Golden Feathers Falling

By Marcin Wrona

Alit is a girl like any other.

By night, she wards off clumsy advances from boring scribes and functionaries, and dreams of other lives she could have led.

By day, she carries letters across dangerous Numush to add coins to her dowry, and awaits with some trepidation the day when her brother is finally old enough to sign her over to another man.

Her world shatters when her tablet house is attacked, for the second time, by men with knives. They want to know more about her father, who disappeared six years ago.

So does she.

Alit hires a band of mercenaries to chase after the only lead she has, and is drawn into an Ekka she has only glimpsed: a land built on vengeance, crime for coin, and simmering revolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcin Wrona
• Release date: Aug 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465897237

Marcin Wrona

Marcin Wrona is a Polish-born Canadian author, a multiple immigrant, a mustachio-twirling financier, and many other things besides. He lives and works in Toronto. To learn more or to follow him through the Twitters and facebooks of the world, please visit www.marcinwrona.ca.

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Golden Feathers Falling

Copyright 2011 by Marcin Wrona

Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1: Orphans

The familiar creak of wooden wheels heralded the day’s work.

Alit sighed, rising from the chair in which she’d been drifting into and out of sleep. Too early. I feel like a walking corpse.

Serves you right. What kind of unmarried girl stays out all night?

Alit turned around to retort. Her brother sat at ease in the elaborate chair he’d designed, hands clasped in a shriveled lap. Alit’s indignation melted away before the grin on his spotty face.

Did you have fun? Amdug asked. His eyebrows quirked upward. Not that I want to hear the details.

Alit shrugged. There had been beer, and stronger things for the men, then clumsy orations and fumbling advances.

Not really, she said. Pasin’s friends are the same boring functionaries as usual. Tradesmen, scribes, shopkeepers.

Boring scribes like us, you mean? He hesitated a moment, then shook his head sadly.

Here we go.

Alit, I’m almost old enough to sign your marriage contract. You’re already nineteen years old. You haven’t many more until no man wants you.

Thanks for that. I’m happy you think I’ve one foot in the grave.

She saw guilt in the spaces between frowns. Amdug hated these arguments even more than she did, if that was possible, but he pressed on.

There won’t be a foreign prince! he said.

She felt heat behind her eyes; anger, and a hint of tears gathering.

"Is that what you think? I’m not a little girl anymore."

Aren’t you? It’s not like you don’t have suitors, and good ones at that. But you reject them all.

What, so you want to pack me off to the next idiot who happens to come to call? Ubaba, maybe? He’s not very ugly, and he’ll beat me only sometimes.

Of course I don’t … I don’t mean it that way, it’s just … you’re young, you’re pretty, you’re … Amdug hesitated a moment, then glanced downward, … you’re whole.

Any anger that might have flared inside Alit had faded away, as it always did when her brother looked down at his ruined legs and his smile faltered. She fought down the tears she’d been dreading, took Amdug’s hands, and kissed his brow.

I’m trying, she said, in a weak voice. I am.

Amdug’s hands disentangled from hers. He took Alit’s shoulders, and gently pushed her away. I know. I’m sorry. This is no way to start the day. What’s for breakfast?

Millet porridge, I’m afraid.

Anki deliver me. Again?

Again.

Alit forced a smile. Well, we at least have some more pleasant things to chase away the bitterness. It hasn’t been that lean a month. Sit by the table. I’ll go get it.

A curtain stitched with hunting lions hung over the archway that led to the kitchen. It was one of the few things they still had that remembered the prosperity of Nashu’s tablet house. The other was carved into the wall beside it. The great shedu relief stood rampant, wings unfurled, a raised hoof pointing to the heavy door that led to their waiting room, and the streets of Numush beyond.

A shedu, the messenger of the gods, warrior and protector. It had not delivered them from evil, but it had saved their lives. Alit laid a hand on the creature’s bullish haunch, the second time that morning. Its human face, bearded and crowned like that of a munificent king, seemed to follow her as she passed.

Beside the bubbling gruel stood a wooden ewer she had filled with milk from the early morning market, and she added this and several spoonfuls of crystalline honey before pouring two generous portions into wooden bowls. She left the fire to burn down, so that tablets could be dried on its coals.

It’s still awful, I’m afraid, she said moments later, seated at the table, tongue coated with bitter film.

Amdug shook his head. Not at all. It’s every bit as good as millet gets. You’ll make a grand wife.

Oh, shut up.

After they ate, Amdug wheeled his way over to his usual station, in the centre of the main room. A full water bowl stood upon a second table, beside small bricks of clay cut during quiet periods to the volume needed for tablets. Amdug took one of these blocks, submerged it, and then rolled it out to an appropriate size.

Even if the tablet house had seen too few students within the last year, they had no shortage of clients with the Feast of Sheaves approaching. Invitations had to be sent to family members in the far-flung city-states of Nerkut and Inatum, inventory ledgers were made up for traveling merchants who carried the city’s delicacies to the hundreds of villages along the great river, and harvest tallies awaited submission to the Lugal’s tax office.

This morning, Amdug worked on none of these things. He pulled a stylus from a compartment built into the side of his chair, and went to work on the fourth tablet of a noble’s commission to copy Anki’s Deliberations.

Do you want me to bring the Deliberations out? Alit asked.

Amdug shook his head. He had scribed this tale enough times that he could do so from memory. Could you look over the accounts? I think I may have counted Shur-Lagaba’s commission twice when I did them yesterday.

What a start to the day.

Alit nodded, and sat down beside her brother, dreaming, as she so often did, of other lives she could have led.

It was not until noon that silver bells alerted Alit to the arrival of their first customer.

That’ll be yet another suitor, I’m sure, Amdug said. Alit threw him a dirty look and followed the shedu’s pointing hoof outside.

A man half-sat, half-lay on the padded bench they had put out for customers. His scarred mouth and limp hair seemed to Alit the unmistakable marks of an unsavoury character. She felt a twinge of fear at the thought of a man such as this waiting in the foyer where her mother had been cut down.

Still, his clothes were rich, almost kingly: a robe of green brocade, edged with golden thread, and many pieces of jewelry. A successful merchant? Perhaps a noble? He had come without a servant, which seemed odd. Taking no chances, Alit carefully assumed a servile smile.

Welcome to Nashu’s tablet house. How may we serve you?

The man looked her up and down, too brazenly for Alit’s liking, then pulled himself upright. I need a message scribed and delivered. You deliver letters, I hear?

Within Numush, yes.

And Numush-ummi?

I am afraid I must ask a surcharge of two shekels if I’m to cross Chagasha’s Ford. It is a long journey, and we are only two working here. She hated telling customers that. The expense was often enough to drive them away.

Very well. It goes to the third house on the Street of Enet Reborn. Painted blue, with a green door. Do you know the street?

I do.

I will dictate to your brother, then.

Master, my brother is busy copying the Deliberations. I can take your dictation.

The man shook his head. I’m sure you’re perfectly adequate, but I have heard that your brother’s script is the cleanest and most artful in the city. I will see him and him alone.

Alit felt a swell of pride, and bowed her head. Very well. Please follow me.

Amdug looked up as the door to his scriptorium creaked open. Alit went through first, mouthing he wants you to her brother. The richly dressed man followed after her.

Amdug bowed his head. Welcome. What task might you have for this humble servant?

First, I should see what it is you’re working on. I hear you have a neat hand.

Amdug put down his stylus, dropped strong hands to the wheels of his chair, and backed away from the table. As he did so, Alit noticed that their visitor’s gaze locked on the wooden contraption.

As always.

Please, said Amdug, take as much time as you would like to read what I have been writing.

Thank you. I am Tukulti. Tell me, he said, bending over the tablet Amdug had been working on, how is it that you lost your legs?

Once, such a personal question might have startled Alit. It had been asked so many times over the years that she no longer paid it much mind.

I was attacked, Master Tukulti. Stabbed. I was lucky to live, but I suppose not the whole of me did. The same answer, each time. Rehearsed.

Men can be such brutes, said Tukulti. Your chair interests me greatly. I saw such a thing on a foreign scroll once. But enough of that. I have not come to pry into your affairs, or to admire carpentry. Your writing is as clean as I was told. It would be impressive in an elder scribe, to say nothing of a boy of your age. I would have you take a letter, if you are ready, then enclose and apply my seal for delivery.

Tukulti reached into a pouch that hung at his belt, and pulled from it an ivory cylinder that he placed on the table. He stepped away, and Amdug wheeled his way back.

Will you take tea or beer? Amdug asked, selecting a brick of clay from the stack and submerging it in water as he had the first. We’ve nothing fit for you here, but Alit can go to market.

Beer, I think. But I’ll not have you beggar yourself on my account. He reached into his purse again, and handed a shekel to Alit, smiling in a way that she forced herself to pretend was pleasant. Get the best you can find around here.

Of course, she said, and left.

***

Numush was not a beautiful city, but the neighbourhood where her father had opened his tablet house was more pleasant, and far safer, than most visitors expected.

The best beer she knew of—Amdug would no doubt pretend to be scandalized if he ever learned how many times she herself had tested it—could be found at a tavern beneath the sign of a red ox. Its owner had designs on marrying Alit to his son, and he would not turn her away.

Alit’s Street of the Stable was a boulevard broad enough for several wagons to ride abreast, lined with palms that had yellowed and wilted during the too-dry summer. The stable that had lent the street its name was ancient memory. She could see, from here, the green awning of the fruit vendor that neighboured the Ox. Its shimmer in the noontime heat reminded her of billowing sails, but no wind blew.

No sooner had Alit begun her journey than she became aware of the first beads of sweat forming in the small of her back and under her arms. The burning rays of Anki’s Chariot would soon have her robe clinging suggestively to wide hips and long legs, to give rise to the day’s disapproving clucks and whispers.

She had only recently begun to really feel the disapproval that followed her. Perhaps it came from the fact that she was pretty and well into childbearing years, yet still wore no marriage veil. Perhaps it came from rumoured licentiousness, from a reputation for smoke and beer and easily spread legs.

In reality, she had not so much as kissed a man—beer and smoke, those were another tale entirely—but reality had little interest for neighbours both bored and boring, who entertained themselves with half-truths and speculation.

Just what kind of girl could I be, after all, if murder made me an orphan.

Alit passed the fruit vendor’s shop, fully aware of the lascivious gaze in his piggish eyes. A part of her was appalled, but another reveled in the admiration. Which part won out, in situations such as this, was frequently a function of how much beer she’d imbibed. This morning, with millet laying too heavily in a stomach made delicate by last night’s revel, she chose disgust.

And so, her thoughts turned back once again to beer, she entered Dipatu’s taproom.

The Ox was a cheerful place. By day, the light of Anki’s Chariot shone through windows so wide that men frequently made a game of leaping through them rather than entering by the door. By night, Dipatu or his awful son brought oil-burning lamps atop tall copper stands to each of the twelve round tables, and fragrant braziers lit the long common bench at which less august patrons sat.

Dipatu’s waving hand, and the scents of lamb and cumin, greeted Alit. The midday meal had not yet begun in earnest. Three patrons sat at tables, and a drunkard she recognized snored contentedly at Dipatu’s counter, his hand cradling a clay mug.

Back so soon after so long a night? I think perhaps it is time for you to move in with us, said the publican. A broad smile spread across his homely face. Dare I dream that you’ve come to consent to Ubaba’s marriage proposal?

Alit returned his smile, despite herself. Dipatu was effortlessly friendly where his son was loutish, and his mind was open where his son’s had been set in fired clay. Were she to marry into the family, the son would not be her first choice.

Not today, Dipatu. I came for a jug of beer to take home.

Anki’s Chariot, you’re as insatiable as any soldier!

She laughed. It’s for a client. Sadly.

She pulled Tukulti’s shekel from her pouch and slid it over the counter. Dipatu shook his head and slid it back.

Today, it’s my treat.

The drunkard slurred something she caught only through tone.

Because she’s prettier than you, old fool, Dipatu replied.

And because you’re quick to resort to bribery. But it would take far more than beer to make Ubaba marriageable.

Thank you, she said, pocketing the shekel.

Dipatu handed her a clay jug, sealed with dusty orange wax. As good as it comes, he said. Bring the jug back when you can. My old hands have broken two this week alone.

I will. Goodbye, Dipatu.

***

When she returned to the tablet house, she heard laughter and clapping even through the heavy wood of the door that separated their foyer from the scriptorium. Alit opened the door to reveal Amdug racing in tight circles around the room. He leaned to one side to ride the length of the shedu’s wall on a single wheel, and reddened when he saw her standing, arms crossed, at the end of it.

I guess the day’s work is done, then? she asked.

Tukulti, who now sat at the table, nodded. It was a short message. I must say, I’m impressed with the facility with which your brother moves around. I think you are in the wrong trade. Such chairs would make you famous and wealthy besides. Perhaps it’s something to discuss over beer.

Alit left the jug on Amdug’s table and went in search of cups.

‘Anki gave us words and made us men’. This has been my family’s duty to the gods, Amdug said, as she passed under the archway that led to the kitchen. Thank you for your kind words, but I am pleased with my work.

For a moment, there was silence. Alit selected her three finest earthenware mugs, and sighed at the thought that some men drank from silver or gold. Maybe someday I’ll have more to offer than humility.

Perhaps you will sell me the measurements that allow you to speed your way around like that without tipping over? I will pay handsomely.

I think we can talk about this, said Amdug, the excitement plain in his voice. Alit sighed and put one of the mugs back. She had berated the eagerness with which her brother approached negotiations so many times that he no longer liked her to be present for them.

She returned to the main room. While the two of you discuss affairs, she said, unsealing the jug of beer and pouring two full cups, I will deliver the letter.

Tukulti seemed to regard her strangely, for a moment, but the expression passed swiftly enough that she could not be sure it had ever been there. Yes, that will be ideal. You remember the directions?

Numush-ummi, Street of Enet Reborn, third house. Blue with a green door.

Impressive recall. The man took a swig of Dipatu’s best and wrinkled his nose. Why do I get the feeling we’ll be thirty mina in debt by nightfall?

Still, she had no option but to leave her brother alone with this unpleasant man. She felt his eyes lingering on her legs and backside as she left, the letter in hand.

It was not until she reached the hilltop on which the Lonely Sandbar bathhouse stood that the Numushes opened up before Alit. The heat of noon had broken, and Anki’s Chariot hung low enough that her shadow was as tall as she, but even so she had crested the hill quickly.

Alit delivered messages often, and had covered enough of the sister cities on foot to form calluses and wiry calves worthy of any wanderer, but there were limits to her endurance. She had pushed herself hard. Too hard, perhaps. Numush-ummi was still far away, and she was not sure she could make the return journey before nightfall. She could take a moment to rest, but no more.

The Sandbar’s resplendent mosaic, guarded day and night by meaty sentinels, was a gleam at the edge of her vision, a hint of lapis, malachite and gold. The stone-paved street broadened as it descended past large houses and then small ones, until it ended among shacks and market pavilions at the edge of the colossal bridge that spanned the Shalumes and connected Numush to Numush-ummi.

In the distance, not far from her destination or the river, stood the sand-yellow ziggurat of Chagasha’s great temple. A sister, this one a pyramid of green terraces upon which all manner of trees and flowers grew, rose from a bend in the Shalumes to her right, still within Numush proper. Chagasha’s Growing Temple and her Harvest Temple, like the Numushes, were two halves of a whole.

Alit stood on her tiptoes, stretching her back and arms, while she took in the cities. The Feast’s bunting was still sparse, but in only a few days the Numushes would be draped in orange and yellow cloth.

Too skinny, called one of the Lonely Sandbar’s guards. Come here, girl, I’ll feed you better.

Judging by your belly, she said, turning to leave, you’ll keep it all to yourself.

I wasn’t going to feed you with bread.

The guard guffawed at his own joke, encouraged by a few weak titters from passersby. Alit rolled her eyes and continued onward, towards The Bridge.

She bought a skewer of red peppers and onions from a roadside stall along the way, and ate it as she walked, vowing to extort a stable and horse from any money Amdug might get for his chair design. She nodded and waved to the few familiar faces that she passed. As she neared The Bridge, these disappeared entirely.

The Numushes were lawless cities run by inept Lugals, and nowhere was this clearer than at the riverside docks clustered in the shadow of the impossibly great causeway linking them. Chagasha’s Ford, tourists called it.

In a week, the goddess’s High Priest would leave the Growing Temple and make her pilgrimage from Numush to Numush-ummi, to take up his seat in the Harvest Temple until the Rain Days came. Until then, The Bridge would have to content itself with humbler feet. Dockhands, merchants and mercenaries from all countries congregated here. Some laboured at the docks below, ant-small and ant-industrious. Others browsed the topside shops, or the rainbow of stalls and tents that painted The Bridge in riotous colours. The wiser among them walked hired vigilant guards. The less wise were prey for pickpockets.

As Alit crossed, she heard all around her the arguments of trade, offers and counter-offers, protests and pretexts. Here, a desert nomad wrapped head to foot in cloth argued with a burly blacksmith over the price of an ugly-looking bronze blade. There, a wealthy merchant clasped pendant after pendant around his veiled wife’s neck, clucking his tongue at each in turn.

By the time Alit returned from her errand, these shops would all be gone, their awnings and tents packed up, their carts wheeled away. Merchants took The Bridge’s evening prohibition on trade seriously. The penalties for flouting it were measured in lost fingers, and in any case, all men knew that thieves and worse things prowled the Numushes at night.

Alit was no stranger to the city after dark. She knew where the worst dangers could be found and how to evade them, and could run far and fast. When escape proved impossible, she was perfectly willing to strike with the iron pin that held back her hair. It had already been bloodied, once, inside a too-insistent hand.

Such thoughts always came when deliveries took her far away from the tablet house. They were a litany, a preparation for very real possibilities. Alit had been orphaned by murder. She had no illusions about what the gods could bring down in their ugly moments.

***

The blue house with the green door was not far from the river. By the time she arrived, Anki’s Chariot had passed over the horizon, and the torch boys had begun to come out. While the god took his nightly pleasure, his warriors, the Ashuras, marched through the black sky, pinpricks of light in gleaming armour.

Alit knocked at the door and studied the street around her. Two braziers had been lit nearby, and a torch boy loitered against a wall, but she could spy no guards in Numush’s green and red livery. This was not a poor place, exactly, but neither was it the sort of neighbourhood she expected a man as richly garbed as Tukulti to live in. The realization teased at the hairs of her neck.

You’re jumping at shadows. He’s just a pretender at nobility, like so many other merchants. Still… She patted the back of her head, eager for reassurance that her hair spike was still there.

The door creaked open, partway, and a slave-branded face appeared, backlit by lamps within the house.

You are?

Alit, of Nashu’s tablet house. I was hired by Tukulti to deliver a letter.

The door opened, and the slave beckoned her into a small, tastefully appointed sitting room dominated by a rich Sarvashi carpet and the smells of tea and burning lamp oil. A man in a checked tunic looked at her from over a shukasi board.

There was a wheezy quality to the slave’s voice when he announced her, the reed-whistle timbre of a much older man than he appeared to be. Alit reflexively stepped away, subtly tracing the ward against disease. The seated man’s mouth quirked upward, though he said nothing.

I have a letter, she said. From Tukulti.

Read it to me.

Alit loosened a pouch hanging from her belt and withdrew a dun block. She pulled the soft clay envelope apart with her fingers, then blew dust from the fired clay tablet within. She brought the letter closer to one of the lamps, and squinted as she read it.

The jackalspawn owes me three mina, and I expect he’ll try to strike a bargain with you before this night’s deadline. If he does not pay, send for the Satrap’s seneschal.

The Satrap? What could such men have to do with Sarvashi nobles?

From the corner of her eye, Alit could see that the slave had moved back to block the house’s exit. Her throat dried out, and beads of sweat formed on her arms. Anything done to her by men invoking the Satrap would more than likely pass without recourse, and the house’s owner had, she realized, a distinctly cruel look in his eye.

So, he said. "You are the jackalspawn, are you?"

Wh-what? I owe Tukulti no money, master, I swear. I never met him until today.

The man in the checked tunic began to rise to his feet. Alit darted a look at his slave, who stood impassively at the door.

Do not think to touch me, she said. I will scream.

And who’ll care, hmm? But no, I have no interest in your cunny. An ugly grin. Not yet, anyway. Tell me, jackalspawn, about your father.

Alit’s blood turned to ice. She heard men screaming, stone-muffled, while her brother bled and made piteous noises.

Tell me, jackalspawn, about your father.

Hours after the screams and groans had come to an end, she had dared to leave their hiding place, to emerge from the cunningly hidden compartment between the shedu’s legs. Corpses had lain bleeding among stacked tablets. Her mother had been left in the foyer where she was cut down. Her father had disappeared that day.

Memories disappeared, driven away by a sword that had appeared in the man’s hand. He would be cruel, she knew, crueler than she could bear.

Alit bolted towards the door, and saw the slave tense for contact. Her hand swung out, throwing the letter in the direction of the man in the checked tunic. Then, she tore out an iron pin and a clump of black hair. She struck, hard, burying the makeshift blade in the slave’s throat. She threw him behind her as he toppled, fumbling with the door. Behind her was a clatter. She didn’t dare look.

Help! she screamed into the night air, knowing that he’d been right, that nobody would listen. Not here, not in Numush. Anki’s warriors hung impotently in the sky. She would have to protect herself.

Oh, gods, Amdug.

Another thought, one she could not face just now. Alit ran, no longer calling for help. She did not need to look back to know that she was pursued.

The torch boy that had been standing in the street of Enet Reborn was still there, his brand lit. Alit changed course, and ran directly at him.

The boy ran, or tried to. The wise did not mire themselves in the nighttime tragedies that befell others. But he did not get far before Alit was upon him. She kneed him in the small of the back. He fell, and his torch skittered away. She scooped it from the ground as she ran. It was dark outside, too dark, and the brand could serve as a weapon if she needed it to.

Her pursuer was not far behind, and ran as swiftly as she. Alit sucked air in, and stretched her stride even longer. The streets were empty. They usually were, at this hour. There would be guards at the Harvest Temple, but she did not trust herself to find it in the dark. There would be guards at The Bridge,