Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

 
1
The Light and the Fair
     
     
    So it came that Menial found him in the
square at Carron Town
     
    She walked through the fair in the light of a northern summer
evening, looking for me. Of the hundreds of people around her,
the thousands in the town and the thousands on the project, only
I would serve her purpose. My voice and visage, mind and body
were her target acquisition parameters.
    I sat on the plinth of the statue of the Deliverer, drained a
bottle of beer and put it carefully down and looked around,
screwing up my eyes against the westering sun. The music faded
for a moment, then another band struck up, something rollicking
and loud that echoed off the tall buildings around three sides of
the square and boomed out from the open side across the shore and
over the water. The still sealoch was miles of gold, the distant
hills and islands stacks of black. The air was warm and shaking
with the music and heavy with scent and sweat,alcohol-breath and
weed-smoke. People were already dancing, swinging and swirling
among the remaining stalls of the day’s market. I caught
glimpses and greetings from various of my workmates, Jondo and
Druin and Machard and the rest, as they whirled past in the
throng with somebody who might be their partner for the hour, or
for the night, or for longer.
    For a moment, I felt intensely alone, and was about to jump up
and plunge in and seek out someone, anyone, who would take me
even for one dance. It was not normally this way; usually at such
occasions through the summer I had got lucky. Like most of my
fellow-workers, I was young and – of necessity –
strong, and my vanity needed no flattery, and we were most of us
open-handed strangers, and therefore welcome. But I was in a
serious and abstracted mood, the coming autumn’s study
already casting its long shadow back, and in all that
evening’s gaiety I had not once made a woman laugh, and my
luck had fled.
    She walked through that dense crowd as if it wasn’t
there. I saw her before she saw me. Her long black hair was
caught around the temples by two narrow braids; the tumbling
waves of the rest showed traces of auburn in the late sun. That
golden light and ruddy shadow defined her tanned and flushed
face: the large bright eyes, the high cheekbones, the curve of
her cheek and jaw, the red lips. She wore a gown of plain green
velvet that seemed, and probably was, made to show off her strong
and well-endowed figure. Her gaze met mine, and locked. Her eyes
were large and a little slanted, and they caught my glance like a
trap.
    There is, no doubt, some bodily basis for the crude cartoon of
such moments – the arrowthrough the heart. A sudden demand
on the sugar reserves of the cells, perhaps. It’s more like
a thorn than an arrow, and passes in less than a second, but
it’s there, that sharp, sweet stab.
    A moment later she stood in front of me, looking down at me
quizzically, curiously, then she came to some decision and sat
down beside me on the cold black marble. The hooves of the
Deliverer’s horse reared above us. We stared at each other
for a moment. My heart was hammering. She appeared younger, more
hesitant, than she’d seemed with her first bold gaze. Her
irises were golden-brown, ringed with green-blue. I could see a
faint spatter of freckles beneath her tan. A fine gold chain
around her neck suspended a rough mesh of gold wire containing a
seer-stone the size of a pigeon’s egg. It hung between her
breasts, its small world flickering randomly in that gentle
friction. An even thinner silver chain implied some other
ornament, but it hung below where I could see. The dagger and
derringer and purse on her narrow waist-belt were each so elegant
and delicate as to be almost nominal. There was some powerful
undertone to her scent, whether natural or artificial I
didn’t know.
    ‘Well, here you are,’ she said, as though
we’d arranged to meet at this very place. For a couple of
heartbeats I entertained the thought that this might be true,
that she was someone I really did know and had unaccountably,
unforgivably forgotten – but no, I had no memory of ever
having met her before. At the same time I couldn’t get rid
of a conviction that I already knew her, and always had.
    ‘Hello,’ I said, for want of anything less banal.
‘What’s your name?’
    ‘Menial,’ she said. ‘And you
are…?’
    ‘Clovis,’ I said ‘Clovis colha