Flux

meant. She looked quickly at her own children and her eyes filled with tears. Miner rose clumsily to his feet and, muttering something to her even he didn’t understand, rushed away before he began to cry.

    ***

    Ennek felt much better when he finally crawled out of bed around noon. He sat on a bench in the courtyard, eating soup and rice while Miner stood behind him and combed out his hair. The children kept zooming over to tug at a curl or two before racing away again, shrieking with laughter.
    “Do you think we could bathe again?” Miner asked.
    Ennek laughed. “You’ve certainly overcome your fears.” He said something to Luli, who was nearby, hanging wet clothing to dry on a wooden rack. She answered and Ennek turned his head to smile up at Miner. “No problem. She says just wait about an hour.”
    While they waited, Yuening took them down the road. The Bhujanga scolded them from overhead. The children alternately bounded ahead and trailed behind, chattering the entire way, and people they passed waved cheerily at them and called out their names. They hadn’t spent much time in this place, but Miner felt as if they were welcome—that if he and Ennek were to announce they intended to stay, everyone would be pleased to have them as neighbors. He wished they could stay. He liked this place. If they remained long enough maybe he’d even learn to speak a word or two of the language.
    They stopped at a small house at the far end of the village. It was much more modest than Hai-Shui and Luli’s home, really more a hut than anything else, and there was no courtyard at all so that the door opened almost directly onto the road. But there were bright flowers growing in front of the house and a few flags of vividly colored silk fluttered over the door, and the man who came out to greet the visitors smiled broadly at them.
    The man was tiny, at least a full head shorter than Yuening, and so wiry he couldn’t have weighed more than a child. His face was dark and deeply lined, as if he’d spent his long life mostly out of doors; his hands were gnarled, and he had only a few stray wisps of white hair remaining on his scalp. He was also missing most of his teeth. But his back was very straight and he moved as quickly as a squirrel, darting about to lead them to a little garden behind his house, where he seated them on low stone benches and plied them with tea and tiny bowls of salty nuts and seeds.
    Miner was content enough with their visit, but he didn’t understand the reason for it until the man rushed into his house and then danced back with a huge fabric satchel under his arm. He set the satchel on the ground near Ennek and Miner’s feet and knelt before them, drawing from his bag sheets of soft leather and a string he used to measure the length and breadth of their feet.
    “He’s a shoemaker?” Miner asked.
    “I guess so. I miss my boots, you know. Isn’t that silly, after all we’ve been through?”
    “They were nice boots.”
    “They were. I have to say, though, I prefer the clothing here to all those scratchy tight suits I had to wear in the Keep, with the collars buttoned up so snugly around my neck I always felt like I was strangling.”
    Miner stroked his soft trousers absently. “Yes, these are much more comfortable.”
    “Can you imagine what a sensation we’d make, appearing in the Keep dressed like this?”
    “I imagine we’d make a sensation appearing in the Keep no matter how we were dressed.”
    Ennek sighed. “True enough.” His gaze turned far away. “I wonder how Larkin is doing. After Thelius murdered his family…it just ruined my brother. And then to learn that Thelius used my powers, and to have the whole scandal of me to deal with…. Larkin’s a strong man, but I don’t know that he’s that strong.”
    “Will he run the polis well when it’s his turn?”
    “I don’t know. I used to think so, but…I just don’t know. The Chief is so hard, and I’ve wondered for some time if he was always like that, or if he turned that way because of his office. My mother’s death couldn’t have helped either. Gods, and what I’ve done! He must have been apoplectic.”
    “Do you wish you’d never gone Under, En?”
    Ennek looked at him, shocked. “Never! I have no regrets over finding you and getting you out of there—out of the polis. None at all.”
    The shoemaker must have finished then, because he had a short conversation with Yuening and Ennek. “Our shoes will be