Flux

particularly common here, but they might be up north.”
    “Why is everyone so shocked, then? Is he someone famous or maybe infamous? He didn’t look all that important to me.”
    Ennek shook his head. “It’s not that. The symbols have other meanings as well. And the one on the left, it means ‘star.’ It’s also the name of the star god the children mistook you for.”
    “Oh. Well, I suppose that is a little…odd.”
    “A little, yes. But the other symbol, Mine, the other symbol means magician.” Ennek let out a deep breath. “And water, or sea. It means that too. And now that I’ve really looked at it closely, it’s not so different from the symbol for the water element that Thelius taught me. More elaborate, is all.”
    Miner blinked at him. He was still deeply confused. “So what does it all mean, En?” he asked plaintively.
    “I don’t know. It’s an odd coincidence, though. Hai-Shui thinks it’s a sign, but he doesn’t know of what.”
    That was disturbing, to say the least. Miner didn’t much fancy omens, and he certainly didn’t fancy them burned into his skin.
    “There’s something else, though,” Ennek said. “Taken together, those symbols have an entirely different meaning as well.”
    “I’m very glad I didn’t try to learn to read this language. What else do they mean?”
    “Freedom. Your back says freedom.”

Chapter Seventeen
    h

    I t wasn’t until they stopped at midday on the first day of their journey to Jiangbei that Miner discovered the gift from Yuening. Tucked into his bag were several sheets of paper tightly rolled together, some brushes of varying widths, and a pot of black ink. At first he assumed all the papers were blank, but then he realized that the inner one contained a painting: a beautiful, simple rendition of two men. The details of their faces were vague, but one man was tall and thin, with short hair, while the other was shorter and more muscular, his hair hanging almost to his shoulder in curls. The taller man was behind the shorter one and had his arms wrapped around the other man’s middle as if he were supporting him, or perhaps protecting him. The shorter man leaned back into the embrace, alert but relaxed, his hands planted on his hips. You could tell at a glance that these two men loved one another.
    “Wow,” Ennek said, peering at the painting. “It’s almost as nice as one of yours. Who made it?”
    “Yuening,” Miner replied, ignoring the first statement. He knew Ennek had a falsely high opinion of Miner’s work.
    “I wonder why she posed us like that?”
    “Because you’re too short to be seen if you hold me up.”
    Ennek swatted him lightly on the arm. “No, she could have had us side by side. She saw, Mine.”
    “Saw what?” Miner carefully rolled up the painting and the other papers, fastening them with a bit of gold cord and returning them to his bag. Then he pulled out the thick packet of dried meat he’d been searching for in the first place.
    “She saw what you are to me.”
    “And what’s that?”
    Ennek had already found some apples in the new bag their friends had given him. He handed one to Miner and took a bite of his own. “Do you remember what the Keep looks like? From the outside, I mean?”
    Miner blinked at the abrupt change of subject and gave a small shrug. “Of course. I spent a lot of hours standing or marching in front of it.”
    “So you know how strong it looks. Intimidating. As if it could withstand absolutely anything.”
    “Of course.”
    “It was meant to look that way. And it is strong. It’s stood for hundreds of years, through attacks, earthquakes, storms, the pounding waves. But you know what really holds that tower up?”
    “Um…the walls?”
    “Yeah, nice thick stone walls. And they’d have toppled to rubble long, long ago if it weren’t for those sort of delicate-looking arches and piers attached to the base of them. Flying buttresses, Mine, and they don’t look all that tough, but they’re what supports the entire structure.”
    “All right,” Miner said. He bit into his apple, wondering at the import of the impromptu architecture lesson.
    “That’s you, Miner. You’re my buttress. And Yuening saw that and painted it.”
    “I’m not—”
    “My buttress,” Ennek said very firmly, and then stomped off to fill their pot with some water from the nearby stream.

    ***

    They made love under the canopy of stars that night. They were surprisingly energetic about it,