A Tyranny of Queens by Foz Meadows

Author:Foz Meadows [Meadows, Foz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85766-589-8
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2017-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

11

Moon-Tales

Noqevai was a patchwork city, luminous and fey. So far as Saffron could see – and that was, she freely admitted, not very far at all, her knowledge and assumptions both still skewed to Earthly norms – it was a chaotic jumble of magic and technology, a magpie’s nest assembled from the trappings of an itinerant multiverse. More and stranger creatures than the roshaqui roamed the mazelike streets, though none were quite so large, and as strange as she’d found the paladin Tsai – who belonged, said Nim, to a race called the Qashqa – she was far from being the only non-human around. Yet all of them, unquestionably, were people: people riding unfamiliar bipeds and quadrupeds; people in armoured palanquins; people zipping past her on gleaming, personalised hoverboards; people, people everywhere, and not a one she knew.

Saffron’s head spun with it, giddy and half-terrified, elated to the point of nausea. It was like being perpetually caught in the moment where a lucid dream became a nightmare, only without the horror: a visceral, all-over jump that said it’s real and you’re here and you need to stay calm or you can’t control it, written right down to her bones. Nim, who was clearly no stranger to overwhelmed newcomers, made no fuss of her gawking, but guided her gently through the crowds with a hand on her elbow, thir patter meant more as background noise than incitement to conversation. For his part, Leoden took in the alien markets, with their tiered fountains and colourful buildings and unpredictable denizens, with a sort of calm equanimity, as though he were not so much acclimatised to the setting as aloof from its implications.

“You are staying at the Baroeht, aren’t you?” Nim asked him. The three of them momentarily split up, navigating separate paths through the cheerful outspill of a packed hostelry, the milling patrons all with a drink or food in hand and talking over the distant strains of music. When they came back together again, Nim added, as though there’d been no interruption, “I ought to have asked earlier, but I just assumed–”

“I am, yes,” said Leoden, shooting thim a wry glance. “Though I’m not sure I ever said as much.”

“You didn’t have to,” Nim replied. “It’s in the paladin records, and even if it weren’t, the Baroeht is usually where the touts send human first-timers.” Saffron did a slight doubletake at that, the word human having a somewhat broader definition in Trade than in English, the better to account for the various differences that distinguished them across different worlds.

Leoden raised a brow. “Even the disreputable touts?”

“Especially them,” said Nim. “Or else they’d answer to us.”

“Why?” asked Saffron, interjecting for the first time in nearly ten minutes.

Nim waved a bare hand – thei’d long since removed thir gloves – at the surrounding cityscape. “Noqevai looks wild, I know, but it functions as it does precisely because we adhere to rules of order. Travellers coming here must be able to trust that they’ll encounter a certain degree of safety, and that any patrons they bring in the future will do so, too.

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