Tides of the Titans by Thoraiya Dyer

Author:Thoraiya Dyer
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780765386090
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2019-01-29T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

MITIMITI PULLED down a green bamboo pipe from its groove in the corner post of a house.

Freshwater streamed from the open end of it.

“From the distillery,” she told Leaper in between taking thirsty gulps directly from the flow. “It runs everywhere in the city except for the palace tower. I draw the buckets up to the queen’s rooms myself. At least”—she paused to grin at Leaper—“I used to. Before you came. I’d say you have four-bucket shoulders.”

She stripped off her diving suit under the partial cover of a windturner and rinsed the mud from her hands and feet. Her white soles were wrinkled from the seawater, contrasting against her brown knees as she balanced on one leg at a time.

Leaper followed suit, rinsing himself before popping his face through the head hole in the windturner, ripping the seams of his suit, and reaching for the bell-covered belt.

“Shouldn’t we wear something fancier, for a banquet?”

“Not yet. First we have to go to the Mooring for worship. Quickly!” She replaced the pipe, stopping the flow, and bounded ahead of him so quickly he could barely keep up. They passed Saltdeck, the palace precinct, and the beehive-covered edge of Blackpress before a sudden abundance of bead-covered warriors with woolly sashes and red-beaded caps warned him that they’d reached the Mooring, the precinct where the men of Cast were confined.

There was no sign of any women of Cast. Leaper felt safely invisible in his windturner, but kept his head down anyway. Through the corner of his eye, he saw tall masts tipping back and forth beyond a long series of warehouses. They could have been the masts of what remained of Wetwoodknee’s fishing fleet. Or else the mobile swamp city of Cast had sails.

Mitimiti slowed to navigate a crowded wooden walkway. Leaper bent over her closest ear and asked her about the masts.

“That’s Cast,” she whispered back, distracted. “You can examine it from the tower at your leisure, later on. Their women, children, and slaves stay there while the men wander. The queen’s been invited to Cast to inspect the damage, but she’s no desire to see it up close, nor to smell the desperation of prisoners chained in the dark.”

On the other side of the walkway, a broad platform encircled the trunk of a wide tree; at least, it was wide by Wetwoodknee standards. Even the biggest trees here looked too small to Leaper, like they were thousands of paces away.

Its buttress roots were submerged in the river waters. Leafless branches spread wide, and a thick trunk was covered in savage, thumb-sized thorns. A wooden carving of some sort of spiny animal, with steps and a small single-person-sized dais in front, had been built against the south face of the thorny trunk.

The queen stood on the dais in her pearl-weighted windturner, head held high, facing the crowd.

“The kapok loses its leaves in the dry,” Mitimiti told Leaper with ten or more rows of windturners still between them and the dais despite her best efforts to squeeze past.

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