The Republic of Salt by Ariel Kaplan

Author:Ariel Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Erewhon Books
Published: 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

Zayit’s second-best astronomer was a man with aspirations.

Asmel had been clever enough not to have gone to the salt guild asking about the gate. He hadn’t been clever enough to realize the mortal salt guild would have feelers out looking for people trying to find it themselves. They’d been warned, apparently, by the Maziks: Conceal the location of the gate at all costs. If anyone arrives and asks for the codex, kill them. If anyone arrives and begins an analysis of the stars, kill them. Trade through the gate had been suspended indefinitely.

The salt guild did not kill Asmel for one reason: the man instructed to pass on the order suffered a heart attack on his way to work that morning and died. So Asmel sat in a makeshift cell in the basement of the mortal salt guild, and the men set to guard him were left to wonder if they should kill him or just keep him.

If they killed him without a direct order, it would not go well for them, so they decided to wait. The salt guild replaced the dead man with one of his subordinates. This man was not happy about his professional prospects, now that the guild had lost its most lucrative market and the price of salt was sure to plummet, and voiced the opinion that he should have gone into the oil trade with his cousin, who was making a killing selling to Katlav. He was very grumpy, very often, and the men guarding Asmel would have brought up the subject, but really, the man was awful and no one wanted to tell him anything.

In the dim light of the guild’s basement, a pair of guards searched Asmel’s belongings and found the remaining spheres of Toba’s and Tsifra’s magic. “I don’t like the look of that at all,” the first guard said.

“Who do you suppose he is?”

“Forget that. Do you think we can sell these?”

“How would we go about finding a buyer? We don’t even know what they are. Hey,” the guard called to Asmel, “what are these baubles in your bag?”

Asmel looked up from his spot in his cell. “Can I have one of those, please?”

“Shut up, you,” the guard said. “Maybe they blow up? Throw one against the wall.”

“Are you stupid?”

“Right,” the first one said. “Right, that’s a bad idea.”

“They don’t explode,” Asmel said. “Really, there’s nothing you can do with them at all.”

“Then why did you want one?”

Asmel could not think of a response to that, because he could not exactly remember.

The guards put the baubles back in the bag and left it sitting in the corner. “Ah,” said one, “I hate this post. Smells like mouse shit down here, doesn’t it?”

“If we kill him, we don’t have to sit down here any longer,” the other suggested.

“But if we sit down here, we don’t have to do anything,” the other said. “Otherwise we’re hauling salt ten hours a day.”

“I don’t understand why we’re moving so much of it when the gate’s shut.

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