The canal widened perceptibly, and the banks were crowded with low‑slung barges, their open decks piled high with crates and boxes. Shoppers, men and women alike in loose shirts and trousers, many of them barefoot on the sun‑warmed stones, moved along the banks with string sacks balanced on each shoulder, calling to each other and to the merchants on the barges. The barge tenders seemed to sell anything, Lioe saw with amazement. There was one stocked with food, set up like any land‑bound store with neat aisles and display cases; tied to its stern was a much smaller boat that seemed to be filled with rags. A couple of adolescents were pawing through the piles. As Lioe watched, one of them straightened with a crow of delight, and slung a salvaged cape around his thin shoulders, striking a dramatic attitude. Farther on, a closed barge sold custom masks, a white, unpainted face peering from each of the tiny portholes. It was an unsettling effect, and Lioe looked away quickly.

The bus stopped three times in the market basin–Warden Mecomber’s Market, the signs read, in Burning Bright’s old‑fashioned, legible script–and the passengers climbed out in droves, calling to the driver as they went. As the bus pulled away from the final stop, only Lioe and a trio of musicians, two towheaded young men who looked like siblings and a stocky, flat‑faced woman, remained. The musicians huddled together, talking in low voices, their cased instruments tucked between their feet. The woman, sketching phrasing and tempo in the air, had beautiful hands.

The bus moved more slowly now, and the tone of its engine deepened, as though it were fighting a new current. Lioe glanced over the side, curious, but the oily water slid past, apparently unchanged. Then she heard a new rushing noise–not so new, she realized; she had been hearing it since the market, but the babble of voices had kept her from realizing what it was. The bus slanted in toward the left‑hand bank, the embankment side, and the driver’s voice crackled in the speakers.

“Crooked Underpass, people. End of the line.”

Lioe followed the musicians up onto the bank, and stopped short, staring at the Dike. Directly ahead of her, the embankment ended in a woven iron railing; beyond that, water spurted from a hole in the Dike, a short, meter‑long fall to the river below–not a hole, she realized instantly, but a tunnel. The Crooked River had to pass through the Dike–she had known that, but it hadn’t quite sunk in to her consciousness–and this was the mouth of the tunnel that carried it. The tunnel probably has hydro generators in it, too, she thought, striving for some kind of perspective. Burning Brighters don’t seem to waste power. Beyond the railing, the water roared, and a segment of the spectrum danced in the spray. She stared for a moment longer, then made herself look away.

She rode the elevator up the face of the Dike–it was a closed car, and she wasn’t entirely sure if she was glad or sorry–and passed through the elevator station and into a blaze of noise and color. She blinked, startled, checked instinctively, and nearly ran into someone. Warden Street was mobbed, people jostling shoulder to shoulder along the walkways and spilling out into the street, so that the trolley sounded its two‑toned whistle almost continually, and still barely moved more than a few meters at a time. A group of musicians–not the trio from the bus–were playing on a wooden platform that looked temporary, the stinging sound of steel strings ringing over the crowd, but the singer’s words were lost in the general uproar. Lioe blinked again, realized that she was becoming a traffic hazard, and made herself start walking.

The crowds here were better dressed than they had been on the streets below. Here most of the people, men and women, wore either the full‑skirted, nipwaisted coats or loose, unshaped wraps of some silky fabric that seemed to float in the air around them, trailing strange perfumes. Quite a few wore strands of bells, silver or gold or enameled in many colors, slung from shoulder to hip, and Lioe found herself eyeing them curiously, wondering if the style would suit her. The shop windows were enticing, holograms revolving in the thick display glass, showing off clothes more improbable even than the Republic’s highest fashion, the prices flickering discreetly just below the items. A few of the older buildings had real windows, with real goods in the boxes behind them. Lioe slowed her step to stare, not caring if that betrayed her as a foreigner–the neat hat would do that anyway, marked her as a pilot and a Republican on any human‑settled world–and realized that the prices in these windows were sandwiched in the glass itself, faint opalescent numbers visible only from a certain angle. She couldn’t begin to guess how much such a display would cost, but she suspected the shops made more than enough to cover their expenses. Still, one of them was bound to have what she needed.

She found what she was looking for at last, in a smaller store toward the center of the Dike, a place crammed with racks of the full‑skirted coats and the silky wraps, and a pile of skirts made of reembroidered lace, each pattern in the lace itself redefined by an overlay of colored shapes cut from sequensa shells. She fingered that fabric cautiously, admiring its elaborate beauty, but knew better than to buy. She wouldn’t know how to wear a skirt, how to make herself look good in it, but even so, she sighed for the lost possibility. She bought a coat instead, this one straight‑bodied, a rich gold‑on‑gold brocade embroidered at the neck and shoulders with gold beads and leaf‑shaped paillettes of gold‑dyed sequensas. It looked good, she had to admit as she looked at herself in the shop mirror, the counterwoman hovering in the background, good enough to make her reckless. She bought a shirt as well, a loose tunic of the floating silk dyed a darker mustard color, and a thin scarf bordered with more sequensas and gold embroidery. It took everything that was left of the voucher from Shadows to pay for it all, but she shrugged away the thought that she was doing it to impress Ransome. This was easy money, easy come and easy go, to be spent on indulgences like this. And if I want to impress somebody with it, well, I’ll just call Roscha. I might do that anyway. She passed the last of the vouchers over the countertop, watched the woman feed them one by one into the bank machine. I think I’ll do just that–and if I need money, there’s always Republican C‑and‑I. Kichi Desjourdy’s station chief here, and she always paid well for information. There’s bound to be enough stuff going on here that would interest her. She watched the counterwoman wrap the clothes into a tidy bundle, accepted it with thanks. Certainly there should be enough happening at this party of Ransome’s. She tucked the bundle under her arm, and stepped out of the shop to catch the trolley back toward Governor’s Point and her hostel in the Ghetto beyond.

Evening, Day 31

High Spring: The Hsai

Ambassador’s House, in the

Ghetto, Landing Isle Above

Old City North

It was evening in Chauvelin’s garden, and Damian Chrestil stood with his back to the terrace wall, looking inward toward the house. It was almost as large as a midsize palazze, the sort that cousins of Five Points families built in the districts below the Five Points cliffs. The white stone glowed in the twilight, very bright against the purpling haze of the sky; the open windows were filled with golden light, spilling a distant music into the cooling air. In the gap between the southern wing and the main house, he could just see a blue‑black expanse of ocean, reflecting a rising moon in a scattering of light like foam. He looked away from that, made uneasy by the sight of open water–the sea should be viewed from the security of the barrier hills, or from an open deck, not glimpsed like this across a garden–and found the lesser moon, just rising, riding low beneath a bank of cloud. The larger moon was well up, and all but invisible, just a faint glow of pewter light behind the thickening clouds. The street brokers were saying it was thirty‑to‑one that the storm that was building to the south would hit the city, but no one was taking odds on strength.