her again, all of that is gone.
She is back. Deeper than ever. An Ascendant of the Seventh House. Apart from that there is the undeniable sense of family she attaches to the organization. She buries it. She ridicules it internally as an affectation but the feelings persist, a vague sense of belonging. Unable to verbalize such a grotesquery, Sena sums it as crassly as she can in her journal,
“They still have a use.”
She moves out of Sandren even before her cottage is complete and begins skipping social functions, fading from Sandrenese galas, shrugging her duties to focus on her project. Megan’s letters become persistent. The cottage secret slips.
“The Highlands of Tue? Within eyeshot of the Porch of Sth? Are you mad?”
Sena doesn’t argue. Megan is right.
She still remembers her first journey below the Walls of Tue, looking up at the grim dark circle perched on the brink of cliff and sky; she had seen something in the air, transparent ommatophorous images, like light trapped in ancient glass.
Sena won’t admit that the monument frightens her. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Her goal, her search, wins out. The Stones are linked to something abstruse and awful, something that can protect her if she actually finds the
Csrym T.
Much different than the modernists in Sandren, Sena sees herself as a believer in sweet black secrets, rich as chocolate cake, visceral and bloody with cosmic truths learned and lost on the tides of other civilizations.
In the cities, in the gleaming dirty bustle and rush,
Sena thinks,
we are on the edge of something . . . not the future. Something so old it only feels new . . .
Sena keeps working for the Sisterhood even after her cottage is finished. She fudges on her hours. And then, after nearly two years, everything pays off.
“
New electroplate angel on my altarpiece,” Bishop Wilhelm murmurs. Sena says nothing as they pass a pharmacopolist. “God-jarring marvel pales in comparison to you.”
The bishop is smoldering. He swings himself around her like a censer. Cologne and wealth pour off him like smoke.
Lines of sight intersticed by momentary objects and rushing peopleallow others to glimpse their eastward passage along the Avenue of Lights. They catch snippets of Sena. The fleeting blond tantrum in the wind. The gem-blue eyes italicized in mascara. The movement of her hips caroms sunlight, sets the black jewel fastened in her navel flashing. It is a chronotropic spell. Some of her gawkers collide with city things, remembering their places in the street on impact.
Sena slices east between the buildings with purpose.
At the outlet to Rum Street she and the bishop say good-bye. His questionable eloquence fades into city sound as she pays for teagle fare and enters one of the gondolas blackened by a century of weather. In her hand is a colorful shopping bag, stretched by something heavy
. . .
It hadn’t been found in some forsaken temple or ruined attic. Rather it was to be had off March Street for five gold scythes.
“I want this one,” she had said, holding up the book.
The proprietor had smiled with lips like wood shavings—pale, smooth and tight.
“That’s from Stonehold . . . very old. Can’t open it though. Latch’s rusted shut, see?”
“How much do you want?” Sena had given him a coy look, then turned away, pretending to consider while his thin fingers had kept caressing the leather.
“The binding suggests it might have come from the islands before I found it.”
“I’ll give you three gold scythes.”
A simper.
“Five?”
The machine lurches down a wind-scraped cliff, carrying Sena with it, scudding through iron rib cages draped in grease. She watches the operator throw his switches and apply the brakes whenever they descend too fast. His eyes are furtive and lochetic. As soon as the great old lift clanks against its coupling in the ghettos of Seatk’r, Sena leaves.
Her animal is stabled nearby. It takes her out of the reeking
She is back. Deeper than ever. An Ascendant of the Seventh House. Apart from that there is the undeniable sense of family she attaches to the organization. She buries it. She ridicules it internally as an affectation but the feelings persist, a vague sense of belonging. Unable to verbalize such a grotesquery, Sena sums it as crassly as she can in her journal,
“They still have a use.”
She moves out of Sandren even before her cottage is complete and begins skipping social functions, fading from Sandrenese galas, shrugging her duties to focus on her project. Megan’s letters become persistent. The cottage secret slips.
“The Highlands of Tue? Within eyeshot of the Porch of Sth? Are you mad?”
Sena doesn’t argue. Megan is right.
She still remembers her first journey below the Walls of Tue, looking up at the grim dark circle perched on the brink of cliff and sky; she had seen something in the air, transparent ommatophorous images, like light trapped in ancient glass.
Sena won’t admit that the monument frightens her. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Her goal, her search, wins out. The Stones are linked to something abstruse and awful, something that can protect her if she actually finds the
Csrym T.
Much different than the modernists in Sandren, Sena sees herself as a believer in sweet black secrets, rich as chocolate cake, visceral and bloody with cosmic truths learned and lost on the tides of other civilizations.
In the cities, in the gleaming dirty bustle and rush,
Sena thinks,
we are on the edge of something . . . not the future. Something so old it only feels new . . .
Sena keeps working for the Sisterhood even after her cottage is finished. She fudges on her hours. And then, after nearly two years, everything pays off.
“
New electroplate angel on my altarpiece,” Bishop Wilhelm murmurs. Sena says nothing as they pass a pharmacopolist. “God-jarring marvel pales in comparison to you.”
The bishop is smoldering. He swings himself around her like a censer. Cologne and wealth pour off him like smoke.
Lines of sight intersticed by momentary objects and rushing peopleallow others to glimpse their eastward passage along the Avenue of Lights. They catch snippets of Sena. The fleeting blond tantrum in the wind. The gem-blue eyes italicized in mascara. The movement of her hips caroms sunlight, sets the black jewel fastened in her navel flashing. It is a chronotropic spell. Some of her gawkers collide with city things, remembering their places in the street on impact.
Sena slices east between the buildings with purpose.
At the outlet to Rum Street she and the bishop say good-bye. His questionable eloquence fades into city sound as she pays for teagle fare and enters one of the gondolas blackened by a century of weather. In her hand is a colorful shopping bag, stretched by something heavy
. . .
It hadn’t been found in some forsaken temple or ruined attic. Rather it was to be had off March Street for five gold scythes.
“I want this one,” she had said, holding up the book.
The proprietor had smiled with lips like wood shavings—pale, smooth and tight.
“That’s from Stonehold . . . very old. Can’t open it though. Latch’s rusted shut, see?”
“How much do you want?” Sena had given him a coy look, then turned away, pretending to consider while his thin fingers had kept caressing the leather.
“The binding suggests it might have come from the islands before I found it.”
“I’ll give you three gold scythes.”
A simper.
“Five?”
The machine lurches down a wind-scraped cliff, carrying Sena with it, scudding through iron rib cages draped in grease. She watches the operator throw his switches and apply the brakes whenever they descend too fast. His eyes are furtive and lochetic. As soon as the great old lift clanks against its coupling in the ghettos of Seatk’r, Sena leaves.
Her animal is stabled nearby. It takes her out of the reeking
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