Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Carenage Town, the island nation of Chynchin HERE AT THE TOP of Cullybree Heights, the stone statue honouring the twin goddess Mamacona loomed out over the ocean. She was carved in the form of two caimans, standing back to back on their hind legs, clawed front legs reaching out to embrace or to scourge. The caiman facing seawards was Mamagua, her jewelled eyes and pointed teeth the deep blue of lapis. Facing inland was Mamapiche, eyes and teeth a gleaming black obsidian. Each sister had a powerful caiman tail curled around her feet. The fore-day morning sea was a deep, cold blue. Mama Sea was cheerful on the surface of Her vast, shifting self; whitecaps dancing towards the port in fishscale recursives, like slatterns kicking up their skirts to show their knickers. But beneath those knickers, ah, what? Salty depths that had swallowed many a somebody who surfaced changed, or surfaced not at all.
What might be down there in the deep? You didn''t need to sink too far into the water before the sombre blue shaded even darker to navy, then deep night, then full, cold blackness. Veycosi shuddered. Best to let women be the fishers. Take to their rudders to ride the sea. They understood Her better. Straddling the wide clay outlet pipe that took fresh water from the Cullybree Heights reservoir to the south side of Carenage Town, he scooted a little farther along it. He had to be quick. As soon as the sun was fully up, other people would start visiting Carenage Town''s big reservoir, whether maintenance workers, people hunting the iguanas that were plentiful in the brush up here, or people fishing the reservoir for frogs and mullet.
Every so often, Veycosi knocked on the pipe. Each thump netted him a juddering thud, as when you knocked on the green rind of a watermillion to test its ripeness. He''d been right, then; there was water in this pipe, too, as in the other five he''d tested. That was well. But he could also tell that the water wasn''t moving; when he''d done this same procedure a few minutes ago with the five other massive pipes that fed the other areas of Carenage Town, he hadn''t even needed to thump on them. The water filling them was running so strong that when he straddled each pipe, he could feel the powerful thrum of the flow against his haunches, like the stroke of a masterful lover. In this sixth pipe, however, the water was still; there must be a blockage somewhere farther down. Stale water made for ill humours.
Every day the town elders didn''t let him act, they risked an outbreak of cholera or bottle leg disease in Carenage. And if South Carenage sickened, it could spread to North, West, and East Carenage, Blueing, and Cassava Downs. Veycosi kept knocking against the pipe, advancing as he went. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thump. A flat sound, with no answering resonance.
Was that the blockage? He moved forwards a little more, knocking the while. He hadn''t gone more than thirty handsbreadths when his knock fetched a third sound; a low, hollow clang. The quality of the sound told him that from that section onwards, the pipe was empty. And as he''d suspected, the blockage was right at the point where the pipe turned to begin its gentle dip down to Carenage Town''s south side. Likely a build-up of matter blown into the reservoir during Chynchin''s long dry season. Council members were addlepates, every last one of them. Refusing his petition to try out his idea for getting the water flowing again. Instead, they wanted to wait until the rainy season, which should arrive in a few sennights.
The council hoped that the weight of extra water from the rains would flush the pipe clear. The histories sang of only a few times pipes from the reservoir had become blocked, and each time, the weight of water pressing against the blockage had quickly cleared it. But this time, it had been going on for months. In the meantime, South Carenage, the bustling centre of town, had to fetch water from the river in buckets. And there was an ever-present smell of rot from still sewers. Next it''d be mosquitos breeding, their larvae wiggling in the putrid water. Then sickness. Thandy, his and Gombey''s fiancée, lived there, in the centre of town.
This thing had to be fixed, and now. He would make the air down there sweet again, make the water flow. Thandy would be proud and show him favour once more, as she used to. She''d seemed cool towards him for some weeks now. He had no idea why. He was training to be a chanter of knowledge that others might employ it. The council had reminded him he was a chantwell, and a student one at that. Said he was not an ingenieur.
Said he shouldn''t be meddling in the business of builders. Fuck that. He could reckon instructions as well as anyone with a brain. Could chant the first five chapters of Mauretaine''s book Of Divers Matters on Constructing Wells, Pipes, and Sewers , beginning to end and back again, the full tenor main part. He and his classmates had studied its song last year. But he hadn''t had to memorize the section on clearing blocked pipes; that part was for the sopranos of his line. Veycosi was beginning to slaver around the selfsame book he''d brought out onto the pipe with him, clenched between his teeth. He released it into his hand and opened it to the place he''d marked by slipping a z''avocade leaf in between the pages.
The vellum binding creaked as the book opened. The ancient handmade paper of the pages gave off the usual dusty library smell, so sweet and exciting to his nose, it nearly made him hard every time he scented it. The book''s handwritten ink was fading; good thing he and his line at the Colloquium were committing it to memory, setting it to music so the song might spread on the winds like Mamacona''s breath. That way, the knowledge the book contained might never be forgotten. He reread the instructions on the page. Yes, rap on the pipes for soundness. He''d already done that and verified that it wasn''t cracked. Open the sluice of the blocked pipe.
He''d done that before he''d mounted the pipe. Drop some dye into the reservoir water now, very near the inlet of the suspect pipe. Thence he must watch and see where it did and didn''t flow. Ingenious, that. He pulled the bottle of indigo out of his sleeve pocket, removed the cork, and emptied the bottle into the reservoir water, as close to the pipe as possible. Slowly, a thread of it began to spiral downwards, away from the spreading circle of blue on the surface and towards the inlet below. So the pipe wasn''t completely blocked. Presently, though, he saw his mistake in using indigo.
Blue dye, blue water, sombre morning light. The thinner the indigo spread, the less he could see it, until he couldn''t make out the dye at all. No matter. He''d learned what it had to tell him. Time for the next part of the instructions. Veycosi humped back along the pipe, towards the service steps from the reservoir to the ground below. He refused to think on how his movement resembled that of a cat with a wormy behind. Good thing Thandy couldn''t see his undignified dismount from his water pipe steed.
Standing on the top step, he looked around. Still no one up here but him and the birds. Half-seen flashes of iridescence laced with brown and green, the cullybrees flitted around him in their endless, wheeling flight. Truth was, the council had another reason for waiting till rainy season to think about the blocked pipe. They didn''t want to risk disrupting the cullybree eggs and ruining the annual Cullybree Festival. The cullybree chicks would hatch soon as the season turned fully from dry to rainy. Already they''d had a slight drizzle or two this month, but it was tapu to disturb the cullybree nests. Laying cullybrees tipped their eggs onto moss-lined crags on the northeastern face of the Heights, a furlong or so farther off.
The foolish had a way to say that touching a cullybree nest would bring the world to an end. Chuh. Credulous gullwits. Any road, he was nowhere near the nests. He would get this thing done, then be off tomorrow on the ship to Ifanmwe, where the Colloquium''s book trader was holding a copy of the Alamat Book of Light for him. That tome hadn''t been seen for near on five centaines! The Colloquium had thought it long gone, lost to the sea when the siege of Ifanmwe had seen that country''s fine library put to the torch. Seventeen hundred books and scrolls burned. The histories sang that the clouds above the burned shell of the Ifanmwe library had been black for three days with paper ash.
Knowledge destroyed. It was abominable to even think on. Veycosi had heard that in the mountains above Ifanmwe, two oceans away, it was so cold in their wet season that rain hardened in midair and fell to the ground as a fine white powder. He''d always longed to see that. And to taste it. Steli said they creamed the stuff with yak''s milk and honey to make a divine confection. Veycosi was soon to become a fully fledged Fellow of the Colloquium of the nation of Chynchin. He had only to fetch a rare book for the Colloquium Council.
The Alamat book was the prize that would bring him closer to that fellowship. Bring it home, take the dreaming draught that would give him a Reverie, and then he would be a full chantwell. Once he was a Fellow, he would be free to travel the world, collecting and preserving the written knowledge of history. To be on the sea! He''d only done so once, as a youngboy. He still remembered standing at the bow, the tang of salt spray on his lips. Back at the reservoir wall, he tucked the book into his sleeve, which was turned and hemmed to form a deep pocket. From the foot of the reservoir steps he fetched the three unfired.