The old folk know why the rains are so heavy that year. The god of the river is angry. He appeared to a group of farmers at the ford to the north, blue-faced and bleary-eyed, and said they’d allowed the Gauravayan army to cross His sacred way in the spring without offering the proper sacrifices. As punishment, he will swell and rage and let no-one cross. The farmers offered him a goat but he asked what use a river god has for a goat. They offered him a bowl of milk, and he said the same.
This makes sense, the old folk say, but whoever heard of a sensible good? When it came to the heavens and the fields, something new was always something bad.
Whatever the reason, soon after, an avalanche of cloud piles into the mountains northwards and dumps a sky’s worth of water onto their flanks. One night a rider on her way to Hweneyenshwi brings word of pastures and orchards and people mangled by landslides into a mess working its way downstream. On her heels the river swells like a diseased artery. The water thickens into a raging stew of wood and stone and wreckage, demolishing its banks and eviscerating trees.
As soon as the rider leaves the castle gates gape and Lord’s Daughter rides down to the village with some guards in tow. She is a large woman on a large horse and most in the village have spent their lives obeying her. Those who haven’t take one look at her face, wide and sharp-edged and fierce like the head of a battering ram, and comply with her orders to pack up and move to the castle.
Her brother greets the refugees at the gates. He’s a slender boy, frail when he was young and insubstantial and stiff in his movements, as if he was a creature long made of glass who was only now acclimatizing to flesh. The South Bankers have adored him as long as they’ve feared his sister so his smile and voice are precious welcome indeed. He’s emptied out one of the dining halls off the inner courtyard and the South Bankers settle onto the warm stone and marvel at steadiness of the flames from the expensive candles and at how, once inside, they feel no draught or damp. Some old folk though stay in the courtyard and kneel on the muddy flagstones and pray towards the Temple of the Towers, a slender grey tower with a conical red roof like an ill-fitting hat, peeking round the side of the castle as if shy. This is something else they’ve been doing their whole lives.
Just after nightfall the Lord’s Daughter returns with twin sacks of grain on her shoulders. The guards close the castle gate behind her.
‘What about the North Bankers?’ says the Lord’s Son.
‘What about them?’ she growls.
The boy looks north. The sky is choked with clouds, blackbellied and churning and thunderous, all sailing north. Even the river-spirits are leaving — a small tribe of glowing newts splotching up through the deserted streets with their neon glow licking the cobbles in swift silky flashes.
‘We have to help them,’ he says, quietly.
‘They can float,’ says his sister, and walks away.
*
A delegation of North Bankers arrives at the castle led by the Moneylender. The Porter comes also, and the Scroll Painter, all in their best blue-and-white silks, their little knitted skull caps darkened with rain. The Lord’s Daughter watches them approach from the gate tower with a grin as malicious as the noonday sun.
‘Open the gates,’ says her brother.
‘Keep them shut,’ she says. Then she turns to the delegation and yells, ‘You’re not coming in here!’
The Moneylender steps forward, hands up.
‘Please, m’lady,’ he says. ‘Will the lord of the valley not shelter his people?’
‘There’s no room,’ says the Lord’s Daughter. ‘Besides, the waters will recede. You’ll be fine.’
The Scroll-Painter steps forward, skinny and long-fingered and thin-faced. She has a scowl to match the Lord’s Daughter and when their gazes meet it’s like watching hammer meet anvil.
‘Then why is everyone else in there?’ she says.
‘They have the privilege of the lord’s protection.’
‘We pay our taxes! We’re loyal to His Lordship!’ She crosses her arms. ‘Would your father want us all to die out here?’
The Lord’s Daughter sneers at her.
‘I speak for my father.’
‘Stop it,’ hisses the Lord’s Son. ‘Just let them in.’
‘Sod off.’ The Lord’s Daughter shoves him back and looks at the guards. ‘We’re just having a little fun, aren’t we? Aren’t we?’
The guards chuckle. One of them is gap-toothed and fat and the rain trickles down his face in oily gobs like sweat. Down below, the Moneylender yanks the Scroll-Painter back and hisses something into her ear. She turns her scowl on him but he knows her well enough not to look. Instead he turns back to the Lord’s Daughter.
‘Please,’ he says. ‘M’lady. We’ll die.’
‘Just let them in,’ says the Lord’s Son. He grabs his sister’s arm and his hands are small against the bulge of her bicep ‘Please.’
The Lord’s Daughter looks at his hand and then at his face and then at the people down below. She snorts, and spits on the ground.
‘Fine.’ She points at the Lord’s Son. ‘You’re responsible for them, you hear? And none of them come up into the courtyard.’
‘They can’t sleep in the rain.’
‘They can have the barn and sties.’
Her glare is a provocation but he doesn’t rise to it. He just wraps his arms around her. She stiffens, and resists. Eventually she squeezes back, once and very quickly. Then she pushes him away again and heads off and the guards follow like metal ducklings.
‘Open the gates!’ yells the Lord’s Son. ‘In my father’s name, I welcome you to this castle.’
The North Bankers bow and hurry away. But the Scroll-Painter lingers, face pale and shiny and small in the black tangle of her hair. The Lord’s Son smiles at her, and for a long and unbearable moment she doesn’t respond. Then she winks, and blows him a kiss, and rushes to join the others.
*
Rain comes in the evening and is so intense that the cobble path up to the Temple of the Lovers becomes a glassy cascade and the Lord’s Son can barely see ten feet in any direction. Still, he sneaks out with a sack draped over his head and ascends the slope, slipping and grunting and cold, until he reaches the old awning over the entrance. He pauses against the faded carvings of lilies and leviathans and wipes the rain from his face. Then he enters.
Inside the sound of the rain melts into a hiss interrupted only by stone and wood cracking as they shrink in the cold. The floor is a dusty expanse of flagstones the size of his chest and piled up against the walls are old crates and furniture and an old rocking-horse he recalls was once the object of his vivid desire. In the far corner is an unsteady island of light cast by a stumpy candle and in this he sees the Scroll-Painter staring up at a tapestry of the Sacred Lovers on the wall. She takes it in, lips parted, eyes sweeping up and down like a tongue licking flavoured ice. In the red-gold illumination her face is a thing of exultant beauty.
Eventually she turns to him and her lips purse and curl at the edges into what he knows is her version of a smile. She gestures to the clutter around them.
‘It’s abandoned,’ she says.
‘No one’s been up here for years,’ says the Lord’s Son.
‘Why not?’
‘Dunno. Don’t want to make the ancestors angry, I guess.’
‘They’re not angry you’re using their house as a storeroom?’
‘I mean.’ The Lord’s Son shrugs. ‘Aren’t graves just storerooms for people?’
The boy recalls that his mother once told him that laughter is to living as flavour is to food. Whatever the case, when the Scroll Painter chuckles, a low sound from deep in her throat, it feels to him like the instant he sinks into a steaming hot bath on a frigid day. He joins her examining the tapestry and takes in the blocky mountains in the background and the two moons over them like twin haloes and the animals with strangely human faces. He sees the woman in the middle of the image has a spear and shield and the man next to her a pen and parchment. Both are flawless and poised as only folk in legends ever are. It’s beautiful, he thinks, but it also reeks of an old world and an old creed, where what was right was right only because those who came before said it was.
As always when he sees such things it only makes him more determined to transgress. He digs through a box and heaves out a great bear-fur and lays it out on the ground. Then he takes the Scroll-Painter by the hand and they lie down and peel each other’s clothes off with the gentle impatience of those who know precisely what they’ll find underneath yet still cannot wait to see it. The cold air puckers their skin but soon they share their warmth and it’s enough to make them both sweat. He digs his fingers into the rough lusciousness of her hair and she her fingertips into his chest and back as if trying to tear chunks of him out and keep them for herself. Then when they’re done they curl up around each other and stare up at newt-spirits skittering and playing in the rafters.
‘How are your people?’ says the Lord’s Son. ‘Are you all settling in?’
The Scroll-Painter nods.
‘They’re leaving us alone. The sties aren’t so bad. I thought there’d be pigs and goats, but there’s none.’
‘Yeah. She had us clean it out when she heard the rains were coming.’
‘Where are the animals, then?’
‘There’s only four. We’re not that rich, you know. She’s keeping them in her apartments.’
The Scroll-Painter turns to him.
‘In her apartments? The goats?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And the pigs?’
‘She likes the pigs. She says they see her as equals.’
‘She’s an odd one, your sister.’
‘That she is.’
They lie there in silence. Then:
‘Do you know the story of Kxonilketu and Danidur?’
The Lord’s Son glances at the figures in the tapestry.
‘Of course. I heard your people have a different version, though.’
‘Really? In our version, the day after they were married, Mursidan came to Danidur’s father and said, they should not be together. One is of Gauravaya, and the other is of Maru. One is of a people who don’t recognize Him as the True God, and instead worship many. They can no more be together than fire can burn underwater. So his father set them seven tasks, and said if they could complete them, he’d bless their union and allow them to remain together. They built the great dam, picked the fire-lilies of the Lowest Heaven, wrestled a leviathan – you know the list. Then he told them they had to travel to the underworld and bring back a plum from the Black Trees of Aga. They knew it was a trick – no one who went to the underworld ever found their way back. But they did, because he drew a map with his magical parchment and she protected them with her blessed arrows. So they came back with the plum, and ate it themselves, and were together forever.’
The Scroll-Painter rests her head against the Lord’s Son’s chest. The candle goes out and in the gloom they’re a little island of warmth beyond which nothing exists. As a darkness beyond mere lightlessness creeps up on them, the Lord’s Son hears the Scroll-Painter’s voice in his ear.
‘Is your version different?’ she says.
‘Yes. In our version, there’s only one way to go to the underworld. So when the king gives them their final task, they know what they must do.’
‘What’s that?’
The Lord’s Son buries his face in the soft skin of the Scroll-Painter’s chest.
‘They kill each other,’ he says. ‘Their last task was to kill each other.’
*
There are mornings when thoughts of the day ahead burn in the Lord’s Son’s chest like bleak fire. When there’s nothing to do but avoid his sister and oversee the stable-boys and study the lives of dead kings in the library while the Tutor dozes, drooling, against the stacks. His mother once told him that happiness is in the seed, not the flower, but there were many things his mother told him that he didn’t understand. There were others he did comprehend, but didn’t agree with. This was, he suspected, one of them.
He wakes the next day heavy-limbed and already tired and is fully prepared to doze all morning. Then he hears shouting on the outer walls. He flops out of bed and heads out. A stampede of clouds is thundering its way northwards on a stiff mountain breeze. As he walks the world dims and lightens with metronomic regularity as their shadows sweep the land. He can clear down to where the village is. The bridge is gone and river’s bloated and turned the North Bank’s streets into dirty waterways. Off to the left two warehouses have collapsed and a scattering of bolts of silk float about like giant petals amidst branches and leaves and dead goats swept down from the mountains, their corpses bloated and splay-legged and darkened with rot. Every now and then a giant catfish spirit, a wild and spiky creature of the black waters, pops up and nibbles at their flesh.
At the gates of the inner walls is a cluster of South Bankers led by the Potter, all red-faced and slow-eyed and reeking of booze. Facing them is a clutch of North Bankers, prim in their silken tunics, gathered around a cloth merchant . The Lord’s Son recognizes him – he once sold the castle two dozen bolts of silk dyed with ocean blue for half the price he charged anyone else. An old woman has a pair of sinewy arms around his waist and her face buried in his chest, shaking. Two guards slouch against the walls nearby, and they push off against the walls without conviction when the Lord’s Son approaches.
The Lord’s Son walks between the arguing villagers.
‘Explain yourselves,’ he says.
They all start talking at once and the Lord’s Son waits silently until they realise he’s not listening. Then they take turns.
‘My warehouse fell into the water, m’lord,’ says the North Banker. ‘I lost all my silk. Many months of work.’
‘Not your work!’ barks the Potter. ‘It’s them worms what do all the work.’
The others join in messy chorus:
‘Yeah, you just take their work.’
‘Then you eat them!’
‘Go ask your king for help! His army’s what caused all this!’
The North Banker shakes his head.
‘We grow the cocoons, and spin. We don’t get it for nothing. And he’s not our king.’
‘What would you eat if you didn’t have us?’ says one of the South Bankers.
‘You’d eat each other. You Gauravayans was cannibals back where you came from, me nan told me.’
The North Banker balls his fists. The old woman tightens her grip on his waist.
‘I was born here. My father was born here. Don’t start with this again.’
‘If you’re from here you’ll know it’s all about sharing, this place is.’ The Potter points up at the temple. ‘Kxonilketu and Danidur. They shared, right? They shared their troubles and their good times. They helped each other. If you’re from here, share!’
One of the guards scratches her face.
‘Someone go fetch the lady,’ she says.
‘No,’ says the Lord’s Son. ‘I will decide –’
She pauses and holds his gaze just long enough for the Lord’s Son to see that she doesn’t care what he’ll decide. Then she turns up towards the castle, and shouts: ‘Someone go fetch the lady!’
Another guard jangles off uphill. The Lord’s Son watches him go and then watches his sister emerge from the castle and head down towards them, more ominous by magnitudes than the thunderclouds overhead.
‘What’s this crap?’ She crosses her arms and glares at the Potter and the Cloth Merchant and the Lord’s Son in turn. ‘I’m trying to take my morning shit and the guards tell me there’s a bunch of you down here picking fights.’
‘They were cheering, m’lady,’ says the North Banker. ‘They were cheering when my warehouse fell in and then they said vile things to my mother –’
‘Why can’t have nice things?’ says the Potter. ‘M’lady. They’ve come here with their silks and gold, and they piled it up high in the stables. We seen it. But you came and took our grain, all of it, you did.’
‘Everyone needs grain,’ says the Lord’s Daughter. ‘You can’t eat silks.’
‘But why’ve we got to give but they give nothing? Why can’t we have silks?’
‘You can trade for it,’ says the North Banker. ‘Like everyone else.’
The Lord’s Sister looks at him.
‘Is that so?’ she says. ‘Well, then, you can trade for your food.’
‘But, m’lady.’ The North Banker blinks. ‘But – everyone gets food in times of need.’
‘If they can’t pay. But you, and yours, can. He’s right. I saw you all brought silks, and gold, but no food.’
‘But – we don’t have any food!’
The Lord’s Daughter shrugs.
‘The food we have comes from the South Bank. They’ve given something up. Seems fair that you should too, doesn’t it?’
‘That’s not fair,’ says the Lord’s Son. ‘The South Bankers get tax relief –’
‘You shut your mouth,’ says the Lord’s Daughter. She turns to the guard. ‘Henceforth, the North Bankers pay for their rations. A bolt of cloth per meal per family, or equivalent.’’
The North Bankers gasp.
‘A bolt!’ says the Silk Merchant, ‘M’lady, that’s a whole day’s work!’
The Lord’s Daughter grins
‘Better broke than dead, eh?’ She slams her hand into her brother’s back, cheerful and terrifying. ‘There, little brother. No one’s fighting now.’
She stomps off and the South Bankers disperse and the guards also. But the North Bankers stay where they are, huddled together, staring at the sodden mess of the valley below. In their faces the Lord’s Son sees the same grief he woke up with that morning. The black flames reignite in his chest, and he slouches back to bed.
*
The sky clears the next day and the ground starts steaming. In the drowsy sunlight the growing lake in the valley becomes a rippling mirror studded with half-submerged buildings. The refugees gather and light fires and grill fish and pancakes and the pickled peppers a young merchant gave away to everyone when drunk.The South Bankers start playing drums and the Northerners on the outer walls join in with flutes. Young folk gather by the gate in the inner wall and dance together. Soon the fires have coalesced into a bonfire and everyone gathers around it and the silhouettes of the revellers seethe against the golden inferno. The Lord’s Son watches from his window and though he sees the glum pile of cloud off to the north he sees also that everyone’s happy and no one’s talking about paying for food and so he holds his tongue.
After sunset he heads through the smell of food and flame to a far tower on the inner wall. The Scroll Painter comes up the outer stairs, as silent as moonrise. They kiss and stare into the star-flecked orbs of each other’s eyes and renew their amazement that two people born by coincidence in the same place and time could fit together as neatly as two halves of a sundered gem. Then, late, past midnight, when the dancing’s died down and the wind’s turned cold, they hear something beyond the walls. Something like a splash, but far closer than it should be.
They peek over the sides, and the Scroll-Painter screams.
People look up from the courtyard. A guard starts ambling up the stairs, only half sober and unsteady with her polearm. The Scroll Painter rushes down the stairs in the dark and straight into an expanse of liquid. Where the foot of the wall and the embankment and the ragged lawn had been just a few hours earlier is a vast inundation reaching almost to the base of the outer walls, oily-looking and studded with wreckage.
The village is gone.
The Scroll Painter breathes deep and sneaks back up. She emerges back onto the roof and the guard and the Potter are standing by the Lord’s Son, staring out at the valley. They look at her.
‘I was out for a walk,’ she blurts. ‘The water’s rising!’
They look away and she realizes they don’t care where she’s been or that she’s there. The Potter, fat face stupid with horror, turns to the Lord’s Son.
‘M’lord,’ he says. ‘The village. What – where’s it gone?’
The Lord’s Son shakes his head, and squeezes his shoulder.
‘It’s still raining in the mountains,’ he says quietly. ‘The flood isn’t over..’
The Lord’s Son heads up into the castle. The refugees have abandoned the fire and the music. The South Bankers are filtering away from the Northerners, back up to the inner courtyard, away from the slimy tide. He finds his sister on her balcony with two grey-black and bristly pigs asleep at her feet. Without her armour, without her men, she’s just like their mother – thick-limbed and square-faced and distracted-looking, her voice too small and her movements too dainty for one so large.
‘We need to move them up,’ says the Lord’s Son.
His sister shakes her head.
‘There’ll be fighting.’
‘We have to –’
‘Just. Leave me alone.’
The Lord’s Son steps up beside her.
‘How is he?’
‘Bad.’
‘What did he say?’
She purses her lips and says nothing.
‘We can’t leave them like that,’ says the Lord’s Son.
‘There’s nowhere to put them.’ A silence descends thick enough to hear someone coughing on the outer walls. ‘You want to know what he said? He said the tale of Kxonilketu and Danidur is a tale of loss. They have everything, and they lose it, and without it they themselves are nothing. Accordingly – that’s the word he used, accordingly – there is no use for vassals who have nothing. So. Let them drown.’ She grits her teeth. ‘He can’t stop being a prick, even when he’s dying.’
‘We’ve got to convince him to —‘
She sighs and turns away from him. Watching her so deflated is like watching some fearsome beast hissing through its death throes and the Lord’s Son can’t stand it. He turns to go but as he does she grabs him by the arm and pulls him close and sniffs his neck.
‘You know what the easiest things are to lose?’ she says.
‘What?’
‘The things you’re not supposed to have.’
The Lord’s Son yanks himself free.
‘And who decides what you’re supposed to have?’
The Lord’s Daughter gestures to the deluge and the mitotic crowd of villagers below.
‘Not who,’ she says. ‘What.’
*
The flood reaches the outer walls at dawn. Ratty and stagnant-looking pools ooze out of the ground with froth about their edges like the mouths of deadfolk in a plaguetown. Odd-looking manifestations throb in the air about them like motile frogspawn. The North Bankers flee upwards but the South Bankers close the gates to the inner courtyard and gather on the rampart walls to watch them plead. Some are fretting and uncertain. Some are whispering to others furiously in the way people do when they’re trying to convince each other, and themselves, of something. But others are grinning and drinking and leering.
How easy it is, thinks the Scroll-Painter, for them to tell themselves their unkindness doesn’t matter.
She sprints round the outside of the inner walls and up the ancient supply stairs that jut out of the stonework like fish-bones from a riverbed. They’re slick and unsteady but she’s climbed them many times before and the view down to the dwindling ground no longer worries her. She sneaks along the ramparts and then flips up her hood and climbs down into the courtyard below. A couple of the old women watch her, searching and stony-faced. She knows they know who she is. She knows that as long as she says nothing, they’ll say nothing too.
She sneaks up a narrow spiral of stairs worming their way through the great stone trunk of the Lord’s Son’s tower and finds him at a window in his room, arms wrapped around himself, eyes red and wet. He whisks around when she walks in.
‘Can’t you knock?’ he snaps.
‘You need to help us,’ says the Scroll-Painter. ‘You need to let us through.’
‘What do you think I’ve been trying to do? I just got back from meeting my father.’
‘And?’
‘And he won’t budge. He says this is sacred ground and he’ll be damned if he’ll let a bunch of heathens –’
‘What does your sister say?’
He snorts.
‘She didn’t say anything. She just sat there and stared at the wall.’
‘My family will die.’
‘I can’t open the gates, Kxonil. Not on my own. Not even with you.’
‘I can bring them up the side stairs. The way I came.’
‘The children? The sick? The aged?’
They stare down at the courtyard. Standing next to him she feels farther away from him than she ever has.
‘Please, Danidur,’ she says. ‘Please.’
He’s silent for a long time. Then he turns to her, slowly.
‘I can’t let you in,’ he says, ‘But that doesn’t mean I can’t come out.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll come out. I’ll join you. If the waters keep rising, they’ll have to let me in, or I’ll drown. Either they’ll have to come out and get me – so they’ll have to open the gates, and let us in. And if not…’
‘If not?’
He pauses. Then:
‘We’ll be like our namesakes,’ he says. ‘We’ll die, together.’
The Scroll-Painter tries to breathe, but no breath will come. She cups his cheek.
‘Are you…are you sure?’
‘I’m –’
Footsteps coming up the stairs. The Scroll-Painter looks around, wild, for somewhere to hide, but there’s nowhere and no time. The door flies open and the Lord’s Daughter stomps in, armoured and grinning. She sees them, and her smile disappears.
‘What the hell is this?’ she hisses.
The Lord’s Son moves the Scroll-Painter behind him.
‘Leave her alone,’ he says. ‘She didn’t do anything. I – I seduced her.’
The Lord’s Daughter laughs, short and sharp and cruel. ‘You? Seduced her? You couldn’t convince a pig to eat your shit.’
‘M’lady –’
‘Oh, so it’s m’lady now, is it?’ The Lord’s Daughter pulls out a dagger. It glints in the dim light like a metal tooth. The Lord’s Son looks around but there’s nothing to hand but a candlestick and two books and he knows his sister is too fast and too strong for him to get to either of them. The wind licks his back and he feels the Scroll-Painter step up onto the window sill. He grabs her leg, hard.
‘Let me go,’ she whispers.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘If I jump – if I die – they can’t —‘
The Lord’s Daughter holds up her hands.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘It was my fault, m’lady.’ The Scroll-Painter holds the top of the Lord’s Son’s head. So easy to fit beneath her palm. So warm and familiar and wondrous in what it contains. ‘You won’t believe me, but I love him. I’ve always loved him –’
‘Of course you do.’ She tosses the knife on the bed. ‘Get off there, you stupid cow. You think I don’t know you two’ve been sneaking off like rabbits for years? I could smell you on him. I was going to give you that for you to protect yourself with. I don’t want him moping around like a neutered goat if anything happens to you today.’
The Lord’s Son frowns.
‘Why would anything happen to her today?’
‘We can’t leave her lot out there,’ says the Lord’s Daughter. ‘We can’t let half the village’s tax-payers die. It’s ridiculous. We’re letting them in.’
‘But, father –’
‘Screw father. We’re letting them in, and if any of the guards object, they can have words with us. I’m not having half the taxpayers in my domain killed because my old man’s too stupid to open a bloody gate.’ She squints up at the Scroll-Painter ‘So. Are you going to help me stage this little coup? Or are you going to jump? Make up your mind either way. We haven’t much time, and neither do your people.’
The Scroll-Painter studies the Lord’s Daughter’s face with the intensity of someone reading a book in a language they just about understand. Then she climbs down, slowly, and takes the knife.
‘I thought…’ She swallows. ‘I thought you didn’t like me.’
‘I don’t!’ says the Lord’s Daughter cheerfully. ‘But you make this toerag happy. Besides, this is sacred ground to Kxonilketu and Danidur. What kind of guardian would I be to stand in the way of love, when that’s what their story’s all about?’
The Lord’s Son sobs, and nods.
‘That’s what I’ve always thought, too,’ he says.
*
There’s no need for a coup. The Lord’s Daughter stomps out and orders the gates open and no-one objects. A pale old man’s face appears briefly at a window high in a tower, as ghostly as a moon behind the clouds. The Lord’s Daughter and Son stare up at it with the North Bankers spilling in grateful and noisome torrent around them, and it retreats into the darkness.
‘Move your lot into the courtyard,’ the Lord’s Daughter says to the Scroll-Painter.
‘Where will the people already there go?’ says the Scroll-Painter.
The Lord’s Daughter narrows her eyes.
‘Up your arse if you don’t mind your own business.’
The Lord’s Son watches the two cooperate through bickering and senses an unwelcome mutual respect he knows they’ll all puzzle over for years. Perhaps that’s how the North Bankers and South Bankers see each other. Just like humanity sees the gods, or the world itself. Great things, repulsive and beautiful and enduring, things they barely comprehend and love to hate but love nonetheless.
By afternoon the sky’s cleared from horizon to crooked horizon. By evening the waters are receding, inch by slow inch. The Lord’s Son is watching the red moon rising when the Scroll-Painter walks in without knocking, sweating and wild-haired, and grins.
‘What?’ he says.
‘Ask me what I’ve been doing.’
He looks at her hands. There’s ink all over the rough skin and her grimy nails are like little black smiles at the tips of her fingers.
‘What’ve you been doing?’
‘We’re renovating the Temple!’
‘What?’
She nods, and steps out onto the balcony. He can smell paint on her now, sharp and resiny. ‘A bunch of South Bankers decided to clean it up and use it again. They didn’t know it wasn’t being used. We’re making hanging scrolls and tapestries, and we’re going to donate them to the temple. Your sister says we can do that in lieu of payment for the food we received.’ She stretches. ‘You can keep us out for now but we’re part of your world, m’lord. Soon you won’t be able to live without us.’
‘Too late,’ he says.
The Scroll-Painter mimes throwing up. Someone starts with the drums in the courtyard below and the smell of grilling fish wafts up on the breeze. Up on the ramparts two guards watch a clutch of North Banker girls walk past, leering and cross-armed.
‘I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to paint for my contribution,’ she says. ‘But I can’t figure out what the story of Kxonilketu and Danidur is supposed to be about. Is it supposed to be about loss? Or death? Or love, like you said?’
‘I always thought the best stories were about whatever you wanted them to be about,’ he says.
Down in the valley, the river-spirits return. They wrap their arms around each other and watch them scurry down them scurry down muddy hillsides, excited and singing in their airy voices, leaving ghostly umbilici of moisture wafting into the night air. When they hit the water they slide in, smooth and slick and silent.
‘That’s just another way of saying nothing’s about anything,’ says the Scroll-Painter. ‘I wonder if that’s true.’
THE END