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  Saiara laughed her warm laugh. Then she set her glass of sparkling secco down, leaned close to me, put her hands on either cheek, and kissed me on lips. “Maybe I can give you something else to focus on for a little while,” she said. “Will you know what to do with yourself then?”

  * * *

  I leaned back in the low boat and let my hand hang over the side, trailing my fingers through the cool waters of the Feyra. Saiara stood at the prow, her long golden hair tied up in a bun behind her head, handling the long oar like an expert, poling left, then right, then twice left again to keep us on a straight course through the river’s mild currents.

  “Where did you learn to navigate like that?” I asked her.

  The academy qualifiers were less than a week away, and we wanted to make the most of our last days of leisure. The city was so large, and we had seen so little of it. We had been on the river for over an hour, heading south on a rented gondola towards Tulburn Hall, a popular artisans’ quarter in the city. The boats were a nostalgic relic from a previous age, but they held an undeniable charm. The owner had lined up dozens near our residential complex, and when we saw them clustered together along the shore, dark and sleek, carved with the old runes of the river folk, komodo eyes painted on the prowhead, we were smitten. The owner offered up one of his young staffers to lead us on a tour, but Saiara insisted we make our own way.

  “I grew up on Jarcosa, you oaf,” she said. “Remember? I spent more time on my family’s trimaran than I did on land. This river is a tender companion compared to the moody open waters of the Coscan ocean.”

  “Well I’m impressed,” I said. “You cut a striking figure up there. I like watching you in action.”

  “Aren’t you sweet. I know how hard you’re working to balance the boat’s weight back there, so please, by all means, enjoy the view. I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.” She kept poling the oar through the water as she teased me. The water rippled and eddied in the wake of her strokes.

  “Someone has to keep an eye on you. If I’m not careful, you’ll get the wild idea to take us over a waterfall or something.”

  “I don’t think there are any falls on this part of the river,” she said with playful mockery.

  “But if there are, you’ll be the one to find them.”

  I closed my eyes, smiling to myself. I loved hearing her laugh.

  “Oren,” she said. “Look at that!”

  I must have dozed off. I opened my eyes. We were coming to a wide thoroughfare that terminated at a large park on the eastern shore of the river. And at the far horizon of the thoroughfare, framed by the valley of buildings stretching away from the river, we saw it. The Watchtower. The soaring axle at the center of Manderley, seat of the Worldheart, where the eldest made their home.

  We both stared at it in silent awe until our boat drifted past and it disappeared from sight, obscured by closer structures.

  “What I wouldn’t give to go there,” Saiara said, her eyes mapping the ripples of water around the edges of our boat.

  “Maybe someday,” I said. “You never know.”

  “I would like that very much,” she said in a quiet voice.

  When we started our journey down river, the buildings of the city huddled close to the water, forming a deep, shadowed canyon. Now, the shoreline opened up, the buildings sat further back, and the waterside park and the adjacent thoroughfare were alive with the bustling traffic of pedestrians, rollers, fliers, and floaters of all shapes and sizes, mingling together in a chaotic dance. I kept waiting for someone to crash into someone else, but it never happened.

  “You think it’s all autonomous?” I asked Saiara. “The way the traffic all blends together like that?”

  “Definitely,” she said. “The Worldheart orchestrates everything on Forsara, communicating with every functional intelligence to keep the systems humming at optimal efficiency.”

  Some of the fliers and floaters left the thoroughfare and moved out above the river, water rippling and fluttering beneath them as they crossed to the western shore and dispersed down a delta of avenues, alleys and sky passages.

  “Do you think it ever makes mistakes?” I said.

  “It’s hard to say. Even Transcend was sometimes imperfect in his knowledge of our ship. But I’m sure there are redundancies built in to account for any number of potential errors. Manderley did not become the greatest city in the galaxy by accident.”

  As she spoke, Saiara steered us closer to the eastern shore. Two men sat there, holding hands, enjoying the warm day. One of the men was distracted by a young boy and girl playing nearby. He called to them to be careful as they ran along the water’s edge. The other man smiled and waved to us as we floated past. We both waved back.

  “Do you know where the Tulburn Hall neighborhood is?” Saiara called to the man who waved to us. His partner turned to look at us too. “Are we close?”

  “Hi there! Yes, you’re very close. Just head south for a few more minutes, around the river’s bend, until you cross under Tulburn Bridge. You should be able to dock there and climb the steps up to the street. Are you going to the performance?”

  Before we could ask what performance, there was a splash in the water.

  I turned to see the young boy thrashing in the shallows of the river. His sister was kneeling in the grass at the edge, her face pinched with concern.

  “Eledar’s breath,” the second man said, jumping up. “Jacquin! What in the names of the Scions are you doing? Come out from the water!”

  But Jacquin was struggling. He thrashed, then his head dipped under. When he came up again, he was further from shore.

  “Jacquin!” There was panic in the father’s voice now.

  “I’ve got him,” I called. “Saiara, swing us around,” I said to her, swiveling my index finger in the air.

  We were close enough to shore that Saiara could dig the pole oar into the silt of the river bed. Our boat turned on the axis of the oar, bringing us close to the boy.

  “Here we go,” I said, scooping him out of the water.

  I pulled him into our gondola, setting him on his hands and knees, wet and bedraggled. I patted him on the back as he hacked and coughed.

  “Breathe, Jacquin,” I said. “You’re alright, little friend. Just breathe.”

  His panic started to level off. His breath came more evenly. He sat back on his haunches and looked up at me, water running down his cheeks and forehead. His eyes opened wide. “Elly’s belly, sire,” he said with a comical mix of casual and formal that only a child can pull off. “You’re real big!”

  I laughed. “I come from hardy stock. Miners’ blood runs in these veins,” I said, patting my hand against my chest. “Good thing for you too. I’ve lifted much heavier objects than your sodden self.”

  The boy gave me a sheepish look. “I could have made it myself,” he muttered.

  “Okay,” I said with a shrug. “Should I toss you back in then?”

  He shook his head vigorously, his eyes opening even wider.

  I laughed again.

  “Jacquin,” the boy’s father called, “are you okay?”

  “Of course I am, father!” Jacquin stood up quick to prove his point. Droplets of water pattered against my face. Saiara leaned on the oar, steadying the boat.

  “I warned you to be careful, didn’t I?”

  “I was being careful. Weiun pushed me!”

  The little girl came running over. “I did not! You’re a filthy liar Jacq!”

  “Enough!” the father said. “We’re not playing ‘who’s the culprit’ today. It’s too beautiful out for that nonsense, and your father and I plan on enjoying this day. You were both playing near the water, even though I warned you not to, so no freeze cream for either of you.”

  “But father,” they both wailed in unison.

  He crossed his arms and glared at them. They tried to meet his fierce gaze. Weiun looked pleading. Jacq looked ready to fight. But their father was clearly not budging. A
fter a moment, both children averted their eyes.

  I caught the eye of the children’s other father, the man who had first waved to us. He was still sitting on the grass. He smiled, shrugged, and shook his head.

  “Now Jacq,” the standing father said, “say thank you to this nice man for rescuing you.”

  The boy kept his head down. “Thank you,” he mumbled.

  “Jacq?” The father’s pitch rose up a note.

  “Thank you, sire,” he said, louder now.

  “You’re very welcome, Jacq,” I said with amusement.

  Saiara pushed our boat closer to shore, and before he could protest, I lifted Jacquin out of the boat, handling him like a sack of tubers, and set him down. He scurried up the grass, then turned and gave me a vengeful look.

  “You’re a fierce one, eh little Jacq?” I said.

  His father came and put his arm around Jacq’s shoulders. The boy’s face softened. He leaned in, resting his head in the crook of his father’s arm. He was on the cusp of adolescence, and his mix of petulance, braggadocio, and vulnerability was charming.

  “Pay him no mind,” the sitting father said. “He takes after Rolston.” He tilted his head towards the standing father. “Those two are seeds in a pod, they are.”

  Rolston chuckled, and Jacq pulled closer to him, hugging his arms around Rolston’s waist.

  “My name is Oren,” I said, waving my hand again. “It’s nice to meet you all.”

  “Weiono,” the sitting man said. “That accent? Where are you from?”

  “Verygone. The Beallurian system.”

  Weiono whistled. “Long way from home. First time on Forsara?”

  I nodded.

  “And you?” he said, turning to Saiara. “Where do you hail from?”

  “Jarcosa,” she said with a smile.

  “Ah. A child of the water. No wonder you handle that old gondola with such ease. I’ve heard it’s beautiful on Jarcosa.”

  “It is the most beautiful place in the galaxy,” she said. “At least to me.”

  “There’s no beauty like the beauty of home,” Weiono said.

  “Our cities are nothing like this, though,” she said, turning her head to take in the buildings and bustle around us.

  “There’s no place anywhere quite like Manderley. I can’t imagine ever leaving.” Then he stood up. “But in less than a decade, the suns will converge again, and the choice to stay or the choice to explore the unknown is a decision everyone must make for themselves.

  “I might never see the oceans of Jarcosa or the warm sun of Beallur, but it gladdens me to meet you here. On behalf of our family,” he gestured towards Rolston, Jacq, and Weiun, “we bid you most welcome to our fair city.”

  “Thank you,” Saiara said.

  “Thank you for rescuing our son,” Rolston said.

  “Now then,” Weiono went on, “if you’re going to the performance, and you have a chance to speak with the band leader, tell her I sent you. She’s an old friend.”

  “We didn’t even know about the show,” I said. “We are just exploring.”

  Weiono clapped his hands together. “Oh, you absolutely must go. The experience is rapturous. The children don’t have the patience for it yet, or we would be there right now.”

  “What kind of performance is it?”

  Weiono pursed his lips. “It’s hard to describe. Better you see it for yourselves. I promise you, it’s worth it. Though I must give you fair warning, this is entertainment from a different era. It is less than the virtual simulations we are all so used to, and yet, in other ways, it is so much more.”

  Saiara rapped her palm against the lacquered wood of our gondola. “Given our means of transportation, that sounds fitting.”

  Weiono grinned. “Too true. Too true. You still have some time then. The next performance doesn’t start until first sun fall. The old amphitheater is in the north quarter of Tulburn Hall, past the arch of Yincoln. You cannot miss it.”

  “Thank you, Weiono,” Saiara said, using the oar to shove us off.

  I lifted my hand to wave as she steered us back into the soft central current of the Feyra. They all waved back. Even Jacq. I tipped my head to him and gave him a formal salute, touching my fingers to my chin, then pointing towards him. He smiled, then buried his head in his father’s tunic.

  * * *

  “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  Saiara shook her head. Her jaw hung open.

  “Your jaw is hanging open.”

  She closed her mouth and gave me a dirty look.

  I laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look surprised before.”

  “Oh, and you’re not?”

  I shrugged.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I forgot what an experienced and worldly spacefarer you are.”

  I laughed again. She was right of course. I had never seen anything like it either. The moment we stepped off our boat and climbed the stairs up from the canal to the streets above, we were transported to an altogether different Manderley.

  Tulburn Hall was not a hall at all. It was city within the city. Older. More relaxed. More conflicted. Coming to the hall was like the moment I discovered Saiara’s birthmark on her lower back, a constellation of freckles in a lighter patch of skin, just above the curve of her hips. Up until now, Manderley had seemed ageless, a perfect city, crystallized and immutable. The hall punctured that illusion, enriching the meticulous beauty of Manderley with color and chaos. It served as a marker of earlier incarnations. A reminder that we always carry our histories with us.

  For the first few minutes, we just stood at the lip of the aqueduct, gawking like the offworlders we were. The streets were alive. People of all ages and many stripes were moving in every direction, and the scene was permeated with an air of leisure and playfulness. People carried food and drink as they walked. The sound of music and conversation poured from open windows and doorways. Revelers stood and watched from balconies lining the higher floors.

  “Come on,” Saiara said, breaking us from the spell.

  She took my hand and led us deeper into the hall. A chaotic jumble of architecture from ages past had formed like sediment, layers stacked one on the next, accreting over the centuries. From certain vantages, we could still see the sleek towers of Manderley, but that only made the contrast between old and new that much sharper, and when the towers were obscured from view, the sense that we had traveled to a different world was immersive and complete.

  We heard the universal tongue often enough, but there were many other languages too. The competing accents and dialects formed a steady cadence that permeated the hall, a thrum of human voices blending together in a neverending chorus. The sound was a wordless promise that something magical waited just beyond sight. I was a child again, giddy and awestruck, skipping through the streets of a city as wondrous as any fantasy.

  We passed an ancient granite manse that might have been a thousand years old or more. Its arches and buttresses looked as if they’d been repaired countless times. It had once, perhaps, been the centerpiece of a large estate, but now the aging residence was hemmed in by five- and six-story houses, stucco and plaster walls framed by thick wooden beams and peaked roofs shingled with slate and clay. Arching footbridges nested precariously in the housetops, and people moved across them, nimble and surefooted.

  We rounded a corner, and a man holding what looked like a sort of tortured legelhorn strolled past us. A profusion of pipes and levers and dials sprouted from the curved central horn. He lifted it to his lips as he walked, blowing into it, fingering the instrument’s buttons. Music came gurgling out, cheerful and infectious.

  As he played, bright spots of rainbow light strobed from holes bored into the instrument. Whenever someone got flashed with the colored light, their skin turned candy red, or sunset purple, or marigold yellow.

  People laughed as he passed by, pointing at each other as they turned different colors, and a gaggle of children followed close b
ehind him, jostling and jumping, trying to get hit with the next ray of light.

  A moment later, a lime green man came running around the corner shouting invectives at the horn player in a tongue I did not recognize. The horn player pirouetted, flicked his fingers across the instrument, and a warm, white light washed over his angry pursuer.

  The man stopped in his tracks. He was no longer green. He held up his sandy hands, examining them. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he put two fingers behind his right ear and, with a theatrical sneer, flicked his fingers towards the horn player before storming off.

  “That’s incredible,” I whispered to Saiara. “How do you think he gets people to change color like that?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “Some kind of bacterial or chemical reaction?”

  I was tempted to ask the horn player himself, but I suspect he would have just smiled and lit me up with color. We kept moving, the mystery unsolved.

  Vendors shouted and waved, hawking their merchandise. A lithe man in a skintight garment moved like dancer on a thin strand of rope strung between a leafy green tree and a wrought iron lamp post. An emerald green giant leaned his arms on a second-story windowsill, talking to a pretty woman in the window. An old fashioned android with burnished gold plating walked a half-dozen canines of all shapes and sizes. The largest hound stood as high as my waist, and I could have held the smallest in one my palm.

  We came to a large park ringed by trees. A mother ran alongside her son as he held tight to a nylon string attached to a toy flyer, swooping and curling above us, thirty feet up in the air. A blindfolded archer wowed onlookers, loosing arrows at a rapid pace to spear fruit and loaves of bread that her assistants tossed into the air. A group of people moved in unison through a slow motion sequence of choreographed poses, arms flowing like water.

  We paused in front of a statue of a naked woman with seashell pink skin and the head of a horned komodo. She held a small box in her hand. Three teenagers stood nearby, pointing at the statue and whispering to themselves. One of them, a young girl with a shorn scalp and heavy green makeup around her eyes, ran up to the komodo woman and dropped a circle of metal into the box.