Aishana—Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Skyborn
PART I
“The wise man pulls not at loose thread, unless he has learned to fly.”
— Proverbs of the Skyborn
Gas flares whooshed, keeping the silk balloons plump, keeping everything in its place, keeping the city of Chambers aloft, high above the clouds, higher still above the sea, high above and far removed from the Seamen to be found upon the waves below.
In an airy skylounge, Mika popped a morsel of spiced fish in his mouth, and shook his head in wonder at the tale they’d just heard. ‘Such treachery!’
Noki rose on an elbow. ‘Those stinking Seafilth! I’ll bomb them to the bottom of their stinking Sea!’ He followed this pronouncement with a too-deep puff from the relaxpipe he was sharing with Anders and spluttered.
Piotr snorted. ‘You will, will you? From where, way up here?’
Noki recovered from his coughing fit and scowled. ‘No, idiot, I’ll be captaining a flitter. And I’ll swoop lowest of all our craft and bomb them and their cruddy ships. Send them fishbreaths to their deaths, I will.’
Mika laughed with the rest. Noki was aflame with bloodlust after a single afternoon listening to the Explorer Pukki and the Recreant Seamen. This luxurious skylounge was as close as Noki would ever get to war or Seamen. This was as close as any Elide youth would get, and they all knew it. Not that war would ever come.
A shadow fell swift upon cream silk walls and the boys’ laughter died away. A figure appeared, in the grey sleeveless shift and billowing trousers of a Consul attendant. ‘Junior Consul Arkhoo?’
Responses came quick from the banks of cushions: ‘Not here.’ ‘Never heard of him.’ ‘He went that way!’ ‘Left this morning!’ before the youths descended into boisterous laughter.
The attendant failed to join their giddy mood. ‘I was told Junior Consul Arkhoo would be here,’ he said.
Mika lay back and looked up: soft cream light caressed the underbellies of the balloons. Skylounges were supposed to provide sanctuary from such intrusions of reality. He closed his eyes: all that remained was the whoosh, faint and intermittent, from the flares, and the hushhhh as silk ropes creaked at their ties.
‘What do you want him for?’ asked Piotr.
‘An Emergency Consul Meeting,’ said the attendant crisply.
Mika’s eyes snapped open but he lay still.
‘Well, then, you have the wrong Arkhoo,’ said Piotr to the attendant, aiming an ear-flick at Mika. ‘This one’s a mere Junior Consul!’
Mika rolled away from Piotr’s attack and elbowed him in the ribs. Wasn’t like Piotr or any of the rest were burdened with such an office.
‘Thank you,’ said the attendant to Piotr. He turned to Mika. ‘Junior Consul, the Prime Consul has invited you to attend.’
Mika stiffened; one didn’t dare refuse such “invitations”. But he was immediately suspicious: only the three Consuls attended Emergency Consul Meetings. Why would they want a Junior Consul there? He narrowed his eyes at the attendant. Mika didn’t recognise the face… but then, who would recognise an attendant? They were just there, in the background, carrying messages, or attending, or whatever it was they did for the Consuls.
This was a jest. He glanced around the cushioned tiers: Anders and Noki, alone on the upper level, muttering quietly as ever — studiously ignoring the scene below, or genuinely disinterested? Or Jani: actually asleep, or just pretending? Or Piotr and Timmu watching to see what Mika would do: any of them was capable of such a stunt. Mika gestured to the attendant to approach. ‘Who sent you?’
‘Consul Jurt,’ the attendant replied.
Plausible. ‘And what does this meeting concern?’
‘Forgive me, Junior Consul, but I don’t know.’
Mika reclined on an elbow, weighing up the matter. Skyborn prided themselves on honour and honesty, but jesting was another matter entirely; it was how Mika and his cohort whiled away their days… when not picking at trays laden with exotic food, listening to Histories being read, or concocting schemes to lure Elide girls away from their chaperones. Anything to avoid boredom, or worse—“serious” talk of politics, like this. Mika shanked a look at Anders, the likeliest suspect. Then, with a sigh, he got to his feet. It was a beautifully-weighted prank, he had to admit. The possibility, however faint, that the invitation was genuine meant he couldn’t refuse it: the Prime Consul’s wrath was legendary.
Mika nimbly stepped over the dangling legs trying to trip him up. Taunts and tossed food fell short as he reached the garments pooled by the threshold. He stooped to pick up a rich red robe, pulling it on over his plain undergarments. Adjusting the fall of the cloth, he fixed the clasp in place with the glittering jewelled seal of Junior Consul and nodded at the attendant to lead the way. Mika pressed the man for more information, but the attendant insisted he knew nothing more. Fresh doubt clouded Mika’s mind: how far would this ruse go before collapsing? Whoever was behind it had taken clever scheming to a new level: more like Piotr, then, than Anders.
Crossing a walkway suspended between two balloons, a small slight figure detached from behind a wispy curtain and into Mika’s slipstream. ‘What’s a Mergency Consul Meeting, Mika?’
‘You hear everything, don’t you, Sami?’ Mika said, tousling the boy’s white-blonde hair. ‘A dangerous weapon.’ Mika’s young cousin was rarely further than ten paces from Mika, unless forcibly kept away.
Sami squealed with glee and squirmed away before immediately returning to Mika’s side. ‘Really?’ he asked.
‘Well, it would have been useful with the Spacemen,’ Mika said to himself. ‘Anyway, it’s an Emergency Consul Meeting.’
Sami mouthed the new word to himself, as Mika continued: ‘You know how Baba Klaus meets with the other Consuls each moon?’
‘Baba Wurmi and Baba Jurt?’
‘Yes. Well, they’re called Consuls when they meet to look after important stuff.’
‘Consuls…’
‘Yes. Consuls. But when something really really important happens, they have an Emergency Consul Meeting.’
‘Important like what?’
Mika paused to think. The last concerned the Spacemen, so definitely not exciting. Mika didn’t remember it himself, but had since been forced to learn about it: his father insisted that Mika be tutored on Ley. None of the others had to learn this stuff, but fathers could be persuasive, and Mika’s most persuasive of all, particularly concerning his ambitions for his son. Still, at least it meant Mika had answers to Sami’s relentless questions. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘in the Histories they had lots, because big things used to happen all the time.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like the First War between Clans… or the Fall of the Seamen…’ He thought of another exciting one. ‘Even the balloons used to sometimes pop, right out of the sky.’
Sami’s eyes widened and he tensed. ‘Scary, eh?’ said Mika, giving a squeeze to Sami’s shoulder. ‘But don’t worry, that doesn’t happen anymore. The Emergency Meetings fixed everything, so we’re safe now.’ He set off once more and Sami scampered after him.
‘How come they popped, Mika?’
‘What?’
‘The balloons. How come they popped?’
Mika pursed his lips. The answer to that one was deep in his memory. ‘Well, they weren’t maintained very well, and never inspected… oh yes, and then there were attacks from the Seamen — ’
Sami shivered at the villains of almost every tale the Skyborn had.
‘ — but we are at peace with the Seamen since the Great Truce,’ said Mika. ‘And most importantly, the Ley makes sure every ship maintains its balloons… and the Checkmen in flitters check the balloons of every airship they meet. To make sure everyone follows the Ley and stays safe.’
The attendant gave a cough, and Mika gave him a wary glance.
Well, true, thought Mika. The Ley of Maintenance also let the Consul count its people and levy them accordingly, but Sami was a bit young to have the tax system explained to him, surely. Mika was hardly in much better position to explain!
The attendant cleared his throat again. This time, Mika glanced at their surrounds and realised the attendant was merely signalling their arrival.
A narrow walkway separated them from the Consul Chamber, a walkway guarded by two sturdy scowling Consulmen, each clad in a skyblue version of the attendant’s uniform, with considerably more cloth required to contain their frames. The attendant passed between them and across the walkway. Giving Mika a stern look, as if they didn’t quite believe he was a Junior Consul, the Consulmen stood apart for him and his sidekick. One of the Consulmen gave Sami a conspiratorial wink, and the boy bounded ahead of Mika, only pulling up upon reaching the far side of the footbridge and the awe-inspiring Chamber Portal.
Mika, by contrast, swallowed hard: no prank would include the Consulmen. This was no jest, then. He trudged over the footbridge. This would be just his second time passing beneath the Chamber Portal, threshold to the Consul Chamber. The Portal was wood, intricately carved with famous scenes from the Histories. Wood was uncommon — Weight is seldom appreciated, never wasted was more usually and cruelly directed at people but applied to everything in the Sky. For those who trusted their lives to balloons, anything heavy had to earn its place on board. As grandiose entrance to the hallowed Consul Chamber, the Chamber Portal probably merited its existence.
‘Okay, Sami,’ said Mika, crouching to address his cousin. ‘You’ve got to stay out here, okay? Or better yet, maybe go play with some other cousins for a while, eh?’
Sami gave his most pleading expression, but for once Mika stood firm. ‘Sorry, not with your overactive ears,’ he said.
With the carefree shrug of youth, Sami relented and skipped back over the footbridge, to mock-attack the Consulmen, before disappearing altogether from Mika’s view.
Standing, Mika turned to face the ancient frame. He couldn’t help but reach out and run his hand over its timeworn texture. Oke, it was called; so his father had told him. Oke no longer lived, having died out after the First Beginning. This precious frame was a gift from Scrabblers, who seemed to have more of it for reasons unclear to Mika.
He was startled by the attendant’s sudden reemergence from the layers of dark silk curtain beneath the Portal. The man gave Mika a curt nod and passed.
Very well; the Consuls await. Mika wavered beneath the threshold. He took a deep breath and pushed through the layers of silk to the Consul Chamber.
Read Chapter 2: Measured Measures now; the novel Aishana will be available very soon on Amazon and Apple. (Pre-orders coming sooner.)
