The Wall of Storms, page 67
The shared trauma of losing their families to the depredations of the Lyucu and the work in the laboratory provided Zomi and Théra with a unique bond. The two took their meals together and spent hours on break discussing garinafin research, engineering principles, military tactics, and whatever else came to mind.
The investigation into the garinafins had slowed down as the scholars were mired in endless debate over the nature of the air sacs and how to reconcile them to the observed behavior of the beasts. There were too many theories and everyone was frustrated as Imperial messengers from Pan demanded updates every other day, reminding everyone of the looming war with the Lyucu.
There was a thundershower one day, and after the rain stopped, Théra convinced Zomi to take a break from their work and climb to the top of the cliffs.
“Isn’t this lovely?” said Théra. The tranquil ocean was a dark turquoise. A rainbow hung in the sky as the sun peeked out behind the clouds.
Zomi smiled and pointed at the rainbow.
“What?” Théra shaded her eyes and gazed in the direction Zomi was pointing, thinking she had spied something on the horizon.
Zomi smiled and pointed at the rainbow again.
“Is this a riddle?”
Zomi smiled and pointed at the rainbow again.
“I give up. Tell me what you’re trying to say.”
Zomi’s smile turned wistful. “My mother once told me a story about the gods and the Calendrical Dozen, and in that story Lord Lutho chose to answer every question posed to him this way. The gods are full of mysteries.”
“I’d like to hear that story sometime,” said Théra. “I wish I’d gotten to meet your mother.”
“Both my parents were good storytellers,” said Zomi. “And the story is better when told in the dialect of Dasu. I’ve been away from home so long I’ve lost my accent.”
Théra put a comforting arm around Zomi as they stood side by side. “We lose much as we grow up, but we also gain much. To get to where we are hasn’t been easy.”
The surrounding countryside looked as fresh as though it had just been painted on a canvas: lush green fields, deep-black sandy beach, the huts and houses glinting with washed red roof tiles and bright white walls.
“A great lady once told me that gazing upon a world reborn after the rain is one of the greatest pleasures in the world,” Théra said.
“It really is,” said Zomi. “I’m glad I listened to you and climbed up here. Though I don’t think I’d enjoy it half as much if I were here by myself.”
Théra smiled. The lady had said something like that, too.
Zomi sat down to fuss with her leg harness, as the climb had loosened some of the bindings.
“That’s a really amazing piece of machinery,” said Théra. She sat down beside Zomi to examine how the harness flexed and magnified the movements of Zomi’s weakened leg muscles.
“My teacher made this for me,” said Zomi. Her eyes dimmed for a moment. “If he were here now, I bet he would have already figured out the secrets of the garinafins. We’re making such slow progress that I feel like I’m letting him down.”
“I don’t think so,” said Théra. “Luan Zyaji was a great scholar, but he wasn’t a god. He was mortal like you and me. He believed the universe was knowable, and as long as we hold on to that belief and keep at it, I’m sure we’ll make a breakthrough.”
“How do you stay so cheerful?”
“I was taught that what we fill our hearts with has much more to do with our fates than our native talents or circumstances. I was named Dissolver of Sorrows, and I intend to live up to my name. If our situation seems hopeless, we can either give in to it and lament our fortune, or revise the script and chart ourselves a new course. We’re always the heroes of our own stories.”
“We’re always the heroes of our own stories,” Zomi repeated. She smiled for the first time in a long time.
“You know,” said Théra, “you’re beautiful when you smile.”
Zomi bristled. She had always been sensitive about maintaining a serious demeanor to prove she belonged among the ranks of the learned. “Are you telling me to smile more?”
“Not at all,” said Théra. “It makes me happy to see you happy, and I hope we’ll have more moments of genuine joy together.”
Zomi blushed. Few had ever commented on her appearance, given her disfigurement from that childhood experience with a lightning strike. But Théra’s comment made her heart grow light.
Théra giggled. “That red-faced look isn’t bad either. Did you know that you used to intimidate me? I was sure that you didn’t like me, because you were so impatient every time I tried to talk to you.”
Zomi laughed awkwardly. “I was arrogant and thought I knew everything. I’m sorry I used to be so rude.”
“I grew up with few other children who weren’t my siblings, and when I did get to spend some time with other girls my age, the difference in our statuses made it impossible to become close,” Théra mused. “I’m really glad we are working on this together.”
“Me too,” said Zomi. She swallowed and then continued, “I never told you this, but I’m grateful that you made me see that I was being a coward when I wanted to leave court after my betrayal of the marshal.”
“I only showed you what you already knew to be true in your heart,” said Théra. “A real friend is a mirror who reflects the truth back to us.”
“What if . . .” Zomi paused, and swallowed, looking into Théra’s expectant eyes. She forced herself to go on, her heart pounding. “I want to be more than friends?”
Théra blushed as her face broke into a radiant smile. “I thought I was playing the zither to the ruminating cow, but it turns out that I was the cow who was too afraid to dance!”
“Is that a . . . yes?” asked Zomi, her heart beating wildly.
Instead of answering, Théra wrapped her arms about Zomi and pulled her into a long, lingering kiss.
The sun sparkled against the sea, and a gentle breeze caressed the revitalized world.
The voices of two young women who had heard the voices in each other’s hearts, the music beneath the music, sang in perfect harmony:
How far will they go? What will they behold?
What distant shores will they touch and visit?
Before they sink and sprout and grow and bloom—
To sway over sun-dappled waves anew!
A bandaged Atharo Ye returned to the investigation with gusto. Humbly, he asked Princess Théra and Zomi to assist him.
“There are too many theories being tossed about and not enough evidence,” said Atharo. “We need to do more, talk less.”
Cautiously, they cut another sac from one of the dead garinafins.
“How do we measure the qualities of this gas?” asked a frowning Atharo.
Zomi grinned. “We can weigh the fish.”
They inflated one of the empty sacs with the lift gas from one of the few messenger airships left under Imperial command until it was the same size as the sac from the garinafin. Then they tied various weights to the two sacs until both were buoyancy-neutral.
“The gas inside the garinafins is heavier than the gas bubbling out of Lake Dako,” Atharo concluded. “That’s why the other sac is able to carry a heavier weight.”
“That also means that the garinafins have less lift than the Mingén falcons and our airships,” said Zomi. “That explains the need for such large wings.”
“It’s also highly flammable, which means that it’s probably the source for the fire breath,” said Théra.
On a hunch, Théra asked that one of the canisters holding the gas that powered the marshal’s flamethrowers be brought to the cave. The same experiment was run to compare the gas extracted from the fermented manure with the gas from one of the garinafin sacs, and they were found to have identical weight.
“But how could the garinafins have access to manure gas?” asked the puzzled scholars.
Mécodé, the expert on the effects of various herbs on animal digestion, offered a possible answer. “The fermentation process that generates the gas for the flamethrowers may be similar to what happens inside these grass-eating creatures.”
Further dissection of the animals seemed to confirm the hypothesis. Like cattle and sheep, the garinafins had multichambered stomachs. It appeared that the grass had to be fermented in some of the earlier chambers, regurgitated, chewed, and swallowed again. The gas generated from the fermentation was then distributed and stored in the network of sacs found throughout the body. To prevent bloating, the gas slowly leaked out over time and had to be replenished.
“Breathing fire consumes the gas as well,” speculated Zomi. “This explains why the garinafins can’t fly for as long when they breathe fire. They need to replenish the gas supply by landing and eating.”
“Creation certainly is full of wonders,” said Atharo Ye. “The herbivores must have developed this ability as a defense mechanism. Makes me wonder what kind of other amazing creatures one might find in the lands of Ukyu and Gondé.”
Seeing these fearsome creatures as cud-chewing flying cattle certainly removed some of their mystique. The scholars immediately turned to debate how to take advantage of these discoveries and generate countermeasures.
More mysteries were revealed as the dissection continued.
Although the garinafins were clearly mammals, dissection of the two carcasses—both female—revealed partially formed eggs with hard shells, suggesting that they were oviparous.
“Mammals that lay eggs!” exclaimed Atharo Ye. “I never would have believed such a thing if I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes.”
Looking inside the eggs yielded even more surprises.
“And unlike most egg-laying animals we know, the embryos develop at least partly inside the mother before the eggs are even laid,” mused Çami, who was knowledgeable about prenatal development in domestic fowl. “We may not know a lot about the process of garinafin birth, but anyone can see that these three-winged and six-limbed monstrosities aren’t normal and probably aren’t viable.”
“Do you think this garinafin was sick?” asked Princess Théra.
“Possible. But it’s also possible that something is wrong with the environment. After all, the garinafins are in a foreign land, and they may lack some essential nourishment necessary for reproduction.”
“You know, it’s interesting that we haven’t seen any juvenile garinafins so far,” said Zomi. “We know that the Lyucu rely on having juvenile garinafins around to control their parents. If the garinafins are having trouble birthing young, then the Lyucu might be losing control of their mounts as well.”
This seemed a promising prospect, but there was still too little evidence to justify optimism.
Once the preliminary work of dissecting the garinafins was done, the scholars divided into teams focusing on different areas of further research.
Since the garinafins were similar to cattle in their habits and digestive anatomy, Mécodé reasoned that perhaps they would suffer from the same digestive diseases and vulnerabilities.
“And I know just the person to ask for advice about cattle,” said Théra.
She took one of the messenger airships and headed for the highlands of Faça.
Lu Matiza was happy to have her granddaughter visit, but she was much less happy to hear what she wanted.
“Why do you want to spend time with the ranch hands? If you want to know about cattle, just ask me.”
“Grandma, you may know all about keeping a ranch running smoothly and ensuring that the business hums along, but what I need is practical knowledge, the sort of thing that only those who get their hands dirty can tell me.”
No matter how much Lu Matiza tried to explain to Théra that it was inappropriate for a princess of Dara to live and work among the rough ranch hands—could she imagine what the gossips would say about her and about her family?—Théra would not listen to reason. She insisted that she had to learn what she needed to know from the only teacher who mattered: experience.
Lu sighed. This stubborn granddaughter reminded her exactly of young Jia.
“Your mother never listened to me either.”
This piqued Théra’s interest. “What about?”
“Oh, everything. I told her not to run around with the wild village children playing dangerous games during the summer; I begged her to focus more on embroidery and dance and not spend every moment digging for herbs; I had so many matchmakers storming out of the house after she mocked them. You should have heard the arguments we had.”
Théra imagined a younger version of her mother resisting marriage proposals in favor of other more exciting pursuits. Considering the history of their own tense relationship, it was more than a little ironic. But the story somehow made her feel closer to Jia as well.
In the end, Grandma Lu relented. She comforted herself by recalling the fact that even though Jia had refused to obey her and Gilo and insisted on marrying Kuni Garu, things had worked out for the best in the end. Maybe it was all right to let the daughters of the Matiza family do as they liked.
And so, for a few weeks, Théra became one of Lu Matiza’s ranch hands—she forbade her grandmother from revealing her real identity to her coworkers so that she could learn what was really involved in caring for cattle. Théra learned to eat dried biscuits and jerky for dinner, to drink the hot brew made from roasted chicory root to stay warm and alert, to laugh and tell bawdy jokes around a campfire, to sleep in the fields under a sky full of stars while wrapped in a cozy spring cocoon-blanket, to shovel manure into a processing pit, to drive the cattle from pasture to pasture during good weather, and to shelter them during the rainy days in barns and fill their feeding troughs with fragrant hay. With the constant exertion and a seemingly endless series of chores that had to be performed, her hands became rough and her skin tanned, and she could feel strength filling her limbs.
The ranch hands fretted about the Lyucu and shared outrageous rumors, and Théra tried to calm them without revealing who she was. It was a difficult juggling act, and she was gnawed constantly by worry that she might be too late to discover the one nugget of information that would change everything.
She learned what a marvel the ruminant stomach was and how careful one had to be in directing what went into it. One couldn’t just feed whatever plant material was at hand to cattle and hope for the best. Switching from one mix of grass or hay to another had to be done gradually and carefully, lest the cattle fall sick from bloat and poisoning. What was good for people to eat was not at all good to feed to cattle. The ruminant’s stomach had to be babied and the excrement of the cattle carefully examined to infer the state of the mysterious digestive process inside the cattle that turned grass and hay into milk, meat, and other by-products.
By the time she was ready to return to Ginpen with her findings, she had in mind a plan that she was rather proud of.
Zomi Kidosu, meanwhile, was consumed with the mystery of just how the garinafins turned the flammable lift gas into actual tongues of flames.
While the marshal’s flamethrowers relied on a pilot light, examination of the oral cavity and the upper digestive tract of the garinafins revealed no structure capable of supporting such a thing. Neither was there any sign of metal or flint to generate a spark.
The other scholars came up with elaborate theories to explain how the beasts ignited their fire breath: Perhaps the animals’ bodies contained some kind of essence that could spontaneously burst into flames; or perhaps they had learned to grind their teeth together with such force and speed as to create incendiary heat—much as travelers lost in the woods could create fire by rubbing sticks together; or maybe the eyes of the beasts could focus sunlight like the curved mirrors of old Haan into fire inside their skulls?
None of these theories found any support in the actual anatomy of the garinafins. Eventually, most of the scholars abandoned the topic as an unsolvable puzzle and turned to other—hopefully more crackable—garinafin riddles.
But Zomi could not let the mystery go. She sent out word to the farseers to gather and collect knowledge of novel ways of starting fire, hoping to learn something that would lead to a breakthrough.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
THE AID OF TAN ADÜ
TAN ADÜ: THE FOURTH MONTH IN THE TWELFTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF FOUR PLACID SEAS.
Dafiro Miro came to Tan Adü. It had been twenty years since he had last set foot on this southernmost of the Islands of Dara.
True to the promise he had made to Chief Kyzen in exchange for the Adüans’ help with calling the crubens to the aid of the rebellion, Emperor Ragin had forbidden all his military commanders and nobles from waging war against the Adüans. During the last two decades, the only men of Dara who had come here were traders and missionaries of the various gods, and from time to time, Adüans in search of adventure would return with them to the other islands to satisfy their curiosity about the larger world.
Slowly but surely, life on Tan Adü was changing: Porcelain, lacquerware, and even silk could be found in the households of some of the Adüan chieftains, and Chief Kyzen himself had even reluctantly agreed to hire scribes from Dara to record the histories and legends of his people in writing so as to create a more secure repository than talk-story. These changes were hotly debated among the chieftains and the other members of the tribes, but the choices were being made by the tribes themselves rather than imposed under threat of conquest.
Chief Kyzen, who had become so familiar with the vernacular of Dara that he no longer needed an interpreter to converse with Emperor Ragin’s emissaries, received Dafiro warmly.
“Is the All-Chief well?” asked Kyzen, a teasing smile on the corners of his lips. “When he came to me the first time, he gave me a pretty speech about overthrowing Mapidéré the tyrant. But in the end, I guess he couldn’t resist the temptation to be All-Chief himself!”
