87 - The wind in my face

There are no fights during Jitzmitthra, nor the next three days after—they are always on dates that are multiples of four—so the denizens of the Mezem would have peace for a while. It was oddly silent, like a tomb, since all the fighters who were not nursing wounds were out taking part in the festivities, and as often as not were silent returning, passed out in carrying chairs hired by their boys. We all had our ways, of escaping from Arko.

I was forbidden that way. Seeing how the wound was healing, though, Iska eased the times, saying I could do training at the end of Jitzmitthra and fight as soon as the fights started up again.

So I passed the time learning Arkan, and doing what research I could without either going out or making it obvious I was doing research, on the prospects of escape. That was little, so it was mostly learning Arkan. I’d decided by then to learn to read and write it too, encouraged that it had only a score of letters, like Athali.

Skorsas fussed and bothered around me, frustrated that he couldn’t take me clothes-shopping since the shops were all closed for Jitzmitthra and I simply could not try anything on leaning on a crutch anyway.

Then on the last day of the festival, he was called away suddenly and then came running back fiery-eyed and grinning as if a chest of gold had materialized in his garderobe. “Raikas! Raikas! Come! Come right now! It’s Minis… Minis… clothes… him… buy… dinner… you… and, heh heh, me! Come!!”

Everyone jumps when Minis blinks, I thought, so I’ll take my time; it’s not as if I don’t have an excuse. The one concession to Arkan propriety I made was to wrap a cloth around my hips; everyone had seen me with less on last time.

Minis sat on Iska’s desk, excessively jeweled as always; it was what was on his feet that struck me. He wore a pair of laced-up blue and silver leathern boots, each with a line down the middle of the sole of four steel wheels. He flicked one of them impatiently with his finger, and it spun as easily as if it were floating. His two Mahid were wearing them too, white to match their suits. For rolling on?

“There you are!” he said exasperatedly. “Raikas: I am taking you shopping. Even if it is Jitzmitthra.” He jumped off the desk and glided towards me, made a deft hop up the stairs, a one-footed glide along the stair behind me, and back down, with unthinking skill that made him graceful in spite of his bulk. The motion was like that of those who do much practice moving on ice with runner-boots; I’d done it some myself as a boy, though never on stairs.

Then he made a circle of his feet, turned so fast I barely followed, and rolled smoothly backwards, with not a doubt in his mind that someone would open the glass doors for him. “Come, Raikas! Skorsas, you too! That rag is disgraceful. I’ve ordered carry-chairs so you can keep up.” His Mahid rolled in formation with him, equally skilled. Their wheels made a whirring sound along the smooth stone.

“You like my faibiskitzai? Idiesas, show him yours.” Almost without stopping, one of the Mahid lifted his foot effortlessly to the level of my face and held it steady there, balancing on the wheels on the other foot. Though it put him at my mercy, he made no objection to my touching the device, and spinning one wheel myself. With so much metal and such craftsmanship, they had to be fiendishly expensive.

“Now quit playing with him and let’s go!” Minis shrilled. “You’ll be able to see the city go crazy yet another way today.” Skorsas hurried, half-pushing me towards the Weapons Trust.

Outside the glass doors stood two pairs of huge, burly, bare-shouldered but pristine-gloved men, each with wheeled feet as well; the wheels were much bigger, though, as if for rougher ground. Between each pair sat a plush brass-trimmed chair, with carrying arms with long leathern straps, and wheels on its legs. I wasn’t such a bumpkin as never to have seen carrying-chairs before I’d come to Arko; the Kin in the Palace of Kraj use them.

One of each pair of chair-bearers had a square plaque hung around his neck with official-looking golden Arkan lettering on it, and a wicker and leather apparatus on his shoulders that held a very loud-looking whistle near his mouth so he need not use his hands to blow it.

One of the chairs had something you never see in Laka—a sun-shade. “You want the shaded chair, or the faster one?” Minis asked me. The attentive reader will guess which one I chose. Skorsas, with his milk-fair skin that he wanted to keep that way, was happy to take the other. He grandly allowed one of the bearers to hand him in as if he’d done it every day in his life. The chair rolled under me slightly as I got in. In as perfect unison as warriors, the bearers slid the straps over their shoulders and lifted me. I glanced back at Iska. “No idiocies, Karas Raikas!” he mouthed silently to me. I just smiled back.

Minis floated past me backwards, then did a leaping twirl, lowered his body like a runner and thrust his feet hard outwards and sideways, driving himself forward down the colonnade, while oddsmen and writers scampered out of his way. Muscles bristling, my bearers did the same with practiced ease, swooping me from side to side, and soon we were going as fast as a flat-out run, then a horse’s gallop, then faster, and still Minis and his Mahid streaking after him were losing us. The guards threw the Mezem gates wide open, and he made a screeching turn onto the street. How could a kid that plump move so fast?

On the main streets in the richer parts of of the city of Arko, there are lanes on one side that are paved unearthly smooth. I had seen them on the way in, and wondered why no one walked on them. Now as Minis and his Mahid barreled onto and along one, and my bearers followed, picking up even more speed and now and then blasting their whistles deafeningly, I understood. If you can afford a fast chair, it’s the best way to get around.

There was freedom in feeling the wind in my face. “Faster, you lazy sluggards!” I roared at my bearers, though I doubted they could understand Enchian. “Catch that boy! Come on—if I had both legs I could run rings around you on those things!” Skorsas shrilled from behind, telling me to shut up with a fair number of fik’s. “Faster!—don’t you know my name is Lightning?”

Just then Minis whizzed up a bridge and on the crest leapt into the air, tucking his legs, and flew a fair distance before landing, with perfect panache, on his feet. “Do that!” I told the bearers in my best Arkan. “Do what he did!” The rear one, whose face was now glistening with sweat, looked at me as if I were foaming at the mouth.

I was seeing much more of Arko today than I’d thought I would, but none of it for very long. They’d taken me down a street whose boulevard had astonishing, larger-than-life marble statues all down it, going on and on, but each one, when I passed, was a blur.

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This scene from Minis's point of view