Law of the Wolf Tower: The Claidi Journals Book 1 by Tanith Lee (black authors fiction txt) 📕

primitive they didn’t have the means. I thought anywhere that was sophisticated, would also have balloons itself. Perhaps be used to travellers. But then all those guns went off, and I thought I was going to be killed.’ He looked across the garden, bleakly. ‘It shook me up. And then – quite a reception your people gave me.’

‘You didn’t seem …’ I hesitated, ‘upset at all.’

‘Oh come on, Claidi. That was an act. All noble and dashing. I was at my wits’ end.’

‘So you lay down on the floor in front of everyone and went to sleep.’

He frowned and cast me one slanting look.

‘Actually, I passed out. I’d had a thump on the head getting into the tree. Rather than just fall over flat, I did it that way, noble and dashing again, and very careless. An act. I said.’

I was amazed. I felt strange. I can’t describe it. I’m not sure I’d want to. I admired him, too. And – I felt guilty. Those times on the journey when he’d simply gone to sleep – had he been feeling ill? And he hadn’t trusted me, or was too proud to show it.

‘Anyway,’ he now said. ‘I owe you my life.’ (The words I’d wanted before.) ‘I won’t forget that, Claidi. I have an important position in my own city. You’re going to have wonderful experiences there. You’ll live in a luxury beyond anything in that House. And you’ll be respected and honoured.’

All this sounded so bizarre, I couldn’t take it in. Me? I didn’t really care anyway. Just liked him to go on talking.

So then he told me things about his city. I was impressed. Apparently it far outshines the ruin we’d glimpsed. A mighty river runs through, a mile or more wide, so in places you can’t see across from one bank to the other. The water is pure as glass. The buildings rise to vast heights, and are so tall they have sort of clockwork cages in them, they call lifters, which carry people from the ground floor to the top storey.

He said they’d let off fireworks in celebration to welcome him home, and to greet me. I’ve heard of fireworks, but never seen them. He said they’re the colours of a rainbow, shot with gold and silver stars.

He said the city is governed from four great towers. The most powerful tower is the Tower of the Wolf. And he was born in this tower.

Then I remembered something he’d said in the Debating Hall, about being on a search or quest.

I asked him what that was. Nemian laughed. ‘Oh, I was just making it sound grand. I was only travelling.’

I asked him where the red flowers grew, like the one he’d given to Jizania Tiger.

‘In my city,’ he said. ‘We call them Immortals. After you pick them, they can live for months, even without water. You see, Claidi, even here the Waste isn’t all a desert. And there are places where everything’s – like your Garden. Only far better. Cooped up in that House, you must have found it very dull. You must have been very bored.’

‘It was all rules and senseless Rituals,’ I muttered.

‘I can guess. Rules should never be boring,’ he oddly replied.

Then he leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips.

I was so stunned, that it meant almost nothing as it happened. So I have to keep recalling it, reliving it, that kiss. Trying to feel its staggering importance.

In a funny way it makes me think of when I scalded myself once, as a child. For some moments I didn’t feel a thing.

I’m still waiting to feel this. I know when I do, it will be colossal, sweeping through me, like the pain of the scald, only not pain at all.

After he’d kissed me, we went on talking, as if nothing at all had happened.

He knows so much. But then, I know nothing.

My head’s bursting now with sketches of other places in the Waste, towns, cities, places where they use hot-air balloons for flight.

A couple of times, people had passed, more or less unnoticed by me. But then some sheep came wandering by, and after them some couples, saying to us shyly, ‘Brur’naa-baa,’ which apparently, (Nemian) means something like ‘Are we disturbing you?’ And since they seemed awkward, and it’s their garden, we got up and walked back to the guest-house.

When I’d climbed up the ladder (no lifters here) to my narrow bed, piled with woollen blankets and scented by sheep, I was frozen.

Since I couldn’t sleep at all, I’ve sat and written this down, and now I think that may be dawn, that light low in the window – or is it?

After I went down the ladder again, I peered over the sort of gallery there, where a famous sheepskull called Praaa burns a big candle all night.

Coming into the guest-house was a crowd of men, mostly young. They were dressed in rather a fantastic way, skin trousers, tunics, boots, jackets with gilded buttons and tassels, and whirling cloaks. They had a lot of weapons, knives and bows, and a couple of rifles.

The Sheepers were baaing and bowing.

Candlelight pranced on wild tanned faces.

I wondered if Nemian knew about this, and if it was going to be useful.

But really, they looked, the newcomers, like accounts I’d heard mumbled in tales in the House. Wandering bands of bandits from the Waste, criminals, who’d stab you as soon as say hallo.

I crept back up the ladder and huddled into bed.

Of course, the House told lies about the Waste. The Waste isn’t like anything I was told – or not all of it. Or not all of what I’ve seen so far.

Finally I did go to sleep, because I was woken by a riotous row downstairs.

Was it the bandits? What were they doing? Murdering everyone and about to set fire to the guest-house?

I scrambled up and got dressed, but just then one of the Sheeper women came in, bleated, and handed me some milk