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Kataria is an enig ago in a forest Of all the others, she has been the one I’ve never worried about, I’ve never thought ill of for very long She has been the only one I am able to sleep easy next to, the only one I knoill share her food, the only one I knoouldn’t abandon old or violence
Why can’t I understand her?
All she does is stare She doesn’t speak much to me, to anyone else, really, but she only stares at me With hatred? With envy? Does she knohat I’ve done with the book? Does she hate me for it?
She should be happy, shouldn’t she? The voice tellsdoes isthe book I can look at her without feeling , I can stare at her, though I can see her as she is … and even then, I don’t knohat to ht, I can’t …
Sweet Khetashe, this has gotten a tad strange, hasn’t it?
The book is ours now That’s what matters Soon we’ll trade it for money, have our whisky and our whores and see who hires us next That is assu point: the island of Teji We’ve got one night left to an writing, and a huge, endless sea beneath us
Hope is ill advised
ACT ONE
The Stew of Mankind
One
STEALING THE SUNRISE
Dawn had never been so quiet in the country
Amid the sparse oases in the desert, noise had thrived where all other sound had died Dawn ca as people roused there breakfast In the country, the sun came with life
In the city, life ended with the sun
Anacha stared from her balcony over Cier’Djaal as the sun rose over its rooftops and peeked through its towers to shine on the sand-covered streets below The city, in response, see its shadows like a blanket as it rolled over and told the sun to let it sleep for a few birds cas in the market for prices she could not afford No sounds of beds; all clients slept on cushions on the floor, that their late-night visitorsNo bread, no water; breakfast would be served when the clients were gone and the girls ht
A frown crossed her face as she observed the scaffolding and lazy bricks of a tower being raised right in front of her balcony It would be done in one year, she had heard the workers say
One year, she thought, and then the city steals the sun from me, too
Her ears twitched with the sound of a razor on skin She thought it odd, as she did everya sht it odd that this client of hers should choose to linger long enough to shave every ti cushion, observing the back of his head: round and bronzed, the same colour as the rest of his naked body His face was calm in the mirror over her washbasin; wrinkles that would become deep, stress-born crevices in the afternoon now lay sainst the sunset ide and brilliantly blue in the glass as he carefully ran the razor along his froth-laden scalp
‘I wager you have beautiful hair,’ she said from the balcony He did not turn, so she cleared her throat and spoke up ‘Long, thick locks of red that would run all the way down to your buttocks if you gave them but two days’
He paused at that, the referred cheeks squeezing together self-consciously She giggled, sprawled out on her cushion so that she looked at hi the river of fire that would descend frohed at her own e, ‘for hours and hours It wouldn’t ht of just one candle, I could be blinded’
She thought she caught a hint of a smile in the reflection If it truly was such, however, he did not confirm it as he ran the razor over his scalp and flicked the lather into her basin
‘My hair is black,’ he replied, ‘like any , rolled up onto her belly and propped her chin on her elbows ‘So glad my poetry is not lost on heathen ears’
‘"Heathen," in the coods Since I do not have such a thing, you are halfway right Since gods do not exist, you are co’ This tiht the razor to his head once more ‘And I didn’t pay for the poetry’