It was tall and gray and many-towered, with few windows, and slot-like, high in the walls. I didn’t know what to expect; there are no fortresses on Seoribyeol. But this fit the scene. Sunblasted crags behind it, rough cliffs below it, and rocks and high waves rushing at it. No banners, no heraldry, no colors on the Fortress. Just grim, square walls. There was not a single sign of life in it. Not a puff of smoke, not a man on the battlements, not a ringing bell.
We stepped out on the waterfront as the crew tied the boat fast, and we stood and took it in.
“Do people live in this place?” I said.
“A few,” Gnoza said. “I’ve never been here, but the Ephor’s father kept men there to watch it. Then there were some militia for a while, a decade ago. It’s been empty lately, but now the mainland has put men there again. This place has a reputation.”
“I’ve heard of it, even in Calypso,” Constans said. “They tell legends of the west tip of Kandiers.”
“This place must have a reputation, too,” I said. “Even among people living here.”
Thisbos was a sad vilaĝo, its windows closed, and above every door a black wreath hung. Crepe myrtle bloomed, and somehow, even these flowers brought no life. Everyone seemed to be in mourning, wearing black and gray.
“What a cheerless place,” Constans said.
“It is as if someone has died,” Psamathe said.
“Or many people,” Rhodope agreed. “A ship has sunk with many men. Or sickness.”
“Not the fever, I hope,” Gnoza said.
The village taverno was quiet, and we sat at a table by a cold hearth. The publican came over and looked us over sourly.
“Where do you come from?”
“By boat,” Constans said, “up the coast to the east.”
The publican pulled his chin, looking at Psamathe and Rhodope. “Selling their contracts?”
Constans shrugged, but I said, “No.”
“They yours?” he said to me.
“Yes, both of them.”
He looked narrowly at me. “What’ll you have?”
“Food and drink,” Gnoza said. “Something simple, and cheap.”
“Aye,” he said, and shuffled away.
A man at another table approached us. “I’m the archon,” he said,
Constans stood and offered his hand. “I’m Constans.”
“Muniro.”
“Mist’ Muniro. A quiet place, Thisbos.”
“Well, sir, it is, and it is not. It will be livelier soon. The Sea Festival is in two days.”
“A popular festival then?”
The archon shrugged. “Some may say.” He looked around at all of us, then nodded at the servants. “These girls—will you part with them?”
“I’m sorry?”
“There’s a need for labor in Thisbos. Will you part with them? The vilaĝo will pay well for them.”
He looked at his with eyes deep under thick black brows, and Psamathe and Rhodope looked at me, frightened.
I stepped between him and them. “They are not for sale.”
The archon sighed. “It is a shame,” he said. “They’re very pretty.”
“Yes,” I agreed. I didn’t move. It felt crucial to stand between him and them. He appeared desperate to offer a sum of money, and I felt, with equal urgency, that it was vital he refrain from doing so.
“What’s this fortress I see down the coast?” Constans said.
The archon slowly looked at him. “The Fortress? Aye, well there’s some that call it just that, up-island. Down here, the House of the Sea, people say.”
“It looks deserted,” Gnoza said.
“Off and on. There’s men from the mainland there now. Militia, I suppose.”
“No!” Constans said, as if amazed. “Here? On Kandiers? I wonder what the Ephor thinks.”
“I doubt the Ephor thinks of this end of the island at all.”
“How many are there?” I said. “An army?”
“Army.” He rolled that word across his tongue, trying to imagine it, perhaps. It didn’t seem familiar to him. “Army. Not sure what you’re thinking of. It’s militia. Maybe ten men. A cornet, a warrant, some armsmen. We don’t see them often. They’ve been here a month, maybe. They do not mix with us. They’ll have a grand view of the Sea Festival, though.”
“The Goddess?” Constans asked.
“Deeper things, old things,” the archon said, evasive. “The sea’s full of such, the vilaĝos around it often worship them first, and the Lady second. We don’t forget her, but once a year—Ye know, la?”
“The Great Thalassa is an old place,” Constans agreed.
“Old and dangerous.”
Our host came out and laid down plates and bowls, and we began to eat. The archon lingered a moment, then left the taverno. The host gnawed his lip. “Ye’ll want rooms?”
“A room,” Gnoza said. She’d seemed to nominate herself as our treasurer. “A cheap one.”
“Two obols a night.”
“That’ll do,” she said. “Nothing fancy. They have good doors?”
He seemed bemused. “Good enough.”
Night fell over us swiftly, the aqua sky sliding to a teal, a dark charcoal, and finally black, riveted with brilliant stars, their planets, and a rising, blighted, shattered, blood-and-fawn moon, the little one, Neith. We gathered outside briefly, watching a procession pass by in the dark through the marketplace up the hill to a small square temple amid cypresses. There was chanting up there, and then wailing. Gnoza lit a cigarette, which I did not often see her do, and smoked with a dark expression.
“What are they doing up there?” I asked Constans.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It sounds like a funeral. Probably mourning the death of whatever triton they worship here, reborn in a day. Midsummer’s day coming up,” he added. “Or his wife, who can say?”
I looked at the lesser moon, rising out of Cetus, pale and tinged with blood, then west at the Fortress, the House of the Sea. Beyond it, setting, was Bootes: red Arcturus in his hip, and in his heart, a yellow star that, eleven hundred years ago, starships had fled from, carrying my people’s ancestors, and his people’s ancestors, never looking back.
The Fortress was a black set of rectangles against the starry sky. There were no lights, no sign by night that anyone was within, nor more than by day.
“What can we do against that place?” I said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know entirely what you want to do, Hijong.”
“I don’t know either. But I’ve been led here, by visions, by dreams, by catastrophes.”
We lay in our narrow room, suffering in heat and airlessness, and I felt Psamathe’s eyes on me in the dark, from my left.
“You saved our lives, Miss,” she said.
“The sea cast us up. I had no control over that.”
“No, tonight. The archon means us ill. If you sell sister Rhodope and me to him, we will die. I can feel in him.”
“Are you having visions too, Psamathe?”
“I have been part of you since I first started to dream of you,” she whispered. “You are my Miss entire. Sister Rhodope has begun to dream as well.”
“She can’t be telling the truth.”
“We do not lie. We are tank-girls, not citizens; we would not lie unless a citizen told us to. She dreams of a world of snow.”
I stirred uneasily. “What do you mean?”
Rhodope’s voice came to me on my right hand, “I dreamed of a machine that rode on rails of shining metal below black mountains and above a black sea, and all the stars were strange, and you sat in a carriage, all white and lit and queenly. I could hear the rails and the wheels humming, and then we crossed a bridge over a dark river into a city of light, with a tower of light. And you were a young girl, Miss.”
“I have dreamed more dreams, Miss,” Psamathe said. “Dreams which I am afraid of.”
I closed my eyes, tired, and afraid also. “What did you dream, Psamathe?”
“I dreamed of the sea rising up and swallowing everything, from the shore to the top of a tall tower.
“And today I saw the same tall tower for the first time with waking eyes.”