Pyritan Towers

The Tsilvene-speaking crowd that poured out of Elevon's ancient train station dizzied Erydh. Hundreds of people of all ages, clad in the thick wools and furs that those from the coldest parts of Tsilvet had designed to keep warm through the most biting winters. The wind cut through Erydh's thin coat—Mother had not planned for her to need to step outside in Eastern Tsilvet at the coldest time of year. She had planned poorly, as she usually did in matters that had to do with her family. Perhaps when she had become the most powerful woman in Geri, she'd given up the ability to make sound personal decisions. It was unfortunate that Erydh also happened to disagree with most of her political decisions. She shuddered as she pushed past the strangers and into the station hall. It was hardly warmer there; but at least there was no wind. The windows in the roof provided little light, even in the middle of the afternoon. Erydh went to the information desk. 

"Raivoal," she started, in the stiff, academic Tsilvene she learned at the Academy. The weeks she had spent in the constant company of Princess Madat and her paramour Lady Danya were a dear memory to Erydh, but they had done little to improve her Tsilvene. "Dya prirvira al tyircoa rial Hieillie... rial Geri, hyipyitral."

The woman stared at her blankly. Erydh doubted she would reply in Geri, or in Deiterline, or even in Sileneyan. This far East, only Tsilvene existed. Mother had always said that somewhere between Gohfuobla and Elevon, Tsilvet stopped being part of Pyrita and became a land of its own. In that regard, Erydh agreed with her. The problem was the implication of that statement: "So they deserve relentless taxation and a separate immigration regime."

Really, Erydh thought it was wonderful that so much of Tsilvet remained untouched by the trend towards uniformisation that prevailed in the rest of Pyrita. Such a sentiment is fast annihilated in a young girl travelling alone through a foreign place. She showed the woman the ticket Mother had given her. "Hyipyitral. Dya Erydithe fid Xanthippe."

The woman said what Erydh only understood to mean "wait" from the finger she raised as she picked up the phone. The call lasted a few minutes; the woman only spoke intermittently. Erydh didn't understand anything she said, save for her name and her mother's. When she hung up, she looked as though she had been roused from sleep by a fire alarm. "Pyal-frivyiaj. Wait room." She pointed to Erydh's left, towards the train platforms. "Frivyii. Uyial griyiaj." She raised her thumb. Erydh understood that much; she was to wait one hour... and then what? The woman dismissed her with a movement of her head, so Erydh left the line and walked towards the waiting room. Someone would surely come for her after the hour was up. A charcoal sketch of the station hung on the wall across from Erydh. It looked uneven; with low ceilings and soaring towers and a convoluted web of rail—a gigantic beast of glass, iron, stone.

From within, it was as impressive as any major train station—albeit a remarkably dilapidated one. The ceilings were almost as high as those in Hieillie's central station, and the towers were inaccessible from inside the station. They had once been used as coal storage, when trains still needed coal to run. Scholar Lothelnor's words echoed in Erydh's head. She could still see the way Manou's hand had shot up to ask what use there was for the towers now. Scholar Lothelnor had no answer for her. "I am sure the Academy's library will provide you with a far more detailed answer than I could, Manaorie. Curiosity is a virtue when it is paired with diligence."

Manou was curious, but she was sparing of her diligence. She hadn't gone to the library in search for answers that evening; instead she'd taken Erydh's books away until she agreed to leave her studies until the morning, and they'd gone back to Erydh's room, below the spire of the Scholars' quarters. Soon enough they were lying face to face on Erydh's bed, talking of whatever fancy flew through their minds. "That's one advantage to your being away from the dorms. We are free to speak here." Manou had stroked the edge of the birthmark on Erydh's cheek as she said the words. She wondered if Manou meant that they were free to speak of any subject, or merely to each other, but she did not wish to know.

Erydh opened her suitcase on the floor. She had collected trinkets throughout her tour of Pyrita to give Manou when they returned to the Academy. There were the colourful scraps of bold silk, embroidered wool, and patterned lace she had found, forgotten in the corners of empty ballrooms and banquet halls at the end of diplomatic events. Manou had only ever lived in Hieillie, strictly within the walls of the Academy, and on her parents' estate in a rural area of Southern Geri, which she would often describe as "a drab, unexciting expanse of land with the one singularly ugly towering house, like a picture of a cock in an anatomy book". She was a self-appointed lover of beauty, or rather a lover of the unexpected, Erydh corrected to herself, who was seldom as happy as when the bread at dinner was charred, or the soup darker than usual, because it made those days different. She hoped the eccentric fabrics would entertain her. 

Next was the small copper cup from a train station in Sileneya. It looked like an inkwell mounted on three stands craved into bird feet. Erydh felt a pang of guilt for taking it, but it struck her precisely as the type of trinket Manou would love. She had managed to stuff two spherical pieces of bittersweet hard candy from the Deiterline East into it. She'd enjoyed them so much, she wanted to share the experience with her beloved.

And last was the portable set of vallie. Erydh had seen it in an antiquarian's window when Madat and Danya had taken her to explore Gohfuobla. That was when she had first told them about Manou, the person dearest to her at the Academy. How they had bonded over the game. The way in which she took minute care to align all the roughly carved pieces across the circular board and smiled at the order of it before she would allow any of them to be moved. The diplomats were Manou's least favourite pieces. They looked so silly at the top of their towers. And they shouldn't just be able to move anywhere in straight lines. That was so boring. Even the councillor couldn't do that. The most powerful piece! But they could, for some reason. Really, they belonged in an entirely different game.

Madat had bought it for them, despite Erydh's protestations. "A gift for your lover, Lady Erydithe. As you have gifted us with your company," she'd said with a great smile, shrugging away Erydh's offer for repayment. The recollection of her friends moved her. They had spent so little time together—Madat was still correcting herself for calling Erydh by her formal name and the title of Lady when she left Gohfuobla with her parents and King Ulac—and they had said nothing of beginning a correspondence. The set was old; centuries old, perhaps. The board was marble, with a silver finish lining the circular edge; a removable glass dome conveniently sealed the small pieces within. They were finely carved from ebony and tulip wood, with details to the pieces' faces. Even the walkers had gaunt horrified faces; some fine lines in the wood gave a further impression of contorted agony. The white councillor was crowned with a gold band, the black with silver. The generals had small spheres, sapphire and ruby, over their head. The diplomats seemed to be leaping out of their towers, an agitated air deforming the upper half of their faces. The bent-backed priests were the most grotesque; with their troubling, pathetic grimaces, they looked like they were begging for survival, rather than humbling themselves in genuine worship before a God. Erydh rotated one of the three white priests between her fingers. The gap between its upper body and its base fit perfectly into the gap between one of the black diplomats' towers and its leaping body. The two pieces, joined in this way, made a cartoonish sight; like the priest was rushing after the diplomat to stop it from jumping out of its tower. 

The door to the waiting room opened. Erydh put the fabric scraps and the cup back into her suitcase, but kept the resealed vallie set on her lap. She watched Alnor step into the small, cold room—she remembered him as the same man who had kept her company on the way from the Academy to the train station, and until her train departed, a little over a month ago. He was clad in a Tsilvene coat this time, and he seemed uncomfortable. That saddened Erydh; he had been so affable the first time she had seen him. Now he would not leave the side of the door. "Good morning Erydithe," he said, rather coldly. Had he been given a promotion? She remembered Mother mentioning that she had recommended one of her assistants for a Vice-Council position in the Division of Education for his exceptional service on tour. Alnor hadn't struck her as the type to make his way in the world by playing on the heartstrings of the children of the powerful; but perhaps she was not as good a judge of character as she thought, and he was no better than all the other politicians that had hoped to use Erydh to worm their way into her mother's good graces since before she could remember.

"Alnor," she responded in kind. "Good morning."

Distance smothered them. Beyond the walls of the waiting room, the whistling and clinking of trains in motion and the ever-flowing crowd filled the silence like a chair at the centre of an empty room. "Aren't you cold like this?"

"No." That was a lie. She tried to conceal the shiver that ran through her as she said the word. Alnor took off his coat and came to wrap it over her shoulders.

"Liar." The warmth she'd perceived in him the first time returned. That made her happy.

"Now you'll be cold," Erydh protested with a smile. He didn't return it. 

If she didn't know better, she would say he seemed sorry. "I can bear it." His big hand patted her shoulder over the fur. "I do hope you are all right, considering the circumstances."

She furrowed her brow. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I've overstepped." Alnor put his hands up in confession. He was smiling politically. "My apologies."

"What circumstances are you referring to?" As far as Erydh was concerned; the circumstances were the Academic term beginning the next day, Tsilvene weather, and the saddening prospect of losing Madat and Danya's friendship—kind as he was, she could not imagine Alnor would know or even guess the latter, and the other two barely qualified as circumstances at all.

"I am sure Head Council Xanthippe would have told you, if she thought it might be of interest to you."

That was less than certain; and even for a politician, he seemed unconvinced. Mother had always been one to withhold information at her discretion, both as a politician and as a parent. "She might have," Erydh attempted. "I am very forgetful."

"With all due respect, this doesn't strike me as the sort of information that is easily forgotten." Something shone in his eye; something dropped inside Erydh.

"Tell me."

"I might have misunderstood—"

"You know perfectly well you did not misunderstand." He flinched. When the words echoed back to her, she heard her mother through them. It shocked her. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I... I did not mean to raise my voice."

He shrugged. "It happens to the best of us. But you have quite a voice for someone so young."

"I really am sorry. But tell me, please."

Alnor sighed. "A girl... at one of the Academies. I'm not sure which one. She was fourteen years old, too. Yesterday, she climbed to the highest tower, and she..." He was looking for a decent way of describing it, Erydh realised, the endeavour, the one that took many forms but only ever meant desperation, the same one she had made herself a year earlier, "she fell. When they found her yesterday morning, she was already gone."

"That is awful." Many students at the Academy had made an endeavour of their own—it was an unspoken evidence to everyone within its walls—and their best kept secret; if someone was convalescent for more than a few days, they had likely done something regrettable to themselves. But Erydh had never heard of anyone succeeding before—be it at the National Selective Academy, or the People's Selective Academy, the sister institution Mother had attended. "What was her name?" Erydh was not fond of anyone at the Academy beyond Manou, but she did not hate any of them enough to be left indifferent by their death. 

"Manaorie, fid Alippe." Erydh's heart should have stopped. She scrutinised every line of Alnor's face for the slightest hint of—humour, cruelty, deformity that might void the name of its meaning.

"I am deeply sorry for your loss, if you knew her."

The dome over the vallie set shattered in ripples when it collided with the stone floor. Impact did not separate the white priest piece from its black leaping diplomat.

Cass Baumann is a member of John Snow College and a second year English student. Initially a poet, she also writes drama and prose fiction. Her work tends to revolve around echoes and cycles of pain, euphoria, language and communication, immoderation, and the occasional hint of body horror. Her influences include T.S. Eliot’s poetry, postmodernist drama, and the Franco-English bilingual education she received before coming to Durham.