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By Root 1240 0

side is hell and horror. This is the end of civilized space, so let’s have done with civility. Yes, I was Ghayth, and am. The last Abir made me a writer of fiction, can you imagine it?” Ghayth unselfconsciouly pecked at the black dust of the street and came up with a twisted yellow worm, which he slurped down. “I have to imagine things that never happened, and then arrange them in a pleasing order, and then write them down! And they have to be connected with themes and metaphors and motifs! Motifs, I tell you! What rot. I miss being Ghayth Below-the-Wall. Now I am Ghayth Who-Makes-Things-Up-and-Fusses-With-Motifs.” He spat the head of the worm. “Give me a history again! Solid, verifiable, respectable! Let me record the ravages of Gog once more! Let me count the ships in a harbor, or how long a certain copper coin has circulated! Do you know my last masterwork featured two young religions, barely out of their own prophets’ diapers, one of whom crossed half a continent to slaughter the other, only to get bored halfway there and slaughter a city that had nothing to do with either of them? Come, that’s fancy, that’s satire, it’s practically a drunkard’s ballad! I just made it up! I was bored! I had to write something! I can’t be blamed! But my public says it’s my best yet.”

“Pray tell, who is your public, bird?” John said, and I do think he meant to be polite.

“Well, Azenach, of course. That’s where you are. If you had a map, it would say Azenach: Here There Be Cannibals. Also Peacocks. Sleep Elsewhere. They put on my fictions down in the amphitheater—quite something, they’ve masks and pulleys and all manner of machines to make things frightening. They’re mainly interested in the frightening. They built a whole trebuchet once, for the battle scenes. Painted it green, in my honor. I suppose it’s a bit fun. No one ever put on my histories.”

“I copied your histories, for all sorts of people,” I said, suddenly shy. “Once for the great library, in the al-Qasr.”

“And did you spoil my prose, and add vowels, and make the dialogue much prettier than it would have been in life, and leave off whole episodes?”

“I never changed a word.”

“Good woman! For that, I’ll feed the lot of you—though I can’t promise our local dishes will be to your liking.”

Out of the dim, dark houses, each of them little more than curtains and poles, resting in the wash of heat off of the diamond Gates, eyes and hands could now be seen, moving slightly, nervous.

“They elected me Welcomer to Foreigners,” Ghayth explained. “The Azenach make people anxious.”

A small figure toddled up to us, and for a moment I thought the Azenach might be pygmies—but no, it was a child, a little girl shaped much like John, save that her skin was striped as a tiger’s, and her teeth gleamed very sharp.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said solemnly. “We only eat each other.”

“Oh, please!” danced Ghayth, hopping from one three-toed foot to another, his tail wavering beautifully in the diamond-light. “Oh, please, let me tell them! A chance to be a historian again! To tell the truth, a long and honest narrative of real things!”

Several others had drifted out, all striped, all silent and wary. “Yes,” some said. “Must you?” sighed others.

“I don’t like telling stories, anyway,” said the girl, who we would learn was called Yat, and who had only eaten a very little bit of anyone in her life. “We already know who we are. What’s the point?”

“The point is that they don’t, so there is a keen pleasure in sharing knowledge. When you’ve done, they know, and you know, and you can know together, and make quite good jokes a little while later.”

“I want to watch,” insisted Yat, and so she did, as the rest of us paid close attention, settling onto patient haunches. All except Hajji, who clutched John’s hand, and breathed shallowly, and seemed to be trying to make herself as small as possible, which is to say very small indeed. But I would not make the same blunder twice and cause her worse embarrassment. I made a great show of giving her space, crouching nowhere near her or John, hoping she would know