The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

Kalal swallowed. His lump of old stone clicked the floor. A spindle of wind played chill on Jalila’s neck. Then-she didn’t know how it began-the tariqua was talking of Ghezirah, the great and fabled city that lay at the center of all the Ten Thousand and One Worlds. No one Jalila had ever met or heard of had ever visited Ghezirah, not even Nayra’s mothers-yet this tariqua talked of it as if she knew it well. Before, Jalila had somehow imagined the tariqua trailing from planet to distant planet with dull cargoes of ore and biomass in her ship’s holds. To her mind, Ghezirah had always been more than half-mythical-a place from which a dubious historical figure such as the Blessed Joanna might easily emanate, but certainly not a place composed of solid streets upon which the gnarled and bony feet of this old woman might once have walked…

Ghezirah… she could see it now in her mind, smell the shadowy lobbies, see the ever-climbing curve of its mezzanines and rooftops vanishing into the impossible greens of the Floating Ocean. But every time Jalila’s vision seemed about to solidify, the tariqua said something else that made it tremble and change. And then the tariqua said the strangest thing of all, which was that the City At The End Of All Roads was actually alive. Not alive in the meager sense in which every town has a sort of life, but truly living. The city thought. It grew. It responded. There was no central mind or focus to this consciousness, because Ghezirah itself, its teeming streets and minarets and rivers and caleches and its many millions of lives, was itself the mind…

Jalila was awestruck, but Kalal seemed unimpressed, and was still playing with that old lump of stone.

4.

“Jalilaneen…”

The way bondmother Lya said her name made Jalila look up. Somewhere in her throat, a wary nerve started ticking. They took their meals inside now, in the central courtyard of the haramlek, which Pavo had provided with a translucent roofing to let in a little of what light there was in the evenings’ skies, and keep out most of the wind. Still, as Jalila took a sip of steaming hibiscus, she was sure that the sand had gotten into something.

“We’ve been talking. Things have come up-ideas about which we’d like to seek your opinion…”

In other words, Jalila thought, her gaze traveling across her three mothers, you’ve decided something. And this is how you tell me-by pretending that you’re consulting me. It had been the same with leaving Tabuthal. It was always the same. An old ghost of herself got up at that point, threw down her napkin, stalked off up to her room. But the new Jalila remained seated. She even smiled and tried to look encouraging.

“We’ve seen so little of this world,” Lya continued. “All of us, really. And especially since we had you. It’s been marvelous. But, of course, it’s also been confining… Oh no -” Lya waved the idea away quickly, before anyone could even begin to start thinking it. “-we won’t be leaving our haramlek and Al Janb. There are many things to do. New bonds and friendships have been made. Ananke and I won’t be leaving, anyway… But Pavo…” And here Lya, who could never quite stop being the chair of a committee, gave a nod toward her mate. “… Pavo here has dec-expressed a wish- that she would like to travel.”

“Travel?” Jalila leaned forward, her chin resting on her knuckles. “How?”

Pavo gave her plate a half turn. “By boat seems the best way to explore Habara. With such a big ocean…” She turned the plate again, as if to demonstrate.

“And not just a boat,” Ananke put in encouragingly. “A brand new ship. We’re having it built-”

“-But I thought you said you hadn’t yet decided?”

“The contract, I think, is still being prepared,” Lya explained. “And much of the craft will be to Pavo’s own design.”

“Will you be building it yourself?”

“Not alone.” Pavo gave another of her flustered smiles. “I’ve asked Ibra to help me. He seems to be the best, the most knowledgeable-”

“-Ibra? Does he have any references?”

“This is Al Janb, Jalila,” Lya said. “We know and trust people. I’d have thought that, with your friendship with Kalal…”

“This certainly is Al Janb…” Jalila sat back. “How can I ever forget it!” All of her mothers’ eyes were on her. Then something broke. She got up and stormed off to her room.

The long ride to the tariqua’s qasr, the swish of the wind, and banging three times on the old oak door. Then hobbling Robin and hurrying through dusty corridors to that tall tiled chamber, and somehow expecting no one to be there, even though Jalila had now come here several times alone.

But the tariqua was always there. Waiting.

Between them now, there was much to be said.