The Hanging City(13)

“Unach!” The woman on the right punches her in the shoulder. “I thought you’d be here. We’re playing kow’tug in the rec and need another player.”

“I’ll play,” Troff volunteers.

The woman laughs. “We’d have better chances with a human.”

They all chuckle, even Unach. I stay tucked away.

Unach waves them off. “I’ll meet you there. Just cleaning up.” They exchange a few more words before leaving. She pulls off her harness and chucks it in the chest. Looks at Troff. “Kub’s late again.”

Troff shrugs. “Noon shift.”

She turns toward me, her gaze narrowing. “Go to the market. We passed the road for it on the way down. It’s below the trade works.”

I hesitate. “Where . . . was the trade works?”

She frowns. “Outside the farm walls.” Groans. “How good is your memory? I don’t want to write this down.”

“It’s good—”

“Go to the market,” she barrels on. “It’s on the eighth level, down the way you came yesterday but through the west tunnel. Go to the food handlers and request rations for . . . What’s your birth year?”

I blink. “945 . . .”

“Lark 945.” She adjusts a leather bracer on her arm. A long strip is cut out of it for the bony nubs that protrude from her verdant skin. “While you’re down there, get mine and Azmar’s, too.”

I nod, wanting any excuse to appease Unach.

She responds, “Unach 935 and Azmar 937.”

It sounds like trolls use birth years instead of surnames. Which also means Unach is twenty-nine and Azmar is twenty-seven.

I light up. “You’re Iter.”

Unach hesitates. “What did you call me?” Her voice rings sharp as a saw blade.

“I-I.” I force myself not to shy back. “Your birth year. It aligns with the planet Iter, the spider.”

She gawks at me like I’m speaking another language.

Steadying myself, I say, “The planets in the cosmos, I mean. Among the stars. You and I are the same. Iter, the fifth planet. It . . . It represents strength and cunning.”

Unach looks me up and down and snorts, as though finding the comparison laughable. I suppose it is. But there are different sorts of strength. A different strength for every person, if they know where to find it. The Cosmodians believe that the gods speak to us through the stars, and following the path of a birth planet helps us interpret their words. I don’t share this, though.

“Azmar is Ura,” I offer. The seventh planet, which can be seen only through a powerful spyglass.

“Unach!” the chatty female calls.

“Kesta!” Unach calls back in a mocking voice. Refocusing on me, she sighs. “You’ll have to ask for a tradesman package as well. You’ll get some pushback, I’m sure, but just say the council approved it, and the council will be very angry if they don’t accommodate you. If they don’t believe you, use my name.”

I wonder what sort of weight the name Unach 935 carries.

Knowing she’s eager to leave, I speak quickly. “And there’s an enclave here? Of humans?”

She looks at me as though the question is absurd. “How should I know? I don’t associate with humans.”

If she notes the insult in her words, she hardly cares to amend them.

Unach continues, “You’ll also need to go to the Rooms Office and request servants’ quarters. You might not get them; the city is only so big.” Looking at the ceiling above us, she clucks her tongue. “I don’t need you taking up space in my lodgings. Azmar takes up enough already.”

I nod. Rooms Office. Tradesman package. Unach 935, Azmar 937.

She lists several more items to collect and errands to run, and I panic inwardly, sure I won’t remember all of them, but I don’t want to ask her to repeat herself, and I have nothing on which to write. I offer another nod, and Unach leaves with Kesta and the others.

I’m nervous to wind through Cagmar by myself, especially after my encounter with Grodd . . . but if more trolls are like Troff, it won’t be so bad. And I’m used to being novel. When one moves from township to township, she is always the “new girl.”

I start for the door. Pause. Turn back to Troff. “I . . . I’m so sorry, but how do I get to the farm walls, again?”

He cocks a brow, winding rope around his forearm. “Go up the lift and turn left for the school block. Follow the stairs past Deccor housing and the Mid-divide. Quickest way is to follow that toward Storage and then up the lift again.”

I understand only a fraction of what he says. Before I pass through the doorway, he adds, “You have to default for the lifts.”

I hesitate. “Default?”

He nods. “Trollis first.”

Oh. “Thank you.”

Like Unach, he regards my gratitude strangely. Do trolls not thank one another? I ponder the question as I head away from the docks. I remember walking a straight line when I come to the first fork . . . but I’d been so focused on not losing Unach a second time I get turned around quickly. Up a lift and . . . left, wasn’t it?

I come to another fork. I can see a lift at the end of the tunnel to my left, though the passage is swarming with troll bodies. There’s a set of stairs straight ahead. Didn’t I take stairs with Unach? Either way, both would take me up . . . and were I to wait for every troll to go ahead of me at that lift, I might never get to the market.