I looked over her shoulder at the contraption. It was a boxlike frame of wires, with a round, heavy weight hanging down from the exact center. The weight had a little metal tip at the end, which rested against a situr string stretched across the bottom of the frame. I realized the weight was moving very slightly, vibrating from some unseen force, so its tip was tapping against the string with a soft chiming.
“What’s that, ma’am?” I asked.
“An Engineering quake instrument,” she said. “When the earth below moves at all, just shakes the tiniest bit, the weight tries to stay in place, and bounces against the string. It takes a lot to calibrate it right, but if you do it, it can be very sensitive. For example—you can’t feel the earth shaking now, can you, Din?”
“The earth is shaking?” I said. “Right now? Truly?”
“You’re probably accustomed to it, having been here for so long. But yes. The earth is shaking. Right now.”
I watched as the little weight bounced against the string, and felt my skin go cold.
“It’s shaking…” I said. “It’s shaking because…”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “What we are witnessing, Din, are the quakes from the sea floor about two hundred leagues away, as a leviathan slowly churns its way through the bottom of the ocean, toward the coast.”
I stared at the bouncing weight. The atonal chiming suddenly seemed far louder.
“Must be a big one,” said Ana, grinning. “Let’s hope the sea walls hold, eh?”
CHAPTER 4
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IT WAS LATE BY the time I got to the post station at the edge of town. The Fisher’s Hook twinkled high above the gray treetops, bent slightly to the east, signaling the fading of the month of Skalasi and the beginning of the month of Kyuz. Though the post station was deserted except for a few exhausted-looking mules tied up at the back, Postmaster Stephinos was still leaning against his counter, arms crossed, a thread of smoke unscrolling from his tiny pipe. The coal in its bowl danced in the dark as he nodded his head at me.
“Evening, Kol,” he said. “Thought I’d be expecting you.”
“Evening, Stephinos,” I said. “I’ve a letter to mail.”
“I’m sure you do. That time of the month. Hence why I waited for you.”
“Oh. You did?”
He gestured to himself, a flamboyant little flourish—Obviously, as I am here.
“Oh, well. Thank you for that, Steph.”
He watched me fumble in my pockets, his black Legionnaire’s cloak half-lost in the dark, his gaze keen but not impatient. The position of Postmaster was close to that of a god in a place like Daretana, touching nearly everything that mattered to everyone every day. How lucky we were to have one as benevolent as Stephinos.
I handed over the parchment Ana had given me. Stephinos filed it away and slid another piece of paper over to me: my dispensation, a document I could bring to any imperial bank to collect my monthly pay.
“I’m going to be really indulgent this time,” I said, picking it up.
“Are you now,” he said.
“Yes. I’m going to hold it for ten seconds rather than the usual five before giving it right back to you, and won’t that be a treat.”
He grinned. I studied my monthly dispensation, trying to take satisfaction in it. Like every piece of text I saw, the letters quivered and slipped about, but the numbers made sense—though the amount they indicated was very small.
“What a thing it is,” I said, “to be rich for a handful of minutes.” I sighed, put it back down on the counter, and pushed it over to him. “Or at least slightly less poor.”
Stephinos watched me, a sympathetic gleam in his eye. “Need an envelope?” he said around his pipe.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got one.” I slid the envelope out of my pocket and handed it over. I’d spent a few minutes yesterday working on the address, sketching parallel lines on its front to make sure the letters touched the lines on the top and bottom. It was difficult for me to write legible text, but if I was patient and careful, I could manage it.
Stephinos appraised my work like I’d made a copy of a holy text. “This one’s pretty good!” he said. “Much better than the others.”
“Don’t need to drown me in compliments, Steph. But I appreciate it.”
“You seem in need of them. Is she running you ragged again?”
“If I’m alive, then the answer’s yes.” I tried to smile, but the chiming of Ana’s little contraption echoed in my ears. I glanced eastward, thinking. “Steph—you’re Legion, and you know more than anyone about the shape of things around here. Can I ask you something?”