Sharon Shinn - Gateway

Once she made it to the small tumble of debris that Kalen had indicated, she scooped up her first collection of stones with the long-handled sieve. Of the ten rocks she shook free of the mud, four were black and one was veined with blurry copper. But the rest were a soft, chipped grayish rose, and she dumped them in the shapeless sack she wore on a strap over her shoulder.

This could be a really long day.

She got a rhythm down in the next half hour-bend, scoop, shake, sort, bend again. In addition to stones, she brought up bits of broken glass, fish bones, unidentifiable scraps of metal, what looked like animal teeth, twigs and clumps of bark, the occasional live worm. Twice when she sorted through her collection of debris, she picked up ordinary gray rocks and felt a tingle against her fingertips. By this time, Kalen was too far away for her to shout out a question, so she tossed those stones in the sack just in case.

By noon she was famished and thirsty, even though she had brought a handful of crackers and a full water bottle to see her through the morning. She was just about to tramp back to Kalen to ask how much longer they would be working when the air was filled with the silver riffle of dozens of tiny bells.

“Daiyu!” Kalen was calling before she’d even registered what the pretty noise might mean. “They’re going to raise the gates! Out of the river!”

“Eek!”she squealed, and tried to fight her way faster through the heavy mud. Kalen laughed and caught up with her, putting a hand under her elbow.

“They give you time to get out before they lift the gates,” he assured her.

“It might take me longer than they think to get through the mud,” she said breathlessly.

“How’d you do?” he said.

“I don’t have any idea! I picked up a lot of rocks, though.”

“Hand me your bag. I’ll carry it for you.”

“I can carry it myself,” she said indignantly. But she didn’t protest too much when he simply reached over and lifted it from her shoulder, settling the strap across his chest.

“Not very heavy,” he teased. “You must have thrown away a lot more rocks than you kept.”

“I thought I was supposed to.”

“Never know what you might have left behind.”

They were almost at the riverbank when Daiyu stepped in a particularly slimy patch and pitched to her knees. Kalen was beside her instantly, one hand on her arm. “Oops-are you all right?” he asked. She could tell he was trying not to laugh.

She brought her left hand up in one smooth motion and clicked the copper bracelet around his wrist. “I’m fine,” she said sweetly.

He stared at her in disbelief a moment before he burst into laughter. Then he stood up and yanked her to her feet, still laughing, and towed her back to solid ground so fast that she was practically stumbling behind him. They climbed out of the mud and a few feet up the stony slope, then Kalen dropped his burdens and turned back to face the river.

“You ought to see them send the water back in,” he said.

They settled beside each other on the incline. Kalen gave her his last strip of dried meat, and Daiyu washed it down with her final swallow of water. The small bells were still trilling out their aria of peril.It hadn’t been too hot that morning, but now the sun was beating down, and the humidity in the air was taking on an extra malevolence. Daiyu wiped her forehead with her sleeve and felt herself leave a smear of mud behind.

Kalen pointed toward the bridge. “Watch,” he said.

And then, as if raised in tandem by precision-trained teams, the three huge river gates began rising. As the barriers slowly ascended, water first began seeping out, then gurgling out, then pouring through in a great frothy frenzy, leaping and joyous as a fluid pack of hunting dogs. The sound buil tfrom a mild rumble, like a hundred faucets turned at full blast, to a whooshing roar as the greatest part of the pent-up water came gushing through. And then the noise became quieter, calmer, as the river found its level and the water slowly returned to normal.

“Wow,” Daiyu said.

“I know. I thought you’d like that,” he said.

“Now can we get something else to eat?”

They returned to the house for the noon meal and found Ombri before them, vague about how he had spent his morning. Aurora would be at Xiang’s until late, he informed them, but they could practice the tiaowu without her that night.

“First I want to sort through Daiyu’s stones and take them in for scanning,” Kalen said.

“We brought home bags of rocks, but I don’t know if any of mine are qiji stones,” Daiyu said. “Why do some of them feel funny?”

She had the attention of both men. “Feel funny-in what way?” Ombri asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “They thrum. Like there’s a really slight power current running through them.”

Kalen was looking at Ombri, but Ombri was still watching Daiyu. “Most people can’t feel that,” the black man said. “I’m surprised you can.”

“You know what she’s talking about?” Kalen demanded.

Ombri nodded. “A qiji has a specific cellular makeup that vibrates at a slightly different level than most of the solid materials on Jia,” he said. “I can feel the difference. So can Daiyu, apparently.”

“Oooooh, so those were qiji stones?” she said, reaching for her bag. “Let me see if I can find them again!”

Daiyu dumped her bag out on the floor and then settled herself on the rug beside the loose stones. Kalen and Ombri sat across from her. She picked through every rock, culling out the ones that sent a faint skitter across her fingertips.

“These two,” she said, handing them over to Ombri.

His fingers closed over them and he nodded emphatically. “Oh, yes. Those are full of tremors.”

Kalen took them from Ombri’s palm, furrowing his brow in concentration, then he sighed. “They just feel ordinary to me.”

Ombri gestured at Kalen’s bag. “Let’s see if she can find any treasures in the stones you brought back.”

She sorted more quickly through Kalen’s haul. “Only one, I think,” she said.

Ombri took the stone from her hand and nodded. “Quite remarkable,” he said.

“Still,” Daiyu said thoughtfully. “It’s not much of a time savings. If I was a stonepicker, I’d still have to spend half the day in the river, touching every rock I found.”

“You could sell your services to other stonepickers in the neighborhood,” Kalen said. “They wouldn’t have to go to the scanners to get the rocks appraised. They could bargain directly with the merchants and make more money off of eachqiji.Once the merchants learned to trust you, of course.”

“And dozens of stonepickers would be lifted out of poverty,” Daiyu said. Not for nothing had she listened to her father’s lectures on microfinance. “Almost makes me wish I was going to be staying here for a while.”

Kalen smiled at her. “I was wishing that already.”

She smiled back. “Hand me that big rock. I want to check something.”

The minute he offered it to her, balanced on his open palm, she slapped the copper bracelet around his wrist. Ombri’s approving “Very good!” was lost in Daiyu’s squeal as Kalen dove from his knees and wrestled her to the floor.

“Any iteration I go to, you’ll follow me there!” he cried.

“As soon as he releases you, pull out your quartz talisman,” Ombri advised. “Or whatever you have chosen to simulate the talisman while you are practicing.”

She slipped free of Kalen’s hold and rolled to a sitting position. “Ihaven’t. Picked a stone to practice with, I mean. I guess I could just use one of these.”