Mike Allen - Clockwork Phoenix

Her father had proved his weakness many times over.

Neniza pulled clothes on over the fleshy nakedness of her body, loincloth, skirt, and a shawl broad enough to hide her arms, then forced her way through the trees to the road.

The city almost made her turn back.

Neniza had been to town before, disguising herself as a woman of one common caste or another, mingling into the crowds she found there, but her first sight of the city showed her how little that had prepared her.

The huge stone walls took her breath away, towering upward in interlocking blocks of carefully-dressed limestone. The tangle of forest had been cleared in a broad swath around them, so the sun hammered down on the line of aluxob with their grain and vay sotz with their packs of goods to trade, all waiting to pass through the gates. Neniza joined them, thirsty and footsore; she was unused to walking barefoot and masked on the hard, pounded dirt of the road. A few of the other travelers glanced at her incuriously, but most disregarded her, intent on their destination. She was grateful for their inattention.

Inside the walls she found a clamoring chaos that took the breath right out of her lungs. Smells, sights, sounds, people pushing at her on every side, dogs underfoot, jostling elbows, flapping birds tethered or in cages, sellers shouting, strangers of every caste packed in like ants, and over it all, rearing above the flat level of streets and houses, the imposing heights of the temple and palace mounds.

Neniza stared upward, transfixed, and then stumbled and nearly fell when a passing kisin rammed into her. He continued on without apologizing, while the flow of people buffeted her this way and that, until she lurched up against the mud-brick wall of a potter’s shop and stopped to catch her breath.

She could no longer see the palace mound from where she stood, and it was probably just as well. With her goal not dominating her vision, she could calm herself, take slow breaths, reassert her self-control before she ventured back out into the stream of people flowing through the lanes and plazas of the city. They wore shawls and serapes woven in many colors, with beaded fringes of carved wood or even coral, that would have been unimaginable wealth in the villages she knew. It was too much for Neniza to take in. She flinched every time someone brushed up against her, which was often. Never before had she put her mask to such a test, and it was hard to trust that it would hold.

No one gave her a second glance, though. Why should anyone pay attention to a young alux woman, lost in the mass of people swarming through the city streets?

By the time she arrived at the foot of the palace mound, she was breathless and faint, and for the first time she experienced doubt. This was no place for her. She belonged out in the trackless expanses of forest, where the fields and towns had not yet pushed the wilderness back. She belonged in solitude, away from contact with others except when she chose to bring herself near them. She was meant to deal with people singly, not in flocks.

Alone at the base of the mound—for the people of the city did not come here unless they had reason—she bit her lip and looked upward.

The wide steps of dressed limestone led up, and up, and up. The arched entrance to the expanse of the palace mound faced westward, opposite to the main temple, so that the setting sun scorched its carved facade with scarlet light. Two figures stood on either side of the arch; she could not see them clearly at this distance, but their muscled outlines and the spears in their hands marked them as guards. Once past them—if she passed them—she was committed. Or so she told herself. Once she attained the heights of the palace mound, she would not turn back.

Neniza took a deep breath, wiped her sweating brow, and began to climb the steps.

The guards did not move as she climbed past the carved and painted murals of the lord’s triumphs against his enemies, but the instant her foot touched the level surface of the smaller landing just below them, their spears snapped across to bar the arch.

Neniza jumped at the movement, even though she had been expecting it. The guards, of course, were ocelotlaca, and she had never been so close to such before. They stood half again as tall as her small alux form, and their muscles slid smoothly beneath the jaguar spots of their fur. They wore loincloths, arm-bands, headdresses of beads and shells; nothing stood between them and harm but their own teeth, claws, and weapons, their skill in battle.

They needed nothing more.

“State your business,” a melodiously bored voice said in accented Wide Speech. Within the shade of the archway, just behind the spears, stood an amantecatl. He was dressed in elegant court finery, with golden ear-spools and a pectoral of turquoise and jade. Still, Neniza told herself, he must not be very important, if he were assigned the tedious duty of the palace entrance.

She slid her hands beneath the opposite edges of her shawl, crossing her arms and bowing as she knelt on the hot stone. “I have come to wait in the plaza of the Honored One, in hopes that he will listen to my words.”

The amantecatl sighed. “You’re going to wait a long time.”

Neniza nodded, eyes fixed on a near-invisible seam where two blocks of limestone joined together. “I understand.”

“No, you don’t,” the amantecatl said, and then muttered something in unintelligible Court Speech. “But you may enter, if you wish to waste your time.”

A wooden clack as the ocelotlaca tapped their spears together and withdrew them. Neniza rose, bowed again, and hurried through the arch into the plaza behind.

They had grown careless. They believed the threat was long gone. They had not demanded to see her hands.

The amantecatl’s words were true. Neniza lost count of how many days she spent waiting in the petitioners’ plaza. She knew only how difficult it was to keep her nature disguised, living so closely with others.

She did not need food, but she had to hide her lack of need, and water was a constant concern. Others ran out of provisions but would not leave; they traded sexual favors to the palace-mound inhabitants who came by the plaza, in exchange for what they needed. It was one of the many sacrifices that kept the world functioning. But Neniza, female as she had become, dared not imitate them.

Nor could she maintain the mask forever. Her first task, upon reaching the plaza, was to find an alcove sufficiently sheltered for her to hide in when she felt her flesh failing. The plaza was ringed by buildings, and the petitioners went among them, but privacy was hard to come by.

Still, she endured. She had climbed the palace mound and passed the guards; that meant she could not turn back.

Life in the petitioners’ plaza was not a simple matter of waiting. However long Neniza had been there, others had waited longer, arriving after the last visit the lord had made to this place. There were even a few desperate souls who had been there when he came, but had not received the gift of his attention; they stayed on in the fading hope that their fortunes might improve. They were few in number, though. Most who were not heard the first time lacked the determination to go on waiting.

In the plaza, Neniza saw people of every caste. Hairy kisin, owl-eyed chusas, vay sotz with gifts they hoped to give the lord, and at least a dozen aluxob, whose company Neniza avoided. Even some of the noble castes were there, startling her with their presence. Over time she came to understand that not all amanteca and ocelotlaca had courtly rank, that some of their kind had fallen out of favor to the point where they made their way in the cities as commoners, selling their skills to others.