Thalenor

FROM THE MANUSCRIPT · READING EXCERPT

Enter the story

Taryn Solah knew the channel had moved before she put a measuring rod into the water. She stood knee-deep at the edge of Thalenor’s lower harbor, watching a strand of yellow grass twist around one of the old mooring posts. It had caught there during the night. Each push of the current pulled it north, but when the water drew back, the grass slipped a little farther east. It was a small thing, easy to overlook among the branches, leaves, and other debris that six days of hard rain had washed down from the mountains. Taryn had been watching it for several minutes.

That wasn’t what the harbor chart said the water should be doing. Behind her, someone drove a wooden stake into the mud. Three blows came in quick succession, followed by a pause and two more. Taryn knew from the sound alone that the first three had been meant to place it and the last two to satisfy the person holding the hammer.

“Solah.”

She raised one hand without turning. “One moment.”

“The marker line is already set.”

“I know.”

Mareth Veylan made a sound behind her that Taryn had heard often enough to understand without looking. It meant the senior surveyor had decided she was being difficult but hadn’t yet decided whether arguing with her was worth the trouble. She smiled to herself and crouched lower, studying the water instead. Rain had hammered the mountains for nearly a week. The river pouring through Thalenor seemed to be carrying half the highlands with it: broken branches, pale clay, black grit, uprooted brush, and yesterday afternoon the roof of somebody’s riverside storage shed.

All of it came down through the city and emptied into the sea beneath the harbor wall, where the brown floodwater fought the tides twice each day. Everyone expected the main channel to deepen under the increased flow. Instead, Taryn thought it was beginning to fill. She pushed the iron-shod end of the measuring rod into the water until it disappeared into the mud. The bottom was soft. She shifted half a pace to her left and tried again, finding much the same thing. On the third attempt the rod struck something firmer beneath the brown water.

Taryn marked the depth against her thumb, pulled the rod free, and looked toward the harbor mouth.

“Again?” Mareth asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ve measured that line four times.”

“Five.”

“Ah. Well. That changes everything.”

Taryn glanced back at him and smiled before wading farther out. Thalenor climbed the slopes behind Mareth in layers of dark timber and pale stone, rising toward green ridges wrapped in morning mist. During the wet season, water seemed to come out of the city itself. It spilled from carved gutters, hurried through stone channels beside the streets, and dropped from the northern cliffs in thin white streams. She had lived here all her life; the city could still surprise her. Today, however, she was more interested in the mud.

She planted the rod again and felt the solid resistance beneath it. “Mareth.”

He came down the bank, his boots sinking almost to the ankle. Mareth was broad through the shoulders and beginning to gray at the temples, though he still moved through mud and broken ground with the balance of a man who had spent far more of his life outdoors than behind a government desk.

“What?”

“The southern shelf is building.”

“I can see that.”

“No. Underneath.”

That got his attention. Mareth came closer, and Taryn pointed with the measuring rod toward the center of the harbor.

“The river isn’t carrying the sediment through the middle anymore.”

“It was yesterday.”

“It looked like it was.”

Mareth frowned at the water. Taryn turned and pointed toward the nearest pier, where several Saren were unloading woven baskets from a narrow coastal vessel. Flood debris had collected around the pilings, most of it exactly where anyone familiar with the harbor would expect to find it.

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End of excerpt. This site presents a selection from the manuscript.