Chapter Ten

When the exterior walls of Gom Weydan started to glow, the mages suspected it meant they should be leaving soon. Arkady had expected it would be something blatant and too prominent to miss, but the amount of illumination the walls were emitting was beyond even his wildest expectations. It also explained why people tended to know where Gom Weydan was best during its arrival and right before its departure. The dwarven mage had assumed the glow had been a result of the travelling process the great city was subjected to, but now that he could see the walls glowing before it travelled, he knew it was simply a side effect of the process, charging up before cooling down.

Velshia, the Mayor's niece, had received two further treatments from Arkady, but she still needed one more, otherwise the Shesterlilly hive would remain cohesive enough that it would regenerate and propagate even more. That meant there was truly only one option - to take Velshia with them when they departed.

Arkady and Yasha headed back to the mayor's office, and as soon as they set foot in the office, the mages could tell the Mayor had made her decision. "You said she would need a day or two after each treatment to recover, yes?" the woman asked, seeing them approaching her desk.

"That's correct," Arkady said.

"And she still needs one more treatment?"

"She does."

The Mayor nodded sagely. "Velshia always wanted to travel beyond the walls of Gom Weydan, and without treatment, she would be as good as dead. This treatment... it isn't something we could do ourselves without you?"

The dwarf stroked his beard in ponderance. "I could try and prepare a salve, but the odds of its success are... substantially lower than when I'm administering treatment personally."

"What versus what?"

"95% chance if I'm performing the treatment, 30-40% if I am not."

"Unacceptable," the Mayor sighed. "You will need to take her with you then. I prepared a letter for her to read when she... is herself again."

"How long do we have from when the walls start glowing to make our departure, your Mayorship?"

"Again, you seem to think this is some exact science, Threadbinder," the Mayor chuckled darkly. "Anywhere from an hour after the Great Glow appears, the city will flash five times, one minute apart, and then shift from one location to another. So, you haven't too long if the city is moving at its quickest, but if it isn't, you should have a little time."

"Never assume anything like that, we've learned in our travels," Yasha said with a kind smile. His wife was correct; they'd learned that assuming you had plenty of time rarely meant you had any, so they had made a habit of always doing things promptly and quickly, rather than hoping time would be plentiful. It meant that sometimes they could feel the strain of doing so many things at once, but they rarely found themselves regretting doing them. "We'll gather your niece and your letter and then make our way back to the gateway tower, so we can take our leave of the city."

"Do ensure my niece at least gets a good start once she's up and awake again," the Mayor said, offering her hand, which Arkady shook.

"Of course. And we appreciate the trust."

They took their leave of the Mayor's office and headed over to Hagolik's, where Moonweave, Sophia and Vinton were waiting at Quiesh's stable, Sophia making adoring eyes at Vinton, who was busy sketching her on a piece of vellum in his lap using a stick of charcoal.

"I take we are leaving, my lady?" Vinton asked Yasha, as Arkady moved to settle the ledger with Hagolik. The dwarf gestured for a couple of the dock workers to load the container with Velshia's unconscious form contained within into the storage area in the back portion of Quiesh's hutch. It was going to be a little cramped travelling now, what with five of them in a travelling compartment that had never been designed to house more than two or three residents. Sophia and Moonweave had already been pushing it, but Vinton was definitely going to strain them. "Gom Weydan has been an interesting place to stop, but I must confess, after my imprisonment, I have no strong desires to remain here any longer than I must."

"We are indeed leaving, as the city is departing on its own and we are not heading in the same direction it is," Yasha said as she did a visual inspection, making sure that Quiesh had been taken care of during her time at the stable.

Hagolik had done a fine job caring for the griffon, giving her time to stretch her wings and fly around the city each day before she returned to the stable, awaiting her companions being ready to depart. The griffon telepathically communicated to Yasha how much she had been enjoying the down time, being able to explore the high skies and return back to a sky perch that was both safe and warm, but was eager to resume their travels. Part of the reason Quiesh had joined up with Arkady and Yasha was because they were constantly on the move, and the griffon suffered from a similar wanderlust as to the elf's husband.

The room was suddenly filled with a gush of white light that poured in through every opening and then dissipated with the ring of a gong that bellowed over the entire city. The avian looked up from the paperwork and tilted his beak to one side. "Looks like you were smart about heading here now," Hagolik said to them. "We seem to be in an early departure window. Been a while since we departed within a couple of hours of the Big Glow, but it's always a possibility."

"Is everything secure, my love?" Arkady asked his wife.

"It seems that it is," she replied. "We should depart."

"Alright, everyone who's going, all aboard," the dwarf laughed, climbing the short ladder up to the driver's bench, Yasha sprinting up it after him, as Moonweave, Vinton and Sophia hopped into the back compartment, peeking their heads out as the griffon began to beat her mighty wings, moving over towards the runway, as a second burst of light filled the area around them and then vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

The griffon started her run up and after several heavy, lurching steps, the griffon crouched and then leaped up with three heavy flaps to fling herself away from the spire and the city, catching an updraft of air to let it propel her up and into the big blue sky. Her powerful wings fluttered to bring them further out as the city beneath them flashed a third time, filling the area with luminescence before darkening once more.

"How far do we need to be?" Arkady asked his wife. She had studied teleportation magic in her younger days and had a much firmer grip on the fundamentals of such spellwork.

"Not too far, but far enough that you couldn't throw a stone and hit the city, my love," Yasha said, sliding her hand along his back as he guided Quiesh along a path outward, but curving as she flew, so that they could allow their passengers in the back to peer out from their rear flap and watch, as the city flashed a fourth time.

Arkady could see the city itself growing semi-transparent, and the mountain range behind it started to come into view, as if Gom Weydan was severing itself from this location and beginning to appear in another.

"This certainly is quite a glorious sight," Arkady said, as Moonweave poked her head out from the back through a flap that led to the driver's bench.

"How does the city do that?" she asked the two mages, her pixie chin resting on Arkady's shoulder, leaning her cheek against his slightly.

"No one truly knows," Yasha told her. "The spellworking behind Gom Weydan predates even the oldest of mages we have ever encountered in our travels. The sorts of machinations would require dozens, if not hundreds, of mages working in tandem for weeks, months, maybe even years... and all for what purpose? The city follows no set pattern, other than it seems to never appear in the same place twice. Much of the time it is floating in the air, but other times it has appeared as an island just atop a lake or an ocean. There have been spells of time where Gom Weydan could not be found on the surface of this world, appearing on other worlds in our galaxy. Sometimes even on one of the moons around our planet. The people who inhabit it have lost all past knowledge of how the machines work, although Arkady did have a look at them, hoping he might have some idea of what could be done to try and give the residents some control over the city they call home."

"And?" Moonweave asked him, as the city flashed one final time and when the light dimmed, no trace of the city remained. Even the air around it seemed to confuse the local wildlife, as birds that had been circling overhead the city's busy market suddenly found themselves with no place to dive into, no street vendors who might give up a scrap of food by accident at an inopportune moment. With Gom Weydan gone, the birds would be forced to return to their usual hunting grounds, and massive flocks of them descended back down towards the mountains below.

"And I couldn't figure a damn thing out about how any of it worked," Arkady chuckled ruefully, as he turned the griffon back to start heading to the north once more, back in path to head towards the home of the Council. Gom Weydan had been a nice distraction, but there was still grave business to attend to. Still, visions of the city's machinery would haunt his dreams for years to follow. "I'd always thought if I could lay eyes on the gears and pistons and whatnot, I would be able to glean at least some of the basic functions of the controls, but there were so many levers and dials and gears and gauges and switches... they made it abundantly clear I was not to touch anything, not that I dared push or pull anything, for fear of changing how things worked."

"I wondered where you went when you were gone for an entire day by yourself," Moonweave said, nuzzling in against him. "You came back looking like I have never seen you before... shaken. Was it truly so complex?"

"I could have spent a thousand lifetimes just trying to map out the connectivity of each individual piece, much less trying to divine their utility and function," Arkady said, his voice a little reverent and awestruck. "Hundreds upon hundreds of pistons and valves and chambers and rods and gears and..." he trailed off for a moment, as if getting lost in the maze of it all before pulling himself back to the here and now. "It was breathtaking, but the time needed even to grasp the fundamentals... You would need not only a comprehensive understanding of eldritch magic, magical machinery, gemology, metallurgy... I did what I could, as little as that felt like. I gave their curator a rough idea of how I think they should begin cataloguing and categorizing everything, maybe a system they could even use to begin trying to document it all, but I expect that project will be generational. I couldn't even fathom if the machine's designer ever saw to its construction, or if they were long dead after the city's construction."

"There was so much to do and see in the city proper," Moonweave said, moving to sit on his shoulder, having shrunk her size a bit more, no larger than a parrot or so. "I felt like we could've spent ages there, just getting to know the people and the customs and the... and the FOODS! Gods above, I bought dozens upon dozens of vials of spices to try cooking with. I'm sure I'll make some duds, but you have no idea what sorts of wild things I may come up with. In fact, I think I'll go start planning what to cook us all for dinner. Do we know where we will set down tonight?"

"Our plan for departure had us putting down about halfway to Daggerport, which will be in the middle of nowhere, honestly," Yasha said. "Daggerport the day after, and then a few days after that, we'll be at the Council."

"Is it truly that important we go and visit this Council of yours, beloved?" Moonweave said, her small hand brushing along the curve of his ear.

"Absolutely," the dwarf grumbled. "The system upon which the entire Threadbinder community is built seems in danger of some serious foundation shaking. I'm fairly certain others will have reported in about it, but it isn't the kind of thing we can overlook, and I want to know what we're supposed to be doing about it."

"How long as the system been standing?" the pixie asked him.

"Longer than written history, as far as I know," Arkady replied. "Much longer than any story has told. Even in the earliest oral histories passed down from generation to generation, there have always been Threadbinders and Threatbinders, two sides of the same coin."

There was laughing and giggling from the back of the cart and Yasha looked over at her husband with a soft sigh and asked a question she already knew the answer to. "Are we still threadbound to Sophia, my love?"

"We are, but the thread is thinner, reedier now than it was before," he said, a certain level of amusement in his voice. "I'm guessing you've taken note of how much she and Vinton have been doting upon one another since their connection, and how the rest of us have sort of taken second seat to him? I don't mind, but it's definitely been quite the change compared to how she was when we first arrived, so maybe not all threads are equal."

The griffon continued her flight across the sky before diving slowly downwards towards the plain they'd chosen to make camp at for the night, an expanse of golden strands of tallgrass, shimmering and swaying in the heavy winds.

During the middle of the night, Arkady headed out of the compartment to walk amongst the grass for a bit beneath the moonlight. In the stillness of the dark night air, he could see the threads he'd connected lingering in the space around him, those that he'd chosen to focus on, although another few weeks and they would fade into obscurity. That was the nature of threads when studied - they burned bright and vibrant when first looked at, but no ritual would last forever. Which was for the best, or else a Threadbinder would be continually surrounded by the crisscrossing threads of those who they had tended to before.

The stars above were a glorious sight, and being far from the nearest city meant the view was unobscured and even the nearby planets and moons didn't feel quite so distant, like they were just within throwing distance by the strongest possible arm, even if the dwarf knew they very much weren't.

He glanced back in the direction they came from, and the view was so strange without the framing of Gom Weydan around it, or even just taking up some of the space. They'd spend half a month in the city and while he was glad to be gone, there was an addictive quality to the place he was surprised to find himself missing.

Gom Weydan had been everything that had been promised and so much more. There were book vendors, artifact collectors, map sellers and all sorts of wonderous delights in every nook, cranny and corner of the city. Yasha had regaled him each day with tales of wandering through exotic fabric dealers, things she would use to eventually make clothing for the both of them, or to better decorate the inside of Quiesh's compartments.

That said, there were also darker stalls and stores that Arkady wasn't fond of seeing. While there weren't any direct slavers in the city, there was a sense of people trading in other people in some of the back rooms.

He was also amused by how quickly he'd gotten kicked out of the few gambling halls, not for cheating, but for being too good. He'd walked away with high winnings and it turned out the people who ran the halls didn't like reliable winners - they were bad for business. And there was nothing in the city laws about refusing to let some people play.

"You're pondering," Sophia's voice said from behind him as she walked up to stand next to him. "I know that ponderous look anywhere. Heavy are the thoughts of kings and queens." She slid her hand around his shoulder, leaning against him.

"And you know I am neither," the dwarf replied to her. "No leader of countries or armies. Just a simple task mage, out earning a living and seeing as much of the worlds as he can." He considered the view a moment, the silence hanging between them before he spoke again. "You and Vinton seem to have been getting along swimmingly."

"That's sort of what I wanted to talk to you about," she said, leaning her head on her shoulder. "You know I love both you and Yasha so much, but demon worms? Disappearing cities? That... that might be more than I thought I was signing up for. Is... what are the rules for a threadbound?"

Arkady chuckled, stroking his beard slightly. "There aren't any 'rules' to anything around this, Sophia. But if you're not feeling as strong a connection to me and Yasha as you once were..."

"No, I'm mean, I do, like, I still love you, but I don't know that I'm... I don't know if I'm still in love with you," she said in the most timid tone of voice he'd ever heard from her. "Does that make me a bad person?"

"Not at all," he said, reaching over to tussle her fiery hair. "The issue of our lifespans versus yours would become an issue eventually unless you continued to take part in our tithes, and I couldn't extend that same courtesy to Vinton. I do not blame you for having reservations about our lifestyle. Plus, Vinton seems a good man and a good match for you."

"Despite his being arrested."

"I must confess, 'sketching someone without their permission' is a new law even for me. So, I wouldn't worry too much about that."

"I figured we could part ways in Daggerport," she said, running her hand along his thigh. "I know it's sudden, but the longer I'm with you two, the more I'm going to regret it, because it's going to be harder and harder to say goodbye."

He nodded. "Yasha and I have seen it coming. We could feel how immediately drawn to Vinton you were, and the thread connecting you and him has become easily the thickest of all those coming off you. We support you in your decision."

Sophia's cheeks were streaked with tears as she sniffed and laughed. "And even when I'm leaving you, you're still so fucking nice about it," she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "How the hell did you get so sage about this kind of thing?"

The dwarf laughed slightly, rubbing his hand across the back of her neck slowly, comfortingly, reassuring her softly. "We've been used to being it just the two of us for a very long time, Sophia, so your arrival threw us for quite the loop. Since then, we've been trying to find some sense of stability once more. And while we loved having you around, both Yasha and I knew how temporary it would have to be. You deserve to have a long life of happiness, and someone you can grow old with. As selfish as it might have been of me, I was hoping that you might find someone who would be a better long term fit for you. And you did. You're happy, Sophia," he said with a grin. "There's nothing wrong with being happy. That's the end goal of all my work. To bring people happiness."

"Gods damn you, dwarf, for being so fucking kind..." she laughed with a sob, "but thank you, for being so fucking wise. I am going to miss both you and Yasha, you know that, don't you?"

He stroked his beard with a sly smile. "I do, but I also know that longing will pass, as you focus more and more on your new life with your new partner. We'll grow to be distant memories that you think fondly of every now and then."

She took his calloused hand and squeezed it in her own. "No. No my first born shall be named either after you or Yasha. I do not wish to forget my time here, with the two of you."

"You won't," Arkady said. "We will swing by from time to time and ensure things are going well, and that you and Vinton are still very much in love."

"We're bound by thread," Sophia said curiously. "Why wouldn't we be?"

"Because it seems that maybe the threads are no longer as reliable as they once were, my dear," Arkady said. "That's why I'm out here on my own. A crisis of faith, if you will."

"Why's that?"

"Because the system has been the system longer than any of you have been alive. Hells, longer than I have been alive, and I'm older than the dirt we're resting on, likely," he said with a slight smirk. "It's not a thing that has ever changed before, and the fact that the fundamentals are changing?" He shook his head. "The Council is going to be shitting bricks, if you pardon my language. Our services used to be a guarantee. We would find the thread and lead you to your one true love. Now? Now it seems like that's not a thing we can promise, because you might have three or four threads leading from you. Do I deliver a person to one of them? To all of them? How do I reconcile the matches knowing there will be splits in between? Do I just take them to the thickest thread? The brightest?" He scowled slightly, punching his fist into the dirt below where he sat. "Things used to work reliably, consistently. Now, everything is so chaotic, so up in the air..."

"You'll figure it out, Arkady, even if it takes time," she said, leaning to rest her head against his chest, making him wrap his powerful arms around her slender frame. "You're one of the smartest people I've ever met, and you've got maybe the only person I've met smarter than you married to you. You and Yasha will be fine. It just means you need to change. And maybe that change has been a long time coming, and you just didn't realize it. Sometimes life can do that to you."

He nodded, trying to let his thoughts get a bit ahead of his words. "We will miss you also, Sophia. You've brought a new spark of energy to us that will last far past when you're gone. We definitely feel a bit more revitalized than we had in the past few years."

"You make sure you come by, Arkady. I want my kids to know who they're named after."

She moved to slide out of his arms and get back up, heading back towards the camp, leaving him to ponder the skies once more.

He wasn't entirely certain what he was going to tell the Council. He supposed it would depend on what they already knew. There was a lot that needed to be dealt with, and he still had Velshia to deal with in a few days' time, once she had recovered enough for her final treatment to be delivered. He also needed to prepare for Daggerport, a city with a much less generous reputation than Gom Weydan had. He knew they would need to take great care within those walls, as thieves, murderers, rogues and ruffians ran rampant there. Of course, those were Yasha's favorite kinds of locations, places she could find easy work, pick up a threat or two to deal with in short periods of time for a bit of vitae, usually nothing more than stomping some local bully, but with Daggerport, there would be genuine threats there on offer, things it would take them a little time to deal with.

Daggerport was also a port city, so they could send Sophia and Vinton off in style, buy them a ticket upon a sea voyaging ship, or maybe even one of the skyliners that criss-crossed the planet for long hauls. Sophia was certainly one with many skills and Vinton seemed like he could at least be counted on to earn his fair share.

Before he retired for bed, Arkady decided to do something he hadn't done in a long time - simply let his sight open wide and see how many threads were running in the skies above them. They were well in uninhabited lands, so only the strongest of threads would be visible at such distance. He'd not done something like this in centuries, so he unfurled his mat and laid down on his back against it, folding his arms behind his head.

He closed his eyes and with each breath, he pushed out a bit of his tension. The idea was to be as open as possible when threadgazing in the wild, and he wanted to be sure he gave his best look at it. He expected to see dozens, maybe a hundred threads, criss crossing in the skies above him, but when he finally opened his gaze, he was nearly blinded by the fabric of threads he could see above him, tens, no, hundreds of thousands of threads, running every which way, of all sizes and shapes and sorts.

Perhaps the one consolation he took from it was that the threads were no longer uniform, but each was distinct and different. In the old days, they had been simple solid gold luminescent cords, one indistinguishable piece. Now, there were braids, and frays, thick strands like heavy anchor rope and others almost as thin as single hairs.

The old thread system was dead; long live the new thread system.

For the next hour or so, he committed all he could see to his journal, sketching, annotating and explaining everything he saw before the fabric started to fade and he realized he was too tired to continue. He would rest much of the next day and let Yasha pilot Quiesh.

He had far too much to think about.