We have an hour to do our work, starting before the sun is too fierce. The gates are closed. The stairs cordoned off. We scamper up them. Our buckets slosh. Our brushes rattle. We carry a tall ladder between the three of us. After four years of working together, we’ve worked out a sturdy routine. Bilal sweeps the stairs and the ground around the plinth, pocketing any coins or jewellery he finds, like a fat and tenacious magpie. His back is ruined from scrubbing the stairs and buffing the hand railings until they gleam like the sun beating down on us. Ef, unusually tall for a girl her age, passes her suds-soaked cloth over the statue’s legs, his lowered hands, and his waist. A less serious girl might crack a joke about her constant proximity to the royal crotch. But Ef does not crack jokes. She barely speaks. I clamber up the ladder, a bucket cradled to my hip like a chubby baby, and clean his chest, his shoulders, and his head, which bears a plain circlet. Grime and bird shit collect in his ears and on his protruding throat stone. I whistle a listless tune while I scrub, returning the statue to its usual hearty beige. He is a boy king. Maybe fourteen. Construction on him began when I was four. I have now seen twenty-three Summers. The boy cannot still be a boy unless their years truly are as long as I’ve heard, time warping so much he remains eternally young. I get an amazing view of the city from up here. I never grow tired of it, even when my vision is blurred by rivulets of sweat. I can see the bazaar, and the tiny men thronging it, the hanging gardens, and the towers of the Monastery reflecting the sun.
I’m coming to the end of my work when I notice movement below and distant voices. A small clump of men have gathered at the rope blocking the stairs. One of them, who looks to be their guide, is pointing at the statue, gesticulating enthusiastically. Slightly removed from them is a woman, sheltering from the heat with a paper umbrella. She catches sight of me watching her, and although I cannot see her eyes, they are covered by tinted spectacles that flash in the sun, I know she is watching me closely. She seems to shimmer in the heat haze, like a mirage.
Sammy! Bilal barks up at me. What are you doing? Get on with it!
Muttering under my breath I return to the boy king’s hairless chin. I climb down and fold up the ladder alone, the others have finished before me. The tour guide’s voice, an unctuous thing, echoes over the stone. He and his companions are making their leisurely way up the now-open stairs. I hoist the ladder under one arm, throw the cloth into the cool, filthy water, and race down the steps. The men in the group ignore my passing, but the woman follows my steps with open curiosity. She twirls the umbrella with each step and smiles at me.
“Do you speak Estran?” she asks with no embarrassment.
She can’t be much older than thirty, but her voice carries a resignation and a depth that prickles my skin. I take in the details that I missed at a distance. She is from one of the outer planets judging by her fair complexion. I would guess Estra, she’s not wearing the sweltering fur I’ve seen Uzinian women in. A flaccid straw hat covers her boyish hair which is the color of anaemic caramel. Her dress is shapeless, although not unflattering, and I notice with a flush that has nothing to do with the heat, that it is slightly sheer. The blurred outline of her narrow body looms intriguingly.
“Yes, Ma’am,” I say.
I learned Estran in school and I’ve picked up a great deal through this job. I still speak in my mother tongue when I’m alone with my uncle. He tells me it is important. I’ve always found it strange that there seems to be only one language on their vast planet. I wonder if it was always that way. My muscles strain under the weight of my load, but I don’t move. She nears me and I get a waft of her perfume, sweet and a little cloying like an apple core that has been left to rot under a bed.
“What do you think of him?” she asks, gesturing to the statue.
I’m caught off guard by the question. I’m so used to him by now. He’s familiar, almost comfortable, like an old friend, or a benign and ancient cat. I wonder if her question is some kind of test. Her mouth curves knowingly, as though she has some inkling of my dilemma.
“He’s impressive,” I say simply.
She makes a decidedly unimpressed noise. “I thought…he would be bigger.”
And with that, she moves off, to follow her male companions.
After the cleaning job, I go to the taverna, where I work every other night. It’s a sweaty place in the old city owned by a friend of my uncle. They “specialize” in huge skewers of meat, grilled over open coals then hacked off onto customer’s plates. I don’t think it’s particularly good (I’ve sampled enough leftovers to judge) but it does well with tourists and if that keeps me in a job, I can’t complain. I wash plates and scrape away the burnt edges of meat that grip stubbornly to the metal skewers. It’s tough, greasy work that leaves singes and scrapes on my forearms. The chefs chatter behind me in their harsh, guttural Underlands tongue. I understand enough to grasp that they are sharing a joke about a customer’s ridiculous hat. I try not to get in their way, and they don’t seem to resent me, not openly at least.
When I return home my uncle has left a candle burning on the kitchen table for me. Beside it is a plate of homemade bread and a brown paste, which I discover, when I dip my finger into it and take a taste, is made with pungent garlic and aubergine from our garden. I inhale it so quickly it’s gone by the time I reach my bedroom. My uncle, who sleeps opposite, is still awake. He’s at his drawing desk, one bare foot crossed over the other. He used to be a cartographer before the Estrans came. Now he works as a laborer at the Monastery, but still keeps the flame alive in the evenings. I look over his shoulder. It’s a map of a dense city I don’t recognize, with a lake at its centre. I begin to hiccup deeply, the dense bread getting to me.
You should eat slower, my girl, my uncle says.
I was hungry. It was nice.
Is that a thank you? he asks, turning to face me. He’s entirely bald, his beard almost all grey. There’s a solidity to his wide and stocky frame that I’ve always found comforting.
Thank you, I say, belatedly.
You’re welcome.
He smiles then, his grey eyes twinkling. He’s tired, but not being cruel. He spent all his cruelty a long time ago. I point to his drawing.
What is this?
What do you think it is?
A city you made up.
His smile grows wistful. No. Look closer.
I do. Familiar street names catch my eye, and landmarks from the old city. Maker’s Well, the Meeting House, nestled beside temples and academies that don’t exist.
The old city. Or how you imagine it?
Yes and no. I’m using the records we keep at the Meeting House, trying to piece things back together.
It had a lake?
That’s an embellishment, but parts of the Last Day book suggest one did exist, although not one this large.
But…where did it go?
He points down at the floor, scattered with lead fillings. Beneath our feet. Nothing ever dies my girl, remember that.
I roll my eyes.
“So you say. I need to sleep. Goodnight.”
He gives me the sharp, reproachful look he always does when I speak Estran in his house. I correct myself. Goodnight. His expression softens.
Goodnight.
It occurs to me as I slough off my clothes and climb into bed that my sister has not written to me for months. I wonder how far into the depths of the system she made it. A familiar cold ache roils inside me. I should not have burned her previous letters. Sleep comes gently. My last conscious thought is of the beautiful Estran woman at the statue today. And her rotten, sickly scent.