The café was beautiful, all marble topped tables with wrought iron legs, and high ceilings decorated with pressed tin. It marked the spot where the fairgrounds ended and the capitol city’s shops, eateries, and expensive apartments began. People walking by on the street were exceptionally well-dressed, and a quarter of the ladies had tiny dogs much smaller than their impressive hats. Continue reading →

“Let’s see the world, shall we?” Teresthan said. Anna took his arm, somewhat against her better judgment, and let him pull her along through the other side of the site, where wildflowers clung stubbornly to some lovely rocks and waterfalls dashed in torrents under happily finished little bridges, some of wood and some of stone. Anna recognized decorative elements from some of her earlier drawings for railings and pillars. Teresthan’s grin brightened whenever she noted something with approval. Continue reading →

Anna found her tent hard to leave. It was all soft green and lavender cloth, and vases of lilies, and a wonderful writing desk stocked with paper, pens, ink, and pencils of every lead softness. There were shelves of books on Levour, a Levour and Trade Common dictionary, a book of poems by the bard Tehvan, and an art history text. Continue reading →

When the train arrived in the main Levour station, workmen removed the cars of materials and re-attached them to a different, smaller engine. With Anna and the workers packed onto the back, holding to the railings, the little train rolled down a special new track direct to the fairgrounds. It was near midmorning, but felt much earlier to Anna, whose hair was still slowly drying and curling madly in the damp drizzle that shrouded the city. Continue reading →

Anna was, by now, very familiar with Sherard station. No trains ran to Shandor, so the nearest place to board was the station just over the eastern passes. Sherard station nestled in a pine-forested valley, in a town of almost Shandorian looking half-timbered houses. Anna knew the workers’ foreman, and he greeted her by name as she alighted from the first of a train of wagons. Continue reading →

“Well,” the grey-haired Queen of Shandor gasped. “That’s a great many stairs to climb to find somewhere quiet.”

Tam was inclined to agree, but the view was so striking that he didn’t say anything. The high tower of the castle of Shandor hadn’t been named too inventively, but that was, he expected, because no words could describe how it felt to stand nearly in the clouds looking down on half the country like a bird might. Continue reading →

“So now they want to put us down in the third tier between the Dynasties and Sarvarthi?” Djaren asked, tapping the map with his pencil. He and Isakoa, teenaged king of the Tembelakan islands, were sharing tea with the ambassador at the little Shandorian embassy in Cambriol. The Shandorian ambassador to Arien had a guest, his counterpart who worked in Levour. That gentleman, Darcere, was a tall, thin man with hooded eyes and a bored demeanor that likely helped him in Levour. Continue reading →