Ortahn sat at the round tabletop levitating above the cobblestones, trying not to stare too openly at Viya-daughter-Kartia. Above her head, magical vines elegantly intertwined, emitting a melodic chime as if glasses were clinking in the heights. These vegetal tentacles gently sent glass, low-gravity spheres of drinks to the nectarium's visitors; inside them, colorful clouds of syrup swayed merrily. The air was thick and sweet (and not just from Viya’s presence). Several homunculus-waiters, their backs fused with the roots of the vines, glided silently between the tables. They did not approach Ortahn and Viya.

  "You're drifting in the aether again, Ort," she noted, tilting her beautiful, hairless head slightly to catch a ray of Solara. "And I'm right here."

  "That's a false dichotomy," Ortahn blurted out, flustered but not looking away. His smile was as clumsy as everything else about him: his torso too broad for the delicate seats (his levitating chair had noticeably sagged), his palms too large for the fragile spheres, his face coarse and fleshy compared to the perfect female form. But Viya wasn't looking away from him either—and that outweighed everything.

  "You've picked up all sorts of fancy words from your aunt. Now I can't even tease you," she giggled.

  "Oh, please tease away!" Ortahn hurried to assure her.

  At that moment, a gaunt woman with a tight spire of ash-blonde hair on her crown approached their table. Her face was frozen in an expression of anxious civility.

  "Excuse me," her voice was cautious but firm. "You had best leave. Right now."

  "Did we do something wrong?" Viya turned to her, confused. "This is the outdoor section."

  "It doesn't matter what section of my establishment it is," a note of irritation crept into the nectarium owner's voice. "I have the right to decide who may be a guest on my territory. And you are not them."

  Ortahn had already risen and taken his beloved's hand, but she didn't move.

  "Please explain why you consider this place unsuitable for us," Viya asked defiantly.

  "Viya, let's go," Ortahn pleaded quietly.

  "I just want to understand," Viya-daughter-Kartia looked at him apologetically, but with a hardness in her eyes. "I'm asking in case there's somewhere else we shouldn't be, and we just don't know."

  "Do you truly not understand?" The owner's nostrils flared at such a clueless girl. "Your presence ruins the appetite of my real customers. And it scares away new ones. Are you satisfied now that I've explained, unblessed? Or do I need to point a finger at the brand on your shoulder? Leave. To some extent, your bound man at least has some sense. Otherwise, I'll have to invoke Law. And none of us want that."

  "Let's go," Ortahn managed to pull Viya up by her hand, though she resisted.

  She fell silent, pressing her lips into a thin line for good measure, and allowed him to lead her out onto the public walkway. There, her face softened again.

  "'Ever' does not mean 'forever.' Change is possible if you change things, preferably inside people," she said, barely audible. Her chosen one guessed the words from her lips rather than heard them.

  "Who's talking fancy now?" Ortahn snorted, relieved the incident was over. He took her by the elbow, stooping.

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  Viya sighed, looked at him with tenderness, and led him down the street. A line of light flew over the pavement and touched her shoulder. The girl caught it with her fingers, and for a moment it spun around them like a golden spark, as if in an orbit, before returning to its journey.

  They walked through the city, and the city walked beneath them. The pavement trembled slightly, the colorful panes of stained glass on the countless towers constantly shifted into new patterns like mad kaleidoscopes: now a talking face would appear, now multicolored squares of fields with one-story earthen towns, each crowned with a single tower, would flash by, now bevels would assemble into a beautiful abstraction. The tower walls were covered in flowering mosses, around which bright insects circled. Some plants and butterflies glowed with bioluminescent light, creating living signs and billboards. On the horizon, a neighboring canton lazily shifted its stone legs against a backdrop of fiery pillars, the "Fires of Eden," that pierced the sky.

  Hundreds of light lines from the neoteric light-weave flew along the streets, overhead, between the buildings that blocked Solara's light, but the glowing lines tried to compensate for the luminary's absence. Some carried letters, others carried memories of reality that could be rewatched, and others circled to the rhythm of unseen music. Some light-letters, like schools of fish, would swarm into a cluster above important women receiving dozens of messages at once.

  "Maybe we should steal a letter? Find out what holiday it is today," Viya smiled predatorily. But Ortahn knew she wasn't serious. Like everyone, she respected Law, even if she didn't love it.

  He wanted to say something, but he just watched as her shaved head reflected the city's gleam, thinking that all these lines, towers, and even the steps of their canton were nothing next to her. Hair was the most crucial aesthetic component of their society, a symbol of beauty, and women who lost it to illness or accident would instantly restore their locks. Some even classified hair magic as a separate type—"Tressomancy." But Viya shaved hers voluntarily, every day, as if in defiance of everyone. It made her stand out fiercely among the other women, and Ortahn was madly in love with it.

  "Your hands are trembling, as if I'm the one flustering you, not the city shaking," said Viya, still trying to draw her beloved into conversation.

  "Maybe it is you after all? Look how the city slows its pace to eavesdrop on our secrets," Ortahn replied. The city wasn't slowing down, and it couldn't care less about their secrets, but with Viya, he always spoke brilliant nonsense.

  But that nonsense always made her laugh, and she broke into a peal of laughter that always made Ortahn's temperature rise. And so they walked along the spine-street, holding hands and talking quietly.

  "I can still hear your aunt's voice: 'Viya, my child, strength is in knowledge. Even if the world refuses to listen, make it hear you with the rightness,'" the girl said, masterfully mimicking his aunt's intonations. "She taught you that way too, didn't she?"

  Ortahn chuckled, but a shadow of sadness flickered in his eyes.

  "She did. She's gone now, but her words still spin in my head. Sometimes I catch myself wanting to ask her for advice, and I answer myself with her phrases. That's my 'coping strategy,'" Ortahn imitated his aunt's voice, less accurately. "Funny?"

  "Not funny. Wise. She was a great sorceress. I'm sure that's why she spoke in proverbs, sayings, and as if quoting herself most of the time."

  "And for some reason, she raised a nephew. Taught him not only men's crafts, but the laws of magic, the language of light, and the history of the cantons... I think if she hadn't been so extravagant, her madness after the Quiet Plague wouldn't have been so severe and wouldn't have destroyed her."

  "And that's your fault too, Ort? Not everything in the world revolves around you, you know," Viya playfully nudged the man, who swayed out of politeness. "And what do you think? Why would a high-ranking mage need a smart male heir?"

  Viya pressed against his shoulder, and they slowed their pace. Ortahn thought for a moment, watching a street performance by thin-legged homunculus-dancers.

  "I suppose she just wanted someone after her to also be able to see the world... as a whole, not just their own half. Probably. Something like that. She used to say, 'Crooked ideas grow from truncated knowledge, Ort. Like a tree from a crack in a stone. Twisted and evil.' So she tried to raise me straight."

  "She succeeded," Viya said quietly.

  "I'm not so sure. I know too much to be a content man, and I was born the wrong sex to apply that knowledge in any way."

  "You apply it. You talk to me. And you understand me. For a start, that's more than enough."

  "A start to what, Viya? I have a feeling you're preparing for something," Ortahn snorted. "Plotting something over there."