The Land Below the Sunset

Chapter One

Six months later and half a world away, a young man stood at a balustrade gazing out over rooftops and narrow gardens that descended sharply to the bank of the Ophis River. A yellow haze hung over the water and the far hills, as though the world were drowned in old honey. While he watched, shadows grew like grit in the gaps between the sunlight, dusk creeping across the scene as grime slowly in time comes to obscure a painting. His eyes reflected the bronze dusk as a cloud of seething troubles.

"Hey, Propriano!"

He turned as a group of sedan chairs came jouncing up the steep marble steps from the Avenue of Tiers. The doors banged open before the bearers even had time to set the chairs down and Propriano found himself surrounded by a throng of bright young things. Somebody clapped a hand on his shoulder. For some reason Propriano found his gaze straying past his friends to the sedan chair bearers. Little men with taut wiry muscles, they dropped instantly to a crouch after setting their load down and sat with looks of fierce concentration, sucking air in through their nostrils and expelling it between pursed lips as though kindling a fire.

"Propriano," said a pouting girl holding a glass of wine, "we haven't seen you in weeks." She put the glass up to his lips, but Propriano just smiled uncomfortably and pressed back against the balustrade to avoid taking a sip.

"What have you been doing with yourself?" a pasty youth with a frugal moustache demanded to know.

"Not enough, really," said Propriano.

"You're coming along tonight, aren't you? We're going to the Anchor and then out to Overlook for a late supper at Jazine's."

"Oh gods!" snapped the girl with the wine goblet. "You didn't say Jazine was coming." She swept back angrily to her sedan chair with her anxious swain in tow.

The others began to melt away like moths spying a new flame. "You will come, won't you, Propriano?" called back a voice as the sedan chairs swayed off in the direction of the Managerie Gate. The voice took on a ribald tone: "Nephithia will be there!"

"How would he know?"

Propriano looked around. "Nephithia. I didn't notice you there."

Nephithia turned her face towards the receding sedan chairs. In profile her narrow boyish face showed its patrician origins. "I didn't much feel like talking to that crowd. Is there any news of your father, Propriano?"

Perhaps because he cared more for Nephithia than for the others, Propriano was unable to give her the false smile he'd dredged up for them. He turned away and was surprised to see he'd missed the sunset. In just that short time, night had poured down from the hills and flooded the river banks in shadow.

"It can't be long now. I'd welcome it, really, just to put an end to the suffering."

Nephithia slipped her arm under his. "Oh, Propriano..."

He gave her a sharp look. "I meant his suffering."

"Of course," she replied, giving his arm a squeeze.

"He got a visitor today," Propriano went on. "A shipping agent or somebody, from way upriver. It's just like my father, isn't it, to keep working right up to his... right up to the end?"

"He's just worried about you."

"And I'm worried about him."

"Yes, of course. That too."

They walked in silence through the thick blue dusk, past couples who had taken the same stroll to watch the sunset together. Along the esplanade came one of the city's lamplighters, a bandy legged old man with a trained monkey which he sent clambering up to unlatch and light each streetlamp in turn. Both the old man and his animal wore identical red jerkins, which on other occasions Propriano had found comical. This evening nothing could lighten his mood.