Book One – Chapter 15

Sticking with food; Bubs was the guild’s mianid chef.

 Mianids were an amphibious race with smooth, waxy skin that glistened with a perpetual dampness. Their colouring ranged from deep yellow to the greys and reds of stagnant water. It reflected both habitat and age; murky and dull in the old, vivid and fresh in the young. Large, bulbous eyes dominated their round faces, giving them a look of both perpetual vigilance and constant panic — wide, unblinking, disconcertingly direct. Slender, slightly webbed limbs lent them a natural grace in water, though on land they moved with an odd sort of slug and slog.

That clumsiness did not extend to their hands. Their long, multi-jointed fingers were exquisitely dexterous, moving with the precision of an instrument fine-tuned for dissection. Mianids were slight things, smaller and frailer than every other land-dwelling peoples, yet their delicate touch made them indispensable where precision was paramount.

They found their place in trades that required meticulous artistry and an unwavering hand. They gutted fish and animals with surgical ease, their movements as fluid as the creatures they carved open. They turned stone into statues and shaped wood into unique pieces of furniture, each detail impossibly fine. They painted cutlery with delicate patterns, threaded silk through impossibly small needles and wove tapestries more intricate than anything you would ever see. Their hands pieced together the smallest fragments of fine jewellery, setting gems so precisely they seemed to grow from the metal itself.

They were a race of quiet perfectionists. And yet, for all their artistry, they did not seem to recognise their own value. As far as Yu knew, mianid culture revolved around simplicity and stewardship. They prided themselves on restraint and preservation, on taking no more than needed and leaving no waste. Tria had employed several mianids at her estate, though their servile demeanour had done little to endear them to Yu. He got to know quite a few, amongst them Lib and Url, who did their fair share in raising him. They were soft-spoken, spineless sycophants, slinking from one task to the next with quiet servility. In other words; hey were straight-out ass-kissers, eager to please and desperate to avoid notice. There were no words for how much Yu missed them now.