Book One – Chapter 19

By then, every other drink order had slipped from his mind except one: something foreign-sounding, pronounced like Astra Kor, requested by Branwen. Yu had no idea what it was, nor how any part of it might be spelled. He scoured the shelves until the task took on the heat of compulsion, and then turned feverish. First, he was hunted by failure, then by anger. He was on the verge of accepting he had fallen for a stupid joke when he unearthed a bottle marked Estjeque. It was the closest match to what he recalled Branwen say. Yu’s first impulse was to simply pour him that – in the spirit of close enough – but at the last moment he stopped. For one, the name was just too far off, and for the other, the bottle looked too clinical, the glass thick in the way of things meant to clean, strip or dissolve. It looked suspiciously like something meant for Bubs’ surgical tools. Or maybe for his knives and saws. Less so for his guests. One mildly disappointed traveller was safer than a poison-dead one.

Except … Branwen was not merely a traveller, was he?

Yu felt his eyes drawn to where the Sharran Vey stood in the shadow. He forced his gaze away, upwards, sideways, half around the room and further still, until it struck the surgery door.

    It was still … the better choice ?

No one looked back from there. He stood too far away for his face to reflect on the metal.

            For now.

Yu did not want the hassle and humiliation that came with asking Branwen to repeat the name; the stares and mockery and laughter about what he had been doing all this time if not fetching that drink, thank you no thank you bye. So instead, he brought Nion his Dundinway and then announced they were out of the other thing. Then he threw himself back into the loop: ask again what the others wanted, listen, try to memorise, fail, search, mis-search, resign, bring water for Harrow instead, and begin the cycle again, with another round of apologies and asking. Somehow – by error, by attrition, or by the blind mercy of dumb luck – he eventually found the juice for the two brannok and the various types of Sulfa Spirit that made everyone else happy.

Happy.

Yes, that was the right word. It was highly concentrated alcohol. They grew happier with every swallow, dissolving caution and decency by degrees into unearned ease.

Yu envied them their dissolutions. He tried it. The spirit. But he had to stop immediately, recoiling as the unmistakable sour crease of whey brushed his tongue.