Season I, Episode I: The City of Marble

Marble was not white.

Iskander Halevar had known this long before Sentra rose from the river like something the sun had imagined and forgotten to finish. His first master in Sunvale said marble was only called white by people too impatient to look properly.

Marble remembered color. At dawn it held pink like the inside of a shell. At noon it turned gold-edged and severe. Beneath rain it went blue. In shadow it softened to ash.

From the deck of the Memora ferry, one hand on the rail and the other on his satchel, Iskander decided Sentra was not white at all.

It was every color at once.

The capital climbed from the river in terraces of limestone and marble, hallowed gold roofs and impossible bridges. Towers rose behind towers. Columns held balconies wide enough for gardens. Gulls nested in the crook of one saint’s marble elbow, wholly unimpressed by the splendor.

Iskander laughed under his breath.

“What’s funny?” asked the merchant beside him.

“Nothing.” He was still smiling.

The merchant gave him the weary look of a man who had spent the past week deciding artists were tolerable but impractical. Iskander did not mind. He was too busy looking.

He had left Sunvale with one trunk, one satchel, three letters from his mother, two from his sister, a purse too light to think about, and a manuscript wrapped in waxed cloth. His father had gripped his shoulders before dawn and told him to stand straight before the Sophontes. His mother had tucked bread into his bag until the seams protested. His sister had wept, then threatened to deny it if he ever wrote home about that part.

For seven days he had traveled by merchant caravan and ferry, through road dust and river mist and the endless talk of strangers.

Now Sentra stood before him, and somewhere beyond those bridges waited the Halls of Aura. There, he would find residency and scholarship for Grammat training. There, he would receive a proper stipend with enough coin, in time, to send home so his parents never again counted lamp oil by the thumb’s width.

All he had to do was be remarkable. Fortunately, Iskander had always believed remarkable things began in the margins.

The ferry bumped the dock under a sign reading HALLWARD. He hurried after the crowd into a harbor that smelled of salt, riverweed, and old parchment. Men hauled crates beside golems with rune-scored faces. A dockworker cursed at a jammed pulley while a man in green-trimmed robes mended a cracked loading stone with one bored flick of his fingers.

Iskander stopped walking.

In Sunvale, an Elementari crossing the market could halt conversation for half a street. Here, one repaired harbor masonry as though divine favor had been invented for the upkeep of docks. Iskander marveled at no crowd gathering around the mended stone and at the absence of bows towards the mage.

He walked on, dazed with delight. By the lower avenue he had stepped aside for two Ortharcs, a Horisto mageologist, a woman with the stillness of a steadfast Didaskal, and a young man whose Axiom marked him some manner of Water Elite. Each time, the city flowed around the great and the gifted with practiced indifference.

Everyone was important here.

The thought may frighten some. Instead it thrilled Iskander.

He passed artists beneath a shaded arcade. He gaped at portraitists, silhouette cutters, and a woman painting river scenes on polished shells. A man illuminating devotional cards flashed him a grin, which Iskander returned. Until he noted the prices. His smile faltered. Two copper virethi a card.

A full illuminated blessing for less than the cost of vellum back home.

The cardmaker caught him staring. “First day?”

“Is it obvious?”

“You still have a twinkle in your eye.”

“I’m trying not to.”

“Don’t worry.” The man returned to his cards. “This city fixes that.”

Iskander chuckled. The artist did not.

After a day perusing the market square, he found himself seeking a place to sleep. Three boarding houses turned him away. Their laughter at his rent offering followed him as he walked an alley toward the Lowstone district.

There, he found the boarding house. His remaining coin was accepted for a room beneath the roof with a bed, a washbasin, a crooked chair, and a window that opened only if persuaded with both hands and a prayer. It was perfect.

Or near enough.

Setting down his trunk and satchel, Iskander drew the wrapped manuscript from inside his coat.

His hands stilled. For a moment, there was only the book.

He unwound the waxed cloth until the cover emerged. Deep green leather worked by his father’s hands, tooled with vines Iskander had drawn at sixteen. He brushed a thumb across one worn corner and felt the faint answer of aether beneath the surface.

He opened to the first illumination. A mother knelt beneath a tree, ringed by eight children. One held a basket of bread while another watched the path ahead with a stick clutched like a sword. None wore crowns nor elemental marks. Only a mother teaching her children how to be good to one another.

His own mother had told the fairytale at bedtime when the stove burned low. His master had helped him shape it into a children’s book. After Convergence, when earth settled into his bones and Raphar power woke in his hands, Iskander bound the art as it deserved until the story held.

Tomorrow, he would carry it to the Halls of Aura for inspection. Gods willing, someone there would see what he had made and understand. Gods willing, it would be enough to earn scholarship into the Sophontes training regimen.

He forced the stubborn window open and leaned into the evening air. Sentra spread beneath him in ringing bells and gilded roofs, its marble catching the sunset in rose and amber and violet.

Not white, he thought. Never white.

On a scrap torn from his ledger he sketched the skyline, adding a gull nesting in the elbow of a statue. Beneath it he wrote: Cities reveal themselves slowly. Fortunately, artists are patient.

Iskander Halevar smiled into the capital’s glittering dusk, certain he had arrived at the beginning of his life.