Essan departed later than Kaleb thought he would. He stayed longer, Kaleb thought, because he was pleased to have Erid around again, and because he was also – or so it seemed to Kaleb – concerned about Kaleb’s own wellbeing. He did, after all, have another week or so left with use of only one arm, but he was also being instructed by Erid now, and Essan was watching occasionally, sitting in silence, but with his attention clearly directed to their lessons. There was also the matter of general security. Though Kaleb was out and about in the town and nothing untoward had happened, either Erid and Essan and sometimes both would usually accompany him out in the town. It seemed that they took their role as his protectors – one they had adopted themselves without much of his input – very seriously. He supposed he had now narrowly avoided being an organ donor at least twice, and who knew how many other times his new camouflage may have saved him from a similar fate. In truth, Kaleb found himself grateful, though he had never been supervised quite so much before in his life, and also found it somewhat claustrophobic. Even when learning to climb the faces of Haethea he was expected to fall and to get hurt, and so few people had paid much attention. But then, there wasn’t much danger there if one was sensible. Now, he relished the times he went out alone, and was able to see the city on its own terms. Everywhere he went, he looked out for signs of what Erid had called Veillard’s ‘secret heart’, and he saw them – small carvings, signs on doors, little symbols that Erid had explained to him that were Veillish tributes. They sent a thrill up Kaleb’s neck, and he hunted them with glee.

His lessons had been progressing. He could now perform the exercise that Erid had demonstrated for him, utilising a coin and moving it from a vertical to a rotating motion. His efficiency in the employment of smaller fields had improved enormously. What before he would use multiple fields for, he would now only employ a single one, relying on a kinesthetic sense of space and motion to balance the coins and their trajectory. As they went along, Erid had given him greater and greater challenges. They were directed in two ways: the complexity of the movement, and the number of coins. And so Kaleb would sit, and orbit coins in regular ‘bouncing’ movements, drawing the orbit closer and then sending it further – at first individually around his legs, then his waist, then his chest, then his biceps, forearms and hands, moving the orbit from one site to the next. Then he would try and ‘juggle’ a number of these at a time, at first in the same rhythmic patterns and then in different rhythmic patterns. It was less a physical strain than it was a mental strain. Kaleb had thought that the exercises with the pools of capacitance that he wore as camouflage whenever he went out had been difficult, but these field generation control exercises left him, at the end of each session, feeling as if someone had driven a spike directly into his forehead. None-the-less he improved, and he could now maintain up to four coins in separate orbits around his hands, cycling them between each. He had to rest his right arm on a chair to stop the weight of his cast exhausting his muscles, but he could maintain the pattern for a good few minutes.

The day of Essan’s departure, however, there were no lessons, and they all stayed together indoors at a cafe near to the mistship yard. Essan was travelling in a large arc over and around Arbistrad, that would end up putting him near where he had worked out the elevation where Haethea should be, judging from the approximate length of Kaleb’s fall.

“So how did you come to own a bar?” Kaleb asked

“Hmmm… well, it wasn’t really a bar… but we did get to pick what we wanted to do when we – that is, those of us who were fixed in locations as opposed to being peripatetic – were assigned to a place. And alcohol has always held a special place in my heart–”

“In his stomach, he means!”

“-oi! And so I decided that it would be the best way to operate and stay happy–”

“Very happy”

“I’ll sock you.”

“Sorry”

“I’ve actually owned and run breweries and distilleries before as well, they were quite the undertaking! But the thing is that only the real puritans – and the actual puritans – are against the consumption of alcohol. Mostly I find that you can loosen lips and loosen purse-strings with a little bit of lubrication, and it is easier than many other businesses. It’s the tax though! My god, the governance of the towns knows where the money is, that’s for sure. I’ve been run out of some towns that I tried to set up in, particularly out here in the sticks. It’s an anarchic world out here still, nothing like the inner city, and sometimes the mayor or the chairperson is also the proprietor of the local pub, or the owner of the mist-ship yard.”

“Oh here we go” muttered Erid

“No, no, listen. I’ve got nothing against people earning merit through the management of resources or the ownership of property or the management of business or what have you, but the combination of the regulation of those businesses, the operation of the town security and the ownership, management or what have you of those said businesses – now that really is the pathway to corruption.”

“So what would you have people do, hire AG to run their towns for them?”

“I realise that it allows for the consolidation of power within a community, but it also permits the consolidation of power within an individual, Erid. There should be better management employed by the towns out here. They seem like they just run themselves, but they really are more like baby tyrannies than anything else.”

“There is a limit to how much tyranny you can have in a tiny place like Veillard”

“This is tiny?” asked Kaleb

“Minuscule!” said Erid. “oh boy, you wait till you see the inner cities. They’re like a hundred thousand Veillard’s all stuck together, they’ve got ancient ruins in them, and modern buildings, and huuuuuuge structures like you’ve never seen. They’re way bigger than the bridge up here the market district is on. Absolutely incredible things”

“Yes, and all built by the companies and the corporations”

“Oh shut it, old man. They’re built by people, not corps”

“And what else are corps but people motivated by a will and a goal that is not their own!”

“Your arguments are as circular as the bottom of the beer glasses you peer out at the world through!”

“The delusions of the young! One cannot have the results and the gains of terrible means without engaging in those means!”

“I bet there are, old man. I’ve been around this city, you’ve only seen a fraction of it. People everywhere make incredible things, and they do it without money. What do they do on Haethea, Kaleb?”

“Oh –ah, we just get food. I didn’t really think about money before I left. Though! I did intend to give you this, Essan.” Kaleb reached up and took off the bead necklace he wore.

“We get given beads as a symbol of the value we contribute to the community. I guess… well I guess I won’t really need this anymore. So I think you should take it, so that people will know you saw me, and that I gave you this.”

“Oh. Thank you, Kaleb.” Essan and Erid abruptly shifted gears from their mock argument, and became quite serious. Kaleb supposed that it was an important moment. These were really the last impractical and purely sentimental things he had with him from Haethea. But sending them back to the lonely pillar with Essan would be more important than him keeping them. He reached up to feel the empty space around his neck.

“That’s ok, I hope that everybody there treats you well, though I am sure they will. I didn’t like my life there, and decided to leave, so it seems strange to me that you want to go there, but I hope that you can guide them to a better future. They are still my people, and I want the best for them.”

“I’ll do my best, Kaleb” said Essan “I’m not sure what will be waiting for me on Haethea. There is probably a reason that things are like they are there, and I’m not sure if my input will be welcomed or not. I suspect that things might be different from how you experienced them in the scope of the whole, but I will be sure to put the good of the community and the desires of those within it first in my mind.”

“Thank you”

“No, thank you. This is an opportunity, I believe. It is a tiny sliver of possibility for the future, and perhaps there will be a new way of doing things that could come of it.”

After Kaleb handed over the beads, All three had one last cup of tea before it was time for Essan to depart. Essan collapsed their hands in turn at the pier, and then turned and carried his suitcase up the gangway. He stood out on deck as the ship’s crew drew the gangway up and as the vessel shuddered to life, its huge wing-like fins swirling the mist as it began to move, the throb of field generation emerging from each of the vast things as they moved.

“Goodbye Erid, goodbye Kaleb, take care!” Essan called

“Goodbye Essan, we’ll see you later!” Kaleb called.

And then Essan raised his hands, and waved – and kept waving until he was only a dark silhouette against the mist-light. And then he was gone, disappearing into the orange glow along with the bulk of the mist-ship.

Kaleb and Erid returned to the hotel quietly. It had been, thought Kaleb, a truly wonderful few weeks, even with a broken arm. But in Essan’s departure there was incontrovertible proof that time was moving on, that things were changing, evolving and reforming. Kaleb felt like he were standing again on the precipice right before jumping into the unknown depths of the mist.