3. Interrogation

Prebuha trudged through the perfectly straight shopping lanes on her way to her first suspect. She wanted to run, for a change, but couldn’t due to the large crowds.

A new procession of migrants entered the city. They were led to an empty Region. The walls surrounding it all showed the same unique symbol. As soon as they lived there, they’d all receive a Bulla with the same symbol, to prove their identity. Then they were free to choose their own leader or run their Region however they wanted.

Look at that! The city even received its first migrant pandas, a nice couple of one white and one black.

You could live here without ever leaving your Region. In practice, though, everyone married everyone, and Regions traded freely every day on the main streets that cut the city into four sectors. One ran North to South, the other East to West, and all so annoyingly straight.

The architects of this city had foreseen all of this, thousands of years ago. Still some Regions were empty. Where they found the time and materials for such an enormous city … nobody knew. What they were going to do once it was full … nobody knew either.

She stopped in front of a food stall to practice. She didn’t say a word and just placed several Bulla on the counter: symbols that represented an offer of wood.

“Don’t speak our language, girl?” the female wolf asked, protective of her wares.

She almost shook her head. Stupid! If she didn’t understand the language, she wouldn’t understand this question! So she just looked vaguely innocent and glassy-eyed.

The merchant sighed. She rummaged through her own wares and revealed one Bulla showing grain.

One grain for all that wood? That felt unfair. She abused a helpless migrant girl!

She looked angry and pointed at more grain. The merchant shook her head. Prebuha offered more wood. No success. Not even one more piece of grain!

“I don’t need that much wood, girl,” the wolf said, while gesturing with a passion. “Unless you offer something else, please step aside for the next customer.”

Of course. You could offer something very valuable to you, but not for the other party. Satisfied with this lesson, she walked on with a smile and left behind a confused wolf.

Just before reaching her first suspect, she tried again. This time at a stall that sold feathers, owned by a large flock of doves. Those creatures were everywhere these days.

What did birds want? Nuts? She found a Bulla with a seed and placed it on the counter. The birds were interested and searched for a counteroffer. But once they took a better look at her, they dropped their Bullas.

“You’re no migrant. You’re Prebuha! The lazy, terrible trader!”

“Excuse—erm, I mean, I can’t understand you!”

“Spare yourself the effort, girl. Nobody will ever trade with you once they know who you are. And once they hear who your father was …”

How did they know? How did doves always know what was going on everywhere? Did they have gossip groups high in the clouds?

“And you … you are ugly! Ha!”

She stuck out her tongue and continued walking. Two short trades—and she was already tired. Working was too much work. Stupid.

Suddenly all the creatures looked past her. Someone yelled at her back. As she turned around, she was pushed aside by a fast hyena with a food basket firmly held in his teeth.

“Thief! Thief! Thief!”

She was right next to him. She could’ve stuck out a paw, grabbed him, attacked him, stopped him with one action. But that felt like work.

Instead she let him pass. Bystanders had to close the gap. They reached for the thief’s paws, formed a wall, threw objects they were holding, all an instinctual reaction. It often worked—not this time.

The hyena was too strong. He bit at a wolf, slipped through someone’s grip, and jumped over a water well to disappear in a dark alley. They had to give up the chase and the stolen food.

“Prepre! Out of the way!” a voice yelled from above. She hadn’t seen him! Welpon sat on the roof with his next weapon, as a cat ran from his lap.

She crouched. Welpon blew into a tube and shot a rain of stones, like stormy winds right above her head.

The hyena growled and fell down with a thud. The merchant angrily retrieved his stolen wares. Larsh ran to Welpon as he climbed down, smiling broadly, his quills shining in the sunlight.

“Too dangerous!” Larsh yelled. “You’re coming with me!”

What? He’d stopped the thief! He’d found a much more effective way to stop the bad people! But she couldn’t say anything to Larsh anymore, so she didn’t.

She walked onward at a brisk pace—especially for her—and reminded herself of all she had to miss if she was exiled.

Benches were placed to the side of the streets, perfectly in the shade. And on each side was a hole. Sometimes they placed a vase to act as a garbage bin, sometimes they placed a tree, or even a well. The city had almost a thousand wells—and they were all placed by the first architects, as if they knew the future.

Those first architects were obsessed with water anyway. All the homes had great plumbing to get rid of dirty water and goods. Those were all connected to a tunnel running underneath the city, reaching for the Indus. Somewhere the water grew filthier every day—but it was not inside their pretty city.

But the biggest achievement was of course The Great Bath.

A huge swimming pool that was constantly refreshed, warmed by the sun or cooled by smart usage of cold winds. Just like each home was designed and rotated to cool itself from the top. It was entirely water-proofed by smearing a substance called tar over the stones, and the stones themselves were all the same exact dimensions of 4 by 2 by 1. Though inventions from the Clayskipper and his son had later improved much of what the first architects created.

Everyone visited The Great Bath almost daily. If war came here, they’d at least find an enemy who smelled nice.

That’s where she found Megitas, combing his beard and wiping himself with a rough patch of cotton.

“Ah, I heard calls of a thief,” he said. “But I’m glad it wasn’t you.”

Prebuha nearly pulverized the Bulla in her claws with her death grip. “Why does everyone want to remind me that my dad stole something once?”

Megitas raised his front paws as an excuse, briefly standing on his hind paws. “Forgive me. I merely seek to protect you from … silly deeds. What did you want to ask, my child?”

“You knew our Regionleader had fallen. What else do you know about his death?”

“He inspected the Region from atop the wall. A large distance to fall, my child. He survived, but his wounds were deep.”

“Was he alone? Did someone push him?”

Megitas shook his head. “The winds were strong. He was a somewhat arrogant hyena. He fell, an accident.”

“And you told nobody? You didn’t find a healer?”

“Our Region has no healer.”

“The Crowstrays next to us do.”

“Yes, and the Bowbanners on the other side believe that all wounds will heal by sacrificing a goat.”

He grabbed his walking stick and circled the bath with her.

“The Indus civilization is large, my child. Much larger than you think. We hold more area than all civilizations around the Twin Rivers together. Our cities are much farther apart, yet identical in their layout and culture of peace.”

Prebuha crossed her arms. “So there surely needs to be one good healer among us!”

“No, such an area is too large to rule and protect. We should’ve had war a long time ago, or conquered by creatures who do make weapons. Why does it not happen?”

She shrugged. From the high vantage point of The Great Bath she could look over the rest of the Citadel. Many little boxes. Hundreds of smaller Regions that all governed themselves.

“The Regions?”

Megitas nodded. “Animals can’t think further than a small group of maybe twenty animals. We were made for that and able to keep the peace without laws or armies. Thus, the genius architects of our city build a system in which everyone lived in those small groups. We can trade with everyone, instead of fight.”

She thought back to the thief. To all the times it was considered the task of bystanders to stop a thief, a killer, or anyone who worked against their Region.

“How can you be sure? Are weapons that terrible? Welpon stopped one—”

“Yes,” Megitas said, eyes on the horizon. “It would be an unrecoverable disaster.”

That sounded needlessly dramatic. She had seen a crowd rip off a thief’s arm in an attempt to stop and punish him. Was that better than preventing thieves in the first place by intimidation?

“The soul of Asha,” the old Gosti said, “would not survive.”

“What is Asha?”

Megitas walked down the long staircase, back to the fields that were still flooded. “A tribe from long ago. The tribe had a bad split—their idea of peace and equality lives on. In us … and seemingly nowhere else in this world.”

He shivered. “Asha was favored by the gods. I see this civilization as their gift to us for being peaceful. Doing things right. But Asha angered a great deal of jaguars who I’m sure still want their revenge for some deed time has forgotten.”

His walking stick tapped a rhythm. “Though it is strange how quickly those Gosti would give up their entire trade with you …”

She saw it in his eyes. He believed in this civilization, the Regions, its soul. He had nothing to gain from killing a beloved Regionleader.

She had to interrogate the Clayskipper next. Welpon surely. And then—

A wolf messenger—apparently always panicked and hasty—ran up the stairs to meet them.

“Message from Larsh,” he yelled at her. “The Sumiser ships have been sighted again in the distance, coming our way. They have never sailed this far! They cannot enter our harbors.”

“Why are you telling me?” She was tired of all the hassle and could barely keep up.

“As agreed, he’s sending you ahead in a ship to trade. Please don’t make a mess of it this time.”