The Riddles Club

Day 1

Ysmael Cykoven was a boy of much wealth but little talk. He rarely stepped out of line during his school lessons and kept largely to himself. He was a hopeful scholar in one of the eight Houses of Art, in the country known as Heil (a place not unlike yours or mine). Ysmael's House was the House of Ighero, where he studied philosophy, classic literature, rhetoric, and so on. Ysmael's home city was called Suyu an Miños; a place of spiraling roads and interweaving bridges.

Most of the roads in the city were bridges, in fact. They arched like garden trellises high over the smaller buildings, forming two layers. The top layer was the Sky Roads, and the central bridges were called the Commonli Layer. That is where this story begins. Usually, Ysmael took the Sky Roads to get home after House studies, but this time was different. He was on a mission.

Ysmael jaunted through crisscrossing shadows and triangles of sunlight on his way over the bridges. With subdued haste he picked his way through the dust and crowds, by an inconveniently parked coach and its braying mule, to a large terrace lined on one side by four crude apartments. His destination was the far left apartment, the one with the worn little door and a single grimy window to the right of it.

Ysmael tugged at the hems of his jacket to straighten out any errant wrinkles, patted his hair flat, then approached the door. After a polite knock, he waited.

There was a small shuffle from inside. Two dark eyes appeared in the window, which vanished as soon as he looked at them. The door's handle creaked wretchedly. It popped open a fist's width and a speckled face, eye-level with his own, glared out from the home's dark interior.

"What are you doing here, ayu-boy?" a girl's voice queried.

In Heil, ayu meant blue-blood, or noble. It was a person of high rank, which Ysmael was. He was the son of a magistrate!

Ysmael bowed.

The girl was his age and her name was Tali. She was commonli. Commonli rarely had dealings with their wealthy counterparts outside of the Houses, so the girl was understandably annoyed and suspicious finding Ysmael at her door.

"I have started a club," Ysmael declared. "It is a riddles club; I would like for you to join."

"I don't do riddles, Ysmael. I'm not in the Houses, you know."

Tali knew of Ysmael well enough. The boy had a reputation for a mature comportment (that made him popular among the girls), but better known as the Magistrate of Financial's son. Tali was the daughter of weavers.

This difference did not deter Ysmael.

"Come on, Tali, everyone is going," he said, sounding quite confident.

Tali wrinkled her nose. "Who's everyone?"

"Your friend Rebeka is going, and others from Commonli. A few of my friends are, too. It's a public club after all. I'm hosting a competition of riddles. Who ever answers the riddle wins a grand prize, so grand that it's a secret until the very end. As the Riddles Club's host, I would be honored if you could attend."

"You talk like it's the ball or something," Tali retorted, shaking her head.

But there wasn't anything else planned for her day. She was sick of making baskets (which weren't popular at market anyhow). A contest could be a pleasant enough respite. She made the boy wait a considerable length of time, pretending to mull the matter over more delicately, then said, "Fine."

Ysmael beamed. Without another word he grabbed her hand and dragged her stumbling and spilling in a reckless dash through Commonli. Tali resisted at first, but was too awed by this barbaric action to stop it. She followed the boy to a place called the East Balustrade; one of two lengthy slopes cradling the city.