Nadia's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The notice was pinned at eye level, so Nadia read it twice before she believed it. The brass kiosk stood in the plaza where she stopped every morning, its clock ticking above rows of public boards. Today one board held a single sheet with a Gold Order seal. It named her sanctuary a heresy. It named her by name. Nadia had spent three years traveling between every Order, sleeping no more than a month in any one place, filling her satchel with seeds and journals for a boat she had not yet finished building. She had come to the plaza to post her own notice, inviting the curious to visit the hull. Two women read the seal, glanced at her jewelry, and walked the other way. She folded her notice back into her coat and went to find the man who had signed his name to the page. Elder Malach Goldmantle received her in a small side room off the Gold Order hall. He was older than she remembered, white beard neatly trimmed, brass cane resting against his knee. He rose when she entered. He did not smile, but he did not frown either. "I hoped you would come," he said. "I owed you the courtesy of saying it to your face." "Then say it," Nadia said. She stayed standing. "Your boat gathers every philosophy under one roof. Children will not know which teacher to trust. Elders will lose the ones they trained." He tapped the cane once against the floor. "The Row has held together because each Order keeps its own house. You want to knock down the walls. I cannot bless that." "I am not knocking down walls. I am opening a door." "A door is a hole in a wall." His voice stayed gentle. "I will not lie about what I see. I will not withdraw the notice." She had prepared arguments. She had letters gathered from every one of the five Orders, along with small keepsakes collected during years of travel. She left them in the satchel. He was not refusing to listen. He had listened for a long time, and decided. "Thank you for meeting me," she said. "Go safely, Nadia." She walked back through the plaza without stopping at the kiosk. At the room she rented by the week, she lifted the satchel from the hook. Journals, folded maps, letters of introduction, seeds in labeled paper twists. She carried it down to the river. The barge waited where she had left it, hull weathered, brass framework bare, scaffolding wrapped around a single finished hall of glass and brass at its center. No workers today. The notice had reached them too. She climbed the plank alone. She set the satchel on a crate inside the glass hall. She took out a journal, a pencil, and the first packet of seeds. She began.