“Well? Are you an army man?”

I explain.

“It stinks,” he shrugs. “Let’s go drink some of your scrip, Low.”

*

I find unaccountable difficulties always arise in searching out the narrative sections of any marketplace, but of course how could I know that? Anyhow there always seems to be some distraction, or the sort of wrong turn that, having drawn you into the trammels of its mischief, dodges behind the innocent turns and loses itself among them like an absconding pickpocket. No shortage of the real ones either—at the wine store, Jil Punkinflake took my wallet slowly from my hand as I was about to restore it to my pocket, and deftly slipped it into my shirt, where my vest holds it now against my skin. I ask him about the narrative market and he gives me a swift, canny look. With a nearly invisible toss of his head I realize he is one of those go-betweens who are involved with the narrative merchants, the storiers and letterers and calligraphers and abecederians. We flit out into trough-like stone lanes.

“I’m one of many at the college,” he avers. “Our work and their work can be compared. Properly compared. A feel for one is a feel for the other, often.”

Past the indigo dyers and a suave aproned ink maker, and here is the narrative section, a long row of small, elegant shops with teak fronts adorned with gleaming brass and magnificent tumbling window displays. Here all the world’s alphabets, abjads, and syllabaries are sold. Jil Punkinflake’s face grows tight and sharp, he seems etched in the air. His eyes shimmer. There’s a casino atmosphere here; I can see great whirlwinds of invisible loss and gain churning in the sky down into the earth. But these stores sell only the general sort of alphabet, the vast majority of which were created long ago by a handful of ancient masters and gods. The current alphabet makers are skilled copyists, and talented embellishers—at least, this is true of those who sell their wares in these stores.

Another class of symbolists exists, who conduct their trade in secret, against both city and royal law, meeting clients in clandestine assignations, fashioning unique, customized writing ways for them. Hidden as they are, their presence is palpable everywhere, and accounts for this heady atmosphere. These underground artificers, trained by anonymous teachers, read copy and circulate books long lost to memory in the perfectly ordered, perfectly maintained, perfectly complete, never-read archives of the Alaks. The creation of a new symbola is not simply a matter of drawing a series of substitute markings; it is a magical undertaking, in which an ordination must be created that will allow for the improvisation of signs that will become permanent, and which must be commensurate with the client’s requirements and expressive, at every point, of a rigorous internal coherence. Some clients will get phonetic alphabets, others syllabaries; some symbols, others pictures, depending upon their needs, wants, personalities, whatever exigency is expressed in their need for a writing way of their own. Furthermore, the characters must seem appropriate to their sounds, or concepts, and this is where no amount of unassisted technical ability avails. The association of symbols is conducted in often gruelling, if simple, rituals that can last for weeks; some accomplished artisans have died in pursuit of them. There is no telling at the outset what will cause the most difficulty; in some cases, extreme refinement of nuance may bring the symbolist to the point of complete collapse, while in other cases it may be an intolerable simplicity and directness that suffocates her.