City of Red Towers

1587-12-21
Gates of Bonona

The road spilled me onto a winter plain and there Bonona rose, all red towers and ordered arches. Arcades held out the cold while merchants weighed saffron and vellum on brass plates that clicked like beads. Students argued under porticoes and wrote answers in the air with their fingers. Chestnut smoke drifted through vaulted streets. Side-swords swung at hips the way lutes swing at shoulders.

The gates worked like a measure. Step. Speak. Pass. Guild clerks tallied names and trades. A masonwright in a grey sash carried plumb line and prayer cord and the tower behind him hummed low, the kind of note a hall gives back to a choir. Men call them towers. The city calls them something else now.

I walked the ring street and learned the beat. Broad strides on colonnade brick. Quiet turns between cloisters where the stone kept its own time. In a side alley a door wore ash traced in thin lines, neat as script, and someone watched without moving. By the docks a herald in foreign blues spoke softly with a guild factor while both pretended to count bales. The peace holds when everyone looks busy.

Bonona did not shout. It placed the feet and asked you to follow. If Maraisbourg was a drum, this city was a pavane. I felt the old habits wake. Measure first. Then step.