Free Square Wave by Mark de Silva

Sanskrit or any of its descendants.
    The more he studied it, the more the writing came to resemble not a language but a shorthand, one that would have been filled in contextually during Kassapa’s reign. On either side of the writing were elongated etchings, some of a creature that was a man below and a lion above, depicted beneath a broad parasol, and adjoining other images of palm trees and scabbards.
    He copied down the three-inch-high script bounded by these drawings. On the fifth and narrowest floor, a pair of interior columns within the king’s chambers was similarly marked. He kneeled near one of the columns and transcribed the text that wound its way up to the low ceiling in a spiral. After finishing the other column, he sat against the wall and put away the stylus and the palm book. The day was not unusually hot, but an ordinary day was fiery in the midlands, far from the cooling seas.
    The king would inquire about the commentary on the Great Chronicle the monk would prepare back in the Highlands, the core of the modern kingdom. He was sure of this. Rajasingha presented himself to the Sinhalese, and to the Europeans equally, as a champion of historical inquiry—perhaps he was—and, more certainly, of the notion of lineal rule of the kingdom tracing back to Kassapa.
    The king would be even keener, naturally, to know what the committee of monks was preparing to add to the Lesser Chronicle about his own reign over the last decades. But here Rajasingha’s inquiry could not be direct. By tradition the clerical records were not to be interfered with. If influence were to be exerted, it would have to travel by subterranean channels.
    For the moment, Darasa thought, the king might be occupied by more pressing matters—the intensifying Dutch raids from the south, and the more ambiguous, mature standoff with the Portuguese to the north—to bother much with this. Any sort of respite from his “vigilance” would be a relief.
    The monk took a sesame ball from his satchel and ate in the heat, thinking of the trip back down the mountain, to the village temple where he’d spent these last nights.
    ■   ■   ■
    Stagg rose from the desk and pushed open the bathroom door. He tugged on the beaded metal chain that hung at eye-level. The bulb hummed then flickered. It stabilized a faint white and revealed a mirror stained by a mist of toothpaste and a tiny oval sink ringed with millimeter-length hair. He put his hand on the hot water knob of the shower. But he was late. In the many months now since he’d started writing the pieces in earnest, stopping only when the scenes trailed off in his mind, he always was.
    From the medicine cabinet he pulled an uncapped bottle of mouthwash, bright green, and gargled with his head held back while pissing into the stained bowl. The sound of disturbed water confirmed his position as the burn of alcohol grew in his mouth till he had to spit it out over the last trickles of piss. He dressed quickly in the clothes on the bed, sank his feet into loafers, and squeezed his laptop into a briefcase, a gift from Renna, that was stiff from underuse.
    The air in the hallway was an improvement, cooler, smelling faintly of sawdust. The trip down three flights seemed longer than usual, and he caught himself limping slightly. His Achilles was sore, though he couldn’t think of when or where he might have strained it. Perhaps dragging the girl.
    The foyer was flush with sunlight. It streamed through the glass doors and reflected off the concrete stairs outside and the glossy speckled tiling underfoot that smelled of disinfectant. For a moment everything disappeared in the glare.

5
    “This is what,” thomas penerin said, studying the manila-foldered report on the last assault. “Jen Best. Found… Harth, right, well, that says almost nothing. This is what, then? For us.”
    “I’ve seen a lot of girls now on that route,” Stagg said. “And no one’s turned up like this.” He picked bits