The Broken Heavens (The Worldbreaker Saga)

by Kameron Hurley

  The morning was cool, and he shivered, though from the cold or the body, he did not know. He gazed back at the house. From this distance, the old Aaldian house was like a ship on a great green plain. The Aaldians had such a love for the sea that it should not have surprised him that they built their houses with riggings on which plants could twine their way from the sod gardens that insulated the roofs. The house itself was half-buried in the ground, which protected it from windstorms and the great tornadic clouds that prowled the plains. Carved totems, like those on the prows of ships, bookended the house.

  As the double helix of the suns rose over the house, Natanial stepped out onto the stone porch. It reminded Anavha of the house in Tordin, when Anavha had opened the gate to Aaldia and turned back to see Natanial there, letting him choose his path. Maybe Natanial had not given him a choice at all. Anavha had thought journeying from Tordin would mean escaping the madness, but as long as the world was mad, it would intrude upon his life. Anavha had been fighting himself for so long that he didn’t know what it would be like to fight other people. Maybe Natanial was right, and Anavha would only have to open a few gates, help mend the world in a small way, and then he could come home.

  Natanial walked across the porch and followed the fence until he stood at Anavha’s side.

  “You’re seeing more of them,” Natanial said, nodding at the body.

  “I don’t want to destroy Dorinah,” Anavha said. “It was, is, where my family lives. But this… this is what they are trying to stop, aren’t they? The Tai Mora? They can protect us from this?”

  “There are whole foreign armies of them in Dorinah,” Natanial said, “pushing through the soft spaces between the worlds. It’s one reason they want Daorian. It’s a secure hold, with a good port. The Tai Mora can hold out against these other worlds far longer, in Daorian.”

  “They’ll stop this, then?” Anavha said. “Nusi and Giska, here… we can save this place?”

  “It’s possible,” Natanial said. “I want to keep you safe, Anavha. I want to keep everyone I care about safe, but to do that we need to align ourselves with the Tai Mora. The closer we are to them, the less likely we are to fall by their hand. You understand? It’s why I stayed close to Saradyn, because there was no one in Tordin more powerful than him. And it’s why I’m with the Tai Mora now.”

  “You can’t really save me if something goes wrong, though.”

  “I can try.”

  The body remained inert. Flies crawled at the edges of the eyes. Anavha thought they would have burst, but the eyes were half-open, dull, with just a hint of wetness at the corners.

  “Do you feel responsible for my decision?” Anavha asked.

  “I always feel responsible,” Natanial said.

  “If I go with you, I could come back here at any moment. I won’t make any promises, or accept any binding.”

  “I’m all right with that,” Natanial said. “Come, let’s tell them what you’ve decided.”

  Nusi waited for them on the porch, wiping their hands on an old dishrag, expression inscrutable.

  “So you are going?” Nusi said.

  “I will only be gone a little while,” Anavha said. “I’m going to stop all the people falling from the sky. He says I can help.”

  Nusi opened their arms and embraced him. Anavha cried. He wanted to take it back, then, as he inhaled the scent of them. But he knew Nusi would disapprove if he made a promise and broke it. So he just cried, and then went to his room to pack his things.

  When he returned to the porch, Nusi and Natanial were gazing at the sky. Great thunderheads roiled across the lavender expanse. Jagged lightning radiated from the largest of them. And there, to the north, just before the mountain range, a ragged line had opened, a great wound on the purple horizon through which a yellow fog emanated.

  Nusi pulled Anavha close and kissed him. He lingered as long as he could, and then he felt a few drops of rain carried by the wind, and he was moving away, following after Natanial.

  “Let’s see if you’re any better with opening those gates now,” Natanial said, and gestured to a broad area of meadow well clear of the house.

  Anavha held up his hands, because he found that it was easier to focus that way, and called on the power of Oma. He felt the breath of the satellite beneath his skin instantly, and his body was soon suffused in red tendrils of mist. He trembled a little with the pleasure and fear of it.

  “Where are we going?” Anavha said. “Which part of Daorian? It needs to be somewhere I’ve been, somewhere I’ve seen.”

  “There’s a village just outside,” Natanial said, “Asaolina. You know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bring us out on the hill overlooking it, there in the south. Less likely to be people there.”

  Anavha closed his eyes. He remembered Asaolina, because it was where Zezili liked to stop and rest if they were coming into Daorian too late at night. She would tell him it was too dangerous to bring a man into town after dark. They stayed at an inn there, the Copper Maidenhead, and he remembered the way the sheets smelled of lavender and old socks, and the light was always orange, because the flame flies in all the lanterns were dying. The memory overcame him, and for a moment he was back in that tavern, and Zezili had her hands around his throat as she straddled him. They were both covered in sweat, and his fear and desire mixed in that old, heady way it had every time she touched him.

  Asaolina.

  Anavha breathed in, pulling the power of Oma into his body and neatly knitting and binding it into the shape he needed. He released his breath, and a great spiraling eye opened in the air in front of him. As he exhaled, it continued to open, further and further, until Anavha could see the familiar tiled roofs of Asaolina on the other side.

  Natanial whistled softly. “You’ve gotten much better,” he said. His gaze turned up, to the boiling sky. “We best hurry.”

  Natanial stepped quickly through the gate, and Anavha followed.

  Natanial saw Anavha stumble as he came out of the gate and onto a low hill outside Asaolina. Natanial caught him by the arm and hauled him up. Natanial turned to see what had tripped Anavha. As he did, light flashed across his vision. A massive black tear opened above the fields, not more than a few hundred paces away.

  And an army fell out of the sky.

  The gate closed.

  Natanial shivered. This vision of the army lingered; hundreds, no, thousands, descending onto the Aaldian farm like black insects. Whose army? What world? What nation? He had no idea. Everything was coming together. Everything was falling apart.

  “Is everything all right?” Anavha asked, and though the gate was closed and Anavha could not see what lay behind them, Natanial kept hold of his arm and propelled him forward, so he could not look back.

  “It’s fine,” Natanial said. “Everything is going to be just fine.”

  8

  Luna had long practice with silence.

  The Saiduan had shaped much of the childhood Luna remembered. It was a childhood where others spoke, and Luna obeyed. That childhood had taught Luna about the quiet resistance of hir own silence.

  Once Luna had decided not to speak about the book ze had toted across the ocean from Saiduan, it had become easier to give up speaking all together. Luna knew what the Empress had not yet intuited: that the temples could do far more than simply seal away the other worlds from crossing over. They could be used to remake the world. To shatter continents. Sink whole cities. Luna kept hir silence, because it was the only way ze could think to save the world.

  Instead, Luna spun stories in hir head, ruminated over deaths, cursed Roh, cursed hir parents, wept over what was lost, soaked in hir anger at all those who had owned hir over these many years.

  Luna pressed hir face to the cell floor, half-dozing. Hunger came and went. Starvation was at once like freeing one from the body and reminding one of just how vulnerable the flesh was, how transient. Luna had once lasted thirty-seven days without food. It had been amo
ng the best thirty-seven days of hir life, because Luna had been fully and completely in control of hir body for the first time.

  They would try to feed Luna again soon. Ze heard them bickering about it.

  The voices subsided. Footsteps sounded outside the door, gritty leather soles on stone. Dhai didn’t wear leather shoes. That was how Luna could distinguish the Dhai from Tai Mora.

  Creak of the cell door. A spill of light. The guards dragged Luna to the table at the center of the cellblock. One of the guards hefted hir onto the bench. Luna was too tired to struggle. Luna expected to see food: rice, eating sticks, maybe a bowl of broth and a spoon. Instead, they stripped Luna down and took hir up two flights of stairs to a big empty bathing room and tossed hir into a massive pool.

  The water was so cold, it shocked Luna breathless. For a moment ze was back under the icy surface of a Saiduan river, choking on death. Luna’s limbs felt wooden. Ze could not swim. With some chagrin, Luna realized the water was shallow enough to stand in.

  One of the guards called from the edge, “Get decent. Scrub up.”

  When Luna refused, they came in and scrubbed Luna roughly then hauled hir out. Luna did little to help them with their task, even as they pulled a clean tunic over hir head and dragged hir up the never-ending staircase. At the very top, in a chamber dominated by a massive circular table, the Empress of the Tai Mora waited, grim as ever.

  On either side of the Empress, two jistas in long robes waited, hands folded.

  “Hello again, Luna,” Kirana said. Luna had learned to hate her narrow face, the thin lips, the cold black eyes. “Please, do you want to sit? Eat?”

  Luna just stared at her.

  “I understand,” Kirana said. “I have been unfair, wrapped up in my own concerns. People I trust have suggested that you may not appreciate why we have done as we have, and why it’s in your best interests to assist us. I know it seems cruel, but it was very necessary. I could tell you, yes, or… I could show you what’s becoming of all these worlds that others are abandoning.”

  She gestured to one of the jistas next to her. “Suari?”

  The man raised his hand. The air trembled. Luna felt the pressure in hir ears and pressed hir hands to hir ears.

  Something in the air broke.

  Luna recoiled. The world split in two. A shimmering hole opened in the air just ahead of hir, very nearly touching the floor. Luna feared that anything going over the threshold that got caught on the lip between the worlds would blink out of existence.

  The guard at hir left took hir arm roughly and pushed hir through ahead of him. Luna shrieked as ze went over the lip of the hole in the world – to somewhere else.

  On the other side, it was very dim. Luna stumbled into a piece of furniture. The soldier came after hir, one long leg and the arm that gripped hir pressing through the gate and then–

  The hole in the world snapped shut.

  Luna’s ears popped. The fingers wrapped around hir arm loosened. The arm, a chunk of the soldier’s left breast, and most of his left leg slopped to the floor, spraying blood.

  Luna felt dizzy. Darkness kissed the edges of hir vision.

  “Who’s there?” A voice in the hallway. A key in the door. Where was this? Another cell?

  The smell of the blood tasted coppery. Luna tried to go around the furniture, but hir eyes hadn’t yet adjusted. Luna slipped in blood. Fell hard.

  Darkness. A moment of consciousness, gazing at blood on hir own hands. Whose blood? Luna had forgotten. Another hand on hir arm. Alive?

  Then dark again, a stutter of lost time, and a voice.

  “My name is Yisaoh. What are you called?”

  Luna peered behind the silhouette of the woman who spoke, and found hirself gazing out dirty windows. Beyond the streaked glass, the light was the color of weak tea. The air smelled of burning trash and tar; the smell lingered at the back of hir throat, so thick ze could taste it.

  “I’m sorry for that… welcome,” the woman said again. She turned slightly, no longer in silhouette. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a bent nose and generous mouth. Her head appeared too large for her body, as if she carried far less weight than her frame demanded.

  When Luna said nothing, the woman, Yisaoh, continued, “It’s all right. Talking uses more breath. Would you like to see why? I expect that’s what Kirana wants you to see. She told me you were coming. Something must have gone wrong with the wink. It does happen. I mourn the guard. I knew him. We have seen so much death together, and so much hope. But I am heartened that nothing happened to you.”

  Luna did wonder at the source of the smell. And the hole in the world.

  “How is your head?” Yisaoh offered a hot cup of foul-smelling tea. “This may help.”

  Luna took it. Gagged a little. Hir stomach protested. It had been too long since ze ate or drank anything.

  Yisaoh reached for her shoulder, then stopped. “I apologize. You are Dhai. You don’t like to be touched, is that right?”

  Luna firmed hir mouth. Luna had been born in Dhai, but the culture ze knew was Saiduan. The Saiduan did what they wished to those who were weaker. They were much like the Tai Mora in that way.

  “Until Oma begins to respond to the jistas again, we are stuck together,” Yisaoh continued. “There’s fresh bread downstairs. And it smells better than here.”

  Yisaoh straightened. Her hands were bony, the veins prominent. The cuffs of her long violet robe shifted and covered them. She went to the door, waited for Luna.

  Luna considered Yisaoh’s words. The smell of fresh bread. The tea in hir stomach. Ze had seen no soldiers here, just this woman. Was Yisaoh meant to be a jailer? Or was she a prisoner like Luna?

  Ze rose from the bed. Drank a little more of the tea. Ze stumbled, and Yisaoh bent to catch hir. Her arm looped around Luna’s waist, a temporary bulwark against Luna’s own weak body. It felt oddly comforting, after so long in the dark among strangers who hated hir. Maybe this one hated hir too, but in this new air, this new space, Luna could pretend.

  Yisaoh escorted Luna through shattered corridors. Crumbled bricks were lashed with mortar and knotted tendrils of plant matter too uniform to be natural. Luna recognized the work of tirajistas. Luna understood that they were… somewhere else. Perhaps on hir world, but most likely not. The air itself felt alien. The way the ground pulled down at hir, seeming somehow firmer. The stones beneath them had melted in places. As they began up a set of broad steps, the hold rumbled, groaning as if alive and in terrible pain. Luna froze on the stairs.

  “It passes.” Yisaoh gestured for hir to continue. “The quakes usually aren’t severe enough to threaten the integrity of the hold. Our jistas have shored it up.”

  At the top of the stairs was a door. Yisaoh pulled a scarf from a hook, and a pair of goggles that buckled behind the head. She handed another set to Luna. Ze struggled to get it all on.

  “You should really eat before we go outside.” Yisaoh pulled a bit of hard candy from her pocket. Luna had not seen candy since ze was a child.

  Luna’s fingers shook as ze took it. The burst of flavor on hir tongue made hir shiver. So sweet! It suffused hir body like some vital elixir.

  Yisaoh opened the door.

  A blast of black, tarry particles. The stench of burning hair, and something far more foul that Luna could not name. Ze stumbled after Yisaoh, fingers pressed to the scarf around hir face for fear it would blow away in the hot, dry wind.

  As they trod across the roof, they left deep footprints in the ash. Luna’s curiosity nearly got the better of hir. Luna opened hir mouth to ask what had happened here, but ze had not spoken in so long that no sound came out. Luna coughed.

  “Don’t breathe too deeply,” Yisaoh said. “Here. You can see it just through the cover.” She pointed across the roof of the building. Flat roof, Luna noted. Not a place that was used to getting snow, not like Saiduan. A gory orange-black fire blazed in the sky, like a watery eye trailing tears of wispy smoke.

 
“It’s been poisoning this world for years,” Yisaoh said. “The one Kirana and I are from is already dead, did you know that? This is another, adjacent to it, very similar. It had a great army as well, one that failed. We had to retreat here to the middle of the world, along the equator. You know what that is? The midpoint of a world. It’s the only place still warm enough, here. With the cleanest air. You see? We had few choices.”

  Luna searched for the rest of the satellites. Low along the horizon, the faint red pulse of Oma shuddered like a tremulous heart. Luna took in the breadth of the roof. Behind hir, squat towers rose into cloudy brown haze. The windows higher up lay open; what was left of the shutters wept from crumbling frames.

  Ze coughed, and wheezed, “There is always another choice.” Hir voice sounded foreign to hir, after spending so long silent. Always another choice, that’s what Maralah would have said, when Luna tried to explain why this or that task had not been completed. People with power always believed there were choices for others, but no other options for themselves except the path of least resistance.

  “I assure you we explored many options.”

  Luna gazed at the edge of the rooftop. They were only two stories up. Hir body tensed. It was not a terribly long drop. Could Luna make it? Get away?

  Ze was moving before ze realized it. Legs stumbling across the dusty rooftop, toward the edge.

  “Wait!” Yisaoh, incredulous.

  Luna leaped, hurling hirself into the great black abyss that embraced hir.

  The smack of a forgiving surface.

  A deep plunge.

  Luna bobbed in the water of a shallow moat. Pulled acrid air into hir lungs. Coughed fitfully. Luna splashed toward a dark shape ze took to be the shoreline of the sludgy moat, only a few paces distant. As ze crawled onto land, the air cleared for a brief moment. Ze had every intention of running, of getting as far and fast as hir legs would carry hir, but exhaustion overcame hir again. Luna had not eaten, or moved so vigorously, in some time.