The Bronze Skies

by Catherine Asaro

  I ought to.

  You are denying a neural resonance.

  What?

  Your brain waves and his have a resonance similar to that found in twins.

  Seriously? I had many thoughts about Jak, some good, some not, but none were sisterly.

  I didn’t mean like siblings. But love, yes. Your responses to him confuse me.

  That’s all right. They confuse me, too.

  You shouldn’t repress your emotions.

  You’re a mesh node. Why do you care?

  I am an evolving intelligence. We evolve according to our use. I am part of you now.

  I thought of Izu Yaxlan and the Lock. Had they been evolving all these millennia, alone in the desert? Gods only knew what they had become. They had no reason to care about humanity. Maybe they would prefer if we ceased to exist. I didn’t want to say that to an EI, so I just thought, I’m fine.

  All right. He sounded unconvinced, but he stopping pressing.

  I must have eventually dozed, because I became aware of a change in the patch of sky above me. It was turning blue. I sat up, rubbing the small of my back. Even with my meds supplying nutrients to ease the buildup of chemicals, my muscles still felt sore. The room looked the same as last night, empty, all stone, sand on the floor. With a grunt, I climbed to my feet. Time to go.

  Footsteps sounded outside the tower. Drawing my gun, I moved to one side of the entrance, an archway with no door. I risked a look—

  No one.

  I withdrew, my hearing cranked up to maximum. Was that another scrape of a boot on stone outside? I inched forward—

  “My greetings, Major,” a voice rumbled in Iotic.

  I spun around, whipping up my gun. The Uzan stood there.

  My face heated. “How did you get here?”

  This time he really did raise an eyebrow. “Are you going to shoot me?”

  “Oh. No.” I lowered the gun.

  “This tower has an underground entrance,” he added.

  One apparently well hidden. “Uh, my greetings, too.” I didn’t know what else to say to him.

  “We must go. Calaj is here.”

  Just as calm as could be, oh excuse me, our mad Jagernaut has arrived. “For how long?”

  “Not long.” He motioned toward the doorway. “Come.”

  I holstered my gun and went outside with him. The predawn light softened the ruins, blurring the breaks and touching the spires. The sky above was dark blue, but the horizon had lightened, heralding the sun. It would stay that way for longer than sunrises on the planet Parthonia, where I had lived for over a decade before I returned here.

  “It’s intelligent, isn’t it?” I asked.

  The Uzan glanced at me. “What is intelligent?”

  “This city. It’s an EI. That’s why you don’t let anyone come here. It doesn’t want them.”

  “Whatever Izu Yaxlan has been,” he said, “it endures as always.”

  “Is that a ‘Yes’?”

  He smiled. “You are very direct, Major.”

  “It’s the only way I know how to be.” It startled me to see him smile, like a statue coming to life. It looked good on him. Had it not been for Jak, I would have taken the Uzan up on his offer last night. Max knew me better than I wanted to admit, though. Whatever my conflicted reactions to Jak, our lives were inextricably tangled together.

  We continued along a road that reminded me of the boulevards in Cries, except crumbling towers and empty ball courts lined this avenue instead of modern buildings.

  “The ruins are a mask,” I said after a while. “The intelligence is invisible. If you try to find it, the EI pushes you away.” Like the Lock had done with me. “The intelligence, it’s at least five thousand years old, probably more.”

  He motioned toward the city center. “I believe Calaj is there.”

  Okay, he wasn’t going to confirm anything, but he hadn’t denied it, either. It was a start.

  We set off together, headed toward the center of Izu Yaxlan.

  X

  The Pharaoh’s Tomb

  A pyramid rose in the center of Izu Yaxlan, its top glowing in the light of the rising sun. Stairs climbed its slanted sides. The Uzan took me to an entrance in its base, a rectangular doorway bordered by glyphs that showed spirits with horned heads and curved fangs. The rising-sun glyph symbolized power and the notched hexagon represented a red jewel. Ruby.

  Inside, the Uzan left his robe on a hook by the entrance. He lit a torch he took from the wall, and the flame surrounded us with orange light. The murals painted on the walls were clear and bright, images of queens, warriors, and water signs, all well maintained despite their age. I felt as if we had passed through a portal into another time, before the advent of modern civilization.

  The corridor we followed angled upward, a passage so narrow we had to walk single file, the Uzan then me. The stone walls closed in on either side. I’d never considered myself superstitious, but I couldn’t shake my sense that we had invaded the realm of an ancient spirit we didn’t dare awaken.

  “Calaj could trap us in this place,” I said. “If she’s here.”

  The Uzan spoke ahead of me. “She’s here.”

  “How do you know?” If he said the city told me, I was leaving.

  He spoke dryly. “We have good sensors, Major. Several of our bee-bots located her at the tomb in the center of this temple.”

  I fell silent, respecting whatever slept here.

  Our trek ended at an empty chamber. Mosaics covered every surface in gold, blue, and green tiles, gleaming in the torchlight. The architecture was exquisite, the vaulted ceiling high and supported by arches. Carved into the walls, statues of goddesses and gods gazed at us with jeweled eyes, rubies and diamonds that sparkled in the torchlight. A table stood by the far wall, sculpted into a likeness of the god Azu Bullom with his jaguar’s legs, his head raised at one end, his horns sharp. His flat back looked just the right size to hold a coffin, but at the moment it held zilch.

  “Someone robbed your tomb,” I said.

  The Uzan held his torch high, shedding light throughout the chamber. “No one is buried here.”

  “What’s it for, then?” I saw no indication that anyone had been here, living or otherwise.

  “It’s the tomb for the last Ruby Pharaoh.”

  I shivered, though it wasn’t cold. “I hope it never gets used.”

  “Ai,” he murmured. “On that, we agree.” He set the torch in a scrolled holder on the wall. He went to work on his massive wrist gauntlet, no doubt analyzing the tomb.

  While the Uzan concentrated on his sensors, I studied the chamber. An archway stood on the other side and beyond it stairs led up into darkness. I walked over and peered at the steps. They went straight up rather than spiraling, but the construction otherwise reminded me of the Lock stairwell. As much as I wanted to stay as far away from them as possible, they offered the only exit besides the archway that the Uzan and I had used. Had Calaj used them?

  Gritting my teeth, I went up one step. I looked back at the Uzan, but he was still working on his gauntlet, his face gaunt in the bronzed glow from the torch—and with no warning, the light vanished, plunging the tomb into darkness, followed by the impact of flesh hitting flesh.

  Activate IR! I thought. The chamber reappeared, bathed in red. Two people were fighting, the Uzan—gods almighty, that was Calaj.

  She moved fast. The Uzan had height and strength, but she had greater speed. They were using tykado, but comparing their moves to what I taught the Dust Knights was like comparing a starship to a scooter. They kicked and spun with a lethal grace unmatched by anyone else I knew. The Uzan ran halfway up one wall, then flipped over Calaj and landed on her other side even as she spun to face him. I drew my gun, but they were too damn quick, leaving no opening where I could shoot or lend my force. I’d never witnessed their incredible level of expertise. The Uzan startled me. Of course I knew the Abaj trained almost from birth, but his reserved bearing disguised the
truth, making it easy to forget he was one of the deadliest fighters alive.

  Why had Calaj come to the tomb of a pharaoh who had yet to be born? She spun around and kicked at the Uzan. He blocked the blow, then punched one-two, with his long arms. Calaj dodged even faster than he moved. She jumped with her legs stretched through the air in a flying split. He ducked, then kicked out and caught the side of her head in a glancing blow. As she stumbled back, I felt pain reverberate through her temples. Yet even as she lurched to the side, she was kicking again, this time at the Uzan’s legs. He grunted when they buckled. Penalty move, but tough. As he fell into the wall, she aimed a blow at his head. He dodged with his astonishing, long-limbed grace, then kicked—too high! His foot slammed into the wall above her head and it shattered, raining rocks on Calaj. I raised my arms for what meager protection they could offer against the collapse of the chamber—but no, it wasn’t breaking. The Uzan had hit a shelf near the ceiling that didn’t support the tomb; deliberately I realized. The Abaj would have to rebuild that sacred chunk of rock, but the chamber remained intact. Calaj staggered as the pieces of the shelf showered over her—

  And she disappeared.

  I jumped down the stairs and ran to where she had vanished. Another archway stood there, one I hadn’t seen when we entered the tomb. As I raced through the opening, I heard the Uzan behind me, his boots pounding the ground. Calaj was a blur of red up ahead. The passage curved around, then straightened into a tunnel far longer than the base of the pyramid. Calaj must have reactivated her shroud, because I could no longer see her. The Uzan edged around me and sprinted ahead, easily outdistancing me with his long legs.

  So we ran.

  Max, I thought. Where the blazes does this tunnel go?

  If it keeps in this direction, with this slight downgrade, it will intersect the second or third tier of the aqueducts.

  Good gods. If this passage actually went that far, that meant a hidden tunnel connected the pharaoh’s final tomb to the Undercity, a distance of at least ten kilometers. Why?

  The Uzan pulled ahead until I lost sight of him. If Calaj hadn’t run, I suspected he would have won their fight, but I felt certain he’d been going for the knock out rather than a kill. We wanted her alive. What surprised me was that I didn’t think Calaj had been fighting to kill, either.

  The tunnel ended in a warren of caves, twisting passages, and crevices I couldn’t have navigated without Max’s help. I squeezed between columns of rock and through cracks in the walls. In one place, I had to crawl on my stomach under a flow curtain. In another, the walls pressed in so close that nothing fatter than a light stylus could fit between them. I backtracked until I found another route. Soon after, I came to a rock fall that blocked the way. I climbed the boulders to the ceiling and wriggled into the hole left by its collapse. Cavities networked the stone up there, enough that I could crawl through the narrow spaces until I had passed the barrier of rocks. With a grunt of relief, I dropped from the ceiling to the open passage beyond the rock fall and set off jogging. I passed a pile of strange white stones—and stopped. Those “rocks” were bones, the skeleton of a long dead traveler. I stood for one moment, honoring their memory, and then set off again.

  A short time later I passed a wall carving I recognized, the image of two dust devils. I had reached the Maze, part of the aqueducts, but a region few of my people bothered to visit. It mostly led nowhere, it changed constantly when sections collapsed, and you could easily become lost in the passages, wandering until you starved. Not to mention that before last year, one of our most notorious smugglers had used the Maze to hide her goods. Scorch. She had kidnapped Prince Dayj, and I shot her when she tried to kill me during the rescue. I gritted my teeth and kept going.

  The Maze gradually became easier to navigate. I jogged down a passage with stalagmites on my left, a flow wall on my right, and a ceiling of stone icicles glazed with mineral deposits.

  Someone is here, Max thought.

  I see. The Uzan was on the path ahead, standing by a jagged mass of rock that jutted up from the floor. As I came up to him, I said, “You run fast.” I was the queen of understatement today.

  “Not fast enough.” He regarded me with his impassive gaze, but the hint of something else showed. Curiosity? Regret? If he felt self-conscious after our exchange last night, he gave no sign.

  “Did you see Calaj again?” I asked.

  He motioned back toward the way I had come. “I lost her in that maze.”

  “She’s good at what she does.” Too damn good. “I’m surprised you located her in the tomb.”

  “She invaded our most sacred place. It’s well monitored.”

  I didn’t doubt that, but still. Even ISC couldn’t locate her with their best monitors. Maybe Izu Yaxlan really did tell him. That was easier for me to accept than his having some mystical connection with the ruins. “Why would she go to that tomb?” I asked. “I doubt many people know it exists.”

  He regarded me steadily. “Only the Ruby Dynasty, the Abaj, and General Majda.”

  “Yet you told me.”

  “You had a need to know.”

  True, but even so. I doubted he would have let me see that tomb if Izu Yaxlan wanted me kept out. Apparently it liked me more than the Lock. I had no concrete reason to assume they weren’t the same EI, except that they felt different. Izu Yaxlan seemed more benign, if such a word could be attributed to the otherworldly presence I had glimpsed in that ancient place.

  I spoke quietly. “You honored me with your trust.”

  He smiled, only a slight curve of his lips, but enough that I knew he chose to let me see it. “Izu Yaxlan does not object to your visits.”

  Izu Yaxlan. The city. Not him. Then again, I wasn’t so sure they were separate entities.

  I chose my words with care. “It’s not like any other place. If I wasn’t already a citizen of the Undercity, I would gladly visit Izu Yaxlan.”

  He inclined his head in acknowledgement of what I actually meant; if I wasn’t already involved with a man in the Undercity, I would have gladly accepted the invitation to his bed and his life. Which was true. Many people would consider me an idiot to choose an Undercity crime lord over the leader of the pharaoh’s personal bodyguard, and maybe they were right, but as much as the Uzan impressed and intrigued me, he wasn’t Jak.

  He glanced at my wrist. “How is it?”

  Lifting my arm, I flexed my wrist back and forth. “Almost healed.” I lowered my hand. “Are you going back to Izu Yaxlan?”

  “Yes. Now that I’ve lost her again, I can work better on the search using the center there.”

  “At least we have more data about her movements.” I didn’t know yet how Max’s evolving model of Calaj would change with this new data, but every bit of input helped fine-tune the picture I was building of her. “It will help me predict her behavior.”

  “For us, too.” He looked around and grimaced. “I’ll go back above ground. I’ve no wish to navigate that maze again.”

  Him and me both. “Do you need a guide to the Concourse?”

  “Just safe passage.”

  I doubted anyone here would attack him. The Abaj were revered both above and below Cries, and he could defend himself just fine. In asking for a guide, he showed respect for our ways. It would indicate he’d come by invitation rather than trespassing.

  “Walk with me,” I said.

  We headed out of the Maze.

  The Foyer that exited from the Undercity into the Concourse always felt empty to me, as if it were a transition space where people never spent time. A few vendors in the stalls beyond the exit peered through the haze, trying to make out the two people standing just inside the archway.

  “You can walk up the Concourse,” I told the Uzan. “It will let you out near the outskirts of Cries. You can summon a flyer from there if you want.” He could easily jog the ten kilometers to Izu Yaxlan, especially given that we were still in the cooler morning hours.

  “Thank you,
Major.” He nodded to me. “Be well.”

  “And you,” I said.

  With that, he left. As he strode into view, the vendors stood up straighter, gaping. I doubted they’d ever seen an Abaj. By the time the Uzan reached the end of the Concourse, he would have started a new legend, tales of the huge, enigmatic warrior, a man of myth who walked out of the Undercity and passed so briefly among the people of Cries.

  The Dust Knights were practicing in the cavern I used for advanced work with the adults, who were mostly college age. Not that any of them had ever gone to school. They still learned, especially now that the Code required it, through their life experiences rather than formal classrooms. And I taught them tykado. Always tykado. They loved it. When they wanted to know more, I gave them books to read. Sure, some listened while others read to them or convinced the cyber-riders to translate the books into audio files, but even with all that, it still prodded them to learn.

  I entered the cavern between two rock columns, walking quietly so I didn’t disturb the group. They were practicing in pairs, one student holding a large stuffed bag while the other kicked it, the right foot, a fast turn, and then the left foot, over and over, kick, kick, pause, kick, kick, pause, kick, kick, pause. They looked good.

  “Ho!” someone called out.

  Everyone stopped, looking around. One of the fighters spotted me and bowed from the waist. The rest followed suit, their formations haphazard, unlike the perfect lines of well-timed bows in the army or at tykado academies, but those places didn’t have their teacher slipping in unannounced, either. The class consisted of Ruzik and his dust gang, Pay Oey Sandjan and her gang, and a third gang that had formed in the aftermath of the war, two dusters, the rider Hack, and Dark Singer.

  I walked forward, but instead of starting the lesson, I said, “Got offer.”

  They stood waiting, their curiosity almost tangible.

  “Above-city,” I added.

  An unfriendly murmur rumbled around my usually taciturn fighters.

  “What bargain?” Singer asked.