by Cam Baity
Like their dead city, the Uaxtu themselves were ruins.
As they climbed, the Shroud began to thin, and Micah was able to see farther ahead. The light of the suns penetrated, bathing everything in a rich amber glow. The crunch underfoot softened as the dead mountain coral gave way to velvety gold lichen. A citrusy smell told Micah that vesper was near, but the fragrance was more sweet and honeyed than he remembered. Mehkan birdcalls trilled and ratcheted among the echo of more Uaxtu bells. Lots of them.
The last stretch to the summit lay before him. Rust Risen awaited.
The Uaxtu led him past vesperfalls that trickled down the mountain in lazy curls and spilled over toppled ruins to gather in shallow peach-colored pools. Lush gardens of rich gold and royal purple overflowed with curling ivy and wild blooms. Fuzzy copper roots snaked through the debris, swirling up into coiled trunks that burst into golden canopies overhead, alive with spectacularly feathered birds. Shining yellow, red, and orange leaves drifted down as if in a state of perpetual autumn.
Still they ascended, winding up flaking steps. Micah spotted more Uaxtu perched atop high spires of rubble. They sat motionless, as if lost in a state of deep meditation. Some were overgrown with golden moss, suggesting they had been sitting there for a very long time. Others tossed kernels to darting shapes in the pools or drifted through the gardens, tending to the abundant life.
At last, the procession reached the peak. The stairs spilled over the lip, becoming stepping-stones that led across a pond at the top. Floating on the orange crystal vesper were wide gear-shaped lily pads, each topped by a fluffy black ball like the head of a dandelion. Micah followed as the Uaxtu carried Phoebe across the pond to a small island with a raised rusted slab at its center.
They eased her body onto the altar of ore and sat for a long moment staring at her, their collective bell tones ringing softly. Micah looked back and forth at the somber mehkans, waiting for them to do something. Then, one of the Uaxtu stepped into the pond, sinking up to its knees. Flakes of rust sloughed off into the vesper as it approached one of the gear-shaped lily pads. With great reverence, the Uaxtu reached into the black puffball at its heart.
The black bloom lit up in a crackle of forked lightning, like one of those plasma globes Micah had touched back in bioscience class. Within seconds, the spark was gone, and the Uaxtu returned with something in its hands.
A circular seed, black and gleaming with a mirror shine.
The other mehkans huddled around Phoebe. With gentle tendril fingers, they swept across her arms, up her shoulders, and over her bruised neck. Micah’s breath was coming fast. The Uaxtu traced the paths of Phoebe’s veins and arteries, gathering their wispy digits in a circulatory web around the hollow at the base of her throat. The Uaxtu bearing the black seed delicately placed it at that spot on her blemished neck.
Then they all backed away and watched.
And waited.
Micah smoothed Phoebe’s hair back, tucking it behind her ears. It was still soft—so was her porcelain skin. Even in death, she was beautiful. The Uaxtu continued to toll their trance-inducing bells. He realized he was shaking uncontrollably.
Then the black seed twitched, sank into her skin like a hot coal into a snowbank. Micah watched as a vein in her throat pulsed. No, it was a root emerging from the seed, an alien sprout wriggling through the pathways of her body. More runners snaked from it, burrowing into her neck. He could hear sounds, awful sounds, as the shoots wormed deeper into her flesh, under her skin, twisting around her collarbone.
What had he done?
“Stop it!” he cried. “You’re hurting her!”
He lunged forward to tear the horrid thing away, but the Uaxtu held him back. He tried to grab his rifle, but the mehkans, frail as they appeared, pinned his arms to his sides. Their rusted limbs groaned with the effort.
“NO!” he screamed, struggling in vain against his captors.
Their bell song stopped.
With a crackle, Phoebe’s body tensed, spasming as if she were being electrocuted. Micah strained to get free but was held fast.
The seed began to glow with a weak golden light. Soft. Warm. Micah stopped fighting as understanding dawned. This was the same thing the Uaxtu wore on their heads, what he had mistaken for an eye.
This was how they cheated death.
Hope flared in him like fireworks. It was going to work!
The glow abruptly faded to black. Another electric tremor shook Phoebe’s body.
Then she lay still.
Silence fell over them, interrupted only by the trickling vesper and bittersweet song of mehkan birds. The Uaxtu peered at the blackened seed and waited.
And waited. But there was nothing.
Just death.
Then the Uaxtu took up their chorus of vibrating bells again, bellows expanding and compressing to sustain the notes. Their song sounded less blissful to Micah now, flat and cold—like the bells at a funeral. They let go of his arms. Slowly, the Uaxtu drifted from his side, strode down the stepping-stones, then over the lip of the crater.
And Micah was alone once more. Alone like he had been before he met Phoebe, before he followed her into Mehk. Alone like he had felt his entire life. Unwanted from birth, alone at death. Alone without her. So Micah sat next to Phoebe. Held her hand.
With nothing left to hope for, all he could do was be with her.
And cry.
In the long clicks before the ring of suns singed the horizon, the marauders pillaged another two barges. There was no room for more slaves in the underdeck, so Tchiock’s crew tossed their weakest prisoners overboard, filled the seats with new captives, and packed the brig below with the rest. The overseer whipped up a frenzy until the resistance was flogged out of the newcomers. The enclosure was so ripe with rancid smells of waste and corrosion that Mr. Pynch mourned the loss of his silver nozzle cap back in Sen Ta’rine. How many slaves had gone to rust in this very hold?
No matter—they were not his problem. The crank was his entire world now.
Mr. Pynch could hear the drunken laughter of Tchiock and his loathsome band of cutthroats bursting from the command deck up above. Cruel insult added to abundant injury.
“Hold fast,” muttered the vol next to Mr. Pynch. “She comes.”
“You saw Her?” hissed a long-limbed tiulu behind them.
The vol shook his head with a grunt.
“Captain o’ the barge we jus’ took on. Word is he seen Her.”
This caused a stir amongst the slaves. Mr. Pynch kept his eyes fixed on the crank—push forward, pull back. He tried to tune out the urgent murmurs around him.
“What’s She look like, then?” whispered another nearby vol.
“Jus’ like the stories,” piped in another captive. “Bigger’n a mountain, She is. All heavenly smoke an’ thunder an’ fire.”
“SILENCE!”
Mr. Pynch felt the biting wind off the overseer’s barbed lash as it struck the reckless vol beside him. His neighbor growled and pushed the crank harder. Mr. Pynch ducked his head and pumped, his golden teeth grinding as he poured all his strength into his labor. Another crack of the lash, and another captive barked in pain.
“Pump, you spawn of rust-caked tchurbs!” the overseer snarled. “Or I’ll toss ya overboard when we nab the next scraps.”
Soon the axles were moving in unison once more.
For a long while, the crew was silent, bent in their labors to avoid the overseer’s wrath. Mr. Pynch was grateful they had shut up, so he could avoid punishment by association. They were fools, the whole lot of them—staking their lives on blind faith. The Way was empty-headed fantasy, nothing more. The only truth was that his associate, the Marquis, was gone. No one was coming to Mr. Pynch’s rescue, especially not some ridiculous, make-believe mehkie in the sky. And even if She did, he didn’t deserve Her mercy. He had earned this spot on the crank for every lie he had told, for every sucker he had cheated. For forfeiting the lives of those stupid bleeder kids.
>
“Hold fast,” muttered the vol next to him once again.
Mr. Pynch momentarily snapped out of his depression. He was starting to hope that the overseer would make good on his promise and throw this one overboard.
“A plan is in place,” the idiot vol muttered, eyeing the knurler lock needlekey dangling around the overseer’s neck. “Await the signal, and we will be free of these chains. Pass the word along.”
Mr. Pynch ignored his neighbor. He wanted no part of it. This one was going to send them all to the rust. Let the others risk being tossed. Miserable as he was, Mr. Pynch had no desire to meet his end at the bottom of the Mirroring Sea.
There was a soft chant all around him. Mr. Pynch had not noticed it at first, because every word was timed to the squeal of the turning axle. It was a faint pulse, meant only for the slaves’ ears. It was supposed to fill them all with hope and courage.
But for Mr. Pynch it did the exact opposite.
“She comes.”
“She comes.”
“She comes.”
“Ju-just a little bit…hi-higher,” Dollop grunted.
The Marquis gave a final shove, and Dollop leapt for the top branch. He clung on, hauled himself up, and dragged the gangly lumilow along beside him.
After a few brief and desperate clicks of recharge, they had decided to take advantage of the dawn to get a better view of the Depot. Now, high in the sparse edge of the pipework forest, they scanned the battlefield to see what was happening to the Covenant. It was deathly silent down there—a very bad sign. Mehkan bodies lay scattered like black spores amid smoking wreckage. Foundry forces were organizing, but they were too far off for Dollop to tell what they were doing.
“Wh-what do you see?” Dollop whispered.
The Marquis’s tethered lenses were layered in front of his opticle to magnify his vision. He flickered an anxious message at Dollop, making complex gestures to provide details of his surveillance. Dollop stared back at him blankly, without the foggiest clue of what was being said. The lumilow tilted his shutters up in what could only be an exasperated eye roll. He leaned forward, extending the stalks of his diopters, and stacked them in front of Dollop.
Through the makeshift telescope of the Marquis’s lenses, Dollop could make out Foundry forces as they took up positions around salathyl holes. There was commotion inside the Depot as well, and Dollop tugged the lenses of the straining Marquis closer for a better look. There, at the heart of the stronghold, was what had been the Covenant’s target—the tunnel that led to the bleeders’ world.
Dollop gasped. A battalion of soldiers was emerging from the darkness of the tunnel, along with more Foundry war machines.
“Re-re-re-re-reinforcements!” Dollop whispered.
The Marquis nodded, holding his arms out, as if to say that was what he had been trying to tell him all along. He patted Dollop’s shoulder sympathetically, then pointed out to the horizon away from the Depot and flashed a message.
“I sa-said no!” Dollop snapped, recoiling from the Marquis’s touch. “If you wa-want to go, then go. I—I never asked for—”
The Marquis motioned for him to calm down. He pointed back at the Depot and held his hands out hopelessly.
“I…I d-don’t know what to do,” Dollop replied, “but I have to—to do something.”
The Marquis stared at him for a moment and, to Dollop’s surprise, nodded in understanding. He plopped down next to Dollop on the pipework branch, looking pensive. What this shifty mehkan was up to, Dollop couldn’t guess, but he seemed determined to help. Maybe the Marquis was looking for an opportunity to capture Dollop again and turn him over to the Foundry. But if that were the case, he could have done it back at the Depot. Instead, he had saved Dollop’s life.
Maybe, just maybe, the Marquis felt bad for what he had done. Maybe he was seeking forgiveness from Dollop. And wasn’t that at the heart of the Way, after all? Wasn’t the Great Engineer’s desire for all of Her creations to interlock?
The Way was quite clear on this matter.
Dollop looked keenly at the Marquis. The lumilow was deep in thought, toying with something that dangled from the branch, twisting it around one gloved finger.
“Th-that’s it!” Dollop exclaimed, his sudden excitement nearly knocking the Marquis from his perch. “I kn-now what we have to—to do. Praise the ge-gears!”
Dollop turned around to gaze deeper into the pipework forest. A far-off chorus of chimes sounded in the silvery leaves. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? He snatched the thing out of the confused lumie’s hands—a strand of familiar woven cable.
“I know s-someone who ju-just might help.”
Shiny leaves of crimson and gold fluttered down to the pond, flickering on the surface like lazy fire. Whispering trickles of vesper mixed with the distant bells of the Uaxtu in a promise of peace and calm.
Micah felt none of it. Nothing but emptiness. He sat hunched beside the altar where Phoebe’s body lay. His hunger was gone, crushed under the numbing weight of grief. There were no more tears. He was wrung out.
Done.
Micah had not seen another living thing since the Uaxtu left him. He had not turned his eyes from Phoebe’s corpse. Her cold hand was still pressed in his. Even when the ring of suns expanded to afternoon, he didn’t move. Couldn’t move. He tried to imagine her voice, tried to picture that hard look she got in her honey-brown eyes when she was about to do something stupid—and somehow pull it off.
That’s how he wanted to remember her.
Remember her. That’s all she was now. A memory.
He couldn’t carry on. Wouldn’t. The Covenant didn’t need him, not now that Makina was back. And he couldn’t go home. Not without her.
He would stay.
He could always take off his mask. How long would he last without it, breathing in the toxic Shroud? Maybe a few minutes of pain? At least this misery would fade. Fade like the light from…
Micah sat bolt upright, eyes wide.
The seed nestled into the soft flesh of Phoebe’s throat was glowing again. It was dim and fluttering pathetically. He watched, not daring to breathe lest he disturb it.
Then it faded once more, losing strength, a tiny candle sputtering in the storm.
There was a sharp crack like splintering wood, so loud it made Micah tumble backward. Sun-yellow sparks erupted from the seed. They hurt his eyes. Light coursed through Phoebe’s veins, illuminating her from the inside for a brief, astonishing moment.
Her body spasmed again. Her back arched. Arms whipped out, legs kicked. Her lips parted. Eyes opened.
Alive.
Wildfire galloped through Phoebe’s body. Every nerve triggered and sizzling. Scrambled sensation without meaning. She was falling. Caught.
The first thing she knew for sure was light—a formless, unfocused blur. Then came a burrowing pain in her chest. It grew, spread to her arms and legs, sinking fiery fingers into her brain. Her lungs hitched. Her body remembered what it meant and reacted. Something hard was being forced over her mouth, trying to prevent her from taking in air, but she knocked it away with spastic ferocity.
Breathed deep. The pain subsided.
She felt contained by something—held. It was tight but comforting. The world began to take shape. She still couldn’t see, but her senses were becoming ordered. She recognized the feeling that surrounded her as an embrace.
And the words in her ear as Micah’s.
“You’re back. You’re back,” he whimpered.
Her muscles felt petrified. She tried to speak, but her tongue was like a brick in her mouth. Something metal pressed to her lips. Cool water trickled out of it, and the relief was bliss. Phoebe kept drinking, savoring every drop, feeling it nourish her depleted body. She coughed and sputtered. Micah took the canister away and patted her back.
At last, her eyes focused. Through his facemask, Micah’s expression was tense and contorted, and one of his eyes was bruised and swollen shut. He shook with sobs.
>
Or was it laughter?
“You’re back,” he blubbered, over and over. His voice sounded hysterical. She wanted to help. Didn’t know what was wrong with him. Couldn’t muster the strength. He wrapped her in an even-tighter hug, and she could feel his body quiver.
They sat for a long time, and the spinning world slowly painted itself into some sort of recognizable shape. They were on a small island, leaning up against a rusted platform that was speckled with shimmering gold moss. Surrounding them was a vesper pond that reflected the rosy, muted light of dusk. She couldn’t see more than a dozen yards away, because a thick gray fog engulfed the world, making it feel like they were floating in a tranquil void.
“I tried puttin’ your mask on, but you wouldn’t let me,” Micah said, smiling contentedly. “Guess you don’t need it here like I do.”
“Where is here?”
Micah stared at her for a moment, his smile fading as he searched for the words. He touched her smudged face, felt her cheeks and forehead.
“You’re still cold,” he said, gathering up her coveralls.
Like a tender parent, he helped her get dressed in the protective Foundry gear, swapped shoes with her, and slipped gloves onto her stiff hands.
What was going on? Phoebe tried to remember, but it was all muddled. She didn’t know how she’d gotten here or what had happened to her—nothing.
“Where are we, Micah?” she tried again.
“Don’t worry, we’re safe,” he reassured her. “Just rest.”
“No,” Phoebe rasped. “Have to get up.”
He wrapped his arms around her to help her stand. Her muscles were rigid and prickling with pain, as if they had been stretched too tight and clamped in place. A buzzing electric spasm shook her thighs and rippled down to her toes. Her limbs didn’t seem to work right—there seemed to be a slight delay between her impulse to move and her body’s response.