Beasts of the Walking City

by Del Law

  She thinks about it. Power always comes from somewhere. Where would that be, on an Akarii ship in the middle of the ocean? Truthfully, she has no idea where it came from in Tamaranth, either, and since she has time on her hands it might be a good time to investigate. What has she got to lose? It’s not like someone will miss her down here, at least not for a few hours.

  So she stands and follows the aether upstream, down deeper into the ship with the old knife held out before her.

  It leads her down ladders, through sections of drones she hasn’t seen before, lower and lower in the ship, deep into the interior of the stinking lowest hold where it’s cold and utterly dark, and yet full of invisible fire. There’s aether in the air all around her, and with her knife-enhanced eyes it’s so bright she has to squint. No rats scurry here. Her hair all stands on end, and the featherwolves roll and spin.

  She can't tell if the drones here are even breathing. Their eyes glow. Their skin is bright. Maybe they don’t need to breathe? Maybe they’re living on aether?

  She makes her way down the long stretch of the chamber, and at the far end of this hold is a huge lead door, shut tight. All the power in the ship flows from behind it.

  Maybe this is a bad idea, she thinks. But something is drawing her forward.

  It’s not locked. It swings open at her touch.

  Inside are children. Floating in the air.

  Three of them, two girls and a boy, all human like her. They are dressed in simple shifts and are bound to the bare hull of the ship with copper-colored chains that wrapped around their left ankles.

  Their heads are shaved. They’re hovering around a flaming crimson vortex. The vortex is open, like the giant bloom of some otherworldly flower, and tendrils of energy spill out of it and up into the ship.

  Kjat catches her breath.

  It’s like the conduits she herself can open, world to world, only this one is open into the space between worlds, where the aether lives.

  The ship isn’t drawing power from the lei-lines. It’s going deeper, opening up the world around them, getting the aether directly from the source.

  It’s amazingly beautiful. A great hole in the universe.

  And children are tending it.

  One child reaches toward the vortex and Kjat sees it responding to his gestures. His hand moves in simple waves, his fingers flutter, and deep within the vortex, flame colors shift and move, shapes come and go. And aether flows up through the vortex, out through him, and drone to drone out into the rest of the ship.

  Without entirely knowing why, Kjat feels herself reaching out her own arm to the vortex.

  She opens her palm, and the vortex responds—it shifts to violet and green, and it reaches out a tendril of fire to her. It touches the skin of her palm, warm and electric.

  There’s a sigh from the boy. “It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Kjat nods, not able to speak.

  The boy’s eyes are closed, but she senses he understands her. He’s right. She thinks she’s never seen something so beautiful. A kaleidoscope of color there, and sound and vibration, too. It wasn’t just fire, just the aether that was beautiful—it was the tunnel too, a tunnel through the fabric of the world and in that fabric were all things of the world. It isn’t something she can easily put into words, and yet she can feel it if she lets herself.

  She relaxes into it, and the tendril of the vortex wraps around her arms and legs, across her chest and between her legs and lifts her, pulls her closer in. It was warm and rich and full of life here, warm and pulsing. It is deftly woven from parts of the ship, the ocean, the creatures beneath them in the water and above them in the air, the air itself, the city-ship and all of the people in it and yes and parts of Blackwell too. She feels herself in it, now, her body and parts of what must be her soul intertwining with the children, with the essence of the boy who was so much more than she, who enveloped her with his weaving and who drew her in deeper, deeper.

  Yes, yes, Kjati, the boy urges, and the other children’s voices merge with his too. The girl says Come! Come and play with us, and together they all rise up into the air. The boy’s eyes are open now and staring into hers, and they are deep and pale green and flecked with gold and they're spinning, and she can’t tell if they are his eyes or the eyes of vortex itself. Her arms are buried in them now, deep in the aether, and she reaches and touches and weaves herself and himself together, weaves in parts of the ship and pieces of ocean and sky and thoughts of the Akarii and deeper, older thoughts of something far, far beneath them that slept on and dreamed into that tunnel.

  That’s right, whispered the boy. That’s just exactly right.

  But Kjat knows it is, without him even saying it. She knows that this thread, spun from fish and water and whale will go here, up against the essence of air and hair of the beard of an Akarii merchant, wrapped within feathered Stona and sleeping silvereel. This is the way you wove together a hole in the world. And the aether flows through, out into the world, out into the hands of all the mages in all parts of the ship, the way it should.

  And she can even draw on the blackjackals within her, the boy says without words. They should not trouble her so now. They were just parts of another world, a place beyond the aether, and it was linked to her with its own kind of vortex, nothing more. It too can be part of the weaving. He reaches into her and pulls a featherwolf free, kicking and howling, and he breaks it apart, weaves it into the great tapestry.

  You need not fear it with me here, he told her, and he was right.

  There is a noise now, and she desperately wants to ignore it. She feels warm and blissful, focused and alert and intently relaxed in a way she has never felt before in her life. This is was what she was born for, she knew that now. And yet the sound comes again and with it a sharp burst of pain along her left side.

  The boy smiles, and holds her. His eyes spin and he says It is nothing, Kjat, you are one of us and always will be, and yet the tearing now is fierce and sharp, her side is wet, and when she looks down she sees the other children, the girls, ripping at her side with their nails and their knifesharp teeth, drawing flesh and blood away, and weaving her into the vortex too.

  Your body is nothing, the boy says, taking her head and facing it back at him, at his golden eyes. For such as us it is a burden, Kjati! Let us rid you of that. Let us weave together. Let us become one with the world and everything that is beyond it!

  No, she thinks.

  Maybe it’s that amulet around her neck from the Buhr.

  Maybe she’s spent too long fighting against the blackjackals to give in to something else so easily.

  She throws herself backwards, stumbling, her eyes blinded now by the glow of the vortex that flares up, brighter than the sun. She pushes and scrambles toward where she thinks the door was. She clamps one hand to the wound at her side and throws her weight against it, falls out into the hold and the dark and all the time the children are reaching for her, faces and hands covered with her own blood, and the boy calls Come back, Kjati! You are one of us! This is where you truly belong! and they strained at the chains that bind their ankles. The vortex pulses and sparkles, spins tendrils out to her like it’s a living thing as she slams the door closed and runs, tripping and falling, through this hold into the next one and the one after that.

  As she runs each drone’s eyes roll forward to watch her, one by one as she passes, closing again only slowly after she’s gone, like sleepers awakened by some terrible dream.

  At last she collapses into some unused niche, sobbing and breathing hard, clutching the Buhr’s talisman around her neck as the featherwolves howl and scratch, the blackjackals bite and claw their way upward, through her. Down, she tells them. She feels the buzzing of the amulet again, doing it’s work, and they settle for now, waiting.

  She tries to calm herself so that she can find some rags, can bind her wounds, and find some clothing that isn’t streaked with blood. But her side is throbbing and it seems like that piece of mind
will be a long time coming.

  Especially as she knows, deep down, that boy is right.

  She is one of them.

  And sooner or later she will have to come home.

  25.

  When Kjat finally makes her way back again, to her old familiar sink and bucket and mop that seem almost welcome now, it’s nearly dawn. She picks up the mop, grateful for the rough feel of it in her hands, and turns to the dump the bucket.

  And suddenly Rehdr is there, as if he’d appeared from nowhere. There is a large bruise on the right side of his face, and his lip is split and bleeding. He falls to his hands and knees, when he sees her, and struggles to catch his breath.

  “It’s Ava,” he says. “They, they…” He looks up at her, and then looks away. “They found us. Birds. You have to help. You’re… you’re a mage, aren’t you? I saw your scabbard in the shiptown …”

  Kjat bends and helps him to his feet, holding her arm tight to her left side to keep the rough bandage she put there in place. “Did you go to Eeg?”

  Rehdr shakes his head. “There’s nothing she can do. They’re Birds, Kjat. She’s a steward. They could rip her apart and no one on the upperdecks would even blink. We all know it. Come on, Kjat. You have to help us. Help her. Help Ava.” He looks at her, and his eyes are full and wet. The bruise is swelling up like a blue and purple cloud.

  Kjat curses. “Show me,” she says.

  Rehdr nods and runs out into the corridor. He makes a series of turns back towards the dormitories, opens a door into a small storage room and goes inside. She follows, tucking her arm against her side. He opens up part of the wall in the back of the room, and leads her into a side passage that Croah hadn’t shown her yet. It’s low and dark and doubles back on itself at times, but Rehdr speed through it, hardly looking back to see if she is following. Then in a low spot, Rehdr stops and pushes at the ceiling.

  “Help me,” he says, “I think they’ve put something over the top.” Kjat runs to join him, but it isn’t any use—whatever is blocking the door is too heavy for them to move from down here. She can hear the muffled sounds of what she thinks are sobs, and awful sounds of men’s raucous laughter.

  “Get behind me,” she says, and takes out the old drone’s knife. She draws power out of the walls and throws a burst at the door. It blows up and into the room above, and then she has Rehdr boost her up through the charred opening and the remains of a heavy crate.

  Two young Akarii men, dressed in elaborate bird costumes, stare back at her with open mouths.

  They have their knives out, and behind them, in a corner, is Ava. Her face is streaked with tears and she grips what is left of her nightshift in an attempt to cover herself. Kjat can see she’s bleeding from multiple cuts on her hands, arms, and legs.

  “What’s this,” says one of the men. “More downbelow trash for us?” His voice is high and reedy sounding, and the white feathers and jewels attached around the edges of his pale powdered face quiver when he speaks. His eyes are wide and nervous despite the insolent tone in his voice. He flips his knife into the air and catches it. Then he pulls power out of the wall and spins up a small matrix with the other man, who has stepped back a bit. He whistles eerily, a strange succession of birdcalls. His partner answers each whistle in return.

  Kjat frowns. “I don’t want trouble with you. I just want my friend.” She hears Rehdr climb into the room behind her.

  “The hatchling brought us back a magelet,” the other man says, in a singsong voice. He cocks his head to one side to study her. “Now where’d you find a magelet?” This one is painted in blue and gold, with dark, downward slashes across his eyes. His tiara is platinum and studded with small gems, and his hair is long and carefully coiffed, interwoven with streaks of metal. They both smell strongly of sweat and jekelpepper.

  The second man points his jewel-encrusted knife at Kjat. “Come and play, magelet.” He pushes a tracer at her knife.

  Kjat catches the tracer. “I just want my friend,” she repeats. She fills out the conduit between them, and it hangs there, gold and crackling in the air between them. Ava’s eyes are wide, staring at her, and behind her she hears Rehdr pick something up off the floor.

  The blue-faced man-bird clacks his teeth at her, like a heron would snap its beak at a frog, and throws fire.

  Kjat catches it, holds it at the edge of her knife.

  She pulls more aether out of the walls, fills out the conduit even more and pushes it back down at them.

  The man struggles with it, shunts it sloppily back and forth between himself and his friend, and threw it back at her again.

  They weren’t very strong, she realizes. They're just kids, really. Kjat can see them starting to sweat, and the paint on the blue-faced one begins to streak and run. She catches their energy easily, and lets it spin on the edge of her knife for a moment. She closes her eyes and envisions one of the smaller Bakarh constructs that Josik had taught her, and imposes the form onto the energy. It spins to life like a slow moving whirlpool there at the end of her knife. She opened her eyes again and sends it slowly down the conduit at the men.

  They watch it approach, terrified. Kjat wonders if they had even heard of the Bakarh tradition—maybe it had been somewhere deep in a leather-bound textbook they had neglected to crack open. The construct hits the tip of the blue-faced man’s knife, slows, but then continues down the blade, up the hilt, and then up the man’s arms and into his chest. The feathered robe he wears begins to smoke, and he begins to shake; his lips pull back in a grimace and his eyes go wide. All of his carefully-shaped hair lifts up and stands on end. The matrix collapses. Yellow tendrils of energy stretch out from him and crackle on the walls, and the pale-faced man drops his knife and backs slowly away towards the door. The cloak of the blue-faced man bursts into flame, and then he screams and drops his knife.

  “Get her, Rehdr. Quickly.”

  Rehdr drops the piece of crate he’s been holding, runs forward and grabs Ava. The two of them crawl to the opening to the passage and drop down into it.

  The pale-faced man opens the door and runs, calling for help.

  The blue-faced man struggles out of his cloak, picks up his knife again and advances on Kjat.

  The room smells of smoke from the cloak and his singed underwraps, and his face is streaked with sweat. Parts of his tiara are melted and misshapen.

  He moves his head jerkily to the right and left, the way a hunting bird might to get a good look, and he holds his knife in an overhanded grip, thumb on the pommel and the blade down close to his forearm.

  He clacks his teeth at her and snarls.

  Kjat pulls more aether out of the walls, but before she can do anything with it he leaps at her. He pins her up against the wall, and his jeweled, expensive knife is close to her cheek. Her knife hand is pinned, and he is stronger than he looks. Bursts of pain shoot up her left side as he knees here there, where the bandage has come loose.

  Despite her, he pushes his blade against her cheek, and the edge of it slices her, shallowly, from the top of her lip up over her cheekbone.

  They struggle, neither of them gaining ground.

  Kjat can feel and taste her own blood slipping into her mouth. She brings her knee up into the man’s groin, hard, and pushes him back away from her. He crouches and whistles strangely, and then leaps again, but as he does she brings her knife up and slides it smoothly into his rib cage.

  It goes deep.

  The man’s eyes go wide and he falls on top of her, gasping and clutching at his chest. Blood boils up through his mouth, flecked with air bubbles, and he makes a terrible moan before she pushes him off. He falls to the floor, his legs dangling half into the opening of the secret corridor and twitching erratically.

  There’s noise beyond the main door, now; running, heavy feet, and shouting.

  Kjat lowers herself into the corridor and runs. She hears the door burst open in the room above, and the hiss and splat of magefire, and she throws herself against the flo
or of the passage as a hot tracer shoots down into the corridor and sweeps low over her. She runs, taking turns at random. She hears someone getting close behind her as she stumbles blindly, throwing open doors and running down passageways, through holds filled with boxes and boxes of cargo, through more drone pits, and even at one point through a room filled with hammocks and sleeping Talovians.

  They’re still close behind.

  Finally, she collapses against a porthole on a lower upperdeck and tries to catch her breath. Dawn is here, the sun is rising—she can see the light filtering in. A man with a tall orange topknot passes, staring at her strangely, but he says nothing. She lifts up the window seat here, ducks into it and slides down a ladder there that Croah had showed her, under the floor of some sort of art gallery, and through a door into another hallway and from there to a long, narrow chamber over the engines.

  The floor throbs and pulses, the drone of the engines fills up the small space, and the air is thick with aether and ozone. The ceiling is low, and the room is mostly dark, lit only by the light coming up through the floorboards.

  It's only after her eyes take a minute to adjust that Kjat realizes she isn’t alone here.

  There’s Blackwell.

  He lies, asleep, off toward the other end of the room, next to a pile of clothing that might have been his.

  Or that might belong to the woman sprawled on top of him, like he’s a great rug.

  She is wearing nothing but a set of silver bracelets on both her arms.

  Kjat feels her breath freeze in her chest, and a deep sadness sinking through her gut.

  They are both asleep, their breathing slow.

  She shakes her head, closes her eyes and backs slowly out of the room. She closes the door gently behind her as her eyes filled up with water, and she stumbles away. She turns and turns again, running at random, until at last she runs right into a set of three Tel Kharan mages that have been pursuing her.

  They draw their knives and spin up a matrix, and demand she throw down her own knife immediately, and lay down on the floor before them. Now.