City of Thirst

by Carrie Ryan

  “Too bad we don’t have that grassberg anymore,” Marrill muttered. “We could climb on, have Ropebone toss it into the air, and float all the way up.”

  Just like that, inspiration smashed into Fin. He flashed her a wily grin. “Ropebone could toss us, you say?”

  Marrill shook her head. “Oh no. I see where you’re going with this.”

  “Why have a line thrown down,” he whispered, “when you can throw a line up?”

  She held out her hands. “No way—we’ll crash against the Wall and die.”

  “I’ve got my skysailing jacket,” Fin offered. “I could just glide on down gently.…”

  She crossed her arms. “And what about me? Sure, you’ll be fine. You’re always fine. But where’s my jacket, huh?” She stopped. “Wait a second,” she said. “I think I’ve got an idea. Stay right here.”

  With that, she darted out onto the main deck and let loose a furious yawn. “Well,” she said loudly, “I think I’ll grab some sheets and blankets and turn in on the deck tonight. How cool to sleep under the Wall, huh, Remy?”

  Remy looked up. “What? Yeah, sure, that’s fine. Just stay on the ship, okay? I swear, Marrill, if you even think about putting a foot on those docks, I will skin you and wear you as a scarf. Got it?”

  “I solemnly promise I will not set foot on the docks,” Marrill said. Fin tried not to giggle too loudly. She was telling the truth. No way were they touching those docks. Now, the giant gears hundreds of feet above them—that was a different story.

  “And that goes for your plus one, too!” Remy added. Fin felt himself blush as he caught hold of one of the ship’s ropes. It was weird to have someone talking about him. Even if Remy didn’t know him, exactly.

  A few moments later, Marrill reappeared carting a carefully folded sheet. “Got it,” she said. “Ready when you are.”

  “And away we go!” Fin grinned and handed her a rope. “We’ll have to aim for one of the gears. Otherwise, we’ll just sink right back to the marsh. But make sure you overshoot them, so we have room to glide down.” He checked the strings in his jacket sleeves with his fingers. “Oh, and you’ll have to give the command. Ropebone always forgets me.”

  Marrill cocked her head. “Aim for a gear, overshoot it. Got it. Ready, Ropebone?” she whispered. “Fling both of us when I say, and make it high!”

  Fin felt the rope go tight in his hand. Overhead, the Ropebone Man squealed.

  “Now!” she cried. With a jerk, they were lifted off their feet. And then they were zipping through the air so fast Fin was pretty sure he’d left his stomach behind on the Kraken.

  “What the—” Coll shouted.

  Remy’s voice grew distant as the docks fell away. “Marrill Aesterwest, I will hunt …”

  The Wall zoomed toward them. The ropes fell away. They were up, arcing higher. They passed the gear where Annalessa’s cabin danced; he caught sight of Ardent’s purple cap bobbing furiously through the candlelit window.

  Higher, higher.

  Marble now dotted the wood of the Grovel. People dangled like puppets to pluck it off before the buildings dropped too far. Fin let out a laugh of triumph and waved as they rocketed past.

  Higher, higher.

  Gravity snatched at them. Another gear passed. They were slowing.

  Starting to fall.

  Fin fumbled with the strings of his skysails. Marrill’s face twisted in terror beside him. She struggled to throw out her big silk sheet, puffing it up behind her as a giant parachute. Even so, they were hurtling toward the Wall at an unhealthy speed. At this rate they would hit it and plummet to their deaths.

  This plan had gone terribly wrong.

  “Aim for one of the gears!” he cried as he fumbled for the climbing knives tucked into the back of his belt. He pulled them free just as he clipped the corner of a roof and tumbled through a wide gap where a building had once stood.

  Nothing but an expanse of smooth gray stone loomed. He’d completely misjudged; he was coming in too fast, and too high. He smacked against the Wall with enough force to knock the wind from his lungs. Still, he had the presence of mind to swing the knives, slamming them against the stone.

  A shock of impact traveled up his arms, spreading through the rest of his limbs until his entire body vibrated from the force of it. Yet his blades barely even scratched the Wall’s surface.

  He slid downward, landing with a thump on a massive gear jutting out like a shelf below. A moment later, Marrill landed gracefully next to him. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with excitement as she pulled the makeshift parachute down behind her.

  “That was so amazing! Can you believe—” She cut herself off. Frowning, she tilted her head, listening. “Do you—”

  Fin nodded before she even finished. He heard it, too. At first he’d thought it was blood rushing through his ears, or maybe even the gear turning slowly beneath them. But the sound grew and grew until he realized that it wasn’t in his head after all.

  “What is that?” Marrill shouted. A rising wind washed down over them. It came with a whumpwhump sound, like an oncoming stampede. A stampede charging down the Wall, straight at them.

  “Whatever it is, it’s not a parade of puppies. Let’s get out of here!” He pushed to his feet.

  Marrill was already retreating across the wide surface of the gear.

  Fin made the mistake of looking up as he chased after her. The lights of the city above them had vanished into darkness. The air beat with the sound of a hundred birds flapping. The darkness overhead writhed.

  “Faster!” he cried. But it was too late. He could see them now.

  They were blacker than black, flapping and crawling. Long, spindly fingers raked the air instead of wings. They were like shadow puppets cast from the hands of someone who couldn’t decide whether to make a bat or a spider.

  Fin threw his arms wide. They were coming too fast. All he could do was hope to hold them back so Marrill had time to escape.

  He scrunched his eyes shut and braced as the swarm engulfed him.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have Dangling from a Snail

  Fin!” Marrill cried as the creatures washed over him. She reached for him. And then they were on her, too. She was enveloped in darkness. A thousand hands climbed across her body; ten thousand fingertips fluttered against her skin. At the touch of each one, she felt her flesh rippling like liquid.

  Visions poured into her mind, memories complete with taste and sound. At first they were her own—a picnic with her parents, a tribal dance in the Brazilian Amazon. But then they were unfamiliar; then she was someone else.

  Two-faced men in shimmersilk robes twirled with chittering beetle maidens, their shells inlaid with gems and gold. The smell of roasted butterbeast filled the air. It was a joyous day. For today, the Boundless Plains were united.

  More memories came, memories she knew belonged to others. So many they overwhelmed her. They filled every thought, cut off everything about her.

  The King and the Dawn Wizard walked together through the Dangling Garden, admiring the way the sunferns reflected up into the sky. The King had to admit, he hadn’t expected the Wizard to be so small. All eyebrows and whiskers, like a kitten caught in the rain. Could he trust such a creature?

  “Wishes are great things, O King,” the Wizard chirped. “But for every wish made real, a thousand possibilities must be ended. Are you ready to end a world you’ve never seen before?”

  The King breathed deep, the smooth scent of morning dew setting his nerves at ease. “Can you make it?” he asked again.

  Marrill stumbled backward. The images, the moments, rushed over and past her like a waterfall. She felt her foot teetering on the edge of the gear.

  The builder balanced on the edge of a girder, far in the air. One day, they said, this wall would be big enough to keep all of the Boundless Plains safe from the Pirate Stream.

  His master held up a tube of odd, shiny glass. “The Stream
water’ll flow in through this stuff,” she said. “So we’ll be using a lot of it. Don’t know how it works myself, but that wizard says it’s better than dullwood.”

  The builder waited until she wasn’t looking, then horked a glob of spit over the side, just to watch it fall.

  Marrill reeled. The turning gear buckled beneath her. She clawed at the air, trying to regain her balance. The builder’s nasty spit wasn’t falling—she was!

  “Help!” she yipped.

  And then a long arm slung around her waist, and she was flying. Or rather, she realized belatedly, she was swinging. Out and away, like a weight on the end of a pendulum.

  “Gotcha!” an unfamiliar voice said in her ear. It was low and mellow, with just a bit of an accent. “Hold on tight, now.”

  Marrill didn’t need to be told twice. She grabbed on to anything she could reach. She felt buckles, and rough cloth, and something spongy, like rubber, as she threw her arms around her rescuer. “Wh-what were those things?” she stammered, her skin still crawling at the memory of the bat-like creatures sweeping over her, their legs dancing across her skin.

  “Wiverwanes,” her rescuer said as she stretched a rope of green jelly around Marrill’s waist and cinched it tight. “Newcomer, you must be. Don’t see too many of you up here.” The woman reached up and tugged on the line above them that stretched impossibly high into the sky. Slowly, they started rising. “Normally,” she continued, “they stay up in their tower, and only come out when folks scratch the Wall. Up and carry them away to the other side.”

  The way she said the phrase “other side,” Marrill knew it wasn’t good. “Thank you for saving me,” she managed. Her voice came out strained and raspy. She swallowed and tried not to look down.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of her rescuer’s profile. The woman’s skin was smooth and gray, but something about the arrangement of her features was off. It was the nose, Marrill realized. It seemed to jut out at an odd angle.

  “Ah, happy to do it,” her rescuer replied, turning toward her. “Wasn’t much worth scrounging left on those buildings anyway.”

  Marrill blinked and tried not to stare. The woman had two faces, split by a deep cleft down the middle. Two noses pointed away from each other, two chins moved two mouths that met and became one in the middle. An eye looked out from each side, with a third in the center.

  “Name’s Slandy, by the way,” she continued. “Good thing for you I was prospecting just above you when the Wiverwanes came, eh? You’re lucky they didn’t take you. Didn’t see anyone else there, so I guess they were just passing through.”

  Something about what Slandy said caused Marrill’s thoughts to pile up on one another. She frowned, the flood of stolen memories clogging her head and making it hard to focus on what had really happened. Something about scratching the Wall. She hadn’t scratched the Wall. But…

  Her stomach dropped. “Fin!” she gasped. In the confusion and the falling and the excitement, she’d forgotten him.

  “Pardon?” asked Slandy.

  “My friend,” she explained urgently. “He was on the gear with me.”

  Slandy shot her a dubious glance, but slung them back down anyway. When they reached the gear, there was no sign of him. Marrill’s chest tightened.

  “Lose something?” Fin casually leaned on a sinking portico as it dropped into view. Judging by the sweat on his brow, he’d been trying to climb the buildings after her. Which made Marrill feel even worse about leaving him behind.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re okay!”

  He grinned. “Always.”

  “Sorry, kid,” Slandy said, “didn’t mean to take your friend away without telling you. Just didn’t catch sight of you.” She raised her chins to the sky. “But look at me jawing, when there’s a party coming down the Wall tonight! The missus will be wondering where I got off to.” She reached up to tug on her line, then paused. “Climb on if you’re comin’.”

  Less than a minute later, Fin was strapped awkwardly next to Marrill, his face pressed so hard into Slandy’s shirt he could scarcely speak. Their feet dangled free in the open air as the green line hauled them up and Slandy played tour guide.

  “We call this the Chimes!” she shouted, as the tinkling they’d heard below grew to the deafening sound of church bells. All about, a hundred little gears stuck out from the Wall at random. They were strung like chandeliers with dangling crystals, all clattering and banging against each other. The ones that were turning dashed their crystals against the Wall as they moved, shattering them into a waterfall of tinkling glass. Marrill pressed her palms against her ears to drown out the noise.

  “Oversleep, and the Chimes’ll wake you before you sink too far,” Slandy said once they’d passed the din. “Not that you’ll have a lot of time left to do much about it. More’n likely you’ll end up stuck in the Grovel with the rest of the driftwood anyway. Best rule of Monerva: Don’t oversleep.”

  As they rose farther, the city grew more and more intact, and more and more inhabited. Pipes filled with Stream water weaved through the buildings, lighting them up with a warm, gentle glow. Marrill scarcely saw wood anymore, just polished stone and cold glass. Even here, though, cranes moved to dismantle the biggest and nicest pieces and carry them higher up the Wall.

  “That’s the Gallery of Lost Kingdoms,” Slandy said, pointing at a big shell of a building that jutted out beside them. “A bit far down this season, but I’m sure they’ll raise it back up soon enough.”

  Marrill couldn’t help but shudder at the jagged black iron that ran across its roof. It reminded her all too much that the Master was still out there, sailing in across the tides of time.

  “Faffilating,” Fin murfled against their host’s chest. Marrill patted his hand to let him know she heard him. Even if she couldn’t quite understand him.

  They threaded through hollow gears as they rose, passing gardens that hung like moss from silver trellises, and marble arches that reached outward to gather starlight. Glass fountains swiveled as they dropped, sending little curlicues of glowing Stream water dancing through the air.

  “But how does it all work?” Marrill asked. A needle-pointed tower went by. Someone had balanced another building on its peak, and more and more buildings were jumbled on top of that. “I mean, everything’s sinking! How does anyone, you know… not sink?”

  “Get higher, you mean?” Slandy said. “Oop, one side.” She swung them gently, just as what looked like a full restaurant, still serving dinner, came flying up past them, hauled by five separate cranes. “It’s easy! You just grab what you can get, build it as high as you can go, then scrabble up on top of that pile before it all drops away again. You build your own way, by the sweat of your brow!”

  Marrill thought for a moment. That didn’t seem terribly possible, given the way they were currently traveling. “But… how do you get up in the first place?” she asked. “I mean, don’t you have to have someone haul you up?”

  They passed an open-air market where all the shops hung down from poles stuck into the city above them. Glass pathways snaked up and down through the air, connecting one to the next.

  Slandy shrugged. “Well, sure. But that’s because you bring up stuff for them. And then they get higher, and pull you along with them. And eventually you start pulling people up, and they start bringing you stuff. The higher you are, the higher you can get, and the more people you can pull up after you. And that’s the way everyone gets to the top.”

  “But… the whole thing’s sinking,” Marrill pointed out again.

  Slandy nodded thoughtfully. “All the more reason to haul up as much as you can!”

  Marrill was sure this made sense, even if she didn’t quite see how. “And… what about the people all the way down in the Grovel? Everything’s gone by the time it gets to them.”

  “Well, they should have thought of that before they went and started at the bottom.” Slandy swung them to one side again. In the s
pace where they’d just been, a rising piano nearly collided with a falling flagpole. Before Marrill could respond, Slandy wrapped one big arm around them. “End of the line coming. Get ready!”

  Just above them was a giant shell the size of a cement mixer. It moved like one, too, its contours spiraling in on themselves in brightly colored patterns that shifted and glowed. Squishy green ropes, just like the one that held them, sprang out from round holes up and down its sides and stretched off down the Wall.

  “Atta girl,” Slandy said, smacking the base of it as they came within reach. With one leg, she hauled them onto a makeshift scaffolding built across the creature’s back. Deftly, the Monervan unlatched her belts, popping Fin and Marrill free. The squishy rope retracted from around her waist and shot back into the shell with a slurp.

  Slandy pulled a lumpy piece of purple fruit from a bag at her waist. “Thanks, old girl,” she said, tossing it into the air. A warm, gooey tongue licked past Marrill’s cheek, leaving a trail of slime as it snagged the fruit. A dozen eyes flashed behind the mouth, before the entire head retreated into the shell.

  She wiped away the slime on her cheek, and stared at the glistening goop. “Um, this isn’t going to make me grow feathers, is it?” It wouldn’t have been the first time that had happened after all.

  Slandy laughed. “Nah. She’s just an old levator snail, harmless as she can be.” She patted the big creature. “She’ll keep us riding high, long as we’re on her.”

  Marrill glanced around. While the city was sliding downward as fast as ever, they weren’t. The snail was currently scaling the front of a house, climbing up the Wall at the exact same rate the building fell.

  “Whoa,” she breathed. Now that she knew what to look for, she could see hundreds more snails scattered across the top third of Monerva. Lines reached down from all of them, and workers like Slandy hung at the ends. They swarmed over the face of the city, stripping down the buildings by the light of lanterns. They were, Marrill thought, like a school of glow-in-the-dark piranhas stripping a cow to the bone. But she felt bad about making the comparison. She had swum with piranhas before, and they were way more discriminating than the Monervans.