Up across old brickwork, up through tangles of vines and hyphae, up stems and up chimneys until the city’s guts lay spread out below her. She was out of practice, and couldn’t stop shaking besides. Her hands hurt, and the wind nearly threw her off. Her terror had kept her moving. She could see over Arnak Vonaj—anything tall near it had been cut down, but the further reaches of the city grew dizzyingly high. She could see the Shambles in the north: the slum district that seemed to go on forever, into the foothills and jungle. She could see the Houses of Parliament in the south: high atop Heron’s Hill, decorated in absurdly flamboyant biowork. The old Parliament Houses had burned in the revolution; the new one was meant to say something but she wasn’t sure what.
As she climbed, a flock of kākā—night parrots—circled around her. Their screeching reminded her of Sen’s shrieks when the cnida wrapped around his leg. The red feathers under their wings looked too much like his pain-mottled skin. They were modified with a second pair of wings: must’ve once been a pet, or an exhibit. She tried to shoo them away, and almost lost her grip. They seemed to glow, as if each of them had inside its little chest a tangled ball of golden threads. She wasn’t seeing them with her eyes: she was sensing, and her mind was giving them form.
A malnourished hypha broke away as she snatched at it—she cried out, threw her entire body forward into the mushroom’s stem, and wrapped her arms around it. She was shivering: she realised that her cold clothes and the night wind were coming together in a way that could be lethal. Just her luck, she couldn’t get a break from the heat until the moment she needed it most.
The mushroom’s gills heaved, just above her head. It didn’t look like the safest spot in the city, but it would have to do. She hauled her way, shivering, up the stem and onto the cap. The door was overgrown. She tore at it, and it came away in her hands in wisps of plant matter. The house had been abandoned for a long time. The furniture was long gone: probably absorbed into the walls for food. The floor was spongy. It breathed in-and-out in a ragged staccato: the house was probably dying. She collapsed, and the instant her back hit the floor she could feel the house coming to life—eager for sweat, and hair, and flakes of skin. Houses were remarkably efficient creatures, but they still needed to eat. She lay on her back panting, and she did not cry. She could barely move. Something crackled in the distance, far below, and she couldn’t tell if it was fireworks or gunfire. The detonations rattled the overgrown window pane, and set her teeth on edge. She was too exhausted to even get up and look.
Yat collapsed into sleep. So far as she knew, she did not dream.
The kākā woke her up; their raw, chuckling cries cut through her sleep. She wandered over to the window, and pulled back the hyphae blocking the light. The city lay below her, and it wasn’t on fire: the first good news in what felt like weeks. She looked out at a nearby ledge and saw the two parrots, perched on a steel outcropping that had probably once been part of a trellis. She opened the window, and one flew over and alighted on the sill. It cocked its head at her. She moved to touch its beautiful feathered head and—
The smell before a fire. Something golden moved through the air between them: and she realised that its threads had unspooled and cast themselves towards her hand. The parrot squawked and tried to fly away but it was too late. Its feathers turned grey and began to fall out. Its head twisted back, as if in agony. Its nest-mate screamed and took off. Yat tried to back away, but the connection was too strong: something elemental tying her to the dying bird. A river of fire ran between them, and she couldn’t break away from it. Its little body fell sideways, hit the windowsill, then slid off and out of sight.
At the same time, a warmth filled her. Something was dying in front of her and it was … intoxicating. It burned her guts like good chillies or bad whisky. It was so good, it threatened to burn her body down. She staggered backwards with a huge grin on her face. She laughed and didn’t know where the laugh came from. There was no pain in her muscles. She realised that her clothes were dry; had the house done that? She should’ve changed out of them—hypothermia was a very real danger, even in sweltering heat. She hadn’t, but they were dry. Nice houses could dehumidify themselves but this was something else. It was amazing. She hadn’t felt this alive in years.
She looked out the window and—
Atop the old trellis, a small nest. The eggs were large and white, like a chicken’s. She closed her eyes, and felt the golden threads coiled inside them. Gods, she’d killed their mother. She’d left them alone just like she’d been left alone.
Dad’s body wasn’t even cold yet when she'd found it. He’d gone out to his tiny greenhouse—just gone out into the place he lived and died, and curled up like a cat.
No money left, out on the street, climbing in through windows just to find food to hold off the pain in her stomach and—
She fell to her knees, and wept. She hadn’t let herself cry in a very long time but it came out of her now: years of pain all at once. The salt stung her throat, and her eyes. She fell again, onto her side, and curled up around herself. She didn’t know what was happening, or why. She knew that she’d slept in an abandoned house, and she’d hurt her only friend, and that she’d died and was somehow walking around anyway. She was accustomed to the inevitable come-down from her panic: an endless greyness that carved hollows into her heart. This was something else.
The warmth that filled her body suddenly felt like a curse. She cried and cried. The house shuddered as her tears hit the floor; it must’ve been close to starving before she arrived. Her body shook, and the house shook. She cried until she was empty, then she lay on her back and watched the mycelium on the ceiling grow.
It was hard to tell how much time passed. She’d never seen a house grow like this: the windows and doors growing over in front of her eyes. There was no sunlight getting in, but when Yat closed her eyes, she could sense the whole house humming with the same golden threads she’d sensed in the parrot; a dense network of fibers, somewhere beyond sense, that ran through her body and into the floor, and up the walls. They weren’t visible as such, but she knew they were there in the same way you can sense your body when your eyes are closed. The house was drinking from her, or she was feeding it. The glow she’d got from the dying bird was gone now: she didn’t know whether it was part of her, or whether its energy had fled into the sky to join its family.
After hours or days or centuries, or maybe an endless aeon, when her revulsion finally overcame her exhaustion, she forced herself to stand up. She’d never felt so empty. She stumbled, and made her way to the doorway, then tried to tear it open. It was properly grown over: trama and cuticle, real mushroom flesh. She tore at it with her fingernails. It came away in clumps. The house shook, and its threads fled away from her. It took some time, but she managed to rip open a gap big enough to crawl through. The golden threads came back together behind her, and seemed to cling to her as she left, as if to coax her back in. She looked down and saw the parrots’ nest—about ten feet below the lowest point of the house, and on the opposite side. The houses around her looked different, too—the place must’ve twisted and grown in the night.
The city looked tiny beneath her. She could see over the swamp and jungle to the south, and all the way across the Strait of Bitter Tea to Gostei, the gateway to great lost Suta. She could see tall, pale shapes of dumbtech towers behind Gostei, piercing the horizon like the skeletal fingers of some forgotten god reaching up into the sky—so huge she could make them out from five hundred leagues away.
She could see the Axakat River wending its lazy way through the city and out into the western jungles. She could see: dilapidated and overgrown imperial factories; slums that seemed to stretch on forever; the great old wall cutting the city in half; the chaotic jumble of fungi and towers and minarets that impossibly came together to form Hainak Kuai Vitraj.
It was the same city she’d fled from—she felt like she’d been asleep for centuries, but it
looked very much like only a day had passed. She breathed deeply: the air was clear up here, and sweet. For a moment, she wondered whether she could just live up here forever: eat and drink from the houses; keep company with the birds; work for nobody but the sky. The thought didn’t last long—her city lay out somewhere beneath her, passed-out like a drunk in an alley. It needed somebody to get it home in one piece. It had been a hard life, but it was her home: it hurt to see how bad things were, but she was doing her part to make it better. Something was going on down there, and if she didn’t try to help, it would burrow under her skin and the itch would drive her mad. It was her town, and she would protect it.
She climbed down. The way up had been a war against the wind, and the sky, and her own body. Climbing down shouldn’t have been easier: it was too dangerous for her to be quick, but while it was slow work, she barely felt it. She felt rested, in a way she hadn’t in years: her whole life had been one big hustle just to make do, where sleep was a luxury. She’d forgotten what a good night’s sleep felt like.
The city didn’t look so different, up close, but there was something in the air. In the same way a good alchemist can see a bridge under strain years before it collapses, Yat knew that something wasn’t right. Her feet touched the ground, and the stillness of it made her stumble: she’d seen sailors do the same thing when they came ashore after months at sea. A blank trundled past her, rolling along a barrel of something. She stepped around him in a wide arc. She could taste iron in the back of her throat, and feel her heart beating. Her head hurt. How long since she’d had a smoke? Too long.
And yet, she felt alive—like she’d been sleepwalking through the world for as long as she could remember and now her whole self was waking up. She eyed the blank; he wandered away, not making eye contact. He was a short man, with an owner’s brand stained onto his shaved forehead: a stylised wing. She didn’t recognise it, and she warily watched him go. She wasn’t quite in the same street she’d ascended from, but she knew the district well enough. She could make her way to the station and let them know what happene—
It caught her all at once: she couldn’t go back to the station. They might be convinced to turn on Wajet, but Sen? He’d been her only friend on the force, and she didn’t know if that was true anymore. Folks died from cnida stings sometimes, but she wasn’t ready to face that thought yet: she tucked it away in some quiet part of her soul where she didn’t have to look at it. She’d hurt him though, that was for sure.
And yet, there’d been a murder. A body floating in the harbour. A man with sharpened teeth. That was what the police were there for, right? To keep bad men off the streets, to protect the little guy. To be on the side of the light, even if it meant getting a little dirty. They’d want to know what she’d seen but—
how would she ever explain it? Sen was her only real friend in the force, and he hadn’t believed her. What hope was there that Varazzo or Wajet any of the higher-ups took her seriously? She saw them in her head, sitting around a table and taking an inventory of all her failings. Disgraced officer, degenerate tastes, looking to stir up trouble to get herself back in the department’s good books. No body, no witnesses: just a mixed-up girl making up stories. Sad, really. I suppose we should’ve known: they’re all like that. Little lost pups, in need of a good home.
She couldn’t go back to her own house: that was the first place they’d look. Fugitives almost always went home first: they all seemed to assume it was too obvious for the cops to actually follow up. She’d been on-hand for a lot of arrests where the poor bastard just wanted to grab a few sentimental things before skipping town. One guy’d had a barony set up for him somewhere in the Eastern Shelf, but he went home to grab his lucky coffee cup and ended up getting caught and turned into a blank. Her hand immediately shot to her flask: the comforting weight sat in her front pocket. She took it out and took a sip. The tea was cold, but it was better than nothing.
She didn’t know what to do: she didn’t have enough data. Slow, methodical, piece-by-piece. She held her flask flush against her stomach, and took a deep breath. Her dad’s voice rang in her ears: “If you’ve got the time, get the data. If there’s no time, make some.”
She had her uniform, which would get her far. She didn’t know whether they’d be looking for her yet, but she had to risk it. She put on her helmet, pulled the brim low over her face, and stepped out into a strange new town.
It had been, to put it lightly, a rough night. The roughest of Sen’s life, or so the medic told him. The sort of night his old mum would’ve called Rough as Guts in that tobacco-scratched voice of hers. Even with a few days between him and his No Good Really Fucking Awful Night, it still felt fresh and raw. He couldn’t remember much after grabbing Yat: a scuffle and then just pain coming on in waves, then a sudden floatiness and the realisation that he couldn’t breath but that his limbs were too damned heavy to do anything about it. Anaphylactic shock, the medic said. Throat closed up, lost airflow to his brain for a good forty seconds longer than he would’ve liked, which is to say he’d lost airflow to his brain for a good forty seconds. They’d pushed an adrenaline needle straight into his heart and he’d sat up and nearly punched out an orderly when it hit his bloodstream. Fucked if he knew why they went with a needle to the heart, but he was still breathing so it must’ve done something. His chest hurt where the needle had gone in, but it didn’t hurt nearly so much as his damned leg.
It was this awful mix of hot and cold: blistered skin, deadened nerves. The toxins had done something that made it resistant to biowork—they’d need to wait before they could fix it, and they’d gotten very bashful when asked how long that waiting might take. It wouldn’t move right and he had to swing it in a tight arc, lean on a cane while he swung his good leg. They’ve given him a department-issue cane, and it was a piece of shit. The handle made his palm hurt almost worse than his leg. They’d finally let him sit down, but he wasn’t celebrating. He drummed his fingers on the conference table while the Cap spoke. It had been a sleepless week: he’d reopened the rash on his calf scratching at it. He’d already been through the entire station coffee tin, and had resorted to bringing in his own. The steaming cup in front of him mingled with the reek of the room: cigarette smoke with a faint hint of piss. The piss was new. Most of the brass had been beat officers during the revolution; more than a few were missing fingers or eyes but they’d all gotten fat and slow while the world turned under them. Their scars were healed over, and last night had torn them all open. The whole room stank like a fresh wound. They were all shouting, but nobody had a damned plan. Somebody had put food on the table, but nobody was touching it. Twelve officers in all, though they’d had sergeants coming in and out. It was Sen’s turn to face them. Captain Trezet stood at their centre: a man with a face like a brick but with a gentle, lilting voice that felt wrong coming out of his scarred lips.
A bin chicken—an Erzau Priest, but he refused to call them that—stood in the corner, with his mask still on. Sen didn’t like that: didn’t like not being able to see his face. Part of being a good cop was knowing how to spot trouble before it happened, and reading faces was part of that—folks looking to make trouble usually let you know it with their eyes and failing that, with their body language. The shifty bugger wore a red robe and a beaked mask and it made it impossible to tell whether he was bored or angry or listening intently. Something in the tilt of his body made Sen think the latter, and that worried him more than the other options.
There weren’t enough sergeants to have one per precinct, so they were bringing in a trainfull of lads from out-of-town, from up in the desert marches. Sen didn’t like that either. Border officers tended to have a certain swagger, a certain looseness, a certain proclivity to go straight to violence and then get condescending about the real state of things that a city boy like you couldn’t dream of. They were the sort of coward who didn’t even have the decency to recognise his own bloody cowardice. There’d been
lads like that in the army, and they were good killers but awful soldiers. Put a man like that in a dark alley and he’d end up putting a hole in an alleycat. Not that it were only country bumpkins who went off half-cocked; he itched his leg again, and grimaced. Gods knew the kid had her bloody demons, but he’d trained her better than that. One day on patrol with Wajet and she’d been a wreck. Something about the whole thing stank worse than a barracks lavvy.
Wajet wasn’t in the meeting, of course. He was meant to be there: second officers on the scene and all that. He’d swagger in late and it would go in the report and get quietly forgotten. He was just like that, and the force put up with a certain amount of corruption if it didn’t get in the way.
He’d been too busy watching the priest to follow the conversation, but a certain name pulled him back into the world.
“Constable Jyn Yat-Hok, the subject of our present discussion, is a person of interest in the attacks last night,” said Captain Trezet. “She has previously been given a citation and censure for certain moral infractions—”
“She is degenerate,” said the priest. Despite the mask, the words came out with perfect clarity. Some sort of internal speaker system? Hard to say. The church got all the new tech. “She should’ve been censured the moment you caught her. Sin is cancerous, Captain. It metastasized tonight, and we are all its host. Your inaction is noted.”
“With respect, Brother, she was censured,” said the Captain. “She is good at her job: we thought it was worth a course-correction so we put her on the night shift to limit her movements. Put her on the clock during the hours of sin. Keep her hands full, so to speak.”
“Then you failed,” said the Priest. “The correct censure for her crime is death. She refuses to partake in the sacred circle of life. The book is clear on this matter: burn the cancer before it spreads. The police force is hopelessly corrupted at this point, and one only need look to the girl to see it.”
The Dawnhounds Page 7