by Sparks,Cat
The toddy strengthened Star’s resolve. The three had been planning to jump the Van at the Axa flats—and that could only mean one thing. She strode out to join him, soft sand muffling her footfall.
“Too early for Angels, if that’s what you’re looking for,” she said. “Angels don’t start their fighting till after midnight.”
Kian didn’t say anything. Didn’t even lower his gaze to see who’d spoken.
“Seen plenty of shooters, but never seen one fall to ground before. Not in daylight. Especially not on fire,” she added, her voice sounding small and hollow beneath the vast enormity of the sky.
“Is that so?”
She waited for him to make some effort at keeping the conversation going, but he didn’t. She swallowed the lump in her throat. It was now or never.
“So where do you three really come from? Long way from here, I’m reckoning.”
Kian kept on staring at the sky.
Star continued. “I’ve been as far as Evenslough, right up to the Lucent fortress steps. To Makasa, to watch the big ships heading out to sea.”
She jumped as glass smashed against stone. Turned to see Tallis standing a little too close. His close-cropped blond hair gave him a menacing appearance in the mix of lantern and starlight.
He stared at her blankly. “Make yourself useful. Go fetch us more wine.”
“Shhh Tal, there’s no need for that,” Kian said.
“I’m not your servant,” Star replied. “I want to know where you thought you were going, back there before the Van came around the Fists. You were gonna jump before that Angel fell. Out there in the middle of nowhere. Gotta be a reason for it.”
Silence. Tallis cocked his head and stared at her so long and hard that she began to wonder if, perhaps, he hadn’t understood.
“Only one thing standing on the Axa flats,” she continued. “Fortress city Axa itself.”
Kian transferred his attention from the stars to her face. Not a comfortable stare. She felt like a bug under a glass.
She jabbed a finger at his chest. “Those skinsuits. That fancy relic in your pocket. I think you’re from Axa. Fortress City people up above ground. Scouting the Sand Road, blending in as best you can. You were almost home when that Angel fell.”
“You are mistaken,” said Kian coldly.
With a slow and fluid motion, Jakome drew his blade. Kian raised his hand to make him stop.
“You are drunk,” he said to her. “Saying crazy things you will regret.”
“Take me with you to Fallow Heel—or wherever it is you’re headed. I won’t say anything to anybody—promise!”
Kian paused, as if considering. “I’m afraid that isn’t possible.”
“Why not? I know Heel like the back of my hand. I’ve been there many times. I can help you find whatever you’re looking for.”
“I doubt it.”
“Kian, it’s nearly time,” said Tallis, his own hand resting upon his dagger’s hilt.
“You think you’re better than the rest of us,” Star blurted, speaking directly into Kian’s dark eyes, ignoring the other two.
“Would have thought that was blatantly obvious,” Tallis said, smirking. “I can smell you from here. You and your people stink worse than the camels.”
The insult stung, but Star held her ground.
Jakome raised his dagger. This time Kian did nothing to stop him. “What dya say, boys—reckon she might be tainted? She looks to have the right count of body parts, but you can never tell.”
“Could be anything under those trousers,” Tallis chimed in. “A skink’s dick. Or perhaps a tail. Better to be safe than sorry. Self defence, you understand. A man’s got to watch himself when amongst savages.”
Star’s cheeks flushed with anger but she held it in, wishing she had a weapon—the small knives in her boots were not much use.
Kian made an elaborate hand gesture. Reluctantly, Jakome lowered his blade.
Kian took a shiny cigarette case from his pocket, opened it, placed a hand-rolled cigarette between his lips. He struck a match, shielded the flame as he lit the tip, then shook it out, flicking the match away as the pungent scent of seaweed wafted. He drew deeply and stared into Star’s eyes.
“Whatever you think you saw back on the Van, you should forget. We’ll get where we’re going, but you’d do best to stay with your own kind.”
“Take me with you. We can help each other.”
He laughed through a plume of bluish smoke. “Go away, ugly little girl. Go play with your Van trash friends.”
A bottle smashed against one of the Vulture’s struts just inches from Jakome’s head. Star shut her eyes as glass rained down. When she opened them, Remy was stepping forward into the pool of lantern light, a blade in one hand, Van hands flanking either side, all of them armed.
Moments earlier, Kian and his friends had seemed half drunk. They sobered quickly as the gang pressed in closer.
Remy stepped forward, a blade gripped tightly. “This tourist bothering you?” he said coolly.
Ted stepped up to take position at Remy’s side. He stabbed a wooden stave into the sand. Kaja stepped forward. Knives were her thing. Both she and her sister were always armed, even when you couldn’t see a blade.
There were others. Regulars and transients alike, all bored with waiting for the dawn. Looking for trouble, not being too picky where they found it.
“Don’t be idiots,” said Star. As the words left her lips, her hands curled into fists, the nails biting into her flesh, her head still warm and fuzzy from the toddy. Something didn’t seem quite right. There was more light than there should have been. More light than constellations and one small lantern could provide. She peered up through the Vulture’s arcing struts to a moon soaked in a river of stars—so many they could never be counted. Blazing suns like ours, so Nene said. Shining down on countless other worlds.
Something strange was happening overhead. She could see too much detail in the faces of the foreign princes. The embroidery on their galabeyas. The weapons in their hands. The sky was lightening, like dawn come hours early. A bank of boiling, writhing clouds was manifesting overhead. Wispy tendrils blocked the moon, pulsing with an eerie incandescence.
“Kian, we don’t have time,” said Jakome urgently.
“Time?” Remy laughed. “Where do you think you’re going? You have no power here. No authority. Nobody is going to sell you their camels. Not for any price you care to name.”
One by one, his companions readied their weapons.
“Cut it out,” said Star, glancing nervously at the clouds getting nearer. Lightning flared. Close, and getting closer.
“We’ll see who’s the idiot,” said Remy.
Ted cried out suddenly and pointed upwards. Everybody looked, even the three who faced a beating. Three who surely knew better than to turn their attention from an angry, well-armed mob.
“Look at the sky!”
“Just a storm. It can’t get past the Sentinel,” said a deep voice. Not one of theirs. A shadow emerging from other shadows. Kristo. No blade was drawn, no rifle at the ready. He didn’t need them. His voice alone was weaponry enough.
“Get to the fire. Eat up and pack your kits.” He spoke directly to Kaja and Teddy as the other Van hands and hangers on scattered, rendered into children by the commanding tone of his voice.
Star held her ground.
Kristo ignored her. He turned to face Kian and the foreigners square on. “Put away your blades, else you’ll find mine drawn across your throats. Are we clear? I’m sick of your kind. I won’t be warning you again.”
Tallis stepped forward. Kian gripped his friend’s arm to stop him.
“We’re clear,” said Kian.
&nbs
p; Kristo continued. “I’ve a mind to put the three of you off at Crossroads. You can find your own way to Heel from there—or wherever it is you think you might belong.”
He turned to Star. “As for you, I had high hopes you might grow into something half as useful as your sister. Looks like you’re no better than the rest.”
All the clever answers she knew off by heart lodged firmly in her throat. Her face flushed red with a mix of toddy and embarrassment.
Kristo glanced upwards. “Keep clear of the perimeter. Stick close to the wagons and the animals. Something’s not right about that sky.”
When Kristo left, the princes followed at a distance. Star waited until the last of them had blended with the fire crowd.
Shattered shards of broken bottle glinted in the strange light reflected off the underbellies of clouds. Lightning flashed in short, sharp bursts.
She stood until the rage within her tempered. Till she could breath easy, not in ragged gasps. She dared not answer back to Kristo, but those three stuck up princes had not seen the last of her. Whether or not they were from the Fortress City, they were up to something. She was going to find out what it was.
Reluctantly, she headed for the fire. She didn’t want Nene to see her—or Remy. Or Lucius, or even Anj. People were still bickering, some in favour of staying till dawn, others whining that they should have left already. There had been starlight enough and the way was clear—except who could be sure of anything anymore, with Barbaros dead and Harthstone burning? The Van might be barrelling into the path of a brand new warlord. One who had no respect for the sanctity of white flag.
“The veil of darkness offers us protection!”
“Quicksand and hidden serpente nests is what it offers . . .”
“The longer we waste here, the sooner the dead can come to claim our souls.”
Star tuned out the pointless banter—the storm meant they would have to stay till morning. The words the three of them had uttered went racing through her head. Jakome urging that they didn’t have time. Time for what? Where were they now? Not by the fire alongside everyone else.
= Thirteen =
Inside the belly of the Temple of the Dish, the air was still and cool. What little juice still flowed through the solar batteries, Marianthe conserved for powering up the screens. She did not waste a single drop of battery on light. Illumination came from windows, lanterns, and tallow candles, the wax all used up years ago. She hadn’t glimpsed a single bee for decades.
She lit the wicks of a precious few then leaned her weight on the walking stave hand carved from the last remaining tree in Evenslough. Others would have burnt it for fuel but she had been so much smarter than the rest of them, able to recognise what they were going to need in future days.
She collapsed her weight into the old metal chair. It creaked in protestation but held together. Marianthe sat there in the half light for a spell, till all thoughts of goats and girls and cabbages subsided.
In the early days when she’d been alone, before she’d got the dish patched up, juiced and aimed, she’d swept the surrounding skies with radio, hopeful of finding other outposts, survivors like herself.
Fox hunting was what they used to call it, listening for transmitter signals. Occasionally she’d made connection via tropospheric scatter, moon bounce, and Borealis. Dust particles refracting signals over the horizon. Skywave propagation during extreme peaks in the sunspot cycle.
The remains of a military base in Pacific waters. Some other place called Ice Land which she pictured as cool and clear, all gleaming white palaces carved from snow and crystal. Places she would never visit, a thought that made her feel a little sad.
She leant forward, brushed dust off the metallic surface. Paused to consider. Every time she powered up the console she took a risk. Risk that it might be the last time. Risk that the fading sun-fed batteries might not have enough grunt left in them for one more gasp. When the last of the rechargeables fell beyond repair, with it would die her last and only chance of finding him.
He was dead, of course. Long dead, how could he not be? Everyone from the bad old days was dead and gone. Everyone except for her, a living relic—if living was what you could call this way of life. Existing was a better word for it, from day to day, problem to problem, goat to goat.
The chair creaked loudly as she leaned forward and flicked a switch. Equipment groaned and shuddered to life, and a dull hum like the droning of subterranean insects filled the space.
The screens were chipped and scratched in several places. Only a third of them worked at all, but a third was better than nothing. More switches gave her access to her drones, allowing her to see whatever they could. Which wasn’t much, admittedly. The temple and its cluster of mud brick dwellings from above, each made lovingly by hands that considered this the safest place they’d ever lived. Beyond them, a stretch of cracked and buckled tarmac. A flat expanse of grey cement littered with rows and rows of corroding planes. Further beyond, the Obsidian Sea. The less said about that deadly place, the better.
Little Ditto, all patched up and in full flight, performing a sweep of the outer perimeter. Dutifully, it beamed back images of sand and more sand, red and yellow mixed together. Now and then, there would be a flash of movement. Small creatures: sometimes dogs or foxes or bigger things like lizards. Sometimes tankers or those other flesh-mesh things with spider legs. Hunter-seekers, Searchers-and-destroyers, she had once known the names of all the different kinds..
Little Ditto’s job was to search for creatures moving on two legs. To observe the ones who passed on by, to keep check of the ones half likely to intend their Temple settlement harm.
She leant back in the chair again, pondering which of the Dish’s many origin myths she would teach her curious flock that afternoon. Some kind of lesson or performance was inevitable. Her people needed something to distract them from the Angels. The mighty dish had been an ear for listening to the old sky gods. The mighty dish was a giant platter, which, in days of yore, was filled with offerings. She doubted the latter. Even before the Ruin, when the sands were green and shiny silver cities stabbed at the skyline, filling that dish would have been an improbable feat.
A thunking sound, then a flash and then the screen went blank. Her heart sank. Little Ditto, patched up one too many times. Perhaps its time had finally come, as time comes to everything eventually. But no. An electronic cough and splutter. Faithful Ditto, still alive and kicking, beaming back through electronic eyes.
She smiled.
On the screen was a blurred image of sand up close, and then the sky: vast, impenetrable, and blue. Then something she had never seen before. Bands of static infused with random-seeming patterns. Pixelated rainbows. Hacks and clicks, sub frequency squeals. Then nothing. Black again, and then the sky restored, as did Little Ditto, as though nothing strange had happened.
Marianthe sat even further back in her chair, placed her gnarled fingers on her lips. A message. It had been a message, she was certain. But a message from whom or what?
Him.
Always the first thought that came to mind. Always the first dismissed. Her feelings for him were residue, impossible to flush completely from her heart.
He was dead. He had been dead for centuries.
If not him, then who?
She sat there in the half light until the candles burned to stubs, watching footage of sand and rocks and sky and sand again while seeing none of it. Thinking about the coincidence of Angels come to ground. A handful in as many days, then this, which could be no coincidence at all. Which could be nothing but it might be something. A stab at communication. Shouting in the sub-frequency wilderness.
= Fourteen =
The plaster-walled office seemed much smaller than it actually was, crammed with merchandise Mohandas had yet found time to deal with: u
nopened crates, dusty rolls of stacked carpet, bulging sacks labelled with faded stencil marks. Antique furniture, lamps, chests of drawers, broken clocks that had not told time for centuries, porcelain crockery rimmed with gold—far too ostentatious for practical use in an industrious tanker port like Fallow Heel.
Above his desk hung a painting of his pride and joy: the Razael; the finest sand ship the docks of Fallow Heel had ever seen. The only such vessel if truth be told. He had overseen every splinter of its restoration and conversion. A symbol harking back to times where anything had seemed possible, when there had still been oceans within a hundred miles of this place.
His massive desk was thickly layered with maps and charts. Some were purely for decoration and prestige. Generally speaking, the more lavish the map, the more dubious its likely provenance. Other more authentic kinds he sold to tourists, adventurers, and fools; all three rolled into one, more often than not. The stretch of Verge surrounding Fallow Heel had been picked clean as bone. Not so much as a brick of pre-Ruin salvage remained that hadn’t been accounted for, let alone the kind of treasures idiots from the wealthy coastline craved.
That left only tankers and the Obsidian Sea for the purely idiotic. Daredevils, risk takers, crazies willing to chance everything on a dream. Tanker hearts, tanker brains, and their precious oil, a substance thick with tiny relic machines. Taverns along the Obsidian Sea sandfront were ripe with one armed, one legged, mangled heroes trading their hard luck bravado escapades for drink. Chandlers, harpoon smithys offering fancy lances etched with spells, protection wards and prayers. Chasing a tanker and hunting it down was only ever half the story. Once caught and bested, the salvage and bounty had to be transported safely back to port, a feat that involved running the gauntlet of pirate nests, many manned by broken tankerjacks on a last ditch mission to make their own misfortunes pay.