by Sparks,Cat
Two girls interrupted them, walking past balancing hoes across their shoulders. They glanced at Star and Grieve, at the fallen hoe, smiled at Iago, then looked away.
Beyond the buildings lay more of the orderly rectangular garden plots, sand stretching out into the distance.
Above it all, the bruised, sky. The air smelled strange. The day before it had smelled like ordinary desert.
Grieve bit into the apple again, this time finding it bitter and hard to chew.
“We live well here,” offered Iago, smiling kindly.
“What the man says,” blurted Grieve. “Those stinger clouds can’t touch us. Walls are sturdy, we’re safe inside the buildings.”
“We’re not safe anywhere while that thing’s boiling up the sky. Those stinger clouds are part of it, being spat out the centre of that . . . thing.”
No need to point. He knew what she was referring to. The scabbed patch of sky above the horizon. Strange how none of the farming folk seemed bothered by it. Grieve chewed, slower and less enthusiastically than before. “Whatever that thing is, it’s far away. Not much we can do about it.” He attempted a grin, not very successfully.
“Quarrel said that sky bruise has a mind. That likely it’s controlling the tankers too. he said those things are now smarter than the folks who built them.”
“Doesn’t sound too hard,” said Grieve. “Folks that built them have been dead for centuries. That Templar’s completely crazy by the way, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“That Templar is currently the only thing willing to fight to protect this land.”
“So he keeps telling everybody, but what proof do you have of any of the ranting garbage he spouts is real?”
“He didn’t abandon us to die. That’s pretty real to me.”
“You look pretty real to me,” said Grieve. “Chill out, power down, pick up a hoe, stop and smell the flowers.” He bent forward, miming such an act with great exaggeration.
“You really are a piece of work, Grieve. A pathetic sack of—”
“And you are completely naive,” he said, coldly this time, straightening back up, the grin gone from his face, the apple swallowed, the humour leached out of his voice. “What if the mad old soldier’s right—what can any of us do about an ancient weapon? Something our oh-so-brilliant ancestors couldn’t even kill?”
“If Quarrel’s right, that Lotus Blue will take out everything from here to the Sammaryndan coast. Maybe even further. The Sand Road. Fallow Heel. Everything and everyone we’ve ever known.”
“So? We all gotta die sometime . . .”
He gnawed on the remains of the apple core. She slapped it from his hand.
“Hey!” he pushed her.
She shoved him back. When he pushed her again, harder this time, she slapped him across the face. “You’re a coward. An utter coward. What did you really do to get thrown off that ship? Don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know.”
He grabbed her wrist and gripped it tight, pulled her so close she could smell his bitter apple breath. “I’m a survivor. That’s what I am. That’s what I do. You don’t know anything about me at all. Not where I’ve come from. Not what I’ve had to endure to get this far.”
His grim expression made him seem much older than twenty summers.
“Let go. You’re hurting me.” He gripped tighter until she yelped. “LIAR!”
“Of course I lie—every day of my life. Sometimes lying’s the only thing that works. But here’s a truth: nobody’s getting across that sand. That’s open tanker country and those things are batshit crazy.”
She managed to tug her hand away. He cut in before she could speak.
“I’ve seen them. Been spying on the lot of them through those drones of hers.” He made swooping motions with his arms, imitating flight.
“Liar!”
Grieve continued. “The mad old woman who runs this joint promises her followers the world. Literally—a shiny new one, not this sun-blasted wasteland. More than promises—she shows it to them. I’ve seen it too. It’s beautiful.”
“I don’t believe you, you’re full of—”
“Not this time.” He grinned wickedly, his eyes shining. “I can prove it. Let me show you too. Plus something else—that threat that Templar is holding over your head. The Lotus Blue—it’s nothing dangerous, just another ruin. The Red is littered with ’em. Come with me and I’ll show that to you as well.”
She took a step back, wary. “Why should I trust you or believe anything you say?”
“See it with your own eyes. Make up your own mind.” He shrugged. “What have you got to lose at this point?” He pointed to the giant dish. “Old lady lives inside the centre of that thing. Calls it Sanctum. I know a way in. A secret way.”
She looked to where he pointed. The temple was formidable—she’d never seen another structure like it. No guards were posted by the entrance. She didn’t trust Grieve but he was right about one thing—what did she have left to lose? Everything she’d ever had was lost already: Nene, Lucius, her own true name and origin. The friends she once had on the Van, the ones she almost thought she might make on the Dogwatch. And all she had to show for it was proof that she wasn’t even human.
“We’ll go later,” he explained, reading the expression on her face, looking pleased with himself, winking at Iago, who had stepped back when the other two started shoving. “When darkness falls and everyone is sleeping.”
Grieve brushed a clump of hair out of his eyes. Star looked to Iago, but he was already leading the lizard away through the melons.
“You’re still a coward and a thief,” she said.
He smiled. “Meet you behind the potting sheds after lights out.”
= Fifty-three =
Mohandas buried his face in his hands. He wept, enormous body-jarring sobs accompanied by a keening sound, like a wounded animal in pain.
Allegra placed her arms around her father’s shoulders. Arms that did not reach far enough. He barely seemed to notice she was there.
“Papa, those men aren’t going to hurt you any more. See, they have taken your chains away, moved you out of that horrid splintered wooden chair. Brought you on deck, see, is this not more comfortable already? There is quite a view, a whole buried settlement being dug up from the sand in front of the ship.”
She had managed to convince Kian that her father posed no threat to anyone. That he could be given a comfortable place to sit in the fresh and open air atop plump cushions beneath a shady awning. His ankles were chained but his hands were free. He had promised her he would not attempt to flee, and she was not worried he might try, because where was there to run to? The ship had truly reached the end of the Earth. It’s castors choked up with soft sand, it would go no further without help. But none were available to dig it free. They’d all run off, the crew and even his once-trusted servants, run off to escape the foreigners and seek their fortunes in the ruins. Kian and his bodyguards hadn’t even tried to stop them. All they cared about were those blasted maps that her father should have destroyed three decades ago.
At the end of the trail, apparently, lay an unspeakable monster—only no one would listen, no one would heed his warning. The sky should have been warning enough, a swirling current of sickly-coloured clouds and lightning forks.
Mohandas continued to weep into his hands—bare after all his jewelled rings had been pulled from his fingers. Allegra patted his shoulders gently, then withdrew her hands and folded them in her lap. She waited for her father to stop crying, but his torrent of tears did not let up. A few minutes passed, and her patience thinned. The noise he was making was extremely unpleasant. She worried that the few remaining guards would come, that they might not be aware of the understanding blossoming between herself and Kian, the Axan prince. Her
own blood kin, as it turned out. A situation she was prepared to take full and thorough advantage of.
She placed her hands on her father’s shoulders. This time he shrugged them off.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, stupid girl. You don’t know what these people are capable of.”
His skin was flushed, his eyes red rimmed and puffy, adding twenty years to his appearance.
“I can charm him, Papa—have I not achieved that much already?” She held up her wrists as evidence. The marks made by her bonds were already fading.
He pushed her hands away—gently, just rough enough to make his feelings known.
“Papa, you have made your point—now stop blubbering and start listening to mine. They’re our people, Papa—our own blood kin.”
He snorted, a wet, unpleasant sound made even more so by the reddening of his face.
“We got lucky,” she continued. “Hooking up with Axa is a brilliant plan. Everything will change because of it. You know how Darian has the monopoly on silk and cotton. How Li Ming and Burton Jax gang up on us, how they always favour Evenslough even though—”
“Allegra, my daughter, I love you dearly, but you are a bloody fool. Did you not learn anything from those expensive history lessons I paid for? Do you know nothing of the wars and why they were fought?”
She rolled her eyes. “2061: The Karrantha War; 2146: The Battle of Carpenteria; 2155: Defence of the Barossa; 2210: Operation Great Ocean Road; 2243: The Siege of Kakadu: 2348: The Crysse Offensive; 2352: The Lotus Wars; 2388: The Battle of Maratista Plain—”
“Mindless rote recitation. What was all that bloodshed in aid of, can you tell me that?”
She glared at him with great annoyance. “They fought to gain control of the land and its resources. Wars are all about fighting to come out on top. To not let foreign parties get the better of you.”
Mohandas gestured at the surrounding sands. “Once, this was all green pasture and rolling hills, filled with animals and plants and other lovely things that were not trying to kill you. The temperature of the air was cooler—people didn’t have to cover all their skin. It used to rain. Gently, not just storms and flash floods.”
Allegra brimmed with impatience, but she didn’t interrupt.
“Lots of people lived here and they didn’t fight. They traded. They built things up together. They built machines that travelled through the air, and even to the moon.”
“I know all this already.”
“No, you don’t. You know the words, maybe, but you don’t comprehend their meaning. What the world had, once, and what it lost. That all we do now is survive, day to day, scratching and picking over the bones of the dead.” He pointed ahead with his bound hands. “That thing out there is a war machine. A Lotus Blue, deadliest of all the colours. It has its own mind, its own agenda. It cannot be harnessed, controlled, or bargained with.”
“It’s a relic, that’s all,” said Allegra. “More sophisticated than a tanker, I’ll grant you that, but a relic all the same. Relics were the tools of men. Kian has told me all about them. He says—”
“Kian is a young, hot-headed idiot. Trust me, I knew his father and he was an idiot too. He’s just another petty princeling, greedy and short sighted.”
Mohandas’s shoulders slumped. “And I remain the biggest idiot of them all, for stealing something so dangerous in the first place and hanging on to it when it should have been destroyed. I’m old. What happens to me doesn’t matter anymore. You’re the one whose going to end up paying for my folly.”
Allegra’s harsh expression softened. She took his hands between her own as delicately as if they’d been a baby bird. “Kian has explained to me how they’d take the harvested reliquary of the tankers, use it to make lights that burn and power without flame. Light and heat and air that blows cool through big slits in the walls.” She leant in closer. “They make things, Papa, they don’t just dig them up and sell them.”
“I know. I grew up underground, remember? Axa was my home.”
She nodded. “I don’t understand why you ever left such a wondrous place.”
He sighed. “Because Axa is stagnant, inbred, closed off, a dead end—dead and dying. Because I came to admire the bravery of those who stayed up top. Who stuck it out and kept on going, despite the heat and the dust and the terrible storms, the war machines and the toxic detritus. Despite everything, they stayed alive. They’re better than we are, precious, by a long shot.”
He angled his body to face his daughter. “Do not do this thing, I beg of you. Get rid of those maps. Take a rock and smash them into powder, cast them into the wind where they can do no harm. Let the secrets of the Lotus bunker remain lost forever. Use your influence to help us all. Turn this ship and head for home—I beg of you!”
She kissed him on the forehead, but she wasn’t listening. Axa was her home too, her spiritual home, and she was now determined to set foot in its splendour, no matter what it took. She rubbed the surface of her grandmother’s golden locket with her thumb, eyes glistening with longing and excitement.
= Fifty-four =
Darkness fell across the Temple of the Dish. Guards patrolled the courtyard and garden plot perimeters on foot. One slouched in each of the spindle-legged watchtowers, while another walked along the old stone wall. Yet another lurked around the kitchen door. But no guard stood watch outside the temple entrance. The old woman’s followers were frightened of things they didn’t understand, Star realized. Nobody went inside without permission.
A broken metal staircase jutted like an elbow around the Temple’s back and sides.
Grieve was waiting for her in the shadows. “Watch this,” he said, wrapping his hands in rags, then slinging the rope he wore across his shoulder, pulling it taut when the grappling hook caught fast.
He hauled himself up the rope, arm over arm. Not far to go until he reached a jutting metal spike. He tested his weight on it, anchored himself, then dropped the end of the rope back down to her.
Star shook her head. He jiggled the rope enthusiastically. With great agility, she shimmied up the broken staircase.
“Hey, where’d you learn to do that?”
She ignored the question. “They’ll see us up here. The tower guards will shoot.”
“Bet you there’s not a bullet between them.”
“What about the windows?”
“Trust me—nobody’s looking.”
She didn’t trust him, but she followed closely at his heels, pausing now and then to take in the spectacular view. The abomination of the churning sky gave off enough light to permit them a clear view of geometric vegetable plots and the endless desert beyond them.
They climbed in through one of the topmost windows. Easier than it looked.
“Careful,” he warned. “Nothing but starlight now, till we reach the second tier.”
Star followed Grieve on tiptoe along a rickety walkway that hugged the circular walls. It shuddered beneath their combined weight. She willed herself to be light and sure footed. If the structure collapsed, the fall would kill or cripple them.
Unfamiliar sounds emanated in random bursts from down below. It was too dark to see anything. Star paused to listen, but Grieve reached back and grabbed her sleeve.
“Keep moving!”
They dropped down to a lower level, a cramped area filled with metal panels, switches, and dusty glass. Dim light spilled in through the windows. The smell of fabric damp and thick with mould hung in the air.
“Don’t touch,” he whispered.
She had no intention of touching anything. Boxes were stacked high atop one another in teetering piles, some of them half decayed, their contents spilled. The smell of rot was much stronger, sharper here.
She covered her nose with her hand as he led
her down again, both of them bent over, through a rabbit warren of narrow gaps. No light at all until they reached the end. Beyond a flap of musty hessian lay a nest; that was how she’d best describe it. A cosy pile of sacks and other fabrics. Above it was a makeshift shelf of bricks and boards upon which sat a trio of stumpy candles. A plate, a knife, and a collection of old-world trinkets, worth a coin or two, had there been anywhere to sell them.
“Stinks like an animal’s lair,” she said.
He didn’t take the bait. “Shhh.” He put his finger to his lips, then gently tugged at a scrappy length of hessian draped above the shelf. He motioned for her to lean and take a look. There were muffled voices. Flares of light.
Down below, the circular walls encased a bank of reliquary. Jagged brickwork jutted from the walls, suggesting an entire floor had been removed.
She stared. “What happens now?”
“We wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“You’ll see.” He flopped down on his nest of a bed, stretched, and placed his hands behind his head, then closed his eyes.
Her shoulders slumped. She wriggled, attempting to get comfortable. “I don’t have time for more of your stupid games.”
“It’s not a game,” he said, his eyes still closed. “You wanted to see, so I’m showing you.”
“I don’t want to see anything. What I want is for us to get out of here before—”
He opened his eyes. “You’ll want to see this. Trust me.”
There was nowhere comfortable to sit unless she knelt to share the bed with him, so she remained standing in a cramped position, listening for the occasional sounds that rose up from down below. Peeping back out through the hessian, she noticed more detail every time: framed pictures, candles half burned down. Metal boxes with glass fronts, a flat expanse of dull white placed up high.
“How long will we have to wait?”
“Not long.” He sat up, moved into a crouch. “That old lady lives for this. Her mind’s addled. Rotted from the inside with all kinds of bullshit.”