by Jordan Reece
Once the bandage was tied, he heard a change in the rumbling from above. The aerial dipped a little beneath his feet. They were landing. Frantic to disembark, he hefted his satchel and took himself out to the hallway. How long would it be until an aerial worker came upon the Dragon of the Blood, or he freed himself from his restraints? Elario had to be well away, and as fast as possible. Spending the night in Port Galderon was not an option anymore, nor was traveling by aerial again. He had to go to the station and scout the crawlers.
Winding about the second level of the airship, and catching curious glances for the bandage, he descended the staircase to the lowest level. Brother Shanus was seated at the bar and crowed to see him. “Master Tappan! My good man, what has happened to you?”
Elario returned the spectacles to him. “My gratitude for these, Brother. It was most kind of you to share. They showed me more than I could have hoped, but I am afraid they left me with a throbbing pain on one side of my head.”
Shutting his book of drawings, Brother Shanus said sympathetically, “Oh, yes, they can give headaches afterwards as your eyes readjust! Am I not right about that, Nollo?”
The mechanical bartender smiled and delivered a drink to the scholar. “You are quite right. It is most often true among those with unbalanced vision, the stronger eye compensating for the weaker. Do you have weaker sight on one side?”
“I fear I do,” Elario lied.
“Do not worry: the headache generally passes within the hour. If the pain worsens, go to the port office of administration when we land. They will give you a tonic.”
Through the windows was a tapestry of roofs and fields. This was Port Galderon, which lacked the grandness of Vallere, yet bustled most comfortingly with life. As Brother Shanus regaled the two boys from the Penborough waiting room with further stories about mad King Denelan, Elario crossed to the windows and studied the city through his one eye.
There it was, the field where they were due to land, a crowd of tiny figures waiting for the ropes. Several blocks away were crawler tracks, and he followed the arc of them through trees to the black roof of the station. If soldiers were waiting within . . . if they were positioned on each aerial and crawler . . . The ensigno upstairs said anyone with a knack could sense the oddness about Elario.
Stay low, Hydon, should you return with one. They’ll be watching. Catch a crawler by night, one of the freight cars in back, and lay low. This was not advice being spoken to Elario, but he should take it.
The aerial lowered to sweep just above the treetops, the men in the field spreading apart and calling to one another as it came down. Passengers got up from the chairs and trickled for the exit. They landed with a lurch, and then late afternoon sunlight gushed in from the opening door, stairs unfolding to trampled grass.
Elario descended within a crowd of passengers, who immediately split upon the grass into three distinct lines: one aiming for the arched building where tickets were purchased, a much larger line for the half-ring of inns at the end of the field, and the last cutting to the lane where carriages were waiting. Elario chose the last line, giving a farewell wave to the scholar and walking with a careful eye to all those upon the lane.
There were no Dragons of the Blood, or Red Guard plumes. Elario wended through the carriages and pushed on for the crawler station.
Chapter Eight
Over the next week, he traveled by stealth.
For all the time that he spent in crossing the golden ring, he saw precious little of it from within the freight cars. Only in the stations did he catch a glimpse of this peculiar world, and even the glimpses were beyond his kenning. Towering metal buildings scaled up to the clouds, gray and imposing, and blinding with reflected sunlight. Higher still were fleets of aerials flying between the cities.
Constant noise emanated from out of sight, most often from snakes passing underground in tubes that connected all the regions of each city, and often one city to the next. They trembled the ground as they rushed beneath, bearing their passengers to various destinations. Then there were the trolleys going into and out of the crawler stations to drop off or pick up people, their bells ringing merrily to announce arrivals and departures.
A trolley was a new thing to Elario, as were these buildings of such height that they practically touched the clouds. Thirty floors, forty floors, sixty and seventy floors and more . . . Until now, a four-story building was something remarkable to him, and here that was nothing. The populace of these cities lived all on top of one another, and where a man could turn anywhere in Alming to a green field or patch of trees, here there were only potted plants and sad strips of lawns, if anything. Then again, he was limited to a very small part of the golden ring, and maybe it was prettier farther away from the crawler stations.
The people were different, too. It was easy to identify the nobles among the crowds. Enormous hats adorned the heads of the women, done up in fruit and flowers and feathers and bows, their arms swathed in bangle bracelets, their fingers in rings, and the hoops of their skirts so wide that they brushed the sides of the doorways while their umbrellas scraped the top. The women of Alming would have fallen apart in gales of laughter at the thought of wearing such gaudy, ridiculous clothing. How did one work in clothes like that? Meals had to be made; children minded and animals tended; the fields ploughed and gardens weeded. But that was the difference between them. These noblewomen didn’t have to work.
The noblemen of the golden ring were just as flamboyant in their dress, wearing trousers gathered into airy puffs from knee to ankle, and shirts slashed at the sleeves to reveal bright colors and patterns underneath. No less jewelry did they wear either. The men of Alming would have snickered at these noble fellows carrying themselves as proud as peacocks among their drabber company. Servants trailed along behind them to carry coin purses and baggage, and bodyguards to keep close watch for pickpockets. Each crawler had a car in front reserved for the well-footed; not once did Elario see a noble climb into any car but that, and most did not patronize the station at all.
Those who were not nobles wore simpler versions of the same clothing. The men’s shirts were of wool instead of silk, and bore smaller slashes just beneath the shoulder, the colors and patterns underneath less dazzling. Their trousers had only a single puff or two just above the foot. Often they were stained with dirt from walking, or punctured so that they hung limply in folds. The women’s hoops had a smaller circumference that did not impede doorways, nor did their hats or arms have as much garnish. The roughest laborers simply wore scuffs. At least that was familiar to Elario; nothing else in this world was. But even there, Elario felt little connection to them. The laborers were loud and braying and talking about intricate machinery of which he knew little, singing odd songs and telling rude jokes as they waited to board.
On every platform were a couple of soldiers in tan-and-greens. They were low-ranking, one or at most two pips per collar. Consumed with boredom, they idly watched the passengers getting on and off the crawlers. Their presence disturbed no one; clearly it was normal to see soldiers at a crawler station, or it was so common to see them about the golden ring that nobody found it odd to happen upon them anywhere.
The station jacks were a far bigger problem than the soldiers. Their job was to prevent travelers like Elario from hitching free rides. Twice his escape was narrow, once in trying to sneak into a freight car and once in sneaking off, and there were a few times he missed the crawler he needed because a jack was watching too carefully for him to catch it. Night was less difficult to travel by than day, with the darkness a cloak from their eyes, and if they were drinking, so much the better for Elario.
In this skulking fashion, he arrived at Reves before dawn. It was the northernmost city of the golden ring and still a distance from Drouthe. Jacks and soldiers dotted the platform as the crawler pulled in with a squeal of brakes. As the freight car that he was in had slatted sides, Elario hid between empty bins and stayed entirely still. The crawler rocked as other
cars were loaded with cargo, yawning laborers threading through to the passenger cars.
Lantern light trailed over the slats, a jack outside walking along the cars and peering in, but he did not spy Elario. Worryingly, a soldier stared at the freight car for some time, making Elario wonder if the man had a very weak knack. Just enough to alert him to the presence of oddness, yet not so strong as to embolden him to search when the jack called out all clear. Then the crawler moved on.
A death knack. That soldier had a death knack. They were curious things, death knacks. Even the strongest could not kill a healthy person, but for a mortal injury or illness, the knacker could lay a hand upon the afflicted and ease them into death. Arnald at’Limen was the death knacker in Alming. He owned a farm just outside of town, where he harvested tubers and raised sheep. Every now and then, his knack was needed. For the aged with crushing infirmities or illness, for those who had accidents from which recovery was not possible, for the Dennings’ son who fell off a roof and onto the spears of a fence, and little Talice Meriner, who sank beneath the surface of the lake one summer and was pulled out in a coma from which she never roused. He was even called out for animals, beloved horses and dogs and barn cats. Arnald used his knack so much during the contagion that he nearly burned himself out.
Elario had called upon him just once, after delivering a baby so deformed that healing was out of the question. It was unable to suckle with its ripped open upper lip and palate; it had no genitals and its intestines protruded into a sac at its abdomen. The head was too small and the feet were clubbed. The sound to whistle from its throat was that of terrible pain. But it would not die. It just keened and keened, vomiting up Elario’s medicine to sedate it, and then Arnald came.
There was a grave kindness in that stocky man with the oversized hands. He knelt at the bedside as the mother cradled her baby and the father cradled his wife, and asked them to sing a lullaby. They did so as he rested his hand over that misshapen, hairless scalp. The baby took one last breath, its limbs slackening, and its short life of suffering ceased.
The Dragon of the Blood at Reves Station was a death knacker from somewhere in the east. There was a pull between him and that direction.
Elario gave his wandering mind a firm shake, for there was no proof that any of this was true. It was just exhaustion and hunger nibbling at his mind, as those things had nibbled at him for days. His provisions still lasted, but only from eating sparingly.
He would get to Drouthe, find this man named Westen at’Inamon, and have him fix up Elario’s eye. After that, Elario had no idea of what to do. But that would wait until his eye cleared. In his herbal case was a circular hand-glass. Every time he lifted the bandage and held the glass up to his face, he saw that scarlet iris looking back at him.
It took the morning to get from Reves to Drouthe. The sky was a solid wall of gray, the sun unable to penetrate the cloud cover. Wind whistled through the freight car, chilling him as he looked out the slats to farmland. It would have made Elario feel at home if not for how flat the land was here. Harvested fields stretched all the way to the horizon. Folding his arms behind his head, he fell into a restive sleep that fled him the moment the crawler began to slow. The whistle blew.
He blinked. Instead of seeing the car, his eyes took in the crawler station. A quintet of soldiers stood upon the platform. Two had their heads turned to the tracks, having heard the distant whistle though the crawler was not yet in view. Three of the soldiers wore tan-and-greens; the last two were Red Guard. They were not waiting to board.
A veritable flock of jacks streamed out of the entryway to join the soldiers on the platform. Elario did not ponder what he was seeing; he just reacted to it. Blinking the station away, he went to the side of the car and pushed open the heavy door just enough to slip through. Snarled foliage grew to the tracks and extended down to a line of spindly pine trees. The satchel left his hands to land in the foliage and turn end over end. He jumped after it as the crawler approached a curve.
His legs crumpled upon impact and he fell. Throwing out his arm, he rolled violently through the weeds and came to rest just before the pines. The crawler vanished into the trees, brakes peeling as it neared the station.
The wild tumbling had loosened the bandage. Elario tightened it and got up, brushing dirt and twigs from his clothing. Collecting his satchel, he slipped through the trees. Almost at once he spilled out into a dirt road alongside fields. A droid was at work in the corn stalks, a flurry of arms plucking the cobs and dumping them into the bin of the droid’s body. It harvested the end of the row, turned deftly on its wheels, and headed down another.
He walked the better part of a mile past fields and distant farmhouses before Drouthe appeared in rows of stubby, shingled buildings made of white-wood. Sheets upon laundry lines flapped between the second-floor windows. Oddly, there was nobody around. No children playing, no one in the windows, and no one on the road. No voices, no music, nothing. It was as still as Vallere.
There had to be someone to ask for directions to Westen at’Inamon’s home! Surely he was not walking into a town teeming with soldiers. They were expecting someone to arrive by crawler or carriage; not a single aerial was anywhere in the sky, and there had not been since leaving Reves.
The dirt changed to cobbles as he entered Drouthe. Within several blocks, the homes became finer, their gardens and courtyards ringed with white walls. Still there were no people to be seen, yet swells of noise occasionally burst out from elsewhere.
Elario slipped from one avenue to another, the homes changing to industry. The shops were closed in the middle of the day, which was bewildering. It was not Hallowmas yet. A forge was quiet, as were two bakeries and a tailor, and all else around them.
He almost jumped out of his skin at voices. Three wagons of crops were crossing at the road ahead, the drivers turning at the same corner and two of them calling back and forth in surprise about the closed shops. Elario trailed after them a short distance to a weigh-master.
Even here it was relative desolation, without the weigh-master or crop dealers at the scales. Horses stood hitched to loaded wagons, but the only drivers around were the ones just arriving. The three of them got down to speak to a girl of about ten dressed in the heavy black apron of a weigh-master, but at her age, she was only an apprentice.
At the girl’s words, which Elario was too far away to hear, the drivers reeled back. Then they turned as one and ran away from the scales in high excitement. Assuming that Elario was another driver, the girl beckoned to him exuberantly. “It’s a hanging!” she called through the wagons. “Sun at its crown in the square.”
Walking to her, Elario feigned interest. “Gods of mercy! What is the crime?”
The girl was light-hearted at the prospect of death, and her eyes were envious upon the departing drivers. “He’s a master thief, the Dragons of the Blood pronounced him. His gang works in the golden ring and sends their loot on the crawler to Drouthe. The soldiers turned over the haberdashery and found evidence, jewelry stolen from noble homes, to be sold on a secret market. His gang even stole from the home of the king’s half-sister in Ruzan! Everyone has gone down to the square to give him a death-gift at the jail grate and take place to watch him swing.”
“A death-gift,” Elario repeated.
She did not take his comment for ignorance, so lost was she in the scandal to shake her young world. “I’d give a copper for a flower, or maybe an apple, you? But I’ve got to stay here and mind the wagons, Master Riggs says, no use hanging a thief to leave goods lying about for another.”
Suddenly, she noticed his bandage. “What did you do to your eye, sir?”
“I was setting out the droid for the day and took an arm to the face,” Elario said ruefully.
She laughed. “Picked your head instead, yah?”
“It did. Tell me,” Elario said, matching her good humor with his own. “Do you know a man named Westen at’Inamon? Where might I find him?”
She
laughed all the harder. “You’ll find him swinging from a rope in the square.”
Shock overcame him, but her youth kept her from recognizing it in full. His uncle had sent him all this way to deliver a package to a thief? This eye was something precious and unusual, stolen no doubt from a very wealthy person! Fury burned in his gut as the girl promised to keep an eye on the wagons and pointed him in the direction of the square.
He heard it long before he arrived. Hundreds of people were speaking all at once, flute and fiddle music threading through the voices. He turned around a building and into a scene of festivity. People hung out of windows and milled about upon the cobbles, talking and pointing to the massive black tree where a noose was dangling. Dragons of the Blood were erecting a scaffold beneath it, one calling out and a man below wrenching a lever in response. A trapdoor dropped from the scaffold.
The crowds gasped in horrified delight. Elario produced a copper from his coin purse and stopped an old woman with a basket of pepper roses. She pinched the copper and passed him a rose. “Mind you don’t prick yourself on the thorns,” she warned. These roses were so recently and hastily picked that there was dirt on the roots.
“Where is the jail grate?” Elario queried.
She nodded across the square. Elario went there, his eye keen for soldiers. The small, squat building that served as the jail had only townsmen stationed on the three steps before it. They were unarmed, positioned there solely for show. A short line was at the shadowed alley to the side of the jail, a townsman to either side admitting people with death-gifts in ones and twos.
Elario joined at the back of the line. At least his clothing wasn’t marking him as an outsider here; what they wore in Drouthe was very similar to what they wore in Alming, and there wasn’t a noble anywhere. There were a few slashed sleeves in the square, a few bangle bracelets, and that was all.