by Teresa Rook
“Until this drought choked it out,” I scowl.
Ennis shakes his head. “That’s not on us. Things are bad now, yes, but they were bad before, too. By the time we got rid of the witches, the trees were already dead.”
“So you don’t think the Chirals are to blame.”
“I think something had to be done, and I think it’s more complicated than a lot of people realize.”
eighteen
The first Dead City we come to, Akisir, was once the site of the tallest structures in Carnigai. Back when there were trees, these massive structures towered above them. I’m awestruck when they appear on the horizon, their runes lighting them up for me to see. The Star of Carnigai, they used to call it.
“You wouldn’t believe this view,” I say. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“We do believe it,” Riksher says. “It’s not the runes that are making it shine. That’s the chrome they’re made from.”
I squint. I suppose the sight is different from Yural, which was just a twinkling on the horizon. These structures flash back at us like the sun glancing off a clear, still pool of water. “Witch steel?” I ask.
Riksher glances at me. “I haven’t heard anyone call it that in a long time.”
Old Man Wells has told me a hundred times about the metal the witches bent into their trains. Not even he could say where they sourced it from. I saw them bend it once, he’d told me. Twenty of them together, and they stretched out this giant rock like it was wet plaster.
“I didn’t know they’d built a city out of it.”
“I think you’ll find there’s lots you don’t know. Look closer.”
The reflections from the building aren’t constant. They blink from different directions, different spots lighting up at different times. Flashes of white appear between them, only for a second at a time, and the light they give off bounces back at us. “Lightning!” I exclaim.
Ennis rides up beside me. “Can’t be. There are no clouds.”
He’s right. The sky is clear from here to Akisir. But then I see another strike, and two more within the space of seconds. There’s no other explanation for it. We both stare.
“Welcome to your first Dead City,” Riksher says.
As we get closer, the snaps of light get brighter, and a low rumbling grows in intensity around us. The city is a constant thunderclap, a fast-flashing light. I didn’t know anything could be so bright.
The lightning strikes a building at the edge of the city and we watch as the entire tower lights up white. The lightning crackles down its chrome exterior, a lightning rod. Then it’s over and we are all stunned silent. It was beautiful, but clearly deadly. These towers can survive a lightning strike. Us, our bodies made of flesh and bone, could not.
But it’s a Dead City, which means there are runes inside. We have to go in.
#####
The lightning hay more be accompanied by clouds, but the same cannot be said for thunder. The noise grows steadily in our ears as we approach, and by the time we’re inside, it’s all all-consuming cacophony. I can’t imagine spending more than a day in this noise before my head exploding. Never in my life have I been bombarded with more sound than the constant crashing of thunder. My head throbs. No wonder nobody lives here anymore.
I’m sure Riksher’s ideal solution would be to burn the entire city to the ground. But there’s nothing here that burns. It’s just the witch steel, meticulously blocked buildings far taller than they are wide, their chrome surfaces utterly immune to fire. If this place could have burned, the lightning constantly striking its tallest towers would have set it ablaze years ago. As it stands, whatever organic matter was once here has been burnt to a crisp. Charred tree stumps and the skeletons of bushes occasionally poke out from the ground, the only remnants of life. I try to imagine this city as green, when the chrome buildings would have mirrored the leaves and flowers. The image of a verdant metal jungle sets butterflies in my stomach. I would have liked to see this place before.
We walk in the center of the wide streets, and every time a building near us lights up, we freeze. The stress makes me want to cackle. One unlucky strike and we all get roasted. The first time we try to approach a building, it’s struck, and the electricity shoots down the metal, into the ground, and up through our feet. My teeth chatter and my body gives a tiny convulsion. The looks of terror on Riksher and Ennis tells me they felt it, too. We stay away from the buildings.
Deep inside the city, we’re surrounded by mirrors. We’d be completely disoriented without the compass Riksher holds in his hand. I wish we’d come up with a plan to split up, cover more ground. The less time we spend in this death trap, the better. But talking is pointless now. The crashing of thunder would drown out any words.
We press on, Riksher watching me closely for signs of the runes. But there’s nothing here, just the towers and the lightning. We have to look inside, I think, staring at one of the towers. I push the thought away and squint around me, searching for any sign of tech on the dirt streets. The towers are off limits. We are not risking that.
We round a corner and there, finally, lies the answer.
I don’t see the runes at first, what with the brightness of the lightning. But between strikes, when the after-image of the white has faded somewhat from the backs of my eyes, I see them.
We’ve entered a square, with chrome towers on all sides but enough room for a small lake in the space between them. In the center of this clearing rises a gigantic pile of random witch tech, enough to build five walls around Yural.
Riksher and I look at each other, and I’m sure we’re asking the same question: what is all this doing here?
It’s not all witch steel. I creep closer, wary of a lightning strike, but this mountain is wide, not tall. The towers are the lightning rods. This pile, as evidenced by the intact pieces of wooden tech, is safe from the skies. Even the thunder seems muted here. If I yelled, I might even be heard.
The steel is hard to identify, hacked into pieces that tell me nothing about the original machines. Riksher’s lips thin beside me, and he picks up a leg of steel, holding it up for my analysis. I nod, and he nods back. That’s tech.
The wood, bureaus and simple children’s toys, must have come from the buildings. I don’t understand why the witches would pile their tech up in the center of town like this. At least now we know where the lightning comes from.
Another piece of tech catches my eye, something bone-white. But upon further inspection, there are no runes drawn into its surface. I run my fingers over it. It’s thin and smooth and long my arm.
Beside me, Ennis lets out a yelp and steps back. He stares at me with wide, shocked eyes, and I peer in front of him, into where he was sifting through the pile.
I recognize the round, white shape immediately, and it only takes a second to extrapolate it to the object in my hand. I drop it and scream.
Not just bone-white. Bone.
“Lions,” I say, then bite down on the back of my wrist to quell the panic.
Riksher, too, investigates, and he straightens slowly, less surprised than Ennis and I.
“Why aren’t you shocked?” I yell, backing away. “What do you know?”
Riksher sags, then squares his shoulders. “This was a war,” he says between strikes, his voice strained. “You thought there would be no bodies?”
I stare at the pile. “Not like this. No burial? No anything? Just tossed in the center of the city with the other…stuff? Like these people were just things?”
“Witches,” he says. “They were witches.”
“Still people!”
“Have you ever seen a war, Darga? Do you have any idea of the sheer numbers that fell? We did what we had to.”
Ennis speaks up. “You’ve been here before.”
Riksher shakes his head. “No. I was in Bu’tah when Akisir was purged. This wasn’t me.”
“Of course it was!” I say. I dart forward and wrap my hand around the sku
ll, hooking a finger through an eye socket. I pull and there’s a snap as it comes loose from the spine. I shove it in his face. “How old does this skull look to you, Riksher?”
“Get that out of my face,” he growls.
I chuck the child’s skill at the ground, and it cracks sharply off the cobblestone. I think of Abadiah. “You murdered children.”
“What would you have had us do, Darga? Any kids would have grown into adults, and then we’d be in the same spot we were in before. We got them all the first time. We did what we had to.”
I stare at him. “You’ve murdered babies in their cribs, haven’t you?”
His retort is outstripped by an incredible crack of thunder, nearer than anything we’re encountered so far. It comes with a bolt of lightning, an instant of searing heat that burns into the backs of my eyes. Time slows to a still, that single frame.
Ennis flashes bright white for a second, as blinding as the bolt of lightning that shocks through his veins. I swear I see his skeleton. Then he turns black again, and he begins to fall.
I step forward to catch him, but Riksher is there before me. He lets Ennis go gently to the ground, then stands back up, his hands held out in front of him, twitching, useless.
I inhale sharply, and the world comes back into focus. I knock Riksher aside and kneel by Ennis, pressing my fingers first to his forehead, then to his neck. He’s warm, impossibly so, but breathing. The shirt he’s been wearing since Salis is charred at the hems, and his pants end halfway down his thighs.
Riksher tries to shout something in my ear, and I ignore him, numb. I can’t tell if the ringing in my ears is from the thunder or the panic.
I have no idea how to treat a lightning strike.
Ennis’s black skin is cooling quickly. I look up and can’t locate the sun, hidden behind one of the skyscrapers. The red tinge to the sky tells me night is coming.
I stand and grab a ghost-white Riksher by the shoulders. “He needs to stay warm,” I say. “Find something. A blanket, some curtains, anything.”
Riksher doesn’t hesitate. He charges to the nearest building, wraps his hand around its metal door handle, and pulls with his entire body. I hold my breath and watch the sky, but we are lucky. Nothing strikes while Riksher is in contact.
I peel off my tunic and lay it over Ennis. Its thick Chiral fabric will help until we find something better. Then I head for the building next to Riksher’s, but it takes me a moment to find the courage to tear open the door. I take a few deep, shallow breaths, then grab the cool metal handle and wrench it open. I stumble backwards, terrified lightning will strike, but it doesn’t.
The inside of the building is bare, all its furniture stripped from its floors, presumably tossed into the pile with the bodies. This first floor is small, scarcely bigger than my parents’ cabin in Barnab. An elaborate metal staircase curves upwards, but I don’t dare touch it.
The next building over bears nothing useful, but Riksher seems to have found something. I sprint into the square, where Riksher is delicately wrapping his brother in what looks like an ornamental tapestry. I snag my tunic from the ground and pull it back over my head. Riksher doesn’t mention it.
“What now?” he asks.
I crouch next to Ennis and press my palm to his forehead.
“What now?!”
“I don’t know, okay?” I scream.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? This is what you do! This is why you’re here!”
“No,” I say, “I’m here because you need me to clean up your witch mess. I never said I was a doctor. I work with animals, and none of mine have ever been struck by lightning.” I work hard to keep my voice level, failing several times and having to bring it back under control. Riksher and I will accomplish nothing by yelling at each other.
The truth, tough as it is to swallow, is that I can’t do anything else for Ennis. “We wait,” I say. I look up at Riksher. “And if you pray, you do that, too.”
nineteen
Neither of us sleeps that night. In the daylight, the lightning flashes add a bright pulse to the light from a clear sky. At night, each strike is an eerie illumination that shows our scant movements in static frames. It highlights the subtle changes in Riksher’s face as he sits before his brother, unable to do anything but wait. I get a stop-motion presentation of his fear.
When day breaks, Ennis is still unconscious. It’s not until Riksher reaches for his bag that I realize we haven’t eaten. He hands me some carrot chips and a slice of jerky.
“How long do we wait?” he asks, finally breaking our silence. We’ve had a long night to cool off, and the high emotions from yesterday have finally plateaued. Laying blame is less important than getting Ennis through this.
I bite my lip. “I’ve never seen this before. I don’t know.”
Silence falls again as Riksher and I eat. I sip from my canteen and Riksher helps me dribble some water onto Ennis’s lips. Sitting and waiting accomplished nothing, so I leave our vigil twice to circle the mountain of tech, a trip that takes me nearly an hour. An entire city’s worth of belongings piled into one heap, along with the bodies of their owners.
“How many skeletons do you think are in there?” I ask, pretending I can think of anything but Ennis. I can’t stop staring at his pale face.
Riksher sighs. “Thousands. Akisir was a big city.”
That’s a big number. I look at my hands. “How did it happen?”
He glances up at me. “You don’t want to hear that.”
“I do. How?”
Riksher takes so long to answer I think he’s not going to. He pushes himself wearily to his feet and pulls something from the pile. A metal cog.
“This,” he says, “is part of a weapon.”
He passes it to me and I run my fingers over it, the runes dancing across its surface. “What kind of weapon?”
“The witches didn’t come at us hand-to-hand. They laid traps where they cold, collapsing buildings or clogging exits. But they also had these suits.” He reaches high up into the air. “Taller than this. They hid inside them and used them as walking battering rams. Akisir is where they were made, so it was one of the first cities we hit.”
“Along with Bu’tah.”
He shakes his head. “We tried, but Bu’tah held out longer. It was only once Akisir was down and no more suits were coming that we had any chance of taking out Bu’tah.”
“But you did eventually.”
“We did eventually. I was there for that one.”
I gesture to the tech rising beside us. “Is there one of these in the centre of Bu’tah?”
He shakes his head. “This didn’t happen anywhere else. The idea was to burn everything, but the lightning started before they could even collect it all. The outer homes will still be furnished. But it got dangerous to be here, so Iskielle must have ordered everyone out before they finished the job.”
I have a visceral reaction to the name of the late Wolf. I can’t figure out what I think of her. She didn’t help me in Salis, but she didn’t seem evil. Ennis loves her. Chloje and Fariq seemed moved by her death. And yet Riksher has reminded me she was also a warlord. She was the one who told her people to stack the bodies of witch children onto this pyre.
“We’re not burning it,” I say.
Riksher sighs. “Darga. We are. I’m sorry for what happened here. I know it’s not pretty. But look around you. Look at Ennis.”
I do. He’s perfectly still, his brown eyes still closed.
“This is that this tech does. We burn it here today and the storms will stop. Then this city will be habitable again, and who knows, maybe Tribe Iral starts over here.”
I purse my lips, annoyed that his instinct is for Tribe Iral to be the ones to start over. Shouldn’t it be the Yurals who have to find a new home, if something suitable becomes available? I won’t push them into the desert, but if another city is ready and waiting, that’s a different story.
“This is a graveyard,” I sa
y quietly. Riksher leans towards me, and I speak louder to be heard over the thunder. “We can’t burn a graveyard.”
Movement behind Riksher catches my attention. I wonder at first if our horses have wandered in after us, but no, we tied them firmly. A small figure darts out from between two buildings and scurries behind the tech.
Riksher looks over his shoulder. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say hurriedly. “Just thought I saw something.”
“Something like what?”
I shrug. “Trick of the lightning. They’ve got shapes dancing around my eyelids. Feels like I’m hallucinating. This place.” In truth, it looked like a kid. But what could a kid possibly be doing here?
Unless he’s a witch, in which case Riksher definitely does not need to know.
“I’m going for another walk,” I say. Riksher doesn’t protest, just gives another glance behind his shoulder. “Maybe I’ll find something that can help Ennis.”
“What should I do?”
There’s something satisfying in Riksher seeking direction from me. I try not to dwell in it. “Stay here. Watch him. Keep him warm. I’ll be back.”
#####
I round the mountain of tech but there’s no sign of the kid. How long has he been watching us? Is there a whole tribe here, watching?
And can I convince them to help Ennis?
“Hello?” I venture. “Is anyone there?”
I’m answered only by the thunder, a deep rumble that stops my voice from carrying. I keep a close eye on the homes that ring the square, watching their windows, the alleyways between them. After the tenth false start—just a shadow from the lightning—I’m mostly convinced what I saw was nothing at all.
Something rustles behind me. I turn, startled, to see the leg of a chair tumble down the mountain. I bend down to pick it up, and that’s when I see the tunnel.
I have to blink a few times before the image makes sense in my head. A flash of lightning illuminates the first few feet of the opening, otherwise hidden in shadow, and I get down on all fours to peer inside. Someone’s hollowed out a path, barely big enough for me to slide through on my belly. There’s no way even Ennis would fit through, and definitely not Riksher.