Ninth City Burning

by J. Patrick Black

  To my shame, I realize I am trembling and near to tears. My nerves are blasted to bits, the memory of my sister’s death a gauze clinging to me like a spider’s webbing I have walked through and cannot shake off. From outside, another explosion rattles our flying machine.

  “You’re safe enough, don’t worry,” Vinneas says, noting my distress. “Everyone will be giving us a little space until they’re convinced you’re not going to kill me, so we’ve got a few minutes to chat.” He tips his can back, draining it, then takes the one I have left untouched. “So, how about you tell me what all of that was about back there?”

  His casual air, however contrived, enrages me. I had begun to think Vinneas an honorable man. He even helped me bargain for the safety of my coda. And yet there he sits, sipping his little can, as if to say he had no part in planning my death.

  “I’ll admit our insulation cells aren’t exactly luxurious,” he says conversationally. “I certainly wouldn’t want to sit down in one of those things. But somehow I don’t think the screaming, the kicking Reggidel in the crotch, et cetera, was a comment on our decorating.”

  “You have fooled me for the last time,” I say, my voice hoarse and grating in my throat. “I have the measure of you now, you and your people. Kill me if you want, but do not expect me to cooperate.”

  “Is that so?” He sets down his can, abandoning the pretense of nonchalance.

  “I have seen your weaponry at work before, the same as you used on those children, and would have used on me.” The story Reggidel told, that this was to be a simple test, now strikes me as nothing but a cruel joke. A test indeed, though I was not the one to be tested. I was merely a target to exercise the Principate’s arsenal.

  Vinneas makes no effort to conceal his surprise or the keenness of his interest. “When was this?”

  “Not long ago.” I have the idea that this young man may not know the extent of his people’s wickedness, and that finding out will wound him. And so I say, “My sister died in one of your traps.”

  “Your sister?”

  “She was called Rae.” I use her name like a charm, invoking it as an emblem of courage. Vinneas would be sorry indeed to find himself trapped with my sister in such close quarters, and if I cannot break him in half the way she would, at least I can put on a look that tells him how pleased I would be to see his insides littering the floor.

  Vinneas, for his part, seems dazed, amazed perhaps, like a man who has just discovered that ice and water are, at their base, the same element. In a distant voice, he mutters, “Well, imagine that.”

  The repeating blasts of the pits outside, once close and fast, have become slow and intermittent, like the last kernels in a pot of corn popped over a fire. I wait for the next to come, but instead hear a hammering at our door. Vinneas draws it open to reveal Censor Reggidel, still somewhat hunched and perturbed to a severe degree.

  “That was not very polite, Naomi,” he growls. To Vinneas he says, “Looks like you were right about her. Good thing, too. Don’t think the Curator would have been very happy with me if I brought her star pupil back in a bucket.”

  “Naomi and I have been having an exceedingly interesting conversation,” Vinneas tells him. His good mood is largely restored, I am sorry to see. He rattles his empty can at Reggidel. “Care to join us? I think there are a few cans of General Ginger left.”

  “Not now, no,” Reggidel responds with exasperation. “We should move on to the final stage as soon as possible.” He turns to me. “What do you say, Naomi? Only one more test to go. We’ll have to travel a bit, but we’ll be moving much more quickly now.”

  I regard him coldly, feeling the hatred rise anew in my belly. “You are insane if you believe I will ever go anywhere with you again,” I say.

  “I think we’re going to have some trouble securing her cooperation,” Vinneas says to Reggidel. “For one thing, she thinks we just tried to kill her.” These words come in stark contrast to his mood, which appears near to jubilation. “I don’t think our usual demonstration for new recruits is going to do the trick. I’ve got an idea that might work, but I’ll have to borrow the velo. There’s something I need from the city.”

  “This isn’t the time, Vinn,” Reggidel replies. “The harvester’s just about ready to go.”

  “You’ll be glad I went, I promise.” Vinneas looks down at me, an absurd grin on his face, as if he intends this promise for me as well. “Naomi, if you’re really determined not to go anywhere with us, you should hop out now. I’m about to take off.”

  Though I suspect I would be better off with Vinneas, I do as he says and climb down from this contraption he calls a velo. It rises smoothly into the air and, after turning a small arc, darts toward the horizon at terrific speed. Strangely, it exhibits none of the whirring effort I remarked in a similar vehicle flying over Granite Shore.

  “You weren’t entirely wrong, you know,” Reggidel says as the velo passes from view. “About someone trying to kill you. I’m pretty sure one of my legionaries might very well have blasted you if Vinneas hadn’t shut you up in that velo. Would have been a shame, not to mention extremely embarrassing for me professionally.” He glowers disapprovingly at me. “Would it have been so hard to just stay down in that insulation cell like I told you?”

  I return his glower. “If you were set on destroying me, I thought I should make you go to some trouble for it.”

  “Those cells aren’t meant to hurt you, Naomi. They’re to protect the people around you. Vinneas took a big risk carrying you off like that. He got very lucky.”

  “I think I have had enough of your tales,” I say. My throat has become unaccountably tight, a sharp pain constricting my chest.

  “Well, we need something to do while we wait for the harvester to finish loading up. It should only be a few minutes. How about I tell you one more of my tales, and if you’re not convinced you want to come with me after that, you can get back on the train and go anywhere you like.”

  I do not bother with a reply, as I have the notion that I am being mocked. We both know the train has only one destination.

  “I’ll even hold up my side of the bargain and keep your people out of the draft, whether or not you decide to come along,” he says. “I think we’ve already got the toughest of you for the Legion anyway.”

  The image returns to me of my codesmen splayed and scattered across the ground like pickup sticks.

  “Your people are just fine,” Reggidel says, guessing my concern. “They’re getting patched up right now. Already good as new, I’d expect. And better than when they showed up here. They aren’t the first recruits Ghalo’s delivered in less-than-mint condition.”

  I had not thought to survey this outpost after leaving the velo, but at Reggidel’s mention of my codesmen, I look anxiously about for some sign of them, only to discover myself amid a scene so strange that I could easily think myself arrived in another world.

  EIGHTEEN

  NAOMI

  The whalelike monster I had watched descending over us has sunk so low that its ponderous belly now obscures the greater part of the sky. At this near distance, its weightlessness seems all the more unlikely. Long tendrils extend from its side, twisting and groping over the train that brought me from Granite Shore, or so it seems until I look more closely and discern the containers lining the train’s spine all thrown open and their contents floating into the sky, apparently of their own volition. Grain spills upward in twirling cords, lithe as a snake rising on its coils. Water, milk, oil, and a dozen other liquids not familiar to me flow like uphill rivers with no other bed than open air, now and then sending up sprays that float as quivering globes before rejoining their respective eddies. Solid goods rise in swarms, orbiting the massive bulb in the sky with an easy synchrony that seems to transform it from gluttonous whale to busy beehive, all frantic work and industry. And all of this is accomplished without a single huma
n hand put to work.

  Below, the draftees from Granite Shore have mustered once again, and, one at a time, they too begin to float upward, wavering faintly in the manner of rising bubbles until they vanish inside the hive. Against any hope, I search for smaller figures that could be the children who rode with me on the train but find none.

  “The harvester should be ready soon,” says Censor Reggidel. “Let’s sit awhile, shall we?” Despite there being nothing save the ground to serve as a seat, Reggidel looks about as though seeking a set of chairs, apparently deciding upon a stretch of flat rock nearby. From his jacket he produces a thin folding case, which contains a number of the small metal disks he displayed for me back in the township of Granite Shore. Reggidel chooses one disk and begins fussing over it with furrowed brows. He runs a hand across it, then looks about as if expecting some result. When there is none, his confused expression deepens, and he begins muttering to himself, but at last his face clears. “Ah!” he says. “Watch this!”

  Again, he runs a hand over the disk, and this time the rocky space beside him abruptly assumes a shivering, liquid quality. He moves his hand once more, and the surface rises as in a splash, solidifying, impossibly, into the shape of two chairs posed opposite one another, each so perfectly formed they could have been sculpted where they stand.

  Not so much like mushrooms after all. This is my first thought upon watching the two chairs form. I know then that these people, or others like them, were the ones who raised the shroomtowns. When we wintered in New Absalom and places like it, we were living in their ruins.

  “Like that, do you?” Reggidel asks. He has misread my expression, seeing awe when what I feel is more akin to disappointment. “I’ve got about a hundred of them.” He replaces the disk in its case and begins sifting through the others. “Some are pretty showy. I can make a tiny little thunderstorm right over the ground. Comes about up to your knees. How about that?”

  “I have no desire to see any more of your tricks.”

  Reggidel looks up from his case. “They aren’t tricks, Naomi,” he says. “They’re called ‘artifices,’ and they’re meant as a demonstration.” He has been working one silver disk in his hand, and with nearly comical mistiming, the area over his head explodes in pink and purple sparks. He ducks, cursing under his breath.

  “I hate these stupid things,” he mutters. He clicks the case closed, shaking his head, and levels his gaze at me. “You’re a smart girl, Naomi. I can tell. You know what’s happening here, all around you, it can’t be just some illusion. You’ve seen things that shouldn’t be possible, but they’re happening anyway. And you have to be curious about how it’s done.”

  I am, of course. I am exceedingly curious, but I will not admit this to Censor Reggidel.

  “The truth, Naomi, the real truth, is that we have learned to harness a remarkable power, a power that makes the impossible possible.”

  Above his head, the contents of the train continue to soar back and forth with an unmistakable sense of purpose. A power, he says, one that renders impossible things real. A power that can create fire or wind or rain from nothing, that can take the massive bulk of this so-called harvester, a thing that should by all rights sit on the earth as heavily as any mountain, and set it in the sky. “You are talking about magic,” I say.

  “Magic.” Censor Reggidel uses the word wistfully, as if it comes from a time fondly remembered, now long past. “Yes, I suppose that’s as accurate a description as any. The folks in charge don’t much like it, though. Think it encourages too much of a superstitious outlook. The word we use is ‘thelemity.’” He regards his case of silver disks, contemplating another demonstration, perhaps. “Thelemity,” he repeats. “Think of it as another force of the universe, like gravity. Electricity isn’t a bad comparison, actually.” He holds up his case of disks. “My little toys here, and that great big harvester floating up above us, none of them would work unless we had a source of thelemity nearby.”

  “You mean to tell me this outpost of yours is built on some hallowed place, a land inhabited by faeries, where magic is free for the taking.” I am all scorn now, having determined to handle Censor Reggidel as I do Baby Adam when he comes round with childish tales of spooks and haints and goblins.

  “You aren’t too far off,” Reggidel says, pleased that I am playing along. “But thelemity doesn’t come from any specific place. It comes from people, very special people we call ‘fontani.’”

  “Fontani,” I repeat, making it sound as biting and skeptical as I can. We are speaking his language, the same one used in the townships, but the word sounds familiar. Not unlike our word “fountain.”

  “Yes, right. There’s one up there right now, on that harvester,” he says, pointing. He looks purposefully at me. “And if Vinneas and I are right, there’s another down here. One more test, and we’ll know for sure. But we need your full cooperation, Naomi.”

  There is no mistaking his meaning. Unbidden, a shiver of excitement slides over me at the prospect of witnessing true magic. I wonder how many other foolish children he has trapped by these same promises. “I have seen what use you make of your power,” I say, giving my contempt free rein. “I want no part in it. You would make me a workhorse to be yoked and driven, or else siphon and bottle my spirit and leave me an empty husk.”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Reggidel says. “This will all make sense once you understand a little more about thelemity. You just need to trust me.”

  “I will be six feet beneath the earth before I make that mistake again.”

  Censor Reggidel heaves a heavy sigh. “All right, Naomi. I’ll send you back to Settlement 225 if that’s what you want.”

  I cannot say with any surety that this is indeed what I want. My codesmen have volunteered for this Legion when I might have set out with nothing but Papa’s old fiddle for company, and I cannot in any conscience abandon them here. But nor can I be a part of Reggidel’s schemes. Weariness settles over me, and I finally take one of the shroomchairs. Reggidel watches me silently, seemingly just as tired as I am, and for a time we sit listening to the sound of water and wheat and cans and boxes levitating toward the ship above, until the quiet is broken by a new sound, first a loud roar, then something softer, discernible only as a change in the wind.

  “He’s back,” Censor Reggidel says, rising from his seat and nodding toward an approaching falcon-ship. “Vinneas. He’d better have brought us a miracle.”

  He has. At first it appears Vinneas has arrived with nothing aside from a grin substantially larger than the one he wore upon his departure. He slings down from his vehicle, the very picture of self-satisfaction, and I feel a sneer form on my face, but then he reaches up to help someone down after him. A tall girl dressed in white. She looks about, disoriented, scanning the terrain around her, then she calls out: “Naomi?” She has not yet seen me, and her voice is thin with panic.

  I try to call back to her, but find I cannot. I am unable to move. It is simply one thing too many, and finally I am overcome by everything I have witnessed these past days, the contradictory sights, the multiplication of impossibilities. But then she sees me, and I am caught up in her arms, and she is solid and true and real. “Oh, Sunshine,” she says, her voice heavy with tears, “I thought you were gone forever.” And though at any other time I would never consent to being lifted up like a child, I do not complain as she holds me and covers my head in kisses, as excessive in her affection as she has always been, returned to me against all promise and reason, my sister, Rae.

  PART TWO

  COSMIC EMPTINESS IN MY SOUL

  NINETEEN

  RAE

  I opened my eyes to warm rain falling, fine mist dewing the grass and gathering in spheres on the leaves to roll and plunge plopping through the branches. The air was thick but not uncomfortably humid, light clouds drifting eastward, and in the west, the warm hues of sunset. The cold, stark air, th
e havoc of snowflakes I remembered, had gone without a trace. I could almost imagine I had awakened in some lush paradise, the Elysium Papa was known to discuss in his more whimsical moments, or Valhalla, in which Reaper Thom professed firm and unironical belief.

  As my thoughts settled into order, it occurred to me that in an afterlife for the gallant dead, my shirts and britches would likely not be so damp, which was to say soaked through. Moreover, once I took stock of my surroundings, I found them quite familiar in arrangement if not in climate. It seemed far more likely I had remained here for some unknown stretch of time, perhaps one measured in months or years rather than days. A stone maiden sleeping undisturbed as the seasons passed around her. Such fairy-tale notions would come to seem irredeemably silly to me very soon; still later I would decide them entirely appropriate for the place where I had turned up, this juncture between the real and unreal.

  The path leading to the spot where I lay shone bright and clear in my mind. I pictured myself standing among the breached mountains over the Valley of Endless Summer, declaring my intention to venture down and confirm the place free of threats, and I cursed myself for every brand of foolish I could name. What I ought to have done was lead the scouts back to New Absalom and see to it our coda was packed up and lit out for Emily’s Lake or Black Mills or any other of our winter holdfasts. Coming into this valley was recklessness on a par with the worst of my wild and profligate youth, when I gained a reputation for never turning down a dare. I am on record as running a mile with a live honeybee in my mouth, diving thirty feet to the wreck of some ancient hulk sunk off the southern marshlands, climbing to the top of a ruined monument deep in Nworkie territory, and all other manner of lunacy I thought I had outgrown until I saw the look on Naomi’s face as she realized we would likely have to abandon New Absalom. Her disappointment was simply more than I could bear, and I believe it is to blame for my sudden attack of stupidity.