by Chuck Wendig
“I know.”
And with that, she hears the elevator doors crank open, hears the Elevator Man announce the uppermost floor to whoever has come to get her and deliver her to the chambers below.
“It’s time,” she says.
She and the young architect head to the elevator.
A massive, sprawling room. Black table. Red carpets. Drapes the color of pressed wine. An ugly space. Enyastasia is sure it has some name, a name that harkens to some period of design that the Empyrean glitterati all know about—but Enyastasia just thinks it looks old. This was the first flotilla, after all, and it hasn’t seen much updating while Luzerne was at the head of this table.
Ten Grand Architects sit around the table. Seven men. Three women. Most of them old—though, really, Enyastasia wouldn’t use the word old so much as she’d call them all “decrepit skin-kites aloft on the winds of their own gaseous emissions.”
Two chairs are empty.
The head of the table: Berwin Luzerne.
The other side: the chair reserved for her grandfather Stirling Ormond.
Heron hovers behind her, nervous energy bleeding off him like heat vapors off a hot hover-panel.
The architects share a series of uncomfortable looks. Miranda Woodwick, who looks quite a bit like a constipated stork, flits a gaze toward the round, toadlike Ernesto Gravenost—who had seemed to be melting into his chair but now perks up at her nervous stare. He shrugs. She jiggles her head as if to say, Someone, please speak.
Someone does. Fentinue Crisler clears his throat, steeples his fingers, and leans forward with his elbows on the table. Everything about him looks tight, as if he’s a corpse left in the sun, its flesh drawn tighter and tighter as all the moisture dried up.
“Thank you for coming today,” he says, his voice with a crisp edge to it. As if someone is giving him a slight pinch whenever he reaches the end of a sentence. “You, too, Mister Yong—”
“Can we dispense with all the polite folderol and get to the matter at hand?” Enyastasia asks. “Is Project Raven allowed to continue or not?”
Again more looks at the table.
Fentinue speaks, almost as if he’s irritated nobody else will. “The untimely death of Berwin Luzerne”—she hears the slightest sigh of relief from Heron, behind her; relief, most likely, that they’re not on the hook for murder—“has left us reeling and grasping for a way forward in this dark time. But we are prepared to continue with his recommendation despite his demise, that Project Raven be canceled. We have a way forward—”
“You’re weak,” she says. A collective gasp from the table. The regal old Jorum Grantham looks like he’s about to foul his seersucker pants. “I came here days after the Saranyu fell. Days after my grandfather died because of an attack by a cell of terrorists you were incapable of identifying and incapacitating. And I said to you that I had a plan. One part of that was the creation of a war-flotilla, and I recommended this bright young architect to build the Herfjotur. The other part of it was the commission of a new band of soldiers. That was Project Raven, and I am to be its head.”
They’re still staring at her, shocked by her impudence.
Ernesto Gravenost finally speaks, and when he does it’s all wet flapping and rheumy lung-grumble, as if every word first has to pass through a filter of pudding. “We already have a two-pronged approach. We have the Initiative, and we have Herfjotur, which, yes, yes, we have you to thank for that idea and for sending Architect Yong in our direction. We are most gracious. We are prepared to offer you a notable tract of real estate in the Palace Hill District of the Oshadagea—a vineyard, a stable, a small sky-yacht—”
“I don’t want a vineyard, or a boat, or a bunch of godsdamn ponies. I want what I have been building to for the last year. I am Dirae to my Harpies, and we are prepared to go to war.” She sneers. “Have you seen the visi-feeds? Have you seen what the animals are up to down there in the dust and the pollen? Yes, the metal men of the Initiative set up a blockade around the Saranyu’s wreckage. But look what happened! The terrorists attacked it. Broke the line. Destroyed a dozen mechanicals. Destroyed a ketch-boat. Killed a dozen more of our guardsmen. Does that feel effective to you?”
Ernesto blusters: “We will soon have utter supremacy of land and sky with our Initiative in place and the Herfjotur flying in less than a month—”
“Even if you had those a year ago, would it have stopped the Saranyu from crashing to the Heartland? You can’t stomp ants and think you’ve killed the colony. You need to kill the queen. They have our flotilla and have claimed it as a city. They have the love of the Heartlanders. And now they have Blighted monsters fighting for them—monsters who can take apart your precious metal men with barely more than a thought. But sure, of course, let’s keep pretending that every problem is a nail and we have the hammer.” She leers, wild-eyed, feeling a fire going wild inside her. “Sometimes, you need a knife.”
“And you’re that knife?” Fentinue asks.
“Not me. I’m just the handle. My girls, the Harpies, are the blade.”
“But you are just girls,” Ernesto says—contained within that sentiment she hears incredulity, but also anger. She can practically hear his thoughts: How dare these girls think that they can be soldiers for the Empyrean?
She’s about to let fly with some choice profanities, but it turns out, she doesn’t have to. One of the women present, Miranda Woodwick, lifts her cranelike head and narrows her eyes: “What’s wrong with being female?”
The other two female architects present—Isme D’kard and Ginger Wellington—both nod their heads in agreement.
“Well, it’s not—it’s not just that!” Ernesto blubbers. “They’re girls. Children. It’s not fitting for them to become . . . a . . . a weapon.”
“I designed the Kingfisher model of ketch-boat when I was fifteen years old,” Miranda says, chin lifted. “What did you do at fifteen, Ernesto? Eat, drink, be merry on the deck of your father’s yacht?”
Ernesto blubbers. “Not all children are eager. I came to my role and my talents in time—”
“I have come to mine now,” Enyastasia says, voice raised. “So let me use my talents for the good of the Empyrean. This is not the time to be soft-handed. I am the handle of the knife. Wield the blade, godsdamnit.” With that last word she pounds the table with the flat of her hand.
They all quietly look to one another, shifting uncomfortably in their seats. Ernesto biting a thumbnail. Jorum squirming like something’s trying to burrow into him from below. Fentinue looking left, right, left, right. “I think it’s time to vote, then, on Project Raven.”
And they vote.
Below, clouds snake along the streets of the Ilmatar flotilla. Some drift up and over the buildings, like a consumptive force. Enyastasia wonders what it would be like to jump. To fall. To whiff through those clouds and die a half-moment later. She’s considering it, her hands on the edge, her feet itching to pick her up and carry her over. Kill yourself. Die. Show them what they lost in you. Let the guilt destroy them.
But that’s not what would happen. They’d all moo and cluck and bow their heads and shrug. They’d say she was troubled. They’d say her grandfather was addlepated. They’d say her father was a monster.
And then they’d go on feeling plenty justified for voting her down, for killing Project Raven before it ever took flight.
Enyastasia quakes.
Heron is down there, being congratulated. Handshakes pistoning his arm so hard it’s probably about to fall off at the elbow.
All she’s done. For nothing. Just to prop him up.
A presence behind her. A part of her thinks: Doesn’t matter who it is. Just spin around, grab them, throw them off the edge. Because whoever approaches isn’t her ally. She has no allies but her Harpies. The scarred-up girls who are daughters to those who died on the Saranyu. Survivors. Like her.
Instead, she waits.
The voice that speaks surprises her.
“I�
�m sorry about that in there,” Miranda Woodwick says.
“You voted for me.”
“So did a few others. But the numbers just weren’t there.”
“No.” That word spoken with a clenched jaw.
Miranda steps up next to her. Cranes her long neck out, looks down, following Enyastasia’s own gaze. “You’re different than all the others.”
“Different. Yes.” She hesitates. “Broken. I’m broken.”
“Broken does not mean ruined. Are you familiar with the art of golden joining?” Enyastasia shakes her head, and Miranda continues: “When a ceramic pot, or vase, or cup is broken, one may mend it with a resin mixed with powdered gold. The broken pot then regains its utility and gains an even greater beauty.”
“I like that.”
“Me, too.” Miranda looks her up and down. “I’d always heard rumors about you. Stirling was tight-lipped, never wanted to say much. Your father—he was the one, wasn’t he? The one who broke you, I mean.”
Enyastasia offers a stiff nod. She’s not used to talking about this. Nobody ever asks, probably because they don’t want to know. Nobody up here in the sky wants to be forced to think about troubling things. They’d rather flit away like swifts on curved wing, ducking and dodging.
She says, “My mother died in childbirth. Leaving me with a father who didn’t want me, a father who was the son of Stirling Ormond, a Grand Architect who had no time for him, and so my father had no time for me. Problem is, he had already burned so many bridges on the flotillas thanks to his behavior that nobody wanted him around. He took his yacht—the Argus—and in a fit of drunkenness took me with him. I was three at the time. He wanted to live his life: women, sometimes boys, gin, poppy-smoke. So me, he just locked away. A yacht isn’t big. My bedroom was a box.”
“Did he . . .” The words trail off.
“No, he didn’t. But if I dared to speak up or cry out he beat me until I was quiet. I stayed in that box for so long my legs began to atrophy.” And that’s why I learned to be strong. She doesn’t say that, for some reason. Given the votes, it feels suddenly unearned. “Eventually my father killed himself. Drunk, he fell off the yacht. Or so I’m told.”
“You didn’t kill him, then.”
“I wish I had.”
The wind howls, filling the silence between the two.
“Men always want to put us in boxes,” Miranda says finally. “They want to keep us there, out of sight, out of mind. Make our limbs weak so we can’t fight back. They would very much prefer us to be props—a rack, perhaps, to hold up their hats, a shelf to display their trophies. I am pleased to hear that you are not so easily contained.”
Enyastasia raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“What if I told you that Project Raven can still continue?”
She turns her whole body to face Miranda. “Then I’d say I’m listening.”
“Good.” Miranda leans forward, lowers her voice. “The ones in there who voted against you are men. They are empty-headed old cowards who will die sooner than later. I’m old, too, but wise enough to know that I’m not the future. I see that change is upon us. You’re the change I want to see. They’re putting you in a box. It’s time to get out of the box, Miss Ormond.”
Enyastasia is about to say something, but then the older woman takes her hand and peels the fingers back—Miranda presses a small piece of paper into her palm.
“What—?”
“A list of locations. Where those men in there lay their heads at night. Take away their voices, take away their votes, and the raven will fly again.”
PART TWO
PEGASUS CITY
BIG SKY BROKEN
HE’S ALIVE.
Lane’s mouth is dry as hardtack. His hands are sweat-slick.
Cael is alive.
Lane wants to be happy. And he is—but that happiness is a small flame in a roaring wind. A wind of great worry. A wind with teeth. Last time they saw each other, Cael killed Billy Cross, Killian’s first mate. Then Cael disappeared out the back of the trawler, breaking through the window in Killian’s chambers—and then he was gone.
Rumors had persisted. That Cael was alive out there. That he was on the Saranyu when it fell. Lane tried not to give too much to those rumors—as if he didn’t already feel guilty enough about the things he’d done to remove the Empyrean yoke from the Heartland’s neck. He tried to tell himself that back then, on the trawler, things would’ve been different if he just could’ve talked it out. If he’d been there to help mediate between Cael and Killian. Gods, that feels like forever ago.
He walks through the center of the city. Folks are up and out today. They’re happy. He can feel the energy. Over there, a couple kids have set up a line of enemy soldiers made out of buckets and boxes—one bucket has been painted like a horse’s head, another like the dead, leering face of one of the mechanical men. The kids take stakes and sticks and use them like they’re pretend sonic weapons and swords, and attack—shrieking and war-whooping, knocking buckets up in the air and whacking them again on the way down.
Couple tents away, a few raider women sit outside a fixy still—plastic jugs and medical tubing and glass bottles. The smell coming off that contraption could burn the hairs right out of your nose. Any fly that gets within fifteen feet of that thing is gonna drop dead of drunk. The women laugh and sharpen machetes, and as Lane passes they give him a respectful nod and two-finger half-salute, half-wave.
As he walks, that’s the reaction he gets. Nods. Waves. Smiles. Chins up. Chests out. Like they’re proud of themselves for following him, which is even better than them being proud of him alone.
And yet he feels like an imposter. Like somewhere in the backs of their heads they might still have little drawers of judgment reserved just for him, and at any moment they might open those drawers and let the bad thoughts out. You don’t belong here. You’re too young. Too dumb. You’re no captain, no mayor, no nothing. Stowaway. Pretender. Naive little faggot.
Though he wonders:
Is that judgment coming from other people, or from himself?
Shit.
He chews on a birch stick, nods, and waves, and tries to muster a smile. Ahead, in what passes for the city center—Boxelder Circle—he sees the lunch wagon set up. Sign hand-painted above it: SULLY’S KITCHEN. Someone painted a likeness of Sully the Cook on it—a bit cartoonish-looking, the cheeks too round and red, the eyes big like a puppy’s eyes. Of course, the truck is Sully’s only in name, only in memory. Sully’s dead now. Made into a red mess by the mechanicals of Tuttle’s Church.
All around the wagon, raiders and Heartlanders gather. Lots of laughing and big voices booming from men and women alike. The rhythm of stories going around—the words lost as the voices compete, but Lane knows the rhythm of a tale told. He spies a few bottles of Micky Finn’s gin going around in a circuit, and a few bottles of Jack Kenny whiskey.
In the center of it, there he is.
Cael McAvoy. Captain of the Big Sky Scavengers.
Once, one of Lane’s best friends.
Still is, right? that voice asks.
Way it asks, it doesn’t sound so sure.
Suddenly, a presence presses up against him, preceded only by a moment’s worth of septic breath. Killian. He reaches for Lane’s arm and holds it tight—the man’s skin is almost pricky-cold, yet somehow damp.
“Your friend has returned from the dead,” Killian says in Lane’s ear.
“It’s a good day,” Lane says.
“Is it? He’s a Blighter and a killer. Don’t forget Billy.”
“Billy was your first mate, not mine.”
“Yes, but I’m yours. First mate, best friend, and everything else,” Killian sneers. “Cael McAvoy is a bad seed from whence grows a devilish tree. He’s got the stink of Old Scratch about him. Chaosbringer. Hellhound. Shit-stirrer.”
“Control yourself, you’re drunk,” Lane hisses.
“More than drunk. High as a skiff, I am.” Killian grins.
Lane pushes past him into the crowd. Killian remains behind, though his words chase Lane like a hungry ghost.
Folks see Lane coming through, and they stop and say his name then step aside—cutting a path for him that leads right to Cael.
Everyone goes quiet.
Cael isn’t alone. My gods. My gods. It’s Gwennie. And Wanda! He feels a fishhook tug at the corner of his mouth, a grin he can’t help emerging into the light—a grin that quickly stalls when he sees the faraway look in Gwennie’s eyes; the shining green leaf-scale running up Wanda’s neck like a swirl of mold on a fence-board; the pulsing, twitching vine braided around Cael’s arm. Just behind them: Rigo, with the same bombed-out look as Gwennie, with his one leg long gone. And so Lane’s initial surge of the gang is all here quickly dies back and he’s left with a hollow feeling. Boxelder feels suddenly very far away both in distance and in time. A thousand miles and a hundred lifetimes between them. But Lane keeps the grin, tries to hold it there, pinned to his face like a sign nailed to a wall—
He hesitates, hangs back a little.
Cael does no such thing.
Cael barks a laugh, the kind of laugh that isn’t forced, that sounds like it kicked its way out of him like a foot through a rotten door. He springs up and collides with Lane and wraps his arms around him. Lane can’t help it—he goes with it, feels a kind of buried love and brotherhood surge through him. The two hug for a while, squeezing each other so hard it feels like one of them is going to pop. And yet, Lane feels it—the Blight. It’s there, too, like a third person trying to get in on the reunited lovefest. He can feel it throbbing along the margins of Cael’s lower back like a dull heartbeat.
Then there really is a third person in on the embrace—Rigo, slow to move but surely eager to join, is grunting happily as he joins the hug. And then Gwennie’s there, too—hanging slightly back like she’s unsure of herself, like she doesn’t know if she belongs anymore. But Rigo hooks her and suddenly they’re not so much a bunch of old friends but one entity, one mind, one crew: the Big Sky Scavengers.