by Sarah Zettel
“Wait.” Aria put the light down and unlooped her sling from around her belt. She unsnapped one of the belt pockets and brought out a handful of stones she’d kept from the fray with the Narroways soldiers. “There’s not much room in here.” She loaded the sling and hefted it to test the weight. “But it’ll be better than nothing.”
Jay scowled at her weapon. “Just make sure you miss me.”
“This despised one will do her best, my Lord Skyman,” Aria answered blandly. Jay gave no sign of having caught her sarcasm. He just hefted his gun and slipped carefully down the corridor.
Aria, suppressing a sigh, picked up the light in her free hand and followed.
Because he didn’t dare take his eyes off Heart, Eric didn’t see when they finally crossed the Narroways road. He didn’t need to. He could hear the fading thunder of the attack. It bounced off the walls, a bizarre staccato noise, not like real thunder at all.
Heart was chanting again. From the slow rise and fall in the cadence, Eric guessed it was the entire prayer for safety.
A moment later a strangely dry, hot wind blew the first faint scent of smoke through the sledge.
“I’m taking us to the overlook,” said Heart through clenched teeth. “Unless you want me to drive us straight into a fire.”
“All right.” Eric felt like kicking himself for forgetting the overlook. It was one of the many escarpments in Broken Canyon’s chaotic breadth. From its ledge, you could look down the length of the canyon and see the city itself. Narroways usually kept a watch there.
Eric genuinely doubted there’d be one there now. He tightened his fists until his knuckles turned white. The dry wind scraped gently against them. A small black flake settled between the knuckles of his index and middle fingers. Eric stared at it. Another came to rest beside it.
Ash.
The sledge jolted and skidded to a halt. Heart stood still between the driver’s rails for a moment. Then he climbed off, one jerky step at a time, holding his head rigidly still above his shoulders.
Eric set his jaw and tried to prepare himself for what he’d see. He knew it was was impossible, but he had to try anyway. Eric climbed out after his brother-in-law.
The wind was always strong in the Midway Breach, and even more so on the overlook. It hit him with a blast of heat that tried to drag his skin off his face. Eric screwed up his eyes and looked into the wind. Ash stung his cheeks and nostrils and he coughed, inhaling more ash.
Heart of the Seablade sank to his knees. Ash wafted over him, tracing long black trails around his shoulders. Eric waded through wind to stand beside him. He saw the stone house that had been built to hold the watch. Its shutters and door were flung wide-open, but no one stirred inside. He saw the eddies and whorls of the granite under his feet, washed by wind and water until there was nothing left but pink-and-black stone with an unevenly sculpted lip. Ash skittered across the stone.
Eric made himself look up.
He had only stood on the Narroways overlook once in his life. The Kings of Narroways did not welcome First City Nobility up here. He had never forgotten the long panorama of greens and browns, all of it framed by Broken Canyon’s splendor.
Now night had fallen between the gold-streaked Walls. A roiling cloud blotted out the far reaches of the canyon. It spread out its tendrils until it stroked the Walls. Black streaks cut across the bands of mauve and maroon and silver that the Nameless had painted to make up for the quarrel they had had.
They were too far to away to hear any distinct noises. The vague thunder that was probably made up of roaring flames and crumbling stone still rumbled under the shriek of the wind around their ears. The same wind carried a stench to them. Thick and greasy and acrid, it drove itself straight to the back of Eric’s throat. He tasted ash and death and he
“Mind was down there,” said Heart. “Mind was still down there.” He looked up at Eric like a bewildered child.
“This is how the Skymen value us,” Eric told nun bitterly. “They value us so much that they’ll kill some of us to frighten the rest of us into submission. Come on, Heart.” He turned away. More than just ash stung his eyes now. “We have to find out if Aria is all right.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“Then we go back into the marshes and start looking for her mother,” he said to the empty watch house, “or for her daughter, or for anyone who’s related to her. The Servant went to one Notouch, didn’t he? We’ll go to all of them.” He looked back grimly at the cloud of ash and smoke that had been a city whose name was used as a synonym for defiance. “On our knees, if we have to.”
The toes of Jay’s boots hung over the edge of the second drop. A dim light shone up from the shaft and turned his weather-browned skin the color of dirty paste. At his direction, Aria kept her penlight pointed the other way, so only the dimmest reflection touched the mouth of the well. Jay’s gun peered down the well first, then his eyes followed.
Aria shifted her weight from foot to foot, trying to ease away the feeling of being watched. A shadow drifted up from the floor to the curved wall and paused right at her eye level. It hung there, almost as if it was expecting something.
No shadow did that for Jay. Aria swallowed hard and tried not to remember what Eric had said about finding the Nameless Powers down here.
Jay waved to her frantically. His own shadow made an opaque, black streak over the transluscent grey that surrounded them. Aria moved closer to his side, still keeping the light angled away from the well. Jay pointed at the ladder, then at himself, at his torque, back to the ladder, then to her. Then he pressed the side of his index finger against his lips.
Aria nodded, bridling at his insistence of trying to repeat the plan they had already worked out in the middle of the tunnel. Jay would go down the ladder first. If nothing happened, he would signal her through his torque. Aria was to follow, and to stay silent.
Jay bolstered the gun and gripped the sides of the rope ladder where amber blobs of industrial strength glue held it to the tunnel floor.
Aria sat down and switched off the light. Darkness dropped over her. Jay became little more than a silhouette as he took a deep breath and slid himself down far enough to reach the rungs with his boots. She heard the leather creak minutely under his weight, and creak again and again each time his foot settled on a new rung.
Aria wished he could have told her how many rungs there were, then she would have had some idea how long she would need to sit here in the darkness. Darkness itself didn’t frighten her. She’d lived the better part of her life in the nighttime or in shadows. But this wasn’t the living darkness of the Realm’s night, or even the expectant darkness of the void between the stars. This was a muffling, confining darkness that wrapped around her and pinned her down, making it that much easier for whatever waited behind the walls to reach out and take her. The glowing well beside her didn’t help. It just collected shadows around her, as if they were moths coming to peer at a candle.
All at once, Jay’s voice echoed up the shaft. Her disk delivered nothing but a string of nonsense syllables. Aria drew her legs under her. A staccato noise like hail on granite rang against the walls. Light flashed brightly in time with the deafening sound. Aria threw herself away from the edge of the well and pressed back against the shadow-filled wall. She glanced back toward the entrance.
Run? I could, but where to? She gritted her teeth and clutched her sling. What I need is here.
Another flash of light and burst of hail shot out of the well. Then she heard Jay scream.
Aria picked a stone out of the sling’s pouch and crawled over to the well’s mouth. She raised her hand, ready to hurl it down. She peered over the edge.
Below her, Jay slumped against the tunnel wall. His eyes glistened brightly in the reflected light. There was no other movement visible, except for the restless shadows in the walls.
Aria dropped the stone back into the sling. She stuck the straps between her teeth and grabbed the ladder’s rungs. She
started down as fast as she could. The ladder twisted and wriggled under her hands and she cursed it under her breath, wishing for the steady metal rungs that had carried her out of Haron Station with Eric.
A shadow shot up the wall and stopped three inches from her nose. Aria gasped and almost lost her grip on her sling. The shadow hung in front of her eyes. Its edges expanded and contracted as if it was breathing. Aria swung her foot around to find the next rung. As her eye level dropped, so did the shadow. Aria felt her pulse flutter like a trapped wasp in her wrists, but she forced herself to keep climbing. The shadow followed her all the way down.
At last, she was close enough to the floor to let go of the wriggling ladder and drop the last three feet. Jay curled against the wall. His weapon lay on the floor at his feet. Down the tunnel, toward a lighted archway, lay three corpses. Human gore spattered the walls around them. Aria swallowed against the sweet, coppery scent that filled the tunnel.
Aria turned her eyes quickly back to Jay. His jaw was slack and a small trail of spittle trickled out over his lips. His eyes were open but he didn’t blink, or track her as she leaned over him.
“Jay.” She laid her hands against his chest and felt his shallow breathing. “Jay!” The spittle dripped onto the back of his hand, and Aria saw a dart with a sapphire blue shaft sticking out of his arm.
“Garismit’s Eyes.” Aria plucked the dart free. She bit her lip.
Probably not poison, or he’d be dead already. Probably just drugged. It’ll wear off. She sniffed the dart carefully and smelled crushed leaves and antiseptic. She glanced down at Jay’s paralyzed figure. In time.
But I need him now.
Aria tucked the sling into her belt and opened the pouch of stones. She touched her fingertips to one of the cool spheres.
Her mind opened with staggering force. Light surged through her, illuminating every thought, every facet of knowledge that she carried inside her. The substance on the dart was a paralyzing agent. It would wear off in about four hours if not reinforced. When used as a weapon against people or animals, an antidote was generally carried.
Aria shook her hand and the stone fell, but the light didn’t fade. It carried her down the tunnel to the corpses. The light was a shield and a bind. It moved her hands while she watched, bemused, from the back of her mind. Her strong fingers ripped open the corpse’s tool belt and found a flat case the size of her hand. Her fingernail pried the cover open. Inside lay a selection of color-coded needles. Her hand selected the blue one and the light drew her back to Jay. It reached her arm out until the needle drove itself into the Skyman’s neck. It held her there for a dozen or so heartbeats and then drew her arm back. The needle came away with it, and Jay blinked.
The light winked out and Aria dropped to the floor. Her heart spasmed madly and her stomach heaved. She coughed and gagged against her bile.
“Aria?” Jay croaked.
“I’m here.” She pushed herself upright.
Jay was sitting up too. His eyes looked dazed, but at least they were focusing.
“What happened?” he asked.
Aria swallowed bile and blotted at the sweat on her forehead with the back of her hand. “I don’t know.” The stone lay on the floor, as perfect and beautiful as it had ever been. “This place may be having an effect on my namestones.” Or on me. She lifted her free hand away from the floor that felt so much like the skin of her stones. Nameless Powers preserve me.
“Can you stand?” Jay drew his legs under him in a series of short jerks.
Aria nodded. “Can you?”
Pressing his hands against the corridor wall, Jay climbed to his feet. “Looks like it.” He lifted his hands carefully away from the wall, and stayed standing.
Aria undid her headcloth and wrapped one end around her hand before she picked up her stone to return it to the pouch. She clenched her muscles and lifted herself to her feet without touching the corridor’s surface.
“Let’s go.” Jay’s walk was wobbly at first, but it improved rapidly. He stepped between the corpses without hesitation, or even a second look.
Aria felt a cold void in the pit of her stomach. There were three bodies on the floor, and Jay had killed them all. That merited something, a prayer, or a curse at the very least.
What have I allied my self with? she wondered as she picked her own path between them. She tried to tell herself that she was just overreacting. She had seen too much death and blood in the past two days and it was making her squeamish.
The cold did not fade. She touched the pouch of her sling to check the load.
Walk softly, whatever you are, she thought toward Jay’s back as he disappeared through the lighted archway. Neither you nor I have any time for games.
She followed Jay through the threshold, very aware of the cluster of shadows trailing along at her right hand. They did not pause for blood or death either.
The chamber beyond the archway was even more staggeringly strange than the common room aboard the U-Kenai had been. Feathery stars pressed against the walls, creating a net that caught the drifting shadows and held them in place.
So they can get a really long look. Aria shuddered.
Then, she saw the bank of arias. A dozen stones, sisters to the ones she had carried for all her adult life, nestled in fitted sockets and reflecting the patterns of light and shadow that filled the bizarre room.
Jay stood beside the bank, waiting for her with a look close to lust in his eyes. His poncho hung loosely about his shoulders and she could see the holster for his weapon on his hip.
“Is there anything I need to do?” he asked. His voice was carefully controlled. It betrayed no emotion.
Aria’s gaze swept across the stones. The air in the room was all but humming from the tension Jay radiated.
I wish I’d come alone. I wish I’d brought Eric. She rubbed her palm against her stones’ pouch, feeling the smooth, soft leather. Ancestress, you had the Servant with you. I have no idea what I’ve brought with me.
She looked hungrily at the stones that waited in front of her like an invitation.
I have to do this, and I have to have someone to stand by. The Vitae could send reinforcements at any time. The stones could overwhelm me like they did Broken Trail.
“Just keep watch,” she said to Jay. “If anything happens, pull me away from the stones.” Jay nodded, but the shining eagerness hadn’t left his eyes.
Will he do it? She bit her lip. Well, at least nothing’s going to sneak up behind me. The vision of the Vitae corpses came to her far too clearly.
The stones gleamed in their sockets, right where her hands would rest comfortably if she sat in the rotted chair in front of the bank. She reached out toward the closest sphere. Her mouth went dry in the same instant. She closed her eyes and tried to keep her mind open as she dropped her hand onto the smooth, cool curve.
A flood wave of sensations crashed down on her. Every sense screamed in instant pain as blazing colors, distorted sounds, a thousand overwhelming smells drove straight into her, pummeling every nerve. Underneath it all rose a hideous incomprehensible pleading. Someone, somewhere, begged to be heard.
But she couldn’t hear. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t sort out any of the burning, blazing, stench that poured through her.
As fast as it began, it was gone. She was back in her own body with nothing but her own senses and the world immediately outside them. Arms cradled her.
Eric? she thought with a kind of instinctual need. She peeled open her eyes. Jay’s face leaned over her, blocking out the ceiling.
“You fell.” He blurted the words out. “What happened?”
The abrupt question brought old, comfortable anger to her. “This despised one is fine, thank you for asking, my lord.” Aria gripped the edge of the bank and pulled herself out of his arms. The shock was fading rapidly. She actually felt surprisingly well, except for the raw sensation in her heart left from the strange, strong pleading that she’d felt, more than heard.
She picked herself up off the floor and eyed the arias in their sockets.
“Perhaps,” she murmured, more to herself than to Jay, “the problem is that these are not my stones.”
Aria undid her pouch and drew out one of her namestones. She dropped it into an empty socket. It landed with a sharp click. She leaned her palm against it and closed her eyes.
For a long moment, she did nothing but stand there looking intently at the insides of her eyelids and feeling mildly foolish.
Then, something stirred. Her heart began to beat lightly, quickly. Something shifted. She could taste iron in her mouth and feel the air tingling in her lungs. The floor pushed heavily against the bottoms of her boots, just like the stone pushed against her palm. Her awareness stretched down to the floor and out to the stone. She met no resistance. She passed through the pressure and expanded, spreading herself out through the floor until she found the walls. She arched up to meet herself where she filled the control console. She wrapped herself solidly around the room as if she was embracing one of her children.
Aria opened her eyes. She saw her hand on the stone, but the awareness of it was superimposed over the sight of the rest of the room, all of it, seen from all angles. She looked up from the floor and down from the ceiling and out from all the walls. She felt the disturbances Jay’s breath made in the air and the heat from his body, and her own. She felt the gentle pressure where feet stood. She felt portions of the room stir, as she might feel her heart beat, or her lungs breathe.
Past all this lay another great space. She knew that, and she knew it was at the same time far beyond her and immediately within reach, and…Aria leaned toward it.
There was someone else out there. She could hear them crying in that distant vastness.
Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go!
Aria gathered herself together and willed herself to look toward the plea.
It was like looking out the view wall toward the stars. Aria felt the old vertigo rock her mind.