Kata looked at the minotaur: his great hulking frame, his rippling body. “Who can say what is possible,” she said. She looked back at the child, who dipped his hand in the water. He tasted it, stuck his tongue out, and grimaced. Kata smiled and looked up at the sky.
Above her, the wind whipped the clouds away, as if they were pulling back a great sheet. The unwrapped sky was littered with stars of diamond-white brilliance. In between them, patches of jet black, the vast reaches of the universe. In that moment, everything was bathed in the clear light. When they finally returned to the city, the same brilliance seemed to embrace everything. The corners of the buildings were sharp and crisp, water in the gutters shone like rivers of silver, the world seemed once more a place of potential, as if possibility had been set free, just like the unwrapped sky above.
FIFTY
About halfway up the mountain face behind Caeli-Amur, a figure stepped out of the darkness. It was wrapped in a cloak and a hood, and appeared to emerge from the very rock, the soft glow of a lantern in hand. Its other hand held the stirrups of a horse. Hidden from view was an opening in the mountain’s rocky face, a tunnel that led through the labyrinthine passages all the way through the mountain, past the catacombs and the strange ancient city, past underground streams and dams, close to the Undercity of the Elo-Talern. The figure dropped a heavy bag onto the ground and, turning a knob on the lamp, killed its flame.
Armand stretched in the cool of the early morning. He was born for just this moment. The times demanded a certain sort of individual—his sort of person. Not like Director Autec, who was nothing but a tramworker. It was true, Autec had understood certain realities: There would need to be change in Caeli-Amur, change in order that things could remain the same. A Forum perhaps, laws and rules, regulations, an overarching power higher than the Houses. A paramount authority, like the Directorate in Varenis: it was Armand’s destiny to become such a force. When he returned to Caeli-Amur there would be war. Order required force, and he could foresee a brutal struggle to crush all forms of sedition. But in his mind, he pictured a new Caeli-Amur, a Caeli-Amur returned to its days of glory. All things would find their proper place.
Armand strapped the bag onto the side of the horse. Inside was everything he had taken from Technis: the subterranean maps, lists of seditionists, lists of officiates, plans of the city, and wrapped in a silk overlay, the most valuable of possessions—the Prism of Alerion. He had carefully informed his contacts, mobilized his supporters to be ready for his return. Then he had taken a horse from the Technis stables and used the copies of the maps to pass through the hidden passageways to the other side of the mountain.
When the bag was fixed, he swung up onto the saddle. The pathway was steep and possibly dangerous, but he was anxious to be well on the road to Varenis by the time the sun rose over the sea to the east.
With this he led the horse slowly down the side of the mountain. By the time he reached the flat of the valley, the sky to the east was lightening. Before long, he was on the wide cobblestoned road that led northwest toward Varenis. He broke into a gallop, feeling the wind in his hair, the powerful rhythm of the horse beneath him. Finally, when he was surrounded by the foothills, the sun broke over the horizon behind him. Although the road was still shaded, the hills to his west lit up with golden light, the gray stony surfaces brought into sharp focus. North, he thought, to Varenis, the greatest city in the world. There his fate awaited him, and the fate of Caeli-Amur itself.
FIFTY-ONE
At the edge of a high cliff on the island stood a figure. The wind blew her raven black hair from her face. Her skin was clear and fresh, her eyes huge and green. She looked over the sea, which was unusually aqua colored as it coursed around the dangerous shoals and channels of the Taritian Archipelago. From where she stood, she could see the sunken wrecks of ships that had tried to navigate those treacherous straits, which were impossible to map. Even now she could perceive the islands shifting slightly, moving around each other so that soon they would find a whole new configuration and her view would be different and fresh. The thought filled her with joy. A new configuration, she thought to herself.
She breathed in the cool salt air and the wind felt fresh and cool on her skin. I am free, Paxaea thought. The time in Caeli-Amur was now a distant memory. Even the pain of it no longer burned her as it once had. She touched her neck, where the torc had once been clamped. Boris Autec had been a curious man, so filled with contradiction. He had been alien to her, not just his strange beady eyes, his round fleshy face, but his odd emotions, his desire for—for what? She couldn’t tell. She could not feel sorry for him, and yet, of all the people in Caeli-Amur, he had freed her. She had left the House Complex with a long straggle of others: prisoners, thaumaturgists, lower officials. She had bought passage on a clipper headed for Numeria. The sailors were filled with radical ideas. They sailed as close to Taritia as was safe and gave her one of the small rowboats to take her the rest of the way. It had been dangerous, but she knew the shoals and reefs well. Finally, she came home to her island, her very own island, free of anyone else.
Now, standing on the edge of the cliff, she threw her head back and cried out. Her voice carried powerfully over the islands and out over the ocean, in the direction of the city she had left. From another island another cry merged with hers. And then yet another carried from another island, and yet another, until the archipelago rang with the sounds of these cries, beautiful and terrible and seductive. The figure stopped her call and listened to the Sirens’ chorus. And then she opened her throat and called out again. She was free.
Unwrapped Sky Page 44