by Liz Delton
A Rift Between Cities
Liz Delton
A RIFT BETWEEN CITIES
by Liz Delton
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons is
entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 Liz Delton
All rights reserved.
Edited by Jo Anderson
Cover art and map by Liz Delton
Seals for the Four Cities by Christopher Creed.
Select quote excerpted from Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Fifty-Seven
Fifty-Eight
Acknowledgements
About the Author
One
Sylvia pressed herself into the treewall, jamming her body into a narrow crevice between two trees. The bark scraped her skin, and she sucked in a breath, holding it. Her two pursuers were just around the curve of the wall, slowly advancing upon her hiding place.
She closed her eyes, and watched them take each step. She watched them with eyes that were not hers, eyes that darted about between the trees at her command. The eyes that watched were those of a little black bird, a drone. It fed its images directly to her thoughts, through the tiny silver earlink tucked in her ear. Both were gifts from Seascape.
They were getting too close, and would spot her soon, no matter how much she pressed herself into the treewall. Without the forewarning of her drone, she wouldn’t have noticed them while she patrolled outside the wall. They were getting better at sneaking up on people.
She pulled in a slow breath, trying to calm her rabbiting heartbeat. She would need to do something soon. If she could just get to the gate...but they were blocking her way.
Suddenly, one of her pursuers stopped, drew his bow and pointed his arrow at something in the wilds. From the eyes of her drone, she could clearly see that the sound had come from one of the drone’s living counterparts as a small brown bird flitted to another branch.
Realizing this, they quickly returned to their pursuit. It was then that they noticed her light footprints in the delicate moss.
She cracked open her eyelids and peered down at her wrist, which was encased in a half-sleeve of shimmering black and silver fabric—another gift from Seascape. Her fingers brushed the datastrands, sending commands to her drone in practiced movements. The real bird had given her an idea.
She wouldn’t let them take her. At her command, the drone dropped silently to hover about hip height in the trees, and with one last flick of her finger, it rocketed backward through the brush, crashing through the dense undergrowth. It was so loud she could hear it from her hiding place.
Both men whipped their heads around at the noise, then headed for it, thankfully leaving the shadow of the treewall. Sylvia had to admit, it did sound like someone crashing through the bushes.
She sucked in a deep breath, refilling her lungs, then ran for it.
While she sprinted beside the treewall, bolting for the gate, she was also focused on untangling her drone from an irksome vine it had gotten stuck in.
She was used to the double vision by now, with the drone’s images superimposed directly onto her thoughts by way of the earlink. If they got to her drone before she could untangle it, she was in big trouble. She had to work fast.
The sun had disappeared, making the shadows in the wilds grow long in the dry summer evening. Finally, she worked the drone free of the vine, maneuvering its wings back and forth to free it from the tangled mess.
It zoomed upward at her command, and wheeled around to follow her as she sprinted for the gate. Then she tripped over an enormous root that had not been there a second ago.
She fell face first into the ground, with barely any time to reach out and catch herself. What she had thought was a root was really a leg, attached to a tall, lanky woman wearing a fur vest, who had evidently hidden in the shadows of the treewall.
Before she could even register the blood seeping from her scraped palms, the woman turned her over with a boot and had a blade to her throat.
Sylvia squeezed her eyes shut briefly as her weapons were kicked away. All she had left was her drone. But how could it help her now?
She cursed herself. She had been too focused on freeing the drone, and not what she was seeing with her own eyes.
The dagger never moved from its position, poised over the large vein throbbing in her throat, even as she was yanked to her feet.
She couldn’t believe she’d failed, that she was being taken. She hung her head.
“Oh, cheer up, Sylvia,” the woman said, gathering up Sylvia’s weapons and leading them toward the gate. “You lasted the longest out of everybody.”
Sylvia raised an eyebrow, and shrugged out of her captor’s grip, which had loosened.
She took her weapons as they were returned to her. “At least it was you who got me,” Sylvia admitted. “You can brag to your team.”
“I thought Charlie and Ash were going to get you for sure,” Amelia said. “But I thought I’d stick around and try anyway.”
Sylvia cracked a smile. At least she was the last to be captured. “Good practice, then.”
Amelia nodded, now peeling off the fur vest the Defenders wore when they impersonated the Scouts during their practice.
They reached the gate, where the rest of Sylvia’s team had gathered, evidently having been captured long ago. Amelia went off to round up her own team of pretend Scouts.
Vince, Sylvia’s team commander, greeted her with a clap on the shoulder, and began to regale her with a breakdown of the entire practice.
As the two teams debriefed, Sylvia sent her drone to circle the city, the way she always did when she wasn’t using it for practice. Once she was sure the wilds around Meadowcity were free of actual foes, her shoulders relaxed.
It was dangerous conducting their practices out in the open like this, but Sylvia needed practice with her drone, and the Defenders needed experience fighting outside the wall, and evading the Scouts.
At last, the enormous doors of the gate creaked open, admitting th
e tired and sweating Defenders. Once they were inside, the gates closed out the night with a deafening slam as the heavy bolt was returned to its position.
Sylvia tried to relax, tried to shake the feeling that stalked her whenever she was out in the wilds, but it was a hard thing to do these days with the threat of a battle that could be at their walls any day.
Before the war, the treewall had been enough to shut out her fears, to soothe her nerves. Knowing just how easily that wall could be obliterated had somewhat deadened that feeling.
After confirming the next practice with Vince, Sylvia headed home. The rhythmic sound of her boots on the walkway slowly faded as her mind drifted back to the live image from her drone, now circling outside the city. The small black bird had been a gift from Lady Naomi Blackwater of Seascape, a gift that the Lady thought would help Sylvia win the war against the increasingly brutal Governor Greyling and his army of Scouts.
Her skills had improved greatly over the past few weeks, and it was getting easier to hold the connection, but it still wasn’t perfect. She knew the drone’s help could mean the difference between victory and defeat, so she practiced with it at every available moment.
The earlink and datawoven sleeve had been the only thing she was allowed to take with her after months spent in Seascape—time spent proving that she was worthy of the fifth city’s help.
She hadn’t yet mastered use of the drone at longer distances—say, far enough to spy on Skycity—but she was oddly confident that she would get the hang of it eventually. If she had learned anything in her Trials at Seascape, she knew that desperation was an excellent teacher.
The things she had discovered in the city on the sea still astounded her, even weeks after her departure. Sometimes it all felt like a dream. Never in her life had she imagined she would ride a colossal train that could speed across the land at frightening speeds, nor learn how to master the fascinating datawoven fabrics that could hold scores of information.
It was something from a fairy story how citizens there could communicate with each other by a simple thought, something Atlan had taught her—her teeth involuntarily grit together at the memory.
She had avoided thinking of Atlan Blackwater for some time, but it was impossible to keep him from creeping into her thoughts every now and then. Sylvia couldn’t help but replay her departure from Seascape whenever she thought of Atlan—sitting in the small boat being propelled toward the mainland, while she called and called for Atlan through her earlink, to no answer.
She was completely cut off from the island.
And a question lay on her heart like a shadow across the moon: did Atlan take his serum, the birthright he had earned by passing the Trials and the key to Seascape’s long lives?
Sylvia had been horrified to hear that Lady Naomi was more than two hundred years old—only a fraction of what she would eventually age to be—though she looked no more than forty. Atlan had faced his decision alone after Sylvia had been forced from the island, and she hadn’t heard from him since, despite several futile attempts to contact him through her earlink. Was it the distance between the cities that was the problem? Or was Atlan distancing himself from her?
Shaking her head, she tried to focus on the images from her drone, searching for Scouts, or anything out of the ordinary. Dwelling on Atlan would just distract her from the most important thing at hand: defending Meadowcity and keeping the rest of Arcera from Greyling’s control. It was, after all, the only thing stopping her from returning to Seascape, returning to Atlan—if he even wanted her there. Damn, she thought. Thinking of him again.
She was saved from her miserable thought cycle when she remembered Vince’s words about tomorrow’s practice. Their team would get to act as the Scouts and take down Amelia’s team. Sylvia was looking forward to getting her revenge.
It was imperative that she learn how to use her drone properly during combat. The drone would only be useful if she could control it—and not get so distracted by its images like she did today.
She also struggled to hold the connection with her drone while in hand-to-hand combat, but recently she began to spend some time practicing with Neve and using wooden swords.
Her feet were dragging by the time she reached her villa. With daily Defender practice, her extra training with Neve, and every other moment spent connected to her drone, she was exhausted, mind and body.
As she entered her villa, she looked through her drone’s lifeless eyes, and saw the first stars of nightfall blossom in the darkening sky.
She dropped her spear at the door, wondering when her skills would be put to the true test, when the Scouts would finally bring the war back to Meadowcity.
Two
The darkening city glittered with a falling curtain of stars on Lady Naomi Blackwater’s looking-glass as she watched Sylvia fade out of view.
She dared not give the Rider’s drone any movement commands, but she could easily watch the drone’s vid feed without detection.
It had been only a few weeks since the end of the Trials, since Sylvia had left Seascape. Naomi had begun to spend time in her looking-glass-walled garden room watching vids of the girl as she tried to single-handedly put a stop to Greyling’s war. The Rider had swiftly returned to Meadowcity upon leaving the island, and immediately begun to train with the drone that Naomi had given her, just as Naomi had known she would.
Naomi often contemplated where Sylvia got her spark from. If a task was set before the girl, she would concentrate on nothing else until it was taken care of. It was a fascinating thing to watch. The girl was incredibly driven, a characteristic that Naomi hadn’t seen in any of Arcera’s leaders in the past two centuries.
The day Sylvia had returned to Meadowcity, she had taken the drone from her bag and begun to try and understand how to work the avian machine. Naomi, of course, could discreetly turn on the viewing ports remotely from her own datastrands, and watch.
It hadn’t been terribly interesting to watch the girl and her family through that long and talkative dinner, but Naomi hadn’t had much else to do that first evening. Nowadays, she found herself tuning her looking-glass in to check on Sylvia every few hours, just to watch her progress, now that they were back to war planning in earnest.
Meadowcity had been very busy since Naomi had been granted a closer look at its operations, unbeknownst to its occupants. Their defense efforts were admirable, but even Lady Naomi could not see a way for them to easily rebuff a direct attack from that abhorrent man Greyling. She was keeping a close eye on the walled city, as well as Greyling’s army, but she still wasn’t entirely sure whether she could—or would—step in to halt an attack, if the time came.
Most of Seascape’s residents still believed that they shouldn’t interfere in the Four Cities’ war. Some of the more bitter long-lived thought that Seascape owed nothing to the Four Cities, and hinted that the Cities deserved it for abandoning Seascape—those were the residents who could remember the grumblings of their own parents and grandparents who had been alive when Arcera was founded.
Naomi heaved a great sigh. Although Greyling was governor there, Skycity itself seemed mostly blameless—its inhabitants knew nothing of the true war that waged in Arcera, blinded by the Governor’s propaganda. Yet the men and women who joined his Scout army quickly learned of the injustices, and reveled in them, taking advantage of the power bestowed upon them.
Meadowcity was the only hub of citizens actively resisting Greyling’s control. Riftcity was under the Scouts’ oppressive thumb, and Lightcity—poor Lightcity—had fallen because of a poorly planned act of resistance on Meadowcity’s part. Perhaps they did need help.
But Naomi was reluctant to tip the scales. She did not rule imperially, as she knew the leaders of this land had done long ago. Her decisions had to be supported by the people, and the people were not ready to accept her recommendations, even after Sylvia had completed the Trials.
The only thing she could do was slant the public vid feeds to show the
toll the war was taking on the people of the Four Cities. She desperately hoped there wouldn’t be another tragedy such as the one in Lightcity. Though then, perhaps, even the stubbornest long-lived would agree that they needed to step in and help.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, Naomi leaned back in her spindly metal chair and paused the vid feed on her looking-glass.
Oliver entered the garden room, a polite smile at his lips, as always. As he drew near the table he pulled a small bottle from his vest pocket.
“Thank you, Oliver,” said Naomi in greeting, reaching out to take the bottle from him. The amber-grey liquid inside swirled unnaturally as she took it.
“When Atlan is done with his tantrum, perhaps I will give it back. But I don’t want any harm to come to his serum in the meantime.”
“No, my Lady,” agreed Oliver.
“His security detail is sufficient?”
“Yes, and I have been told he has not attempted to leave his rooms since the last incident.”
“Very good. I am still optimistic that he will concede. But he will not danger the bloodline by leaving the island.” The steel in her voice somewhat muted the smile on Oliver’s face.
She turned to gaze at the looking-glass walls in apparent reflection, and was silent for a moment. “Sometimes I wonder if the Trials come too early in one’s life,” she finally mused, and offered Oliver no further explanation. A sudden melancholy had crept up on her after watching the vids of Sylvia.
Clearly choosing not to ask the Lady’s meaning, Oliver bobbed his head and quietly took his leave.
Naomi stared down at the tiny bottle of serum on the table, its contents still swirling despite not having been moved since she placed it there.
Three
Governor Sorin Greyling couldn’t help but grin at the large pile of books on his desk that Onen the Book Keeper had just brought him.
Ever since the unfortunate loss of Lightcity, the war had become a complete drain on his energy, and he feared he would never bring it to a close—would never achieve his goal of uniting the five cities. The books now spread before him immediately boosted his spirits as he ran his fingers across a few of their spines and covers. This would be the answer.