We drift through the air, watching the wonders unfold below us as the twin suns rise higher in the sky and the three moons disappear until the next night. I want to twist around to look at the Palace behind us, to see if the Master is still there, framed in the window, but if I do the silk will move with me and take us off course.
He wouldn’t still be there. He will be coming after us; he knows I’ve failed. And I know the price of failure.
As we get closer to the edge I realize we haven’t lost enough altitude. At this rate we’ll just keep going and sail right over the edge of the city. I curse and Zair asks me what’s wrong. I explain and he looks panicked.
“Fix it,” he commands. “If we go over the edge the magic wards that surround the city will catch us and burn us alive.”
I’ve never heard about any wards and I want to ask him about it but it needs to wait till later, when we aren’t about to fly into death. More wizardry. I think back to my training; the spidersilk is supposed to be used for short distances, like when I glided into the palace. My teachers didn’t really cover this situation - being forced to help a prince escape by flying across the city - in assassin school. We need to decrease the surface area of the silk balloon above us, I decide. I explain to Zair what we need to do and count down from three. When I hit one we both start twisting the spidersilk around our wrists and forearms, effectively winding the material in. The wind is pulling it away from us so it takes all our strength to wind it in. My muscles are already tired from the long night but I have no choice. As we do we start to drop.
“Not too fast,” I caution. “I don’t want any broken legs or twisted ankles.” We pause, gauge the drift vs the speed of the drop, and wind in more of the silk. We’re going to make it to the ground a little faster than I like but at least we won’t go over.
“When we get close, start moving your legs like you’re running,” I tell him. He nods, not taking his eyes off the ground that’s rushing up to meet us. I start pedaling my legs and after a second he does too. We hit and keep moving, but the silk sail above us tries to pull us off the ground again and we can’t let go because it’s wrapped so tightly around us. I take my free hand and hand him a knife and then with my other knife I start sawing at the spidersilk wrapped around my left arm. He sees what I’m doing and does the same to the silk attached to his right arm.
“Cut it off! Cut it off!” I’m yelling, for no real reason, he knows what to do, but it makes me feel better. After what feels like ages the spidersilk rips away from us and goes flying back up into the sky, a beautiful black sheet waving as it goes, free from us at last. We both collapse on the ground; I wipe my face, exhausted, and the remaining ash comes off in my hand, mixed in with my sweat.
“That was the last of my spidersilk,” I say, in shock. “This is all I have left.” I wave at the tattered ends on our arms.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Alinya,” Zair gasps, “but I would be quite happy if I never saw spidersilk again.”
CHAPTER 5
After resting on the ground at the edge of the city for a few minutes we both stand and look around. I’m hungry and thirsty. Usually by now I’d be getting into bed. My bed is nothing like his but it is at least a step up from lying in the grass under the heat of the two suns. The air is thinner up here and I worry about getting burned but all my layers and my new gaudy cloak should protect me. Zair isn’t worried about his skin; the royals are naturally golden brown and adapted better to the two suns when we came here. The priests say that is a sign of the Gods’ favor but who is around from those days to know? The priests could say anything, really.
I look at Zair and try to avoid his eyes. I decide to focus on his chin. “Where to now?”
“There’s a dock that way,” he waves a bit to our left. I can’t seem to get the hang of directions up here. Is that west? North? Either way we start walking and we keep going until we hear people. I see uniforms and dresses and tunics and hose and cloaks of all colors. The people up here are absolutely glutted with color; I don’t know how they can live with this richness all around them and just walk by like it’s nothing. In the guild we live in greys and browns and faded black. The oldest even dye the whites of their eyes so they won’t show at night, and they chew taca root to intentionally stain their teeth. I never realized there were so many shades of red and pink and yellow. Zair laughs at the look on my face.
“Why are you gawking? You look like a peasant.”
“I am a peasant. I live in the city below; we don’t get colors like this down there. We don’t get the good dyes, just watered down and diluted ones; we don’t get clean sunlight; everything lives in the shadow of the city above.”
He looks thoughtful but not even a little chastened at his own rudeness. I want to stab him. “So this is your first time up here?”
“Yeah - they don’t exactly hand out day passes to visit. People on the surface live like slaves while you are up here drinking and partying and bathing in jewels, with the clean light of the twin suns and all the fruits of our labor.” I close my mouth, shocked. I haven’t said that out loud since I entered the guild to start my training. I’d blocked out the years of hunger, the servitude of my parents. If I hadn’t been chosen to be an assassin I’d be in the mines or farming magic in the fields, hoping not to die.
“We pay dearly for what we get,” Zair snaps at me.
“Really? What do you pay, Zair? What do you give up so you can live up here? Do you know how much food and magic is shipped up here, how many peasants ruin their lungs and their eyes and their hands to feed you? How many die early, having lived for nothing?” I don’t know where these words are coming from but I can’t seem to stop them from coming out.
“Stop talking, Alinya,” Zair commands. I do but...something is different. I obey him but I feel like maybe I don’t have to, I could fight it off if I really resisted. Maybe it’s wearing off. I resolve to keep avoiding his eyes.
We walk through the throngs of people until I realize the buildings ahead of us aren’t buildings. They’re ships, docked at the edge of the city, hovering in the air. This is an airship dock.
***
“I can give you five, but that’s it.” Zair is hiding his eyes from the captain. This is the third airship we’ve approached and I’m hoping he won’t get a deal and will have let me go. For a spoiled prince he sure bargains hard. I wonder if someone has warned them; they don’t seem to have a lot of rooms available, but what do I know of the rich? Maybe they all fly around on airships every day.
The captain eyes us. “Your...servant will be staying in your room?”
Zair sighs, having explained this too many times already. “I do not sleep with my servant, captain. I need two rooms.”
The captain grunts, still looking at me. I stare back at him. “Want to get rid of the servant? I’ll take her.”
“No, thank you, captain, I need my servant for my journey. I’m going on a pilgrimage and she takes care of my affairs.”
The captain’s tooth gleams as he grins, thinking he’s caught us in a lie. “If she does all that, why are you doing the bargaining, young sir?”
“Because, my dear captain, my servant takes care of things but I, and I alone, handle my money.” The prince’s tone tells me that he thinks arguing with ship captains is beneath him. “Five gold sovereigns, two rooms.”
There’s a commotion behind us but we don’t turn to look. “Aright, aright,” the captain drawls, his accent getting thicker. “Six gold, two beds, one room. That’s all I got.”
“Fine.” The prince hands him three gold; the heavy coins have his mother’s face on them. The rest will be paid when we arrive. I’ve never seen so much money in one place before and I realize I’ve forgotten to ask where we’re going and I can’t ask in front of the captain without giving everything away. The servant I’m pretending to be would either already know or would know not to ask. The captain waves us onto the ship, losing interest as his attention turns to whateve
r is happening behind us.
The ship is the largest thing I’ve ever seen, shining wood and circular windows and a ramp that takes us aboard, with masts and sails and a giant wooden wheel. There’s some sort of hut up top but all the passengers are going below. At the opposite end of the ship I see a tall pole with what looks like a giant paddle wheel on it, which makes no sense to me. I decide to look at it later because Zair is rushing me along the wooden deck with the other passengers. We’ve made it just in time; the captain is speaking with some people back at the port but he shakes his head at them, gets on the ship, and starts directing his crew. They pull up the ramp and start running lines and tying ropes and casting loose from the port. The captain shouts a command and the sails fill and we pull away from the dock, the giant ship moaning as it sets sail.
Zair pulls on my arm again.
“Please, just one more minute, I want to see,” I tell him. Miraculously, he lets me.
I look back at the City in the sky as the ship floats away and I can see the light of the twin suns hitting the palace; the palace looks like it’s shattering from all the colors, crystal columns refracting all the light from our binary star, and I think I can hear the crystal singing to me as it shines with all the light I’ve ever seen and we fly slowly away from it. My heart is full and complete; I’ve seen something most people only dream of and it is more glorious than I ever expected. I have to close my eyes; they hurt from all the light.
***
Our room below deck is more cramped than I expected and Zair complains constantly about the lack of room and the tiny dresser. When I ask him what he would put in the dresser, since neither of us have clothes other than the ones on our backs, he snaps at me about peasants and sulks on his bed. He’s acting like I kidnapped him.
Now that we are safely on the ship and I saw what I wanted, the palace in the sky in full sunlight, I start to think of escape. I still have the wizard’s spell in my pocket. I don’t technically need to use a transport platform but it is safer. I wonder if the ship has one and I tell Zair I’m going for a walk and I leave quickly, before he can stop me.
I walk up to the deck and stroll around the perimeter. I was worried about standing out but it seems like the passengers all had the same idea; there are dozens of brightly dressed people walking around the deck, stretching their legs and getting some sun. I can’t help but look for the Master, to see if he somehow followed us onto the ship. My eyes water from the light and I have to keep squinting. I’m grateful for the gaudy cloak Zair insisted I wear; I don’t look like the others here, but at least they can’t tell there’s an assassin wandering amongst them.
The crew are keeping the ship on course, doing whatever it is that needs doing on a giant wooden ship flying through the air. I don’t see a transport platform but as I near the back end of the ship - which is now the front of the ship - I see the tall pole with the paddle wheel. The wheel is spinning as if it is actually doing something but there’s nothing there. It’s paddling air. There is a wizard standing next to it and he’s feeding small orbs of light into a compartment. With a jolt I realize it’s magic - raw magic - that he’s feeding to the paddle wheel. I know what it is because I’ve seen the girls coming home from the magic fields, exhausted, sometimes burned, carrying baskets of these same orbs.
Of course I knew the airship ran on magic but seeing it use raw magic like that is shocking. We only see the product of the magic - the silk after it is bespelled, the city that floats in the sky - or magic that has been converted by a wizard into a spell. I didn’t think that anything in our world ran on raw magic. The priests of the sky had been telling my people for thousands of years that it wasn’t possible, that raw magic was dangerous and useless, and only the wizards and the royals were capable of processing it; a gift from the gods when we came to this world.
And there, right in front of me, is proof that they’d lied, were still lying. None of the other passengers notice what’s happening right in front of us. The wizard finishes and closes the compartment and frowns when he sees me watching him. I nod my head respectfully and keep walking, as if I’d paused for just a moment, as if I’d run into one of the wizards in the assassin’s guild.
It really does feel good to stretch my legs but my mind is awhirl. The royals live above because the gods will it, the gods have set them apart. But now I know that the royals, or at least Zair, can control us. The priests must know as well. The wizards - how do they fit in? What does this all mean? The gods gave Zair his power, but they also sent me to kill him? And was the Master there just to see if I succeeded in the Trials, or to make sure I did?
All I know is I don’t feel as bad about failing. How anyone can claim to know the will of the gods in all this mess is beyond me.
There is a little table at one side of the ship filled with glasses of water. Each glass has slices of citrus floating in the water. Tiny plates of tiny cakes dot the table. The cakes are white or pink or yellow iced with different berries perched on each of them. I take a large glass of ice cold water with lemon and lime and drink it in one gulp, then I take the fruit slices and suck on them. The other passengers stare at me; they are all sipping their water and no one is eating the fruit. I drop the citrus back into my glass and wonder why the rich are so wasteful. There is more fruit in these glasses than I normally see in a year down below. I remember the sound of my sister crying from an empty stomach. I remember hunger.
I check to see if people are eating the tiny cakes and they are. Good. I don’t think I could have walked away without one. I eat a yellow one and it tastes like lemon and sunshine and air, with a single raspberry on top and a layer of raspberry jam in the middle. It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten. I taste all of them, gorging on little cakes until I am dizzy from sugar and my belly is full for the first time in my memory.
A little girl dressed like a lemon cake, complete with a raspberry colored ribbon, giggles and then covers her mouth shyly when I catch her staring at me. She points to a pile of tiny plates next to her and giggles again. I wink at her and realize this is the first time I’ve seen a child up close since I was taken from my family, all those years ago.
◆◆◆
When I get back to our room Zair is sleeping on his bed with all his clothes on, an arm thrown across his eyes, not snoring at all. I wonder if he faked the snoring earlier, when I was waiting for him in his room. I wonder what else was fake.
I take off my cloak and throw it across the back of the chair. The bed crinkles when I sit; frowning, I feel around until I find a piece of paper pressed into the sheets. There is a note written on it in black ink that is somehow the blackest black I’ve ever seen. The writing has odd flourishes that put me in mind of someone having a good chuckle as they write. The note says “Assassin - find the Undying. Bring the prince. He’s not as useless as he looks; but if he is, kill him.” It is signed simply with the letter J.
The Joker.
What have the Gods gotten me into?
CHAPTER 6
When Zair wakes I’m sitting on my bed, staring at the wall. I don’t know what to do with myself; I never have this much free time. I can’t sharpen my knives. I can’t practice with my weapons. There are no buildings to scale or people to kill. I think I might lose my mind. All I can do is wonder who the Undying is and I’ve got no way to find out.
Zair stretches and looks me over. “Care to join me?” he waves at his bed, his tousled hair and heavy eyes not at all alluring.
“No thanks.”
He runs a hand through his hair and looks at the light through our little window. “It’s almost dinner time - let’s go shopping and then get something to eat.”
“Shopping? You know we’re on a ship, right?”
He laughs and chucks me under the chin. “Yes, peasant. This is a first class airship - there’s bound to be a store somewhere. We need supplies, and that cloak isn’t going to hide your assassin clothes forever.”
I decide that when his eye control
wears off I’m going to kill him, if for no other reason than him calling me peasant. He’s a smug, arrogant, self-righteous princeling and I can totally understand why someone wants him dead.
He sweeps out of our room and I follow; I have nothing better to do and he’s not wrong about my clothes. Instead of heading upstairs to the deck he heads to one end of the ship. I know there are words for ship directions but I don’t know what they are. Hopefully I can figure it out before I expose my ignorance even further. If I were here on an official mission, instead of being kidnapped by my own mark, the guild would have prepared me with all the relevant information. Instead I feel like I’m stumbling around in the dark.
“Zair - you still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
“Shopping,” he grunts, looking at me as if I’m dim.
“I know, I get that, I mean where is the ship taking us?”
We’re passing other people now; the ones going the opposite direction are carrying shop packages tied off with colorful ribbons and streamers of gold. We must be headed in the right direction.
“Winter City. My cousin is there and she will shelter me.”
I stop walking. “Winter City doesn’t exist, Zair. It’s not real; it’s just a story, like the Flaming Man or the Forest People.” A story filled with ice bears and snowcats and giants that walk the mountain. It can’t be real.
He snorts. “You really are a peasant. Can you please keep up? I said I’m hungry; I don’t have time to stand around in a hallway teaching you geography.”
I hurry to catch up with him. “It’s real?”
Empire of Sky Page 3
