Empire of Sky

by Gabrielle S Awe

  “How are things out there?” he asks. “Stable?”

  I answer for all of us. “Stale. Awful. My people are slaves. None of us here are truly free. The magic is only used for the benefit of the aristocracy.”

  “Entropy?” he asks, in confirmation.

  We all nod.

  “Well then, I do have one more part of that story. Maybe this is the part you came for. The Five Families made a deal with the Gods; only the Five Families can break that bargain and make a new one. You must collect a representative from each of the Five and travel to the place where we met the gods, the Unseen Realm, and there you can unlock everything and start over.”

  The Five Families. “The Five fucking Families,” Kjiersten whispers.

  I count them off. “We have Kjiersten, for you,” I say to the Undying. “We have Freyja, for Winter. Zair, for Hinshalla, the City in the Air. Alexsi, for the Forest. That’s only four. Who are we missing?”

  “The Fifth Family,” he starts, and then pauses. “We all went where our hearts were, you see. The security officer had come from the navy, an old navy family. The Gods saw her love of the ocean and sent her to the water. When the first officer ripped an island from the ocean the security officer swore never to speak to any of us again. She took her wizards and her colonists and she disappeared under the water. No one has seen them since.”

  I drop my head in my hands. All this time we’ve spent, chasing The Undying, thinking this would be the end of our quest, and we still need to find the Fifth Family, hidden for millennia, and then find the Unseen Realm - if we can convince her to help us. I feel so tired; I feel so very done. The gods don’t want us to succeed. The Joker has just been toying with us, giving us hope only so it can be dashed away. Our quest is impossible.

  The Undying watches me think all these things, pity on his face. He leans forward and speaks to me softly.

  “The time of the gods is ending, Alinya. Have hope.”

  Zair looks confused. “Why didn’t you mention the gifts?” he asks.

  The old man shakes his head, puzzled. “Gifts?”

  “The powers the gods granted to each of the Five Families; the sign that we should rule over our people. You know, the mind control, the ice dragon, the growing things,” he waves at Alexsi and then looks at Kjiersten, clearly wondering what her power is. She doesn’t say anything.

  The Undying man nods slowly. “Remember, we had a biomedical engineer on the ship with a lot of time on her hands. She played with our genes long before we got to this planet, ages before the gods got their hands on us. Those powers came from her, you see. She always did like to tinker.” He stares at Alexsi and we all realize at once the old man is talking about Alexsi’s ancestor, who played with people’s destinies and gave herself the power to grow things. “She thought they could come in handy on a new planet. The captain’s mind control, shared with the First Mate, has only grown with the generations.”

  “An ice dragon?” I ask. That one makes no sense to me.

  “The gods tweaked that one a bit. The communications officer was given the ability to get into the minds of others, to see what they see. When the gods looked into her they bonded her with the ice dragons of the Winter Mountains.” The sinuous dance of the ice dragon, the heat from the Queen of Winter. Freyja.

  I look again at Kjiersten. She knew we were coming to the Forest before anyone else did; she was waiting for us. The Undying told the Queen of the Forest that the Archer and the Prince would be the key to the future.

  Ahhh, indeed.

  The Undying looks down at his tree cat and the old man quaver is back in his voice again. “I’m tired from the long story, children. Thank you for the books and the diversion but you must be going. You have things to do.”

  The Undying. The Joker. The architects of a new future. And I am their instrument.

  CHAPTER 22

  Kjiersten leads us out of the hill and back to Forest, back into time. It’s weird, I can feel the burden of it settling back around me, a weight I never knew we carried until we stepped out of the pocket dimension where the gods put the Undying and back into the Hollow World.

  The Forest looks different here, different from where we left it. Kjiersten looks around, sniffing the air, trying to get a feel for where we are. The trees are lighter in color and further apart; we are no longer in the heart of the Forest. We’ve come out close to one of the edges.

  Alexsi and Zair are shifting restlessly. “Where are we?” Alexsi asks. “I don’t feel the Forest here.”

  Kjiersten keeps looking around as she answers. “This isn’t our Forest, Alexsi. This isn’t Nevel. I don’t know where we are.”

  Nervousness grips me. “Should we go back in?” I mean back into the hill, but when I turn around, the hill is gone. There is just more forest. “Never mind.”

  Something catches my eye and I look up. Silvery threads are drifting through the air; tiny jeweled spiders, hundreds of them, are flying through the forest on webs, much like Zair and I did with the spidersilk when we left the Palace of Air. They shine and shimmer in the light of the suns as they glide high above us, traveling unknown distances to unknowable destinations.

  “That way,” Kjiersten decides, and so we follow the spiders.

  We eat the last of the salted deer meat as we walk. Our conversation starts and stops; all of us are filled with new knowledge but we don’t know what to do with it or even how to talk about it. Then Alexsi surprises us.

  “If he leaves, he’ll die, won’t he?” he asks, in reference to The Undying.

  “I think so,” Kjiersten answers after a pause. “Time will catch up with him.”

  “I wonder if he’s happy,” I muse as we walk.

  “He got what he wanted,” Kjiersten says in an unexpectedly bitter voice.

  “I don’t know that it works that way,” Alexsi says. “It seems like everyone got what they wanted and no one is happy.”

  There is no path here, but the trees are getting further and further apart and it’s easy to follow the spiders as they glide along a route known only to themselves. They do not lose altitude at all as they glide; they look like they could do this forever.

  I hear it and smell it before I see it. A rushing sound, rhythmic and soothing, a crash and a draining and a crashing again that my heart recognizes like its own beat and the smell of salt in the air, and something else, a dry, silicate smell. We crest a small ridge and then we see it - the ocean, stretching out before us, green and white and frothy and pounding on a large stretch of sand. We’re up on a cliff and we can see for miles, miles of ocean and sky and small white clouds and birds wheeling and diving and down, down under the cliff on the beach, a boat with a tall man patiently waiting for us.

  ◆◆◆

  The spiders fly across the ocean as we carefully pick our way down the cliff, Kjiersten in the lead as always. The birds notice the spiders and dive at them; I hope the tiny jeweled arachnids make it wherever they are going. Their webs tangle the birds’ wings and the birds leave them alone after that and the spiders just keep gliding.

  The man on the beach shades his eyes and watches us climb down. The cliff is rocky and dusty and weird scrubby bushes try to trip us and I’m grateful yet again for these sturdier shoes, which keep me from twisting an ankle with the rocks try to slide out from under me. By the time we get down to the beach we are dusty and dirty and scratched from the brambles and laughing; that was easier than fighting through great owls and the Flaming Man.

  We walk across powdery sand and the man leans against his boat, unabashedly checking us all out, his eyes lingering the longest on Kjiersten. I don’t blame him but I don’t like it. I know she is not mine but I do not want her to be his, either.

  Alexsi, the most diplomatic of us, strides forward and holds his hand out. The stranger grips his forearm in a different kind of handshake and says “Well met, strangers. My name is Kell; what brings you to the ocean on this day?” He is tall and his skin is a deep bronze; h
is hair is dark and wiry and his eyes are a green-topaz that looks like the ocean behind him.

  Alexsi holds the man’s forearm for a moment and then lets it go and smiles. “Kell, well meet indeed. I am Alexsi, of the Forest of Nevel, and my companions are Kjiersten, also of the Forest, and Zair and Alinya from the City in the Sky.” The man’s eyes harden when Alexsi introduces us but he doesn’t say anything. “I believe we may have found what we are looking for; the Undying sent us here, looking for the people of the sea.”

  Kell nods at all of us. “What do you want from the sea people?” he asks. He may have said well met but I do not believe he is glad to see us here.

  “We are on a quest to change what the Gods have done to all of our people, Kell. Alinya’s people live as slaves. We wish to petition the Gods and for that we need your help.”

  Kell eyes us and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. “My people wish to be left alone. Did the Undying tell you that?”

  We nod and say nothing.

  “Aye then, it is not for me to decide,” Kell says. “I’ll take you to the King, and let him figure what to do with ye.” Now that the formal greetings are done, his accent is coming out more thickly. He reminds me, just a little, of the men of the airship.

  “How did you know we were coming?” I ask as he pushes the boat into the water.

  He looks back at me, over his shoulder. “The Strange Man said to expect company today, so I came up to see what’s what.”

  The Strange Man. “Did he have a head like a silver glass ball?” I ask, making a shape with my hands.

  “Aye, of course, that’s part of what makes him strange,” Kell says, looking out over the water. I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about him.

  The Joker.

  Kell is wearing canvas trousers that end at the knee and a thin shirt. I can see why as he splashes into the shallow waters on the beach. We all stand on the edge of the water, not knowing what to do.

  “Are ye coming?” He is chest deep in the frothy water and the boat is bobbing next to him.

  We take off our shoes and store them in our packs. I look at the saltwater and consider my leather assassin’s clothes and then I ask everyone for a moment. Modesty be damned, I’m not getting into that water in my leather pants so I change into my thin palace clothes. Kjiersten and the princes roll up their pants and we all wade into the water, where Kell holds the boat as steady as he can and we climb in. He looks disgusted by how much water we splash into the boat but I refrain from reminding him this is the first time any of us have seen the ocean, much less climbed into a boat that is actually floating on water.

  As I wring water out of my pant legs I decide we did pretty well, all things considered. Kell gets in the boat with a graceful leap and guides the boat out into the open water. I look over at Zair, sitting next to me, and his eyes are shining as we sail out into the ocean, with the light of the suns setting on the horizon, coloring everything orange and red and lighting the green green ocean afire.

  The wind is in our faces and salt sprays us as the boat cuts through the water. Alexsi sits with Kell and they chat companionably and I remember how charming Alexsi was when I first met him, how easily he earned my trust - and my interest. I see him weaving the same spell on Kell and I hope it’s enough, because I have a bad feeling about the people of the sea and whether they will give us the help we need.

  Kjiersten is leaning back in the boat, the setting suns warming her face and casting shadows from her high cheekbones. She doesn’t look nervous or afraid at all. Zair looks like he’s falling in love with the ocean and I’m the only one of us that isn’t relaxed about this at all. If Kell is any indication, Zair and I shouldn’t expect a warm welcome from this king; after all, it’s our queen, Zair’s ancestor, who ripped the island from the sea and angered the sea people to begin with.

  Eventually, when the suns have gone down and the moons have risen in the sky, we get to a ring of small islands. They are the size of the islands that float around the City in the Sky, and just like the City they are also covered in stone archways and greenery. We continue through a large gap between two of the islands and then Kell steers the boat to a cove on the other side. I can see the other islands are centered around a huge empty space in the water, like something used to be there.

  Kell gets us as close to the beach of the cove as he can and then tells us to hop out. I’m nervous but we have no choice but to do as he says; I hope he hasn’t brought us here only to dump us on this small island and sail away.

  He doesn’t; he jumps out of the boat and we all help him drag it up onto the sand, where he ties it to a stick sunk deep into the ground. I watch his hands on the rope with interest; his moves are as skilled and confident as any craftsman at their trade. He grabs a net full of small fish from the boat that I didn’t notice earlier and he slings it over his shoulder.

  “Come on then,” he says, and starts hiking up the beach.

  This island is small; there is no city up here. I’m curious and I go to loosen my dagger and remember I stashed everything in my pack with my leathers. Kjiersten sees my movement and she winks at me and jiggles her bow. Alright then.

  Kell leads us past the end of the beach and into the dark green grass, where a path winds up a small hillock. It’s an easy walk, much easier than the mad scramble down the cliff face earlier, but we are tired from a very long day. We woke up on the path in the forest, fought off the forest guardians, spent a while in a pocket dimension with the Undying, and then sailed partway across the ocean. I’m ready for bed and we still have to meet the king.

  We get to the top and I gaze out across the ocean and look at the other islands. They vary in size but they more or less look like this one. There are stone formations scattered around the hillock, dripping with vines, but there are no animals here, no birds.

  Kell does something I don’t see with his hands and suddenly the ground in front of us changes. Instead of a rounded hilltop covered in grass I see a shimmering portal, just like the ones we used in the Winter City, just like the one that led to the Undying, except this one is set into the ground like a small pool.

  “When you meet the king,” he says to Alexsi, giving us all a look from the corner of his eyes, “be careful what you say. He is not friendly to your kind and he will not like your companions. Make sure you do all the speaking.”

  I bristle at that but I also know he’s right.

  Kell nods at each of us and then dives into the shimmering pool. After a pause I shrug and follow him in, falling down and down and down to the bottom of the ocean.

  CHAPTER 23

  “My grandfather says our ancestors dreamed about an old Earth fairy tale about a city that sank under the ocean,” Kell tells us as we walk through the city under the sea, “and so the Gods created this for them.”

  I’m having a hard enough time wrapping my head around where we are; for some reason Kell talking about it just makes it worse. Zair, of course, is enthralled.

  “Do your wizards maintain everything here?” he asks. “It must use so much magic!”

  Kell can’t ignore him and still pretend to be polite. “No. The Gods built this City; it isn’t like Hinshalla. It doesn’t cost us any magic at all.” Something he’s saying catches on a thought, but I’m so distracted by this city that it wriggles away and is gone.

  I was expecting a dome of some kind, something to keep the water out. I tell Alexsi and he shakes his head.

  “Can you imagine the logistics? Pumps to keep the water out. Magic to bring in fresh air. Magic doors. It would be a nightmare to maintain.”

  “But how does it work?” I persist.

  “Alinya,” he says, exasperated, “he just told us, it’s God-magic.”

  Alexsi of all people should want to know how this city works but instead he just follows after Kell, distracted.

  I look at Kjiersten for some company but she is just taking everything in. She doesn’t want to talk.

  There’s no dome. Ther
e’s nothing between us and the water. There is just us, like normal, walking like normal, not needing to swim. We’re not breathing the water, but we’re breathing. I’m breathing. I’m breathing too fast; I start to hyperventilate. Zair stops, comes back, and holds my arms and looks into my eyes.

  “Alinya, it’s ok, it’s ok,” he soothes me. “We’re here. Just breathe slowly. In, and then out, in, and then out.” My heart is pounding and I want to take huge gulps of air, I’m afraid next time I go to breathe there won’t be any air.

  “I don’t know if she can do this,” Zair says to Alexsi. “She’s terrified.”

  We’re under water. But I’m breathing. Alexsi gives me the same compassionate look he gave me on the airship when I saw the glass-bottom restaurant, but it doesn’t work here. I can’t close my eyes and leave the room. Because we’re on the bottom of the ocean and there’s nowhere to go.

  “Does she need to go back up?” Kell asks, as if I’m not even here. My face burns. Here I am, fearless assassin wearing soaking wet silks and having a panic attack because I’m in a magical city under the ocean. I don’t want to go back up; I need to stay and see this through. We need to find the Fifth Family so we can undo what the Gods did to us. I try to slow my breathing.

  And then Kjiersten is there. She moves Zair out of the way and she rubs my arms softly. “Alinya,” she whispers, and starts humming the song that we danced to at the Night Market. “It’s ok, Alinya, you’re safe,” she says, “you’re safe with me,” and I must be in a dream because she leans forward and kisses me, all soft lips and gentle tongue and the bottom falls out of the world because no one has ever kissed me like this before. My body is humming along to her song and she kisses me until I stop being afraid and I remember how to breathe.

  One more kiss, soft and lingering, her lips like fairy fire, and she says “You’re ok now,” and then she turns and walks away from me.

  My lips are still burning, my mouth is swollen, and the princes are grinning at me. Kell looks jealous before he turns and leads us through the city.