Empire of Sky

by Gabrielle S Awe

  “Tell me the rest,” I call to Freyja. “Tell me what happened. Tell me why the colonists are still on the ship. Tell me right now.”

  Freyja takes a breath and begins, faltering at first while I try to burn her alive with my eyes.

  “We took a shuttle down to the surface and we met with the Gods. The Joker, and the five behind him. They didn’t speak; they couldn’t. Only the Joker could speak with us, then and always after.

  “We made our bargain. The Gods said only a few colonists at first; they wanted to see what would happen. So we called the First Mate and told her to only wake a few hundred colonists and to bring the ship down.

  “At first it was ok, it was fine. The colonists woke up and the Gods put us in our cities. But the Captain didn’t like any of the cities, and the navigator didn’t want a city at all. The First Mate helped with logistics - she was always good at that. I took my mountain, and we all thought the captain would settle into one of the other cities with her colonists. I was busy getting settled into Winter and the Gods had already laid down the rule about the Five Families staying away from each other, so I didn’t pay attention - and that’s where it started to go wrong.

  “The Gods had given us Wizards. We didn’t ask where they came from. I don’t think the Gods meant anything wrong, you see, I really don’t. Once everything happened I was angry for a long time but when the anger faded I had plenty of time to think - centuries, in fact - and I realized it was a cultural difference. A miscommunication, you might say.

  “And that’s the part that was my fault. The Gods didn’t understand that the colonists were people, just like us. They had experimented with life before we got here, and decided it wasn’t all that interesting. By the time they met us they had discarded any effort to create sentient life, which is why the planet just had insects, tree cats, those things.”

  I shift impatiently and she looks at me, frustrated. “Let me tell you the whole story, Alinya, because if I don’t you’ll just make me fill in all the details anyway.”

  She’s not wrong. I still hate her but she knows me, she knows.

  “The biomed officer had already tinkered with our genes. She was bored on the journey through the stars and she wanted to improve us, and we went along with it. We all got a little something that might help us when we found our new planet.”

  Kell interrupts her. “What did we get? I’ve seen some of you use your powers, but we don’t have anything.”

  “The security officer didn’t want anything; he didn’t like the biomed officer changing him. So he only accepted basic enhancements; heightened senses, adaptability, resilience.

  “When we met the Gods they assumed we were like them. They only knew of Gods and animals; they assumed we were lesser gods, but still gods, and I think they thought the colonists were - not.” Freyja doesn’t know how to say it. My face flames with heat.

  “When the colonists came out of the ship and the Gods realized that there were more of us, and the colonists realized the deal we made, everything blew up. The Gods were furious. The colonists were panicking. The Captain stepped in, along with the First Mate, and convinced the colonists to go along with it. The Gods decided she was in charge of all of us, which was true on the ship but was not supposed to be true once we got settled on a planet - we had a charter, and a citizens council to elect, and all sorts of things that made sense when we left Earth - and they gave her more power, the power to control all of the colonists, not just the mild thought control the doctor had given her. They also said we could not wake any more of the colonists; they saw how different we were from what they thought. To them, it looked like we had hatched hundreds of lesser gods on their world.

  “I’m sure the Undying explained how the Gods took our random thoughts and memories and stitched together a very loose idea of us. Myths, legends, all the cultural detritus in our minds went into the cities they created, even the armored bears and the snowcats, and especially the City under the Sea.

  “None of that was good enough for the Captain. She used her power to take most of the woken colonists. She used her wizards to rip an island out of the ocean, making an eternal enemy of the people who went to the sea. She set the island in the air and made her colonists slaves, farming magic and jewels and food, so she could live in the air and do what she wanted.

  “And the Gods were furious. To them, she was almost an oath-breaker; almost. So they took her sister and made her the Priestess and set her to watch over the Captain forever. And together, the Priestess and the Joker set up the Guild to murder anyone who threatened the agreement going forward, even the descendants of the Captain.”

  I’ve had enough. “Wasn’t the whole point - the whole reason you came here - to colonize the planet? Didn’t those colonists trust you to wake them and let them run the new world? Who were you to decide for them?”

  “I know, Alinya, it was a terrible mistake. But we didn’t know what else to do. We were tired, we were probably crazy from being on the ship for so long; we didn’t know how to bargain with gods. No one prepared us for that. Fly the ship, maybe do some light terraforming, help set up the council - that’s all we were trained for. So when the Gods said only a few hundred at first we didn’t think that would mean never wake the rest! And it made sense; organizing even that many was difficult enough.” She stops and takes a deep breath. “I want to fix it; I want to make it right. That’s why I’m here with you. That’s why I told you, back in the Winter City, that I would come.”

  “What about the Forest People?” Kjiersten suddenly speaks up. “The wild people, my mother’s people.”

  “And how could we have started with only a few hundred people?” Alexsi asks. “It seems like you would need more than that to settle a planet.”

  Freyja plays with her hands, twisting them. “The Gods were suddenly interested in life again, at least for a while. We weren’t allowed to wake any more colonists, with their Earth ideas and their anger at what we’d done, but we were allowed to use genetic material - and once they saw what we did, that we could take genes and clone people, or combine them to make new people - the Gods did the same. They borrowed genes and they made the creatures from our myths; hybrids, altered humans, intelligent bears. They learned from us.”

  “They tinkered,” Alexsi whispers. I feel sick. Freyja nods.

  “But even with that, even with everything we did, we’re dying on this planet. The Winter City is fading; the Forest of Nevel doesn’t have enough people. The captain took too many of the colonists and made them slaves, driven by her own greed. We don’t have enough genetic diversity to survive much longer. That’s why the Winter City is so empty. That’s why the Forest is dying.”

  I look over at Kjiersten and she looks stunned. I thought I had the most right to be the most upset but then I realize I don’t have a monopoly on betrayal. We were all betrayed in some way.

  I’m not upset that we are different; I’m upset that anyone thought they had a right to change us without our consent. I’m upset that the colonists will never wake up, that they are sleeping forever because of the greed and hubris of the crew and the capriciousness of the Gods.

  “The Flaming Man?” I ask. She nods.

  “They made him.”

  “The loremasters? The wizards?”

  “They made them all, using our genetic material. Everything the Gods gave us had a price; a price some of us paid, and a price others had to pay for us.”

  “The time of the Gods is ending,” Kjiersten says fiercely. “We will end it ourselves.”

  I nod.

  “Let’s get off this ship.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Freyja leads us to a door that lets us out on the other side of the ship. Our canteens are full and the suns are setting so we walk as far as we can from the ship, until the glass ground turns back into sand, and then we walk a little further. I don’t want to look at it. We make camp and we all face forward; only Freyja turns to look at the ship. I see her doing it every few
minutes.

  The desert is cooler at night. At this time of day the ground is still warm and the air is cooler and the mixture feels strange and delightful all at once. The air smells so much more fresh after being in the ship; the smell of sand and dirt and distant plants.

  Kjiersten builds a fire using her everwood. There are no stones for a firepit but out here it doesn’t matter. We all lay out our bedrolls and eat from our dwindling food stores. “Not even a rabbit,” Kjiersten grouses, and she’s right. There’s nothing on this side of the ship; no sandstorms, no vultures, nothing. It feels like we are camping on the edge of the world.

  I know we are getting close and I ask Kjiersten when we’ll get there. “Tomorrow,” she says. “Tomorrow we meet the Gods.”

  We sit around the fire and watch the flames try to reach the sky. I picture the ship coming down from that very sky. I picture the colonists, getting on the ship back on Earth, full of hope as they leave to find a new home. I try to feel that same hope as I think about tomorrow, about meeting with the Gods, but I feel hopeless when I remember how it went so very wrong last time.

  Everyone is talking about what we should say to them when we meet them but I don’t join them. I can’t. I fall asleep instead.

  ◆◆◆

  The Joker is there in my dream. So are my friends, except they’ve all been turned into animals. Bear, shark, wolf, dragon, and an eagle. The Joker hovers above the ground and the ends of his coat dance in the desert wind. Tonight, instead of juggling worlds in his hands, the worlds are spinning around his head and in his hands is a gift.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “It’s your gift,” the Joker says, his crystal ball head awhirl with a future I cannot see.

  “What’s in it?”

  “You haven’t decided yet,” he says, and sets it on the ground.

  “What about them?” I ask, gesturing towards my friends.

  “Don’t you think they’ve been given enough?” His long fingers flutter.

  “I don’t think they have, actually,” I say. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “Hmmm,” he says. “Are you ready for tomorrow?” He sits cross-legged on the ground with me. His legs don’t bend like mine and I remind myself that he isn’t even a little bit human.

  I shake my head and he laughs.

  “Why did you call me your daughter the last time I saw you?”

  He leans forward and his head catches the moonlight.

  “Because I made you, Alinya. It took me centuries; I had to take little bits here and there and watch them grow, and wait, and then take more little bits, but all my work has paid off, for I have finally made a human in my image.”

  “I don’t look anything like you,” I protest.

  “That’s because you don’t yet know how to see inside.” He taps one overly long finger on his head. “It’s the insides that matter.”

  I have so many things I want to ask him, on this last night before everything changes.

  “Why are you called the Joker? Your name has never made sense to me.” He doesn’t tell jokes; he isn’t funny at all.

  His fingers dance along the ground, so very like a spider. “I plucked it from your Captain’s head, my little human. Back on Earth you have a game; it’s played with cards.” He fans his hands and shows me his cards. They have little pictures on them, queens and kings and other things. He holds one up and the picture on it looks a bit like him. “This card is called the Joker; and in most games, the Joker is wild.” He throws the cards up in the air and they scatter in the wind. “A good wildcard, played at the right time, can change the whole game.”

  CHAPTER 31

  We wake in silence. There are no sounds in this part of the desert, not even the wind. No one says anything; the air is heavy with the coming day and it weighs on us. I eat breakfast, dried meat and stale bread and an apple smaller than my fist. I find one last piece of cheese at the bottom of my pack and I eat that too.

  I look at each of my friends and I wonder what’s going to happen. Hope is a dangerous thing, a thing I thought I gave up long ago when I cried myself to sleep in my Guild cot all alone. Each of these people here with me has saved me in a way; it’s hard not to have hope with them around me. I surprise them by giving each of them a hug, even Freyja.

  Solemnly we pack up the camp and start walking. Kjiersten leads us but she looks puzzled. “What is it?” I ask quietly. “Something dangerous ahead?” She shakes her head.

  “I know which direction to go but I can’t see beyond - I can’t see anything about where we’re going.”

  “We’re on our own, I guess. No tricks.”

  She nods. “No tricks.”

  And so we walk through the desert. It doesn’t take long; we know when we’ve found it. Steps rise from the desert floor and go up, up, up to the sky. They appear to not have anything behind them; we circle around the steps and there is just more desert. We come back to where the steps start and there they are, white stone steps that climb to the clouds.

  “It wasn’t like this last time,” Freyja tells us. I’m not surprised.

  We start up the steps and the air is cooler again. It feels nice to leave the heat of the desert behind. There’s moisture in the air too, not rain, and not unpleasant; very different from the Arid Lands. As we climb the steps widen and details start to fill in; there is dirt under the steps, and then grass, and then a mossy stream that trickles down, until it looks like we are climbing a very tall hill that exists only in the sky.

  The steps go on for a while, long enough for us to feel like we’re working but not so long we need to stop and rest. I think something is helping us along because after only a half an hour we get to the clouds; on our next step we are walking on a marble floor that leads up to a giant white table surrounded by potted ferns and columns with climbing vines bursting with colorful flowers and there, sitting cross-legged on the giant white table, is the Joker.

  “Five of a kind,” he says, and laughs. Freyja shakes her head and mutters under her breath.

  “Asshole.”

  I keep looking around, expecting more. There are small animals here too; tree cats, the small jeweled spiders, the big red-furred spiders; the green stick-people from the forest. An armored bear stands behind a pillar in the far corner and a snow cat lies curled up under the table. None of them show any interest in us.

  “What is this?” I ask. “Why does it look like this?”

  “It’s the Unseen Realm,” Freyja answers me. “It can look however he wants it to. He got this one from me.”

  The Joker inclines his head towards her.

  I’m still unimpressed and then I look up. The entire galaxy swirls above my head, milky white streaks across the black expanse of space. Off in the distance, a small blue-green world spins slowly. The view recedes until I can see multiple galaxies, a red and pink wonder filled with light, a blue one shaped like a torus. My head fills with stars and I forget why we’re here.

  “Alinya,” the Joker calls to me, “come and sit.”

  Everyone else is seated around the table already and I walk slowly over and join them.

  “Where are the other gods?” Freyja asks. “The other five.”

  “They’ve gone,” the Joker says, and his fingers trace an imaginary trail across space. “They have moved on. They were almost gone when you got here, but they stayed around a bit to watch what you would do.”

  “And you?” I ask him. “Why are you still here, then?”

  “I have unfinished business,” the Joker says, and steeples his fingers. “We left you a loophole and I’d like to see it closed. Besides, I am younger, and the others - well. I’ll join them when it is time.”

  “Why did you send Alinya to kill me?” Zair blurts out.

  The Joker turns slowly and regards him. “I wanted to see what she would do, young Prince of the Air. Would she uphold order and do her duty by snuffing out the danger you represented? Or would she seize this chance and drive you all
to this place, this moment?”

  “That’s quite a risk to take with my life,” Zair says, and settles back in his chair.

  “Fifty-fifty,” the Joker says with a shrug. Zair shakes his head.

  “Why was Zair such a danger?” I ask. The Joker points at Alexsi, and then points at Kjiersten.

  “Too many threads coming together. The Five Families are supposed to stay apart.”

  Threads that he pulled. He sent me to the Undying. The Undying told the Queen of Nevel something that prompted her to bind Kjiersten and Alexsi together. He sent me to kill Zair. And something, after all these millenia, something prompted the Undying to have a child with one of the Forest people. And the Queen of Nevel sent her son to foster at Winter.

  The Joker’s head is whirling, whirling, as he watches me. I don’t say anything. I don’t know the rules to the game he’s playing and I want to get out of it alive.

  Freyja clears her throat. “I think it’s time to begin.” She looks at me and I nod, watching the Joker.

  “We are bringing the Five Families together in the Unseen Realm to renegotiate the bargain we made with you when you landed.” The Joker inclines his head and waves at her to continue. “Do you represent the Gods of this world?” she asks, formally.

  “I do,” he says. “Do you represent the people of Earth?”

  “I do not. Each of us here represents only ourselves.”

  As soon as she says that I relax.

  “We want to start over on this world. We want to undo what was done.”

  “Careful,” the Joker cautions her, leaning forward. “Do you want to go back in time?”

  “What? No, of course not. We want to start this point forward on our own. No gods. You’re leaving anyway. And we want to talk through it, and not have to pick what you think we mean out of our heads, and we will talk until we are done.”

  “Well, where’s the fun in that.” He leans back again and tilts his head up at the sky.

  Freyja is sweating in this cool place. She wipes her forehead and starts again.