“Tonight, we move Lion close enough that Yaki and I can walk through the ga—”
Yaki shook her head.
“—get into the city somehow at dawn,” Ishe smoothly adjusted, and Yaki nodded. “While we go see the Steward, we will try to get more information on this ship. We’ll have two people in Dancing Fly, my glider, relaying flash messages. Everyone else stays with Lion and waits in case we need to get out of the city. Worse comes to worst, Lion might have to charge through the city defenses to get us out. Hopefully, it will be a one-way trip to get everyone on the torchship.”
“Winds will only favor one way,” Simon said.
Ishe smirked. “Depends what you say to them.”
“Very risky.” Grim nodded. “The winds are flighty bitches.”
“Does anyone want to stay on this mountain?” Ishe asked.
Nobody answered the question.
“Good. Everyone, prepare yourselves for one hell of day tomorrow.” Ishe grinned, and as she did so, she felt the twitch of whiskers as the winds changed.
Chapter Twelve
No matter how big or strong the wall, if humans traverse it, there will be holes. We’re a bit like rats in that way.
Boots, Storywalker
Had war not been declared, Dancing Fly could have gotten them into the city with no fuss, but now the walls blazed with the lights of hundreds of sun crystals, unveiling the sky above the city. The top of the wall bristled with cannon emplacements, all itching for the chance to ruin an intruder’s day. Dismissing the possibility of that, the sisters focused first on what to do with Lazy Lion.
Farmers’ fields did not make for good hiding places for ships. While the skiff from Scale might have been hidden in an irrigation ditch, Lazy Lion, painted to shine like an iridescent beetle in the sky, presented multiple challenges. Fortunately, among the few crates that had been loaded before the craft had been stolen were a few helpful crystals. Hidden among the crop crystals were a few excavation crystals: earth crystals designed to move dirt and soil. Very useful tools. By the time Ishe had managed to wake, bribe a bleary-eyed farmer with a crate full of crop crystals, and return to Lion, Yaki had the ship sunk up to the railing in the earth. Only the gold-and-black masts stuck above his corn. Sadly, those were not removable, so the crew mixed up mud from the irrigation and covered them. As the morning came, they were brown and unremarkable, at least as unremarkable as wooden poles could be sticking up in the middle of a farmer’s field. It would have to do. They covered the deck with sailcloth and felled corn stalks to hide it from the air.
After a brief tutorial, Sparrow and Chimon launched Dancing Fly into the sky. They had borrowed a small mirror from the farmer to use as a signal flasher. As long as they stayed out beyond the city walls the city’s defenses, would assume they were a pair of nobles out for a morning glide. Raiju stayed with the ship to serve as a go-between with the farmer and the crystal-touched.
Simon insisted he knew a way to smuggle Yaki back into the city’s underground, but no mere fabric would be able to hide his inhuman shape. They borrowed the farmer’s cranky mule and his small cart, and stuck the ratman in a barrel.
That left Ishe with Drosa and Yaki with Gama making the walk toward the city. Initially, Yaki worried that they’d stand out in the mobs of peasants who rushed into the city’s markets to deliver their wares, with both Ishe and Gama being more than a head taller than most. Yet with the rough state of her dueling dress, it was only Ishe’s flight suit that raised eyebrows from the people driving the carts that passed them. Ahead, the city stood on the hill, its stone walls of sculpted granite rising on the other side of the Great River, each hundred-foot-wide section a single piece of stone that stretched up ten stories. The point where each section joined was topped with a parapet that bore a cannon. All of these cannons were massive, but some were more massive than others. Two stood so large that the wall had been reinforced to prevent the recoil from shattering the wall. Each was as long as Lazy Lion and fired shells larger than a two-donkey wagon. Their designers had claimed that they would fell an Odin’s Sphere with a single shell, shield or no shield. They were yet untested.
Yaki looked beside her; Ishe’s own gaze rested not on the cannons but on the docks. Behind the walls, the city climbed the hill, its various residences getting larger and taller, the farther up the hill Yaki’s eye roamed. She had never seen it from this angle, always from the sky. The lowest vantage point she’d studied it from was the wharfs. Built of liftwood, the docking district had been attached to the lowest point on the hill that poked over the top of the wall. Centuries before, the wharf had been a single stretch of liftwood that protruded from the hill and over the river like a plank waiting for the condemned to walk off it. Now, though, with dozens of airships coming and going, it reached out like a branch of a tree, the airships on it like bulbous fruits. The fruit was sparse now, the navy’s branch entirely bare. The few that had not departed yesterday floated at various points in the sky. Hanging there, waiting. The sole Behemoth remaining floated directly over the growing parade of farmers joining the party on their march. Not too many trade ships, either Yaki noted; Lyndon’s privateers had taken their toll on trade, and the news of outright war would deliver a knockout.
Silence filled the air between Yaki and her companions, a silence that Yaki wanted to fill, to point out the features of the gate as she saw them, to mention all the subtle ways the wall had been braced. Sometimes, when they came to port, Murray would lecture her about the fortifications. It would have been nice to fill the air with that instead of the heavy thoughts everyone labored under. She’d indulged herself with a bit more wire this morning, and her feet felt lighter than her chest. She nudged herself against Gama and drew a small smile from him. Yet as the gate of the city loomed closer, an anxiety resurfaced. The gate, a huge drawbridge that took up more than half the section of wall it occupied, had been lowered only halfway. A massive crowd gathered in a semicircle around the touchdown point of the bridge, muttering in concerned tones.
They began to circle around the edge of the crowd at Simon’s direction. A priest appeared at the edge of the bridge. The robe he wore bore so much gold thread outlining flame patterns that Yaki could smell it on the breeze. A high inquisitor. He held his hands out, palms down, to balance on the sloping surface. He was opening his mouth to speak when a gust of wind nearly pulled his conical hat from his head. Only the chin strap saved it, but it served as a small sail, and the man nearly toppled over backward.
The wind snickered as the man gestured back at the wall and then knelt as the bridge lowered so that the man stood only five feet or so above the crowd. He adjusted his hat and began to speak. “By order of the Steward of the Golden Hills, all who enter the city will be put to a single question: Do you enter to harm the city or anyone who dwells within it? Those who fail this test will be detained for clarification. The Steward assures you this is all done for your protection and with his utmost blessing. We have three crystals that sort the light from the darkness, so there will be three lines. Do maintain order!” With that, he headed back down the bridge among the grumbles of the crowd.
“Liars,” Simon hissed.
As the crowd jostled, it reorganized, shedding maybe a fifth of its persons up and down the river. Golden Hills did not allow anyone to live directly in front of its gate. Villages had formed north and south of it, right at the edge of the prohibited areas, collectively known as the Traded Twins, Green and Blue, taken from the color of the roofs. They were visible from the palace, and once in a while, an airship had been publicly burned for dropping goods into the villages rather than paying taxes at the docks.
They joined a small throng of merchants heading towards the Blue village, purported to be the richer of the two, dominated in the center by a grand three-story gambling house that had been established by House Yokoyama back when they were a minor house and exiled from the city. Yaki allowed a thrill to go through her; it was also the setting of one of favorite
pillow novels, Deep Under Two Roofs. Did the hall really have a walkway down to the nine hells?
To the disappointment of Yaki’s curiosity, Simon bade them turn down an alley far before they reached the center of town.
The alley appeared to be a completely dead end, bearing not even a door to the shops that flanked either side, a red brick wall rather oddly placed between the two buildings blocking their process.
Simon scrambled out of the barrel and ran up to the wall. “Open up!” he said. “Business with the Lady.”
“Hmmmmm.” The wall itself appeared to shiver. “But you have left us. Do you have the Lady’s invitation?”
“Simon is eye of Lady Night, Sulia. I would not come without need,” Simon answered.
“You do not wear the cloak. You are not of us, Simon.”
Indeed, Simon had exchanged his cloak for a floral-patterned skirt and a tan obi, borrowed or purchased from the farmer. His tail lifted and slammed into the ground. “Simon is still rat, black or no black.” He gestured long fingers at Yaki. “She need into city or walls fall.”
“They are not touched.” The voice sniffed.
“You blind like actual stone.” He jabbed a claw into a gap in the mortar.
“Ow!” Sulia exclaimed. “Dammit, Simon, why are such an ass? You know I gotta get approval for this!”
“Simon in hurry! No time for Nana to run under river.” He started pushing on the wall with both hands and wobbled some.
“Stop it! You’re going to break it!” Sulia wailed.
“Simon say open! Openopenopenopen!” Little pebbles broke away from the mortar as Simon shook the wall.
“Nnnnngh!” The majority of the wall swung inward with a frustrated grunt to reveal a small figure who glared at Simon with bright red eyes set over a long, pointed nose nearly half the length and width of Simon’s muzzle. It bore a scratch on its side. “Why can’t you do anything by the rules, Simon?! You always get me in trouble!”
Grinning, Simon hopped forward and hugged the little man. Sulia sounded surprised before grudgingly returning the hug. “You haven’t been gone long enough for me to miss you. Good-for-nothing varmint,” he grumbled as Simon released him.
“Pesky goblin, always where Simon want to be.” Simon pushed past Sulia, waving at everyone to follow.
Past the wall sat a simple guard house, the brick wall a facade over a wooden one. A pile of books sat next to a stool; one lay open on the table. Another door, this one stout ironwood planks and bearing a crystal lock, was set in the opposite wall. With all six of them crowding, in Yaki really hoped the big door opened inward; otherwise, they’d have to back out of the space or get squished.
“Ya know I don’t got enough crystals for all these folks, Simon,” Sulia said as he shut the first door and ambled over to the inner one, passing his hand over the lock; a deep thunk sounded from behind it.
“Simon can guide and go back and forth. Is not problem.”
Sulia put his entire shoulder to the door and pushed. The heavy hinges groaned as it opened to reveal a stone passageway that immediately reminded Yaki of the catacombs beneath the city, minus actual bones. “That’s gonna be mighty tempting for the Grief, Simon. They might be sleeping, but they’re still hungry.”
Yaki caught Drosa and Ishe exchanging a glance before following Sulia and Simon into the tunnel. Simon and Sulia bantered as the pair led the rest of them down. The tunnel first had a gentle slope and then twisted organically into a spiraling staircase.
The stairs went deep; the stone became slick with moisture before they reached the bottom. While the stairs were wide enough for four people abreast, they all clung to a handrail on the outer wall, except for Sulia, who had begun to hop down the stairs three at a time. As they walked down, they heard the district rhythm of a rainstorm drumming on a roof. Yet they were two to four stories under ground. The volume increased the deeper they went until they reached the bottom. The stairs ended ten feet in front of an archway. The light of the glow crystals that studded the hallway revealed the downpour that waited beyond. Beside the opening stood Sulia, holding a clutch of three glowing water crystals on leather thongs. Simon peered out into the rain.
“Simon do not remember it being this wet.” His whiskers drooped with the weight of the droplets that clung to them.
“Crystal has good and bad days. This is a bad day. Here.” He handed Simon one of the deep blue pendants and then offered the remaining two to Yaki and Gama. “Follow Simon; these will keep you dry. Do not let any part of your body get wet; the water will carry your scent downriver and we’ll have Grief to deal with, and I ain’t talking about the type we keep the crypts for.”
“How is it?” Yaki’s voice trailed off as she struggled to puzzle out the sound of raining underground.
Sulia grinned, displaying a mouth full of mismatched teeth, as he handed her the deep blue water crystal. “Go outside and look up. It’s neat.”
With the crystal around her neck, Yaki stepped through the archway; the rain fell around her and the puddles recoiled from her boots. She looked up through the raindrops and her jaw dropped; above her head, the water came not from a cloud but the river. It rushed overhead, shedding droplets as it passed. Official poetry described the Great River as gold as ripe grain, but you had to squint hard and get the rising sun at the right angle for that to be true. Most of the time, the river remained an unsightly shade of brown, and from beneath, the murk barely had any color at all, a shade of blackish brown. If Grief were in that water, you’d never see it coming.
Gama came up beside her. “Wow” was his only comment.
Yaki stood on a gray stone platform, a rather curious inversion of a dock on the bottom of the riverbed. Simon scurried in front of her, the droplets bending out of his way. Standing, he pointed his nose off to the side to where another water crystal stood, clutched in the hand of Lady Night’s likeness, roughly chiseled from stone, its soft blue light melancholy around the crack that snaked around its octahedral shape. “Poor thing; it’s dying,” Yaki said.
“Been cracked since Simon been here. But it not rain when Simon do Sulia’s job. Maybe it don’t like Sulia,” Simon said.
“She likes me just fine, you flea-eaten rodent!” Sulia called out from the archway. “Leave her alone; she’s doing the best she can! Hurry up and get those two across and come back for the other two.”
“Uhh, hey, Yaki!” Ishe shouted from behind Sulia. “We’re not going this way.”
“What?” Surprised, Yaki growled in Draconic before repeating herself more understandably.
“Hey, I know that word now!” Ishe nearly shouted to be heard over the downpour. “Drosa and I are going to try to get over the bridge.”
A torrent of frustrated words ran through Yaki’s head. In that single moment, she learned more about dragon anatomy and procreation than she ever wanted to know. Shaking herself to be rid of the mental images, she compressed it all into a single word: “Ca-yote?!” If a dragon’s heart set off the priest’s evil sense, then Ishe’s association would be about as subtle as saying hello with an artillery cannon.
Ishe grimaced and her shoulders shook with a laugh, although the rain consumed the sound. “I’ll figure something out! Meet you in the high market! Besides, the priests never bothered Mother.”
Figure something out? Yaki flashed back to their non-escape from Yaz’noth’s lair, and her sister’s idea of a plan had been to throw a power crystal down in front of her and tell her to make it explode nicely. Her own lips peeled back from her teeth as she let smoke out of the corners of her mouth. Yaki scoured her mind for something scathing, a single word that could that make her sister realize how ridiculous she was being.
Ishe grinned before Yaki found that magic word, and something about it stilled all the heat in Yaki’s chest. Too wide, too toothy, too edged with mania, that expression did not belong on her sister’s face. The same expression had haunted numerous artworks and book illustrations within the family’s cabi
n on Fox Fire, displaying Coyote’s madness as he destroyed the moon. The words Ishe had told her in the crystal foundry came back. I’m the Coyote of the gentle wind and the distracting scents. They had been words then, and now with that grin, they became true. Ishe’s dark eyes glinted with amber as she turned with a sweeping wave. Yaki swallowed, and stood in place until Ishe and Drosa’s forms became indistinct shadows.
“Captain?” Simon squinted up at her with his one good eye.
“She’ll be fine.” Gama undermined his assurance with a froglike gulp. “I hope.”
“Couldn’t we have shared the crystals?” Yaki pondered out loud as the pair herded her toward the end of the dock. “Gone two by two?” She examined the circle of dry around her feet. There was space for two there.
“No. Not for the next part,” Simon said as he grabbed his tail and wrapped it around his waist, walking toward the end of the dock, where the river came back down to touch the riverbed. As his bubble of dryness approached it, the water stopped shedding droplets and became glassy. Simon examined his distorted reflection, licked the length of his hand, and smoothed a tuft of fur back into place between his ears. “Stay close to Simon but not too close,” he said. His little body heaved a breath and he strode forward; the water parted in front of him, revealing a stone rod sticking up from the ground. “Don’t touch the water.”
He grasped the rod, walking forward until the water closed behind him.
“After you.” Gama gestured to the wall of water and Yaki approached it. The intensity of the water crystal around her neck increased as the river parted for her. Touching it with her mind, she found its spirit intensely focused, struggling with weight of the water. Taking her own deep breath, she walked forward, revealing the stone rod. She flashed Gama a confident smile. He adjusted his glasses and nodded.
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