Out the window, through a glass that warped and bent as she neared it, she could see the entirety of Enthait. All of it. Without turning her head. As if it was condensed into a smaller, tighter version of itself. From here, the clave, the skars. The Eternal Market shone like a silver spiral, like the zaffre’s symbol in living, moving form. The thing she couldn’t figure out was, if she could see the entire city from here, laid out in front of her, then where was she? At first, she’d thought she was in one of the skars, but that wasn’t possible. Not if what she was looking at really was the city.
The city, the city was a cicatrix. Not just in name. It was the shape of a star, one that started at the clave and ran out through the five biggest skars in the city. You couldn’t tell when you walked along it; the scar was too big, too ingrained into the elements of it to show itself. She thought of the rough streets in the moonmarket, how they seemed gouged from the earth. And the Break itself, how the place where the wall crumbled perfectly matched the scar that ran through and past the Moon Skar.
Standing here, you could imagine two things: one, that a giant creature had come to the city, and attempted to destroy it, pawing the earth, leaving a scar that would live on for aeons to come. The other, and the one she thought more likely: that something had come to destroy the city and whatever had killed it had started at the clave and spread outward to the skars.
And there shall in Enthait be a weapon, so grand, so glorious, so powerful, it shall destroy all of the enemies and all of the beasts and all of the living and all of the dead and only the orness, the keeper of the aria, shall remain.
The weapon wasn’t something inside the city. The aria was the city.
* * *
The guards brought her back to the orness. Who already looked older, more frail.
“What do you know now?” she asked.
“The aria is the city,” Talia said. “The device is too. And so are you. Threaded together. But the myth says that if you use the aria, you’re the only one left standing.”
“Do you believe that?” The orness’ words were soft, mostly breath. It was clear that she was tired. Death was coming for her on rapid wings. They both knew it, but neither wanted to say so again.
“Yes,” she said. “Because that story isn’t about the city, is it? It’s about me. The enemies, the beasts, the living, the dead, they’re all the things inside me that make me who I am. That make me human.” She felt the push of blackened hands against her lips and suppressed a shudder. She’d always thought that the vordcha had made her less than human, but no. They had only made themselves less so. She understood that now.
“You can choose to save yourself or the city, but not both,” the orness said. “The aria has its costs.”
Of course it did.
“What did you choose?” Talia asked.
The orness smiled, and in it, a glimpse of her younger self. A glimpse of Burrin and Seild. A glimpse of who she’d once been, once hoped to be. “You thought me a monster once,” she said. “Do you think me a monster still?”
* * *
Talia chose.
Weirdly, she was not afraid. She leaned in, took the orness’ hands in her single hand.
“Will you help me serve the city of Enthait? Will you help me serve its people?”
The orness looked at her, her eyes flickering between the illusion of health and her own white globes, already falling toward blind. “I will try.”
SHALL SING
The others spent days preparing the city. Talia helped where she could, but there was so much she didn’t know, so often she watched, and gave answers where she could about the charn, the mechbeasts, the vordcha.
Ganeth and the city’s mechmakers had gotten the vallum built up even higher than before. It wasn’t useful for the charn, which flew, but it would be useful for the things that came on foot. Mechbeasts and vordcha alike.
“Are you sad about this, Khee?” she’d asked. “They’re your brethren.”
not.
Burrin, Isera, and Omuf-Rhi had taught all of them as much as they could about what was coming, sometimes asking additional questions of Talia. Rakdel had stocked the clave with supplies. The zaffre, too, were ready. Everything was in place, as much as it could be. The only thing they didn’t know was when the vordcha would come. And there was only one way to tell that.
Ganeth had made her the belt from his drawing, something heavy and metal, with a series of tabs and buttons and devices across it. “The only one you need to worry about is this big blue one,” he said. “I think. I hope… that this will work to keep you here.”
“No,” Talia said, shaking her head with a laugh. It felt good to laugh. Her body was tense, strumming like a wire in the air. “Tell me what that means. In me speak.”
“It should let you go to the… wherever it is you go in the poisoning, to see the danger, but it will also keep you here. So that you can see us, and tell us what’s going on. So you can talk to us while you’re in the poisoning.”
“That sounds… horrible.” For you, mostly, she thought. But she understood its purpose, and knew what he was hoping to do.
“So I push the big blue button when I take the poison…”
“Yes, just as.”
“And then I will see the poison dream, but I will also see all of you?”
“And talk to us, yes. So that you can tell us when they’re coming, or how many there are. Or anything else that you might forget if you were in the dream alone.”
“You’re sure this will work?”
And Ganeth, who often looked at her like he didn’t understand her one bit, gave her a look that went so far beyond that she had to laugh again. “Of course I’m not sure,” he said. “But everything–”
“Wants to be something. Yes, I know.”
“And that’s what this thing wanted to be.”
The day before the poisoning was going to take place, all of the group that had gathered around the table with her at the Sisk had gathered at the clave. Seild, too, who gamely took part in whatever was going on, even though no one had told her and she’d somehow got it in her head that they were having the most glorious game of hide and seek ever. Which lasted until she decided to start lifting Khee’s sleeping paws, to see what he was hiding beneath them. It was Omuf-Rhi who came to the creature’s rescue, pulling Seild away with a gentle word. Khee had opened one eye, watching the two of them walk away, and then said,
like.
And a moment later,
both.
The orness came up from the gardens. She was in her chair, without her mask, and there was a long moment of silence when she first entered. No one, it seemed, knew who she was at first.
So Talia said, as loud as she needed to for her voice to carry, “Moon meld you, Orness,” and put both fists over her eyes until she could hear the others begin to follow suit. Seild, ever oblivious, ran right into her. She fell hard enough to the clave floor that her thud almost covered her, “Ow, Tal!” Khee lifted his head, seemed to realize she wasn’t hurt, and then dropped it back down.
Talia reached down and helped Seild up. The girl wore the red ribbon in her hair again, as she often did lately. Talia ran her fingers over it. “Did your mom give you this?”
Seild shook her head. “Nope!” Then she leaned in and whispered quietly in Talia’s ear. “Burn.”
It took her a moment to figure out what the girl was saying, since much of the word became spit and false whisper at that close range.
“Burrin gave you this? Really? It’s beautiful.”
“I know! And saltpetals!” She twirled it over her fingers. Seild leaned in for another excited spit-whisper, and Talia did her best not to cringe. “He used to scare me, but did you know that he’s really very nice?”
“I did know that,” she said, wiping the wetness from her ear. “But we shouldn’t tell him, right? Because he likes to think he’s mean.”
With big eyes, Seild nodded solemnly. “Right.”
Khee padded over, just in time to get a kiss from Seild on both sides of his head before she ran off.
wet
he said, as he shook his head.
“You’re telling me.”
Talia watched the others work, sure that they were missing something. Sure she’d forgotten something. Sure that everything was about to go wrong.
From across the clave, she caught sight of Isera, standing in the light of one of the symbols. It lit her up like fire, her blue hair a special kind of flame. Isera caught her gaze, and her face opened up. Lit up. Couldn’t close back down.
She felt hope flutter somewhere inside her, soft as moth wings, and she crossed the floor to go to her. Maybe things would go right after all.
* * *
This poisoning was different than all of the others. Almost no one in the city knew it was happening. They hadn’t waited for the moon. The clave was so silent Talia could hear her own breath.
They went through the rituals of the poisoning, because they didn’t know if they had to and it seemed risky not to. Talia had waited in her room in her robe for Seild to come and get her. The three of them had gone through the tunnel, and this time Talia did touch each color of the wall, stroking them calm before they could snap at her, saying someone’s name aloud as she did. She didn’t think she’d come through here again, although she couldn’t say why that was.
For the poisoning, the clave held only Burrin and Isera, Khee, the rest of the greyes, Omuf-Rhi (because he refused to be left behind), and the orness.
The orness could no longer stand, but it was hard to tell. Sometimes you looked at her, and you could see the chair she sat in, the sallow skin. But blink and she stood before them as she always did.
Still, when she pressed her thumbs to Talia’s eyes, her hands were firm and barely shook at all.
The orness started to say something, but Talia could tell it wasn’t what she should be saying, and she shook her head. She already knew the orness’ sorrow, her failure, her shame. But those didn’t belong in the ritual. The city needed her focused, or the whole thing was going to go crosswise.
“Do you promise to serve the city of Enthait?” the orness asked. “Do you promise to serve its people?”
“I do,” Talia said. “I do.”
The orness lifted her thumbs from Talia’s eyes. “You may begin,” she said.
Talia reached into the Eye, hating the moment of it, that space where her only remaining hand left the world and entered whatever was inside the device.
The poison this time was in the shape of a blue-black blade. Pointed as the one she owned. At first, she thought it was the one she owned. But this one was smaller, leather-like and with finely honed edges.
She glanced at the orness, who nodded. Ready.
She hoped so.
She looked at Isera, standing upon the light. The mismatched eyes. The tiny scar from the ravage bear. The way she was fiddling with her weapon, anxious, nervous. For Talia. For all of them.
Finwa, she thought. Forgive me for what I am about to do.
Then she put the poison to her mouth and swallowed.
She pushed the button on the device on her belt at the same time. Her whole body vibrated, hard enough to shake her teeth, jar the bones in her spine.
For a flicker, she was both here and there, present and memory and future.
She heard Isera whisper across the space, “Stay, Talia. Stay.”
And she did her best to obey. But it was so hard. The past pulled and pulled; it ached to have her back, and she nearly went with it. It’s like the orness’ face, she thought. Look at one thing.
And behind her, through her, the blackweave. Something moving around inside it. She was in both places at once, and yet neither place.
She could still see Isera, but barely, as if she was watching her through Ganeth’s device. No, worse than through Ganeth’s device. Just her edges moving, as if running toward her.
Once she knew her feet were on the clave ground, Talia focused on the blackweave. And stepped into it.
The poisoning – onysa
The blackweave was waiting for her. Somehow, she had known it would be. Rows upon rows of torn and tangled trees, oily bark dripping, snaked black limbs slithering in on themselves endlessly. And in the middle of them all, towering above the others, its dark branches straight and long and climbing toward the sky, the place she’d once called home, because she didn’t understand what home meant. Was supposed to mean.
Darker, bigger, more alive than she remembered. The crisscrossed black tangle breathed and slavered, yellow spittle from its torn-thorn mouths. Flowers grew here and there, so purple they were nearly black, furious fists closed around a dozen deadly insects.
The smell. She’d forgotten the smell. The pungent dirt and festering rot that somehow drew you in and repelled you at the same time. An acrid burnt smell so bitter it made her stomach roil. It was like eating a thousand nyryn petals all at once, being forcefed them by a brazen hand.
The feeling she had in the pit of her stomach was one she’d had before. That wrenching twist that comes from knowing something is about to go wrong, but being unable to figure out exactly what it is.
She moved toward it, although every sense in her body begged her not to, begged her to turn and flee.
“I will not flee,” she said. And heard her own voice, and a moment later, the sound of something in the forest moving toward her. She stilled, quiet, listening.
She’d run through this thornforest only once. Snow and fear and her sisters, and she barely remembered it. Other than the tearing. Pushing the pathway through the trunks, they grew so tight together, so coiled and entwined, scorned and thorned, lovers intent on taking the lives of all who stood in their way.
She stood there, on the ground that had once held snow and blades and the bodies of her sisters, and she was ready. She would kill the vordcha. Every one. And this time, she would not run. This time, she would go down swinging.
“I am Cathaliaste, the last of the Twelve Martyrs of the Forgotten Compass. I killed your martyrs, your mechbeasts. Come and claim me, if you can.”
There was no sound, no response. Everything once alive here was dead.
If this was a waiting game, she did not know if she could win. Make your move, you monsters. Please. One way or another, she needed to finish this. She was a device winding down to its last use. Everything that you run from catches and kills you eventually, and she had been running for too long, dying for too long. Eventually, was here.
The skies overhead went gold. Wing and sting. A million mouths clacked and closed.
Charn, she tried to say, but the words were lost in the press of slick black skin to her mouth, the loss of everything as they cut off her breath.
She found the button on the belt Ganeth had given her. She pushed it. And nothing happened.
“They’re coming,” she said, and she was back in the clave.
* * *
Talia came back to the sound of the world cracking open.
From somewhere behind her, Khee was growling. A silent response that Talia felt like tremors in her stomach.
Everyone else was still watching her, the orness, the Eye, which was spinning wildly, erratically. As if it was going to roll off some invisible pedestal and fall, cracking, to the earth.
Overhead, the stronglass ceiling made a popping noise, like it was being compressed by giant hands. A crack opened up on one side, spread along the curved dome with a series of crackles and pops.
Talia wasn’t spurred to action until she felt the first fine shard of stronglass rain down upon her face. She blinked away the sharp dust and then glanced around. It wasn’t supposed to happen now, already. They weren’t ready.
But they would be. They had to be.
Burrin was already calling the greyes into action. They had been stilled momentarily, in shock, watching the curved dome as it split open.
That ended as the shapes began to come through the
holes. They flew down, open mouths and wings like blades. The ceiling came with them, huge pieces of glass falling down in rainbows.
Perhaps it was the darkening of the sky that held their attention. Giant swarms of creatures. Four sets of wings that spun the air so fast they were impossible to follow. Grotesque fat bodies, wrinkled and sloughing off a stream of off-white wherever they went. Despite their size, they were fast. They were predators to start with, before the vordcha had gotten hold of them. And big – twice as big as Talia. It was amazing that they were able to stay aloft, much less move with such alacrity. They should never have been able to get off the ground.
But they were ravenous and aggressive, and so the vordcha had made them something that they never should have been. Their wings were gold colored, but she thought they might have been built of bones and wire, run across the middle with some kind of skin. It was off-white, thin enough to let through the light, carefully stippled in patterns that seemed designed to catch and maximize the air flow around and over them.
Long spines stood up out of their backs, tipped with a glowing blue substance that somehow looked both dangerous and painful. Two tails whipped around their body, metallic barbs on the ends of both. Their faces were all mouth and teeth, great opening maws that left little or no room for eyes or noses or ears. They smelled their way toward her with their purple, flickering tongues, flicking in and out, scenting the air, looking for her.
“Greyes, in your positions!” Burrin was already running to his. Isera too. The others were running for the posts. Charn circled down around them, reaching and clawing. The other zaffre were doing their best to protect the greyes who stood in the pools of light.
Talia glanced around for Seild, found her and Khee already huddled together off to the side. She knew Khee’s every instinct was to fight, and as always, she was grateful for the choices he made.
The orness was moving her chair toward the middle of the clave. Talia ran to help her. As she neared her, the orness lifted an electric prod from her lap and aimed it at a charn that was closing in on her. It met the blue zap of electricity head on and screamed, plummeting to the floor.
Numenera--The Poison Eater Page 24
