The Harvest

by Chuck Wendig

  And then suddenly—

  Thunk.

  Cael’s bar hits something.

  Something that sounds like metal.

  He pulls it away, and Balastair leans into the hole, begins to cart out broken bricks—his blood spattering in the bone-white dust—and he reaches in, finds the margins of something. A box. A crate. Big enough that he asks them to get back in there with the iron posts, to clear it away and lift it out.

  This feels like a holy moment. The two young men levering the box out of its crater. Bricks crumbling and tumbling away.

  Lane squints over his pinched cigarette.

  “This it?” Cael asks.

  Balastair says: “I think so.”

  It’s a metal crate with rounded edges.

  Three feet square, roughly.

  Balastair leans in, wipes dust off of it. He finds a latch that’s been taped shut with yellow tape. That means—

  No. No, no, no.

  He feels around him, palms a small flat chip of brick and brings it up to cut through the tape—it slices with a whisper. He pops the top of the box.

  Lane and Cael peer down into the box.

  “It’s empty,” Cael says.

  “Wait,” Lane says. “Something’s in there.”

  Balastair reaches in, finds a small slip of paper. Even before he reads it he can feel the embossed Pegasus at the bottom, the Empyrean seal.

  “Property of the Empyrean,” he says without even having to read it.

  “I don’t get it,” Cael says.

  “It means they have it. Whatever it is my mother wanted you to find, they possess it. They have the weapon, Cael.”

  Cael growls, cries out, pitches the iron bar like a spear.

  And that ends their hunt.

  REPATRIATION

  “YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS,” Pop says.

  “I’m afraid I do,” Agrasanto answers.

  The skiff hums as it rises toward the flotilla. At first there’s just empty sky, and then the blue is blotted, the sideways sun casting into shadow as the Grantham Jorum Tempestas fills the window. First the glowing hover-panels, the grimy underlayer, then the skiff eases forward and ascends through the drifting islands and tilting structures of the flotilla—each chained together or held fast with telescoping bridges, strung up with wires and cables. Something about it feels like being reborn, resurrected, drawn up through tangled root and rich grave-earth before emerging out into the light—to glass and chrome, to silver and steel, to statues of Saintangels and Pegasus wings. Flat ribbons of morning sunlight shining bright, trapped in mist and slowly burning it away, pooling in windows like paintings inked in glowing magma.

  The chains bind Pop’s wrists and loop through an eyebolt under the skiff’s dash. Agrasanto’s hands are bloodless on the wheel, and stick.

  “Will your husband be here?” he asks her.

  “I hope so. Rutan’s the one who set this up for me. He is a man of leisure but still has political connections through his family.”

  Pop nods. “So you will be able to buy your way back in.”

  “It seems. Rutan knows the Granthams. So that is who will receive you: the Grand Architect of this flotilla and the praetor, Mydra Alamene.”

  “You’ve already negotiated the deal, then.”

  She nods stiffly. “I take you in, all charges against me go away.”

  “I thought you were different,” he says. “Thought maybe you’d changed, saw the error of your people. I know the Seventh Heaven isn’t populated with monsters—many of you don’t like what’s being done to us, haven’t liked it or understood it for a long time. I’m a little disappointed, to be honest.”

  “The guilt of a parent,” she growls. “Don’t bother. I already have it. My mother was good with all that. Guilt. Shame. Regret. But it is what it is. I’ve made my decision. Maybe I can change things from up here. Maybe I can work to alter the landscape from within.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “Then I go on living my life. I have coffee in the morning while Rutan drinks his tea. I read the visidex over fresh fruit. My husband tends to the house, the garden, the dogs. And sometimes I look down at the Heartland, and I feel a pang of sadness, for the Empyrean shadow cast upon you is long and dark.” She shrugs. “Then I go about my day and think about happier things.”

  “Will it really be that easy?”

  “It will,” she says, though the way she says it, he’s not so sure.

  Ahead, an octagonal platform. Each point of the platform marked by a flashing orb in a brazier shaped like an inverted eagle’s claw.

  The proctor presses forward and eases the skiff rails to the platform.

  The skiff hisses as it depressurizes.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Are you?”

  “I am. I’m sorry I convinced you I was someone I was not. I’m just as selfish as everyone else. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I want what I want, and that outweighs any sense of blame.”

  He frowns. “At least you know yourself. Others would justify it. They’d dance circles around it until they forgot what they’d ever done wrong.”

  “The question is, have you justified all that you’ve done wrong?” On her face: a smile flashing like the beacons around them.

  Pop doesn’t answer.

  She gets up, grabs the case with the Heavenkiller revolver, then begins to unlock his chains.

  He thinks: I can take her.

  But it’s an illusion. He can’t. And won’t. He’s not an old man, not yet, but the balance of his life has tipped the other way—he’s getting slower, not faster. She’s still quick, still tight and tough as a cinched belt. And even if he succeeds, then what? People will be here waiting for her. He hasn’t been on a flotilla in—gods, how many years now? Twenty, at least. Where would he go except to the edge of the city and down to his death?

  The last hope of him wrapping the chain around her neck and killing her leaves him—like seed-wisps stolen from a dandelion’s crown. Whoosh.

  Proctor Agrasanto binds his hands behind him.

  And she leads him out of the skiff and onto the platform.

  The winds kick up when they land, howling. The sensation hits him—one he remembers from a long time ago but whose memory is more academic than tactile—where the entire ground beneath his feet seems to be shifting, sliding side to side subtly, reminding him that his feet aren’t planted on hard earth, but defying some natural order, standing way up in the clouds, in the sky, closer to the sun and the stars than any of his friends and family in the Heartland below.

  It’s a feeling both wonderful and terrible—buoyant, in a way, but it also makes him queasy to think about it. Anxiety prickles the back of his neck.

  “Come on,” she says, marching him in front of her.

  Ahead, a set of steps down off the platform. And then a skybridge leading to an elevator with a set of accordion doors and an auto-mate next to it on a pillar.

  The elevator dings.

  The accordion doors slide open with a rattle.

  A young girl steps out. At first Pop thinks her face is just in shadow—because it is—but as soon as she steps farther out onto the skybridge and a band of morning light reaches the side of her face, he sees that she’s scarred. A labyrinth of puffy tissue. Each raised ridge painted gleaming gold.

  She’s alone.

  Agrasanto hrrms, pulls him forward and down to meet the girl.

  “Girl,” Agrasanto says, “you don’t belong here.”

  “Don’t I?”

  Something about the way the girl says it. She knows something. She’s playing a game—acting cheeky and cruel at the same time.

  Pop feels the proctor tense up next to him.

  “I’m meeting people,” the proctor clarifies. “Important people. And if you’re here when they arrive, I imagine they won’t be happy—”

  “You’re meeting Mydra Alamene?” she says. “And Jorum Grantham?”

 
Further tension—like a spring tightening. Agrasanto nods. “I am.”

  The girl sucks air between her teeth. “Except you’re not. I’m afraid I’m here instead. My name is Enyastasia Ormond, Dirae of the Harpies.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “You’ve been gone awhile, Proctor Agrasanto.”

  Pop suddenly has the sense that things have shifted here in the skies—like one of those slide puzzles in reverse, the squares moved by a diligent thumb until the image is no longer discernible.

  “How—?”

  “I told you. I’m Dirae of the Harpies. I have military command.”

  “You have—what? The Praetorial Council—”

  “Is less than the Grand Architect Council, and it’s them I went to. They denied me, of course, which is why men like Jorum Grantham had to die.”

  Agrasanto seethes. “That’s mutiny. You can’t usurp power like that in some bloody coup! You’re just a girl—”

  The girl moves fast.

  So does the proctor.

  The skybridge is five feet wide, maybe—Pop has nowhere to go unless he wants to slip off the edge and down into the wind-scoured bowels of the flotilla’s underlayer—and so instead he shields his face as two sonic blasts scream past each other like a pair of shrieking raptor-birds.

  The proctor and the girl stand there a little while longer.

  Each with her gun up and out.

  Agrasanto’s weapon wavers, sun sliding along the shiny barrel.

  It’s then Pop sees the blood. Spreading from her midsection, like a towel soaking up the oil from a busted motorvator.

  Agrasanto looks at him, tries to say something—

  But then her heel slips out from under her, and she falls off the edge of the bridge. Silently, as if she were never there to begin with.

  Pop wheels on the young girl—the young cruel girl, a girl standing there, grinning ear to ear like that fox that just figured out the lock on the henhouse door. He bares his teeth, but she just laughs.

  She turns down the dial on the pistol as he charges her.

  The sonic scream hits him in the chest.

  His thoughts warp. His guts churn. The sonic blast unsettles every molecule inside him—his marrow like worms burrowing, his veins like corn roots pulling apart all the dirt that composes him—

  His own heel skids, slips, and then it’s over the edge for him.

  But—

  His descent, quickly halted.

  A hand catches the chain binding his hands behind him.

  As the winds die back for a moment, they’re replaced with her disgruntled sigh. “No, no, no, Arthur McAvoy. You don’t get to leave us just yet. You have a head full of information that I’d very much like to have.”

  He cries out, and she lifts him back up onto the bridge, dry-heaving.

  PART THREE

  THE SEVEN

  FLIGHT

  HIS HANDS SHAKE. Cupped inside them, the little gray bird dances about, shrugging its wings. Balastair peels back both thumbs so that the tiny thing can look up at him with its beady eyes, the feathers atop its silly head mussed as if it just woke up, its beak offering an incredulous, disbelieving look.

  Up here, at the wall, he feels almost like he’s in the sky again. The corn, far below, wind pressing shapes into it. In the distance, the blockade, now bolstered and reinforced by many men, many ships. And a line of mechanicals—here they’re impossible to make out, except when one of their exposed metal parts gleams in the sun. But he’s seen them through the scope: their rubbery flesh, the way they move in herky-jerky steps, their dead eyes and flexing mouths. It gets worse when you consider that actual men and women are encased in those things.

  He shakes his head. Can’t care about that right now.

  This is not his fight.

  What is his, however, sits cradled in his hands.

  “How are you feeling, Cicero?”

  The bird chirps a fluted song.

  He found the young bird a week ago down near the Boxelder Circle—the little thing was unable to fly, hopping about and burbling and squeaking. Some Heartlander—a builder, someone who works on the very wall on which Balastair stands now—was about to stomp on it, but Balastair waved his arms (making very birdlike gestures all his own) and caught the man’s attention before the boot came down. Since then, he’s been feeding the little bird, getting it back to strength.

  The bird quite likes him, and he quite likes the bird.

  The bird’s been able to flit about the room—from chairback to chairback, from one side of a railing to another. Now, it’s time for a test.

  He opens his hands. The bird hops out onto the edge of the wall.

  Hop, hop, hop.

  Singing a little song. Warble-woo-chirpy-twee. It makes a sound like a visidex ding. Then a cat meowing. Then a motorvator hum before going back to its little singsongy trill.

  “Go on,” he says, giving the bird a little nudge. “It’s time.”

  One more song. Sounds like a question mark.

  He pokes the bird in the butt.

  The bird tumbles off the edge, wings pinwheeling.

  And then the bird is gone.

  Gone.

  He expects the bird to flutter back up—a dark blur, a gray puffball shape against the blue expanse.

  He waits.

  Waits.

  Nothing.

  Oh, by the gods.

  No.

  Horror fills him.

  The fledgling didn’t fly. Cicero wasn’t ready.

  No, no, no!

  He imagines the little bird down there in the corn—body broken, if not dead. Food now for the corn. Balastair buries his face in his hands and weeps.

  There we go.

  The long case sits on his bed, dark wood like swirled chocolate, golden clasps like monkey hands. Lane slides his hands along it.

  This is gonna make a helluva surprise.

  A little bit of good news in a bad time never hurt anybody.

  He hoists the case up, turns around—

  And about jumps out of his skin.

  Killian stands there. A withered, winnowed shape. A specter, really—a skin-kite with deep-set eyes and dry gums. Half-lidded eyes stare out.

  “Didn’t think you’d come back this time,” Lane says stiffly.

  “I always come back to you, love.”

  “Love.” Lane scowls like he’s eaten a spoonful of dirt. “That’s a good one, Kill. Precious.” He takes a sniff of the air. “You smell lovely.”

  “You want to make out?” Killian says, leering. He lurches forward a few steps, a lusty look crossing his face.

  “You smell like cat piss and rank sweat. Be still my fluttering heart, O Killian Kelly,” Lane sneers. “I’d rather stick my tongue in an anthill.”

  Killian faux pouts. “We used to be something, you know.”

  “Used to be, yes.”

  Now, a real pout. “I could use your compassion. A little empathy wouldn’t fucking kill you, would it, Moreau?”

  “I tried compassion. Same thing as feeding you more rope for hanging. Didn’t work, and so I’m done with that. Now it’s tough love.”

  “Tough love?” A small smirk. “So you do still love me.”

  “Get bent, cornstalk.”

  Killian laughs. It isn’t his bright, bold laugh—it’s a greasy, muddy sound, the laugh of the drunk and defeated.

  Lane asks, “So, what was on the menu this time? More Pheen, I’m guessing.” Fact that the corners of Killian’s lips tug up into a playful smile tells Lane he hit the mark. It’s been three months of this. Gotten worse of late, too. The onetime captain has been disappearing for days on end now, coming back worse and worse every time. He’s diminishing. And Lane feels powerless to stop it—and is increasingly unsure whether he even wants to keep trying. “Where do you find the stuff anyway?”

  Killian just grunts and grins like the cat who ate the canary.

  “Have you seen Luna?” Lane asks.<
br />
  “That little shank-blade? She’s hiding in some bolthole somewhere. Or maybe the rumors are true—maybe she really did leave.”

  “We didn’t find any missing ships.”

  Killian shrugs. “Whatever. I don’t really care. Never liked her much—always found her a bit childish. I was surprised you picked her as your right-hand girl. Still don’t understand that one.”

  “I already explained this to you.”

  “Yes, yes, wah wah wah, similar childhood, parentless orphans, a shared hatred for authority.” He fakes a yawn. “You know why I think you did it? I think you did it because you didn’t want to work with me. Or you’re still ashamed of who we are to each other. Didn’t you yell at me about that, once? Hmm. Easier to hide me away than make me a proper adviser.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” And yet, his words ring in Lane’s head like a votary tolling his bell—a loud gonging echo that won’t quit. Is he right?

  “What’s in the case?” Killian asks, leaning up and over.

  “Nothing.” Pause. “Something for Cael.”

  “Your new boyfriend?”

  “He’s got his own relationship problems without me piling on.”

  Killian grins, tongue in the pocket of his cheek. “And yet, you would pile on, wouldn’t you? You love him.”

  “I love him because he’s my friend.”

  “Sure it’s not more than that?”

  “Sure you’re not just jealous?”

  “I admit it. I admit all manner of things—I admit I’m jealous, I admit I’m an addict, I admit I am half or less of the man I once was. What is it you’ll admit, Mister Mayor? Hmm?”

  Lane asserts once more: “Move.”

  “Gladly.”

  As Lane passes by, he looks at the man Killian has become—he’s almost a transparency, as substantial as fog.

  “I don’t want you in here anymore,” Lane says. “We’re done.”