City of Stone and Silence

by Django Wexler

  I can feel the currents of Eddica energy, more powerful than anything I’ve encountered aboard Soliton. It has a strained, hard quality, as though the magic were as frozen as the rest of this country.

  “Nearly there,” Meroe says, joining me at the rail.

  “Yeah.”

  A few minutes, at most, before Soliton’s Bow touches the light. And then Blessed only knows. I stare at the top of the dome, as it gradually eclipses the cloudy sky overhead. My hands have gone tight on the cold metal rail, and I pry them loose with an effort. After a moment, Meroe’s fingers slip through mine again.

  “Kiss me,” she says. “Just in case.”

  The tip of Soliton’s Bow disappears into the solid wall of gray. I turn to Meroe hait Gevora Nimara, First Princess of Nimar, and kiss her as thoroughly as I know how, my body pressed close to hers as we slip into the unknown.

  * * *

  There’s a moment of pressure, and then release, the feeling of vast energies suddenly relaxing their grip. Then a gust of warm air, cutting the chill like the breath of a hot stove. Meroe pulls away from me with a gasp, and I reluctantly open my eyes.

  The snowy landscape is gone. The clouds are gone, the icebergs are gone. All the gray has changed to gleaming blue—the sun bright and hot in a perfectly clear sky, the water a brilliant cyan. Steam rises from Soliton’s deck as the new hot wind blows across the cold metal, the ship’s coat of snow slumping rapidly into streams of clear water.

  Ahead, there’s a shore, a riot of green that’s almost painful to look at after so long in the gray-on-gray world. Huge trees stretch skyward, trunks tangling into a dense forest canopy. To either side, rocky beaches curve outward as Soliton pulls into a vast bay, but directly ahead of us the forest is broken by a line of enormous structures. They look like walls made out of metal spiderweb, the tops taller than Soliton’s deck, arranged in a regular pattern—

  I match Meroe’s gasp when I realize what I’m looking at. The huge things are docks, rectangular cradles stretching from the shore into the sea, built for a ship the size of Soliton. Not just built for—the titanic berths are lined up one beside the other, and several of them are occupied by gray leviathans. Not twins to Soliton—the shapes are different—but at least siblings.

  I look at Meroe. Her eyes are shining, joyous. Her mind must be whirling away already, fitting all this into her theories about Soliton, who built it and why. There’s nothing she likes better than figuring things out. Looking back to the docks, I can’t help but feel more apprehensive.

  The whole structure is clearly not in good shape. Soliton itself is full of holes, pitted with rust, in spite of the strength of its metallic construction. However bad it is, though, the docks are worse. Whole sections of the spiderweb-walls have collapsed, metal beams hundreds of feet long scattered in the surf like a child’s toys. And the other ships look … broken, their decks canted and collapsing, their towers shattered piles of rust. Looking closer, I can see vegetation growing across them, not just Soliton’s ubiquitous mushrooms but whole trees sprouting through openings in the metal, vines winding around the railings.

  The dock to which Soliton is heading is clear, at least, a long trough of deep water with spidery gantries on either side. I can feel the ship start to slow as it approaches, for the first time since I’d come aboard.

  I can feel something else, as well. Energy—Eddica energy, as I thought—is flowing out of Soliton on a huge scale, an invisible torrent of power rushing over us and out into the dock. In return, something reaches back to us, and I feel a hint of intention in the lines of magic beneath my feet. It feels like when I first met Hagan’s ghost, down in the Deeps, that same sense of converging power that drew me to the conduit chamber. The flow is so strong here that I don’t need a conduit. Hardly daring to breathe, I bend down and press my hand against the deck, thinking hard.

  Hagan? Are you there? I didn’t realize, until that moment, how badly I wanted him to answer.

  There’s no reply, at first. But something notices. Not Hagan—a new presence, sweeping into the ship. I feel it reaching out for me and, hesitantly, I answer, extending my mental grip. We make fleeting contact—

  —a face, inches from mine, skin dried and pebbled into leather; a shock of wispy white hair; protruding, yellowed teeth; but most of all a pair of dark, empty holes where its eyes should be—

  I don’t scream. I might have shouted.

  Meroe takes me by the shoulders as I stagger against the rail. I blink rapidly, trying to focus on her.

  “Isoka! Are you okay?”

  “I—” I shake my head. “Yeah. Rot. I’m okay. I just saw something.…”

  “They’re moving!”

  “Who’s moving?” I blink again, and follow her pointing finger.

  Up and down the length of Soliton’s enormous deck, the angels are stirring.

  * * *

  At some level, I’d always known the angels were—not alive, but capable of action. I’d fought one, after all—two, if you counted the rogue the crew called a dredwurm. When I’d first come aboard, I’d found them deeply unsettling, like sculptures out of a nightmare, animal parts thrown together in illogical ways and mixed with disturbing human touches, faces and hands that seemed to reach out imploringly.

  But the dread had faded, over the weeks I’d been aboard. The angels stood along the edges of the deck, as still as if they were statues in fact, and after a while they became just another part of the landscape. Legend among the crew say they’ll hunt down anyone who tries to leave the ship, or attack anyone who tries to get aboard if they were too old or not a mage-blood, but I’d never seen either.

  Now, though. Now they’re all moving together, a tide of misshapen, multi-legged forms sweeping up the length of the ship from Stern to Bow. Their heavy footfalls set the metal decks ringing, a constant rumble like endless thunder.

  Meroe and I retreat inside, and Thora closes the door behind us, for all the good it will do. We’d held the Garden against a horde of crabs, but angels were another matter entirely; the things were absurdly strong and practically indestructible, their stone-like substance animated by Eddica power. Still, I shout orders as we hurry down the stairs—fighters with me, to the main doors, and non-combatants to stay in place and wait.

  I’d hoped the doors would slow them down, but I should have known better. The same guiding intelligence that controls the angels commands the rest of Soliton, and the huge doors at the front of the Garden fold smoothly outward as the horde approaches. We wait on the grass of the Garden’s first level, everyone who can hold a weapon or throw a bolt of flame. Zarun stands beside me, Jack and Thora, mute, deadly Aifin. The angels pause for a moment, and we wait.

  One of them comes forward. It has five legs, three on one side and two on the other, giving it a strange, lopsided gait. Its crystal eye glows blue, high on what passes for a head, a lumpy protrusion equipped with three human-looking mouths complete with long, lolling tongues. A small forest of arms reach out, hands twitching and grasping blindly.

  I step forward to meet it, not yet igniting my blades. It moves slowly—if it were any other creature, I would have said carefully—stepping lightly enough that it leaves only shallow footprints in the grassy ground. I stop a few feet away from it, and it comes forward another step. Its arms reach out for me, and it takes all the self-control I can muster not to summon my armor. The thin, sickly fingers tug at me, pushing. Up the hill. Deeper into the Garden. Toward the Bow.

  I tense, and try to step forward, toward the line of angels. The hands tighten—not to the point of pain, but enough to stop me. I give another tug, and the thing holds me effortlessly in place. It’s like pushing on a marble statue. When I step in the other direction, it lets me go.

  Options. We could attack the angels, and they’ll kill us all. No rotting question.

  Or … what?

  Other angels are moving forward, toward the rest of the fighters. Myrkai fires ignite, and spears are leveled. Time t
o decide.

  “Stop!” I shout. “Everyone stop. I don’t think they want to hurt us.”

  A second angel, this one shaped like an upside-down jellyfish on a trio of baby’s legs, nudges a few of the crew in the front rank with its dangling tentacles. It pushes them, not violently, but insistently, toward the Bow.

  “What in the hell do they want, then?” Zarun says.

  I watch the angels spreading out, pushing, prodding. Gentle, but firm. “They want us out of here.”

  * * *

  It’s a guess, but it turns out to be a good one.

  We have time to send runners upstairs, to where Meroe is waiting with the non-combatants. The angels follow our people up, some of the smaller ones making their way up the stairs while others descend from the deck. Our people gather whatever happens to be within reach—clothes, food, water, weapons, and tools. The angels form a cordon, forcing us forward and downward, and they don’t seem inclined to let anyone slip past to grab something they forgot. When I find Meroe, she’s carrying her telescope and several other instruments under one arm and a bundle of clothes in the other, constantly on the verge of dropping one or both. I take the clothes, and she gratefully hugs the delicate gadgets to her chest.

  It turns out there’s another door, on the far side of the Garden. It opens, smooth and silent, as the cordon of angels contracts, pushing the entire crew together into a single mass. At Meroe’s suggestion, I take the lead, getting people to start walking ahead of the advancing line to keep anyone from getting crushed or trampled. No one has ever explored on this side of the Garden, but there’s nothing here except a wide corridor, leading straight toward the ship’s Bow.

  We pass several hours this way, trudging awkwardly forward, arms full of whatever we managed to grab. Some of the younger crew are crying. When someone trips, the angels stop, waiting patiently for them to rise again. By the time we reach the Bow itself, the sun outside has slipped past the horizon, and the sky visible through the innumerable gaps in the ship’s skin is purple fading to black.

  The corridor stops at a broad, flat space. The angels stop, too, blocking the way back, but no longer pushing us forward. The crew mills around, voices rising. I push my way through, glaring at the angels.

  “All right, we’re rotting here,” I tell them. “Now what?”

  Blue crystal eyes stare back at me. Then, with a groan like a dying whale, the skin of the ship starts to open. A huge flap of bow folds down, turning itself into a ramp. It strikes the dock with a sharp clang, and the groan stops. I take a deep breath—the salt-and-rust smell of the ship is cut by something else, the earthy scent of trees and soil.

  The angels shuffle forward. An arm comes down and pushes me, very gently.

  Meroe catches my eye, her arms full of telescope. She gives me a brave smile. “I think we get off.”

  3

  TORI

  Kahnzoka rises out of the sea, as Isoka once put it, like the enormous corpse of some great fish washed ashore. That might not be exactly how I would describe it, but the broad shape of the city is something like a fish head, narrowest at the top and widest at the base. The peak, set on the crown of the hill, is the Royal Ward, with the palaces of the First Ward just below it. The Second and Third Wards sit side by side below that, across the military road from one another, and so on as the city approaches the harbor. The farther down the hill you go, the poorer the people are, and the more tightly they’re packed within the constricting ward walls.

  This doesn’t mean all the lower wards are the same, though. There are shades to poverty. The Sixteenth Ward, where my sister and I lived before she fought her way out, is unique, a broad strip encompassing the entire shoreline, where all activity is focused on the docks. The constant comings and goings of ships and sailors mean the Ward Guard barely cares about anyone who isn’t actually trying to burn the place down, and what order there is comes from criminal bosses and their enforcers, like my sister.

  (She doesn’t think I know about that. I’m glad to keep it that way if it makes her happy.)

  The Eleventh Ward, where I’m going, is only one tier above the Sixteenth, but it’s a very different sort of place. Where the Sixteenth is messy, the Eleventh is tidy. Families might be packed two or three to a tiny tenement room, but they maintain a scrupulously polite air as they squeeze into their tiny nooks and take turns at the communal water pump.

  It’s a different sort of people who live here, too. Instead of sailors and dockworkers, the Eleventh Ward and its sisters in the second tier are home to servants and small craftsmen. Every morning, great tides of people flow upward, weavers and potters and ivory-cutters and smith’s boys and every other sort of artisan, all those too poor to own their own shops and businesses.

  They have a strange pride, these people. They may be poor, but they can look down on the Sixteenth Ward and say, at least we’re not thieves or streetwalkers like them. Isoka would find that infuriating, their need to stand on their tiny shred of higher ground. It’s not that there isn’t crime here, it just goes on behind closed doors, protection rackets and smuggling. You can walk down an alley at night without being robbed, or raped, or murdered.

  Usually. I carry a long knife thrust crosswise through the back of my belt, although in truth my best defense is the fact that I’d feel the mind of anyone with bad intentions in time to run away.

  The cab drops me off at the ward gate. Inside the Eleventh, there are no carriages—the streets are too narrow, and filled with a tide of humanity, regardless of the hour. I take a deep breath, adjust my cap, and plunge into the chaos. Just past the gate is the High Market, packed solid with people returning from their labors in the higher wards and doing their shopping before going home. I can only make progress with liberal use of my elbows, jabbing my way forward.

  The sounds and smells of the market are enough to overcome even the babble and stink of the crowd. Vendors shout at the top of their lungs from small wooden stalls, simple repetitive chants overlapping like raucous birdsong. The calls are singsong nonsense, unless you know the patterns—car car car for carrots, a high two-tone whistle for pork, low barks for the fat dumplings they call dogheads.

  I home in on a woman making a trilling riii riii, and burst out of the crowd in front of a stall hung with ropes of dough. I manage to work a copper bit out of my pocket, and the woman tucks it into the bandanna tying back her hair. She tears off a length of dough, dunks it in a simmering pot of oil with a pair of wooden tongs, then swishes it through a bowl of honey before handing it over. It’s almost too hot to touch, dripping and sticky. I’ve already had dinner, but I can’t resist.

  The next stall over is wider, serving noodles to customers crammed shoulder to shoulder on a narrow bench. As I devour the fried dough, I get snatches of conversation.

  “—the Bonira boy, and Vana Kujan’s son.”

  “Terrible, rotting terrible.”

  “—say it’s a death sentence if you get sent to the oars—”

  “—better to volunteer. Might get into the Legions—”

  “—can find a set of papers. I know a guy—”

  I finish the dough, licking honey off my fingers, and push back into the crowd. Heading south, I soon reach the bottom of the market, where it narrows into Orchard Street, high tenements rising on either side. Ordinarily, I would expect the press to ease beyond this point, but the street is just as crowded as the square, a mass of people pressed cheek by jowl. I can hear angry muttering.

  “—rotscum, it shouldn’t be allowed—”

  “—His Imperial Majesty, Blessed preserve him, wouldn’t stand for it if he knew—”

  “—Mommy, I have to pee—”

  I’m close to the edge of the street, where the wood-and-plaster façade of the nearest tenement rises beside me, patched and stained from years of abuse. I fit my fingers into the cracks and climb up a foot or two, just enough to get a view over the mass of heads. A couple of people around me laugh, and a young boy shouts encou
ragement.

  Up ahead, where Orchard Street meets Fishmonger Row, wooden partitions block the road. Two dozen men in Ward Guard uniforms man the barricades. They split the incoming traffic in two: women, children, and the elderly one way, men the other, and each man has a conversation with a stern-faced sergeant and shows a paper.

  I can’t make out the documents from here, but I can guess. The talk of the city (though not of my house, as Ofalo’s made clear) has been Jyashtani aggression down in the islands. His Imperial Majesty, through his servant Kuon Naga, has proclaimed that the Empire must be ready to resist the infidels. That means finding soldiers for the Legions and, more importantly, oarsmen to bring the Imperial Navy up to strength. Since most people would rather stew in jail than row in the fleet—as the joke goes, the only difference is that you’re less likely to drown in prison—that means a draft.

  Any likely-looking young man has to produce papers to prove that his family has already contributed a son to the cause. I can see a dozen sullen boys whose documentation was apparently insufficiently convincing standing between two burly guardsmen. Some of them will probably be rescued by friends and family with better paperwork or more bribe money, but the rest will be shipped out to power the Emperor’s war machine.

  There are no draft checkpoints in the Second Ward, of course. If the families there send a son or daughter to the war, it would be as a mage-blood in the Legions, or at least as an officer. Watching the crowd here shuffle forward, like pigs in a butcher’s pen, tears at something in my chest.

  More immediately, the checkpoint presents a problem. In a pocket sewn into the inside of my shirt, I carry my identity papers, but showing them here is likely to cause trouble. They might not even believe me; young ladies of the Second Ward simply don’t turn up at Eleventh Ward draft checkpoints. I definitely don’t want someone sending for Ofalo to spring me from a prison cell.