Beasts of the Walking City Page 4

  I groan, and roll my eyes. I try to keep myself spread out, and roll over fast—not an easy trick, but I pull it off. The wheat shimmies back and forth. The late-summer sun is hot, and I have to squint. I’m not particularly scared. Where is he? I roll my head from side to side trying to see him, but the angle is all wrong. He can’t be that far, I tell myself—I can still hear him laughing, the sound of the tractor.

  I give up, and sit up to see better, and crash down through the wheat. I try and grab the stalks to keep from falling, and it slows my fall some, but when I think I'll hit the ground, for some reason I don't. I just keep falling, right through that strangely flickering dirt.

  It’s my first time on a corpse road.

  Everything is dark for a minute. My feet have landed on something, but I can’t make it out.

  I take a step. There’s a gray light now, coming from somewhere, and I feel strangely stretched somehow.

  I can still smell the dirt.

  I’m nauseous and sweaty and as I stand there I’m getting dizzy.

  So I take another step, and suddenly I’m on my feet in the middle of a highway. What I know now are cars are flashing past me, throwing up spray, but it’s raining hard, and I’m four, and the cars have their lights on, and in my four-year old mind I’m being attacked by beetles. Huge, speeding beetles with these glowing eyes. I dart to one side. A beetle swerves away from me, just at the last minute, and it sideswipes another. Horns blare. All my hair stands on end, and I’m sure I’ve gone stark white.

  I dodge another beetle with what might be creatures inside of it, and jump the guardrail.

  I run down an embankment, duck under an overpass. It’s damp here, but it’s out of the rain, and I climb up to the corner, where the hill meets the bridge. I extend my claws and dig myself a dirtnest there. The dirt is clumpy, damp, and not at all comfortable, but I’m away from all those rushing beetles.

  My breathing refuses to slow, and my hearts are pounding so fast that I worry they’re going to draw all of those bugs right to me.

  After some time, I don't know how long, my secondfather finds me there. He digs me out of the dirt, sits me on his lap, hugs me into his huge chest. “Fierce you are, and talented too, Blackwell,” he says.

  The rain is still falling, harder now, and water pouring off the overpass like a waterfall. I look at him, my eyes wide. “What is…Sha, where did our field go?”

  He looks at me and smiles, gently. I remember noticing his eyes were pale green, reflective like the lake just before the sunrise.

  “We have a lot to talk about, you and I,” he says.

  5.

  On the rear of the podship, facing Kjat and I, a larger hatch opens. A tall man with a trimmed goatee throws down a hastily-knotted rope. He is young, with a large nose and jet black hair that sticks out from under the brim of his hat.

  He shouts down to us and gestures with his hands. I can’t hear a word he’s saying.

  “My men!” he yells again. “Get them up here! Come with us!” He points. “We’ll try to get you out!”

  It takes me a minute to realize he means the two mages that had been excavating the ship in the first place. They’re still bound and gagged where we left them, half covered in rubble and struggling against the knots.

  I look at Kjat. She shrugs and then nods. We spin up warding and dash back across the excavation. I grab a human under each arm while Kjat covers me. The fat man struggles, and I have to shake him to get him to settle down. I’m trying to balance them and turn, find a way to get my knife out again when I see a tracer pierce Kjat's wards and lock in on her, followed quickly by two others.

  There’s little I can do. The force that burns down the length them of it should be enough to kill her.

  But I’m wrong. She grapples with each of them. The fire wraps around her, crawls up her arms, wraps around her chest and neck. Her clothes start to smolder. But she wrestles, gains control, and throws energy burning back down the line. Somewhere, back on the deck of the Retriever ship, a man screams, and then another.

  I nod at her in amazement. Half a year ago, Josik claimed, she’d been a prisoner of some Talovian mercenaries. Josik had argued to bring her on when Matthais got cut up, but I’d assumed he had a thing for her—he always did go for the quiet, wounded types.

  I didn’t expect anything like the skill she was showing now. “Thanks,” I say. "Nice work."

  She smiles, looks embarrassed, doesn’t meet my eyes. “We should get on the ship,” she points. She’s right. Another cannonball hits it, and the podship begins rotating slowly, out of control. I can hear cursing from inside the ship, as the open hatch starts to spin toward the Retriever cannons.

  We run for the makeshift the rope. I motion Kjat up first, to make sure one of us is onboard before I hand up our only negotiating leverage. She climbs and disappears into the hatch, and when I’m sure she’s in, I throw the fat man up. He sails through the hatch, though I expect it's a rough landing inside.

  I’m climbing with the woman slung over my shoulder, the back of the ship completely open to the Retrievers now, when I hear the attack coming.

  I spin to look. I see three crackling globes of Grohmn force rising up from the bow of the Retriever ship, moving straight at us, turning the night into a deadly sort of dawn.

  I freeze. All the hair across my face and chest goes white despite myself. I can see the shadow of the podship in triplicate, converging toward me across the sands. The bearded man’s head appears above me. His brown eyes are wide, his face pale, his nose shines like a flaming white arrow, his lips are parted to curse again in Fhirlo.

  “Hold on,” I say to the woman over my shoulder. I pull her off my back and throw her up into the hatch ahead of me.

  Someone shouts. The bearded man ducks inside. I swing on the rope and make a leap for the rim. As my claws grasp edge of the hatchway, the podship bucks from another cannonball and it swings back around, kicking me up and inside.

  I roll, hit a wall, find my feet. I’m in a small cargo bay. Old containers are strewn across it. The two bound mages are dangerously close to the opening, and Kjat is dragging the fat man back from the door. I grab the other, pull her deeper inside, and slam the hatch shut. The podship bucks once, and then begins moving forward slowly.

  Too slowly.

  “Hang on,” I shout. The Grohmn-spheres converge where the ship was.

  And then they blow.

  We’re all thrown through the air, containers flying around us. I can hear hot fire crawling over the ship. Glowing metal veins all through the room pop and spit, and the walls of the hull glow first red and then white hot. The ship spins out of control, slams down into something, and slides awkwardly to rest. We’re thrown against the hot bulkhead. The engine cuts out. Somewhere, things are burning, and I can see my own hair and clothes starting to smoke where they rest against the wall.

  I roll to my feet. We’re at a strange angle, with bow of the ship pointed in the air, probably up against a building. I help Kjat up.

  She looks at me with those startling violet eyes. “Short trip,” she says, wryly, raising one eyebrow. I can only nod.

  We pull the mages away from the burning walls, and cut them loose after making sure neither of them is still carrying a knife. Can’t be too careful. They sit up. Their clothes are singed. The fat man’s leg is twisted, badly, and I’m not entirely sure he’s human. His nose is too flat, his eyes too far apart. The woman is very human, and startlingly beautiful—long dark hair, large eyes, great teeth.

  We all look warily at each other. “So.” I say. “Hey.”

  The bearded man appears from the corridor, his face covered in soot, bowler hat crooked and his clothes all smoking. “I don’t know who or what you are,” he says, looking at us. “But my pilot is dead. So if either of you know something about flying, now would be a good time to say so.”

  Kjat and I exchange looks. She shakes her head.

  I’m a better swimmer than I am a pilot
. But no one else looks like they’ve got a better idea.

  I follow him.

  The cockpit is up near the bow of the ship. In one of the seats, the body of a Human mage lies slumped over a knife that's embedded in the control panel. In two of the six other seats sit skeletons. Details leap out at me as I move the mage from his seat—one of them has a large snout, sprouting from a narrow, yellowed skull. Six-fingered hands with long curved nails are rich with rings.

  In the other seat are the bones of a Hulgliev. Traditional heavy armor, like my mother and firstfather used to wear, hangs loose on the skeleton’s huge chest and shoulders. Its skull is half again the size of mine, and is split with a wide grin of sharp teeth.

  I shake my head. I’ll have to think through that later.

  Large windows let me see ahead, above, below. The ship is crushed up against a tower. Men are running at us from the Retriever ship, with boat hooks and netting. The tails of their long dark coats flap behind them. There’s a net across the viewscreen, and men are piling on. Another cannonball ricochets off the roof.

  I grab the mage’s knife and reach out into the ship, and I’m instantly overwhelmed. System readouts spread out across my vision, most of them red and flashing.

  Sartosh had trained me for battle, not for flying. But some of that training was in lei-powered armor.

  But it was nothing as complex as this.

  There’s something more here, too. It’s underneath the readouts, some sort of intelligence in the ship. It recognizes me as a Hulgliev, and I sense that’s a good thing. It’s feeling me out.

  All the hair on my neck ridges stands at attention. It’s smarter and faster than I am.

  We need to get airborne, I tell it through the knife. On instinct, I’m thinking in our High Tongue.

  The ship acknowledges, but I can still feel it up inside my mind. It’s crawling through my memory, trying to figure out if I can be trusted. I’m a kid again on that tractor. I’m hiding deep in my dirtnest from the hunters. I’m burning Sartosh’s desk. I’m getting branded, fighting off a Talovian, climbing out of a wreck in the swamp, kissing a human woman for the first time. I’m curled on top of my dirtnest, staring at that picture from Sartosh’s book—Dekheret presenting Te’loria to the Hulgliev Farsoth.

  Another explosion rocks the podship, and the tower we’re up against shifts and starts to collapse in on itself.

  And then, suddenly, the ship opens up. Glyphs flash bright across my view, and I can see all the mechanics like a map. Most of the power conduits are fried. The battery reserves are dead. The engines are pretty beat up, and there’s no shielding left.

  I tell the ship to tap the lei lines directly for power. I fire up two of the engines that still seem to be functional enough. We lift awkwardly into the air, shifting first right and then left, and rotating slowly. Maneuvering engines are shot out all along the port side, and the ship and I try to compensate.

  I hear the thump and slither of hooked nets dragging across the hull. From the outside come yells, as men are being lifted into the air with us. One of them clambers across the front viewscreen, holding on to the glyph-ridges carved there and straining to see inside. But the ship tilts forward, and he can’t hold.

  I try and get us moving away from the Retriever ship, but instead I wind up crossing low over its decks.

  Men there are swiveling the cannon around.

  The huge, white Tel Kharan marine gestures with his knife in the air. Mages come running to him, and dive into position on the matrix platform.

  His visor is thrown back, and I can see his face clearly. Dark skin, pale eyes, and a series of deep white scars run down his pale, cleanly shaven face.

  The mages start feeding power to him. Aether gathers at the tip of his blade.

  I know all too well what kind of force these guys can put out. I get the ship to throw all of the lei-scoops and all of the power conduits wide open.

  We loft higher, forward, still painfully slow—like some huge metal balloon. Another engine engages, and we lunge forward.

  And then we fall straight into the face of a massive Dead storm.

  6.

  With a great roar, the storm slams into the ship and throws us across the city. Bruise-colored clouds, smoke, and lightning wrap the viewscreens. An eerie howling fills the air, like packs of demon-wolves are riding on the hull. The remains of the ship’s original crew, and the body of the dead pilot, are flung back against the far wall, and the bones and pieces of armor fly in every direction. There’s the smell of ozone and cooked meat, the black city below vanishes from view. Somewhere someone is screaming. I’m hoping it’s not me.

  I strap myself in as best I can. Random glyphs pulse throughout the ship, lit up by the jagged lightning. I’m holding on to the knife in the console like my life depends on it. (Actually, it does.) All of the displays are out, but I can feel the ship still trying to level itself, keep us in the air. Lei is still coming in, the engines are still running. Somehow, the bearded man has strapped into the seat next to me. Kjat and the female mage stumble up the corridor and hold on to the backs of seats while they tie down the fat man.

  I see these will o’wisps out of the corner of my eye and I flinch. They look like little Grohmn spheres, but the color’s wrong—greener, darker. They smell faintly of juniper. What the hell? The ship pitches and rolls over, and I have to dodge the flying debris. A skeletal foot ends up in my lap while I try to level it out.

  I watch the wisps out of the corner of my eye.

  They’re gathering together, merging into larger shapes, which merge into others and those form into figures. The sounds from outside the ship grow fainter, and I can hear voices speaking, first a few and then more and more of them. In a very short time, it’s like I’m down in the middle of a protest in the Warrens.

  “Don’t look at them,” shouts the fat mage. “Don’t look or listen,” but I ignore him.

  The green figures pass through the ship, stepping through the one hull and crossing through the other as if the ship wasn’t there, and they were simply on their way from somewhere to somewhere else. A few, at first. Then more. Some look confused, wandering lost. Others move with purpose. More and more join them, as though we’re at the center of a river of spirits. The figures are dressed in strange clothes, ancient armor with elaborate crests and inlays. They’re both old and young and many of them are human, but there are other races too: I recognize Stona and Talovians, but there are others that I’ve never seen before. Tall, snouted creatures like the ones in the ship. Stout creatures with large tusks and a single wing. Ethereal beings with spindly limbs and huge, shining eyes.

  What gets me is that there’s this shimmer to them, the sort of double-exposure I find at the mouth of a corpse road. And all of my senses are on edge, the way they get when I’m walking the roads. It’s hard to describe what that feels like, unless you’ve walked them yourself. But it’s as if there’s something in the pit of your stomach that’s off, like you’re being pulled in several directions that just feel wrong. You feel like you’re spinning in place, and like there are bugs crawling up under your skin and electricity cracking across it.

  I think I mentioned: corpse roads are places where worlds rub together. My secondfather explained to me that day when he brought me back to that wheat field. “Think of bubbles floating in the lake,” he said. “Sometimes, two bubbles press close. When this happens, sometimes things can slip through, one to another, without breaking the bubbles. Or sometimes those bubbles merge into one big one.

  “All of what we are, Blackwell, is contained in a bubble in a giant lake full of bubbles, and it’s the aether that we all float in. Sometimes worlds drift close enough to each other, they touch. And it’s at those times that we can walk between them.”

  That was the simple version, for the four-year-old me.

  It’s of course more complex than that. Imagine thousands of universes floating in this sea of aether. Some of them think they’re entirely alone, l
ike Earth; in all of their history, they’ve never encountered another universe before, or at least they don’t realize they have. Other worlds, like Kiryth, bump into their neighbors all the time, and they get really good at building roads and bridges back and forth, reaching out across the aether and either invading, getting invaded, or just selling things to each other. When universes get close to each other, really close, sometimes there are these natural holes that open up between them, like the one I fell through. Hulgliev aren’t the only species that can sense them, and navigate them, but it does seem easier for us than most. The natural holes, or roads, are usually linked to specific parts of geography in each world, though they can shift and change without warning.

  The closer the universe is, the more roads open up. And Earth has been getting closer to us for the last twenty years. A lot closer. Sometimes they even collapse into each other, which is how we got the Stona and the Talovian on Kiryth. And, my aunt would argue, the humans.

  More about all of this later, but here are two strange fact I can’t really explain, so you’ll just have to take them for what they are. First, most corpse roads connect with each other somehow, once you learn how to see them. Something about how the aether works, and I’ll be honest I don’t really understand it, but I think of them like this elaborate maze of interdimensional tunnels that you can get lost in pretty easily, if you're not careful.

  Second, while man-made roads and bridges link worlds together in their present times, many of the natural corpse roads seem to link into another world’s past.

  That’s why we call them corpse roads—pretty much anyone you meet there is already dead.

  • • •

  Before long, the figures start to notice me, too. None of the other people in the ship, mind you: just me. They start going out of their way to pass near me. They’re peering and squinting, as if trying to see me from across a long distance, and then they begin to gesture and call out to me. Many of them are suddenly angry, and shouting, but while their mouths move the cacophony of distant voices is already so loud that it’s impossible to know who is saying what. Some of them draw weapons, and threaten me with them. Some of them gaze sadly at me, moving their lips as though they’re talking to themselves. Others are getting right up in my face and shouting.