

Praise for

KEITH DEININGER

and

THE GODGAME TRILOGY

"An epic fantasy tale set in a wondrous world of corruption and war and hope and longing and dreams. No review you will read will ever do this story justice. Just buy it, read it and thank me later."

—Nev Murray, Confessions of a Reviewer

"[Deininger's] prose and imagery is outstanding"

—Anthony Hains, author of Birth Offering and Dead Works

"Like Bradbury on acid."

—Greg F. Gifune, author of The Bleeding Season

"Words themselves can sing... as though music and darkness had been conjured into them, and not just an ordinary darkness, but a delirious, soaring darkness full of menace and mystery. It takes rare talent to wield such magic: Keith Deininger has the gift."

—Robert Dunbar, author of The Pines and Willy

"Keith Deininger deserves a big spot on the New Weird fiction sub-genre. If he doesn't become a legend, then there's something wrong with this world."

—Darkness Dwells

"One of the finest writers of imaginative fiction out there."

—Craig Saunders, author of Masters of Blood and Bone and Deadlift

"I was a teen when I first read Frank Herbert's Dune. He took me to a world so mesmerizing and graphic, that it has stayed with me all these years and I'm talking a lot of years! Today I find another author who is capable of creating such a world, so visual that its landscape plays across my mind as I am reading. The author: Keith Deininger. The book: A Game for Gods."

—Horror Novel Reviews

THE GODGAME

ALSO BY KEITH DEININGER

Novels

The New Flesh

Ghosts of Eden

Within

Violent Hearts

Novellas

Marrow's Pit

Shadow Animals

The Hallow

The Godgame Trilogy

The Godgame

The Uncanny Arts

The Fall of Meridian

The Fever Trilogy

Fevered Hills

Buried Soldiers

Apocalypse Artist

THE GODGAME

KEITH DEININGER

Book One in The Godgame Trilogy

A Meridian Codex Book

A Game for Gods © 2015 by Keith Deininger

All Rights Reserved.

www.KeithDeininger.com

Cover design: Sumrow Art and Illustration

Editor: Kari Sanders

This book may or may not be a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or evidence of fictional realism. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, may or may not be entirely coincidental.

For Violet Layne Deininger

"It is great good health to want to understand one's dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical. It is sickness of the profoundest kind to believe that there is one reality. There is sickness in any piece of work or any piece of art seriously attempting to suggest that the idea that there is more than one reality is somehow redundant."

― Clive Barker

BOOK ONE

A GAME

FOR GODS

# ~ ONE ~

CITY OF TALOS

ELI

From endless storms to oceans vast, from arid wastes to the peak of this crimson mountain, his first glimpse came as the trolley shuddered upward and then, halting for a brief moment at the very top, plunged alarming down the other side. Yet even as his heart leapt into his throat, he could do nothing but stare through the cloudy window at what sprawled before him, filling every opening, every crevasse, every square of available space for as far as the eye could see...

The City of Talos.

It had been many days, yet each rise and fall of light might have been a year, a rebirth, an entire life lived in a series of awed gasps, and then darkness with the promise of new wonders on the morrow. For Eli Sol, who had only ever experienced the artificial lights of the Machine, each day the comet rose, filling the world with light and warmth, was a celebration.

He had fled blindly, a large part of him thinking he was as good as dead, doomed from the start—he would perish beneath the ceaseless rains of the Maelstrom. He had abandoned the safety of the Machine, of the world and the life he had always known, with only the vaguest of convictions and sense of duty. Outside of the Machine, there was nothing, they'd told him. The moldering letter from a distant ancestor, tucked in his breast pocket near his heart, provided his only instructions to the contrary. He carried a small pack slung over his shoulder containing a few scraps of clothing, some Machine-made energy cubes to sustain him, his threadbare copy of the LibroMachina, and the wooden box that had been passed down to him, from father to son for innumerable generations. The box was ornately carved, marked in a language he could not read. It held several strange items, including those long ago forbidden by his people. One of the items was an ancient weapon, a hand-held firearm, a "blunderblast" his father had called it, showing Eli its polished wooden grip when he'd been old enough.

"But the blunderblasts were banned by the Machine. They were all given to the furnace," he'd said to his father, unable to tear his eyes from the dangerous weapon.

His father had smiled grimly. "A few were saved," his father had said. "For the members of the Society of Saint Neil."

"There are others?"

His father had looked away. "Yes, I believe so."

"Who's Saint Neil?"

"I don't know."

And that was all he could remember. His father, if he'd known more, having carried such knowledge to his death and to the furnaces of the Machine.

But there was another item in the box of far greater rarity and value than the blunderblast. It was smaller, its greatness less evident, easily missed among the other trinkets and clues: a tiny stub of paper, a ticket. It was to board the trolley that, according to the letter he carried, ferried travelers from the Machine to a place outside the Maelstrom.

And so he had fled the warmth of the Machine, almost certain his fate was to die alone and cold among the sharp and barren rocks beneath the unending torrent of rain from the Maelstrom above. If he did perish outside of the Machine, he knew, his body would be forever lost. Will my soul be able to return to the Machine? he wondered. Will the Machine still allow my essence to recycle without my physical body to go with it? He had only his ancient letter and box of archaic trinkets to guide him, these things and nothing left to lose. Except my soul, his mind insisted.

His family was gone, his daughter and his wife drowned, his friends killed when there had been a breach in the Machine's foundation. In the depths where he worked, by the glow of the artificial lights, he had witnessed something that, after centuries of slow decay, had weakened and cracked, with a soft groan followed by a larger sound, an explosive scream of metal grinding against metal, exploding pipes, and then water that had gushed suddenly from deep below. He had been the only survivor.

He had awoken in the medical sector of the Machine. The doctors had told him sector nine was now completely beneath water. One of them, whispered out of earshot of the others, had also told him there were rumors of the water levels continuing to rise, slowly, but steadily.

He had been in shock for several days, stricken with grief. Only slowly had he remembered the ornately carved wooden box his father had given him and the letter that went with it. He had read it several times, dismissing its admonishments, expecting to dutifully pass it and the box on to his own son when he had one—or to Pia, his daughter, if he didn't have a son—but he knew the letter mentioned something about "signs to look for" and "failings of the Machine." It also said something about "The Flood."

When he had recovered enough to return to his living quarters—lonely and sterile, which no longer possessed that feeling of home without his wife to lay her copy of the LibroMachina, which she'd been reading, down as he came through to door, to smile up at him from the couch—he had locked the door, slunk to the bedroom closet, and recovered the ancient box from its hiding place. He'd brought the box to the living room and stared at it. After a while, he'd carefully removed the letter from its envelope and opened it gingerly. It was soft like fabric, a burnt umber color. He'd read it by the glow of the light tubes that ran along the walls. When he was done, he'd read it again.

The Flood is coming...

And thus this suicide mission had begun. If his wife had been alive, or even one of his friends, he might have shared with her or him what he had been thinking of doing, but there had been no one. He could, of course, have gone to Father Etheridge—whose HaloMachina services were fierce preaching to the power and benevolence of the Machine—for advice, but then he would have had to admit to harboring contraband and the punishments for such crimes were severe.

He had, instead, left the Machine, his meager jacket instantly soaked beneath the rains of the Maelstrom that filled the sky with swirling eddies of gray. He had negotiated the treacherous rocks filled with crevasses eagerly opening before his stumbling feet, threatening to twist and snap the brittle bones in his ankles with every step. His progress had been slow and soon he'd been exhausted, but he'd forced himself onward. When he'd become too tired to continue, he'd hunkered down against the largest rock he could find, wrapped his arms tight about his shivering body, and passed into feverish sleep for an hour or two. Then he had eaten an energy cube, dragged his body up, and kept going.

At one point his feet had slipped out from under him and he'd fallen. He'd rolled onto his back and stared up into the rain. My end has come, he'd thought, just as he'd imagined it would, and he'd closed his eyes and intended not to rise again. But, sometime later, he had still been alive and found he still possessed some will to live. He'd risen, mustering himself, moving one foot forward, and then the other, and if he hadn't, he never would have seen the wonders that were to fill the next several days.

Sometime later, just as his legs had begun to quiver uncontrollably, threatening to spill him to the rocks for the final time, he had come within sight of the trolley depot, a small building, its many windows shattered long ago. He'd realized then that a large part of him hadn't believed he'd ever find it or that it had ever existed. He'd staggered into the depot, found a chair and passed into unconsciousness once again.

When he'd opened his eyes, the trolley had been pulled up to the station. He'd fumbled through his pack, unwrapping the wooden box from the plastic sheeting (made by the Machine) he'd used to protect it from the rain and, as if in a dream, watched his fingers sift through its contents. When he'd finally found the ticket, he'd rushed forward, afraid the trolley would leave without him. The door had been sealed shut, but there had been a thin slot much like those he'd seen in various places about the Machine. He'd slid the ticket carefully into the slot. There had been a shredding sound as the ticket was destroyed. His entire body had tensed as he waited. If he'd given the ticket to the wrong slot, there were no more in existence and he would have been left to die in that forlorn trolley station at the edge of the world.

But just as his heart had begun to sink, the door had begun to open, trundling aside reluctantly. He'd leapt through the opening. The door had shut behind him, and soon after the trolley had begun to move, slowly at first, and then faster and faster.

The next days he had spent gaping through the windows.

There wasn't much to see in the trolley car, he'd soon come to realize. There were two rows of seats bolted to the floor with a narrow aisle between them. There were doors at either end of the car, but they were sealed shut. The walls were old metal, lined with round porthole windows of thick glass. Yet he was protected from the rain and the air was warm. There was little he could do other than to stare out one of the windows, but all he had been able to see at first was the Maelstrom, gray fog and rain. He'd closed his eyes and slept.

When he'd woken, what must have been several hours later, he had at first thought, I must be dreaming. He'd rubbed his eyes and stared. His mouth had fallen open, gawking.

Through the porthole window, outside of the train, he had seen light. It had been bright and shining unlike anything he'd ever experienced before, shimmering on the green surface of water that stretched infinitely into the distance.

He had spent the next several days unable to look away. The trolley had taken him skimming across the surface of an ocean mesmerizingly green and then a deep lapis, the sky a lighter shade of blue above, with only thin wisps of cloud to mar its surface. Then there had been land alive with greenery like he'd only ever seen in printed illustrations in books. He'd seen some sort of animal watching the trolley fly by with eyes huge and yellow. Then all around had been flat, green giving way to yellow grass that wavered in the breeze, and then to barren dirt pocked with craters. He'd seen bubbling pools of a substance thick and black, and strange-looking plants with needles growing from them. He'd seen slicks alive with flame and several odd creatures, one with a long snout and skin covered in protective scales; another with its body surrounded by a ponderous shell, dragging itself through the sand with claws that protruded from gaps at its sides. Days had passed and he'd forgotten his weariness; he'd forgotten to eat. Then the arid landscape had fallen behind and there had been another ocean and then mountains, the trolley climbing steadily upward.

The mountains had resembled the jagged rocks that surrounded the Machine, but unlike those rocks, these were covered in giant, leafless trees that crawled through their crevasses, clinging vermillion branches like constricting snakes. For endless hours, his sight through the cloudy porthole window had been filled only with these growths, with this singular flush of color, leaving his eyes strained and dry, as if they had begun to rust, forcing him to blink and look away.

And then the trolley had reached the apex of the mountain and every wonder he'd seen previously on his journey seemed to lose significance: he had reached his destination...

At the beginning of his journey, as he had climbed to the top of a small outcropping of rock just outside of the place he had always known as home, he had taken one last look back. He had gazed upon the Machine, built among the mountains. It was a towering compound, chamber built upon chamber, snaking interconnected corridors and observation domes. It stood massively, as it had always stood, its squealing gears grinding on and on, hissing steam, furnaces boiling, molten bubbling metals forged into all manner of strange objects, their purposes long forgotten. From the outside, it was an impressive sight, awe-inspiring, easily deified.

Yet now, as Eli stared through the trolley's tiny window at the City, whose existence he had only a few days before thought impossible, he could not help but to think that if the divine engineers who had raised the Machine had one day focused all their ambitions on this sprawling valley, and for countless centuries thereafter worked tirelessly carving alcoves and building walls as the groundwork for these thousands of humble houses, gabled towers and ornate mansions—and if, after having erected a great pyramid of ascending steps whose peak rose higher than even the tallest of the Machine's jutting pipework, they had built space for gardens and aviaries and astrological towers—then their efforts, once filled to overflowing with millions of scrambling citizens, might have approached the majesty and complexity of Talos.

The trolley caromed and shuddered along the track beneath his feet as Eli took in the immensity. Talos blanketed the landscape as far as the eye could see, rising in tangled heaps. It was an amazing sight. Everywhere a disorder of styles, structures on top of structures, accumulated ruins repurposed again and again, tier upon tier, angular platforms, precarious stairways, and towers of haphazardly stacked blocks. Everything covered in grime. If there was one distinguishing feature that defined Talos, it was its walls, parallel and perpendicular, some high and some low, some lined with spikes and others with twisting curls of razor wire, giving the City a labyrinthine quality. The hovels at the base of the gargantuan pyramid at the center of the City clung feebly to the outer walls like fungus from the earth. Further inward, the buildings became increasingly elaborate, yet always scuffed and worn-looking, from gated corridors lined with fine mansions, to domed structures, to groves of marble pillars, and then on to the highest peak, stairs that came to an apex upon which there appeared to grow a lush garden. Yet the pyramid was only a small section of Talos, the rest of the city and the geometry of its walls spreading like a purple and parasitic blight over the land, so that the actual center of the City must lie well beyond the base of the pyramid.

Despite its grim homogeny, however, Eli found the city of Talos a wondrous sight, its grunge eclipsed by its vibrancy of light. If people could worship the Machine as it clanked on and on beneath the relentless rains of the Maelstrom, he reasoned, surely they must also deify Talos beneath the light of the comet that blazed in the sky above.

He had arrived. The ancient letter he carried in his breast pocket had not lied to him. This was the place where he was supposed to go. Somewhere, on one of those narrow streets, in one of those structures, he would find the man to whom he must deliver his message: The Flood is coming...

He had only his blunderblast, the wooden box with the trinkets it contained, and the name of the man he must find: Marrow.

# ~ TWO ~

TERRITORY OF NOVA

ASH

On a cool summer day in the month of Flayon in the year 214 of the Meridian calendar, a boy named Ashley Roth Alexander stood where the sand met a wavering sea of grass, an exaggerated frown creasing his face, his throat forming the gravelly words of the enemy—spouted mindlessly at his friend, who laughed and rolled in the sand. He was twelve years old. He'd found a Talosian helmet—with its slightly lifted crest of plain, uncolored metal, dented and unkempt—and was now wearing it on his head. His friend, Brent, fell to all fours and began to bark like a dog, turning in place. The sky was clear and blue and filled with cometlight that warmed the sand and the backs of their necks in equal measure.

"Listen," Ash said to Brent, mimicking the voice he'd heard recently spewing from the News Carts that travelled constantly along the greatroad and sometimes through his village. "All roads lead to Talos or death! Just as the Comet rises in the north and sets in the south, just as it has always been, so must we never stray from our duty!"

Brent looked at him, pushed his tongue out, panting. He barked.

Ash laughed, his face instantly a boy's again. He cast the helmet from his head—it was too heavy and gave him a headache anyway—and then took it up and began once more to dig in the sand with it. He shoveled the sand out from beneath a clump of foliage until it was dark and heavy and wet.

"Maybe there's more," Brent said.

"Yeah, maybe," Ash said, continuing to dig.

He dug the helmet in deep. He hit something hard with the helmet and his heart leapt.

"Did you find something?" Brent said.

"No. It's just a root. You wanna help or just sit there and be a dog?"

"Oh. Okay." Brent looked around, grabbed a stick, and started scratching at the beach with it.

Ash hit something else, tore it from the ground. He dropped the helmet and brushed the sand away with his hands. He held it up. "Here, boy," he said, waving it through the air. "Here, boy. Here you are. Come on, boy."

Brent dropped his stick and fell to all fours again. He hung his tongue out, his mouth open.

"Come on, boy. Come on."

Ash threw the bone and Brent dived after it, lumbering across the sand pit. Ash laughed.

He continued to dig. He struck something. He dropped to his knees and began to scoop the sand away with his hands. He uncovered a wooden section, smooth and polished. Is that what I think it is? He pulled. The sand began to fall away in clumps. He pulled the rifle free, laid it in his lap, and stared at it, awestruck.

Brent came bounding up to the edge of the hole, the bone clutched in his mouth. He growled. When he saw what Ash had, the bone dropped, his mouth hanging open. "What's that?" he asked, knowing the answer.

"It's a... A..."

"One of those flute rifle things."

"Yeah," Ash breathed. "A Talosian fluted rifle." He held it up. The rifle's barrel came to a wicked spear-point, lined with holes that made a terrible wailing sound when it was fired. "Do you think it's loaded?"

"Maybe we should just leave it," Brent said.

Ash looked up at his friend. "No way. It's—"

A scream shattered the air.

Silence. His ears were ringing.

His friend was gone. Brent had disappeared from the edge of the hole.

"Brent?" Ash lifted himself, his legs numb beneath him.

For a moment, his eyes wouldn't focus and he stared out over the blurry sand. He could hear the wind rushing through the grass, making him sick. The bone he'd dug up sat on the edge of the hole, looking old and disgusting. The comet glared, the sky a flat blue.

His friend lay rolled in a heap by the edge of the sand pit. His friend wasn't moving.

Slowly, Ash crawled from the hole. He still held the rifle, dragging it beside him with one hand. The sand was warm and scratchy under his bare feet. He padded downhill to the lowest point of the sand pit, where the sand darkened and solidified. He approached his friend.

"Brent? Hey. Come on."

Brent was turned away from him, facing the grasslands. His head was slumped beneath his shoulders, his legs flopped awkwardly. There were dark stains on his clothes. Blood? Is that blood?

Ash lifted a foot and tentatively prodded his friend. "Brent?"

He dropped to his knees and reached his hand out and shook his friend. There was a cut on his finger where the rifle had scratched him somehow. He touched Brent's hair, his friend's cometburned neck.

His hand came away bloodier than before.

"Brent?"

Brent shuddered, his body trembling. He turned over, his eyes were blank, then began to fill with awareness once again. "Ash?"

Ash looked at his friend. His heart was thudding in his throat, making it hard to speak. He helped his friend to sit up. "You okay?"

Brent dabbed at the back of his head with his hand and it came away bloody. "That's strange," he said.

Ash helped Brent to his feet. "Come on," he said. "Let's go home."

"Okay."

Ash dropped the Talosian rifle in the sand, kicked it into the hole, and he and Brent ascended the sand pit, returning to their village.

~

His family ate in silence, sitting around the little table in the kitchen.

Ash watched his dad wolf down his meal, a chunky stew made from blanch root, which gave it a purplish hue, or so his mom said. But his mom hadn't made it. His mom was sick in bed; he could hear her coughing in the back bedroom even now, even with the door closed. His dad thought Ash didn't notice his twitches of concern. He watched his dad's large and hairy fingers push a wad of bread through the slop, taking large bites that left crumbs in the bristles around his mouth.

Blanch root stew was the only dish his father seemed able to make. It was the only thing they'd eaten all week.

Ash's little sister Kya sat next to him, slurping noisily but not talking.

His other two sisters, Terry and Alex, sat on the floor in the corner, playing quietly with their toys.

Ash kept thinking about the rifle. He didn't dare tell his dad about it. They were supposed to be safe from the Talosians: "They'll never get this far," he'd heard his father say on numerous occasions. Where had the rifle come from?

Maybe it's really old, he thought. But it hadn't appeared rotten or damaged in any way. It seemed more likely that it had fallen from the sky, from one of the aerials, and become buried in the sand.

What if someone finds it? His heart leapt in his chest. If one of the adults found it, they'd have it destroyed. If it had been a Novan iron rifle, he would have brought it home proudly for his dad to see, taken it out into the woods and practiced firing it. He needed to learn to shoot. He needed to be able to defend himself and his family.

But the rifle he'd found was Talosian. It belonged to the enemy.

Still... if he took it far enough into the woods where no one could hear him, he could learn to shoot. Besides, it might be valuable later to know something about the enemy's weapons.

"May I be excused?" he asked his father.

His father grunted assent.

Ash ran his bowl to the sink and dumped it, ran back to the living room, thinking about how there was still an hour of cometlight. If he left now, he could run to the sand pits for the rifle, hide it somewhere safe, and make it back before bedtime.

"One minute," his father said, stopping Ash in his tracks. "I need you to pick up something. From Mother Marlena."

"But, Dad..."

"Ash!" his dad said.

Ash jumped, shocked by the seriousness of his dad's tone.

His dad sighed, scrubbed a hand through his greasy hair. "It's for your mother," he said. "Okay?"

"Okay."

"Mother Marlena knows you're coming. Get the medicine and hurry back."

"Okay."

~

He'd heard stories from the other kids at school about Mother Marlena. They said she was a witch. They said she could create flame without a striker and bread without flour.

According to the stories, long before Ash had been born, Fallowvane, their village, had been struck by a horrible sickness. People had been confined to their homes, not coughing or sneezing, but overtaken by a horrible heat, a fever that burned and burned inside their bodies, until it drove people into delirium and psychosis, and then grew so hot it boiled their brains in their skulls.

More than half the village had been dead when Mother Marlena had appeared from the woods. It had been her cures, her strange remedies involving herbs and blood, which had saved the village. According to the stories, she had laughed when she'd seen the state of the village, made a thick tea and ordered everyone to drink as much as she or he could. Within a matter of days, people were better, and so the sickness had passed.

Ash skipped along the main road. To get to Mother Marlena's he had to pass through most of the village. The old woman's house was on the edge of the forest.

The light had dimmed by the time he reached it. He still had close to half an hour before the end of the day, but the comet had now fallen behind the flatness of the grasslands to the south, leaching the color from the world. He ran up the wooden steps and rapped on the door with his fist.

Almost instantly, the door opened, as if the old woman had been standing on the other side waiting for him. Ash took a step back.

Mother Marlena looked at him, her large and watery eyes nearly level with his. She wore a succession of layered shawls, cascading from her shoulders and down the length of her body, joined by nappy strands of hair.

She smiled at him, her lips large and moist, wreathed with lines in the grayness of her ancient skin. She waited for him to speak.

Ash gaped. Mother Marlena was the oldest woman he'd ever seen, and her features were too large, her eyes, her nose, her mouth; his heart thudded with fear. He'd forgotten everything he was supposed to say.

"Come in, child," Mother Marlena said finally, and her words were soothing.

Ash took a deep breath. He was brave, he told himself. He didn't believe the little kid stories. Real witches didn't eat children.

Mother Marlena stepped aside and, holding out her hand, beckoned Ash to enter.

Inside, the house was warm and smelled smoky and strange. Something cooked over the fire and everywhere there were shelves lined with jars and trinkets of all sorts. Movement caught the corner of his eye and he turned in time to see the old woman whisking across the room, the tassels of her shawls wriggling out behind her with such detail his eyes seemed unable to fully perceive what he saw, tracers of color that faded reluctantly from the air.

"I know who you are," Mother Marlena said. "I've seen you."

Ash stood where he was, shuffling his feet nervously, still unable to speak.

The old woman's eyes narrowed, she leaned on a small table positioned between herself and Ash, her bottom lip drooping on its surface. She sniffed loudly. "You have an interesting smell. What are you?"

Ash swallowed dryly and could hear the click in his throat.

"Your dad sent you? You're here for your mother?"

Ash nodded his head.

Mother Marlena laughed, her jowls bouncing. "I'm sorry, child. I don't mean to scare you. What's your name?"

"Ash."

Mother Marlena smacked her lips. "Ash," she said. "Okay. Hm."

Something brushed Ash's leg and he jumped, barely able to stop himself from crying out.

When he looked down, he saw only a spiked tail disappearing into the shadows beneath the table.

"Oh, don't worry about him," Mother Marlena said. "That's Bergman, the kylix. I'm afraid he shares the pugnacious disposition of the man he's named after. But nothing to worry about. He's harmless. Just relax. Although they say if you stare into the eyes of a kylix for too long it will steal your soul, it's not really true. Nothing to worry about."

Ash shuffled his feet, took a deep breath, and looked up at the old woman. "My mother is sick," he said.

Mother Marlena's eyes melted. "Oh, poor child. I'm sorry." For a few seconds, she stared at Ash, studying him intensely, and then, finally, she turned away and began searching her shelves. "I've prepared something for your mother," she said, her back turned to Ash. "I believe it may help."

Ash took another breath; his heart was beginning to slow.

"It's funny," Mother Marlena said, continuing to rummage. "There are cures for all sorts of obscure afflictions, yet it is fever that persists and remains the most difficult to treat." Something rattled and fell from the shelf, but Mother Marlena moved on without bothering to pick it up. "Did you know you can heal hives, rashes, and anything that itches with blanch root?"

"No, I didn't," Ash said, rubbing his throat with his hand, thinking of his father's stew.

"And did you know you can re-attach a severed finger or even a person's arm with some stitching and a little slurry?"

"Nuh-uh," Ash said, his interest piqued.

"That's right. And you can cure psychosis with secretions from the fire-tailed frog."

"Yeah?"

"And incontinence with herbs. And male dysfunction with fryleaf."

"Inconti—what?"

"And getting someone to fall in love with someone else is only a matter of manipulation and persuasion. Love is such a fickle thing, so easily twisted by lust."

"Lust?"

"People's opinions and beliefs are easily shaped and tugged to foul purposes..."

Ash blinked.

"And when you add a few chemicals to the equation, entire nations can be swayed to violence and death."

Ash didn't understand what Mother Marlena was talking about, but her words excited him.

"Ah, here it is," Mother Marlena said. She flew back to the table with a small canister pinched between her fingers.

His fear gone, Ash stepped up to the table.

"Here you go," the old woman said to him, dropping the small container into his open palm. "Have her smear this beneath her eyes twice a day, once in the morning and once at night."

Her hand shot out, snatched his wrist, and drew him close. Her huge eyes looked into Ash's. Up close, they looked wet and runny. She sniffed him noisily, inhaling deeply. Her lips parted and her mouth was lined with huge square teeth glistening with saliva; her breath earthy, like decaying meat.

Ash tried to pull away, but the old woman wouldn't let go.

"What are you?"

With some effort, he wrenched his hand free and began to back away. The old woman watched him with interest and hunger.

"What are you?"

He turned and ran from the house.

"Wait," he heard Mother Marlena call after him. "Tell me what you are!"

Ash ran back to the village, passing through the dark street, between the small houses that lay still in the dark like sleeping beasts, afraid he might wake one of them, and be unable to run away fast enough.

JOSEF

Josef Alexander pinched the letter with his fingers, leaving a visible indentation where his perspiring thumb had been. He was staring out the window, but it was too dark to see much of anything. It was the middle of the night and everyone else was in bed. He could just make out the branches of the nova tree—after which their lands were named—that grew in the backyard, its limbs shivering in the breeze.

His wife broke into a fit of coughing in the back bedroom, which filled the entire house—seemed, to Josef, to shake the walls—despite the door being closed. Josef gritted his teeth and waited for it to pass. Every time she coughed, he felt her pain, the muscles in his chest clenching, holding his breath until she regained her composure. It had become difficult to remain by her side, to watch her suffer. He hoped she would be okay. He hoped the medicine Ash had brought back from Mother Marlena would help. It had not been cheap. He needed her to be okay. There were decisions to be made. Hard times were coming. His children needed protection; Ash most of all.

Should I give my son to war or to madness?

Josef forced himself to take a deep breath, to let it out slowly. Ash was too young, too innocent; he needed a couple more years to mature, to become a man. There were so many things Josef had failed to teach him, things he'd delayed, thinking he had more time, wanting to give his son a proper childhood, a happy childhood.

He opened the letter and read it again.

It was a simple note, but with a signature of such significance... He ran his thumb over it. The ink was raised on the paper so that he could trace the flourish of the letters: MARROW.

Everyone knew of Marrow and his aerial, of his great flying ship that travelled the skies. There were many stories. Some said he was a philanthropist, travelling the lands in search of those in trouble. Others said he was a healer, a man of advanced knowledge in the surgical arts, that he could fix mental maledictions by opening the skull and adjusting the position of one's brain, that he could reattach severed limbs, or provide mechanical ones, arms and legs and even blinded eyes for those of the fleshy variety missing and beyond repair. Some claimed he could raise the dead. And many thought he must be of the immortal race, one of the arkaine—although he did not have the height or the purple hued skin—because he had lived through several human generations. Others said he was a treasure hunter, seeking the rarest of artifacts, priceless gemstones and ancient tomes of secret and forgotten knowledge. Some said he travelled in more worlds than one.

Josef didn't know what to believe. He knew only one person who had ever met the man, and she had always refused to speak of him. But now she must, because Marrow's letter was an invitation for Ash, for their son. Marrow was offering their son a place on his aerial, a position of great honor, some said. There were those who trained for such an honor; others who prayed, some even to Marrow himself. There were houses in Talos, or so the rumors persisted, which served as places of worship to Marrow, places to pray, to beg to be chosen worthy to join Marrow's crew. To learn under Marrow's tutelage was akin to acceptance into the greatest of colleges, into an institution of learning far older and far greater than any still functioning today.

But Josef did not trust such institutions; they were, after all, Talosian by nature. They were complex and often focused on extravagance and manipulation. They were designed for those seeking power and control over others and, sometimes, over the natural laws of the world. He was, after all, a Novan, and here in Nova they lived a simpler life. They did not have such needs.

Yet war was coming. It could not be denied. Small bands of Talosian troops had been seen on their lands and the Novan committee had begun to organize the recruitment of soldiers for their defense. They were taking anyone of age able to hold and fire a rifle. At twelve years old, Ash was old enough to join them. Kya was ten and still too young, but Ash was now considered an adult and it would ultimately be his choice—despite the protests of Josef or his wife—and Josef feared he already knew what choice their son would make.

So, what should I do? Should I give my son to the soldiers or to Marrow?

No matter the choice, he lost his son. Ash would leave the safety of their home and be forced to fend for himself. He did not trust Marrow, knew very little about him, but war was a dangerous thing. Soldiers died. Horrors were witnessed. Even those who survived were forever changed.

His wife's coughing roused him from his thoughts.

He looked down at Marrow's letter and realized he'd crumpled it in his fist, his fingernails white from clenching. He forced his hand to relax and smoothed out the letter. He had to speak with his wife. Lena had known Marrow when she was younger and she would have a better idea what they should do. Even if she was unwilling to share with him her experiences concerning Marrow, she might still know if he could be trusted with their son.

Josef sighed. In the morning, sick or not, he would speak with her. He had hidden Marrow's letter from her and he had not told anyone about it. It had come anonymously marked many days ago. His first instinct had been to destroy the letter and forget it had ever been delivered, but instead, for whatever reason, he had tucked it away and forgotten about it. But now, with the army recruitment teams in town, he had retrieved it. Could this really be a better option for his son? Could this be a way to save him?

Lena would know. She was smarter than he was, and wiser to the ways of the larger world. She would know.

~

"Lena?"

His wife blinked, even smiled.

"How are you feeling this morning?"

The medicine Mother Marlena had instructed to smear beneath his wife's eyes was now dried and flaking and she was forced to squint up at him through the crust, but she nodded. "Better," she said.

Josef let out a sigh of relief. Color was returning to his wife's cheeks. A knot rose in his throat and for several moments he was choked up and couldn't speak; he could only peer down at his tentatively smiling wife, the letter clutched in his hand forgotten.

"I wanted to see you before I went to open the store," Josef said.

"I'm glad you did." She reached her hand out and patted the bed.

He sat and her arm came down to rest in his lap. She gave his leg a squeeze and he smiled. He leaned over to kiss her on the forehead and he saw her eyes glance at the letter.

"What's that?" she asked.

"It's... You know the recruiters are coming and Ash..."

Worry abruptly creased his wife's face. She nodded.

"I could tell him stories, try to scare him, get him to say he'll stay home, tell him we need him here. I could tell him I need his help at the store. Or, when they come, I could hide him. I could take him to Farrenhold for the day. I could..."

His wife raised her hand to stop him. She lifted herself to a sitting position, grimacing, and looked him deeply in the eyes. "What's in the letter?"

He broke eye contact to look down at the letter. He sighed. "It might be a way to keep Ash out of the war."

"How?"

Josef handed his wife the letter and watched her, slowly and with trembling hands, open and begin to read it. He watched the crease between her eyes deepen. She stared at the letter for a very long time, as if frozen in place.

Josef waited, trying to be patient, but when it felt as if several minutes had passed and he could no longer stand the silence, he said, "I thought—"

"No."

"But he'll—"

"Has Ash seen this letter?"

Josef's jaw clenched and he shook his head.

"Good."

Josef leaned forward, clutching his wife. "I know," he said. "It's just an option." He faltered. He didn't know what else to say.

His wife's arms were limp by her sides and she had a pained look on her face. The letter lay like a fallen leaf in her lap.

Josef felt the question slipping out before he could stop himself. "What did Marrow do to you?"

Lena turned her eyes on him, somehow both angry and sad at the same time. "You said you'd never ask me that," she said, but not with the same conviction he'd met the other times he'd dared to ask her about Marrow. Her body slumped, exhausted, looking old and worn.

"I'm sorry," Josef said.

His wife shook her head. "It's okay. I should tell you. I just... I've always wanted this life to be different, simpler, free of the past, my past. Please. You understand."

"Yeah. Understood."

"Burn that letter," Lena said. "I don't want our son to go to war any more than you do, but he is old enough to decide for himself. And we both agree it's necessary, right? If Nova does not organize a military force, the Talosians will sweep through our lands and we'll be helpless to stop them. Ash has to forge his own path through life, just as we have. Here in Nova he has the freedom, just as we do, to make his own choices. They'll make him clean the tents or serve the food. He's too young to see any fighting. Don't worry."

Josef gave his wife a strained smile. "You're right. I'm just happy to see you feeling so much better."

Lena's smile returned. "Glad to be feeling better. What about you?"

"Me? I'm feeling okay."

"No. Will you join them?"

Josef blinked. "You mean the militia? I hadn't even considered that."

"You could stay close to Ash, keep him safe."

"But you're sick. Who will take care of our daughters?"

"I'll find others in town to help. We'll be okay."

Josef looked at his wife closely. He sighed. "I'll think about it."

"Good," Lena said. "We have to protect what we've built here. They were supposed to leave us alone. We can't let them destroy it all now."

ASH

He is in an empty field, stretching flat in every direction. At the furthest reaches of his vision, there is a darkness that seems to move, pulsing, wriggling, as if large things lurk just beyond the reach of his eyes. He can feel the grass beneath his bare feet, damp, and the air is thick with moisture against his skin and heavy in his lungs. He turns and there is a lone chair of simple wood standing not far from him. He begins to walk toward it... And then he is climbing a tree and looking up through a tangle of branches and he really wants to see what's in the sky, needs to see it, something flying high above... And then he is standing alone in a blackened crater and there is a towering pile of dead things burning and the smell... And then his feet are padding through soft powder like snow, but it's not snow; it's warm and puffs up in little clouds with every step. All around him are windowless buildings smooth and gray and there is something coming toward him and it has no face...

~

In the morning, Ash could not remember his dreams. They had been strange and dark. He usually dreamed about adventure, about cutting his way through dense forests to discover forgotten caves or ancient cities filled with treasure. He sometimes dreamed of building tree houses, ones with many platforms and walls and windows. He'd dreamed once that he was a captain of a ship sailing across the ocean to rescue his sister who had been kidnapped. Sometimes he had scary dreams—running from lumbering beasts with claws or men with large smiles and shiny knives—but nothing like the shadowy ones he'd had last night. Last night he hadn't felt scared, only uneasy, the danger looming and still far away, but getting closer and closer...

A shudder ran through his body as he pushed himself out of bed. He stood, stretched, jumped up and down a couple of times, and felt better. He didn't have to go to school and that thought made him excited. School had been cancelled all week.

The rifle!

His pants from the day before were crumpled at the foot of his bed and he hurriedly pulled them on. He slipped into his shoes, tore open his dresser and grabbed the first shirt he saw.

Everyone else was still asleep, so he burst through the front door without being seen and ran around the house and toward the beach.

~

There was a battered open-topped buggy parked in the dirt in front of his house when he returned a little while later. Ash ran up to it. It had rubber wheels and was made of metal, painted an earthen green color. He brushed his hand over its rough surface. He ran around to look at its engine, mounted at the back, a complex hulk of gears and pistons. "Cool," he said. He found the cap where the slurry, which fueled the engine, was poured, caked with dark, congealed smears.

He skipped up to the house, opened the door.

"No," his dad said. "Go away! Ash, get out of here!"

"Dad? What's going on?"

There were two strange men standing in the living room and he knew immediately what they were by their uniforms—plain navy, nova tree badges: soldiers from the Novan army. Their rifles were leaning in the corner and the bearded one—smiling at him—had a pistol clipped to his belt: an officer of some ranking.

The bearded officer bent a little to look at Ash. "Ash, is it?"

Ash's heart was pounding. "Yeah—I mean, yes, sir!"

The bearded officer smiled.

"No," his dad said again. "He's too young."

Ash snatched a bread knife from the table and pretended to stab an invisible enemy in front of him. His little sisters watched from the corner. He winked at them. He tossed the knife back to the table.

The bearded officer began to laugh, a rumbling chuckle.

His little sisters began to laugh too. The other soldier bent down to them, picked up one of their dolls of woven sticks and pretended to make it walk.

"Alright, say what you have to say," Ash's dad said, sitting at the table with a sigh.

The bearded officer righted himself and turned. "Thank you, sir," he said. "All must do their part. We've been sent on a recruitment mission."

"I know."

"Ash is old enough to decide for himself now."

In the corner, the soldier laughed with Ash's sisters. The soldier made gunfire sounds. "Boom," he said. Shrieks of laughter.

Ash saw the soldier had ripped the doll's head from its shoulders and tossed it away. He watched as little Alex picked up the head, walked over to the fire, and tossed it in. She put her fingers in her mouth and sucked. Terry began to cry.

"You can't," his dad was saying. "You can't take him. He's too young."

"Just the same," he heard the bearded soldier say.

Ash watched his sister take the rest of the doll and toss it on the fire. He watched the fire consume the dried roots, a goofy grin on his face.

Behind him, his dad was making strange sounds and he could hear his mom coughing in the other room.

~

That night, his mom ate dinner with them, although she looked sicker than ever, slumped in her seat, the medicine dried and hanging from beneath her eyes like flaps of skin.

His dad reached across the table, ripped a chunk of bread from the loaf. His hands were shaking. He looked tired too, very tired.

"Will you be okay?" Kya asked him.

"Of course," Ash answered easily. "Don't worry. I'm fast. And they'll give me a rifle to shoot."

His mother made a sound in her throat.

"Are they going to make you kill people?"

Ash raised his chin. "They're only Talosians, Kya. They're bad."

Kya nodded. "Oh."

Ash's dad grumbled. "It's not that simple—"

"Don't," his mom said.

Ash's dad fell silent.

He could hear his little sisters giggling in the corner. "Pow-pow-pow," one of them said.

"Listen to me, Ash," his dad said to him. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

Ash nodded.

"Be careful," his Dad said. "Don't do anything foolish. Don't be a hero. I'd go myself, even just to keep an eye on you, but they won't let me. I'm too old."

"I'll make you proud, Dad."

His dad gave a pained smile. "Well that's that, then. They come for you in the morning."

His mother choked back a cough.

Gunfire continued to giggle from the corner.

~

Lying in bed, he was too excited to sleep. He hadn't found the rifle on the beach that morning, but that no longer mattered. Tomorrow, he'd leave his village behind and start a whole new life. He was going to help the cause, keep the Talosians from invading. In the morning, he was going to go with the bearded officer and the other soldier. They were going to give him a uniform and a Novan iron rifle. They were going to teach him to shoot. They were going to train him to be a fighting machine. He was going to belong to something important.

The crack in the ceiling looked as if it'd spread. He couldn't quite tell. It looked as if its striations had meandered from just over his head to down toward his feet.

He blinked, took a deep breath, and turned over.

It was dark and warm. He wondered if Brent was going too. He hoped he was. It would be good to know someone, at least until he made new friends.

He closed his eyes, and dreamed...

LENA

Lena forced herself to give Josef a reassuring smile and closed the bedroom door. She wanted to tell him their son was going to be okay, but there was something caught in her throat. She gasped, her lungs aching, a fit of coughing overtaking her. She held the wall to support herself, hoping her husband would not come through the door, waiting for it to pass. She did not want her husband to know how much worse she was feeling.

She staggered to the bed and slowly crawled beneath the covers. A feverish shudder ran through her body. She clutched the blankets tightly. She stared up at the cracks in the ceiling. The sickness had settled in her lungs, making each breath difficult, as if an oxhoag sat on her chest. She was much sicker than she allowed herself to appear.

Our son is going to be okay, she imagined saying to her husband. Ash is going to be fine.

Her relationship with Josef was founded somewhat on his unquestioning acceptance of her past. She always dismissed his questions, explaining to him how important it was to her to live this chapter of her life unsoiled by the one before it. He knew only that she had been born in Talos, raised and educated there. He knew that she had at a young age been a member of Marrow's crew, but she had never told him more than that. He knew that she still had family in Talos, but she never spoke of them, except occasionally about her sister Embla.

When she had come to the village of Fallowvane, she had been cold, hungry and scared. She had all her life been in the City, with its mobs of people, labyrinthine structures and electrical lights; and then on Marrow's Aerial, among an eclectic group of people, she had seen amazing lands and animals and learned of the greater world. Marrow had taught her many things, had read to her every night as they lay side by side in bed.

Another fit of coughing overtook her and, for a moment, all she could do was close her eyes and clutch herself against the pain that tore through her lungs. When the coughing finally subsided, her entire body was trembling.

She had fled Marrow, but had soon found coming back to the life she'd left behind in Talos hollow and meaningless. She had become disgusted with the greed and decadence of the heirotimates, with the unending schemes her family members and friends plotted—constantly clawing themselves to greater positions of control and wealth—with the attitudes of even the lowliest Talosian that it was okay to manipulate and destroy others economically and emotionally for personal gain. All her years of study with Marrow, of art and philosophy, of the wonders across Meridian, had served only to open her eyes to things of worth beyond the material, and left her unable to cope in a world that defined a person's worth based on their wealth.

So, she had abandoned that life as well, fled Talos and everything for which it stood, shuffling for agonizing hours through a dank tunnel beneath the City, trusting in Galen who had, for a substantial price, agreed to show her the way. She had been led out through a broken drainage grate and been left alone blinking against the brightness of the cometlight with the open countryside before her, some meager supplies, and a few vague rumors she had collected about the territory of Nova.

She had, after weeks of travel through lonely coniferous forest, sleeping in the homes of friendly but cautious villagers when she could, dehydrated and exhausted, come upon the village of Fallowvane. From the top of a small forest hill, she had been able to take in the entire spread of small houses with a single sweep of her eyes. Fallowvane was built where dense forest met sweeping grasslands, in a slight depression that seemed to shelter it. It consisted of two unpaved roads that crossed each other at the village's center, where a sculpture stood, a twenty-foot tower of metal fused together at apparently random angles, as if constructed by a madman, which, she had later been told, it basically was. At the top of the structure protruded a weathervane, a cock in profile roosting upon an arrow, its metal an oxidized turquoise. This sculpture, and the weathervane upon it, was the namesake of the village, although it never moved; despite the warm winds which came through the grasslands, the weathervane refused to budge from its position: always pointing south, always in direct opposition to that which loomed the other way—the City of Talos.

Although she had intended to press on to the coast, perhaps to find a ship that would take her as far from anyone she knew as possible, she had stumbled that day into a small carpenter's shop and met the shop's proprietor. Josef had given her a bed, a warm meal, and a smile of complete trust and kindness, and she had decided to stay.

She had liked Josef the moment she had met him. He was a simple man who worked with his hands, making chairs and other furniture for sale in his shop. He was an honest man. She'd been able to tell that about him right away, his large eyes blinking at her, his face open and unguarded. She had loved him almost immediately, fiercely and loyally. And, she had soon discovered, his attitudes toward Awa, were ambivalent. When she'd told him she no longer believed in Awa or any other god, he'd only shrugged and said, "I don't think it matters much what you believe. All that matters is our lives, right here and now." He'd smiled and waved his large hands through the air.

She had embraced her new pastoral life, as hard as it had been at first to live without electricity and the advanced plumbing systems found throughout most of Talos. She had birthed four children by Josef, Mother Marlena delivering them all. She helped Josef in the shop sometimes, prepared meals, cared for her kids, lived simply. She enjoyed the freshness of the air and the routine of the day to day.

One day she had been outside, sitting in a chair built by her husband, de-feathering several small birds over a large basin by hand while she watched Ash and Kya play in the yard, both toddlers at the time, when her husband had come striding up.

"What are you thinking?" he'd asked. "You have a strange expression on your face."

She'd blinked at him and the words had come to her lips before she'd realized she meant them. "I'm happy," she'd said. "This is what happiness feels like."

Josef had scowled, as he did when she said something he didn't quite understand, and then he'd shrugged. "Why wouldn't you be?"

Lena coughed and coughed. She let her arms fall to her sides, lying on her back, her frail body looking wilted beneath the sheets. She was exhausted and could draw air only in shallow gasps. She had, for several years, lived the life she had always wanted; she was thankful for that. And now, if she was going to choke to death, she had to remember how fortunate she had been. She had produced four beautiful children, had a husband who loved her deeply, and had, for several years, been truly happy. How many people could say that?

War is coming.

The thought sickened her, pulled her from her reminiscing. It was a terrifying thought, but it couldn't be true, could it? The Novan committee reported that bands of Talosian troops had been seen at the borders of the territory, but that did not mean war. Yet Ash, her eldest child, had chosen to join the militia that was assembling. The recruiters had been glad to take her twelve-year-old son from her, but had rejected her husband, saying he was too old and that his skills were needed in Fallowvane.

Ash would never see battle, she reassured herself. Of course he wouldn't. Even if there were a few rogue bands of Talosian mercenaries looking to stir up trouble, the Novan militia would soon scatter them. The threat of war had not grown to the point where children were thrown into battle. The committee was only being vigilant and cautious, as they should be.

Of course, she could write to her sister. Embla, who still lived and worked in Talos, might know what was going on. But it had been years since they'd spoken—would Embla even bother to write

her back?

# ~ THREE ~

TALOS

EMBLA

When Embla saw the letters sitting in her personal mail slot, her heart immediately began to pound. She quickened her step. Somehow, even after all these years, she still hoped for that one letter, the one she'd been waiting for all her life. In her heart she knew it was not too late. She still had much to offer. She wanted to travel the skies. She knew she could still be an asset to Marrow and his crew.

She snatched the letters from the box and hurried into the single room that served as her living quarters. She sat on the bed and looked at the letters. The first one was from her sister, which gave her pause. She looked at her sister's name, written in ink—Lena Alexander—and then tossed the letter aside. The second letter was an unlabeled square of metallic-colored paper. She fumbled it open, unceremoniously ripping the paper in her excitement.

She unfolded the plain paper within and a small packet fell into her lap. She glanced down at the packet, and then at the letter.

She made a sound of disgust. For a moment, she had thought the letter was the one from Marrow for which she yearned; the shiny paper had tricked her. It was only a dummy message; the real letter was sealed inside the packet that had fallen into her lap. The letter said she was to take the packet to the Archon directly. Important messages were sometimes delivered this way, when the telelines—into which anyone could tap and listen—could not be trusted, arriving anonymously and then passed from person to person until they eventually reached their intended audience, in this case: the Archon. She was one of the few who lived in the upper reaches of the Ziggurat, otherwise known as the Archon's Pyramid, and had direct access to the Archon, although she had never seen him personally.

She dropped the letter and picked up the packet. She turned it over in her hands. She wondered what message it contained. It was small, square, sealed with a rubbery substance that felt sticky, but left nothing on her fingers—a popular method for ensuring letters remained tamper-proof amongst the heirotimates. How important was the letter's message? Would people live or die based on the information it contained? Or was it nothing more than an invitation or a thank you note? The fact that it was being delivered by hand and not by teleline meant someone felt it was important enough to use such a secretive, if inefficient, method of delivery. But that fact in itself did not necessarily mean much among the exarchs and many of the heirotimates, who saw life as a competition for the best comforts, for the largest parties, for the newest and most exotic pleasures.

What if she burned it? Could its waxy, sticky coating catch flame? What if she hid it away? Or tossed it in the River Slid?

She shook her head, banishing these thoughts. She glanced around her meager chamber, as if someone might be watching.

Learn of that which cannot be seen, Galen had advised her during her visit to the temple last week. She had asked the prophet how she could become a part of Marrow's crew and that had been his response. She trusted Awa's messenger, but what did his words mean?

That which cannot be seen.

Her thoughts, in this way, had been occupied for the past few days, as she fed the animals and shoveled excrement from their cages and paddocks. As she brushed Theo, the long-haired, onyx-spotted ibex; as she took her lunch in the aviary, closing her eyes in the hopes the roar of avian conversation might help her to reconcile her thoughts; as she walked down to the bay to watch the turtles of paradise, with their bright multi-colored shells, move peacefully beneath the waning cometlight—she considered Galen's words.

Cannot be seen.

She was Keeper of the Beasts and it was her job to feed and care for the rare and unusual creatures housed in the Archon's Biopark. It was demanding work, her staff minimal, and she spent many hours alone, but enjoyed it. She liked spending time with the animals; their politics were simple; they didn't complicate things the way people did. Her father had wanted her on his council, but she had never been very good with people, did not possess the same level of charisma as her sister Lena, so she had ended up with this position, and her father was never too tired to voice his complaints at how difficult it had been for him to get it for her.

Lena had been their father's favorite growing up. Her sister had shown an immediate ease with people and their father had talked, even when they were very young, of how high they would rise. When he had finally been appointed to the position for which he'd sought his entire life—Head Executioner for Bergman, Exarch to the House of Peace—he'd promised his two daughters places in his personal council. Of course, when he made that promise, he'd been thinking of Lena, but Lena had received the invitation to join Marrow's crew and been taken away.

Embla could still remember the look of excitement on Lena's face as she boarded Marrow's Aerial, that smile, filled with perfect teeth, that hint of a sneer, that taunt in her eyes as she looked at Embla standing next to their father. Embla had been fuming with jealousy. Their father had watched stiffly and waved. Then, after Lena had left, he'd looked down his nose at Embla and said, "Now it is you who must learn the ways of the House of Peace."

Her father had dressed her in the crimson robes of Bergman's house, but she had been lost at council meetings and sickened by the decisions that were to be made at each one. How might the campaign to find more wives for Bergman be conducted most diplomatically? How many commoners must be killed to prevent further conflict between the Awans and the Awaes? What punishment should so-and-so receive for this crime or that crime? Shall the torture method be The Kite or The Inscriber or perhaps even The Crimson Curtain? Shall execution be by decollation or defenestration? Was the criminal of enough repute amongst the common folk to be hung from the Gallows Tree?

She had been lost from the very beginning and had hated her father's mocking laughter when she had asked him the difference between decollation and defenestration. "The first is death by having one's head struck from one's shoulders by a heavy blade, the second by inevitable dismemberment upon one's body hitting the ground after a fall from the height of a great tower." When she had grown pale and silent, he had only laughed more loudly and left her to think over what she had learned.

It had not been long before her father had given up on her being a part of his council and found other work for her. She had bounced from job to job within the House of Peace, but had found the harsh ways of her father's people disconcerting and she had not fit in.

Eventually, her father had found her the position of Keeper of the Beasts. He was convinced it was best she work with as few people as possible. But what he didn't understand was that her problem was not with all people, but with his people, with the brutes and sadists who worked within the House of Peace.

It was Lena who should have stayed to work with their father and she who should have joined Marrow's crew. Lena would have been good at making the difficult decisions, at the mind games and people manipulation, at getting people to do what she wanted to further the political position of their family. Embla should have been the humanitarian, travelling the skies to distant lands to help people, to bring them food when they were starving, to cure their fevers when they were sick. She would have been a great asset to Marrow. She still could be. She knew she could. If only Marrow could see her for whom she truly was, for the kindness in her heart. She had, for the past couple of years, hoped her expertise with animals might make her a candidate, but no letter had come.

Learn of that which cannot be seen.

But what did that mean? She enjoyed her job at the biopark, despite judgments from those who felt the position was pointless and obsolete, that she wasted her status as one born into a high-ranking heirotimate family. She didn't care what people said. What she really wanted was to be on Marrow's crew. There was nothing in the world she wanted more. She didn't care about her social class.

She clutched the Archon's letter and put the single room she called home at her back. She walked to the steps and began to climb. She took a deep breath and began through the Garden of Mue. Great marble pillars rose around her like trees without branches, smooth and polished. She could already hear the whistling sounds of several of the acouferrus carvings responding to the shift in the sound waves her presence brought to the garden. Things moved out of the corners of her eyes—statues of animals, small in this part of the garden—but she ignored the sensation; she knew if she turned to look, all would be still, the rabbits and various other creatures of the forest floor arranged as they had always been, carved in stone.

"Embla," someone said.

She stopped. A figure emerged from around one of the pillars, watching her.

"Skin?" Embla said. "What are you doing?"

Skin came forward into the cometlight. "I will take it to him."

Embla looked down at the letter she clutched in her hand, shook her head. "I have to deliver it to the Archon directly."

Skin sighed. She was dressed very differently from the leathers Embla had seen Skin wear before. She was wearing a dress silky and ridiculously impractical, which wrapped first around and between her legs, then up over her hips, the swell of her breasts, to her neck, in a spiral pattern. The white color of her gown appeared very bright against her smooth, purple-hued skin. "I will take it to him," she said again.

"No. Those are not my instructions."

"Please," Skin said.

"Skin, you don't understand. I must—"

"It's okay," said another voice. "I will take it."

A man walked toward them. He was tall for a sapien, though still significantly shorter than Skin, thin, with lanky arms and legs—and just a hint of a protruding heirotimate belly—his blond hair shaven at his scalp, equal in length and color to his clean-cut beard.

"Trevor," Embla said, her muscles tensing.

The man smiled. "Yes, of course it is. Good news, I hope?" He waved at the note Embla held in her hand.

"How would I know?"

Trevor came closer. "Yes. How would you know?" He held his hand out for the note.

Slowly, Embla reached out, and dropped the note into Trevor's hand.

"Thank you," Trevor said. "That will be all."

Embla turned, and hurried back toward the steps that descended the Ziggurat.

TREVOR

Trevor Rothschilde smiled lazily after Embla. I must keep an eye on that one, he thought. Even made busy by her duties with the animals, she was still a potential threat, too much of a free-thinker. There were certain secrets that she might, if she were to discover them, react less than favorably toward. Her father had convinced him to allow her to be the Keeper of the Beasts, but Trevor was not convinced it was enough. He promised himself to discover which lazy coward had passed the responsibility of the Archon's letter to Embla, and have Embla's father expel that individual to the Black Halls.

Tucking the note away safely in a pocket near his heart, just for a moment, he turned to Skin. "You should be careful around Embla," he said. "She is not to be trusted."

Skin smiled.

Trevor moved closer, close enough he could feel heat from her body. She was tall, her legs long and muscular. His eye level came to just below the rise of her breasts. He reached one hand out and carefully touched the bare skin at her side, sliding his hand up her back, stopping near her spine. She was so smooth. He could feel his heart quicken, his penis stiffen.

Skin trembled beneath his touch.

For a moment, he almost lost control. He wanted to grab her, take her, make her scream with pleasure. He wanted to be forceful, and fast. He reached out—slowly, and with great restraint—and gently brushed his lips against the skin just below her breasts. Her body shuddered again and he could feel it going through him as well. He forced himself to pull away.

"What does it say?" Skin asked.

"What's that?"

"The note."

He'd almost forgotten. Only Skin could make him do that, forget his business. He took a step back, pulled the note from his pocket. Carefully, using a technique with his hands closely guarded by the exarchs, he peeled away the sticky coating without ruining the paper beneath, and unfolded the note.

Skin looked down at him expectantly.

Trevor frowned as he read.

Skin reached for him and he brushed her hand aside. "Not now," he said, and began walking quickly up the path through the garden.

~

The mastodon raised its head to regard him as he passed, but when he turned to look, the animal was positioned as it had been originally, tusks lowered, drinking from the pink pool. It was always a bit unnerving to walk through this part of the garden, where the statues became those of much larger animals, posed to interact with the trees and shrubs and flowers. One could never get used to it, no matter how long one worked among its verdant colors.

The note contained good news, if it were true. Had he and the Archon finally found the one they needed? The Talosian citizens were restless, rumors were beginning to blossom, certain voiced opinions and ideas that could be very dangerous if allowed to spread and pollinate. Galen was no longer effective. They needed someone new, someone who could pacify the people, show them everything was fine just the way it was. They needed a miracle. Could this boy be that miracle? There were some who seemed to think so.

He was now walking through the section of the garden where the pillars became caryatids, women carved from stone with bodies twisted and extended, many with their eyes closed, mouths slightly open, heads thrown back. They moved sensually out of the corners of his eyes.

When he reached the small circular pool at the center of the caryatids, he stopped. He reached into one of his many pockets and produced a key. He walked up to the nearest stone woman, who stared at him, presenting her nude body motionlessly. He slipped the key into the keyhole that lurked in the crevasse between her eyes, and turned it easily.

For a moment, the ground rumbled beneath his feet as the canals shifted, then the air was filled with a wet, organic smell, that of the pool being drained. He watched the plants that bobbed at the surface of the water first begin to revolve slowly, and then to spin, sucked down and out of sight as the contents of the pool funneled away. A toad of some kind, warming itself in the comet's light on one of the plants, attempted to jump to safety at the pool's edge, but was not fast enough and missed by inches, lost in the violent movement of the water, most likely to drown in the tunnels beneath.

Trevor smiled.

In a matter of seconds, the pool was empty, the water diverted to another pool in another part of the garden, as was done daily by the gardeners to ensure the flora in all sections were given proper time to soak in the moisture they required.

Where the water had been, there was now revealed a spiraling stairway of uneven stone steps. He stepped forward, and began his descent into the Ziggurat.

The Archon would be pleased, if he still cared. Over the course of several years, the Archon had placed more and more responsibility on Trevor's shoulders, and now allowed him to make certain decisions without his exalted approval. In Trevor's mind the Archon had grown lazy, but so had all of the heirotimates, fat, unable to cope without their myriad extravagant pleasures. Trevor would not allow himself to be like them. He had true ambition, had always found ways to rise in the hierarchy, despite his humble beginnings. He was not so easily seduced by mere wealth. He did not want the weakness that resulted from over-indulgence; he did not seek pleasures of the flesh, only dominance.

He was not heirotimate like his colleagues. He had been born a commoner and started as a messenger boy, running important documents and letters that could not be trusted to the corrupt mail system or over the telelines throughout all parts of the city. He had been known for his speed and efficiency, and, of course, his discretion. He had been strong and athletic, had been the fastest runner in his school growing up. He had built a reputation and soon people of importance had been requesting him personally. He had run messages for low-level officials and for leaders of illegal gangster groups. He had never been one to discriminate, and had been careful not to ask questions.

At first, anyway.

He was patient, and kept his mouth shut to build trust, until the leaders he worked for felt comfortable enough with him to volunteer information.

When he'd been eighteen or nineteen years old, still just a kid really, he'd been employed heavily by a woman who went by the name of Cameron. She was, at that time, responsible for the majority of illegal nova fruit importation and distribution. She was very busy and had used Trevor to carry frequent messages between her and her sister Shelley.

As time went on, the messages became more and more frequent. Cameron eventually confessed to him of fighting with her sister. She told Trevor her sister was unstable, that she'd threatened to report Cameron's business practices to the authorities. She asked Trevor to not only deliver her notes, but to listen, to discover what he could.

He soon found that his charm, coupled with people's natural trust in him, could be used quite effectively for information gathering. And, before long, Shelley was confessing her jealousy for her sister's enterprise, telling him through swollen lips how she had been the one to start the business, before Cameron—the bossy older sister who had "no sense of vision or creativity"—had stolen it from her, as they lay together in Shelley's bed, the fluids from their recent act drying to a crust upon the sheets.

As the fight between the rival sisters became more and more heated, and Trevor's time became almost entirely devoted to running notes back and forth between them, as well as serving as a quiet and sympathetic listener and boy toy for both women, Trevor was able to read between the lines, learning much of the politics of business. He learned of trade and commerce. He learned of money and debt collection, that intimidation and force were sometimes required. But mostly he learned about people, that it was people who made the rules, who decided what was important, what was right and what was wrong. Society was governed by rules, and those rules were written, changed, and manipulated by those with enough intelligence and will to do so.

Eventually, Cameron told him that Shelley must be killed. She asked if Trevor could do it, but he was not a killer and had declined. He had, however, told Cameron he knew an assassin perfect for the job and that he could lure Shelley to the spot of her execution, if such services were required. He and Cameron had come to an arrangement, and the date and time had been set.

When he told Shelley about her sister's plan, she was furious. Shelley demanded retribution, and that he reassign his assassin to Cameron, to which he agreed readily. Shelley smiled at him then. "I knew you were mine," she said, pulling him to the bed, where she forced him down, slid him inside, grinding on top of him, clawing at his chest.

A couple of days later, Trevor hid in the loft of a dilapidated and long-abandoned warehouse, in the shadows, an ideal location to watch. He waited.

Cameron came first, insistent she have an opportunity to confront her sister before the assassin struck. She walked slowly into the building, entering the musty air. She came forward into the open area. Something in the floor creaked beneath her.

Trevor sucked in his breath.

Cameron stopped, brushed at her clothing, and took a pose rigid and defiant.

Shelley came a few minutes later, entering from the south side as Trevor had instructed. She walked up into the open space until the moonlight illuminated her face. She was smiling at her sister.

"Bitch," Shelley said.

"Yes, you are," Cameron responded childishly, as they must have done many times as sisters.

"Thief! You've always been a thief!"

"And you're a low-life whore."

Trevor suppressed a gleeful snicker. There was no assassin. He didn't know those kinds of people. Both sisters thought the other was about to die.

They came at each other, dashing across the open warehouse floor, which shuddered and cracked alarmingly, like ice grown too thin over a frozen lake, but neither of them noticed, too consumed by their hatred for each other.

When they met in the middle, Trevor nearly clapped his hands, rocking where he perched.

They grabbed each other, clawed, pulled hair. They fought like sisters, neither with the courage to inflict anything more serious than scratches on exposed skin and bruises from thrown elbows. They twirled in a violent dance.

Trevor didn't know if the floor would give way beneath them or not, but he did know that it was dangerously brittle. He'd sometimes come to this warehouse when he was a kid to play and explore. He'd always been fascinated with abandoned places. One day, the floor had given way beneath his feet and his body had plummeted into darkness. He'd caught himself just in time, and had managed to pull himself up. He'd discovered there was a large open cavity beneath the warehouse, cave-like, an eroded section of the subterranean Library of Halencia—flooded with murky water, just as were all of the tunnels beneath the city, but the drop was still far and he knew he would have perished had he not caught himself.

He watched the sisters fight. Perhaps they expected the assassin to intervene at any moment, for a stealthy figure to dart from the shadows, stabbing the rival sister in the back while the one still standing smiled at the other and spoke practiced words of triumph.

But already they were losing steam, their angers cooling, their eyes blinking back the intensity of their emotions, once more allowing rational thoughts to enter their minds.

As Trevor watched, a thought occurred to him for the first time: what conclusion would the sisters make if the floor failed to give way and they lived? When the assassin failed to appear, who would they look for? Their anger, perhaps united, might turn against him. If they now stopped what they were doing and began to communicate, to compare notes, they would both surely come to realize Trevor had been lying to them both, playing them for fools.

The smile began to fade from Trevor's lips as he watched the sisters growing tired.

They pulled away from each other and sat back, panting, staring into the wild eyes of the other.

Trevor could hear the floor groaning, ancient wood protesting beneath the weight of the sisters, but holding strong. What could he do? As soon as the sisters began to catch their breaths, they'd begin to talk. He couldn't allow that to happen.

He looked around, seeking something heavy to throw—a rusty chunk of metal, a piece of stone ornamentation crumbled from the architecture, anything—but all that surrounded him were the rafters and dust. He could climb down, but his position was precarious and there wasn't time. All he could do was watch.

"You...bitch..." Shelley panted. "Where is...assassin..."

"Assassin?" Cameron replied.

The sisters looked at each other, they looked long and hard and something passed between them. The less-intelligent might have read it as some sort of sibling telepathy, but Trevor knew it for what it was: a dawning realization they shared.

Trevor watched in horror as slowly Cameron crawled to her sister, but instead of striking Shelley, she embraced her. They hugged each other.

From his shadowy perch, Trevor wrung his hands. His heart was beating quickly, his face hot. He couldn't think what he should do, not yet. He was filled with a shameful fear.

The sisters were crying. Their quarrel had been going on for years.

A loud crack shook the floor, the sound reverberating through the cavernous space of the warehouse. The sisters, still in each other's arms, both snapped their heads up, eyes darting about. They did not seem to know their peril lay beneath them.

Trevor held his breath.

The sisters were motionless. Slowly, their heads turned downward to look at the floor. It gave way, wood splintering noisily, abruptly, and the sisters fell out of sight, into darkness, in each other's arms to the very end.

Trevor laughed to himself and shook his head to clear it of his memories.

"I am sorry. I did not understand what you said."

He blinked, staring. He'd come down the spiraling stairs of the drained pool and had reached the end of the tunnel where one of the doors to the Archon's chambers stood.

"Please repeat yourself," the lock on the door said to him.

Trevor cleared his throat. "Open for—"

"Please repeat yourself."

Trevor gritted his teeth. One had to speak very clearly to the locks on the doors; they were of limited intelligence, although several of them, spread throughout the Ziggurat, knew a joke or two if one had the patience and inclination to converse with them.

"Open for me," he said.

"Is that you, Trevor Rothschilde?"

"Yes. Of course."

"How are you today?"

"Fine. I'm fine."

There was a thud as the bolt drew back on its own, and the door swung slowly open.

"The Archon is in one of his moods, I'm afraid," the lock said.

Trevor pushed his way through and began to walk down the dimly-lit corridor.

"Have an excellent day!" the lock called after him.

The corridor was straight and very long, lined with tiny orange lights that flickered slightly, as if to simulate candle flames in a light breeze. But there was no breeze, the air still and sour.

After the sisters had fallen to their deaths, he'd gained control of the nova fruit importation business, but only briefly. He had not been interested in such things, unconcerned with the possible financial profits it could have afforded him, and instead sought out greater things. He'd given control of the business to Lloyd Shillinger—a man born of certain privileges, and of limited and easily manipulated intelligence—while he continued to run messages, this time for the heirotimates, sometimes even to the Ziggurat itself.

When he reached the end of the corridor, he stopped for a moment. He cleared his throat again.

Across the arched doorway was drawn a crimson curtain, identical to all of the other tunnels that led to the Archon's chambers, heat radiating from within, pulsing the fabric rhythmically—the heart of the city.

Trevor pulled the curtain aside. He stepped into the muggy heat, blinking through the hanging steam. For a moment, a sharp thread of irritation rose up to tickle the back of his throat as he thought about what the lock on the door had said. How could that stupid thing possibly know what sort of mood the Archon would be in? It was even more irritating that this particular lock was, more often than not, correct in its admonishments.

The heels of his shoes clapped on the obsidian tile.

"Ah, Trevor, my little bastard. Come forward."

Trevor pushed his body through the steam.

There was a loud humming sound and the grinding of metal on metal. The Archon's platform trundled to meet him along its tracks cut into the floor.

"I knew it was you," the Archon said. "You are the only one who uses that particular door."

"I prefer to enter with more discretion than most," Trevor said.

"Of course you do."

No matter how often he'd been in the Archon's presence, it still impressed him. It was the practice of the heirotimates to over-eat, to grow large, bellies bulging over their belts, as a sign of their social class. The Archon, however, had taken this practice to the extreme. Over the years, the man's bulk had grown and grown, flesh that rolled and quivered, until it was forced to fold upon itself. Sweat glistened on his cheeks, protruding from a face that glared from the upper heaps, eyes sunken to black points. His body was so large it was difficult to assess with a single glance, one's eyes forced to roam over its rises and crannies, exploring, seeking to recognize where one part ended and another began, belly and limbs one indistinguishable mass.

But perhaps more impressive still, was the Archon's platform, which hissed and pumped, an entropy of tubes and canisters, some transparent, liquids of various colors sloshing and bubbling, all manner of drugs and substances used to prolong the Archon's life, others to counteract side-effects of the primary drugs, and still others to counteract the side-effects of those. Above the snaking tubes, there were moveable platforms arrayed with various foods, many rare and unusual cuisines, including a multitude of live things wriggling in murky tanks.

"You have news?" the Archon asked, reaching his pudgy hand into one of the tanks, lifting out something that squirmed.

"Yes," Trevor said, standing, looking up at the Archon, trying not to be distracted by all of the sounds and subtle movements made by the platform. "Good news. If it's true."

"What is it? Summarize it for me."

"The hallowgeons have chosen a replacement for Galen."

"Yes?" the Archon said, pushing his face out, stuffing the thing into his mouth, chewing.

"A young boy. They say he can—"

"The next chantiac?"

"Yes. He lives in Nova."

The Archon began to laugh—his mouth full of chewed-up mush—unsettlingly high-pitched, punctuated by bubbling and burping sounds that could have been coming from either the man or the machine that sustained him, if it was still possible to draw a distinction between the two.

Repulsed, Trevor smiled.

# ~ FOUR ~

NOVA

ASH

His mom and his dad cried, of course. They held each other, his sisters huddled below, their faces growing smaller where they stood, Kya waving, the engine sputtering and groaning by his head, the buggy taking him down the road. It stank, the steam the engine produced. His mom was shouting something to him, but he couldn't hear her words over the noise. He was in the back of the buggy with several others from the village he recognized, but didn't really know. Brent was with him. He and Brent were the youngest.

He turned to look more closely at his new companions. The only one of them he knew by name was Austin, who worked in the general store, son of the man who ran it. The others looked a little rough, their faces grim, stunned, farmers mostly, as were most in the village of Fallowvane.

Brent was crying.

"Don't worry," he tried to comfort his friend. "We'll be okay."

Brent shook his head. "It's not that."

Ash turned quickly, realizing he'd forgotten to wave goodbye to his parents and sisters as he'd meant to, but when he peeked his head up, the buggy had taken them around a corner and out of sight of his home.

He sat back and enjoyed the ride; he'd never been in a motorized buggy before. He liked the bumps and the grinding sound and the kick of the wind in his face, even the stench.

He smiled and grabbed Brent and shook him. "It's all going to be okay."

Brent looked up at him, his eyes shining from the heap of his clothing, "Where are we going?" he asked.

~

The road led out of Fallowvane and into the woods. Soon, the trees had closed over them and the forest was shadowy and quiet. The buggy's motor continued to grind. No one spoke. Brent was quiet, wouldn't look Ash in the eye.

After a while, feeling bored, Ash stood and moved forward so that he could talk with the soldiers. "How much longer?" he asked the officer sitting in the passenger's seat.

"Soon," the bearded officer said. "Don't worry, son. We're close."

"I'm hungry."

The bearded officer laughed. "We've plenty of food at camp."

"Camp? You mean like tents and stuff?"

"We have a top-secret camp in the woods."

"Oh. Sounds neat."

The soldier driving nodded his head.

The bearded officer continued to smile. "I like you, son," the bearded officer said. "I'm going to put you on patrol."

"Patrol? What's that?"

"It'll be your job to guard and protect the camp."

Ash didn't say anything, but he was smiling as he moved back to join the others.

~

It was wet and cold in the middle of the forest, the air thick with moisture so that his jacket hung soggy on his shoulders; his breath puffed visibly in the air, his lungs filling with moldering thickness with each inhaled breath. There were several large canvas tents lined with cots for sleeping and a giant stove in the middle of the camp like a massive stone statue crumbled to rubble and lit from within, glowing orange as the light faded from the sky; a giant pot filled with a perpetually bubbling gray.

Finally, he was given a rifle. It was an old and battered piece, a long barrel of steel on a leather strap and a small pouch of powder and bullets.

"Where's my uniform?" he asked the soldier handing out the rifles, but the soldier only shook his head and kept handing out the weapons down the line of new recruits.

Standing next to him, Brent took his rifle without enthusiasm, listlessly holding it by his side.

Ash and Brent walked a little ways away from the others, stopping to sit on a fallen log, watching the activity in the camp.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Ash asked his friend.

Brent didn't move, staring straight ahead.

An oxhoag lumbered through the middle of the camp. Someone had painted 'Eat me before the Talosians do' on the large animal's side.

Examining his rifle, he said, "Mine's stained. It has dark stuff all over it that won't wipe off."

Brent began to laugh.

~

It was almost too dark to see the ground; the moon's light caught and held high above on the boughs of the trees so that very little reached Ash where he sat with his back against a tree, staring into the landscape of black and featureless columns. He held his rifle, pointing it into the dark. He'd at first been frightened of every sound, whipping the barrel from side to side, but now he'd settled down. They were in the wilderness; there were animals. Not every sound he heard was a crawling Talosian, a knife clamped in his grinning teeth.

He was very tired, his eyes heavy, but he was too scared to fall asleep. His dreams had been strange, too real, and he had a job to do. The bearded officer was counting on him to protect the camp.

Shoot anyone who doesn't give the password. No exceptions!

A branch snapped. He jolted to attention, acid dumping in his chest, his heart suddenly alive. He pointed the rifle toward the noise. He could almost see someone moving in the shadows.

"Hello?" he said. He didn't like how weak his voice sounded.

"Hey!" he tried again.

There was a light bobbing in the woods. It swung, coming closer.

"Password," he said. "What's the password?"

The light came closer, flitting about like a will-o-the-wisp; it was hanging from a pole, a makeshift lamp of coals inside of a steel can. Its glow illuminated a face, a young face.

"Password," he said again.

"Ash, it's me."

"Brent? What are you doing? What's the password?" He pointed his rifle at his friend.

Brent's face seemed to float in the murk. "I don't know it."

Ash swallowed a dry lump of something. He set the stock against his shoulder. "What's the password?"

"I don't know it."

"No exceptions," Ash said, gritting his teeth, his heart beating in his throat.

Brent looked at him with a blank expression. "Again?" he whispered.

Slowly, Ash dropped the rifle. He couldn't speak.

"Goodbye, Ash," Brent said, his light bobbing onward.

Ash watched the light grow smaller, flitting between the trees, as his friend walked in the dark, moving away from the camp.

~

Ash groaned. Someone was shaking him. He opened his eyes and it was a man he'd never seen before, with an ugly scratch on his oily nose. "Come on," the man said. "It's time for breakfast. Then the captain has something to say. We're about to move."

"Move?" Ash said, but the man was gone.

He looked over at the cot next to him, but it was empty. Brent was gone too.

Ash jumped to his feet, grabbing his jacket and throwing it over his shoulders as he burst into the early morning. Everywhere, there were men moving about, preparing. He inhaled deeply. He felt good.

He ran to join the crowd congregating around the large fire, hundreds of hands raising mess tins to be filled with the gruel from the pot.

"What's for breakfast," someone said.

"New breakfast same as the old breakfast," soldiers chanted.

There were grumbles of laughter, rising and falling through the crowd.

Ash smiled. Luckily, he'd strapped his mess tin through his belt like someone had told him to and had it ready when he got to the front of the line.

His breakfast plopped heavy and steaming into his tin and he grinned. "What's for dinner?"

The man with the ladle let out a dramatic sigh of sour air.

"New dinner same as the old dinner," the crowd chanted.

Ash hurried through the crowd and found a place to sit in the grass. As he wolfed down his stew, a skinny man appeared holding a strange-looking camera with gears spinning slowly at its side. The man raised the camera, and snapped his picture.

Ash laughed.

"What's so funny?" the man asked him.

"I've never seen a camera before. Why are you taking pictures?"

"I'm keeping a record of everyone in this camp."

"What for?"

The skinny man gave him a funny look. "So the world knows we're here. We exist."

~

After breakfast, Ash had patrol duty again. He stood leaning against the same tree as the night before. He yawned. His dreams had been vivid, but now he couldn't remember them. He was left only with strange emotions knotted in his gut. Gray sand and shifting trees.

He looked out through the trees. It was different during the daytime, a different life. With streams of cometlight beaming through the trees filled with scattered dust, the forest felt peaceful, almost idyllic.

He wondered when he was going to start his combat training. No one had told him when or where the shooting lessons took place. He got excited just thinking about it. He wondered if they'd have targets to shoot at, or just cans setup on a fence. Maybe they'd have those cutouts of Talosians that popped up in the woods and...

A branch snapped.

Ash jolted to attention. He lifted his rifle, pointing it out into the woods.

Something moved among the brush. Was it an animal? It darted from tree to tree.

He caught glimpses of white flashing in the light of the comet. It was a person, a girl. She giggled as she darted to the next tree.

"Password," Ash said.

The girl walked into the clearing, approaching him. She had long, straight hair, falling nearly to her waist, almost white, and her eyes were light and alive.

"Password!"

The girl looked at him; she smiled a little. She was a little older than he, a couple of years maybe. She walked closer.

"I'll shoot," Ash said. "No exceptions. Give me the password."

The girl came up to him until she was standing only a few feet away. She stood, her eyes meeting his.

Ash swallowed dryly. He brought the barrel of his rifle down so that it was level with the girl's chest. He put his finger on the trigger.

"Password?"

He could feel the trigger depressing, spring-loaded pressure preparing to burst, a deafening crash that would disturb the peace of the forest.

The girl darted away.

"Wait," he said. He threw the rifle strap over his shoulder and ran after the girl.

The girl screamed and ran faster.

Ash charged after her, avoiding fallen branches and plants that threatened to trip him up, jumping and dodging.

The girl was nimble, seemed to move easily through the forest.

They burst into a small clearing. Ash dived, and tackled the girl to the ground. He fought with her, his rifle bouncing on his back, jabbing him. The girl screamed. He forced her onto her back, straddling her, holding her arms down.

She was still making screaming sounds, but she stopped struggling.

When he looked at her, he realized she was laughing. It was all a game to her. She smiled at him. "Here I am," she said.

Startled by her response, Ash loosened his grip and she rolled him easily. He tumbled into the grass.

"Here I am," she said again. "You caught me."

They sat, looking at each other.

"What's your name?" Ash asked.

"I'm Pera," the girl said. "You're Ash."

"How'd you know my name?"

"Your friend told me."

"Who? Brent?"

Pera nodded her head.

"You know where he is?"

She nodded her head again.

"Can you take me there?"

Pera stood, swept up his hand in hers, and dragged him deeper into the forest.

~

There was a small structure built into the side of the hill, sheltered among the trees. It was an easy spot to miss, the forest giving no indication of its presence, except for a tail of smoke parting the air above the forest and the glow of firelight within.

"In there?"

"Yeah," Pera said.

Pera let go of his hand and skipped up to the door. She pushed it open with some effort, the door sliding inward.

"Pera?" a familiar voice said from within.

"It's me," Pera said. "Look who I brought."

Brent came forward into the light. "Oh," he said. "He shouldn't be here. He's not like us."

"Nice to see you too," Ash said.

"Whatever. Come in."

Ash followed Pera into a small room. There was a table made from a piece of wood laid over a couple of sawed-off stumps, and more stumps for places to sit. A fire crackled comfortably in a fireplace set into one of the walls. At the very back, leading deeper into the hill, there was another half-door, large enough to crawl through.

"Cool place," Ash said. "What's back there?"

"Nothing," Brent said. "That's for me and Pera. You're not ready yet."

"Whatever." Ash sat on one of the stumps.

"I've been lost in these woods for weeks," Pera said. "I was alone until Brent found me. Now we live here together."

Ash looked at Pera, nodded his head. "Uh-huh." He turned to Brent. "You have to come back. With me. Right now."

"Why?" Brent asked.

"They'll think you're a deserter."

"So what?"

"They'll shoot you!"

Brent leaned back on the stump where he sat and laughed.

"Why is that funny?"

"Shoot me?" Brent said. "Shoot me?"

Ash looked at Pera, who shrugged.

"What are you going to do then?" Ash asked.

Brent touched his chin with his hand, thinking. "Not sure," he said. "Hang out here, I guess. Until I'm ready."

"Ready for what?"

"Yeah," Pera joined him. "Ready for what?"

It was Brent's turn to shrug. "Whatever," he said.

Ash looked around. "What do you guys do out here?"

"We wander around the woods," Pera said.

"Hm," Ash said. He stood. "Well, I need to get back to my post." He walked to the door, which was still open.

"You're not going to report us, are you?" Pera said.

Ash stopped in the doorway. He shook his head. "No. But I'll come back and check on you guys again."

Ash stepped through the door and marched back to camp.

JOSEF

"Don't worry, the Talosians will never come to Fallowvane."

He had volunteered, tried to join the militia, but the officer had said, "Our orders are to take only one member of each household and no one over forty." So they had taken Ash and left him behind. He had watched his son being whisked away on one of the militia's scavenged buggies. And when Josef had asked the officer the reason for such an order, the officer had told him the Novan committee had decided there should be "able-bodied" individuals available in each town so as not to leave them defenseless.

"Josef? Did you hear me? I said the Talosians will never come to Fallowvane. There's nothing here for them."

Josef looked up from his work, blinking. "Uh-huh."

"That's why we're safe. We have clean air, open land, and cold winters—nothing the Talosians are interested in. I mean, hell, I barely like living here," Daryn said, and laughed. "Come on, don't look so down. Your son will be back in a couple of months."

Josef nodded. "Yeah, I suppose," he said, returning to the job at hand: sanding the legs smooth on a table he was making for the Braxton family.

He could feel Daryn watching him closely, but when he didn't say anything, his assistant returned to his own work.

That morning, Josef had kissed his wife, although she had barely been conscious, given her frail shoulders a light squeeze, and left a bowl of broth and a glass of water for her on the nightstand. "I have to go to the shop today," he'd told Kya back in the living room, her large eyes blinking up at him. "I owe an important customer something."

"Don't worry, Dad," Kya had said. "I'll stay with her."

"Good, and watch after your sisters." He'd turned to leave.

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

When he'd turned back, Kya had given him a look of complete seriousness. "Are the Talosians coming to get us?"

He'd gone to her, held her. "No. Course not." He'd cupped the back of her small head in one hand and rocked her. "Everything's going to be fine."

And then he'd left her. He'd hated himself for doing it, but he'd had to. He had a debt to pay.

When he'd gone to Mother Marlena for medicine for his wife, he'd had no idea how expensive it was going to be. He, of course, had not had the money to pay for it, so he and Mother Marlena had struck a deal. She had requested he make her something in exchange for the medicine she claimed would cure his wife. It had, as it turned out, been a simple enough thing to make, nothing beyond his abilities, and he'd quickly agreed. He was, however, not to tell anyone about what he was making and certainly not who it was for. He hadn't said a word, especially not to his wife.

Which was why, although his assistant Daryn was perfectly capable of running things on his own, he had come into the shop today.

She's not getting better. The witch promised the medicine would make Lena better, but it's not working.

"Their machines and their rules, that's all they really want. That, and power. Well, that's their choice. This, this right here, our farms and our simple laboring—this is what life is really about. It's about living, an honest living. The Talosians don't want that. They want things: lavish houses, servants, faces as wrinkle-free and smooth as the day they were born. And they all want to live forever. Well, pah on that! That's not living. That's... Hey! Hey, are you even listening?"

Josef looked up at his friend. "Yeah, sure."

Daryn shook his head. "Ah, I'm just blathering is all. I'm sorry. I'm glad you made it in today. I guess your wife must be doing better, huh?"

"A little."

"Good. That's good. She's always been a quiet one, your wife, but strong; I can tell. And pretty too, if you don't mind me saying so. I know some in town have never trusted her, because, you know...she's different. But it'd be a shame to lose her."

Josef looked at Daryn. "She'll be fine."

Daryn came over and clapped him on the back. "Of course she will. And don't worry about your son. It's like I said, even if the Talosians come all the way out here, what are they gonna find? Nothing. We've lived in peace all these years because we have nothing those greedy sons-of-bitches would want. They leave us alone and we leave them alone. Everything's going to be fine."

Josef smiled at his friend. He truly appreciated Daryn's efforts to comfort him. "Of course," he said. "Of course everything's going to be fine."

~

Mother Marlena came in the early afternoon, her strange robes wrapping her stocky frame like a writhing mist. She climbed the steps and her bulbous head peeked through the doorway. "Are you alone?"

Josef glanced across the room at Daryn, "I think it's time for a lunch break, don't you?"

"Sounds great," Daryn said. "My wife packed me some leftovers, if you'd like to join me. She makes a hell of a meat pie. More than enough..." He stopped himself when he saw Mother Marlena in the doorway. "I'll just... Maybe I'll go home for lunch. I'll see you in a little while." He put his tools down and moved toward the back of the store.

Josef heard the back door open and then close.

Mother Marlena stepped into his shop. Her huge, watery eyes blinked. She smacked her lips, licking them moist with her tongue. "I've come for it," she said.

Josef took a step back. "Yes," he said, forgetting everything he'd meant to say. He wanted to ask her some questions, to confront her about the medicine for his wife, but instead he walked to his storage closet. He fumbled the key from his pocket, and pulled the rusty padlock free.

Inside rested the item he'd been making for Mother Marlena: an ironwood cane meticulously shaped to give it a flowing appearance, twisting from one end to the other and topped with a gnarled knot Josef had carved into a screaming face, its open mouth turned upward and hollow. He reached his hand out for it, then stopped, hesitating. He shouldn't give it to her until he knew for sure his wife was getting better. What if the medicine the witch had given him was nothing but mud? What if the witch was tricking him? He was too trusting; he had to remind himself to be wary of people and not let them take advantage of his good nature. He closed the door and replaced the lock. He turned back to Mother Marlena, palming the key awkwardly, dropping his fists by his sides.

The old woman came forward. "Do you have it?"

"It's...not ready yet."

The old woman's brow furrowed. "You told me to come today."

Josef licked his lips. "I... Yes, but...my wife..."

"You wife?" Mother Marlena smiled and darted up to him, surprisingly light on her feet considering her size and figure.

Josef tried not to cringe, but Mother Marlena was mian (a descendent of the original known as Mia) and her facial features were grotesquely large. Even in Nova, where diversity was common, Josef found Mother Marlena's appearance disconcerting. He had met people of many different geneses, but none quite like Mother Marlena, who was the only mian he'd ever seen. He, of course, was the last person to judge anyone on appearance alone, since he was, after all, married to a woman from a genesis different from his own, and he had children by her, something strictly forbidden by the hallowgeons and, by association, the Talosians. But the darker skin of his wife was nothing compared with Mother Marlena's features: her head nearly the same size as her squat and muscular body; constantly watering eyes like gelatinous pools; mouth of large square teeth hinging on a jaw wide enough to swallow his entire head...

"What about your wife?" Mother Marlena asked again.

"Nothing... I mean, she's still sick." Josef held his ground, trying not to look uncomfortable at Mother Marlena's proximity to him.

"She will get better. I said she would, didn't I?" Mother Marlena took a step back. "Now, where is this cane you promised me? I hope I have not misjudged your craftsmanship skills. That was a very special piece of wood I gave you. Where is it?"

Josef took a deep breath. "Yeah, okay. It's right here." He unlocked the door of the storage cabinet. He lifted the cane and one of Mother Marlena's stubby arms snatched it from his grasp before he could hold it out to her.

"Hm," Mother Marlena said, running a stubby hand of gnarled fingers over the wood. "Not bad. This might work."

Josef watched Mother Marlena. "Is there anything else you can do for my wife?"

Mother Marlena raised one of her hands dismissively, her eyes fixed on the cane. "She'll be fine." She began to waddle toward the exit.

"But..." Josef swallowed. His throat was very dry.

At the door, Mother Marlena turned back to look at him. "Oh, I almost forgot. There is one more thing I may be able to do for your wife. Why don't you send your boy Ash to pick it up?"

"Ash is gone. He joined the militia."

Mother Marlena stiffened. "What! When?"

"Almost a week ago."

Mother Marlena gave him a look, something like disgust. She whirled in the doorway and left his shop.

"Wait," Josef said. "But my wife... Should I come to see you later?"

Mother Marlena was gone.

MOTHER MARLENA

Bergy, her four-legged companion, hissed at her as she swept up the stairs and into her hut. The air was muggy with the earthy scent of boiling root vegetables. She slammed the door closed behind her and threw a kick at Bergy, the kylix dodging it easily, darting into the maze of detritus piled in a corner.

"The boy," she muttered to herself. "There's something about that boy..." She laid the cane Josef had made for her flat on the table and moved to stir her simmering stew.

For several minutes she stared sightlessly at the burbling muck. What was the boy? What had she smelled? She was still waiting for a reply to her letter of inquiry. She stomped the floor in frustration.

"Oh, yes," she said, remembering her new cane, dismissing the boy from her thoughts. She turned to one of her shelves and began to scan its contents. "Now where is that...? Why is it I can't find anything when I need it...? Ah, here we go." She snatched a small box from the shelf. She brought it to the table and peeled back the lid. Inside were six shriveled husks, dried like raisins.

"Umbriate larvae," she said—particularly rare, which she had been collecting all her life. These had once been in the form of insects with segmented legs and long stalks tipped with blinking eyes, now barely recognizable.

She lifted the cane and looked into its screaming face, carved from the bulbous knot of wood at its end, just as she had instructed. She smiled. Very carefully, she took one of the dried larvae between her fingers and placed it in the open mouth of her new cane.

At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the cane's mouth closed and began to chew.

# ~ FIVE ~

TALOS

TREVOR

Windows. Yes, he was always looking through windows. His windows. Always on the outside—watching—looking in. The window into which he currently peered flickered, as if to signal a momentary error in reality. He watched listlessly as the crowds milled through Market Street like cattle unhurried on their way to the next grazing sight. He turned to another window, a distant, bird's-eye view of the inside of Galen's largest temple, row upon row of pews below the monstrously large statue of Galen. The temple was only half-filled to capacity with people, Trevor noted, which was proof enough of the growing dissent of the citizens of Talos. Through the next window he watched the limbs of trees shifting restlessly, birds of various colors and species roosting and flitting about in the aviary. Through another window, he saw an empty stadium hall, rows upon rows of seating spiraling down into the murk. And on the next one, light flickering in a cavernous chamber. And on the next one, a view only of a dark room, crumbling detritus littering the floor, a single chair resting in a column of light clotted with spinning dust.

The Ziggurat was a strange place, few were allowed inside to explore its mysteries. It had stood for countless generations, built by a people so ancient their history had long ago been forgotten. Some claimed it had been built by sapiens during the Second Age of Meridian in an attempt to touch the sky, others that it was even older, built, perhaps, by the arkaine. Whatever its original purpose, it now stood at the center of Talos, home to the Archon and most of the exarchs and their houses. Most no longer thought of its secrets, the exarchs content with the sectors they had shaped and festooned to fit their varying needs, but occasionally a new chamber would be discovered, opened by an exarch looking to expand his or her territory, and, although most of such chambers were found to be dark, empty and cold, sometimes things of greater value were discovered.

Remains had been found, the brittle bones of humans from geneses long extinct, as well as arkaine with their elongated limbs and enlarged foreheads, sometimes scattered or festooned with things of great value: gemstones and chains of gold, weapons inlaid with all manner of polished rocks that caught and refracted light, glittering impressively, blinding in the dank depths of the Ziggurat. Such things, when found, were either kept or sold to the highest bidding heirotimate, locked away in one vault or another.

The Archon had, several generations ago, declared the worship of "pretty things which come from the ground" a barbaric and false pursuit. A more civilized method for the control and distribution of wealth had been established. The printing and value determination of the Talosian currency was now controlled by the House of Awa. Yet still, unearthed treasures found in the Ziggurat or elsewhere were traded among the heirotimates, sold and hoarded discreetly.

Sometimes, however, stranger things were found. Once, a crew of Auron's—the exarch to the House of Aesthetics—had tunneled into a chamber filled with a previously unknown animal, a sightless creature that crawled about on a nest of fleshy tails. The creature's unnerving cry had terrified the first excavators, who had lost their minds and fled. It was discovered later that the barking cry made by the darlows—as they were later called—sounded something like burr-live, which had been mistaken by the first excavators as several voices whispering "buried alive" from the dark.

But there was one particular discovery that had piqued Trevor's personal interest, and which had begun his habit of exploration. He had been employed at the time by Doran (Embla's father) on the lowest level of the Ziggurat as a trusted and personal messenger and advisor between Doran and Exarch Bergman, the exarch to the House of Peace. Known for his eidetic memory, Trevor had carried detailed schedules of weapons manufacturing as well as lists of names of those suspected of various plots and betrayals to Bergman, always flawlessly and with the utmost discretion. It was during this time, during his fledgling years among the heirotimates, a new chamber had been discovered. It had been a major deal at the time, everyone talking about it, because it had been on the first level of the Ziggurat where he had worked, long thought completely explored. Trevor had attended to every detail as the rumors had spread.

Apparently, a cleaning crew had been working in one of the storage chambers, where many of the outdated and unused devices of torture were kept, when one of the workers had knocked over a pile of crucifixes. A hole had been torn in a wall of mortared bricks and a small chamber had been discovered. Within, in total darkness, beneath a blanket of dust, they had found a machine they did not recognize and had run to tell their superiors of their discovery.

The machine was something like a large buggy made from thick plates of steel. It had three wheels beneath it and a hatch on one side that led into a space inside just large enough for a single person to sit and use the controls. Buttons and switches and levers lined the walls and ceiling, with only a narrow slit to give its driver a view of what lay before it.

The Bravo Apparatus, as it was to be called, was taken before the heirotimates of The Mechanicus—the house responsible for the maintenance and repair of machines and technological devices in Talos—but their tinkers were unable to identify it, pulling levers and pushing buttons at random with no visible effect. The tinkers requested the apparatus be left in the care of The Mechanicus for further examination and experimentation, but Bergman felt that because the apparatus had been found among the ancient torture devices in storage, it must belong to such a class of device and should be kept by the House of Peace. The tinkers of The Mechanicus protested, but when Bergman requested to speak with Toloran directly, the tinkers had made excuses, claiming their exarch was "too consumed by his work" to be disturbed. Bergman had ordered the apparatus to be placed in a secure chamber and studied, but the heirotimates of the House of Peace are not known for their patience and skills with experimentation, and soon the apparatus had been abandoned, forgotten, and once again collecting dust.

But Trevor had never forgotten. He made it his business never to forget and, forever intrigued by antiquities of the past, he had years later had the Bravo Apparatus moved discreetly into what he had made into his personal chambers on one of the upper levels of the Ziggurat. He had studied the apparatus himself, along with a select crew of trusted scientists and engineers he employed personally, and they had discovered the apparatus could do many unusual things. Buttons and levers pushed in various combinations caused the apparatus to move, to lift its mechanical arms, to produce seemingly pointless beams of light and phosphorescent bubbles. It could also do more dangerous things, things with blades and fire. He had it catalogued and stored for a day when he might need it.

Trevor had also made it his business to explore the Ziggurat. While the majority of heirotimates were busy with their schemes to acquire further wealth, to seek further hedonistic pleasures and decadence, he used his time to map the Ziggurat, to learn of its halls. He was sure he knew them better than anyone. Certainly there were exarchs who knew their own levels perfectly, but Trevor had made it his business to know them all, and to discover their secrets.

There were hidden passages, dark forgotten corners, and doorways into rooms he had found he thought no one living must know of but him. While others forgot, he remembered. Such knowledge, he felt, made him useful, and powerful. He had found stores of clothing, piles of shoes, food preserved in cans, and caches of weapons. He had found unknown ways into the personal chambers of many of the exarchs that they did not know of themselves. He had found curiosities, things of mysterious origins, and saved them all secretly. He had, over the years, graduated from Doran's personal messenger, to Bergman's counselor, to a consultant to all of the exarchs. Most of the exarchs now turned their ears to him, held him as a trusted source of advice and gossip and he was now the personal advisor to the Archon himself.

He had once even stumbled into the Corridor of Visions, a phenomenon he'd read about and sought, but that had seemed so incredible, he had thought it couldn't be real. He had been stepping carefully along a long and narrow, but otherwise unremarkable, hallway, an electrical light strapped to his shoulder, another in his hand, when something strange had happened. The air had brightened, everything around him—the cracks in the stone, the cobwebs in the corners—appearing abruptly clear and crisp, as if a veil had fallen over the world, and the tunnel before him had been gone. He had walked forward into cometlight, grass suddenly beneath his booted feet, and clear sky above, blue and crystalline. Above him, at the top of a small rise, there had been a road of black pavement, the pungent smell of tar in the heat. There had been a small stream to his left, babbling, crowded with birds squabbling among themselves, cawing and chirping a lively conversation. He had swallowed and stared. The landscape had been flat in every direction, farmland, like that which existed on the outskirts of Nova, but which he'd never seen. There had been a house in the distance and a windmill, turning lazily. And then a sound had drawn his eyes upward and he'd seen something in the sky. It had been too large to be a bird and had moved much too quickly to be Marrow's Aerial, leaving a trail of cloud in its wake, a line too straight to be anything natural, and it had filled the air with a booming, rumbling sound.

And then he had been in the dark once more, blinking at the pulsing blobs looming before him as his eyes failed to adjust to the sudden change. He had been confused, and filled with wonder. What had he seen? What did it mean? He had felt as if he'd caught a glimpse of another world. He had returned to that hallway many times since, but never again found the Corridor of Visions.

Yes, the Ziggurat was a strange and mysterious place.

For a moment, the windows before him blinked, their pictures shuddering. They lined the wall, some of the screens gray and blank, his face reflecting back at him. In the past, Archons had used them to govern Talos, to keep a watchful eye on its citizens, but the current Archon had little interest in such things. They were his windows now. Trevor's windows. And one day, perhaps soon, he would put them to good use.

But they were not the only windows into which Trevor cast his calculating gaze. He had found others in the Ziggurat, and kept their secrets for himself.

Yes, windows—always an observer, never a participant, watching, looking out. But one day soon, that was all going to change.

~

As he climbed the spiral stairway, Trevor touched the letter he had intercepted from Embla, tucked into his breast pocket. It told of a new chantiac, one to replace Galen, who had fallen out of favor with the people of Talos. This could be his opportunity. If he was allowed to personally see to the training of this young boy, he might further grow his power and influence.

That, and the desperate need of the Church of Awa to regain the favor it had lost. The people had grown weary of Galen, bored, restless. Small groups had begun to talk of change, of injustice. Certain peasant heretics were preaching the need for more food, improved living conditions, and a redistribution of wealth. The church had always calmed such notions. It gave the people purpose, a nebulous god to which they could air their complaints and request further comforts without the need for false promises from their superiors. When the things they sought did not come, it could always be said their faith was not strong enough, that they must be more devout, and pray. A new prophet, one capable of showing the people of Talos new miracles, would renew the faith of most, and bring peace to the City.

This task, Trevor thought, I must see to myself. Just as I have made the governance of Talos mine, so shall I also make this boy. He will be like a son to me.

The top of the stairs opened up to a large area, the floor tiled, the walls falling away. He was outside, on a viewing platform—another window of a sort—drawn suddenly into fresh air and cometlight. He inhaled deeply and crossed to the railing that marked the edge. He looked out at the city of Talos. From here he could see the domed hovels of those who lived on this, the poorest side of the Ziggurat. A little further on lay Market Street, and beyond that, the dreary cluster of crowded structures that were Luto's Court, where some of the poorest citizens lived and a haven for criminals. And rising above it all was the Theater Verrata, a doorless and windowless tower of stone carved smooth and un-climbable (and likely empty), yet another of Talos's secrets hidden in plain view Trevor had yet to uncover, although inquiries had been made and rewards offered.

The letter he carried had not said what abilities this boy from Nova possessed or why the hallowgeons had deemed him a chantiac, but such things were only minor details. It took only very minor miracles to impresses the common folk. What mattered was how the boy behaved among the populace. Could he be calm and smile? Was he charismatic? Could he speak publicly? Command a presence of authority and purpose?

Galen had been very good in his time, a dreamseer, interpreting his dreams and able to use them to predict certain events of the future. He had also been kind and very good looking. But, over the years, the stress and pressure of his position had worn on him, aged him prematurely. It was said his dreams had grown dark and they had consumed him. He had flagellated himself, leaving ugly scars across his body and face. The true Galen, the man, was now hidden away and no longer allowed before the public, a wanted criminal. His appearance disturbed adults and frightened children. Statues were erected in the likeness of his younger self, and lesser preachers and trained lookalikes now ran his temples.

But a new chantiac would mean new temples as well as renewed excitement and enthusiasm. He must find this boy and have him brought to Talos. But where to look? Nova was a very large territory. Where should he start?

He needed more information. He had risen high, it was true, but only through patience and subtlety. To get what he wanted, others had to first think it was they who were making the decisions, not him. He would wait.

~

He waited for longer than he would have liked. With nothing to go on, without a name or location, anyone he sent out to search for the boy was unlikely to find him. He intended to send Skin after the boy. She was his best and most trusted agent. She was arkaine, highly skilled, and fearless. If anyone could locate and bring the boy back quickly, it was she.

After several days, his patience was rewarded and the answers he sought became clear.

He was visited by the hallowgeons.

It happened as it had two times before, while he looked over the City from his balcony and contemplated the politics of the heirotimates. After the last visitation, he had made it his business to be present in this location every evening he was able. The hallowgeons did not conform to any schedule but their own, their ways mysterious and strange. They often did things that did not seem to serve any rational purpose, yet claimed it was their task to impart wisdom to the human race.

The first time he'd seen their ship, an irrational horror had filled him. Not because he felt his life was in danger, but because he was before something that every fiber of his being felt should not exist, something not of this world. It had been hovering silently in the air next to the Ziggurat, several feet above his balcony. It was an incomprehensibly intricate design, with details that somehow eluded his examination, giving it a hazy and gray quality, as if his human eyes did not have the proper faculties to process all that was before him. It was a ship very different from the aerials—including Marrow's, the largest and most renowned of the airships—capable of elevations far higher, far above the clouds, travelling into regions not understood by humanity, where the hallowgeons must live. Above the clouds there was said to be a place referenced only as the "Void" in the text Lemmenkainen had given him, an ancient tome without a title, the personal understandings and scientific observations of an arkaine from the First Age of the world who had perished long ago.

"Good evening, Trevor," a strange voice spoke from behind him, and when he turned, his heart immediately began to beat furiously in his chest.

The three hallowgeons were standing behind him. Gray robes draped their bodies, as if to conceal anatomies his eyes might find twisted and displeasing to gaze upon, hoods up over their heads so that only their pale faces were visible. They were very tall, the shortest at perhaps a little over nine feet, the tallest closer to ten.

"We are well met," Cadoc said, in a voice Trevor knew as the most normal of the three, yet that seemed to possess an echo of sorts, each cadence reverberating in his skull and lingering, fading only reluctantly.

"Welcome," Trevor managed, swallowing, doing his best to collect himself and hide his discomfort. Even with the masks the hallowgeons wore, their presence was still disconcerting. The identically blank and pale visages the three wore could not conceal their eyes, that peered from slits, larger than human eyes, Cadoc's shot with veins so yellow they seemed to glow, the one known as Mithra (who had spoken initially) almost white and filled with milky wriggling movement, and the one known as Siriac (the tallest of the three) so black it was as if there existed none at all.

"We have come to impart upon you certain information so that you might act in a way we find pleasing," Siriac said, in a voice so deep and hollow that one felt rather than heard it.

"I..." Trevor took a deep breath. "I have been waiting."

SKIN

Skin woke to the ringing of a telephone.

She lifted herself and stretched. It felt as if she'd been sleeping for a very long time. She sat for a moment, looking at the palms of her hands, deep aubergine lines marking the folds of her joints. She felt as if she'd awoken from dreams vivid and real yet could not remember them, left with remnants of feelings only partially realized.

Brriiiiing.

She stood. She was in a small, austere room, furnished only with a bed and a desk. The walls were bare. On the desk sat the phone, made of red plastic worn and scratched.

Brriiiiing.

She reached out and lifted the receiver. "Yes?"

"I need you," the voice from the other end said.

Skin blinking, trying to remember where she'd heard that voice before, to whom it belonged.

"Meet me in our usual spot."

"Yes," Skin said, feeling her lips forming the words as if of their own volition.

The line went dead. Slowly, Skin let the receiver fall back into the phone's cradle.

She looked around the room again. There were three doors, two against one wall and one opposite. One must lead to the closet, the one next to it the bathroom, and the one opposite to the outside. She was surprised to note, she did not need to use the bathroom. Such bodily functions were no longer a part of her life, although she did not know why.

The first door she tried opened to a large walk-in closet. She pulled the string that hung from the ceiling and artificial light filled the space. Along one wall, her clothes hung from a rod, everything from colorful silks to more practical leathers, and some with reinforced sections of armor plating. Along the other wall, an array of weapons, various blades—from small and concealable throwing knives, to swords curved and straight—as well as several projectile devices, flintlock pistols with leather holsters.

She blinked and nodded. "Yes," she said once more, this time for her own benefit. This was always the moment she remembered her purpose. She served Trevor, performing whatever tasks he or the Archon needed of her. The man on the phone had been Trevor Rothschilde. She took her orders from him and... There was something else... She could feel a stirring in her gut, a knot of emotion, of confusion and warmth...

She shook her head to clear it. She drew her hands into fists, clenching, feeling the muscles in her arms flex. She looked down at herself. She was naked. Her body was long and lithe and strong, hairless and smooth except for a tuft of black hair at her pubis. She was arkaine, standing ten feet tall, her skin a purplish tone. She smiled to herself. She felt good.

She dressed quickly in practical pants and a blouse. She would return for whatever supplies and weapons she would need when she discovered the nature of her mission.

She moved to the door she presumed led outside.

"Good evening. Please state your designation," the door said to her.

She looked at it for a moment, at the latch, at the black circle from where the voice had come. "Skin," she said. "My name is Skin."

"Is it?" the door asked her, then paused, as if thinking. "Are you sure?"

Skin waited, although it was a strange question.

"Alright, checks out," the door said finally. The latch clicked and Skin pushed her way through.

She stepped out into a dim and cool night, the moon a sliver among pinprick stars. Below, she could see the lights from the City, glowing and flickering in the distance. Above, the Archon's Pyramid loomed, more informally called the Ziggurat. Steps led up its side, a stairway she knew she had climbed innumerable times before, but she could not remember ever having done so. She began the ascent.

It was a long climb, but her body was fit and strong. Still, her breathing was labored by the time she'd reached halfway to the top. She slowed to catch her breath, but pressed onward.

She was unconcerned with being seen. There were windows and viewing platforms all over the Ziggurat, but most were predominantly, for whatever architectural reason, on the other facings. Although the Archon's Pyramid was composed of unsymmetrical terraced structures that appeared like random and often precarious-looking stacks, all were built around a basic polyhedron core of four roughly equal and triangular sides. There were many paths up the Ziggurat, external stairways and internal passageways, but none as private or as direct as this one, although it was rarely used, and almost never at night. The steps Skin now climbed faced one of the poorest sections of Talos, the lights in its buildings dim, its people unconcerned with the politics within the Ziggurat.

Skin stopped a moment, her breath fogging the air lightly before her. How did she know such things? She had no memory of ever learning them. It was as if certain of her memories had been erased, or only those necessary to her work had been programmed into her current incarnation.

A shudder ran through her body. She dismissed this odd and disquieting thought and returned her attention to the steps, quickening her pace until she was panting for breath once more and could feel herself sweating.

~

At the top of the stairs there was a freestanding arch. She walked through it and stopped for a moment to catch her breath. She was in the Garden of Mue.

She moved through the columns, letting her instincts guide her, inhaling deeply of the night breeze fresh and cool, goose bumps rising on the exposed skin of her arms. Something moved at the corner of her eye, but when she turned her head to look, there were only vague shapes obscured in shadow, still and silent.

She moved through a place where foliage rose from perfectly round pools of dark and lightly rippling water and into a small grove, trees replacing the columns, obscuring much of the moon's reflected light.

She plunged into darkness, letting her feet guide her easily to her destination. She danced over a scattering of stones rising just barely above the surface of more water and felt tile beneath the soles of her shoes. A fountain burbled to her right.

An arm wrapped around her from behind and she whirled out of its grasp. She spun, taking the arm deftly by the wrist with one hand and twisting. She heard a grunt of pain. She was unarmed, but her skills were absolute and she did not need a blade to be an effective weapon. She could easily, with an upward thrust, break the arm that had grabbed her, but something stayed her strike.

"Skin, please," a voice said, and a face came into view, faintly glowing in the moonlight.

Skin let the arm fall and took a step back. "Trevor?"

The man came forward, shorter than she, and embraced her. Before she knew what she was doing she was embracing him back, his lips brushing the skin between her breasts, rising as she bent, up her neck until their lips met, drawing him in, his scent musty, as if he'd been spending too much time in old and dark places, yet also clean, intoxicating. She was the first to open her lips, to take his tongue into her mouth, guiding it with her own. She clutched him fiercely, running a hand down the back of his head, his neck, feeling the muscles rippling in his back. She could feel him, hot and stiff against her thigh.

She was on her knees and then she was on her back, the warmth of his body on top of her. A bed of vines which crawled down the side of the fountain formed a soft mat beneath them. She moaned into his mouth, rational thought forgotten, giving in to her physical desires.

She was sopping wet as he slid into her.

~

"If the hallowgeons only knew," Trevor said, lying next to her, one hand cupping her breast.

Skin smiled. "I know."

"Do you?"

"Crossbreeding is forbidden," she said.

Trevor didn't say anything, but she could feel him nodding next to her.

She was lying on her back, peering up through a sliver in the canopy of branches at the stars in the night sky. The air was still in the grove, cool but not uncomfortable on her bare skin. "They watch," she said. "They see more than you know. My people..."

"Yes?"

She could feel Trevor tense, eager for this tidbit of knowledge she was about to share with him, but whatever it was, it was gone, lost to the night. "I don't know," she said, the thing she had remembered for a brief instance forgotten once again.

Trevor let it go and they lay silently for a few precious moments, as if they might freeze time, happy and content with nothing but each other, avoiding the ambitions and responsibilities of their lives.

After a while, Trevor said, "I have a task for you."

Skin continued to watch the stars and waited.

"I had a visitation. The hallowgeons came to see me this evening." He paused.

Skin didn't move. She felt frozen, suddenly cold.

"They told me of a young boy with an unusual ability. They want this boy to replace Galen as the chantiac. I want you to go and find him and bring him to me."

Still unmoving, she nodded.

"You will bring the boy to me so that I may see to his training personally," Trevor said. "This child, should he truly have the ability the hallowgeons claim, is extremely important. This boy will not only help to restore faith in the Church of Awa, but may have other interesting uses as well."

Skin brushed Trevor's hand from her breast and crossed her arms. "What uses? What do the hallowgeons say?"

"They say he can bring the dead back to life."

Skin scoffed.

"I know. It sounds farfetched. But if what the hallowgeons say is true..."

"The hallowgeons have been manipulating humanity for their own gains for centuries."

Trevor was silent for a moment, then asked, "Is that true?"

Skin tried to think, to remember. "I'm not sure."

"They claim to do things for a large universal aesthetic, but I know their visits are feared. The last time they appeared in Ebon's Square, years ago, one of them made a motion in the air and the fingers dropped from the hands of all the people within a hundred feet, severed clean and twitching. No one knows why. They left without speaking a word."

Skin nodded in the dark.

"They have been known to appear at random to kill those who do not support their apparently unfathomable sense of universal balance and aesthetics. The first time I was visited, I was absolutely terrified. I was consulting with a young tinker from The Mechanicus and, to underscore a point they wanted to make to me, the hallowgeons first lopped off the tinker's head and then began calmly and meticulously to remove his organs and sort them into various piles, using blades unlike anything I've ever seen before, speaking casually while they performed the evisceration. It was...well, most horrifying...and one of the defining moments of my life..."

"And you still trust them?"

"Let's just say, the words they spoke to me that day, the point they were trying to make, is one I will never forget."

Skin rose to a sitting position and began to dress. "Where is this boy?"

"He is Novan, from the small village of Fallowvane."

"He's from Nova? Why would the hallowgeons choose a Novan to be the next chantiac?"

"Good question. One for which I do not have an answer. Get him for me, and we shall see what we discover."

"I'll need transportation, and supplies. The journey is far."

"I have seen to it. In the alcove below your chamber, you will find everything you need. Excluding weapons, that is. Those, I leave up to you."

Skin stood, pulling her pants up, buckling them about her waist.

Trevor lay on his side, looking up at her. "Once more before you depart?"

"No. I must begin my preparations immediately."

Trevor smiled crookedly. "I know."

Fully dressed, Skin turned to leave.

"Wait," Trevor called after her.

She turned back and saw that her lover now had a very different expression on his face. He sat up and fixed her eyes with his. He looked vulnerable, almost desperate. "Do you love me?" he asked.

Skin thought for a moment. She looked at Trevor's face, into his almost-pleading eyes, at his sharp features, angular nose, lips soft and large, the hair on his head shaved nearly to his scalp, a blond color even lighter than his pastel skin. She felt something, some stirring of emotion, but it felt remote, like something once felt, now in the past.

"Yes," she said, but knew it was a lie.

# ~ SIX ~

NOVA

ASH

"I'm sorry, kid. We'll be back in a couple of days."

"But I can help. I've been practicing shooting."

"You'll be safer here."

"But I'm a good soldier."

The soldier looked down at him and smiled. "I'm sure you are. Someone has to stay and guard the camp."

"I wanna talk to the bearded officer."

"Who?"

Ash realized he didn't know the bearded officer's name. "With the beard and the pistol."

The soldier smiled again. "There are many men like that here."

"He knows me. He put me on patrol. He—"

The soldier from his tent stepped away, was whisked into the crowd of grunting and coughing and marching navy, and was gone.

Ash grabbed his rifle, leaning against his cot, and stepped out into the cometshine. He watched the soldiers march by. For a moment, he considered joining them anyway, thrusting himself into the crowd and marching to whatever glorious mission they were attending, but then he thought of the camp empty and unguarded. Someone had to protect the camp.

He sat in the dirt miserably and watched the soldiers march until their numbers thinned and the last stragglers ran to catch up. He watched the dust settle. When the camp was quiet enough he could once more hear the birds chirping and calling out to each other, he stood, and decided to look for something to eat.

The camp was eerily empty, he discovered, as he moved between tents, walking among hundreds of empty, motionless cots. There was very little left behind. Most had taken what meager possessions they had with them on the march.

The captain's tent, which he'd never been inside, was not much different; smaller, with a larger cot, but mostly empty. Beneath the captain's cot, however, he discovered a small bundle wrapped in cloth the color of the dirt. The captain must have forgotten it. It contained a few dried biscuits, a plain but sharp-looking knife, and a tarnished medal embossed with a strange symbol: twin crescent moons each with one bulging eye and slivered grins facing each other.

These were things he might need to defend the camp, he decided. He strapped the knife to his belt. He pinned the medal to the front of his jacket. He stood and puffed his chest out experimentally. He grinned. He sat on the captain's cot and ate the biscuits.

~

He set the rifle in the crook of his shoulder and aimed. He closed one eye and sighted down the barrel. He'd set three empty canteens he'd found lying around camp on a low-hanging branch and he aimed for the center one.

He pulled the trigger.

The rifle kicked, jolting his entire body. It made a sound like a large branch cracking in half, and the smell stung his nose and made his eyes water.

He lowered the rifle and blinked, his ears ringing. He looked at the three canteens sitting on the branch, undisturbed. Shooting was a lot harder than he'd thought it would be.

He hadn't been practicing like he'd told the other soldiers, before they'd all left him alone, and so he'd come out here to make sure he could shoot like he thought he could shoot.

He lowered the rifle and began to load it again, just as he'd watched the other soldiers do, pouring the rust-colored powder down the barrel—not too much—then a few of the courser powder charge flakes, then sliding the bullet down, and packing it lightly with the rod. He knew to be careful. He knew to respect his rifle.

When he was done, he lifted the rifle again. He set it against his sore shoulder and aimed again.

He pulled the trigger.

Blinking through the smoke, he looked out at the canteens. He'd nicked one of them and knocked it from the branch.

"Yes!" he said, and decided that was enough shooting for the day.

~

"Brent? Pera?"

He approached the small hut built into the side of the hill. It was difficult to find. The branches from the trees hung over it, nearly obscuring it completely. The door was plain wood, the same color as the trunks of the trees. It was like a door into the underground, an entrance into the deep.

Ash walked up the door. He reached his hand out and tried to push it open. It wouldn't budge, must have been locked from the inside. He rapped his knuckles on the course wood.

"Brent? You in there?"

"Nope."

Ash jumped, whirled about.

Pera was standing in the clearing only a few feet away. "He's not here."

"Where is he?" Ash asked, his heart thudding in his chest.

Pera shrugged. She turned and darted by him and into the trees.

"Wait!"

Pera stopped and looked at him, leaning from a branch she'd grasped onto, her eyes bright.

"Where are you going?"

"Wanna see something?"

"Sure. What?"

"Come on," Pera said, and slipped into the trees.

He ran after her.

They ran together, Ash stumbling to keep up with Pera's light leaps and lithe movements. The trees passed around them, rushing, rustling.

Pera stopped suddenly, putting her hand out to signal Ash to a halt.

"What is it?" Ash asked.

"Hear that?"

A strange grinding sound was coming from the clearing ahead. It was a labored, sputtering machine sound.

Pera brushed a branch aside with her hand and he could see a machine of some sort, a buggy, but smaller. He came forward for a better look. It was smaller than the buggy that had carried him from Fallowvane to the soldier's camp and it was close-topped and didn't have any place for people to sit. It was exuding a thick and acrid smoke that hung about the still clearing, fogging the air. It was about the size of the news carts that sometimes came along the road, spouting strange voiced recordings of things rarely understood.

But this cart wasn't speaking. It was very old.

"It's okay," Pera said.

Together, they stepped into the clearing.

The cart was laboring, trundling very slowly. It appeared to be following a track of sorts, a circular path around the clearing.

"What's it doing?" Ash asked.

Pera shrugged. "The forest is full of old things like that."

Ash walked carefully up to inspect the track the buggy seemed to be circling over and over again. It was black and smooth and smelled burnt.

"It's a road," Ash said, turning to look at Pera. "Like the greatroad."

"Yup," she said. "A road-maker."

Ash regarded the buggy, now staggering around the turn at the far corner. "It's broken, or something."

"I guess so," Pera said. "Like a lot of things."

"Huh."

Ash unslung his rifle. He brought the barrel up, set the stock in his shoulder, and aimed.

"No," Pera said, rushing forward. She put her hand on the barrel and brought it down to point uselessly at the ground. "Let it be."

It was Ash's turn to shrug. "Fine. Where's Brent?"

"This way." Pera darted into the trees once again.

~

"Here I am," he heard Pera say, and pushed through the foliage in the direction of her voice.

Branches slapped his face and the exposed skin on his arms, but he wanted to catch her and she was fast.

"Brent went through the door." Pera laughed. "He's on the other side now."

A jutting root caught his foot and Ash fell. Grunting, he picked himself up and pushed on.

"Here I am," Pera said, Ash catching a pale flash of her dress just ahead. "I exist."

"Pera, wait!" Ash stumbled. He was out of breath. "Where are you going?"

He came through a patch of bushes and between some trees. He could see Pera laughing and twirling in a patch of cometlight streaming through the trees. He ran forward, grabbed her, and they tumbled, laughing, into the dry leaves.

He rolled on top of her, holding her down by her wrists.

"Why do you see me?" she said.

He rolled off her, and she grabbed his hands and they spun. Ash laughed, he couldn't help himself. Pera's soft face glowed in the light.

They spun until they were off balance and tumbled down onto their backs, side by side. Their hands were clasped.

"I don't hear the birds," Pera said.

Something was in the sky, a distant, lazy shape, a white line of cloud.

What was it? It was moving slowly, too large to be a bird. His heart leapt. Could it be an aerial?

For a moment, total quiet enveloped the forest.

Something dropped fast. A deafening sound filled the air, a flash of heat, a white hot fire...

The world was reduced to a dull ringing in the ears.

Ash lost consciousness.

KYA

With Ash gone off to war, she was now the oldest.

Kya drew the branch she'd carved into a point with a knife she'd taken from her dad's workshop and whipped it through the air. "Hyah!" she said, then slid her "sword" back into a loop in her breeches, and continued to skip down the mostly empty street, on her way to her dad's shop.

At first, it had been nice being the oldest. Ash had never let her play with him and Brent, even though she was better at things than they were. She was now the one in charge, her sisters had to do what she said, but soon she'd discovered that being the oldest was a lot of work and responsibility. Now she missed her brother.

She had followed him once to the sand pit where he and Brent liked to play. Brandon's Beach the adults called it, but it was really just an area of sand that had sifted up from the ground at the edge of Fallowvane, between the grasslands and the village itself. Was it still a beach if there was no water? Kya wasn't sure, but Brent and her brother called it the sand pit and that seemed like a better name, so that's what she called it too.

Ash and Brent had gathered some rocks together and had stacked them in wobbly columns at the center of the sand pit.

Kya hid in some tufts of grass and watched.

"Okay, we only get six bullets each so make them count," Ash said to Brent as he divided the smaller stones they were going to throw at their stacked targets between himself and his friend.

"We might need more," Brent said.

"No. That's all we get. We have to survive," Ash said.

Kya watched Ash and Brent climb to the top of the hill overlooking the sand pit, their ammunition cupped in the bottoms of their shirts, holding it there with their hands.

"Okay," Ash said. "You ready? On the count of three. One..."

"Wait!" Kya called out, standing suddenly, revealing herself. "I wanna play too."

Brent blinked at her, surprised.

Ash looked over and scowled, immediately angry. He lifted his hand holding one of the stones. "I should throw this at you," he said.

Kya put her hands on her hips. "You'd probably miss."

Ash took a step forward and lifted his rock-holding hand even higher. "Oh, yeah?"

Brent tugged on Ash's sleeve. "Come on. Let her try. She's not going to be any good, anyway."

"Fine," Ash said. "Come here, Kya."

Kya jumped through the grass and came around the sand pit until she was standing with the boys. She was grinning from ear to ear.

"Okay," Ash said. "You can have one of mine and one of Brent's." He dropped a single stone into her open palm.

"But you guys got more than that."

"Sorry," Ash said. "That's all you get."

Brent tapped her on the shoulder. "Here, you can have two of mine," he said.

Kya looked at the three stones sitting in the bowl she'd created with her cupped hands. "Thanks."

"Okay, get ready," Ash said, dropping to his knees in the dirt. "When I say so, we pop up and take these guys out. Got it?"

"Got it," Brent said.

Kya nodded.

"One... Two... Three..."

Ash and Brent leapt to their feet screaming, throwing their rocks wildly. Kya jumped up too, but didn't throw her stones right away. Ash's first throw flew far of its mark. Brent's was closer, but thumped ineffectually into the sand inches from one of the three columns of rocks.

Ash threw two more rocks in rapid succession, the first just missing, the second taking the top off of the tower farthest to the right. "Yes!" he said.

Brent threw his rocks, missing with all of them, until he only had one left. He stopped, aimed carefully, and his last rock flew true, striking the same column Ash had struck. The column toppled over, collapsing to a pile of rubble.

Kya threw one of her three rocks, missing the center column by a mere inch.

Ash jumped up to the very crest of the hill so that he was higher than the others, bellowed and fired off the last of his rocks one after the other. "Blam! Blam! Blam!" One of the rocks nicked the side of the center column and ricocheted to the side, the other two missed.

From behind her brother, Kya threw her rocks. One, she counted in her head. It struck the column on the left, blasting it to pieces. Two, the second rock hit the center column at its base, making it rock first one way, then the other. The center column came down like a tree being cut, crunching into the sand with a satisfying, muffled thump.

Ash was staring at her. "You're supposed to shoot right away. In a real battle, you have to shoot fast."

"No you don't," Kya said.

Ash stepped forward. "Yes you do!"

"Alright, alright," Brent said, holding his hands out between Kya and her brother.

"You messed me up," Ash said to Kya. "Come on," he motioned to Brent to follow him. "Let's do it again."

Kya began to follow her brother and Brent down the hill.

"Not you," Ash said. "Just leave us alone, okay?"

Kya stopped on the hill, feeling the sand sifting down over her feet, getting into her shoes. She could feel her face getting hot. She wanted to scream at her brother, to go screaming to her dad about how unfair Ash was being, but she was so upset she couldn't speak. She could feel the emotion rising up in her throat, so instead of confronting her brother and risk him and Brent seeing her cry, she turned and ran.

But that had all happened months ago. Now Ash was gone, and Brent was too. Her brother had been taken away on one of those stinky machine carts. She might never see her brother again and that was fine by her.

With her mom sick in bed and her dad busy at work, it was left to her to watch her two sisters. She'd stay in the house with them and play dolls, or go outside and they'd wander around Fallowvane, since school had been cancelled while the Committee met to decide what must be done to defend against the Talosians.

Let them come, Kya thought, patting the "sword" strapped by her side. She wasn't afraid. And as soon as she could, she'd get a real one. Her brother had always liked guns and rifles, but Kya preferred a good blade. Guns were for people scared of a real fight, who didn't like to get close. She was braver and tougher than that.

She'd been in a fight once with this boy from school named Derek. She hated Derek. Mr. Gregory, their teacher, had been walking around the room to look at their projects they'd brought in, nodding approvingly to most and smiling. Derek had built some sort of stupid tower out of twigs he'd collected from the forest and when Mr. Gregory had asked what it was, he had stammered and said it was the Fallowvane Statue. "Then where's the weathervane at the top?" Mr. Gregory had asked. And when Derek hadn't been able to answer, Mr. Gregory had only shaken his head and made a mark in his notebook.

A hiss of snickers ran through the classroom. Several other kids in class had made the Fallowvane Statue too, but all of them had put the weathervane at the top.

When Mr. Gregory came to Kya's sculpture, she practically jumped from her chair, a smile beaming across her face.

"What do we have here?" Mr. Gregory asked.

"It's the Archon's Pyramid," Kya said.

Mr. Gregory brought a hand to his chin, stepping from side to side to see her sculpture from every angle.

She had used mostly scrap wood from her dad's shop to assemble the basic structure, pounded together with nails and glue. Then she'd spent several hours painstakingly collecting stones of the same shapes and sizes from all over town and gluing them to the base. Then she'd used more stone to construct several leaning towers, just like in the picture of the Archon's Pyramid in her history book. At the flattened top of the Ziggurat, she'd made the Garden of Mue out of sticks and dried leaves. Her project was so heavy she'd had to bring it into school on a wheeled platform her dad had made.

"Wow," Mr. Gregory said. "Impressive, Kya, but why did you choose to build the Archon's Pyramid in Talos?"

Kya shrugged, still smiling. "I think it's cool."

"Talos is a very dangerous place," her teacher said. "Why not build the shipyard of Farrenhold, or the statues on Isla Roccus, or Ago's Station, where the trolley stops before it continues its journey across the ocean?"

Kya said what her dad had said when he'd seen her building her project. "What has more history than the Archon's Pyramid?"

A scowl creased Mr. Gregory's face and he fell silent. He nodded, made a mark in his notebook, and moved on to the next project.

Kya took her seat and gazed proudly at her project. Her dad had also said not to tell her mom about it. He'd said her mom wouldn't like that she was doing something from Talos. Then he'd winked at her and she'd winked back.

Something hit her in the shoulder, a piece of balled-up paper. "Mutt," someone said, and when she turned in her seat, Derek was grinning at her.

Kya felt her face growing hot. Her parents had both told her to ignore bullies and to not be offended by that word, but she couldn't help it. Her mom said she'd come to Nova and Fallowvane because it was a place where people of many different geneses and beliefs lived together and worked together as equals, but Kya knew a lot of people in town talked quietly about her mom and dad's relationship, and most did not approve. Her mom was brean and her dad was davon, from different geneses, which made her a crossbreed.

"Mutt," Derek said again. "Another stupid project from the stinky mutt."

Kya whirled in her chair. "Shut up, Derek!"

"Oh, no! I made the mutt angry! What's the mutt gonna do now?"

Kya tried to ignore Derek, but she couldn't. She just couldn't.

Derek began to make barking sounds. "Woof. Woof-woof."

Kya jumped to her feet, her chair falling backward, clattering to the floor. She stomped over to Derek's table and, using both arms, smashed his stupid tower of sticks with one wide sweep of her fists. It burst into pieces, twigs crusted with glue scattered over the table and floor.

Derek stood, his eyes dark and angry. "Mutt," he almost whispered. Then, nearly a scream, "You mutt!"

Derek was much taller than she and when he stood she had to look up to see his face. He kicked at her, throwing his leg up as hard as he could.

Kya blocked Derek's kicks with her arms, the way her dad had taught her. Derek's reach was long, so she couldn't get close enough to punch him if he kept kicking at her, so she waited, taking the impacts on her arms.

Somewhere in the background, very far away, she could hear kids shouting and cheering; she could hear Mr. Gregory yelling for them to stop.

"Mutt," Derek said again and came at her.

They rolled on the floor and she was punching him any way she could as fast as she could and he was hitting her back. Then she was being lifted up and away and Mr. Gregory's face was right up close to her and he was screaming something at her, but she couldn't understand him through the blood pounding in her temples.

She'd been a little bruised up that day, including a cut beneath her eye, but Derek had come away from their fight with a black eye and a bloody lip. When she'd talked to some of the other kids later, the general consensus had been that she'd won the fight.

Kya stopped in front of her dad's shop. It didn't look open. The door was closed and her dad never kept the door closed when he was working. She looked up and down the empty street. Where was everybody? She stepped up, grasped the doorknob and turned it. The door swung inward and she stepped inside.

~

"Dad?" Kya closed the door behind her. "Are you here?"

Her dad's head jerked up from his work—sanding the legs of a small table—startled, as if caught doing something he shouldn't. "Kya? What are you doing here?"

Kya kicked a sliver of wood that happened to be lying in her path and came forward to sit on the floor where her dad crouched in the sawdust. Her dad had flecks of wood in his beard. "Nothing," she said. "Terry and Alex are with Bethany right now."

Her dad gave a strained smile. "Oh, okay." He returned to his work, smoothing the table legs he'd carved into swooping feet.

Bethany was an older girl who sometimes watched some of the kids in town. The only time Kya had any time to herself these days was when her sisters were with Bethany. She usually hung out with her friend Michael, but when she'd knocked on the door of his house, Michael's parents had both come to the door to tell her Michael couldn't come out today.

"Aren't you gonna go out and play?" her dad asked her.

"Nah, there's nothing to do."

Her dad nodded. "How's your mom?"

"She's okay. Sleeping."

Her dad froze for a moment, giving her an intense look, but didn't say anything.

Kya absentmindedly wrote her name in the sawdust on the floor with her finger, then wiped it away quickly with the palm of her hand.

Her dad said something, but it was so quiet she couldn't hear him.

"What, Dad?"

Her dad cleared his throat. "Remember when you and your brother were little and he tried to scare you with a jumper bug?"

Kya nodded.

"He pinched it between his fingers and shoved it in your face and you didn't even flinch. I remember thinking 'that's my girl'." Her dad smiled, more sincerely this time.

"I remember, Dad." Kya had never told him how she'd later collected a jar of dung beetles from the horse barn and put them in her brother's bed while he was sleeping. Her brother had been furious, but he'd never said anything to their parents.

"Everything's going to be alright," her dad said. "You know that, don't you?"

"Why does everyone keep saying that?"

Her dad dropped his gaze. He sighed. When he looked up, he had a very serious look in his eyes. "They're scared," he said. "There have been a lot of rumors. When people are scared, they act funny."

Kya rolled her eyes. "Tell me about it. That's why I'm never scared."

"Never?"

"Never."

"It's okay if you are. Fear is a good thing. It tells us when we should be careful."

"Michael's parents wouldn't let him come out," Kya said.

"They're just being careful."

"Because they're scared?"

Her dad nodded. "That's right."

"Then why do you let me out?"

Her dad blinked, surprised by the question. "Because—"

"Aren't you scared?"

"No. Of course not. I'm not scared. The Talosians will never come here." Her dad smiled. "Besides, I could never keep you locked up inside, could I? You're too wild and your mother made you tough."

"That's right!" Kya said and jumped to her feet. She pulled her wooden sword free, turned to the side, and spared with an invisible attacker.

"Careful with that thing," her dad said.

"I will. I gotta go, Dad. Just wanted to say hi." She bolted for the door.

"Kya?" her father called after her.

She stopped in the doorway, turning to her father.

"I...I'm afraid I'm not very good at these talks of ours. Your mother is the wise one. She..." Her father took a deep breath.

"What is it, Dad?"

"I lied," he said. "I am scared."

Kya dropped her eyes to her shuffling feet. "I know."

"If you see anything, anyone dangerous, promise me you'll run. Can you do that for me? You're fast. Don't try and fight. Just run."

"Okay, Dad," she said, then pushed through the door and was outside.

~

Using the tip of her wooden sword, she tapped on the window. "Michael? Psst. Michael, are you there?"

After a moment, Michael's face appeared. He looked down at her, frowned, then slid his bedroom window open. "What are you doing?"

"I came to rescue you. Come on, let's go."

Michael didn't move. "Go where?"

Kya shrugged. "Don't you want to come outside?"

Michael glanced over his shoulder. "Keep quiet," he said. "My parents will hear you."

"Then hurry up," Kya said, waving her sword.

For a moment, it looked like Michael wasn't going to come, looking down at her doubtfully. Then, he began to climb down. He landed on his feet, kicking up dust, and stood.

Kya smiled. "Alright, let's go!" She began to run, Michael behind her.

When they'd reached the end of the street, Michael called after her: "Wait!"

Kya stopped, looking back. "What is it?"

Michael caught up to her, breathing hard. "Where are we going?"

"To the sand pits."

Michael shook his head. "That's too far."

"Why?"

"The Talosians. They—"

"You're just like everyone else," Kya interrupted, throwing her hands in the air.

"Like what?"

"Scared."

Michael looked hurt. "I am not."

"Then come with me."

"No."

"Then you're scared."

"Oh, shut up," Michael said, giving her a shove.

Kya stumbled backward, shocked.

"I've heard what everyone is saying," Michael said, anger flushing his face. "Your mom's one of them."

Kya stared at her friend. She could feel her mouth hanging open, her throat was very dry. "What?" she managed.

Michael dropped his eyes and shuffled his feet, as if suddenly ashamed of what he'd just said. "That's what they're saying."

Kya swallowed. "No, she's not."

Michael shook his head. "I'm sorry. I have to go home." He turned his back to her and began to walk slowly back the way they'd come.

Kya watched her friend leave. She was shaking. "No," she whispered. She yanked her wooden sword free and gripped it tightly by her side. My mom's not one of them. She's good. She's...she's sick... She lifted her sword and screamed.

"You shut up!" She charged Michael, who whirled around just in time to see her sword coming down. She struck one of his arms, swung her sword back and chopped again, catching Michael in the chest.

Michael grunted, clearly in pain, but angry too. He threw his body forward as she was lifting her sword for another chop and crashed into her. He was on top of her and he was larger. She fought and struggled as he grabbed first one wrist and then the other and pinned her to the ground. His red-burning face glared down at her. "Stop," he said. "Stop!"

"Get off me!" Kya squirmed, but she couldn't pull her arms free of Michael's grip. She kicked her legs uselessly, dust filling the air around them like smoke.

"Stop! I hate you!"

Kya stopped squirming and looked up at her friend.

"We can't play anymore, okay?" He pushed himself up and backed away.

Kya lay in the dust, motionless, staring up.

"Mutt," Michael said, turned, and ran.

Kya felt her heart beating in her throat, choking her. She'd never heard Michael use that word before. It felt as if his weight was still on her chest, making it hard to breathe. She tried to hold them back, but her world began to blur with tears.

~

"What did you do!" Her father burst through the door, looking angrier than she'd ever seen him.

She was in the bedroom she shared with her sisters, on the other side of the house from where her mother lay sick and sleeping. Terry and Alex were sitting on the floor in the corner and she was sitting on her bed, flipping through one of her old story books with trembling fingers, but not reading or even looking at the pictures, still too angry at Michael to do anything else. She was still in her dirt-smudged clothes, her wooden sword slung through its loop and sticking out over the bed behind her.

"Did you hit the Mason kid?"

Kya looked up at her dad and blinked. "No," she said. "I never hit him."

Her dad stomped into the room. Her sisters shrunk back, clutching their dolls tightly. "No? Michael Mason? His dad came to the shop and told me what you did. Are you sure?"

"He... He..."

"I don't care what he did." Her dad bent down and grabbed her sword, wrenching it from the loop in her pants. "How many times have I told you, no fighting? No more fighting!"

Kya watched her father take her sword in both hands. He snapped it in half over his knee. His eyes were bloodshot, sweat dripped from his beard. "I'm...I'm so angry," he said. "I'm going to have to talk to your mother about this." He dropped her broken sword to the floor and left. She could hear his feet stomping down the hall.

She looked at the shattered stick that used to be her sword lying on the floor. She stepped over it, and left her sisters quaking alone in the corner.

~

She slumped with her back against the nova tree in their backyard. She wiped her eyes and held her breath until she had herself under control. She hated to cry and she'd found that holding her breath was the best way to hold back the tears.

Slowly, she began to breathe normally. She could hear birds chirping in the branches above her. She'd always liked this tree, with the bulbous red fruits it grew in the fall. She could see it from her bedroom window and sometimes, while her sisters slept, she watched it at night, its branches like gnarled hands trembling in the breeze. She sometimes stared at it for hours. It had a certain hypnotic, calming effect on her.

Michael was a jerk. Her dad was a jerk. Everyone could go to hell.

She pushed her thoughts away. She didn't want to cry again. Michael was right about one thing: her mom had come from Talos. Kya herself was half brean, a genesis rarely seen in Nova. Maybe someday, when she was older, she could go to Talos. They'd teach her to fight in Talos. She had an aunt who lived there, she knew: Embla, her mom's sister.

Creak.

Kya turned her head, startled. The sound had come from within the tree. She lifted herself and turned to examine the trunk of the nova tree. There was a cleft cut into the wood that had been there for years. Sometimes pikas lived in there during the summer months. One of them might have made the noise.

Something gleamed at the bottom of the dark hole. She reached her hand down slowly and carefully. She gripped something cool, solid and heavy. She lifted it into the light.

It was a knife, steel, with a slight curve to its blade. She ran the ball of her finger carefully along its edge: very sharp. It had a grip of soft leather and a parry guard to protect its wielder's fingers in a fight. It was clean, immaculate. But what was it doing in the tree in her backyard?

She got on her tippy-toes and looked into the cleft in the tree. There were other things down there. Some clothing, heavy leathers, it looked like; a scabbard for the knife; a compass; a small leather pouch, which she was reaching for when she heard her dad calling her name.

"Kya! Kya, where are you?"

She quickly put the blade back where she'd found it and turned just in time to see her dad walking from around the side of the house.

"Kya," he said, walking up to her. "Are you okay?"

Kya nodded.

"I'm sorry I yelled. Why don't you come inside for some dinner? I made—"

"Blanch root stew!"

Her dad smiled and shrugged. "Sorry."

"That's okay, Dad," Kya said, flinging her arms around her dad's waist and squeezing tight. "I'm sorry too."

ASH

He opened his eyes. He was lying on his back. There was something caught in the tree above him. His head throbbed painfully. A large branch was lying next to him, which must have struck him when it fell.

He sat up, watching something struggling in the branches above. Although the foliage was thrashing about, he couldn't hear it, only a dullness, a muffled scratching that tickled irritatingly inside his head, his ears swollen. He couldn't quite tell what it was up there in the tree.

Then, a branch snapped away and he could see it was a man, strapped into a suit of some kind, dark and leathery wings jutting from his back, tangled and fighting to free his arms. The man was looking right at him, his eyes stony and cold and murderous. The man managed to free one of his arms and drew from the scabbard at his belt a glimmering blade.

Ash couldn't tear his eyes away. The surface of the blade the man was now using to cut effortlessly through the branches that bound him caught the light as he worked, and shown brightly.

Someone next to him said something, tugging on his arm, but he ignored the tug.

He knew what the man was. He'd seen pictures of flying men in the papers the news carts often left blowing in the streets like leaves. He was a Talosian Dropper Scout, highly trained to leap from the prow of an aerial and glide down to strategic locations. They often carried canvas balls about the size of human heads, which the scout had to drop before its weight carried him too close to the ground where he would crash. These canvas balls, constructed by the engineers, were filled with some sort of explosive substance, capable of leveling entire houses.

The man was now almost free. He was dangling by one arm. He looked down at Ash and pointed his blade threateningly, then returned to hacking at the last few cords that wrapped his arm.

The tug became a frantic yank and he looked over and Pera was yelling something at him. Slowly, he got to his feet.

Faintly, he heard the man growl something and when he looked over the Talosian scout had begun climbing down from the tree.

Pera pulled hard and Ash fell, tumbling to the ground, taking Pera with him.

The Talosian landed on his feet and began to run at them, his blade raised.

Ash and Pera scrambled to their feet and ran into the forest.

~

He couldn't hear. The trees whipped by with a hum, and a punctuated high-pitched whine. The branches scratched his face, leaving his skin swollen and inflamed. He must have been hit by part of the blast from the dropper's bomb. He could smell smoke in the air, acrid, from burning trees and bubbling sap. He could barely hear Pera screaming as they ran.

Could he hear their pursuer? Were those grunts his own or the crazed Talosian who chased them?

His rifle, still strapped over his shoulder, jostled and jabbed his hip.

His rifle.

He could use it. He could turn, unsling the weapon, aim, and blast the enemy away. He'd loaded the rifle properly, always at the ready like a good Novan soldier was supposed to be.

Pera had pulled ahead. She was much faster than he, darting through the woods with ease. He was going to have to fight. This was his chance to prove himself.

He turned and dropped to one knee. He ripped the rifle free of his body, cutting his face with the strap. He brought it up, set it in the crook of his shoulder, and pointed it into the woods.

He'd expected the Talosian to be right behind him, that he'd have to be quick, but there was only the forest.

He waited.

His hearing was beginning to return. He could hear the forest again, the rush of the wind through the boughs high above. He could hear Pera's screams of panic, now distant and indistinct.

He heard a branch snap.

He readied himself. His heart was beating too fast and a deep terror filled him, but all he could do now was point the rifle and prepare to shoot.

When it happened, it happened fast. The Talosian stepped from the bushes and into sight. Ash's finger jerked with surprise, triggering his rifle. The Talosian dropper scout exploded.

Later, he could see it clearly in his head, just before he fell asleep each night: the skin bulging, stretching, tearing; the eruption of wet strands of red; tissue flung through the air in wobbling shreds; the sound like a sudden rainstorm through the forest, and the hot smell of ruptured digestive organs; something sagging from a low-hanging branch; a crimson mist hanging in the air; and the taste on his lips and sticky skin; and the single booted foot, jagged with flesh torn at the ankle, left standing, until, as he watched, it slowly slumped to one side, and came to rest in the blood-soaked leaves.

He dropped his rifle and fell back. His ears, once again, began to ring.

~

When Pera found him, he was laughing, soaked in blood.

She appeared from the trees, moving lightly, floating toward him. She leaned down, looking at him.

Ash was almost out of breath from laughing so hard, but he managed to say, "I got him... Must've still had the bomb..."

Pera had a confused, disbelieving expression on her face. But when he wouldn't stop laughing, she began to laugh too.

Pera grabbed his hand and pulled him into the forest.

They spent the afternoon among the trees, shaking the saplings so that water fell from the leaves high above in a cold and refreshing spray. They laughed. They spoke very little. They spun around each other. "Someday," Pera said, "I'd like to have babies." She sighed. "Someday..." she let her voice fade. And Ash grinned at her.

They reeled back to where the hut with the door built into the side of the hill stood. Inside, suddenly very tired, Ash said, "I wish Brent would come back."

Pera shook her head. "Never." She looked at the door at the back of the hut. "I don't want to go."

Ash looked at the door. He didn't like it. He didn't like it at all.

# ~ SEVEN ~

TALOS

EMBLA

Learn of that which cannot be seen...

Embla pulled the hood of her cloak up over her head and, clutching the fabric tight, turned down the dark alley. She moved quickly, the sounds of Market Street fading behind her as she walked, with each step she took deeper and deeper into one of the seedier and more dangerous parts of the City.

Walls of chiseled stone rose several stories high to either side of her, seeming to lean into each other, as if to whisper and conspire high above her, blocking the cometlight, the murky air thickened by damp shadows. The alley seemed to close in, becoming narrower and narrower. She glanced about. She was alone. One of her feet sunk into something soft and wet, warm when it should have been cold, but she never slowed her pace.

"It's marked as corridor M on the City map, but is otherwise nameless," Paimon had told her. "At the very end, there is a brick wall. Turn left and look for the green pavilion."

"Pavilion?" she'd asked. "You mean, like a tent? In the City?"

Paimon had smiled that close-mouthed smile of his, his already thin lips disappearing into his face. "Something like that."

Embla could see the end of the alley, a solid wall of bricks that looked as if they'd been scavenged from construction projects all over the City, a myriad assortment of shapes, styles, and colors, climbing upward several stories, too high to see its termination point through the stifling swirl of fog and smoke that hung in the air above her. She turned left, down an even narrower and darker alley choked with trash cans and splitting bags of refuse, leaving her little more than a six-inch wide track in which to place her feet. She took shallow gasps of air through her mouth and continued.

"Is it in Luto's Court?" she'd asked Paimon.

He'd shaken his head. "No. But close to it."

She stepped carefully over a spot where the trash had eroded over the path and found her self in a small courtyard. She stepped into an open area onto what must have once been tiled ground, now so covered in grime as to be almost black. Wiping some of the grime away with the toe of her boot revealed a lapis smudge. The tile, she could see, had once been filled with color, ornate. A distorted pile of moss-covered stones sagged at the center of the courtyard, perhaps once a fountain of some sort, now incomprehensible. Identical doors lurked in the center of each hexagonal wall segment, their iron works bleeding rust, likely sealed and having remained that way for a very long time. On the other side of the courtyard, behind the collapsed fountain, tatters of cloth hung, protruding a few feet from the wall. She could tell the fabric was a green color, but it looked gray in the faded light, forming a wall, rising upward, shivering slightly from a breeze she could not feel, a flap tied shut at its center: the entrance to the pavilion.

...that which cannot be seen...

She crossed the courtyard and stopped, looking at the tied flap of cloth that was the doorway into a world mysterious and strange, of which she had recently heard many things she had dismissed as untrue. She had never, in all her years seeking Marrow's approval, considered such a course of action. She had never thought she might find value in something that seemed so ethereal, that before she be granted access to wonders of the wider world, she might first seek the wonders of a world much closer to herself.

She reached out her hand, unwound the cord, lifted the heavy flap of fabric, and stepped into the School of the Unseen.

~

She might not have sought such unusual and extreme counsel, but she was troubled. More than her quest to obtain an invitation to join Marrow's crew had driven her to the School of the Unseen—there was an atmosphere about the Ziggurat, an invisible cloud of trepidation. The animals she tended to in the biopark could feel it too, the avian creatures restless and noisy, the cats and the bears pacing their paddocks, even the marine life jittery, everything hungrier than usual. There was a sense something big was coming, a looming threat of change, and, perhaps, violence.

And then there was Lena's letter... What would make her sister think Talos would declare war on Nova? That did not make sense. Nova was mostly empty wilderness—dense forest and little else—its villages primitive, without electric lights or running water, consisting mostly of farmers. Talos had its own farms, vast fields of red wheat—plants fertilized by the slurry mined from Naomi's Pit and pumped over the soil, growing into massive, bloated growths fully capable of feeding the City's population—and did not require such resources from the Novans. Nor did Nova have the technology to attempt an assault on Talos or any of its lands or properties. For many years now, Talos had considered Nova nothing more than an annoyance, and then only because of the refusal of its people to live by Talosian standards and ideologies. The Novans lived without rules and therefore without comforts. It was the duty of those from Talos to look down their noses at the Novans with disdain, nothing more. And, although Embla did not understand why her sister would choose to live with them, she had never wished them harm.

She had also heard rumors, mostly from Paimon—her best source of insider information—who, although he insisted there was no talk of war, reported general unrest in the City. Strange people had taken to the streets, preaching blasphemy secretly in dark alleyways. A division had grown between some who claimed Awa was, like Galen, a masculine figure—a man strong and wise—and others who claimed Awa was feminine—a woman clever and intelligent. Some were beginning to think Galen was a false prophet, but that was preposterous, Embla thought, wasn't it?

It was Galen, after all, who had told her to learn of the unseen. She was determined to follow her intuition. Strange emotions stirred within her. She felt a sense of urgency, that she must do something quickly before she lost her chance. But a chance for what? That was what she was going to find out.

She could never, of course, tell her father what she was doing. He despised the study of anything he deemed "intangible," and, after what had happened with Lena, he despised Marrow. Her father had always told her and Lena not to trust anything they could not see, feel, and touch with their own senses. "You will hear of many things in this world, beautiful and grotesque alike," their father had said once when both she and Lena had been little girls, standing erect and proud as he was wont to do, "hearsay from people who claim to have heard thus-in-such from this person or that person. It's all nonsense. Rumors on the wind." He'd smiled. "Bullshit." And both her and Lena had opened their mouths and bugged their eyes at their father's choice of word.

Paimon had told her the hallowgeons had been spotted visiting the Ziggurat. For what purpose, no one could say, but the fact that there had been more than one sighting in such a short period of time was telling. "The guards are saying it was the hallowgeons who killed Holland," Paimon had said.

"Who's Holland?"

Paimon had shrugged. "A guard for one of the installations in the House of Aesthetics. He was found in a heap at the bottom of some stairs. Someone had taken his wallet, but not his flask of spirits."

"That doesn't sound like the hallowgeons."

Paimon had smiled. "It wasn't. The flask was found empty."

"Do you think I should pay a visit to the School of the Unseen?"

"That's what Galen said to do, right?"

"In so many words."

"You should...follow your heart," Paimon had said, giving her an intense look.

Embla had looked away. "Why do you torture yourself?"

"What's life without pain?"

"You should talk to my father."

A grimace had marred Paimon's face, but that had put a stop to his advances.

Embla knew the only reason Paimon came to see her, willing to share the information he'd collected about Talos and the Ziggurat, was because of how he felt about her. But she also knew his true loyalty was to Trevor, serving in an unofficial capacity as the leader of his personal guard and emissary. Paimon had once been a member of Bergman's Enforcers, who policed the City of Talos, highly trained in the ways of combat and castrated to ensure discipline. Members of Bergman's Enforcers were supposed to serve for life and deserters and offenders were executed, but somehow, despite whatever transgression Paimon had committed, Trevor had saved him from such a fate. When Embla had asked what he had done, he had grown cold and refused to tell her. When it came to Trevor, Paimon's mouth was sealed, his loyalty to his master's secrets absolute.

Of course, Paimon's status as an ex-member of Bergman's Enforcers, even if Embla had been interested, left him without the ability or the need for sexual intimacy. They were both brean, which made them a match, and Paimon was certainly more intelligent than your average enforcer, kind even, but Embla had been blunt. When she'd asked him what he was looking for, Paimon had only shrugged and said, "Closeness."

Embla understood.

~

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She had stepped from a murky alley into an even dimmer corridor. Although she had the impression she was now inside a solid structure, the walls and roof were canvas. It smelled of spicy incense that could not quite cover the mustier scent of mildew. There seemed to be no other way to go than forward, the corridor stretching into the distance, straight ahead.

She listened as she walked, hoping to hear voices, but she neither heard nor saw anyone. She walked down the corridor until she could see its termination point, another canvas-flap door, tied shut. Flickering light leaked from its edges. She unwound the cord and lifted the flap.

On the other side, she was surprised to discover a vast open room, with a ceiling high above made from ornate drapery. It was almost as large a space as the smallest of Galen's temples, except there were no columns or statues, only emptiness, and, distant and hazy, more canvas covered walls. As she continued to move forward, something else came into view, a heap of something, and a person perched at its peak.

The floor beneath her remained un-scrubbed tile, but the sounds her boots made with each step were muffled, the canvas walls absorbing each potential echo. The figure looked up at her and froze as she approached. He eyed her suspiciously. He was wrapped in a thick, colorless robe, entirely bald except for frazzled tufts of white hair about his ears. He had a book in his hand, his place saved with a finger, and the heap itself, upon which he sat, was made from more books, stacked perhaps in some semblance of order once, now tumbled into chaos: a small mountain in the middle of this vast and empty hall.

"They're all approved texts, of course," the man said. "There's no need to worry."

"No," Embla began. "I..."

The man leapt to his feet, the pile of books shifting, one book tumbling free, flipping end over end, skidding on the grit-covered floor. "You better leave now, before you're noticed. It's best not to get involved with these...people."

"I'm sorry," Embla said. "This is the School of the Unseen, is it not?"

The man sighed. "Yes, it is."

"Are you not a member?"

"I... No, no. Shut up. Now's not the time." The man swiped his free hand through the air, as if to shoo something away.

Embla watched the man closely. "What are you doing?"

"Uh," the man said, looking around, distracted. "As you can see, we're all a little crazy around here. We see things that don't exist."

"That's what they say."

"So, if you'll leave me be, I can get back to my reading."

"You're a thaumaturge?"

The man gave her an impatient look. He nodded.

"Then maybe you can help me," Embla persisted.

The man sat down, dropped his book and lifted his arm. He began to stroke whatever he saw perched there, no longer paying her any attention.

"What do you know of Marrow and his crew?"

Without removing his eyes from his invisible familiar, the man said, "A lot. A little. Depends what you're asking."

"How does he choose new crew members?"

The man's hand froze in mid-pet, hovering ridiculously. He turned his head to look at Embla. "Ah, I see. You want to know how to join Marrow's Crew. You want to sail across the world, visit exotic lands, discover the meaning of life in the most adventurous way possible. You don't need all that." He snatched one of the books at random and held it up. "Here's all the adventure you need! Right here!"

"All approved by the House of Antiquities, of course." Embla smiled.

The man scowled. "Right. Of course, of course. I already told—" His arm jerked, as if he'd been stung or bitten or clawed, and he flung the book back into the pile. "I'm sorry," he said to his invisible familiar. "Okay. Shhhh. I'm sorry." He patted the air above his arm reassuringly.

Embla shook her head. Perhaps she'd been a fool to come here. This place was nothing but an empty, moldy tent. And this man was a joke. Galen must have meant something different. What else did she know that had anything to do with being unseen?

"I've spent years here, hoping to unravel the mysteries of the universe," the man was saying, "and what do I have to show for it?" He raised his arm further and shook it. "This accursed thing. Crow. My companion for life."

Embla nodded. "Uh-huh. So it's a crow?"

The man gave her a look of disdain. "No. No. No." He sighed. "His name is Crow, but he's a raven. A white raven. A white raven named Crow. Why is that so hard for people to understand?"

Embla raised her hands in surrender. "Sorry."

"Is there anything else you need?"

"You never answered my question. How can I join Marrow's crew?"

"Ow!" The man flung his arm down. "That's enough! Find somewhere else to roost!" He rubbed his arm. "Disgusting creature," he mumbled to himself.

It was Embla's turn to sigh. "Fine," she said. "Sorry to waste your time." She turned to leave, but then stopped herself. She thought of her sister's letter, felt it absently with her hand through the fabric of her clothing where she'd tucked it. I should ask, she thought. Since I'm here.

She turned back to the man sitting on his hill of books. "This is a place for answers, right?"

The man let out a snort. "Not practical ones."

"All the same, what have you heard of the conflict with Nova? Is there a war brewing?"

The man raised his hand and scratched his cheek. He studied her, his eyes betraying a hint of seriousness. "There have been rumors."

"What have you heard?"

The man blinked slowly. "What was your name again?"

"My name is Embla."

The man jumped in his seat. "Embla? The Keeper of Beasts?"

"Yes, that's right."

His bushy, gray eyebrows rose. And then he said, in a voice that sounded rehearsed, "Do you wish to know of that which cannot be seen?"

Embla could suddenly feel her heart beating in her chest, her palms sweaty, her mouth dry. "I think..." she began, then swallowed and took a step forward. "I do," she said.

With that, the man seemed pleased. "Good. Beneath you, a panel swings upward. You may descend."

Embla took a step back. She studied the floor. It was grimy and scuffed, but yes, as she looked closely, she could see deeper lines, breaks around which there was a trapdoor. And, bolted to it, a corroded ring, something she'd kicked earlier—she could remember the metallic clunk sound it had made against the heel of her boot. She looked up at the man on his pile of books—nodding to her—then back down at the ring. She grabbed it with both hands and pulled.

It lifted easily, hydraulic pistons doing most of the work for her, and she was looking down at a descending stairway, lit dimly in artificial light.

~

At the bottom of the stairs, was a cramped, circular chamber, little more than ten feet in diameter. The walls were plastered with pictures, layer upon layer of overlapping images of people and places. Columns of books rose precariously from the floor. In the center of the chamber stood a plush chair, upon which sat a woman, her straight, light-colored hair hanging in her face.

"Good morning, Embla," the woman said. "Please, have a seat."

Embla looked around, but there were no other chairs so she sat on one of the steps.

"Do you like our school?"

She looked at the woman, eyes glimmering through a cascade of hair. "How do you know my name?"

"I can hear every word you speak to Bailey from here. My name is Maya. Do you wish to learn from us?"

"I do."

The woman brushed the hair back from her face. "Excellent," she said, smiling. "It's been far too long since anyone made it past Bailey."

"Bailey?"

"The old man up top," the woman said, pointing. "He's unpredictable, but he scares away most who come here looking for shortcuts."

"So he's—"

"A test, yeah. To make sure you're serious. To make sure you are who you say you are." The woman cocked her head to the side, giving Embla an intense look. "We need your help."

"You need my help?"

"You came here seeking Marrow, is that correct?"

Embla nodded.

"Something led you to believe the School of the Unseen would lead you to him, right?"

Embla nodded again.

The woman clapped her hands together, leaning back with a grin on her face. "Excellent! We've been expecting you.

TREVOR

"This man stands accused and found guilty of treason against the City. He has forgotten the Archon, forsaken the Church, and befouled the sanctity of Talos."

Trevor stood against the balcony at one edge of the box reserved for exarchs, heirotimates, and their officials, watching Doran, the head executioner, speak. He wore deep aubergine robes, unmarred by insignia or detail, to signify his status as the Archon's officiate. He wore the robe only when absolutely necessary, preferring anonymity in most of his dealings, but today, if his suspicions were even partially correct, he might have need of recognition among this crowd.

All around him were people dressed in ornate clothing filled with color, hats with large brims, all manner of things perched within them—fruits and vegetables; precarious-looking stacks of multi-colored cubes; one with a twisted wire cage forming a beehive of chambers, each containing a different insect or reptile, a blue toad with a red tongue; another depicting a diorama of sorts, an arrangement of pikas stuffed and preserved, given tiny helmets and spears and posed in grotesque conflict—and dresses that unfolded like geometric designs, while others billowed and flowed like water, with edges frothy, misty, and perpetually wet-looking; and robes for the men, or suits and ties with intricate knots; and one woman with boots that entirely covered her legs so that she lurched around when she walked; and one man with a cane made of glass and filled with tiny, squiggling larvae, all different shades of blue, from grayish to indigo. And two of the exarchs themselves were in attendance today. Auron, from the House of Aesthetics, his enormous girth spilling out from beneath an array of furs, sat near the center of the heirotimate's box, smiling and nodding to whoever looked his way; and Bergman, from the House of Peace, his bulk less expansive than Auron's, but still impressive, secured firmly in solid-black leather garments. An impressive turnout, a grand spectacle.

Below the heirotimate's box, in the open area of packed dirt beneath the Gallows Tree, a crowd made up of those of less repute gathered. They came in their working browns and tanned leathers, some with unwashed faces and some with cuts and bruises from their labors, but they came for the same reasons as the heirotimates. They came to uphold a sacred tradition, to be entertained—they came to witness an execution.

Mingled with the crowd of common people, pushed all the way to the front in their customary spot, stood The Regulars, eagerly awaiting the coming festivities. The five of them, three women and two men, spoke among themselves. They wore plain clothes of earthen shades, as well as their jackets with what Trevor knew were strands of hair and scraps of bloody clothing sewn all about like tassels flapping in the wind—souvenirs from past executions. The Regulars were all of lower heirotimate class, although to which houses they reported, Trevor did not know. They were known for their fanatical devotion to the executions, scholars of its history, and never missed a single event. Trevor had never had dealings with The Regulars himself, had never had occasion to explore their backgrounds, but they certainly piqued his curiosity, and he was sure they had their uses. He would keep them in mind, of course. He had a feeling they might be most useful were he ever in need of certain information regarding the executions, more so than Doran himself.

"This man has been granted the honor of a traditional death by hanging beneath the Gallows Tree," Doran said to the crowd, fanning one hand dramatically at the thick noose that hung for the crowd to see. Doran turned to his two henchmen who held between them the motionless prisoner, a hood covering the prisoner's face. "Shall we begin?"

The Gallows Tree was a gargantuan redwood, the last of its kind. There were no trees like it within the borders of the City, nor, it was said, anywhere else in Meridian. Trevor had read that there had once been others. Bellah, an islander, in her early texts on one of her visits to Talos, writes of three such trees. And Yogemkain, a long-deceased arkaine, writes of a time before Talos, when such trees were in abundance and filled the entire area.

Doran waved to his henchmen and one of them removed the hood from the prisoner's face. A gasp went through the crowd.

Trevor leaned forward, clutching the railing with his hands. Yes, this was the man he'd heard about, the one gallivanting around the city, asking too many questions.

The man appeared calm, his eyes scanning the crowd before him. He had an unusual appearance, a genesis Trevor could not identify. He had one arm, his right, although he might have lost his left surgically or in a fight, so that detail in itself meant little. But Trevor had never seen a man with three eyes. The amans, who maintained a healthy population on the island state of Argaea, of course, had only one, but most geneses, such as his own, had two. This man's genesis might be one un-catalogued in the official records, perhaps from one of the more remote islands, and that fact alone Trevor found intriguing.

A hush had fallen over the crowd as Doran's henchmen fitted the noose around the prisoner's neck. If there was ever a time for Trevor to speak, it was now, at the height of tension, on the very cusp between life and death. He cleared his throat loudly.

"A moment," Trevor said in his richest public speaking voice.

Eyes turned to look at him. The heirotimates shuffled. "May I come forward?"

Doran gave him a look, but beckoned to Trevor with another wave of his hand. "Trevor Rothschilde," Doran called out. "Voice of the Archon."

Trevor stepped down from the hierotimate's box and threaded his way through the crowd. He ascended the wooden steps of the gallows slowly and deliberately, feeling the eyes upon him, building their anticipation. He stopped directly across from Doran, leaving the prisoner between them. Doran gave him a nod. Trevor turned to the crowd.

"Good people," he said, his customary beginning. "I owe you an apology for interrupting this event, but it is my duty as Voice of the Archon to ensure justice is always being conducted properly. Do any of you know of what specifically this man has done?" He scanned the faces in the crowd of common folk. He saw immediately they did not. He then scanned the heirotimates, although more quickly, knowing they all knew what the three-eyed man had done. "No? Let me tell you. I believe you have a right to know."

Trevor paused for a moment, hanging his head in thought. When he lifted his face to the crowd, he knew his eyes were bright and full of passion. "He raped a young woman not of his genesis, a brean, a hierotimate's daughter."

The crowd murmured.

"Do you believe, given the severity of such a crime, this man deserves the honor of the Gallows Tree? Do you believe he should be spared the torments of The Rack or The Inscriber or Galen's Chains before he is given over to death?"

The crowd, especially the common people, murmured more loudly. Trevor nodded dramatically. This was where his strength lay, in his ability to incite the common people. He made eye contact with their grubby faces, something most heirotimates would never do.

"What say you?"

The murmurs became a chant and the chant became a cheer. Trevor glanced at the heirotimates, many who remained unmoved, some scowling, a few clapping their hands politely, including, he was surprised to see, Bergman himself.

"I will see to it myself!" And with that, Trevor turned quickly, whipping his robes about in a flourish, and descended the platform.

~

Trevor had the three-eyed man placed in an interrogation cell. For several hours, he sat and watched the man through a peephole in an adjacent room, but the three-eyed man did little other than sit at the table—the only furniture in the tiny, windowless cell—and tap on the table with his fingers. Trevor could not hear much through the peephole, but after a while he could tell the man was tapping in rhythm, tapping out some sort of musical number. The man appeared quite relaxed, showing no signs of fear or anxiety, or relief at his narrow escape with death.

After hours of this, Trevor was ready to speak with the man.

He nodded to the guard he'd placed outside the cell and the guard produced a key, opened the door, and let him inside.

The three-eyed man looked up from the table at Trevor and smiled. "There he is," he said. "My savior."

Trevor forced a warm smile. "Yes," he said. He pulled a chair out from the table and sat across from the three-eyed man. "What is your name?"

"Galahad," the man said, his three eyes blinking in unison.

Trevor nodded. "You may call me Trevor. You smile easily for a man who was not long ago moments from death."

Galahad laughed. "I was never going to die."

"No? Do you want to know why I saved you?"

"Your reasons don't matter," Galahad said. "It was Awa who saved me. I've been in worse situations."

Trevor scowled. "Awa saved you? Your faith is strong. Why you?"

Galahad looked deep into Trevor's eyes. "I am on a divine quest."

"Uh-huh," Trevor said. "For what purpose?"

"I am Galahad, the childless, the last of his kind, of the Order of Saint Neil. I have come seeking a man called Marrow. Do you know where I can find him?"

Trevor looked closely at Galahad. "Why are you looking for Marrow?"

Galahad shook his head. "I am sworn to secrecy. Can you help me?"

Trevor forced another smile. This man was no use to him. He had been hoping for gratitude, for loyalty, for another valuable member of his personal retinue, someone with whom he might build a trusting relationship for future exploits. Instead, this fool sat before him, blind with idiot faith for his god. Trevor stood, pushing the chair out behind him. "Yes, I may be able to help you. I have had dealings with Marrow in the past. I will send for you tonight."

"Very well. Thank you," Galahad said.

"I will also send food and drink."

"You are most gracious."

Trevor crossed the room and knocked on the door to signal to the guard. Trevor turned back. "Where are you from, Galahad?"

The three-eyed man had risen and stood with his body erect and proud. "I am from the island of Boros, from Bora more specifically, our capital city."

Trevor nodded. "What are you? Your genesis?"

"I am galvani. Sadly, the last of my kind."

The door opened and the guard stepped aside. "Did you rape that girl?" Trevor asked quietly.

"No," Galahad answered, uncertainty entering his voice for the first time. "She...it was consensual..."

Trevor stepped into the hallway and slammed the cell door closed himself. For a moment, the image of that three-eyed freak fucking a beautiful brean girl entered his mind. He was disappointed.

~

Trevor walked briskly down the long corridor. It had been several days since he had been summoned before the Archon. He didn't think he'd done anything to displease him, but the familiar anxiety remained.

A door opened at the end of the hallway in front of him and a very tall arkaine man ducked his head through the doorway and walked in Trevor's direction.

"Lemm?" Trevor asked. "What are you doing here?"

Lemmenkainen stopped. He and Trevor faced each other in the hallway. Lemmenkainen was arkaine, serving as a sort of ambassador between his people and humanity. He was constantly bringing news from across the world, warnings and portents. Most of the heirotimates suffered his admonishments politely before sending him on his way. Trevor himself tolerated Lemm, found him little more than a nuisance, another obstacle, however minor, in his path.

"I came to see the Archon," Lemm said. "I came to persuade him against war."

"War? What do you mean?"

Lemm looked down at him. "You don't know?"

Trevor clenched his fists by his sides. If the Archon was planning something, how could he, Voice of the Archon, not know of it? He felt anger, trepidation stirring in his chest.

Lemm grabbed Trevor's shoulders and looked down at him. "He'll listen to you. You must convince him."

Trevor knocked Lemm's arms away. "Haven't I told you to come directly to me with the Archon's business?"

"You have. This is important information I felt would make a greater impact on the Archon if it came from me directly. It did not. Conflict with Nova will not prevent revolution."

"Revolution?"

Lemm nodded gravely. "Here in the Archon's Pyramid, you are blind to the happenings on the streets of Talos. The commoners are losing their faith in the Church of Awa. Two factions have formed, run by leaders independent of Talosian government. The Awans believe Awa is male; the Awaes, that Awa is female. There has been fighting over this difference in belief. If the Archon continues to concern himself with foreign nations and does not use his resources to calm his citizens, there will soon be bloodshed in the streets of Talos."

Trevor met Lemm's condescending gaze. "I will do what I can," he said, resisting an urge to strike out at Lemm. "Let me do my job." He pushed past the arkaine and down the hallway.

~

"How do you like my view?" Trevor asked.

"It's grand," Galahad replied.

He stood with the three-eyed man at the edge of the balcony on the level of the Ziggurat where he kept his quarters. He was still angry from his encounters earlier in the day, first with Lemm and then with the Archon. The Archon would not be persuaded from his war, had already dispatched troops to Nova without so much as a remark to Trevor. It infuriated Trevor that the Archon had acted on such an impulse without first discussing it with him. He was more than infuriated—he was scared. Did he not possess the control he thought he did? Was the Archon displeased with him? Were plots to supplant him already in place? He must discover what was going on. He needed information. He had to act.

"I have travelled far," Galahad was saying, "on my holy quest. The waters are already beginning to rise on my island. The beaches have been swallowed up. Tell me, Trevor, where can I find this man called Marrow?"

Trevor smiled. "He travels the world on his aerial and stops in Talos from time to time to replenish his supplies and crew. He should be coming here soon."

"He is a friend of yours?"

"Oh, yes. In a way."

Galahad sighed. He looked over the balcony, over the City, up to the night sky. He inhaled deeply. "Your city is beautiful," he said.

"Yes," Trevor said quietly. "It is."

"I envy the lives you must live here, such fecundity of resources, culture, and beauty."

An image of the brean girl flashed in his head again. "Yes," he said.

"A man could get used to a place such as this. A man might find happiness, a modest living, perhaps even..." Galahad stopped himself. "No, of course not. My life is destined for other things."

"Say it," Trevor said. "It's okay. Say what you were going to say."

Galahad looked back at Trevor. "I've always longed... I've wanted..."

"A girl, yes?"

"It is forbidden, but—" Galahad made a sudden choking sound, blood bubbled to his lips. He turned, his eyes bugged in sudden terror. Trevor watched the man reach for the blade that he must usually keep in a scabbard slung over his back, but, of course, there was nothing there.

"It is forbidden," Mithra said.

"An abomination," Cadoc said.

"It must not be allowed to happen," Siriac said.

Trevor stepped back as the hallowgeons surrounded Galahad. Siriac came forward with some sort of microfilament net, wrapping Galahad from head to toe, his exposed skin bulging and bleeding as the filaments cut into him. Cadoc produced a tool with a head of incomprehensible pistons and needles, which wheezed and sputtered like a living mutation, and brought it to Galahad's mouth.

Trevor took another step back, but he was unable to peel his eyes away as the hallowgeons began their work, slowly removing first Galahad's fingers, one at a time, and then his organs through an incision across his belly, careful to keep the unfortunate three-eyed man alive and aware while they worked.

Trevor licked his lips. "You see, my friend," he heard himself saying. "The time has come for action. I must act quickly, if Talos is to be mine."

Galahad's three bulging eyes stared at him.

"The heirotimates have too long been ineffectual. It's time they saw what the common man can do."

# ~ EIGHT ~

NOVA

LENA

The cometlight warmed her face. She could see the veins in her closed eyelids, crimson striations. Strange, she thought. Where is that light coming from? The shades are closed. I'm sick. How long have I been in this bed?

Her mind swirled. She was burning up. She kept thinking about her sister, about her family, about Marrow...

Her sister never knew how much their father had tried to persuade her from going away with Marrow. She had been their father's favorite, the one most likely to succeed him in his duties with the House of Peace. Embla was too soft, too compassionate, and too emotional when it came to the executions. Embla was the kind of child who had once brought home a wounded pika she'd found on the street and nursed it back to health, although the streets of Talos were swarming with the vermin.

When they'd both been little girls—Lena eleven years old, Embla nine—their father had taken them to their first execution at the Gallows Tree. He'd made them watch, the accused man begging for his life, claiming innocence. Lena could still remember how the rope had constricted about the man's neck, his face red, his tongue pushing out between his swollen lips as he failed to breathe, legs jerking in an almost comical way as life fled the man's eyes. Lena had been fascinated, shocked and scared, but interested just the same, unable to look away. When she finally had, her father giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, she'd looked over to see Embla crying and trembling uncontrollably.

"They cheered," Embla had said to her later, while they lay in the bed they shared, neither one of them able to sleep. "They were happy. They liked it."

"Who liked it?" Lena had asked her sister.

"All those people watching. They wanted to see that man die."

Lena had shrugged and turned over, not understanding what her sister had meant at the time.

Now, of course, as an adult, she understood her sister's horror. Embla had come to realize something that day. She had learned an important lesson about the nature of humanity. So had Lena.

Am I outside? Why am I so warm? The fever. I'm sick. What's happened? Wake up. Remember...

By the time Lena was fourteen, her father was taking her to work with him, letting her sit in on meetings, showing her some of the stranger interrogation devices, giving her a taste of her future life, and Lena had liked it. She had been beginning to discover her people skills, as well. Even those much older than her seemed eager to follow her orders. She was a natural leader.

And then Marrow's letter had come. It had been an opportunity she could not pass up. Her youthful mind had been captivated by the possibilities. She'd had screaming matches with her father over whether she should go, but eventually she had insisted, despite her father's fury and threats of disownment.

When she'd seen Marrow's warm and mischievous grin, his strong face, wildly sparkling eyes, she'd forgotten all about her father and fallen for the mysterious man almost immediately. He'd swept her off her feet, and, for a time, it truly had been the adventure for which she'd always dreamed.

Wake up. Remember...

~

"I have so much to learn," she says.

Marrow sits up in bed. "You have something in you," he says. "I don't know. I don't mean charm, or flair, or good taste. Something else. A quality. A will to do great things."

"What can I do? I'm just a girl?" she says, turning so that she lies on her side, propping her head up with one arm, her small breasts exposed.

Marrow stands and crosses the cabin, his naked posterior flexing. He sits on a stool and swivels to face her. "Trust me, you have a grand destiny. You have courage, if you can only find patience. I believe in you. Surely that counts for something?" he says, and smiles that smile of his, as if to show her he is only partially joking, as if to really say his smile counts for everything.

"I want to help people. I want to save—"

Marrow raises his hand. "No. Don't move. Stay...just like that." He lifts a charcoal pencil and begins to sketch on a fresh canvas he's placed on the easel before him, looking closely at her, then making some marks on the canvas, then back at her.

She is suddenly self-conscious, feeling the lightly cool air prickling the bare skin of her breasts, the sheets cascading over the curve of her hip, but she holds her position.

Later, Marrow says, "You're far too pretty for greatness, anyhow."

"Perhaps I should drown myself," she says with a smile.

"No, but never marry. Remember who you are. Travel far, give up everything and suffer." He gives her a wicked look out of the corner of his eyes, as if he knows he's said something he shouldn't have and gets an almost boyish glee out of doing it.

Sometimes, despite Marrow's immortal nature, Lena feels she is older and more mature than he.

~

Wake up. Where are my children? My girls? Remember what's happened.

Lena opened her eyes. She was outside, yet still in bed. It was late afternoon and she could hear the birds conversing in the trees. The sky above her was shockingly bright. The air smelled of freshly-disturbed dust. She could feel the fever burning through her, hollowing her out, leaving her weak, a husk of what she once had been. She drew in a hitching breath and coughed. Her head rattled as she shook. When the coughing stopped, she forced herself to turn on her side, looking around.

Her bed had been carried and placed in the middle of the street. She was in front of the Harlow's house for some reason. She blinked and tried to concentrate, to remember what had happened. Her memories were a blur, a flash in the pan—sizzling steam—whisked away in a fog of heat.

There is shouting, and someone is hammering on the door. She hears motors outside, whooping and hollering. She hears voices. A loud crack reverberates through the house. Her girls scream...

~

"You have to hide him," she says, lying in bed, exhausted after the birth.

Her husband leans over the bed. "Don't worry. I won't let anything happen to our little boy."

She takes a deep breath. "You don't understand. Our son is a crossbreed. If they come, we can't stop them. There's nothing we can do."

Josef scowls. He cradles their new sleeping baby in his arms, swaddled tightly. "I'd kill them before I'd let them get close."

Lena struggles to keep herself awake. This is important. "Are you sure? What you said earlier?"

"Yes," Josef says. "The hallowgeons have never come to Fallowvane." He smiles. "Never, ever."

"Good." Lena feels her eyes sliding shut.

"Besides, Daryn says the hallowgeons are a myth, made up by the Talosians to scare people. Everyone knows that."

Lena shakes her head. She is tired, so tired. "I've seen them."

"You have?"

Lena nods. "When I was very young."

"What's the big deal, anyway? I love you and you love me. That has to mean more than what genesis we're from. So what if Ashley here is a little different. Different's good."

Lena can no longer open her eyes, but she smiles. She loves this man, she loves him very much.

"I love you," Josef says.

Lena is asleep before she can say it back.

~

Her girls are screaming. Her husband is shouting. There is rifle fire in the house...

She struggled in bed to sit up. Her pillow fell off the back of the bed and plopped in the dirt. She groaned.

"Hello?" she croaked. She ran her tongue over her teeth in a feeble attempt to get the saliva to flow in her mouth again. She forced a swallow, and tried again, "Hello? Anyone?"

Her body began to tremble. She hugged herself and rocked in place. She brought a hand up and peeled the medicine Mother Marlena had made for her free from where it hung like loose skin beneath her eyes. With both eyes clear, she found herself blinking, her eyes watering uncontrollably. She took in a breath to begin another coughing fit, but let out a sob instead.

Emotions flooded her feeble body as she began to awaken. She was still very hot, but the fever seemed to have subsided somewhat, and, slowly, her mind was beginning to come back to her.

~

"Burn your money," Marrow says, standing before the fire pit, directly between Lena and him, the dimness obscuring the perspective so that Marrow appears to be standing in the fire itself, flames eagerly licking his cloak. "Burn your possessions."

Lena steps forward, her meager gunnysack in hand. She drops it into the fire.

"Material possessions are temporary and meaningless," Marrow says. "Leave your old life behind so that you may begin a new one."

Lena watches Marrow's face and when the man smiles slightly, she knows it is for her.

"Very good," he says. "Now if you'll follow—"

"Wait," Lena interrupts. She gives Marrow a sly smile and begins to undress. She removes her sandals, then her pants and her top. She pushes her clothes into the fire. Then she removes her panties and tosses them to the flames as well. She stands naked before the fire, before Marrow. She can feel sweat on her bare skin.

That slight, bemused smile cracks Marrow's face again as he looks at her. "Very good," he repeats. "Let's find you new garments for your new life, before I take you to meet the rest of the crew..."

~

It was only later, after Marrow had begun to grow bored of her, as she had begun to lose the initial luster of her youth, she'd realized Marrow had never loved her. She'd been so young back then, with so much to learn, about life, about relationships. Marrow had cheated her, scarred her. She had witnessed the immortal man do terrible things. In the end, however, she knew she was as much to blame for her heartache as he had been.

It was after that, she had begun to pull away from humanity. She had wanted to divorce herself from the selfish ambitions of people. Marrow's, she had discovered, with his never ending search for meaning and power in the world, was no different from the heirotimates' quest for wealth and decadence. She wanted no part of it. She wanted a simple life, one free of such greed and selfishness.

And she had found that in Josef, and in the people of Fallowvane. Josef was a simple man who built simple and functional things with his hands for a living. He was content. He smiled easily and didn't understand why anyone would want more. "I have you," he had told her once, "my beautiful wife. I have a boy and three wonderful girls. I am a rich man."

She had thrown her arms around him and squeezed him tight. "And I have you," she'd said.

He'd pulled back just enough so he could meet her eyes with his own. "Always."

"I'm a rich woman."

He'd rolled his eyes. "Sure. If you like."

They'd laughed together.

Josef... Her husband... Where was Josef?

~

They are laughing as they stomp through the house. They are knocking things over, shattering plates in the kitchen, smashing the walls...

Lena tumbled from the bed and landed heavily in the road.

"Help!" Her throat rattled with each word. "Help! Please!"

There was no one around. The houses were empty. Fallowvane was empty. She was alone.

The bedroom door bursts open. Two men with grim faces—one is wearing a hat with protruding horns, the other bald, his skin covered in scars—look in on her. The bald one lifts his rifle and points it at her, but the one with the horns stops him and grins.

She is being lifted, the entire bed carried out of the house with her still in it. There is a gaping hole in the wall of her house where some sort of explosive has torn it open. The two men are laughing like mad men, showing huge yellow teeth.

The two men carry the bed to the middle of the street. All around, the sounds of rifle fire, of panicked screaming, of explosive charges, revving buggy motors and running. They leave her. "There you go, grandma," the bald one says. "We'll leave you as a breeder," the horned one says. Both men laugh maniacally and then they are gone and she loses consciousness.

Lena began to crawl. She needed to find her husband. She needed to find her girls. The Talosians had come to Fallowvane.

KYA

Promise me you'll run. Don't try and fight. Just run.

She ran. She ran as fast as she could, blindly, panting, her lungs burning, the trees whipping by. One of them had seen her and chased her. He'd fired his rifle at her, but he'd missed. She was too fast. No one could catch her.

The bag jostled and swung by her side as she leapt a fallen branch. Was the Talosian soldier still behind her? Did he stalk her through the trees?

When she was too tired to go on, the fire in her lungs an unquenchable furnace, the stitch in her side crippling, she slowed and staggered into some shrubs beneath a rotted tree trunk. She slumped into the wet leaves and tried to catch her breath. She gripped her sword and held it protectively across her body.

She couldn't hear anyone coming after her. She heard no branches snapping or leaves being kicked. All she heard was the wind through the boughs of the trees and the birds calling to each other.

She could feel her heart pumping in her ears and all she could see when she closed her eyes was her dad's face...

You're fast. Just run.

~

She heard them before she saw them. Their buggies buzzed and rumbled, kicking up dust and smoke, and then there were soldiers on foot emerging from the haze and shots were being fired.

Kya was in her bedroom alone. Her sisters were in the living room playing with their dad. Her mom was in bed in the back bedroom.

She acted without thought, thinking of the stuff someone had stashed in the nova tree in the backyard, especially the knife—that, to her, was more like a sword. She pushed her window open and climbed through. She dropped nimbly to her feet and looked around. No one was in sight.

She dashed across the yard to the nova tree. She reached inside and pulled the leather bag out and slung the strap over her head. She removed the sword, encased snugly in its sheath. She was just trying to figure out how to strap it by her side when...

Craaaa-BOOOOM!

She whirled about in time to see fragments from the side of her house scattering into the grass. Smoke and sawdust from obliterated wood hung in the air like a final gasp of breath in the morning cold. Soldiers filled the street, going up to houses, shattering windows and kicking doors in.

The soldiers were already in her house.

For a moment, she heard her dad's voice, carried through the house and out the open window to her. "We'll cooperate," she heard him say. "No one needs to—" She heard two shots.

Blamph. Blamph.

One of her sisters was crying.

"What?" she heard her dad say, disbelief in his voice. "What?"

Blamph.

Kya could no longer hear her sister crying.

She gritted her teeth and began to climb back through the window. She had to help her dad defend the family. Her sisters were too young and her mom was sick and helpless. When she saw one of the Talosian soldiers, she was going to stab him with her sword and watch him bleed and die.

Thunk.

Chips of wood from the side of the house sprayed in her face. She lost her grip on the windowsill and fell back, landing hard, her teeth clacking together. She could taste blood from where she'd bitten her tongue.

She stared dumbly up at the faintly smoking hole in the side of the house, inches from where she'd been a moment before. Soldiers were pouring around the houses. She got to her feet. She pulled her sword free of its covering and hurled its sheath to the ground. She held the blade by her side and looked around.

One of the soldiers had noticed her and was stomping in her direction, grinning from ear to ear. The soldier had what looked like the tails of various rodents tied into his scraggly hair, hanging about his shoulders. He carried a large, curved blade and had a rifle slung over his back. He licked his lips when he saw Kya had noticed him.

She pointed her sword at the soldier and prepared to fight.

Another soldier, this one larger than the first saw her as well and began to pull a pistol from the holster at his side. He pointed it at her, then turned suddenly and fired at someone else.

The soldier with the rodent tails in his hair continued to come toward her, but now more soldiers were coming around the houses and they were everywhere.

All about she heard people screaming and yelling and whooping.

Promise me you'll run.

She took a step back and her foot caught on something and she fell. She heard the soldier with the rodent tails in his hair laughing. She scrambled to her feet. She swung her sword blindly through the air.

Don't try and fight. Just run.

She turned and ran for the cover of the forest.

Behind her, she heard the soldier with the rodent tails in his hair continuing to laugh and laugh. Rifle fire cut a swathe across the trunk of a nearby tree.

She ran.

~

When she'd caught her breath, she picked herself up and kept going. She was no longer running, but still moving quickly. Using her sword, she hacked at the branches that got in her way.

After a while, she stopped. She looked around. She didn't recognize this part of the forest. How far had she come? She looked up and grew dizzy at the sight of the sky through the trees that seemed to spiral around her. She shut her eyes tight and listened.

Nothing. She'd lost the soldiers that had been chasing her. She was alone.

She sat against a tree on the spongy ground made from several seasons of fallen leaves. She didn't know where she was or what she was going to do. She brought her legs up and hung her head between her knees. She tugged the bag she'd taken from the cleft in the tree free, dropped it before her, and opened it. She scattered its contents over the forest floor.

The bag held another small knife that folded closed and fit in her pocket, a thin wool blanket with an ugly oxhoag pattern, a small jar filled with animal fur, and a compass. She also found a small wooden figurine carved to look like a female warrior, sword held high and triumphantly. At the bottom of the bag were several plain biscuits, one of which she devoured, despite its blandness, while she examined the figurine.

She was just finishing packing up her new things—her new belt secured about her waist, her sword tucked through it by her side—when she heard voices coming in her direction.

She glanced about, looking for some place to hide. She dived into some nearby bushes and crouched, waiting, peering out.

A man and a woman walked into the clearing where she'd been resting. They wore cloaks and layers of worn clothing. The man had a thick mop of hair as long as the woman's. Both had roughened appearances, but Kya knew they were not Talosian. They both carried Novan iron rifles.

"I don't know what we're going to do, but you know I'm right," the woman was saying.

The man grunted dismissively.

"We need somewhere safe, where we can regroup."

"You mean Targic, don't you?"

The woman shrugged.

Kya burst from the bushes. "What's Targic?"

The man reached for his rifle. The woman drew a blade from her belt.

"I'm from Fallowvane," Kya said quickly.

The woman took a step forward without lowering her blade. "What the hell are you doing?"

The man grunted again, then swung his rifle back into its place over his back, shaking his head.

"I'm Kya," Kya said.

The woman looked her up and down, distrustfully.

"Just some brat from Fallowvane," the man said.

"Fallowvane is twenty miles from here," the woman said.

Kya felt lightheaded. Had she really come that far?

"Are you lost?" the woman asked her, slowly lowering her blade.

"I ran away. Just like my dad told me." Kya looked at her feet. "I'm Kya."

The man chuckled. "Alright, Kya. Go home."

Kya shook her head. "I can't. The Talosians..." She suddenly felt overwhelmed, a great weight descending over her, making it hard to breathe. She drew in a hitching breath. She didn't want to cry. She hated crying. She held her breath and tried to control herself.

Then the woman was holding her. "Hey," she said. "It's alright. You can come back with us."

Tears blurred Kya's vision.

"The Talosians," the man said. "They're closer than we thought."

~

The man and the woman brought Kya back to their camp, a cluster of worn tents and hungry-looking people huddled around open fires.

"I'll go and speak with Fennric right away," the man said and hurried off.

"Come with me," the woman said, and led Kya through the camp. Faces stared at her as she passed. The woman pulled a flap aside on one of the tents and beckoned Kya inside.

The woman led her to a cot heaped with blankets. She climbed up and lay down.

"My name's Helen," the woman said. "You're safe now."

Kya felt her eyes growing heavy. She desperately wanted to slip into the nothingness of sleep, but she forced herself to stay awake, just for a moment. The faces of her mom, her sisters, even her brother swirled through her mind, but when she spoke, it was for her dad. "My dad," she said. "You have to help him."

"We will, little one," Helen said.

"My Mom's sick and he..." She felt the tears coming back, even though she was exhausted. "He's my dad..."

"Shhh," Helen said, stroking her hair. "You'll be safe here. You're with the People of the Conspiring Moons now."

ASH

Ash awoke terrified.

Someone was shaking him. "I'm not dead! I'm not dead!"

Pera's face loomed over him, pale and shiny. He struggled to push her away.

"You want me to blow myself up? Say so, and I'll blow myself up!"

Ash twisted his body, shoving Pera away. He heard her tumble to the floor, her bony limbs thumping the wood.

He stood and ran from Brent and Pera's hut where he'd been sleeping.

~

Ash stood at the edge of the army camp, his mouth open with disbelief.

It had been ransacked, the furnace pit leveled, the tents shredded and then burned, leaving only their blackened poles standing like skeletal remains. The cots had been piled and burned as well, along with whatever supplies may have been remaining in the camp. The deep, rancid smell of damp ash stung his nose.

He turned away, and began walking down the road.

Before long, Pera joined him, leaping from the trees.

"I've been following you," Pera said.

Ash didn't reply.

"What are you doing? Where are you going?"

Ash kept walking.

"You should come back with me. We shouldn't go this way."

Ash stared straight ahead.

Pera jumped in front of him. "Don't you see me?"

Ash shook his head.

"Please," Pera said. "See me."

Ash mumbled something and continued to walk fast.

"Please," Pera said.

Ash stopped. "What?" he said, turning on Pera, angry.

Pera recoiled. "I... I don't know..."

Ash began walking again.

Falling back, reluctant, Pera followed.

~

Many hours later, the day fading from morning into late afternoon, the forest began to thin and the road turned a corner and he could see his village, Fallowvane, once again.

"Wait," Pera said, who had been silent this entire time.

There was something fallen in a heap in the middle of the road.

Ash took the familiar side street and began to run. He smiled.

"Mom? Dad?"

He burst through the door of his house. No one was in the living room. He ran down the hall to check the bedrooms. No one was home. It was hot. Flies swooped and buzzed.

He returned to the living room. The table was set and there were bowls of stew before each chair.

"Ash..." Pera said from the open doorway.

Ash ran to the table. He snatched up a spoon. He tasted the stew. "See," he said. "It's still warm."

His sisters' dolls were scattered in the corner, lying about at odd and awkward angles, flies crawling over them.

He sat down and ate some more stew.

"Ash," Pera said again.

With a jolt, Ash stood. "I know where they are!"

With a strained smile, Ash bolted from the house, pushing past Pera and out into the street, the cometlight dimming so that many of the houses appeared charred and covered with soot.

Ash ran down the street. He could hear Pera running after him. He ran the other way this time, toward the sand pits. He did not see what Pera saw piled up against the side of the town hall.

He ran, free of the town, tripped, and sprawled panting in the dark sand. He lay there, out of breath, until Pera caught up to him and helped him to his feet.

"What do we do now?" Pera asked with a voice shaken and appalled.

Pera had seen the bodies.

~

His father's face looms in his mind. "After you learn to fish, I'll teach you to shoot. Once a boy can catch a fish, gut it himself, cook it and eat it, then he's man enough to learn to shoot." His father smiles good-naturedly. "Then you can come hunting with me, Ash, just like I did with my father. Those are some of the happiest moments in my life, and we'll have the same."

His father shows him the fishing pole, where to hold it, how to hook the worm. He stares into the can of dark writhing soil and worms while his father untangles some of the equipment.

"There's a big difference between ocean fishing and river fishing," his dad says. "You have to have a sailboat to ocean fish, and nets and all sorts of things. Here in the forest, you don't need all that. Just a pole, some bait, and a little time. After a while you get to know the best spots."

He follows his dad along the edge of the river. He is wearing overalls his mom has sewn for him just like his dad's. He likes the way his dad walks, slow and deliberate, each step full of purpose, his entire body bobbing as he moves. Ash tries to copy his dad's walk. They come to an outcropping of rocks.

"See that dark pool there, where the water grows lazy and still?"

"Yeah, I see it."

"That's where we want to be."

"Okay," Ash says, immediately stepping forward, swinging his fishing pole recklessly through the air.

"Whoa, whoa," his dad says, laughing. "Hold up a minute. See, look, you're all tangled now. Let me show you how to cast."

His dad shows him, using his own fishing pole, the lure made from a dried seed pod plopping and bobbing in the water at the center of the pool. "Just like that. That's where we want it."

Ash looks up at his dad. "What if I can't do it?"

His dad looks at him, eyes filled with warmth and support, "Of course you can, Ash. All it takes is a little practice and you can do anything."

~

People were carrying him, their faces flickering with firelight, Pera's amongst them. He blinked and tried to move, but he was so tired he barely managed a flinch. He allowed himself to be borne into the dark.

He could hear voices, people talking.

"They're not here."

"Where are they?"

"They're crazy."

"Dead. They're all dead."

"His family's dead. She's dead. We'll be dead next."

Pera's face loomed. "He's crazy. Look at him."

"We have to get out of here."

"They'll blow us up. I saw him burn."

"He doesn't see me. He's crazy."

~

Sometimes, all he had to do was pick a few wildflowers from the hills and bring them to his mom tied in a neat bunch with a piece of string, and she'd make him his favorite cakes.

They were sweet, and he'd carry his to the kitchen table triumphantly, the thyme-honey oozing across his fingers, cupping his hands to save every drip. He'd watch his sisters gobble their cakes down and then he'd laugh, being the only one with any left, and savor his, taking slow, exaggerated bites while his sisters looked on. They'd watch him closely as he ate, like homeless dogs hoping for a dropped scrap. But he wouldn't let a single crumb go to waste, licking his fingers until they were clean and white.

Sometimes, he'd play with his sisters, roughhousing, letting them team up against him and pin him to the ground. He'd tickle their bellies and they'd squeal with pleasure and run around him, one tugging at his leg, while another leapt onto his back, her arms around his neck, but he'd hold them up, until Kya joined in and they all tumbled to the floor giggling. Sometimes he'd make toys for them, carving tiny stools from bits of wood for their dolls, or showing them how to dig clay from the earth and make awkwardly heavy little pots.

His mom would smile at him, encouraging him, never saying much, just smiling.

Once, his dad had told him his mom had come from Talos. She had been a part of an important family, but she'd run away. His dad said she'd seen the huge City. She'd seen the Garden of Mue, where the statues moved, sometimes frolicked, lifelike. His dad said never to tell anyone his mother came from Talos, that it was a family secret others would never understand, and he'd never spoken of it, not even to Brent.

"Your mother's much smarter than I am," his dad had said. "She's wise. Been educated in the best schools. But she doesn't like to talk about the past. She chose this life." And then he'd laughed. "Who am I to complain, right?"

~

"Your father's here," someone said to him, shaking him.

Ash looked up and for a minute total horror erupted in his heart. Huge eyes like runny eggs peered at him from mere inches away, a globular mouth seethed, quivering lips like tomato worms wet with saliva.

"Please, child," Mother Marlena said. "Come with me."

Ash followed the old woman, his fear subsiding to a dull ache, a pain that numbed him.

The crowd parted, watching them mournfully, letting them pass.

They came to an even area of dirt cleared of rocks, where a person lay, with skin blackened and burned away by fire, with patches painfully red, features unrecognizable.

Mother Marlena stepped away and motioned Ash to the burnt person.

Ash stood, disgusted, not wanting to bring himself any closer.

"Ash is here," Mother Marlena said.

"Ash?" the burned person said, a man's voice, familiar.

"Dad?" He forced himself to step forward and kneel down so he could better hear that voice.

"I'm glad you're here," the burned man said with the voice of his dad. "I'm sorry."

The smell of blistered flesh was horrible.

"Your mom..." His dad's voice was taken over by a grotesque choking sound that Ash realized was crying.

"It's okay, Dad," he said. He couldn't feel his legs beneath him; his entire face felt slicked in a dried scum, that if he made the smallest expression of fear or remorse would crack open and he'd never be able to put himself back together.

"The Talosians..."

"I know, dad."

His entire body shook, lips splitting his blackened face in a horrible grimace of pink. "I never needed a god," he said. "You're my god, Ash..."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"I begged them to kill me." He writhed. "They laughed."

"Dad?"

"Your mom can tell you..." He struggled.

Ash couldn't breathe.

"Your blood..."

"Blood? Dad?"

~

Sometimes he used to find his mom staring sightlessly out one of the windows, distantly into the past.

"Mom?" he'd say.

But she wouldn't hear him, so he'd reach out and take her hand in his. He'd stand next to her and look out at the nova tree that grew in their backyard, fuchsia flowers already beginning to bloom, the thick veins in all those delicate petals shining as the waning cometlight struck them.

He'd squeeze his mom's hand and he'd wait.

Eventually, his mom would stir and squeeze back. "Ash?" she'd say. "How long have you been standing there?"

No matter how long it'd been he'd always say, "Not long, Mom."

"Good," she'd say. "This is a good place, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's good. This is a good place."

# ~ NINE ~

TALOS

EMBLA

Embla sighed and looked at the letter she held in her hand. She moved quickly, threading through the throngs of people, keeping her head down and hugging the sides of the buildings. She didn't know what was going on, but there seemed to be more people on the streets than usual. They seemed to all be talking loudly, shouting to be heard over each other.

She gritted her teeth and began to cross the street. A buggy honked at her. She passed a stick-thin man in a green suit. A bare-chested boy with sinewy muscles pulling a rickshaw cursed her in a language she didn't understand. People scowled down at her from the horses they rode.

When she reached the sidewalk on the other side of the street, a dancing, naked man painted all in silver leapt in front of her, pointed, and let out a raucous sound somewhere between a laugh and a howl. She ignored the silver man, managed to step quickly over a wet gob of something someone had dropped, and entered the mailing office.

Everywhere people stood in lines, waiting restlessly, shifting the weight of their bodies from one foot to the next and then back again. Fortunately, Embla already had the postage she required. She took a sharp right turn into the international section, blessedly empty of people, and looked for the proper slot in which to deposit her letter. Few people, she knew, sent letters these days to places outside of Talos, but the post still delivered to Nova as well as several of the island nations.

She might not get along with her sister, or approve of her sister's lifestyle—Lena's davon husband and mutt children—but if conflict was brewing between Talos and Nova, she owed Lena, at the very least, a warning. She still loved her sister and would never want anything bad to happen to her.

She slipped the letter into the slot marked NOVA and turned to leave.

~

Her next stop was with Johannes Trim, a spokesman with the House of Aesthetics. She was nervous, not used to official meetings, or being around crowds of people. She had grown used to the animals, to the simplicity of their politics. Food, safety, and a warm place to lie beneath the comet was all they required. Even the brutality of nature—fight or flight; eat or be eaten—was a preferable system, Embla felt, to Talosian politics. She had never been good with social subtleties, with coercion and manipulation, with understanding why people said one thing when they meant something entirely different. She had wanted to be good at such things, for her father, but she had never developed the aptitude. Lena was the one good at reading people, at getting people to do what she wanted them to, and Lena had thrown it all away, stomped on every opportunity she'd been given.

"You must remember, She is always listening. Have the will to call out to Her, and She will hear. Have the faith to believe, and you will be rewarded."

Embla was passing by a small alcove off the side of the street. She stepped out of the way of the walking people and stopped for a moment to listen. The preacher was a woman, dressed all in black, her black hair spilling about her shoulders, framing a homely face, although her eyes were dark and intense with passion.

"Oh, yes," the preacher said. "Speak, beg for forgiveness, and Awa will hear. But commit sin against your neighbor, and She will see. Steal and She will take note. Lie and She will listen. Fornicate outside your genesis and She...will...remember. And when this life has ended and the next begins, you will be held accountable!"

Embla watched the crowd gathered below the preacher. They were commoners, men and women in plain leathers; some even poorer, in rags, smudges of dirt on their faces and hair in unwashed tangles. Some of them swayed, as if moved deeply by the preacher's words. Others knelt on the dirty pavement, or held their hands high in supplication before Awa.

"Let us pray." The preacher bowed her head. "Awa, we reach out to you, your most humble of servants. Awa, our creator, our benevolent mother—hear us!"

"Hallelujah!" someone from the crowd called out.

"Yes, hallelujah," the preacher said. "Yes!"

The rest of the crowd joined in.

Embla took the opportunity to slip away, before she was noticed.

It was strange, she thought, as she walked, these small gatherings and unofficial sermons. She'd heard of them, that they were taking place all over the City, but this had been the first she'd seen. They seemed harmless enough, but why did these people choose to congregate on the streets rather than inside one of Galen's Temples? The only thing strange she'd heard the preacher say was her use of the female possessive pronoun in reference to Awa. It did not seem like a major distinction to Embla. Awa was the creator. What did gender matter?

~

"Why do you wish to see Auron, our beloved exarch, Keeper of Beasts?" Johannes Trim asked her from across his desk, drumming his fingers on the closed ledger before him.

Embla took a deep breath. "I have something I wish to discuss with him."

Johannes nodded dismissively. "Yes, well, he's very busy. I'm very busy. I'm afraid you'll have to try again another time."

Embla looked at the man, a pharom, his face long and thin, cheeks sunken and sallow as if he didn't eat enough, his skin pale and lightly greenish. She tried to think what she could say to convince this man to change his mind. "I..." she began.

Johannes lifted a hand. "That will be all," he said, as if dismissing an underling, which Embla was not. "Thank you for coming."

Embla pushed her chair back and stood. "I am the Keeper of Beasts. I live on the upper reaches of the Archon's Pyramid. I—"

"Yes, yes," Johannes said, his long face drooping with condescension. "And you're the daughter of Doran, Head Executioner of the House of Peace. I know all that. It makes no difference to the exarch's schedule. There is a large shipment of imprinters coming in from the Crooked Isles today and the exarch simply cannot be disturbed." He flipped his ledger open and began to read, ignoring her.

Embla turned and walked to the door. She stopped and turned back. She cleared her throat. "I wasn't supposed to tell you, but I'm prepared to offer the exarch something he's been after for a long time." She waited.

Johannes slowly lifted his head, his finger poised above whatever he was reading. "And what is that?" he asked.

"Animals," she said. "After they die... Many are rare and exotic. He could—"

"Yes," Johannes interrupted, nodding his head. "Is that indeed what you have to offer the exarch?"

Embla nodded, although she was disgusted with herself.

"Then follow me, please."

~

"If you want to be one of us," Maya had said, the woman beneath Bailey's throne of books in the School of the Unseen, "you'll have to prove your worth. Are you up for it?"

"What do I have to do? My duties at the biopark keep me busy."

Maya had smiled. "You'll have to find the time."

Embla had sighed.

"We need you to acquire an item from each of the six exarchs."

"Acquire? You mean steal?"

"They must be personal items," Maya had continued, "things each exarch knows intimately. A hair brush or a quill only ever used by the exarch."

"That's no easy task."

Maya had nodded. "You'll have to get close to each one, but you are one of the few with direct access to the Archon and the exarchs. You're Doran's daughter. You have connections."

"My father got me my job in the biopark to keep me out of the way. I've never seen the Archon personally. Now you want me to steal from the exarchs? I came to the School of the Unseen to escape that world, not be caught up in it even deeper. I'm trying to find Marrow. Haven't you been listening to me?"

Maya had shrugged. "What do you know about Marrow?"

"I... What do you mean?"

"The Scholar? The Great Philomath? Marrow, Seeker of Truth? How do you think we attract such an individual? We can't buy him. He's not interested in material things. We need information, something enticing enough to bring him to the City to meet with us."

Embla had stared at Maya. "What sort of information?"

"What do you know about Archon Gideon?"

"You mean the Father of Monsters?"

Maya had nodded. "That's the one."

"Well," Embla had said, thinking back to her history classes growing up, "he was Archon three hundred or so years ago... Let's see." Embla had held up one of her hands and counted on her fingers, beginning with her index. "He was a ruthless tyrant. He tortured and killed anyone who spoke against him. He slept with thousands of women, many of whom were from geneses different from his own. And..." She had wiggled her pinky finger. "He is the reason the laws were passed forbidding crossbreeding."

Maya had smiled. "Very good. You remember your lessons. Yes, before the Father of Monsters, crossbreeding was frowned upon, but not banned."

Embla had sat forward excitedly. She'd always enjoyed school growing up. "Because the children he had by the women he bedded were horribly disfigured. Even those who appeared outwardly normal displayed mental instability."

Maya had been nodding. "The hallowgeons killed most of them. The Father of Monsters killed their mothers."

"Okay," Embla had said, "but what does the Father of Monsters have to do with Marrow?"

Maya had shrugged. "Do what we ask, get the items from the exarchs, and we'll talk."

Embla had sighed. "Fine."

~

Johannes swept a heavy beige curtain aside and led Embla down a large, dimly-lit hall. "Hear that?" he said with a smile. "That's Fon, the composer."

Embla nodded.

As they came to the end of the hall, Embla could hear it more clearly. It was a beautiful piece, composed of trills and warbles, blending into a smooth and sensuous melody. And it was building, she could tell, its harmony growing more urgent, a rising momentum. She knew little enough about music, but she could appreciate the talent and skill that must go into such an extraordinary symphony, performed, no doubt, by the greatest musicians in Talos, an orchestra of several hundred.

Johannes waved her through a side door and Embla and he stepped out into a large theater. They were standing on the far side of the auditorium. Before them, row upon row of empty, anchored chairs ran down the sloped floor, halting before the stage, upon which stood a large machine controlled by a single man.

Embla gaped.

The stage was large, the machine larger, jutting outward and to either side so that its entirety remained partially obscured by the archway that framed it. A construct of polished amplification tubes, metal girders, and wire woven into intricate webs, the instrument pumped and shook, anchored to a base made from ornate wood paneling, like a piano, where a man with long, black hair sat upon a bench, working a display of keys, pedals, and levers: Fon, the composer. Fon's body stiffened and shook with the passion of his composition, a marionette at the whim of each note.

Embla could feel Johannes Trim looking at her and smiling his condescending smile, but, for the moment, she didn't care.

As her eyes began to take in the enormity of the site, she noticed more detail. The instrument held small chambers, wire cages, from which she could see movement. She could see bright colors, flapping wings, feathers—they were birds, and the birds were trilling, perhaps a hundred of them in concert. And beneath each cage, blood dribbled, like saliva from the spit valve of a horn. An intricate array of needles pierced each bird, torturing them into song, creating the symphony.

Embla looked at Johannes, who nodded and shrugged, bemused understand in his eyes. The sallow man leaned close to her and she could feel his hot breath in her ear. "Perion birds," he said. "Don't they make the most beautiful sounds whilst in pain?"

Embla's gaze was drawn back to the spectacle. She now saw Auron, the exarch of the House of Aesthetics, sitting in the front row on a special cushion designed specifically to hold his mass, nodding along to the music while he sampled from the array of spoons set before him, each, Embla knew, a single bite of a unique and exotic dish one of his cooks had no doubt spent the entire morning meticulously assembling.

The symphony was building dramatically, the crescendo that was to end the piece. Embla could not tear her eyes away as the birds in their prisons began to flutter more rhythmically, to writhe more frantically, in increasing pain. Fon moved too, standing up suddenly, knocking his bench to the floor. He played and pulled and pushed. He stomped on pedals and threw his head back, exposing his teeth.

Auron looked on, clearly enjoying himself.

Then the final note sounded, the entire apparatus straining and trembling as if it might burst apart, the birds—with their bright green bodies and crimson plumage; with their blue-striped hoods and yellow underbellies; with their spiraling tails and purple beaks—jerked violently, their heads thrust upward, mouths open as wide as starved nestlings.

The birds slumped, many of them motionless. A couple, Embla saw, flapping wings feebly.

Fon dropped his arms and stood back gasping.

Auron began to clap, nodding his head in approval. "Quite nice," he said. "Quite nice!"

Johannes waited a moment and then began to clap as well. "Follow me," he said to Embla and began to walk down the aisle, approaching the exarch. "Bravo! Bravo!"

Embla held back a grimace, tried to push the horror of the situation away, and followed.

Auron turned his head so he could see who approached. "Johannes? You heard that? What did you think?"

"Only the final moments, Exarch," Johannes said. "It was wonderful."

Auron nodded. "Indeed. Indeed it was." The exarch turned his attention back to the stage. "Maestro," he called to Fon, who had turned on the stage to face his audience, standing, waiting patiently. "You play that marvelous machine masterfully. What do you call it?"

Fon bowed slightly. "I call it the Grand Avis Carillon. It took my team many months to assemble."

"Yes, yes," Auron said. "I would very much like to arrange a concert. How's your schedule for next week?"

Fon looked uncomfortable. "It will take some time to catch and train more birds. As you can see, they do not survive. I would think—"

"How long?"

Fon dropped his eyes. "Three months, at least."

"I will give you one month and a team of bird catchers."

"But, I'm afraid, it's not—"

Auron interrupted Fon with a wave of annoyance and the composer shut his mouth quickly and left the stage. The exarch looked down at his spoons of food, wiggling his fingers. He selected one, brought it carefully to his mouth, and slurped its contents. He chewed slowly, his eyes turned upward as he assessed the experience.

Johannes waited, Embla standing by his side.

Auron swallowed. "Hm," he said. "Alright, Johannes. What can I help you with? I'm busy. Very busy, as you can see. After this, I must approve next season's line."

Johannes took a step forward. "Embla, Keeper of Beasts, has a proposition you may find interesting."

Auron lifted a small vial from the folds of his clothing and, using the long nail of his pinky finger, scooped a tiny pile of powder black as jet from the vial, brought it to one nostril, and snorted. He replaced the stopper on the vial and it disappeared once more into his folds. "Well," he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. "Bring her forward."

Johannes nodded to her. Embla took a deep breath and walked forward until she was standing before the exarch, the stage and the macabre instrument looming at her back. She scanned the table set before Auron: the spoons of food, utensils, a cloth napkin, a set of magnifying goggles. Beneath the table, she saw, was the pail she was looking for, filled with discarded spoons.

Auron turned his large, liquid eyes up to her. "What do you have for me?"

Embla cleared her throat. "I work in the Archon's Biopark. I—"

"Yes, yes, animals. Go on."

"I...we do not have the proper funding. There are many things in need of repair," she said, not lying about the condition of the biopark. "Food for the animals is very expensive. Proper enclosures are essential to—"

Auron raised a hand. "And how does this concern the House of Aesthetics?"

Embla glanced at Johannes, who nodded and smiled. Awa forgive me. "I am prepared to offer you, in exchange for the money we need, the bodies of the deceased animals." You'll never get them, she thought to herself. Bastard.

Auron leaned forward, bumping the table as he lifted his bulk. He smiled widely. He clapped his hands together. "The animals? Really? You have such rare and unusual creatures. Oh, the possibilities!" His body jiggled with excitement. "The things my artists could do!"

Embla forced herself to smile. In her mind she could see the perion birds, writhing in pain, blood dripping, dripping.

"Yes! Oh, yes! I believe we may come to an amicable agreement. Johannes, draw up the paperwork!"

"Of course," Johannes said.

Embla glanced at Johannes again and then back at the exarch nervously. "Wait," she said.

Their eyes turned to her. "May I... May I come closer, Exarch?"

Auron looked at her for a moment, and then let out a feminine giggle. He waved her forward. "You would like to seal the deal with a kiss, is that it? Or perhaps you're hungry?"

Embla gritted her teeth and walked up to the exarch. He was grinning at her and patting an empty sliver of the cushion that supported his bulk, indicating where she could sit. She sat stiffly.

"Good," the exarch said. "Good." One hand hovered over the table, searching for a spoon, while the other crawled at the small of Embla's back.

Embla endured, although the exarch had a sickeningly sweet smell about him, cloying, making her lightheaded.

"You're brean?" the exarch asked in her ear.

Embla nodded.

"So am I." The exarch selected a spoon. "Here," he said, bringing it up for Embla to sample. It was like a decorative flower made from petals of unidentifiable flesh cut paper thin and seared crisp with a glossy cherry at its center.

Embla knew she could not refuse and opened her mouth. Auron shoved the food between her lips and she chewed. It was very sweet, with a charred aftertaste. It sucked the moisture from her mouth as she chewed and chewed.

"What was your name again?" Auron asked.

"Embla," Johannes answered for her from his place to the side.

Embla continued to chew while the exarch talked, trying desperately to swallow the horrid bite.

Auron sighed. "Embla. Yes, Embla. I could make you quite beautiful, you know." He giggled again. "I have surgeons who could smooth your skin, widen your eyes, shrink your nose, without losing your brean qualities, of course. Or perhaps you'd care to play. I could have a set of masks, quite lifelike, designed for you, each a different face, one for every day of the week. Would you like that? I have artists to paint your body, to shrink your waist, to enlarge your breasts, to increase the lubrication between your legs. I could have—"

Embla stood abruptly. She swallowed the food in her mouth, gasping. "I'm sorry," she said. She stepped back from the exarch.

Auron looked her up and down, surprise on his face.

"I have to return to my duties," she said quickly. She moved to the aisle at the side of the stage where Johannes stood.

"Then we have a deal?" the exarch asked, clear annoyance in his voice.

"Uh-huh." She hurried toward the door, this time in the lead with Johannes following her.

~

"Very good," Johannes said, moving behind his desk and motioning for her to have a seat. "Shall we get started?"

Embla couldn't get the image out of her head of the animals she cared for, some of them nearly extinct, cut into pieces and sewn into grotesque parodies, like the butchers with their oxhoags—bird beaks sewn onto primate faces; feathers protruding through reptilian scales; amphibian legs on feline bodies—all in the name of art.

Embla looked at the empty chair, then at Johannes's condescending sneer. She thought about how good it would feel to smash his face with her fist, teeth crunching, blood spraying.

Johannes looked at her, waiting, smiling.

"I've changed my mind," Embla said, spinning around and marching for the door, but not before she saw Johannes's mouth dropping open.

She had what she came for, wrapped in a napkin and tucked into her pocket, one of Auron's used spoons.

# ~ TEN ~

NOVA

ASH

From the cold mud where he'd slept, he lifted his head. He watched the people, the survivors, crowd around Mother Marlena, as the old woman whispered to them what they must do.

The people scattered into the brush, seeking out the things they needed. They scurried like rats, their eyes darting this way and that, their dirty clothes, their mud-streaked faces. They brought back branches and reeds. They brought back tangles of vine. They were camped near a swampy region of forest and they brought back scoops of thick mud, brimming from scavenged helmets, black like tar.

They began to assemble, according to Mother Marlena's barked directions, something strange. They used the thicker sticks as support beams, lashing them to smaller kindling. It began to grow taller. They smeared the mud into the gaps and crevasses left between the sticks, unmindful of the mess they left upon themselves. They wore blank expressions as they worked, moving slowly but efficiently. Mother Marlena stood back and watched, leaning on her strange cane; she wore an expression grim but knowing.

Ash couldn't move, sitting where he was, frozen with horror as he began to understand what the villagers were making.

"Wait," Ash said, his voice hardly a whisper.

The slap of the mud; the squishes and squirts; the creaking dissent of the branches tightened together.

He forced himself to stand. "We should be gathering food," Ash said. "We should be building shelter."

No one turned, content in their work.

"Stop!" He stepped forward. "We're not safe here. We should keep moving."

The villagers ignored him. He was furious with them; he was a soldier in the Novan army and they should be listening to him. The thing they were building stood on its own now. It was becoming whole.

"She killed my mom with her medicine!"

The villagers stopped. They turned to look at him. Some of them shook their heads; others gave him smiles of pity. Mother Marlena stared at him, a slight smile tugging her lips. The villagers turned back and continued their work.

"That's right," he said, directly to Mother Marlena this time. "You're a fake! You're not even a real witch!"

Mother Marlena shook her head wearily.

The villagers were almost done.

The old woman pointed her cane at him. "Come and see me later," she said. "I must discover what power runs in your veins."

The effigy's face began to grin.

~

Ash hunkered down beneath a tree on a dry hill at the edge of the swampy area. From a distance, he watched people from his village circle the effigy—tall and skinny, with a huge globular nose and sunken spots for eyes—calling out to it for protection. He was a soldier. He still had his rifle. They should be calling on him to help protect them.

He felt alone, and hollowed out inside. He'd wandered wordlessly through the surviving villagers, looking for other members of his family, just one sister that might have survived, but there had been no one. He knew they were all dead. He could feel them missing. The emptiness he felt must be the place where, without him even knowing it, they had filled.

"Don't worry about it, kid."

Ash turned just as two men emerged from the trees. They were dressed in drab civilian clothes, but they both carried Novan rifles slung by straps at their backs.

The man who'd spoken had a faintly red-tinted mustache and wore a pair of strap-on goggles, not over his eyes but holding his scrappy hair back on his forehead. The goggles were black, the kind Ash had heard allowed you to stare at the comet without damaging your eyes.

The other man had a full beard on his face like a rug, speckled with gray, which gave his eyes a sunken appearance; his shoulders broad and muscled.

"You can't help them," the mustached man with the goggles said. "They need their comforts."

Ash watched the man with the mustache glance at the one with the full beard. The bearded man nodded.

The mustached man sighed. "Okay," he said. "Let me introduce myself." He cocked his head to the side. "My name is Niko, and this here," he smacked the much larger bearded man on the back, "is Wolf. At least that's what we call him." He smiled.

Ash nodded. "What do you want?"

"Great," Niko said. "Right to the point." Again, he glanced at Wolf before he continued. "We've been looking for you."

Ash looked carefully at Niko. "Me? Why?"

"Well," Niko said, his eyes darting nervously away for a moment. "We've been watching you. We were hoping you'd join us." He glanced down at Ash's chest, then back up.

"Who's 'us?'"

Niko smiled. "I'm glad you asked." With a jerk of his hand, he lifted a flap of cloth by his shoulder, revealing a glinting pendant.

Ash gaped. He looked down at the front of his soldier's jacket.

"Yes," Niko said. "You wear one as well, although I'm guessing you don't know what it means."

It was the medal he'd found beneath the captain's cot, the medal depicting two crescent moons facing each other.

Niko was chuckling, but when he looked up it was Wolf who caught his attention, shaking his head grimly back and forth. "Put it away," Wolf said. "Now."

Ash fumbled with the pendant, unclipping it, holding it in his hand. "Sorry," he said, and offered it to Wolf, who only continued slowly to shake his head.

"Keep it," Niko said. "And come with us."

Ash looked from one man to the other. He let the pendant drop into one of his pockets. "Where?" he asked.

"First," Niko said, "to find some food. There's an abandoned farm just on the other side of these woods. Follow me. Quickly, before the witch notices."

~

Niko and Wolf moved fast through the woods, Ash struggling to keep up. He had his rifle unslung, the tip of its barrel bobbing in front of him. Niko led the way and then Wolf, his hulking shoulders shifting deftly to avoid low-hanging branches. They did not look back; they trusted Ash to follow, which he did with renewed excitement. It was good to move. He was happy to have new companions. These were real men—Novan mercenaries—and he could tell they were serious in their opposition to the Talosian threat. He smiled a little and his heart beat quickly.

When the trees began to thin, they slowed. Niko put his hand out, signaling for them to stop. They crouched in the bushes, looking out on a patch of land that had been cleared and tilled, unidentifiable sprouts peeking through the dark soil in evenly spaced lines.

"I believe the people who lived here were killed during the Talosian drop, but they still may have a few hens or pigeons," Niko said. "We need to be careful."

Wolf nodded, grunting lowly.

Ash did the same.

Niko lifted himself, flashed them a jaunty grin, then turned and began running across the field.

Wolf and Ash followed.

If there were riflemen in the trees, they'd be easy targets out in the open. Ash ducked his head a little, and trusted that Niko knew what he was doing.

Up ahead, he could see the farmhouse, a modest cabin painted a rusty red color, peeling and flaking. The barn, a little further on, was larger than the house, covered with the same paint.

They dashed across the field and flung their backs against the side of the house, panting, Ash more out of breath than the others.

Somewhere distantly, Ash heard rifle shots, but Niko didn't seem to notice and made a motion with his hand, sending Wolf ahead this time.

Wolf moved around the house, stopping only briefly to look from side to side, then up the steps to the front door. Niko gave Ash a pat on his shoulder and then went after Wolf.

Niko and Ash waited, using the stairs as cover, while Wolf investigated the door. After only a moment spent of trying to open it, Wolf lifted his foot and kicked the door open. He nodded to them grimly, and disappeared inside.

Ash stood to follow, but Niko stopped him with an upraised hand.

They waited.

Ash scanned the field, eyeing the trees closely, that trembled with anticipation in the wind. There was something familiar about this sight, something menacing. A shiver ran through him.

Wolf's head appeared from the open doorway and waved them inside.

Niko and Ash ran up the steps and into the house.

~

"Stay here," Niko told him, and he and Wolf left him alone.

Ash looked around. He was sitting at the table in the main room of the farmhouse. There was a wood-burning stove and built-in cupboards and counter space. There were several other chairs and a scattering of feather-stuffed pillows. It was a cozy little house. It reminded him of...

He gulped and forced the thought away. He was a soldier now. He had to control his emotions; he couldn't be weak anymore. He stared at a rack of pots and pans, which seemed to rock gently where they hung, until he had himself under control.

He stood, to explore the house further, but instead staggered around collecting a few of the pillows. He tossed them into a pile in the corner and fell into them.

Almost instantly, he was asleep.

~

Someone was shaking him, forcing him awake. He opened his eyes and Niko's face bobbed into view. "It's okay," Niko said. "You can sleep. I just thought you might like something to eat first." He smiled.

Ash sat up and blinked.

"We found bread and cheese and the water from the well is still sweet." He offered Ash a cup.

Ash took the cup and brought it to his lips. He swallowed and it was good.

Wolf was sitting at the table, his large and hairy hands resting before him. He lifted a chunk of bread, ripped a bite free, and chewed. He gave Ash a nod.

Niko helped Ash to stand. "Come and sit," he said.

Ash flopped into one of the chairs across from Wolf. The cheese was arrayed in raw chunks on a plate—different kinds, some speckled with blue, others shot through with veins of pink—and there was a knife from the kitchen to cut it and a long loaf of bread.

Niko took another chair and the three of them began to eat.

~

"We checked the perimeter. We're safe. At least for the moment," Niko said.

Ash took another gulp of water and sighed. They'd divided the pillows and now sat each in their own corner of the main room, facing the wood-burning stove that now glowed, radiating heat.

"We didn't find any hens, but there's an oxhoag in the barn. An oxhoag! We fed and watered it and we'll take it back to camp in the morning. Tonight, we'll sleep here."

Wolf grunted amiably, rolling a massive cigarette between his fingers.

Ash laid his head back.

"Wish I'd gone on that trip when I had the chance," Niko said. "I had an offer. I could have been sailing the seas right now. I could be on a beach in Feluscia, eating fruit and soaking in the cometlight. I'd spend weeks doing nothing, lying about; maybe find a little opium and a beautiful woman to prepare it for me. I can see her now, her smile lighting up my life." Niko sighed.

Ash didn't say a word. He sipped his water.

Niko waved his hands irritably at Wolf. "And I wouldn't take this guy." He turned to Ash. "He doesn't know how to relax. He wouldn't know what to do with a beautiful woman if she used her breasts to smack him in the face." He laughed.

Ash shrugged and smiled.

"Doesn't exist," Wolf said, his face remaining grim.

Niko scowled. "What doesn't?"

"The island of Feluscia," Wolf said.

"What? Of course it does," Niko said. Then, to Ash, "He's always like this, doesn't believe in anything. If it were up to Wolf, there wouldn't be anything wonderful in the world, just war and death."

Ash looked over at Wolf and watched the large man shake his head, but the large man did not reply.

"Doesn't believe in Orealis either," Niko said. "When we first met, I told him that's where I was gonna go. Told him I'd find it."

"Is that the secret colony of philosophers?" Ash asked.

Niko gave him a look of surprise. "That's right. A haven for free-thinkers and radicals."

"Is that the place where the people glow?"

Niko was nodding. "Yup. From what I heard, there's a big mushroom farm there and the spores are on everything, including the people. Gives them a phosphorescent look, like 'flies in the light of the comet' an old friend of mine once told me."

"My dad told me about it once, but my mom just laughed at him and shook her head. I guess she didn't believe either."

Niko clapped him on the back and smiled widely. "Well, I believe. That's what counts, right?"

Ash smiled.

They fell silent for a while.

After several minutes, Niko broke the silence. "You know," he said to Ash, "the old woman never would have let you go if she'd known what you really are."

"What old woman?" Ash asked.

"The old woman, the witch. What's her name."

"Mother Marlena?"

Niko nodded. "That's the one."

Ash looked closely into Niko's eyes, curious. "What do you mean? What am I?"

But Niko only shrugged and turned his eyes back to the fire flickering through the grates in the stove.

~

In the morning, the three companions ate the last of the bread and cheese and prepared to head out.

"Where are we going?" Ash asked Niko as he had many times in the brief time they'd known each other.

"We have a camp not far from here, about half a day's walk, but it will probably take us until dark to get there with the oxhoag in tow."

"Who's there?"

"The People of the Conspiring Moons."

"Who're they?"

Niko smiled. "I'm one of them. Wolf is another. We believe in an intimate connection with the universe. Did you know people once sailed through the stars and visited other worlds?"

Ash's brow furrowed, but his eyes widened in wonder. "I've heard stories."

"Did you know there are two moons?"

Ash shook his head. "No. There's only one."

"Yeah—sister moons. The second hides behind the one you see every night, and, perhaps once or twice every few generations, peeks from around its twin so you can see it. There are people living on the second moon."

Ash looked at Niko. "There are?"

Niko nodded. "Yup."

From behind them Wolf grunted. He nudged them to move and they all three filed through the door and out into the softness of the early cometlight.

~

They retrieved the oxhoag from the barn and set out across the field.

They'd crossed maybe half of the open space when the rifles began to fire on them.

"Down!" Niko screamed, and they all three flung themselves flat against the earth.

The oxhoag groaned and wobbled as bullets tore into its resilient hide. Its eyes bugged and rolled, but it remained standing, its bulk absorbing the punishment.

Wolf began to crawl, heading down the incline into a slight depression. He pulled Niko after him.

"No!" Niko tried to grab the rope they'd tied around the oxhoag's neck and yank, but the animal wouldn't budge.

Rifle fire screamed, hideous wails streaking through the air. They were coming from Talosian rifles.

Ash cupped his hands over his head and tried to push his entire body into the earth.

Round after round penetrated the oxhoag's hide, tore holes that briefly spurted, and then dribbled dark blood. The stupid animal did nothing. It moaned and moaned, its eyes rolled and rolled.

Eventually, the animal's front legs gave first, and it slumped forward and was still; its moans ceased.

The rifle fire stopped.

Ash lifted his head. Niko and Wolf were waving their hands at him. He crawled through the dirt until they could pull him into the depression.

They waited.

Eventually, Niko said, as quietly as he could, "We have to crawl for the trees. We can make it if we keep our heads down."

Wolf grunted.

To Ash, the cover of the forest seemed impossibly far.

Wolf and Niko paused at the top of the rise. Niko turned and gave Ash a surprisingly humorous wink. They rushed over and out of sight in a faint cloud of dust.

Ash's heart was pounding. His entire body was trembling. He crawled to the top of the rise. He was terrified of being left behind.

He looked up and crawled.

~

He expected the rifles to resume firing as soon as he began, but they didn't. It was quiet. He could hear the wind whistling through the field around him. He saw only the dust kicked up by Wolf and Niko's boots ahead of him.

He breathed in shallow gasps and crawled.

The Talosians must not be able to see us, he thought.

He was tempted to lift his head, to get a better look around, but he knew that was a bad idea.

He could feel his blood pumping in his temples.

Somehow, he made it to the forest.

When he reached the edge of the brush, he glanced up, expecting to see Wolf and Niko waiting for him, but he couldn't see where they'd gone.

He rolled down a small hill, branches clawing and scraping his skin, but he didn't care. He'd made it. He lifted himself and inhaled deeply. The forest smelled musty and alive.

Around him, the trees were dense. It was dark and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the shadows beneath the canopy of trees.

He stood and looked around. It was very quiet; he could hear his own ragged breathing and little else. He pulled his rifle from his back and held it.

There was a violent rustling in the trees. He snapped around to face it.

Men in faceless masks emerged with great glimmering weapons held like musical instruments, wearing uniforms of overlapping scales and pointing at him with fingers sharpened like the points of knives.

"Run!" Niko screamed from among them, and Ash fled.

~

Ash ran and ran. He ran until his blood pumped like acid in his veins, until his lungs burst with fire, until his legs weakened beneath him, threatening to spill him to the forest floor with each pounding step, until he could run no more, and he tumbled, rolling, thrashing, leaves in his face and eyes and throat, and dark mud lapped around him, and his dad's blackened face said "blood," and the wailing became a screaming and grief enwrapped him like a cocoon.

He ran and ran.

# ~ ELEVEN ~

TALOS

TREVOR

"Awa-fuck!"

Trevor gave Tory Umbridge, his best engineer, a slanted smile. "Yes," he said. "Can you get them working?"

Tory dropped to the floor and slid her body beneath the nearest instrument panel, on her back squinting up. She brought her hands up and fiddled with something. "Damn." She wiggled out from under and sat up, looking at Trevor, a smudge of black grease on her forehead, grinning. "Who else knows about this shit?"

"I pay you for your discretion."

Tory held up her hands in surrender. "Don't worry. I'd never forget what you've done for me. I'm just asking." She stood and walked over to Trevor's windows, the screens that broadcast various parts of the City. "Can't believe these still work." She shook her head and whistled.

Trevor watched her, saying nothing.

Tory had been a low-level mechanic working for the tinkers of the Mechanicus. She'd also had a gambling problem, nothing that put her in debt with any of the cartels, but enough so that she sometimes blew her wages early in the week and went hungry until next she was paid. She enjoyed dice games, particularly Galoo, in which the cubic eggs of the gilly bird were stolen from the nest, hardboiled, and marked with a different number on each side, one through six. Players were then given sixty seconds each to examine the egg dice, looking for imperfections, weight balance, and anything that might skew the standard probabilities of rolling any given number. Bets were placed. And the game began.

When Tory had become pregnant, her heirotimate employer at the Mechanicus had used it as an excuse to terminate her from her position, seeing an opportunity to get rid of a substandard employee who was often late to work. With no support from the father of her child and no money coming in, she had, in desperation, turned to a hierotimate from the House of Aesthetics, a man named Ikit Crue, a member of Exarch Auron's personal council. Ikit had offered her a large sum of money in exchange for her child, to be used—a practice of growing popularity among the exarchs and the wealthiest of the heirotimates—as a living piece of furniture. The child would be raised as a footstool, or given a light to hold and trained as a lamp. As the child grew, he or she would become a bearer, a sort of mobile table, carrying lamps, books, and sometimes weapons, upon which drinks could be held and important documents signed with equal priority.

Tory had given up her child, a daughter she dared not name, taken the money, and attempted to move on with her life.

When Trevor had found her, she had been homeless and living on the streets, having gambled away her fortune and turned to substance abuse to dull her depression. To make money, she'd been scrounging supplies from the dumping grounds—squatting in Excrement Alley, a particularly horrid section of Luto's Court—making small, wind-up automata. She'd been selling them on Market Street. Trevor had gone to visit her pathetic setup, a threadbare rug thrown over a spot of pavement, her ingenious creations walking and scuttling and chirping about. He'd seen Tory's potential immediately and had offered to help her.

Trevor had cleaned her up, had her trained, and, with a promise from her to never again gamble or use dangerous substances, found a way to release her daughter from servitude and put her daughter in a proper school.

Although Tory would never raise her daughter, she was allowed visits, and for those and everything Trevor had done for her, she was, as she said, "forever grateful." She had named her daughter Gilly.

"Can it be done?" Trevor asked.

Tory looked up from the tangle of wires she'd revealed beneath a removable panel Trevor had never noticed before. "This shit's ancient," she said, "but seems pretty well preserved. How many of these units are there?"

Trevor glanced at the dusty, lifeless heaps of machinery pushed against each other in the murk. "Eighty-three."

"Galen-be-damned," Tory swore. "Let me see what I can do."

Trevor smiled.

~

He could already see the rising smoke from his observation balcony by the time Paimon came to report of the event. Riots had broken out on Market Street.

It had begun with street preachers, one who called Awa He, the other who called Awa She. Both preachers had started with small followings that had swollen until they had intermingled. Preaching had turned to debate, as each side defended its case. Debate had turned to argument. And then someone had pushed someone else, on purpose or on accident, no one was certain, but the pushed person had pushed back. Someone had thrown a stone. People had begun to fight, throwing fists and spitting in each other's faces. A young boy had been trampled to death. Someone had stabbed one of the preachers in the back. Chaos had erupted as people had scrambled either to flee or to join the brawl.

"Bergman's Enforcers were called?" Trevor asked.

Paimon nodded. "Yes. They put down most of them."

Trevor grimaced, knowing what that meant. "And the preachers?"

"Both dead."

Trevor sighed. "I wish it had not come to that. We must find the boy."

"The chantiac? I've heard this boy you seek is Novan. Our people will never follow a Novan."

Trevor whipped around, suddenly angry. "And why not?" He took a step forward and glared at Paimon. "Because he happens to have been born in another territory? Wait until they see what this boy can do. He will change their minds. He will unite them. He—"

"Is the enemy," Paimon interrupted.

Trevor balled his hands into fists, could feel his fingernails digging into his skin. "That is the Archon's war, not mine!"

Paimon took a step back. "You speak treason."

"So what if I do? Whose man are you? Mine or the Archon's?"

"I...I had thought you and the Archon's interests were the same."

Trevor turned away, gripping the balcony with both hands. "We were friends once, the Archon and I. We helped each other rise to power. Never equals, he being born into a wealthy heirotimate family and me from nothing, but friends nonetheless."

Paimon, standing behind him, remained silent.

Trevor sighed, then spoke more quietly. "How deep is your loyalty, Paimon, my friend?"

Paimon did not answer right away.

Trevor waited.

After a moment that seemed to stretch on and on, Paimon answered.

"Absolute."

Trevor smiled.

~

He took his usual path through the Garden of Mue, draining the pool and descending the spiraling stairs. He walked slowly down the hallway, thinking, thinking hard about his next move. He had to report the riot on Market Street to the Archon. Then he would advise him to have the representatives of Galen from each church begin preaching on street corners in order to pacify the commoners, at least for a little while longer. This tactic would hopefully provide them more time to find the chantiac. He had to convince the Archon to double his efforts at retrieving the boy.

Assuming, of course, that the boy had not already been killed in the Archon's ridiculous war. He had seen the propaganda papers pasted all over the City, declaring Nova a threat to "the grandeur of Talos." The posters claiming that the Novans despised Talos, that they despised its "innovations and its wonders." They depicted caricatures of primitive-looking people with torches, as if the Novans were an angry mob prepared to set fire to the City.

And where was Skin? He had not heard from her for some time now. There were no telelines in Nova, of course, but mail continued to travel between the villages of Nova and the City of Talos. And there were other methods, if this incarnation of the woman he had loved could remember such things, birds she could send or a messenger toad.

He had no choice but to wait. To be patient. Waiting was his best move. That was how he had climbed as high as he had. Now was not the time to act. He must stall, as usual. He must work with the Archon to keep things in the City from rising to a boil for just long enough for Skin or one of the Archon's agents to capture the boy. Then, he would train the boy quickly. He had already made arrangements with Galen. The details had already been worked out. Galen—the real Galen and not some representative lookalike—would give his endorsement to the boy. The people of Talos would see that the state approved Church of Awa was still powerful and important, still capable of miracles, and peace would be restored.

And then, after that, he might consider his next move.

He could only hope the hallowgeons knew patience as he did.

~

He steps out onto the balcony, as he often does, simply to inhale the evening air and look out over the City. He smiles to himself. He has spent the day examining the various machines and devices he has collected, reviewing Tory's report on the condition and functionality of each. It has been exhilarating knowing of the potential power he has collected without being challenged by a single heirotimate, even though the original purposes of the machines remain, even to Tory, largely a mystery.

He does not notice what already lurks above him, not right away, an abrupt shadow cast over his world.

When he sees it, an intricate mass of geometric angles, hovering silently above his head as if it has always been there, his heart fills with terror. He knows what it is, of course, even though he's never seen it, even though he's never seen them. He's heard stories, and read of notorious encounters. There have been appearances in which the hallowgeons collected forks from people in the middle of meals—leaving them staring at their food, mystified. And other appearances in which internal organ were stolen—removing livers, spleens, and bladders—leaving their unfortunate victims to bleed to death on the street among throngs of screaming people, or alone, gurgling on their kitchen floors.

There is little he can do. He tries to control his breathing and waits.

Movement catches his eyes from the shadows against the wall. They emerge, three of them: the hallowgeons.

They are terrible to behold, despite the masks and the gray robes they wear, scuttling toward him, their eyes, too large for their blank faces, staring at him with an unnerving intensity, some glowing and wriggling, others blacker than shadow, an absence somehow more appalling than the others.

"We are well met, Trevor," the one with milky, wriggling eyes says.

They all stand several feet taller than he, looming.

"I am Cadoc," says the one with veined, yellow eyes in a strangely hollow voice.

"I am Siriac," says the one with black, voided eyes.

"I am Mithra," says the first one. "We have come to inform you of your purpose."

Trevor is shaking, his body numb, unable to speak. He stands frozen, staring at the hallowgeons, waiting to see what they will do.

"We have things to show you. Worlds within worlds," Siriac says.

"What do you have to say?" Cadoc says, eyes flaring.

Trevor swallows. He forces himself to speak. "What will you show me?"

"Where we come from, there are intelligent spheres of gas," Cadoc says, "tentacled scavengers, drifting parasites, spores, slimes, gases, supernovas, and stars."

Trevor blinks and shakes his head. "I do not understand..."

"We have chosen you," Siriac says.

His heart beats so furiously he thinks he is going to pass out. "For what?"

"You will be the ambassador, the sole individual to which we shall speak. It is our task to guide humanity, to ensure your actions continue to serve the greater universal balance."

Trevor nods.

"Good," Siriac says, and the three hallowgeons move oddly beneath their robes and their eyes roll and they are making strange sounds and Trevor sees they have needles and blades.

And then he must finally lose consciousness, because he can't remember the rest.

~

It was impossible to muffle the clacking of his shoes on the obsidian-tiled floor, his murky reflection wavering beneath him as if trapped and jealous of his freedom. He moved through the steam, muggy and hot.

"Trevor?" the Archon said. "Is that you? Come forward."

He could hear the grinding hum of the Archon's platform coming in his direction. He stepped up to his usual spot, orienting himself by the rail tracks cut into the floor.

The Archon's glistening face appeared smiling. His platform carried his bulbous body, roll upon quivering roll, hissing and pumping, milky fluids sputtering through tubes. His sparkling eyes peered at Trevor through crevasses of soft flesh like dough.

"What news, my bastard friend?" the Archon asked. "What news from below?"

Trevor looked about the room. It was large and open, devoid of furnishings, lit artificially, the steam billowing up from the vents making it difficult to see from one wall to the next. They were alone. "Unrest, I'm afraid," he said.

The Archon lifted a huge bowl of apple-sized tomatoes and brought it to his lap. He flapped a chubby hand at him to continue, lifted one of the tomatoes and put the entire fruit in his mouth, biting down, pink juices running down his chin.

"There was a riot on Market Street. Two different unapproved preachers were speaking to the public. They were in conflict. Arguing turned to violence."

"Hm," the Archon said, devouring another tomato.

"Bergman's Enforcers handled the situation," Trevor said.

"What else?" the Archon asked, muffled through half-chewed plant flesh.

"Don't you want to know what they were fighting about? We need to act so that this does not happen again. I suggest we take the Galens from the approved churches and—"

"Any luck finding the chantiac?"

Trevor repressed his anger at being interrupted, clenching his fists behind his back. "No."

The Archon scoffed. "I didn't think so. Your methods are too subtle."

"Is that why you've declared war on Nova?"

The Archon dropped the tomato he'd been lifting to his mouth. It tumbled down his body, bounced off his platform, and struck the floor with a dull splat. He leaned his head forward. "They disgust me. The Novans are a threat to our way of life. They must be exterminated."

Trevor blinked. "Exterminated?"

The Archon crushed another tomato between his teeth.

"You wouldn't wipe out an entire territory? The Novans are harmless. The chantiac could be—"

"Killed? So what? My soldiers will kill everyone who gets in their way."

Trevor's hands were now limp. He could feel his breath whistling in and out of his lungs. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "I've sent Skin to find him, and she will. She has never failed me before."

The Archon chuckled. "Yes...Skin. Tell me? What do you do at night with that grotesque creation of yours?"

"You..." But Trevor held his tongue. He could no longer hide his fists, clenched so tightly by his sides his nails dug into his skin. He took a deep breath. "There are riots in the streets. The common people are preparing to rise up against you. If there's rebellion—"

"I will crush it."

"The army is small. There has not been a true war in a long time. If the common people take up arms, their numbers..."

"Will fail them," the Archon completed Trevor's sentence. "My forces are much larger than you imagine. I have been growing them for years."

Trevor opened his mouth, but realized he no longer knew what to say. "Years?" he managed feebly. How? his mind screamed at him. How has this happened without my knowledge?

The Archon nodded his head, slowly up and down. "Oh, yes. I knew this day would come." He caught Trevor in his gaze, held him frozen in place like a stunned animal. "Let me explain something to you, Trevor. I am the Archon. I will no longer play games. I have no use for them. I will be obeyed, without question." He smiled widely, his jowls shuddering, a gaping and froggy grin.

"I..." Trevor tried to speak, knowing what was coming next. "I have always advised you to the best of my abilities."

"Your services are no longer required." He waved his hand. "You are dismissed."

Trevor was unable to move. He stood there, staring at the Archon.

"Go," the Archon said. "Away with you."

Trevor's mind swirled with panicked questions: What will I do now? Where will I go? What position will I have? He turned his back on the Archon and began to walk away.

After a moment, he stopped. His heart hardened, like a cold stone. Without turning, he said, "Tell me, Ferris, my old friend. How long has my counsel fallen on deaf ears?"

"You forget yourself," the Archon said. "You call me by a name I have not used in a long time. I am the Archon. I have ascended."

Trevor turned back. "You have," he admitted. "In position, if not in wisdom. I was instrumental in your ascension, if you remember. You once called me the 'intelligent one.' That was why you kept me around. That was our arrangement."

"It is not your place to question my judgments."

"Remember," Trevor said, stepping up to the Archon's platform so that he was as close to the Archon as possible. "Remember how close we used to be? Remember the things I used to bring you? The woman we shared? The commoners I lured here so you could see what it felt like to slit a person's throat? You even took Skin that one time, didn't you? The woman I love. After she lost her memory. I even told you to fuck her, didn't I? I could not refuse you, so I stood back and watched as you fucked the only woman I have ever loved!"

The Archon blinked, clearly uncomfortable by Trevor's proximity, but unafraid.

"You used to depend on me. When there was an important decision to be made, you came to me. Me! It's because of me, you sit here now!"

The Archon looked down his nose at him. "I was going to offer you a position. An overseer of some kind, whatever Bergman suggested, but I think your treasonous attitude has removed you from consideration."

"Bergman?" Trevor gripped the side of the Archon's platform. "It's Bergman you've been listening to?"

"Please step back, Trevor. Before I call the Praetorian Guard."

Trevor pushed off the platform and took a step back, but only one, remaining close enough to take one of the hoses that ran from the platform into the Archon's flesh in his hand. "What would happen," Trevor said with a smile, "if I were to pull this loose?"

The Archon shook his head, still unafraid. "The alarms would sound, my Praetorian Guards would come rushing in, and you would lose your head beneath the Gallows Tree."

"Your Praetorian Guard? Tell me, what are their names?"

The Archon only stared at him.

"You don't know them, do you? Let's see, currently on duty... Wagner, Corris, and Leek, I believe. Paimon brought them all before me personally when they were hired. There's Fina, and Barker... Ah, any you'd like to add?"

"What point," the Archon said, "are you trying to make?"

Trevor smiled, and ripped the tube free from the Archon's platform. Thick mucus sputtered and splattered from its open end. He flung it aside.

"Stop," the Archon said, pushing buttons and pulling levers that were supposed to bring help to his side—fear, finally, creeping into his voice.

"Most of this stuff here," Trevor said, "doesn't do much." He waved his hands over the workings of the apparatus, flicked a pumping piston dismissively. "But a couple of these," he said, reaching for another tube, "are vital to your continued survival."

"Where are they?" The Archon was shouting now, thrashing his body about ineffectually, pounding his fists. "Where the fuck are my Praetorian Guards?"

Trevor continued to talk. "I had Tory examine your platform once. She explained to me one very simple thing I could do, if the opportunity should ever present itself."

"Who's Tory? What the fuck are you talking about?"

"This tube," Trevor said, holding it up with one hand, "pumps vital fluids into your body. And this one," he held up the other tube with the other hand, "pumps waste from it." Trevor grinned. "When you switch them..." He crossed the tubes and jammed them both into place. He wiped his hands together and held them up, to show he was done, letting his last statement speak for itself.

"The alarms! I don't understand," the Archon said, his pallor already beginning to darken, a thick pool of pus and blood spraying from something that had burst beneath the platform. "Why don't I hear the alarms?"

"Oh, I deactivated those before I came," Trevor said, so low it was unlikely the Archon heard him.

Trevor stood back and watched.

# ~ TWELVE ~

NOVA

KYA

She woke to darkness, and snoring. For a brief moment, her lips parted, her tongue touched the roof of her mouth, and she was about to call out for her dad, but then she remembered. She swallowed. She was cold and numb.

Moonlight leaked into the tent and, turning on her side, she was able to see the others, wrapped in bedrolls and cloaks. Most of them were on the floor, crammed into every available space, but there were also several cots like the one she was in. The woman who had brought her here—Helen—was nowhere to be seen.

Slowly, she stepped over the sleeping bodies, and crept across the tent, placing her feet between the shadowy bundles. She slipped beneath the tent flap and into the open air of the night.

She had to get back to Fallowvane. She had to find her family. She'd made a mistake leaving. She still had her supplies, her bag and her sword—she'd refused to give them up when they'd tried to take them from her.

She stopped in the middle of the dirt track that cut through the camp, tents of various shapes and sizes fluttering lightly in the gentle breeze. She knew which way to go, her village was to the south and she had her compass, but if what Helen and the other man had said was true, she was twenty, maybe thirty miles away.

She scanned the row of tents. Together, they made their own small village and if each one was as crowded as the one in which she'd woken, there were a lot of people here. She would have to be very quiet.

Holding her pack in place with one hand so that it didn't bounce on her hip, she dashed along the track. At the edge of the tent village, she spotted several horses tied to a rail secured between two trees. She smiled to herself. Even though she'd only been on a horse a couple of times, her dad had taught her how to ride.

She moved, her head down, shoulders hunched. She came up to one of the smaller horses, brushed his neck with her hand. "Shh, shh. There we go." She untied her new horse, led him out into the road. Her horse was already saddled and ready to go, as if someone thought he might need his horse in a hurry, which she was grateful for, because without the saddle she never would have been able to climb up onto the horse's back.

She took the reins in her hands and gently squeezed the horse's sides with her legs. The horse began to move and she was riding.

~

"There you go, Alfred," she said, "get some water."

She left her horse to drink from the small stream. She sat on a fallen log to eat the last biscuit from her bag. When she was done, she was still hungry.

It had been daytime for a couple of hours now. She'd watched the light creep into the sky, slowly filtering through the trees. They must have noticed I'm missing by now, she thought. I wonder if they'll come after me. They'll be mad I stole a horse.

But she didn't care. She was making good time. She dug her compass out of her bag and held it up. South. Just keep going south.

She drank some water from the stream, jumped, grabbed a hold of the saddle, and pulled herself awkwardly up until she could throw one of her legs over Alfred's back, and was on her way.

~

Alfred was one of her favorite characters in some of her dad's stories. He was a lot more interesting than the princesses and ridiculous talking animals her sister's liked. He was a treasure hunter, exploring ancient ruins and caves in search of relics from long-lost civilizations. He was also funny, always tripping over things and falling into water troughs and spilling food on himself. When he ran into traps during his subterranean explorations, he'd accidentally stumble on a tree root or step in mud and the poison dart or falling knife would narrowly miss him. And then, when he finally did find whatever it was he was looking for—an ancient book or golden tablet—his arch rival, Dr. Moor, would be waiting for him and steal it.

"He's not very good at all this, is he, Dad?" she'd asked once.

Her dad had smiled. "No, but he never gives up, does he?"

Kya thought she finally knew what her dad was getting at when he said that.

She named her horse Alfred and continued her journey.

~

It was mid-afternoon when she began to smell the smoke, stinging her nose, making her eyes water.

She'd travelled through the forest without incident, without ever coming across signs that anyone had been through these woods but herself. She slowed Alfred to a trot and approached her village.

At the edge of the trees, she could already see that there was nothing left. Charred husks, some with blackened beams still standing like crisped bones, were all that remained of the houses. Smoke still rose from embers buried deep within the rubble. Something must have caught fire, and with no one to stop it, her village had burned.

As she led Alfred into what remained of Fallowvane, she could feel her heart rising into her throat, threatening her with panic. She could hardly see through her watering eyes, and Alfred didn't like the smoke either, stamping his feet, obeying her commands only reluctantly.

She nearly passed right by her house, unable to tell the charred remains of her house from the one next to it. She stared at it for a moment, blinking, coughing at the smoke.

She moved on.

The weathervane statue at the center of town remained standing, but had also been burned. The vane continued, as it always had, to point south.

South.

When she came to the town hall, the largest building in town, she saw them, piled up against the side of the wall, blackened bones in a heap, jutting ribs and screaming skulls.

She stared for a very long time, and then she turned her head away, and kicked Alfred into motion.

Blackened earth was all that remained of the fields where the crops had grown.

She kicked Alfred harder and he was galloping beneath her.

She passed the sand pits and plunged into the grasslands, surrounded suddenly by the open landscape.

She galloped away. Away. Kicking her horse, faster and faster.

~

She didn't know how exhausted she was until she stopped to catch her breath and nearly fell from Alfred's back. She caught herself and eased her body to the ground. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the sky, panting. So blue, she thought. So blue and empty.

She was thirsty. She didn't have any water and she didn't know when she'd reach the next stream or lake. She'd never been this way, never further than the sand pits.

South. Away from the Talosians. Away from the pain. Going south.

Despite herself, she felt her eyes close. She slept.

~

When she woke, it was dark again. She sat up. She jumped to her feet. The flatlands stretched in every direction, the wavering grass silver beneath the moon's light. She squinted, turning in every direction. She was alone.

Alfred was gone.

~

She walked. It was hot. The cometlight beat down on her. Her feet hurt. There was nothing in the grasslands. She couldn't eat the grass. She looked up at the clear sky often, longing for rain. She'd never felt like this before, this aching, this numbness. She'd always been comfortable, she realized. She'd always been happy.

She stopped, the comet directly above her head, to rest, to catch her breath. She didn't know how much further she could go. She plunged her hand into her bag and felt around for her compass. She brought it out and looked at the needle. She didn't know why she felt she had to go south, but she'd come this far and she was determined to keep going.

~

She passed easily into an exhaustion filled with wretched darkness, and when she woke to the dawn of a new day, she was so weak she could hardly lift herself. She blinked through the crust around her eyes and slowly rolled over. She groaned.

She noticed first something very strange laying a couple of feet away. She crawled and found several colorful glass marbles mired in the dirt. She rose to a sitting position and looked around.

She found several bite-sized biscuits and, right there before her, a clear puddle of water filling a small depression in the earth. She plunged her face into the puddle and drank greedily. She didn't care that the water was becoming muddy as she disturbed it. She drank and drank, retched, nearly threw it all up, then drank the rest of the pool until all she could taste was mud on her teeth.

She rolled over and lay still for a while, breathing heavily.

After a while, she got to her hands and knees and crawled around collecting the little biscuits, like mushroom caps sprouting from the earth, and devoured each one.

Before she got to her feet and continued her trudge south, she found a small picture: a portrait of her dad smiling. She blinked and looked at the picture again, but the man in the portrait was not her dad after all.

~

Again, she could smell it before she saw it, but this time it was different, brighter, saltier, a smell she could identify, although she'd never seen its source: the ocean.

She came over the rise of a small hill and, below her, she could see the town of Farrenhold. She knew of it only from her geography lessons in school. She could see its dot on the map. Farrenhold was a coastal fishing town and the preferred trading port for one of the islands, although she couldn't remember which one.

~

She wandered through the bustling streets in shock, unsure where to look, everywhere people and signs, noisy chaos. She didn't know where to go, what to do, or whom to talk to. She knew she should go into one of the shops or inns and ask someone for help, but she was overwhelmed.

Instead, she followed the streets toward the ocean. She wanted to see the water, to gaze upon the crashing waves, which she could hear, even now. She wanted to see the source of that strange, salty smell.

When she reached the docks, she could see it, a vast body of water crowded with ships. She walked down until she found an open dock. She walked all the way to the end, thrilled when the land ceased and the ocean began beneath her feet though the wooden platform, and stood staring at the immensity of it.

She stared for a long time, her lips parted, and let the brisk winds tug at her ragged clothes and her tangled hair.

"Excuse me? Girl? What are you doing?"

Kya turned and there was a man standing on the dock, blocking her path between herself and the land. He wore large boots and a billowing cloak. Upon his head, a strange hat was jammed all the way to his eyes.

"What are you doing out here?" the man asked again.

Kya looked at the man, and then at the impressive ship she'd hardly glanced at as she'd walked, too intent on the ocean to notice. "Is that your ship?" she asked.

The man nodded.

"Are you the captain?"

The man nodded again.

"What's your name?"

"Captain Emerson."

"Do you need help? Can I have a job? I'm hungry."

The man looked her up and down. "Where's your family?"

"They're all dead."

The man shook his head. "I'm sorry. I can't help you. I would. I've taken other orphaned children into my crew before, but not this time. Not on this voyage."

Kya looked at the man, thinking about that word: orphan. Was that what she was now? "Okay," she said. "Is it okay if I stand here for a while? I've never seen the ocean before."

The man hesitated, and then nodded his head once again. He turned and Kya could hear the captain's boots clomping on the wooden slats of the jetty.

Kya turned back to the ocean.

~

That night, she curled up under the jetty and waited. She watched the light glowing in the cabin of Captain Emerson's ship. When finally it went out and all was dark, she moved stealthily, climbing a rope that hung down the side of the ship, up onto the deck, and looked for a place to hide.

ASH

He blinked awake and lifted himself. His limbs were heavy, smeared in something sticky and warm. He'd fallen into a bog, stumbled into another swampy section of forest. He was sitting in a pool of decaying, festering plant matter.

The Talosians!

His heart jolted, like the chain had been pulled on an old buggy engine, grumbling to life. Was he in danger? He whipped his head about, scanning the trees. He couldn't see anything. He couldn't hear anything. Had he lost them?

He pulled himself to his feet.

The trees rustled with the wind. Somewhere, a bird chirped.

He was alone.

Slowly, he climbed from the bog pit, his feet making disgusting sucking sounds as he pulled them free. He checked his rifle. It was dirty, but mostly dry; it was still loaded. He tried to get his bearings, to remember in which direction he'd come from and in which direction he should go. He was lost.

Ahead of him there was a break in the trees, an animal path perhaps. He decided to follow it. Until he found his friends, he'd have to make all of the decisions.

Before he set out, he bent down and scooped black mud from the bog. He smeared it over his cheeks and forehead, applied it thick beneath his eyes.

Now I'll be harder to see, he thought to himself.

He felt strangely calm.

He walked.

~

The path winding through the trees slowly became a more trodden footpath, clearly used by humans before. He followed it, hoping it would lead him somewhere safe, where he might find some kind people with a warm house and something for him to eat.

He kept his rifle ready and tried to stay alert. He scanned the trees and kept his ears open.

After a while, the path began to descend a slope. The trees struggled for purchase against the side of the mountain. The path became a switchback, going right and then turning sharply left, back and forth, slowly going down.

It was tiring and he was sore and soon he was panting and out of breath.

At one point, he stopped, sitting on a rock, drinking from his canteen, and he heard a gentle rustling in the trees behind him. He turned quickly, aiming his rifle, but it was only a kylix, tufts of fur blending in with the rocks, its spiked tail disappearing into the foliage as it noticed him watching, and darted away.

He trudged on, finally reaching the bottom.

Before long, the path opened up and he could see a small village.

He began to laugh, desperate and crazy.

~

A motor rumbled to his left, a buggy came blundering down the road, going fast, jostling its passengers, their heads bobbing like dolls. Ash froze, watching it approach. On the front of the buggy, skewered through the abdomen and hanging from its ribcage by various spears and spikes, hung the body of a man, its legs long since ground away beneath the tires, glistening tubes of viscera slumping and coming loose a little more with each dip in the road. As the buggy drew closer, Ash could see a sign had been hung from the dead man's neck. NOVACITE = PARASITE, it read, smeared and runny.

The buggy honked its horn and Ash jumped out of the way.

The buggy careened down the road. Lifting his head, Ash saw the people in the buggy looking after him. But the buggy kept going and he watched it pass through the village, around the corner, and into the forest beyond.

Ash picked himself up and entered the village.

~

Eyes watched him from windows. The street was deserted.

As he walked, all too aware of the sounds of his own breathing and the crunching of his feet in the gravel, he tried to remember his geography lessons. Which village was this? Could it be Kelm? Or maybe Stone Town? He remembered that one because its name was so different from the others. It couldn't be Fell Tree; he couldn't have travelled that far. It was probably one of the many nameless villages peppered throughout Nova, too small to be recorded on any map.

He realized he had his rifle raised and he lowered it. He realized he was covered in mud, dark and stinking.

A door to his right opened and a woman stepped forward.

Ash watched her.

"Please, sir," the woman said, coming forward cautiously. Several faces watched him from the open doorway of the house, including a couple of children.

Ash glanced around, expecting there to be someone standing behind him, but the woman was addressing him, he realized.

He took a step toward the house and one of the small children cried out. They were scared of him.

"Of me?" Ash asked. "Don't be scared of me."

The woman, holding her hands out as if to insure a certain distance was kept between her and him, said, "Yes."

"I'm just a boy," Ash said. "See," he began to rub the mud from his face, only smearing it further. He grinned at the family in the doorway and they cringed.

"I just need a place to stay. I'm still just a boy."

The woman continued to hold her hands out; they were shaking.

Ash dropped to his knees, tears welled in his eyes, slipping free—the world blurring out of focus—drew pales lines through the dirt on his cheeks. Something broke loose inside him. He cried.

The woman came forward, and held him.

~

Ash was sitting, looking out the window, letting one of the little girls play and tug at his hair, when the rumbling began. It started low, hardly perceptible, and then he could see it in the glass of water sitting before him, slight ripples, spiraling back and forth. The little girl stopped, and dropped her hands; he could feel her tense.

All talk in the room stopped.

And then they could hear the buggies, motors burning, tires grinding, men whooping and hollering.

Ash jumped to his feet. He snatched his rifle from where it sat leaning against the wall. He pushed his way to the door, despite the protests of the family, who tried to hold him back. He opened the door and peered outside.

He stood in the doorway and watched.

A roaring blur of dust and shouting was coming down the road, a corrosive cloud of slurry exhaust and filth.

"What will they do?" Ash asked no one in particular.

"Get back inside, boy," the father of the family said behind him.

"Close the door," someone else said.

The cloud drew closer, the rumbling increased in intensity.

"Please," a little voice said, and tiny hands pulled pleadingly at Ash's stained and crusty uniform jacket.

Buggies emerged from the fog of crimson-tinted grit, ugly motors vibrating like cantankerous growths on rickety frames, drivers with Talosian crested helmets pushing levers and turning wheels, festooned with hanging chains and mismatched poles of metal and wood sharpened to points and chipped and bent at all angles, and fleshy indefinite limbs draped in various stages of decay, some recognizable: feet and hands and unraveled intestines gone gray and limp in the fetid air. And the passengers, faces grinning wild and insane, frothing with anticipation of violence, teeth bared yellow and screaming, celebrating. And giant leering skulls from various beasts, with mouths large enough to swallow children whole—gaping, moldering teeth and polished yellow bone foreheads so that the cometlight reflected from them, blinding their prey—attached to small motorized mounts, their scaly hides worn by their riders, crowns of bone fashioned from their antlers and horns. And everywhere pennants and strips of ragged cloth bearing the simplistic symbol of Talos: an uninterrupted field of crimson. And the legions came through the smoke.

They carried Talosian fluted rifles sharpened to wicked points, and glimmering blades of various shapes and sizes shot through with veins of phosphorescent color, and some had spears with nozzles that belched flame, tanks of slurry strapped to their backs. They hollered and laughed and whistled and cracked whips. Discordant music played from their vehicles and a recorded voice said, "All roads lead to Talos or death!" over and over again on a loop. They brought dogs with them that ran barking through the streets. Already, a couple of the Talosians had leapt from their vehicles and stopped to fight each other in the dirt. They poured forth, what little was left of their uniforms torn and hanging about them, filled in with scraps of mismatched clothing like lowly theater costumes: coats and scarves stained with the blood of their prior owners; stolen headdresses from obscure religious ceremonies; hats of all sorts; human fingers and toes sewn about like medals of honor; sections of skin stretched taut and cured; strands of Novan lace from the traditional dress of the virgin; and one with his eyes painted to look like explosions; and one hurling vegetables from a basket to splat against the walls of the houses; and one beating his bare stomach like a drum; and one with a bloody screaming mouth where he'd bitten his own tongue; and many with stark pictures of the Archon's face, painted in all colors, a grotesque joke, laughing at them all.

"Awa save us," said the father over Ash's shoulder.

Shrieks of rifle fire entered the air. Talosians leapt from their buggies and bikes. They began to smash windows. Somewhere, a baby cried out. Ghastly faces came through the smoke with blades cold and dark.

Two men, smiling wickedly, approached Ash and the house. One of them had an eye patch painted to look like the moon. The other, a pike weapon with three forked blades fused at its end, glimmering green in the cometlight. The people inside the house pulled Ash back inside and slammed the door closed. A moment later, there was a polite knock. Then, the window on the other side of the room shattered. Several of the children shrieked. The man with the eye patch reached inside and took up a cup of tea sitting on the nearby table. He sipped it, smacked his lips agreeably. The family began to back away from the window and door. The man with the eye patch grabbed a biscuit from the table and began to eat. He looked around casually.

The door burst open with a crash.

The father stepped forward, putting himself between the Talosian and his family. The man with the tri-pointed pike thrust it forward, impaling him through the middle of his abdomen, snapping his spine. The father, with nothing but a lightly expelled breath, slumped forward, folding loosely, as the Talosian ripped the pike free and grinned up at them all.

Ash dropped to his hands and knees and crawled. The house filled with screams. He hurried beneath a table and across to the back of the house. Without looking behind him, he groped up the wall until he found a window. Closing his eyes, ducking his head, he threw himself, shoulders first, through the window.

Glass shattered; he thumped to the ground outside. The screaming continued behind him as he picked himself up and glanced around. The village was filled with Talosians, surrounding it, everywhere. A couple of dogs fought over something, ripping and growling. A Novan woman ran from a gibbering Talosian. Papers tumbled through the streets like leaves. Bikes zipped back and forth, leaving trails of foul-smelling smog that hung in the air. A Talosian ran continuously in circles. Several men hacked at bushels of dried grain with their spears and blades. One Talosian was bending over, firing his weapon so that he appeared to be farting flames from his rear, his nearby friend cackling uncontrollably. An escaped oxhoag squealed and floundered awkwardly through the chaos, grafted flaps of flesh that would cook up as delicious guinea steaks wobbling on its bulk, the legs of several other animals swinging limply and uselessly beneath it, tripping it continuously, the animal's eyes rolling and rolling with blind terror.

Ash was caught in a crowd of villagers, Talosians all around, their faces like demonic masks, red and bloated. He couldn't run. He couldn't breathe. He was pushed, herded. There were several barking dogs ahead, baring their teeth, held back on chains by grinning Talosians, the crowd of villagers surging to avoid their frothing mouths.

Shadows closed over them. Ash looked up and realized they were inside a large barn, arching wooden beams above. He was pushed, further and further, people surging all about, closing in the gaps, until the entire structure was filled with people, each struggling uselessly with his or her neighbor, their screams blending into a single ineffectual roar of torment and fear.

"Hello!" a Talosian said from the loft overhead. He waved a flaming torch above his head. "Welcome to your last city council meeting!" He flung the torch spinning over the crowd.

Villagers screamed, trying to get away, but they were stuffed too tight.

A shot rang out and the Talosian tumbled from the loft, landing with a thump into the moaning crowd not far from where Ash struggled, pushed on from all angles, his hands up, reaching, desperate.

Smoke began to drift over their heads; the smell of burning wood filled the air. Ash could see a boy about his age climbing over the people toward an open window, but his body suddenly jerked, and he fell limply back into the crowd. From within the forest of sweaty arms, a face he recognized swirled into view—the little girl who had been playing with his hair only minutes ago—then she was gone.

"Ashley," a voice called out. "Ash! Look up!"

Directly above him, hanging by a rope from the rafters was someone he'd never seen before. The figure was dressed in a thick cloak with a hood pulled tightly over the face so that the figure's features were obscured in shadow.

"Ash," the strange figure said, reaching a hand down for him.

Panicked, his heart racing, Ash leapt up, swinging his hands desperately, but he fell short. He was out of reach.

The smoke was thicker now. Shrieks filled the space, curdling the air, human suffering and pain.

"Try again," the cloaked figure said.

His mind blank, Ash began to claw, climbing the people around him like a cornered rodent, digging into the flesh with his fingers, kicking and pulling, until he was on top of the churning crowd. He reached up, and caught the figure's hand.

The cloaked figure pulled him upward, but something caught Ash's foot. He looked down and a boy about his age was clutching onto his leg, looking up at him with a crazed expression.

"No," the figure pulling him up said.

Without thinking, Ash began to kick. He smashed the heel of his shoe into the boy's face. He smashed until something broke and the boy's face was bloody and boy's grip loosened and let go.

The hooded figure pulled him up, even as flames licked up the walls and charred debris began to fall into the crowd, up and into the shadows, into the smoke, through a torn opening in the roof, even as the smell of burning hair and charred flesh came after them, and down the back side of the barn, the strange cloaked figure tossing him into a hay pile at the foot of the barn. The cloaked figure landed lightly beside Ash and crouched before him. In the cometlight, he could see the figure was a woman, black hair leaking from the sides of her hood, eyes bright, skin glinting a faint purplish hue.

"I found you," the hooded woman said. "Come with me."

The woman stood and she was very tall, taller than anyone he'd ever met before. "This way," she said. "We must keep moving."

"Wait," Ash said. "How did you—"

"I've been sent to find you. My name is Skin."

"Skin?"

"Yes. Come."

A great wave of heat washed over them from the burning barn, the screams from inside so constant they were almost white noise inside Ash's head. "But..."

Something crashed inside the barn and the screams ebbed and flowed. Voices approached and two Talosians appeared, spitting on a young man, pulling his pants down, laughing. Another appeared from the other side, dragging a woman by her hair.

"We must go," Skin said. "This way."

Ash watched the unnaturally tall, purple-skinned stranger move toward the edge of the village, toward the trees. He had little choice: he followed.

They dashed across the open ground. The Talosians didn't seem to notice them, too intent on their pillaging to care if a few stragglers managed to escape into the woods.

When they'd almost reached the trees, Skin stopped suddenly.

Something was coming, something dark and tall, even taller than Skin, its face looming. It crashed through the branches with impunity, not speaking or yelling or making any other sound.

"No," Skin said.

Mother Marlena's effigy thrashed into view and came at them.

~

"Get back," Skin said, putting herself between Ash and the effigy, drawing an impressive blade from the scabbard at her back.

The effigy moved, not quickly, but relentlessly, its arms reaching out. With each step it took, chunks of mud flaked and fell from its skeletal structure, except from its face: impassive; blank depressions for eyes; a large, sharp nose; no mouth, no expression. It brought its arm up and swung it like a club.

Skin dodged nimbly, rolled, and her blade swung upward along the effigy's abdomen, cutting away mud and filth, but little else.

The effigy immediately swung back with its other arm and Skin was forced to dodge back, put on the defensive.

"Hey there, pretty boy," someone said, and Ash whirled around.

A Talosian soldier was approaching him, a man dressed in a woman's gown—tattered and worn, that may once have been pink—pointing a curved blade like a sickle at him. "Come with me, pretty boy," he said and smiled, missing teeth.

Ash turned and ran into the chaos.

He was engulfed in smog, choking him, making it hard to breathe. A horn honked and a buggy jostled by with a woman in the passenger's seat stroking a strange animal with striped fur on her shoulder. The woman turned and, for a brief moment, made eye contact with him, before the buggy was gone. Ahead of him, a couple of Talosians tugged a group of women through the murk by ropes tied around their necks. Everywhere soldiers were intoxicated, swaying and laughing; one singing while another blew a small horn made from what appeared to be some sort of sea creature's shell; one who appeared to be drinking slurry directly from an old china cup. Somewhere something exploded, a ripple like an earthquake going through the ground. A Talosian soldier about Ash's age was sitting on a barrel clapping his hands enthusiastically, making exaggerated faces at no one in particular, next to him a man bent over, vomiting. Dust and exhaust swirling in irrational eddies. "Found some fruit," someone shouted. And motors revved, and everywhere things were left in flames. And as Ash ran, someone on a motorized bike kicked him and he tumbled into a crater and was still.

~

Ash lay without moving for an indeterminate amount of time, until the last of the motors had passed, until the screaming faded, until a hazy ringing hush fell over everything.

He lifted himself, and peered into the murk. Threads of crimson mist slunk along the ground, slumping into crevasses of earth torn by buggy wheels and explosives. He stood and looked about. He could feel his legs moving beneath him, carrying him back toward the village.

To his right, there was an overturned buggy, flames burning lazily from several shredded pipes. A dead dog lay in the road, along with several other motionless heaps. An oxhoag floundered in the mud, its legs broken, its struggles useless.

His eyes, he found as he walked, no longer wanted to focus on anything, glazed and numb. Nothing he saw horrified or repulsed him any longer. He was in shock.

A girl, a young woman, materialized ahead of him, limping across the street.

"Pera?"

The girl stopped and turned to face him without recognition, her eyes completely vacant, staring past him, as if at some distant gray sea. Her mouth hung open, blood dribbling over her lips and down her chin; blood smeared the insides of her thighs, staining her dress.

"Pera?"

She turned back and walked slowly and stiffly to the other side of the street, and disappeared into the mists.

~

He found himself in the middle of the street, loose sheets of paper swirling all around. The papers were raining from the sky. He felt numb, and hot, feverish. He felt...detached. He felt...old. He knew what was written on the papers.

He couldn't see anyone. He couldn't hear anyone, just the howling of the wind. It was cloudy now, everything gray and colorless.

Blinking back dust and smoke, motion caught his attention and he could see Talosian soldiers approaching. They were not talking, moving silently; they'd already seen him.

He didn't run. He stood motionless and waited.

The propaganda papers made a simple statement: EXTERMINATE ALL NOVANS.

LENA

She crawled, because she lacked the strength to stand. She was going to die. The dirt and leaves and twigs of the forest floor caked her hands, cut into her skin, but she didn't care. The fever blazed through her. Sometimes it grew in intensity, as if someone were blowing fire through her skull, and she was forced to stop for a moment, her thoughts running riot, devouring themselves, tormented and violent. Insects crawled over her body, since she was unable to brush them away, eager to begin the process of decomposition that would return her to the natural cycle of the forest, to the muck through which she wriggled, one agonizing inch at a time.

Her head felt heavy and swollen. Sometimes she felt as if she was floating just above the ground, other times that she was too heavy for the earth, and with each pathetic movement was sinking into it, into the murk, into darkness.

At one point, she looked up to see an animal, with round eyes that shone yellow, four clawed feet and a mouth filled with sharpened teeth, staring at her. The animal stopped to sniff at her upraised hand, then moved away and was gone.

At dawn, as light began to filter through the trees, a calmness came over her. Her heart beat slow and steady. Her head continued to burn, her body trembling with exhaustion, but those things no longer seemed to matter. She was at a crossroads, something tugging on her gut, summoning her.

She lifted her head. A beam of light shone in her eyes, blinding her. She began to crawl more quickly, as if the cometlight had given her strength. When she came upon a tree fallen at an angle, she clutched at it, ignoring the rough bark that made her hands bleed, a stray branch cutting her cheek, and somehow pulled herself to her feet.

She staggered onward, slowly at first, as her legs pricked and burned, and then more quickly. She moved. If she stopped, she knew she would fall and rest forever beneath these trees, unable to rise again. The invitation continued to tug at her innards. Her bare feet began to bleed, but her body was no longer important to her.

Hours must have passed and she was numb, walking in the direction she was called, barely aware of her feet moving, one and then the other. Her mind was empty, her thoughts blessedly silent.

Somewhere toward evening, as the shadows of the trees became long and deepened, she came into a place—a grove of sorts, the trees falling away—the reality of which was in doubt. There was no longer ground beneath her feet, nor sky above her head. There was nothing, and it was pleasant.

She was filled with an overwhelming sense of peace and a desire to simply let go, and everything that she had still to do would never take place.

Then the tug became stronger, and she stepped forward.

She found herself alive—Lena Alexander, wife of Josef and daughter of Doran, mother of four children—in a forest similar yet somehow different from the one in which she'd been moments ago, everything brighter, deep and vibrant.

She felt her pains settle over her, like a heavy and familiar coat, her sickness and burning forehead, her hands and feet torn from her struggles, hunger and thirst like rabid animals fighting for importance within her.

She also felt something else, purpose and importance, dragging her onward.

~

She fell to her knees before the stream, plunging her head into the shockingly cold water, opening her mouth to drink. The sores on her lips stung, but she sucked the water in and swallowed and swallowed. She rose and puked everything she had in her stomach over the grass, then brought her head down and drank some more.

She was like this, in this vulnerable position, when the animal attacked.

It leapt onto her back, claws digging into the flesh just behind her shoulders. She fell, rolling, and the animal would have taken her throat in its jaws and ended her right there, but she brought her arm up just in time. The animal's jaws closed over it, teeth sinking into her.

She watched her blood flow, filling the animal's mouth—a bear. She was unable to free her arm, the pain coursing up and through her, giving her strength she didn't know she had, making her angry.

She beat on the side of the bear with her free hand. Then struck its nose with her fist. The animal's eyes glared at her, yellow and crazed, unrelenting. She tore at its mane, she clawed at its eyes, but the bear shook its head violently and held on.

She stood, and for a moment, she and the bear were at a standstill. She was taller and it was heavier. She glared back, trying to figure out what she should do, but the pain was intense, lancing up her arm.

The bear snapped its jaws for a better position, and she yanked her arm free.

The bear looked at her, licking its chops. She could see its legs tensing, preparing to lunge. She flung her hands out, frantically searching for a weapon.

The bear came at her and she threw an awkward kick. Those lethally sharp teeth closed over her ankle, pulled her off her feet. She tried to pull free, but the bear whipped its head and savaged her foot.

Her hand closed over a rock. She lifted it and brought it around. She smashed it against the bear's head, but still it attacked her.

She lifted the rock high with both hands. The bear glared at her, its eyes dark and round, seeing her, preparing to once again lunge for her exposed throat. It was fast. She brought the rock down. She couldn't see or aim. She could only bring it down.

A dull crunch.

The bear lay still.

Lena lay on the grassy bank by the stream for an untold amount of time, her wounds oozing feebly. When she'd regained her breath, she ripped strips of cloth from her clothing and bound her wounds. She bathed and cleaned herself the best she could in the stream.

The rock she'd used to kill the small bear had broken open into shards when she'd dropped it, dark and glossy on the inside: obsidian.

She took up the sharpest piece she could find that she could grasp comfortably in her hand and used it to open the belly of the bear. When she'd peeled back enough skin, exposing flesh red and sinewy and raw, she began to slice chunks of muscle free and devour them, blood running down her chin.

~

Sometime later, she came upon a camp of many tents, setup in a clearing in the forest.

She limped into the camp, her lips and hair stained with blood, cut and bruised and beaten, her makeshift bandages dark and soaked through. She wore the raw bearskin over her shoulders. As she moved slowly along the path that served as the main road between the tents, people began to appear, staring at her with fear and awe, unable to look away.

Lena limped, but held her head high, her eyes blazing with triumph. The people congregated and began to follow her. No one spoke. The crowd grew.

When she reached the center of the encampment, she stepped onto a flattened rock that lay there. She rose so that all the people could see her. She turned to them. Their eyes followed her.

For a moment, she hesitated, unsure, even at that moment, what she was about to do. Then, in a voice quiet but assured, she said, "The Talosians are here."

People stared at her, looks of bewilderment and grief. She did not know where they had come from or what they had been through, but she knew, could see it in their eyes, that in a very short amount of time, they had seen a great deal of brutality, cruelty and death.

"They have attacked Fallowvane," she said. "They have killed my family." She swallowed and took a deep breath. She secretly hoped some of her family had escaped, but she didn't dare say so out loud. She summoned her anger, and the strength she had found in the woods, pushing away the grief that threatened to overtake her. She clenched her fist and brought it up for everyone to see, her arm shaking with effort. "They have come from the vile City. They have fouled our lands."

She paused, looking sternly out at the crowd. "Where have you come from? What have you been through?"

For a moment, no one answered. Then, a woman's voice, "We are the People of the Conspiring Moons."

"I know you," Lena said. "You are here in Nova to live lives more closely bonded with nature, and with the universe. You're stargazers. Something you could never be in Talos."

A murmur of assent ran through the crowd.

"And Cave Town? What happened to your homes?"

More murmuring and pained looks, but no in the crowd spoke.

Lena nodded. "I'm sorry. I understand your pain." She lowered her head and spoke softly. "I was alone, and sick. I was ready to die. I was ready..." She lifted her dirty face to the crowd. People leaned forward, listening intently. "But I was called back from the brink." Her voice rose, louder and louder. "I have come back! There is a reason I am still alive!"

The crowd reacted now, more than murmuring, a collective exultation. A few people even clapped their hands.

Lena straightened her body, although it made her wounds throb, and stood tall. She practically shouted her next few words, strong and commanding. "My name is Lena Alexander and I have come back! I have come back for one purpose and one purpose only!"

The crowd held its breath, waiting.

"I am going to build an army!"

The crowd cheered and clapped.

~

"Who leads here?" she asked.

A woman spoke. "My father. I'll take you to him."

Lena stepped carefully from the rock that had been her stage and let the woman help her along. The people began to disperse, but they were talking now, excited. Her simple speech had uplifted their spirits, made them more than frightened refugees. They had begun to consider taking action against their aggressors. They had begun to consider revenge.

Now that she was back on solid ground, she became aware once again of her pains and the feeble state of her body. She was amazed at what she had just done, and in shock that it had worked. She hadn't known what she was going to do until she was doing it.

"I'm Helen," the woman said.

Lena smiled. "Thank you, Helen."

They stepped through the opening of one of the larger tents and inside were several cots, a table upon which a map of the area had been unfurled and held in place with a few stones, and a man sitting in a chair looking over the map.

"Father," Helen said. "Did you hear the commotion outside?"

The man lifted his head and smiled. "Every word." He was much younger than he had at first appeared to Lena—hunched like an old man in his chair—perhaps in his late 30s or early 40s, with a dark beard, black hair, and kind eyes.

There was a dull buzzing sound and the man came around the table, his chair moving by a motor. He wheeled up to Lena and held out his hand. Lena took it, his grip firm.

"It's good to meet you, sir," Lena said.

"Likewise, but call me Fennric." Using a set of controls before him with one hand, Fennric drove his chair back and around to face the table, turning his head to the side to look at her. "You don't remember me, do you?"

Lena looked more closely at the man. She shook her head.

"That was a powerful speech," Fennric said. "Do you really think you can go up against the Talosians? You can hardly stand."

"I'll need help."

The man laughed, but it a good-natured sound. "You really don't remember me? I suppose you wouldn't. I've changed nearly as much as you have." He looked her up and down. "We have a mutual friend."

Lena held her breath.

"He's the one who gave me this chair."

Lena waited, knowing the name this man was about to speak.

Fennric raised his eyebrows, and opened his mouth to speak.

"Marrow," he said.

# ~ THIRTEEN ~

TALOS

EMBLA

The sky was cloudy, giving the City a muted quality, threatening rain. Despite this, the streets remained crowded, the citizens of Talos too restless to remain indoors.

Embla walked quickly. She could feel tension in the air, like a piece of rubber stretched taught, ready to snap. She'd been busy, but she'd still heard the rumors of an altercation on Market Street. She didn't, however, trust the reports. Such open violence and slaughter simply did not happen in Talos. Surely accounts had been exaggerated. She'd looked once for Paimon, to ask him what was really going on, but Paimon had been otherwise engaged.

There was a commotion in the street ahead of her. People were shouting. She heard a weapon discharge, saw the smoke, and then the crowd around her began to move, stampeding in her direction.

She had no choice. She turned with the crowd, and ran.

To either side of her, people with faces either blank and dull or frozen in panic—depending on how he or she dealt with fear—pushed in around her. She tried to move faster than them, but many of the people were larger than she and jumped ahead. Her mind was blank, having not been given enough time to rule on the nature of her situation.

When she saw an alley, she turned sharply to the left and stood out of the way of the passing horde, breathing heavily.

What the hell just happened out there?

Only then did she become aware of her frantically pounding heart.

When the mob had passed, it was strangely quiet. From where she stood, the street appeared empty. She was very close to her destination: Corridor M and the passage that led to the School of the Unseen.

She peeked around the corner. The streets to either side of her were deserted. She stepped out onto the pavement and walked slowly. It was eerie, as if she'd abruptly slipped out of place and now walked in a dimension uncannily different from her own.

She could see it. Corridor M. It was unlabeled, of course, but she knew it was the correct alley.

A sudden sound startled her.

Across the street, two people had shattered a shop window and were entering the store. They were talking, but Lena couldn't hear their words from where she stood. It was a wig shop. They were laughing.

She watched as the two people, a man and a woman, perhaps even a couple, plundered the store, stuffing various wigs of real human and animal hairs into their bags, and then, when their bags were full, snatching up as many as they could carry in their arms. They leapt through the broken window and stood on the street. When they saw Embla watching, they threw their heads back and laughed like loons. They ran down the deserted road.

Embla turned away and moved quickly to the mouth of the alley.

"You," someone called out to her. "Awan or Awae?"

Several disheveled figures approached. Their leader was a priest in brown robes swinging a smoking censer back and forth, filling the street with a ghostly fog.

"Answer me now!" the priest said.

Embla ducked down the alley and ran.

~

She didn't stop running until she'd reached the canvas doorway to the School of the Unseen. She stopped to catch her breath and look behind her to make sure she was not being pursued. The courtyard was quiet. The only thing she could hear was her own labored breathing.

She pulled the flap aside and entered. She walked, more quickly this time, down the corridor and into the large hall. She felt safe inside the school, although it remained a curiosity.

Bailey looked up from the book he was reading and watched her approach.

"Still here?" she asked him, standing at the foot of the throne of books.

He gave her a look of condescension. "Yes, we're still here. Where else would we be? We read. Why? Have you found something better to do?"

Embla shrugged. "Sorry. I forgot about your bird."

Bailey looked irritated now. "Crow is a raven, okay? Just leave me in peace, would you? Maya's down below."

Embla found the pull chain and lifted. The door in the floor opened and she descended the stairs.

"Embla!" Maya said, rising from her chair to give Embla a hug, which she returned, shocked by the polarity between Maya's and Bailey's welcomes.

Again, that feeling of unreality washed through her.

Maya held Embla's shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Have you brought something for me?" She returned to her plush chair.

"Yes," Embla said, taking a seat and pulling something from her bag.

Maya took the object wrapped in cloth. She placed it on a nearby stool and pulled the stool between them so they both could see. She carefully unwrapped the object and looked at the spoon inside. "Whose is it?" she asked.

"Auron's. The House of Aesthetics."

"He used it personally?"

Embla nodded. "Yes."

"Most excellent." Maya rewrapped the spoon, bent over, reaching her hand under her chair, and pulled out a wooden box. She placed the spoon in the box, closed it, and slid the box back into place. When she was done, she looked up at Embla. "Good," she said. "Only five more to go."

ASH

Ash woke and lifted himself. For a moment, he couldn't tell if he'd opened his eyes or not, the darkness was so complete. His heart raced with fear as he tried to remember where he was and what had happened to him.

"Niko?" he said into the dark.

Someone moved nearby. "Yeah?"

"How long have we been here?"

"I'm not sure," Niko replied. "Days?"

"Okay."

He was in prison, still in prison.

He'd been taken by the Talosians, but instead of killing him like he'd thought they were going to, they'd tied his hands and he'd been put into a crowded cage with other prisoners and been taken here to this place. It had been a grueling journey of several days, but he could hardly remember it now. He'd subsisted on a strange gruel given to him in shallow animal shells.

"Is Wolf still here?"

"Yes," Niko said.

"How are we going to get out of here?"

"I don't know."

They fell silent for a time.

"Niko?" Ash said.

"Yes?"

"Why were you and Wolf looking for me?"

He heard Niko sigh. "You really don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

"We thought if we could get to you first, before the Talosians..."

"I don't get it."

"They say you can talk to the dead, their spirits, even bring people back to life. Is it true?"

"I don't think... You mean ghosts?" The thought terrified him.

"The Talosians want you to be the next chantiac. They think you're a saint or something."

Ash thought about everyone who had been after him: The People of the Conspiring Moons, Skin, Mother Marlena's effigy. He shivered.

Niko cleared his throat, whispered in the dark, "Is it true you can see the spirits of the dead?"

Ash's eyes rolled as he looked about, his heart beating in his throat, expecting to see faces moldering and bloody coming forward from the total dark, screaming and gibbering with the insanity of death. He couldn't breathe. His heart filled with terror.

TREVOR

"The Archon," Trevor said carefully, "has requested a period of seclusion so that he may contemplate Awa." He took a deep and silent breath, and continued. "He has bid me—Trevor Rothschilde, Voice of the Archon—to take a more active leadership role, passing final judgment upon certain matters, disturbing him in his chambers only for the gravest of circumstances. To help in this task, he has created a High Council, consisting of members of his express choosing, all of whom you shall meet and hear from in due time."

He stood carefully on the spot he'd marked on the floor in his private chambers, looking ahead at the faintly glowing yellow light that hung above the lens of the camera, conducting himself carefully, composed, commanding, exactly as if he now stood before an actual crowd of people, just as he'd rehearsed many times.

"I have," he continued, "enacted a new policy of open communication. Voice boxes have been installed all throughout the city, from which you now may hear my voice and the voice of other important individuals. Additionally, functioning monitors have been put into place in many of the churches and one in Market Street, from which you may witness the face of your leaders." He stopped and nodded carefully to the camera, revealing only the faintest of smiles, as he'd practiced—to demonstrate to the common people he was on their side.

"And with that," Trevor said, "I would like to introduce you to the first member appointed to the High Council and the new high priest of the Church of Awa. Please welcome, Abraham." He stepped away from the camera, leaving no one before it.

A moment later, Abraham stepped into place. "Good evening," he said. "I am Abraham." He smiled. He had a long face, elderly and wise, yet with a full head of thick, conservative hair, a davon of course, as were most of the priests, including the exarch for the House of Awa. "The Archon has decided I must oversee the evolution of the Church. I am here to ensure your best interests are upheld."

He paused for a moment, and then continued. "I know, my children, of the debate that rages within you. Is Awa male or female? Some would ask of me to rule on this difficult question, but I assure you, it is not my place. Only the Archon may make such a ruling, and I promise you, when the Archon emerges, he will have an answer. Until then, I ask you to please maintain the peace. Do not succumb to violence." He sighed, hanging his head slightly, showing the common people how much their conflict pained him. "That is all for now. Thank you." He stepped away.

Trevor fumbled to move quickly, came around to the side of the camera, and switched it off. He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, loud this time. That had gone well, he thought.

He shook the tension from his shoulders and slumped into his chair. He looked at the table, at the various faces arrayed before him, at his masks. He looked at Abraham, oddly grotesque without eyes filling those vacant holes. He looked at the rest of the faces of the High Council, slack and motionless.

The godgame had begun.

The saga continues in Book II: The Blood of Talos
