CW: cultural destruction, interrogation, firearm reference, religion (Christian and Greco-Roman references)

And to the woman he said, “Because you have cut yourself with the blade of the law, no more will your life be among the world. Favored cattle, never will you roam free again, for I now corrall you, and until the last day your kind becomes a creature of garden. Among your own kind will you live, all peoples becoming one and suffering the truth of my law; closed is the world because of you, and only from behind cloth and brick will you know it. Your generations will be spent in this labor; in toil shall you build and govern until the law’s fulfillment, for of mortar you were crafted and to mortar your bones shall return.” Therefore ADONAI raised the walls of Eden and gathered within them all living humans to dwell under the law that only the man and woman knew.

First-Tenth Testament, Genesis C 19:5-9

The Cyanoe and Longcaud forwarded official protests - but these were veteran crews on the way to retirement. The middle and younger generations of lawships did not respond. The inquest was quashed. Heartpage was a case of magnitude, and the last meaningfully hostile audit had occurred decades before the majority of lawships were yet in service. Thus the younger grews grew up in its shadow, took it as a simple fact of caselaw - the precedent was made, for better or worse. Commission and Command openly acknowledged mistakes were made, but the line remained: glorification was the right call, made from the wrong information. A perfect legitimization of the panic and heavy hand.

Heartpage was taken as a provincial outpost, a representative of a much wider shadow empire. Glorification was therefore considered a warning shot in the morning, a demonstration of force. This broad, diverged culture had to be reminded of what the true world was, what its demands were. A standard audit was impossible, no approach could be made in the months of stalemate and negotiation - but evacuations did at last begin.

When could one point to an era that required a respone of this scale? Not since the final years of the unification wars in the decades after the Ecumene’s founding itself; even the establishment of the corporate states had learned that lesson and kept a tight leash, only allowed it to change hands. The reasoning of the See, as it spread to Commission, was one of preparing for an existential conflict not seen in centuries. The world was turning, and the scales must be weighed.

But, of course, Heartpage was not an outpost. It was not one station of many on the border of a grand and deviant outer kingdom. It was not a parallel strain of neotene civilization broken off like a spoke from the wheel, overgrown into a spreading thorny rash. It was the last of its kind, last remnant of an experiment long failed. Each sister settlement had blinked out decades ago and spread to scrap. Its people was one of a scoured and lonely place, huddled together in what was a crown jewel of resilience and ingenuity in an era of utter scarcity.

And then the fire was gone. Of a parallel world nothing now remained. This is one of the unforgivable losses. Command must have felt a relief that there was so little resistance. Families split up and were resettled largely successfully, with the highest numbers in neotene-majority areas of See territory. What else? The guilt faded with the culture.

Brick Spine sel Hard Wave - Olive Tree Institute Dissenter’s Review

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Record VIII

Of fellow visitors and key performances

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“No.” I made a show of glaring, angling my head to look down on him. He bobbed on his perch. Nervousness he had reached several minutes ago, and was settling well into the prolonged stress now. “I told you, that is no longer in argument. Already you have lied to me once -”

“What! Lie? You throw this kind of language at me?”

“I accuse you of nothing, it’s a fact. I saw you lie. No normal employed citizen would behave so. These are baseline logistical queries, the kind that one does not scramble or blush at, unless there is something to protect. Is it your secret or theirs?”

He thought to harden himself in a show of frustration, and so Henarl snapped at me. He would not show me neck. “I haven’t ‘scrambled’, what is meant by that? Day by day you’ve dragged me through the accounts for the entire quarter; what have I denied you? Have I refused to you a single record, no matter how patently irrelevant? I doubt you are so hungry for insight, no lieutenant, you are on the hunt for a lapse of focus. The whole staff knows what’s happening.”

“What is happening?”

“Obviously there was nothing gleaned from the water commission staff proper. So now you are looking for an underling to scape. Why do you guess none but I will meet with you uncoerced?” Pouting.

“Listen, clerk - this, this is not a matter of petty ledger misplacement. This is not even about a bit of embezzlement on the commissioner’s part. We do not speak of extra yield-rations, or off-code quarters. Do you understand that? This is a significant misallocation. Maybe you don’t know that - as I don’t know if it’s your secret or theirs - but a full five percent of the island’s production is in contention. Highly abnormal, entirely unacceptable - how could one in your role not see? We have a keen and active scribe, your holding out will delay us but prevent nothing. You must speak.”

“Then why come for me! When did I ever lie? What moment was it that you first targeted me in!”

“In preliminaries you claimed you were unfamiliar with the commissioner's clan outside of the man himself. You chose your words carefully, but this was a lie. Shall we pursue this? Go name by name until you admit it? Who are you protecting, which of them is it?”

“Ugh - Emelry!” and he had broken character. “Time, time out, we’re unpacking this.”

Typical - using outside tactics to throw my performance off! “What! I was winning! You can’t simply call time at the moment you’ve been ferreted out!”

“No I hadn’t. Going straight to the clan ties? It was far too early to bring that in, you couldn’t have guessed at that yet! You’re factoring in the full scenario summary, subconsciously or no. I’m calling a foul here for extracharacterisic knowledge.”

“But you did lie there, I registered it, it was a perfect tell. You’re just upset you gave it away.”

“Maybe. But we both have most of the scenario, and that doesn’t sound like a routine question for a middle-tier clerk to me. You were chasing even there.” God, he was so smug! Why did he not bring this up last week if he was so concerned! He knew this was a key moment for my team’s progress and was trying to stave it off - and had the gall to call me extracharacteristic when operating like this! “I was very effectively concealing the character’s feelings, and -”

“Oh, indeed, you are back in character now: a terrible liar! ‘Very effectively’, please, it was splayed across your face even without the detector’s aid. This is absurd, I won’t take a foul for such -”

The intercom sounded alive into the interrogation room with Olkha’s curt voice. “Settle yourselves. That is the last pause I will allow. No foul. Sorry, Henarl, but the question is within expectations and other teams handled it without issue. Back to characters.”

Henarl and I settled, and showed each other the same glance - conciliatory, frustrated, embarrassed - and pressed on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Henarl was not my kind of person. He had a sullen and slow personality that was still content to be outgoing - that spoke to the lack of a certain awareness I found necessary. I did not quite like him, but neither could I ever approach dislike. He would be a good liaison upon graduation - was from good sales stock - but as a crewmate I would judge him more harshly. He was a stuffy and proud boy but with no arrogance in him, only an approval-seeking need to find a place and lie down in that groove forever.

It was interesting, realizing which classmates I still called boys and girls when thinking to myself, and which I already knew as men and women. A difficult age.

Henarl was a good actor. He was playing a cornered, romantic clerk in far over his head, a man even Henarl could see the naivety and incompetence in. It was a typical, even easy scenario, only slightly more advanced than early coursework - but it was quite a jump from theory to practice.

“Self-report,” Olkha demanded, not looking up from the transcript.

A deep breath. “Too eager, in places. I struggle with exaggerating my emotions too often. Part of me thinks it is effective - a flare of frustration or the joy of pursuit, positioning myself as a free and passionate hunter. But I slip into this too easily, it makes me less cold.”

“No,” she said loftily, still reading. “It wasn’t unbalanced. To me it accomplished the signals of drive and focus well - not volatile, but coming in knowing something more than was given. Good character; you could stand to hide your hand for longer, but that’s personal judgment. Not an issue in the behavior, just a choice of what tone to set. Here,” she turned the printout to me, pointed to the first place I had said ‘liar’ - “Why was the callout here? What were your other choices?”

I stiffened - I had an answer. “I had an opportunity earlier when he was discussing assignment history - lie of omission during the role in waterworks. This would have put him in close but brief proximity to characters F and R - I made a note of this here - but there was a possibility he would contradict himself during the expertise line of questioning. This was also minor enough that I was not sure I could have fully inferred it in the moment. The callout placement I made… I could also have saved it for our discussion of incentives, but I wanted the unbalance to be early. The ‘focus’ I was establishing - I wanted it to feel like an instant pounce, a hard misstep, rather than a looping-around reminder.”

“His moments of reticence didn’t factor in as a callout point?”

“No - that fear felt natural. An innocent could have acted in the same way if they were mistakenly suspected or brought in for supplemental questioning rather than primary.”

“Good, sounds correct. Alright,” she said, and clipped the paper back to her desk, “what could have rerouted you? Dig deep and think about it, be very honest with me. In this exercise we know the subject’s guilt for a fact. What could have diverted your attention from him? ‘Convinced of his innocence’ is one way, but the shallowest one. Take a moment.”

“No, I won’t require one. There were a few points. Knowing Henarl’s typical sense of interpretation, I suspected a full confession. I thought he would play it that way - cave early and completely, give everything up and place the blame squarely on his superiors’ shoulders. He had the leeway to do it, as he acted far more out of personal connection than personal gain. And I had no idea how to handle that should it have come, it would override my… decisiveness. I would necessarily read him as a coward, not a conspirator.”

“Then you know little about cowards. Good work, more?”

“I’d like to think I’d left few outs for drama - I can handle meltdowns. He could have tried to convince me by reasoned argument, I suppose, but I don’t see a route where he wouldn’t implicate himself there with the level of details necessary for such an argument… am I missing anything?”

“No. He was cornered, at the end, it was a matter of making the kill… So. I’ll make it official soon, but I believe you’ve earned three-fourths marks here.”

My face was instantly red, a rush of pride and relief. “Th-thank you! Thank you, instructor!”

“Mm. Last question: what’s your guess so far? The actual project in question, the hidden initiative - this was not explained in the scenario. Given what you have now, what’s your current suspicion?”

Deep breath. “Theocratically, the habitat is lax. Not strongly spiritual - that can be a good thing, as I don’t suspect anything apostatic here. There’s a reason the investigation is centered around the water commission; if not stemming directly from the commissioner, his purview is a major conduit of whatever is happening. So my wager is that it’s an issue of living space - extra population, extra biosphere? I realize I’ve neglected the wider regional political situation; the interior seems so straightforward and self-contained. But that’s my direction next: who is coming?”

She gave a platonically neutral response and dismissed me - I hoped that I saw a satisfied twitch in her eyes. Outside her office, Anahit was immediately in my face.

“What did you get! How was it, how was it?”

“Hmm,” I hummed, not meeting her eyes. But she caught my flicker of a smile and pushed forward until I was forced to say it. “Well, three-fourths marks.”

She threw her arms around my neck, spinning us in the air down the little brig corridor. “WAH! Yes! That’s incredible, you’re soaring! Ugh, how could it be any other way, of course we’ll be in same year forever, we’ll get there! Wonderful. Wonderful, Emelry. And isn’t she wonderful?”

I disentangled her, and we skipped back in long strides back, arm in arm. “As expected! These aren’t even final marks, you know, and who says I will get so easy a pair as Henarl during finals. And yes, of course you enjoy her - she is ruthless. No time, no time at all for cutting her words down, and she speaks with her teeth.”

“You are so smug, so smug because now you know you will sail through. Not so the worrier you’ve been for weeks, ha! Oh nooo,” she mocked me, “what shall I do short of perfection, how can I bear the wait for confirmation of what I know!”

“Oh, as if you’re any better. Eager girl! You play too much.”

The amused waver in her voice stilled, “No, I’m not playing. I’m just excited, is it not exciting? How liberating it is to fall more and more into the grip of the skill. Maybe all education is like that. But no schools so direct as ours, none with such utility to the company. And none with such access to an Olkha.”

“Everyone calls her cruel? I see why, but they’re wrong. I understand why you’re so fond of her now - she cut through me, Anahit, straight through in a single stroke. Never such clarity, such lack of student-condescension. So level. Illusionless.”

“As any speaker should be,” she said happily. “I do still wish you’d gone speaker-course, really. Smug and grand and fluent - isn’t that all you?”

“Never, too flowery. And how would we work together if we took the same role? Who would look after you, hm?”

The academy - those close halls and curtained rooms. It felt suspended underwater some days, so veiled and rippling, all connected through muffled sound. Close, tight, coffinlike discussion chambers with the concrete roundtables and pews. Fluttering, airy classrooms, only curtains separating the large halls, easy to cling to and fall into. It really was such an active place, one forgot how active, the leaps and falls that were part of the exercises. Flight. Weren’t we frogs?

But suddenly I was out. Present life faded back in - I’d been thinking too broadly. I stared upwards, vision reconstituting itself, at those rainbow glimmers of lights suspended under the great green dome of the grave tree.

“Broke it,” Kali said.

I held my head - dizzy - and slowly stretched my neck. “Yes. Aaah… yes, I lost it. I don’t mean to - the feeling of it slips away -”

“Emotional, that’s it. Spiral, pull in outside the moment. Motive force must associative, must eat and digest everything the feeling feels. Unmeant for sharing. Torrid, no? So how to clean it?”

I sighed. Looked at my hands, knuckle by knuckle. “It’s - there’s the detachment. Learning this by coursework is heavy meditation. Making those standardized loops personal requires a discipline, an ability to keep your head in order. One maintainins a space for oneself - a field - that memories can slot into without overwhelming you with their own perspective. Steeping-in rather than living-through. But shared that becomes impossible.”

E hopped around me, keeping eir beak pointed at my face. “Isn’t? So quick, you, so quick and perfect. Impossibly quick! Half marks, for breaking it.”

“Pff. Please.”

“But isn’t it? How is that space built? A square - a neutral form - how is there to be a neutral form between two people, two heartborn language? A bricking, a treading should happen. Walking together. Iron. What happened, tell me, next, the night? Now I know some of this story.”

“We went to celebrate that night. Her, I, another girl - Ameen Bera. Anahit insisted on inviting her. She asked me what I thought of her - nothing in particular, I said - but Anahit saw right through me. Ameen was another lieutenant-track, with a famous liaison mother she was close to. She began with a full foot over the threshold - you know? I’d be shy around her, impressed. I was very fervent there. How I’d wanted to compare notes with her, ask for direction on where to look, what she knew mattered in a lieutenant. I was chastising myself for my shyness when Anahit, she laughed at me, said how could I be so blind to not know we were already friends? I didn’t understand. We had talked during class, partnered on a project or two. But Anahit knew I was already friends with her, before I knew. How does that happen?”

“Why did you love so academy?”

Another flash of a blush on me. I knew what e meant. “Because it was prestige and progress without stakes. It was the thrill of discovery, secret discovery. It was fun and safe and of a home I loved. I was proud of being there, of belonging to it. There is a sense,” I sighed, looking high high up into the interior of the tree, “and I think all corporate states have it, of participation. In Ilion it is pure and small. It’s tight-knit, in the logic of families, a ring of sending letters and seeing off. I liked it, and it was easy.”

And then it was easy. We watched the rest of the night together, all of it. The hotpot restaurant the three of us had gone to, what we talked of - class gossip, hopes for future crews. We giggled, we hid our faces. Kali along with us, wide-eyed, I hoped it was a gift. I carried the wonder, unbroken, to when I slept. We woke together - and then it was eir turn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The center sang and sang and everyone listened. My fellow preborn - I knew what I was now - and people of the city. City! I couldn’t hear the words yet. I was listening so hard, at all times; they were starting to take shape, and I knew the tones. I could hear the tones. I could hear the feeling of what was being said - the penetration of knowledge - the long tower of stairs - the inner fire I had to hold. And I knew what bones were. The tone had called me here. Months and months ago on a day the fog rolled through the city and turned it grey I heard the echo I had been hearing before, the one I had heard behind throats, in second words, but now song and song filled with it and it brought me like a magnet.

Another preborn perched near where I laid. “Red/blue/sharp/soft/see/finish/there,” e sang to me. “Blue/soft/here/finish,” I replied. E flew away.

I knew what the world was. Everyone knows what the world is. The world is a place you are pulled out of but fly against - you live in the world through flight, through the current between ground and sun. Everyone knows the sun is fed by something greater, inner-outer source. The sun shapes the sky, and the world turns and pushes against its borders. The world is a barrel that wants to grow; it turns and presses. An egg grows with the spirit inside. That life grows into a further world. There is an endless ladder under the river, under a great weight of water.

In me was nothing but this drive. It boiled, coiled, swirled like a hidden eddy of flame, edging through my veins, feeling out the limits of my skin. My feathers tingled, each one, down in the quillpoints. God, God it was like fever, my eyes! It was building in me - it would burst - and I could not move it. More. Less. I looked up, the other student-listeners frolicing in the branch eaves, among the bones and bright edges.

I was here because I was once in the center of the egg, and now I was in the center of my skull, and now I was in the place that was the center of this society, this mass of higher ones who I was not, and this place was the center of the lower world. The sun was the center of the higher world. And once I was there, I would be gone to another center. But everything must be perfected first. Everything must complete. Cycle, sign, sight. The light changed, the hour marked, it was playing on the leaves, and each stone then shone from a different angle. There was a glow that was not fire. I knew what fire was. Fire ate and was kept. A kind of fire that was free, rote, faceted. A solid fire. Teacher - my teacher - my eyes, my nailpoints, I was… there was shaped shadow. There was the smell of sugar, and I was awake.

Bara noticed by that night. The nymph flock dispersed and lingered, and the adult students back to their homes. But now I was among them. “New name, why are you bent?” e asked me, after dusk fell and I had not moved from the little space on the ground floor e read at.

“I hurt myself. It was a sign. My life: I grew here in the hutches too busy, left with my friend, climbed and fell, it was a sign. Now. I refused city so world refused me. Not so?”

“So. I can see it, yes.” E bobbed eir head, hitched eir shoulders up - an old and ragged blue, well-preened but feathers thinned and bones grown heavy. Shuffling. “You can tell that story.”

“A desert now. This yolk-well of the city within it, in paint and blood. I am drunk on it, heart-point heart-point. Everything lacked, wanted, defined in these walls. Everything - the swell - the plumb - the beat - and key.”

I woke up bleeding. I coughed, my ears were wet and hot, my fingers came away from them red. “Dropped,” Kali said, paying it no mind as we found the world again. “I spoke no more to em that night. E left in a huff, that walking cloak - but we spoke first, then. And gave me more time to cook in myself, my broth.” Kali clicked eir nails, already an attendant of eirs was by my side with a wet towel, cleaning me off. It would stop, soon.

“Ruthless, you,” I said. “That was… I’m twisted up. How was it so smooth in the moment? You sailed right through the transition - and I along. But here the whiplash is, is agony, this, this…”

“Utter transfiguration. Nothing changing in particular. And you always in the moment, very the moment. One fails to describe it, no description. Before the faculty - red, far, shut, call, look.”

“How were you alive? Lucid, in the womb.”

“Eir eye was on me then. I was a favored student then. The speakings, eir’s, were for the benefit of all there - but tailored build circle of successors, keen who listened those. E died. I mounted em to the circle of kings, the ringlet of bones upper entrance. Eir eyes are blue now, true and tired gilded blue.” Kali’s claws snapped across the hardwood floor, polished and gleaming. “The world came to Savannah: you are late. The works and epics and treatises and games, all filtered down and settled. Thus was God given to me, you see? Thus in shape, echo pure, far away and like a new shower light. Bara read and read, and here we make the opposite of song in our fumblings. Dream pain, and wake work. My work isn’t that, but Gelo thinks asame, you saw. A shotgun: do you know?”

“No… I don’t know that word.”

“An old hunter’s weapon: pa! To bore the whole animal, all-covered target. A conic palm blast. Turn, Emelry, for I will gift you a shotgun. I will craft you into a shotgun.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back across the river, from the grave tree to the bank we nested at. My litter walked slow and I met no one’s eyes - I was dazed, it suited me. Rain, he was a celebrity in the city now, a beloved guest. I was too, I supposed - but when he passed, the esteem towards him took the shape of chatter. Questions, dares, boasts and taunts he took in kind. He laughed with the city, laughed it off, exchanged compliments, jabs, all to create a kind of safety. He went out of his way to show he was unguarded, as if saying, “I will not shy or shock from you.”

I met no one’s eyes, but they met mine. The crowds parted for me, they watched me. Rain was a cheerful new classmate: I was a dignitary princess. My esteem was a sort of reverence or even fear, what could I do with that but inhabit it? My litter walked on autopilot, I shared the chambers of the king, I carried the outer law. I had come here to change the world.

It was a long, low, late night. The streetlights across the city were a rainbow of senselessly arranged colors, but along the bridge-dam they were honeyed incandescent and built to splay their light out onto the murals. Fat moths with fabricesque wings. Beetles clinking against the lantern glass. I let myself sway in my seat. I let passers by, the tentative crowd hopping from perch to perch alongside me, to catch my eye, to take that curious glance, and I would look back as gold light flashed across theirs. A simple acknowledgement. A lonely girl walking home late, staring and aloof.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Where for me is my skinning blade?” Likin cried, shimmering and almost invisible at the center of the formation, recognizable only by the silvers e was clad in and the unique high and ragged tone of eir voice.

“Who will bring me the heft?” the crowd answered in patches, in one roar, the call-responders darting through the crowd for a better view.

“I gyre down the ladder land, where allwolf eats the sun

Call down soft and canyon cut, drown abide my lores

Gale beneath my skin I spare, my skinning hour come.

“I awhite, aswan away,” e called - the heart. From that center the wings grew, the turning head and clacking beak. A kite dance, hundreds of crows synchronized, shaping out the shadow of a single massive one.

“Abandon me aside!” the response came again. Loudest from Minak, who in the moment’s excitement hurtled up and away from our group to join the rightward wing, near the formation’s shoulder.

“Where for me is my cracking haar, who will bring me there?

Die unswayed of ocean god; mine is the skinning one

Who will my eye chaff to claim? Who can unhalf me?

“I was coming down for you,” “My master craft, my sign!”

“My blue and pale, my mark ashade, far away from me

I was eaten. I alone was counting out the gait

My bluest brave. My seed in snow. My petal rotted sweet.”

“I dive down welcome aroad,” “Alone now, I, alone!”

“What mark cut can follow me? My skinning hour come

Love and laugh and blood and brain, medicine I swell

My bower heart escaped from me. I settled in the dark.”

The whole week was a duty of entertainment. Rain and I had our schedules arranged in an ongoing series of playdates (there was no better word) with Ynewy’s circle of ministers: we were being jointly courted, and courting each other in an odd vicarious triangle. Outside of our sessions, Kali was permanently occupied across a table from Ynewy, both drinking delirious volumes of chocolate in clarifications over this or that territorial trivia, or such and such balance of trade and aid. The great dance between the two great cities of Savannah.

Quay produced quick and bright folk with deep eyes, their words were carefully chosen and spilled out of their beaks. Quarry bred proud birds: proud, ruthlessly fairminded, clean and vibrant, steelily shy. Looy, a lanky and sneering roan whose every movement was etiquette, exemplified these traits. E watched the dance impassively, neck following it as if e was above the sky. “Are you enthralled, Rain? Harka, no sport, will not tell me the read e has. And how to dare disturb this Minak! Ka. You. Is this beautiful?”

Rain took up four rows of bleachers - we were close to the exit to accomodate for our bulk, much to the chagrin of overruled Minak who had wanted a higher seat. But e found one anyway, leaving us, and Rain was happy to oblige. E leaned over casually, “Spectacular. And yes, of course, leave em to the play - e has been so dreaming of this. E’s tried to pitch it to me - I don’t pretend to get it yet - but it really is spectacular. Human dance at a certain level still surprises me, what is possible with a body so familiar - that awe gets doubled here, right? Look, you’ve seen me walk, how strange is it?”

Looy grunted. “How you do not die. Teetering pillar, yes.”

“And so here. I love dance, I’m a fan, I’ve seen good dances. Hyperballads back home had the benefit of Hightower schools and precedent, these ruthlessly competitive ateliers and social spheres, you understand, the only route into any main performances. Even of middlingly-sized cities. But no skill like that is going to find its way out here. We still hold a few for holidays, but they end up boring. All recitation, no revelry! Talent shows, by and for old men, awping at a traditional form dead for two centuries.”

“You still dance? Here, with the staff?” Looy was quieter - e hadn’t expected such an enthusiastic response.

“Just the usual holidays, yeah, no special productions. Again, petty, village-tier stuff. La!” he scoffed, grinning. “It’s a town built by exiles up there, so they have a sickly homesickness. A noble spirit of return, and then a pathetic nostalgia. Plenty to appreciate… little to admire. So I could show you some real performances, but they will not be here - not in the foreseeable future. Nothing that compares to this. And nothing, inner-system or out, that replicates it.”

Looy dropped it, shifting weight from talon to talon, weighing. I wish Rain had not called the quarter a “city of exiles” - would Quay and Quarry not qualify? And would they ever stop talking over the song?

The giant crow dove - the left wing plummeted, the right hovered in place, a waterfall of momentum with the beak pointing groundward. Slowly it evened out to swoop upwards again, too large for a single angle to capture it - I envied Minak for eir quickness, and I looked up so hard that my neck ached and my ears strained.

“Take this glass away from me!” “Drown it tide and turn.”

“Sharp sharp lie, and melting balm, I never wanted so

Peeling skein of corn and kale - flesh reordered thin

So billowed you, where I could hear, pale and careful turn.”

“A molt ago your face was mine,” “Mine, as was a sun!”

“My wander star, a morning glows, a hissing to the bay

Gallop down, you buried pile, bottle my debris

Shrapnel clean, come split my heart, split my skin ayear.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We filtered out - walking. The rest of the crowds simply flew away at the conclusion, but of course we had to climb our way down. Harka, Minak, Looy balanced on the railing of my litter, and so did Rain’s hand as he picked his way down the very narrow stadium perches.

“How long will you be here, Looy?” I asked em where e perched at the litter’s prow, confidently staring ahead.

E didn’t look back. “Days, while the load prepares. Updrafts will finish soon, then reassembly before the next barge passes. All timed, an agony to organize.”

“The kings still trading,” Harka explained. “Much still to decide in that load, and fare.

“Ynewy is never a king,” Looy snipped. “Stop.”

“Aye, well, I won’t say.”

“Rain Flower,” Looy shifted subjects, “your spider. We saw it, by the river you sleep. It alone could do the work, no? Carry our cargo up and weld the wing back together there. We proceed with what we have, but how little. Do not say, ‘it is not mine to give, it is my master’s’, because now you are here. How?”

“That’s true, my friend, la that’s very true. Who says no, who says no? But they bricked me once I didn’t get back. No emissary’s privilege for me, no. I had the wheel for the whole way here, but once my session ended they left me with a missive and nothing else. I’m beached, oh, how much poorer am I!”

“A friend brings gifts. A friend does aid.” Looy stared at him, expressionless, and waited long enough to be unsettling. Quay we had been in long enough to accustom to the common mannerisms, but Quarrybirds had none of these. Grave and direct, all of them. “Let’s, then. We can fix it. Likely.”

“You’ll forgive me. You’re welcome to access it - it’s scrap now. Janitors operate on deep company secrets, far far above my own grade. You’ll forgive me, surely, but I cannot imagine many people in the world doing anything about that lock.”

“But the wires of this bone are ours: Quarry owns them now. And whose bone was it? We can do it, I will wrench it open to show you. And you’ll fly with us. Harka, fly too, what do you think?”

Harka nodded. “Aye, worth and reasonable. With permission?”

Rain smiled and shrugged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But soon the engines were thrumming. Rain was laughing in incredulity there by the riverbank. The spider rested there, crouching in the pebbly sands of the riverbank with its tendrils dipping into the water to cycle. Rain had spilt its guts out; the bottom chassis was popped open and the mess of control modules sprawled out by their umbilical wires. Little drones, those spindly spider-hatchlings, were not subject to the lockout, and dutifully swept between the exposed components to clean away any sand that encroached. The carpenters had been busy - already a roofed roost cast the janitor in shade.

Clouds had rolled in. A gray, close sky somehow more colorful than in clear air. The warm-colored plains and green rashes of forest blended together, usually, into a blue-tinted brownish vague color far above you. It was best kept to peripheral vision, for me. Too long spend tracking those geological contours made my head spin, and I felt panic building slow and low deep in me. I knew how to turn it off now: looking away.

Without clouds, it was blue haze and red dust and a piercing fluorescent light. Spinelight, with exposure, was less ominous, but became stifling. It was an enclosed glass roof too distant to touch. The distance, the limitation, it blended to an infinite enclosement, a true but hard to sense limit of things. The whole world was there, stretching, waiting. But with clouds - the spinelight was softened. The blue of the air, the painted land, glowed from behind the grey in an almost iridescent spectrum. Pastel chalks. Healing mist. A warmth to it, cottony, summer-storm gentle even as the chilly rain spittled down.

We’d known the rain was coming, even just the drizzle. Clouds were impossible to miss - no horizon - just the long pale raindrop slide down the skyland as the formation rolled towards you. My towel I draped around myself like a shawl, and Minak had insisted on appropriating a cart vendor’s awning retrofit to my litter. Far before me, Rain and his attendant flock fussed at the janitor’s entrails - what were they even doing?

Part of the control module hung from the spider’s prow like a severed jaw from tendons. Looy sat on a little wooden stool with a precision solder in eir talons, working at watchmaker scale on one of several trinketlike components spread and sheltered from the rain. E had a clay cup of some indistinct food next to em, picking at it occasionally as e worked.

“That’s what?” Minak asked.

Looy continued working, not looking up. “Hm? Oh, a few routing issues only. You study networks? This is far more straightforward than was lent, that Rain said impossible! But past the door now.”

“No no, that fare. I don’t know it. May I’ve some?”

“This currantmeal? These are my little rations, no. It is what I have for this period. Speak to our suppliers if you’re curious, they are upriver for us - but really, it’s nothing special.”

Minak hopped from perch to perch, staring down at em. E had been exploring the janitor’s chassis for the past little while, finding new outcroppings and contours to perch on and investigate. “No sharing? And no taking, you all shun the king’s invitations. Why no dinner? Why not grace us?”

“We don’t ignore the invitations. Ynewy comes, each time…”

“Ka. And eats one bite to talk and talk. Are you above the eating and meeting? No dinner for you,” Minak mumbled, still fluttering around. “None come but Ynewy, who picks. Why?”

Harka looked over gravely. But Minak ignored it. Looy returned both eir gazes, stiffening eir neck and fixating again on the work. “How hospitable. Please and quiet. Let me work.”

“So above - great flier.”

But eir patience was done with quickly, and e dropped eir tools. “Young thing, what do you want? Here I am, awork and sustaining myself. What culture will you give me but habit-breaking and waste? Don’t decide my place - as if you paint and it comes to life! Take the food, starve me - but I will not eat alongside you.”

“Friend I order and impose nothing. You as Quarry refuse welcome. What do you tell when you leave? Scorn our king’s considerations? Mock what preserved?”

“Nearsighted, you. I work - I work through all dares - my dream is my work. What do you give me? This is welcome, cruel game? Go, complain to another idling in a premature late-phase. Glutton! Welcome, ka, such warm welcome no to show your guests - human guests too - such a performance as you loved. What was that long love song meant to convey? Punishment? I could say more, but I will work.”

“Mi! Nak!” Harka had enough at the first sign or raised voices, crashing to perch between them. Minak fluttered off, barely keeping eir balance. “Ka! May shame, Minak, now. And both of you! These dallying convictions, I believe nothing.”

“Nearsighted! E said, and you!” Minak protested, still waving eir wings. “Old rock. Here old disrespect! Vassal, we’ll abide this? Can’t you mark?

Harka burst out, bumping em with eir chest, wings still folded. “Can’t you give what you beg for? Talk and talk of open, charity, and where is it! So valuable, you say, to not value it. Proud. Where is the city in that? The meeting? And Looy - you are curt, I understand. I feel your disruption, Minak is hasty. But talk efficiency, bring that to em - you argue prolong back.”

“I only responded,” Looy said with beak raised - but e had at last joined the conversation.

“But angry. Both of you have it, before talking, petty and irrelevant. Neither spoke to the other nor respected their own stance. Think for this! Minak: you will come with me. Looy - we do what you ask now. Peace now! Speak later when fair things to say.”

Looy seemed satisfied. Harka hurried Minak away, scolding em the whole time to mingled protestations and apologies, and Rain squatted down next to Looy - these two got along better. They were able to talk shop, check in on the state of the jailbreak. Rain knew how to not step on toes.

The rain itself, meanwhile, let up. As the light persistent drizzle turned to less-frequent fat drops, I stopped being able to overhear. Thunks of drops on the awning, and everyone too busy to give me a glance. There were few chances to be so alone.

The communicator panel of my litter buzzed.

Anahit.

“Rain Flower! Rain!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank God he heard me. He ran over as well as he could, knelt right in the muddy red-brick walkway next to me, arms folded on the railing. Ruining his clothes, staring at me.

Silence on the line. I worried there was nothing there.

“Why are we doing this,” I finally said. “Waiting each other out? Talk to me if we’ve anything to say.”

She made me wait long enough to worry again. “I hate you now and you hate me. What a sad crew we have! What a silly, silly story we are in. Finally your voice again and you, you actor…”

“This is the first time you’ve hailed me personally. I assume you’ve something real to tell me.”

“I have called you seventy-six times for nothing. I was shocked you’ve deigned to acknowledge me. And now you talk as if…” She sighed, gave up on the sentence. “There is nothing to do.”

My chest shook, suppressed panic. “I had to do it. I could only do what I did. You all are quick and sharp, I know you are finding your way. Do you want to update me on the situation? You can guess what work I am doing, Harka has carried me..”

“Graduation speech,” she hissed, bitter and low. “Oh, we will cope. We will be torn apart! With our little adventures underway. That Harka surely ordered your mouth shut forever, I have nothing to ask you. I have nothing to say to you! You’ve ruined all of it, everything’s ruined.”

“Please… please. A hard hand we’ve been dealt. It will stay hard. What is happening there?”

“I have continued making my readings. I have kept working - God knows what you are doing, as you’ve rejected everything. If you would talk to us, Emelry, even talk just to me, have you found it? This same rot? I don’t know what you can do, what I should be doing… There’s something wrong here. The crows, the light, the developmental history, all those are symptoms but… its more, its between any of that. It’s not what we’re talking about any more. This is all… through a window, its set dressing! There’s something sick. I have no idea what’s happening, I feel like I’m dead. I don’t know anything about it. It’s sick and wrong. It’s not evil, or weak, or different. It’s a familiar key. I think it’s interplanal, it works in death. Look… I’m not talking to you.”

“Of course not. What is Bettany saying?”

“How would I know?” she snapped - and then a short gasp, catching her misstep.

“What do you mean? Is she being cagey? Is -”

“You don’t want to ask too much either, huh?” Her voice was sneering and desperate. Spoke too fast, as she did when nervous. I knew I was speaking too softly and betraying the same thing, but there was nothing to be done. “No plan. Flying blind. I’d laugh, dear, I would. You give nothing to me! No messages back, no pieces of the puzzle! Who do you think you are. You’re delusional, Emelry! Lost in dreams of fate! You who will order the world what it should be! Yes, I know that city well enough, I know what you’re learning.We’re all desperate now, desperate vessels, you’ve made it a desperate era.”

“It will all come out. Savannah cannot escape the sun, it will be brought out. That is the only way we have, that long process - it is now a rush to make sure the first movements are favorable. I reject - I reject only what stalls that, what paints a circle around us.” I said it wrong, with a tinge too much of panic: “Where are you?”

“I feel like… I’m so lost. I’m so lost and alone. Are you? Are you adirft in this same empty space, cut and cut and cut so far from…? Aaah.” She said, weakvoiced but more composed, “It’ll look better, right? For how close we were. Sells it better. More of an issue, and less of one, when we both flee, and the story gets split between us. They will have options on the narrative. It gives us time.”

“Where are you? You would abandon them too?”

“I will laugh, I’ll do it. Hang up now,” and she beat me to it. But not before a murmur of another voice came through. Kuryo’s, echoing in a very small room, and indistinct.

“Tell me first. Are you somewhere I can meet you?” I glanced at Rain for approval, he nodded vigorously. “Can we? Listen, please. We are moving reckless, but remain a crew.”

“I’m where I can make it count.” The line politely clicked off.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rain and Harka both insisted I not sleep in the water that night, not so agitated. Harka and three others had flown a whole bundle of blankets and cushions over to Rain Flower’s hut on the barely-claimed pretext of stocking the whole empty village. Swaddled in all these was almost as easy as the water; we sipped hot stomach-warming tea as Rain dried his hair.

“Does a steward have a place here?” Harka asked, bringing over a lantern in eir beak and carefully placing it where he and I sat on the floor.

“No, thank you,” I all but whispered. “Don’t concern yourself. I will speak with the king soon - tomorrow, early - and you will be there.”

“Aye. You’ll your secrets.”

“That’s not what I meant…” I said.

“No! No blame,” e insisted. “Good work. Bumble along, I - no barrier read I, only a skin. You two friends: I will welcome you again and again. Settle - talk - and talk I in a cozied morning. Sleep well?”

“We will, love,” Rain assured em.”Busy day, sleep soon.”

The river whispered, the cicadas chanted from the distant trees in great numbers - and a few clinging to the outdoor posts holding up the house. Harka flew off towards the city, lurching steadily through the tall dark sky. The rain had passed, the cloud formation transferred beyond us and now climbing up the opposite curve of the habitat. It had thickened, and far away were low murmurs of thunder, and occasional flickerings of lightning. Far away, muffled in distance as I was hiding in the blankets.

“That at least went better than what you said of the Redname call. Though similarly frenzied, those two. Crazy bunch, you all, haha. Are you having fun in all this drama?”

“No. I want to be done with it and call the See to cut through the politics.”

“Can’t call Mom just yet.”

“I know. And I’m sorry I didn’t come and get you when Redname contacted me. I was in the water, she had a camera on me…”

“It’s fine. You told me right away, and I heard this one. Stop being so nervous - I believe you already, la.”

“I do need your advice, you know. I’m being vulnerable here. I guess that they have fled to Redname’s partisans - if they are together, and have also fled, it is a similar mission they’ve undertaken to the interior of the third - should we chase them down?”

“Do you actually want to leave the city?”

“No,” I said, instantly. “I want to see the End, but they leave so early. My work with Kali will not be done.”

“Hmmmm.” He sighed, and laid down on the hardwood floor lazily. He asked the cieling, “How fast do you want to go?”

“God. As is possible. I know I’m flustered with that desire, to push and push.

“Here,” he said, “here’s what I say we can do. Ditch your old bestie. Her and Redname - write ‘em both off. Frantic worrying and vague warnings - they’re more flustered than you are, I can tell you that, and Kuryo the fatalist will always pull them in that direction. You were right when you told me last time, if staff had taken drastic measures they would have done more than flick my janitor off and make no changes. No, I say they are in a flurry of cleaning up their act, deleting evidence, preparing their own case. Futile - Harka says we have complete system backups right here, staff can touch nothing. They are panicking, but have had years to plan a slow contingency procedure. And Bettany is a strong and sly woman - Anahit was right that she has a perfect cover story of two devoted friends going rogue. The two of you were not the most stable at the beginning -”

“Alright, alright. Let’s not joke.”

He grinned up at me. “But that’s what I say. We’re in a good position, lieutenant. Really. We’ve fallen into being fortified. Forget everyone else, we can run for as long as we can get away with. Follow through, break the tether. Talk with Kali tomorrow - if you think it’s time to contact the See, then it’s time. It’ll be months for a decision in the court, months more if they wanna send someone. Talk to the king, draft a message, make contact. That’s what I’d do - and then keep running until they react one way or the other. You’re right there too - their response will be the one that matters, this whole mess can only go so far before landing in their hands. Put it there early, and put your name on it and Kali’s. Right?”

“Ka.” Why not. Why not letter to the King of the World? I would only be delaying it.

“You have a long life to reconnect with. To mend any broken faith. But we both know… Quay has… a tight schedule. They can’t wait so long, here.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I broached the subject in the morning - and from eir own desk beneath the grave tree e brought me a handwritten paper. E shone with pride, could not stop looking up and breathing hard. This was an old draft. E had been ready. Revising and revising this message over the years: deep underneath its current state, there were turns of phrase I could recognize from the same draft that Bara once kept, in the same place.

Revised and revised, by the generations of Quay:

O daughter of Delphi - son of the Sun! High one and voice of the Lord, I greet a king as a king. You who are the branch of gold, the bloodspring of goods, you whose spoke the world’s wheel turns upon: my friend and falconer! Will you fear my sharp beak and quick claw? Will you jolt at the death-scent my wings carry? It is few that know the weight of ruling. I speak from Savannah, first of many. It is happening. To you I call - to the line of Christs I entreat myself - for none other could bear my keen call. Call me, as a king, as a wolf, as a comrade! Call me from the outer dark, the terrible valley forest, the savannahs where we together were children once. Call me to the inner fire - I will lay at your warm and resting side - I will alight on your strong and treelike arm - I will hunt for you, and cast many gifts at your feet - for my forbidden one, my betrothed; for the wise one, the pure one. I will be as your rediscovered eye; return me to my socket. Now you will feed me of the lifeblood, for it was written, “It flew from you at the ebbing of the waters, and knew your name when your tongue failed to tell it.” It was I! My love, my pen, my heart is yours. O king of one million hands, to you I entrust my excruciation.