For the first time, Aida stirred from a Vale transition not to dreariness or desolation, but to riotous smell and sound.
A thousand voices called, shouted, laughed, cursed, and sang. Half-a-dozen exotic melodies reached her from varying distances, from full ensembles to lone flutes or drums. Odors of unwashed people mingled with animal dung and garbage, exotic cooking laced with spices, smoke from fires of all varieties, and fleeting other scents she couldn't begin to identify.
Brightness. As she became aware enough to regain vision, light and shadow shifted beyond her closed eyelids. Pleasant warmth radiated from the brightness' general direction. Aida opened her eyes slowly.
A dirty, freckled boy in rags knelt above her waving a crude necklace.
In her middle-aged years, she'd traveled the world widely if not deeply, following her second husband's motto: "Too much world, too little time." Apparently, even in this strange and unknowably-distant universe, impoverished children working to sell a foreigner some bauble looked and sounded the same.
A guard packing a bronze helmet and leather armor decorated here-and-there with fluttering white cloth scraps strolled by. He shook his bronze-pointed spear and yelled at the boy without taking the effort to walk over.
A Thorn jabbed up from the center of a faded and chipped black-and-white tile mosaic depicting the Vale. Though several men and women wielding wicker brooms swept through the space, dirt packed every crack and crevice. Spear-wielding guards wearing bronze helms and greaves stood in pairs watching each arched exit; most bored, a couple arguing, enough smoking pipes to thread a pungent haze through the space.
High overhead, a massive, domed, stone pavilion displayed the Vale's sky. The single thread of white cut down the middle, bright-edged thorns filled the periphery; Jesus' crown enlarged and inlaid in high contrast. Here and there, fallen tiles left earth-toned gaps, as though the Vale itself decayed to reveal a mundane, red-brown stone reality.
Beyond the broad stone columns holding up the echoing dome, a city bustled. Men, women, children, animals, and other creatures her mind struggled to classify walked, marched, danced, haggled, argued, laughed, ate, drank, spat, shat, or exchanged coin, goods, and gossip.
Most pack animals proved variations on long-legged insectoid/sauroid hybrids, the majority matching the rough size and role of a mule, horse, or camel, but many dimensioned more like giraffes. She could only make out their long stilt-like legs as their owners led them through the filthy, crowded, clay-brick streets. Many buskers played instruments while others performed stupid-human tricks or dangerous displays of courage/stupidity for coins. Gaunt beggars packed every doorway or nook. A few planted themselves brazenly in the center-flow of the streets, forcing the traffic to eddy around them and earning more curses and blows than coins.
The multitude represented every possible skin-tone though most shaded the middle between the dark and pale extremes. Hair colors and arrangements likewise struck a diverse note. All the adults seemed to wear at least one earring and most wore two, from simple bone studs to huge loops of silver, copper, or brass to ostentatious gems pressed into gold.
Clothing hugged the same brown-red spectrum as the clay brick, with occasional flourishes and accents. The wealthier strutted in full outfits stitched from bright pastel layers of silk. Togas, robes, sarongs, loin-cloths, aprons, long tunics, and rags over sandals or bare feet dominated. Many children ran about naked; by their half-starved looks due to poverty as much as custom. Beyond Fallon's scrubs, she saw not a single pair of pants. He clearly knew it, basking in the double takes and open stares his pair drew from the street.
The boy snapped his fingers in her face, waving a twine necklace graced here-and-there with bits of shell or bead. His gap-toothed smile accompanied a sing-song sales pitch she understood in context if not content.
She waved him away as she sat up. "I can't understand you."
At her dismissal, he sprang into action, pressing the necklace like a headband against the luminous Thread she'd earned in her Partaking. He repeated a word as he tapped the line, something like "Ebonar." Their word for Dynast maybe?
"No, thank you. I can't pay." She pushed him away gently.
Growing desperate, he placed it against her neck.
"No, really, I-"
His eyes widened and he jerked away as Feral grabbed him with both hands by his threadbare tunic and heaved him bodily into the street. Wailing, the boy pinwheeled through the air and disappeared through the nearest archway. Angry shouts and curses arose from a group of other travelers on their way out of the dome. One nasty-looking fellow with a long braid hanging across his face took a step towards them, sized up Feral's "you want some?" body language, and changed his mind. He settled instead on an offensive gesture that Feral sent back languidly.
"No!" Aida surged to her feet and ran a few steps the direction Feral had hurtled the kid. He'd vanished. Hopefully he'd scampered away, not been trampled or nabbed. If her Feral killed someone, she was sure she'd be held responsible.
"Having people follow you is just more ways to fail," she muttered. Anger lit inside her, half at herself for no good reason. She grabbed Feral with her good hand and spun her around, jabbing a finger into Feral's face while taking the tone she might use to discipline a naughty dog. "No. Don't. Bad. No throwing children!"
Feral shrugged from her grip, glaring back like a rebellious teenager. White Spiral's damning to Feraldom remained a mystery and Ghillie's seemed a tragedy, but Aida could imagine Feral burying her long knives in someone's guts at the flimsiest provocation.
Fallon stepped between them, a glaring anachronism in his proudly-worn scrubs. "Welcome, Mother of Exiles. Welcome to Jadeye's Cupola Thorn. Welcome to the verse of Heaven's Tread."
"You don't need to call me that." Aida let Fallon lead her from the giant stone edifice. The guards at the exit jumped to readiness from sizing up a cute young woman amid the passing traffic, but a single glance at Aida's forehead earned unquestioned passage.
"This place certainly is... wow."
Aida's senses reeled as they stepped into the warm sunlight. Not only did the sound amplify as the rich and generally-pleasant melange of scents assailed her on a hot breeze, but the city stretched as far as she could see, curling up at the horizons to meet overhead.
"Huh... huh." A rush of vertigo left her sitting in the dust and dung as her mind struggled to process what she was looking at. Fallon helped her to her feet as Ghillie minded their straying puppy of a Valeer.
A city coating the inside of a titanic, hollow rolling pin?
Canals threaded the streets and buildings, choked with slender boats and crude rafts and barges. Fields of crops spread where a modern city might host parks.
Pools of burning sunlight blazed from a dozen regularly-spaced plazas. They burned so brightly it hurt to look directly at one. Tiny figures streamed towards them to hurl trash over hard-baked boundary stones, the detritus incinerating to clouds of ash. Smoke from these and a thousand conventional fires curled up on the warm breeze to form a thin haze, thickening into a smoggy smear down the city cylinder's center.
A couple dozen precariously-tall scaffolding towers reached up into that smog. Each grew from a sturdy stone base, transitioned to wood, then grew increasingly fragile until it spread into tangles of nets and platforms in the center. As the towers passed through the center and off the other side, netting turned to scaffolding again, continuing across to reach the stone base planted in the city on the far side. Vertical roads connecting opposite sides of the city?
From her perspective, some were towers while others appeared as rope bridges connecting left and right not up or down. Others canted angles between which her brain struggled to reconcile until she realized up was always the center of the cylinder. Haphazard stairs, ladders, winch baskets, and lifts festooned the structures, swarmed by figures ascending and descending laden with pots, urns, bundles, bales, and bushels.
Following her gaze, Fallon nodded knowingly. "Wicker Ways."
A handful of inestimably-huge insect/octopoid creatures hunched here and there amid the disorganized city-sprawl, each waving dozens of fantastically-long, whip-like tendrils up into the smog. Whip-like from where she stood, anyway. Probably more tree-trunk at the base if she understood their scale. The creatures looked alike until she directed her gaze from one to the other to discover considerable variance in size from 'just' massive to absolutely monstrous. Their coloration varied from red to brown to mottled green and yellow and even tentacle and leg counts varied considerably.
"Reachers. Sect-bred, obviously. Direct flow. Rescue unfortunates who drift astray."
Tracing her gaze up the tentacles, she stared at the hazy heart of the cylinder where a heavy stream of traffic floated in both directions. Flowing tributaries, a human river flowing to and from Wicker Way platforms. Workers among the platforms and netting plucked goods and people from the flow with long, hooked poles.
"The Sighted Path drifting from Iris to Iris."
Though the zero-g human current disappeared into mist and haze, Aida could barely make out water spilling from a circular opening in the cylinder's far end. Waterfalls flowed out in all directions to fill canals and raised aqueducts. Long, watery fingers reaching into the city. Mist roiled up to form foggy clouds that rolled across the city. On the cylinder's end-wall, surfaces unobscured by water and mist offered scattered glimpses of an enormous, faded mosaic: the entire city's end composed a giant eye whose pupil weeped waterfalls.
Broad canals flowed down the largest boulevards, their waters' brownish tint plus wafts of feces and wet garbage on the wind told her they served as open public sewers. She gagged a bit as she saw people filling clay pots and urns from their waters. The canal networks terminated in sprawling rice paddies. She didn't envy the farmers wading those fields.
One other tower joined the city's opposite sides. Standing out starkly amid its ropy kin, an obsidian stalagmite and stalactite rose to pierce an immense, thousand-faceted emerald large enough to contain an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Said giant green gem hung just offset from the Sighted Path traffic like a glinting eye scrutinizing all who passed.
"Ocyl's Spire and the eponymous Jade Eye."
Aida walked around the grimy Thorn Cupola, tracing the human river at the city's core to the cylinder's other end. It wore a massive eye mosaic to match its weepy opposite. Its pupil seemed about the same size as the Jade Eye and seemed the source or destination for most of the Sighted Path's traffic. Innumerable balconies, windows, and doorways crossed by the zigzagging lines of exposed stairs traced the mosaic's surface. Yawning, irregular cave mouths randomly marred the design. Haze, distance, and angle obscured whatever lay beyond the Iris.
At a guess, the whole city might stretch a few-hundred stories high. She estimated the city's cylinder spread half-a-kilometer across and many times that long. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands had to live here.
What lay beyond the hollow Irises through which the traffic poured? Her mind reeled.
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Through it all, birds, bird-analogs, and six-eyed dragonflies darted, lizards scrambled, monkey-oids roamed and chittered, dogs hunted scraps, large insects, and rat-like critters. Cats basked on tile roofs and napped on window-sills. Terrier-sized versions of the giraffe-like beasts trotted about in packs, hunting fist-sized bugs while centipedes long as her arm scuttled over garbage heaps or crackled on street vendor's spits.
It took a few minutes before she could manage a couple more words. "My. God."
"Heaven's Tread." Fallon encompassed everything with a broad, theatrical arm lift. "Home to the largest market and biggest city in The Book: Jadeye. Nothing existent in any verse cannot be bought here, in lots up to the barge-load. Here, Mother of Exiles, we will procure what we need."
"You can stop calling me that."
"If you wish for One-Eighth..." He sighed. "If you wish your verse to become as you desire, we must get your name to every ear and lip."
Her gaze drifted endlessly as new details constantly caught her eye.
Strange, diffuse shadows created by the burning sunlight plazas.
Gray soldiers armored like rusting, walking tanks whose presence drained the color around them.
An alley thick with prostitutes of both genders. They all wore short garments hung from one shoulder and matching makeup colored their lips and nipples or dangling glans.
A painted shop sign depicting an erect phallus thrusting up between kidneys. Under the sign, a lean woman with black-stained hands presented a human liver floating in a glass jar to a bejeweled, silk-robed, dark-skinned family. The woman focused her sales pitch on the old man hunched in a finely-carved, ivory-inlaid wooden wheelchair at the family's center.
"Gonist selling her wares and services. You want to stand around gawking like a barbarian menial all day? No, of course not. Come, Mother of Exiles. We're off to meet the Dynast." He rapped her lightly on the shoulder and led them through the busy plaza hosting the Thorn Cupola.
"I said you don't have to call me that."
He raised his voice to be heard over the tumult. "Dynasts accrue titles like pale beggar boys attract beatings. Best start with one of your creation before another you dislike finds hold and grows on you against your wishes."
"If you say so." She looked about again for the kid Feral chucked. The boy was long gone.
They paused at a branching where plaza transitioned to streets and alleys winding through a chaotic array of precarious-looking, multistory, mud-brick buildings. Fallon squinted, sniffed, and sneezed then cowered as random objects and shouts hurled his way. Within seconds, everyone within view bowed their heads, thumbed their foreheads, and chanted.
As Aida stood mouth agape, the behavior rippled out in all directions. The chant echoed as those nearby finished and went back about their business while others further away started up.
"What the hell was that about?"
He sniffed and wiped his nose with his scarf. "Chant of Inoculation. You don't have them?"
"We just say 'gesundheit' or 'bless you.'"
"Seems short for a chant. Does it work?"
"Work at what?"
"Preventing sickness." He veered into his speaking-the-obvious tone.
"Of course not."
"Then why say it?"
She couldn't find an answer to that.
"Okay, let's back up a second." She pointed up. "How are those people flying?"
He shrugged. "In Heaven's Tread, weight decreases the higher you ascend towards the Sighted Path. When you reach the center you weigh nothing."
"But, if you steer wrong and fall..."
"A multi-limbed Reacher corrects your error."
"What if they don't and... oh God!"
A stench far above and beyond unwashed humanity or open sewers assailed them. She gagged and nearly vomited. Fallon pressed his scarf over his face, the Ferals' nostrils flared, and she envied the Valeer's apparent obliviousness to stench as he was to all else. The surging traffic parted, noses covered and pack animals skittering.
A horde of zombies shambled down the street.
Aida's panic shifted to a feeling of surreal detachment as she noticed a grubby girl leading the zombie throng. The kid held ropes strung through the chest harnesses worn by the zombies at the front while other ropes joined them to their fellows. A disorganized zombie pack train. Crude wooden masks covered their faces, little more than two holes bored in a plank. Most bore bulky burdens: clay jars, cloth bolts, grain bushels, and arrays of other parcels, packages, and tools. Amid the shuffling, sack-clothed human forms, the occasional animal corpse ambled laden even more heavily than their human counterparts.
On the lead girl's shoulder rode a rotting crow with only a few dingy tufts of feather still clinging to it. Its head tilted to take Aida in with one milky eye as the horrible procession stumbled past.
"Fallon, what the hell am I looking at?" Aida covered her mouth with both hands as they joined the compressed traffic skirting the grotesque caravan.
"Rotters," he said disdainfully. "If I may ask one boon, Dynast: no matter how desperately you find yourself in need of currency, do not sell me to the Crowmen when I die."
"Sell you to who?" She glanced back rotter train before the human flow closed it from sight.
"Sell me to a gonist rather and let my organs help some rich, ailing merchant or cremate me at a sun plaza. Anything but the Crowmen." He shuddered then pointed towards the dark, gleaming Spire. "Come. Hard to get lost when you head for that."
"Can't we buy our things first?" she said as they turned down a side street. "I don't think I'm ready to meet another Dynast yet. Also, buy with what? The sum of my worldly possessions amounts to a necklace, a dress, and a fat, fleshy parasite. Magic blood or not, I'm broke."
She waved the letch, accidentally attracting a woman selling woven rugs patterned in bright geometric designs. Fallon deflected the merchant.
"Buy with this." Fallon tapped the line on her forehead. "A Primus' First Thread may not perform as well as originally intended, but hopefully it shall still function to plant and sprout your verse's seed."
"So you mean buying lumber, nails, plows and horses or something? What good is all that without people?"
Fallon smiled. "Do not worry about that. When word of a new verse opening up reaches the streets, we will spend every waking hour sifting through, choosing among, and turning away multitudes."
"Who's this Dynast person we're meeting again?" She walked close behind Fallon as they pushed through the winding streets. Feral took point, shoving and glaring a path while White Spiral marched close at Aida's elbow. Ghillie dragged the anxiously-muttering Valeer along behind them.
Aida could pretend she was walking an old market in Bombay or Cairo until a train of thirty-foot-tall praying mantoids festooned with packs strode over the crowd. Then a glance up brought into view the river of people and parcels drifting through the smog with an upside down city dangling above and all her imaginings crumbled.
Fallon snapped his fingers in front of her face. "We go to meet with Dynast Ocyl, then procure strings so you can function without me constantly holding your hand."
"Strings?" Aida stopped as she saw a tense, silent crowd gathered around something. The crowd shifted and she glimpsed a man performing what looked like a surgical procedure on a moaning woman strapped to a table. As White Spiral dragged her onward, a scream pierced the market hubbub. The operation's audience groaned then cheered.
She glanced back as they turned into an alley. "Was that man cutting that poor woman open in front of an audi-"
"Strings like these." Fallon unwrapped his scarf, stopped, and turned.
"I always wondered why you always wear..."
In her time, she'd seen several smokers puffing away through tracheotomy holes. Fallon bore a similar setup except taut, densely-meshed white threads stretched across the gap in his throat.
"Those are strings?"
"Yes." The strings vibrated like a drum head of strung wire as he spoke. "Seneschals still obtain them to translate should their Dynasts tread far from the spine of the Book to where the civilized tongue means nothing, even though such a place has not been found for generations. Until you, anyway. And, of course, they proved useless there."
He pointed into his ear. "Its match resides here."
"So those somehow let you speak or understand any language?"
"In theory. Whoever sent me to fetch you, however, somehow knew all artifices reliant on current would not function in your verse. Hence my forced, partial slavanting to pour your ugly, useless language into me."
"Current? You mean electricity?" She touched her throat apprehensively. "Can't I just learn the language?"
"What's electricity? Sounds like a disorder of the mind, a schism between you and the Logos. Is that what you have?" The look he fixed on her spoke volumes. "And why not? You learn everything else so quickly."
"Maybe if I had a better teacher who actually explained things I would," Aida shot back. "And not excited to have someone drill a hole in my throat - probably with a dirty drill in front of a live studio audience no less."
She waved the letch at him. "I've already had a couple pieces chopped off, I'm not excited to lose more."
With reluctance, he nodded. "I suppose we could set our sights on something less permanent if more obtrusive."
When they turned, they found an unsavory pair of fellows lounging in the complex shadows at the alley mouth. One picked his teeth with a long knife. The other scratched a scab on his ear. As the latter regarded them, his head tilted and a long braid fell across his face.
Loud finger-snaps from behind.
Aida turned just as Ghillie shoved the Valeer into her. The tiny Feral's hand slid into her ghillie suit, emerging with her long needles splaying from between her fingers like claws. Scruffy figures prowled the shadows behind them. White Spiral drew her bowstring from a pouch at her side and strung her recurve in one smooth motion.
Aida's first husband figured himself a gangster before a judge "encouraged" him to enlist for World War II so Aida knew rough men when she saw them. "Muscle" looked tough for shows of force on the street while "heavies" were the real deal. Aida looked among the ruffians surrounding them and wished she'd learned how to tell the difference.
Fallon approached the pair before them with his hands raised, his tone smooth and confident.
Aida wished she had strings already. If talk broke down, she'd know only when blood flowed. As long as she was wishing, she could have learned karate when she was younger or brought an AK-47 along with her.
Feral's hands rested lightly on her knives. White Spiral nocked an arrow to her bowstring and angled the quiver at her waist for easy reach. The Valeer knocked his head against the wall, moaning.
Whatever Fallon said went well at first. Laughter erupted and they entered into some sort of negotiation. The mens' relaxed confidence spoke volumes. In contrast, her three Ferals wound tight as White Spiral's bowstring.
Out of nowhere, the one she dubbed "Braid" shoved Fallon back. Fallon fell on his butt then scrambled quickly back to his feet. The other lowlife, "Toothy," laughed uproariously.
The gang in the alley behind shuffled a few steps closer.
"Fallon, promise them land in my verse!"
Braid squinted at her.
"Stay out of this, Dynast," Fallon said without looking. "If we allow men like these to dominate you, your rule shall be short indeed."
"If we turn men like these away, what's the point?" She pushed forward. White Spiral moved to intercept her. Aida stepped around, the Feral's unwillingness to remove her hands from her bow preventing her from stopping Aida.
Feral felt less constraint and grabbed Aida's wrist. Aida twisted free and darted forward, wondering if she was crazy. Feral followed a few steps behind, blades sliding from their sheaths.
Aida thrust her forehead forwards to emphasize the luminescent Thread. A chill went down Aida's spine as she met their eyes: they already knew. Maybe chose her specifically because she was a Dynast. What did they call it back then? Ransom?
She tried to make her voice loud, confident. "See this? I'm a Dynast! I've got an empty verse looking for hard men to stake claims in it. You want something from us, how about we give you more than you bargained for?"
"If only they knew how empty," Fallon muttered.
"Less commentary, more translation."
Braid said something to Toothy over his shoulder, clearly intrigued.
"Dynast, this will make us look-"
"-like we need men not afraid to fight for their turf," Aida finished, not taking her eyes from the leader. "Tell them. Now. That's an order."
Grudgingly, he did.
Braid looked perplexed, glancing at his armed compatriot several times with a "they for real?" look before asking skeptical-sounding questions. Fallon turned to her and spoke in a low voice. "They accept, but want collateral."
"What sort of collateral?"
Fallon nodded towards the Valeer. "Until we get back, they will hold him. This is a bad idea, Dynast. Valeers are a rare and expensive commodity we cannot afford-"
"Our Valeer is a valuable person in my retinue, not a thing," she shot back. A detatched voice in her head commented on the strangeness of having a retinue instead of a timeshare on an overworked, undertrained, floor health aide.
She pitched her voice low, as if anyone in the entire verse beyond Fallon spoke English. "Is there any other choice? We're outnumbered and these men look desperate."
Fallon shook his head. "I cannot believe Dynast Ocyl would allow a fellow Dynast to be accosted-"
"Fallon, focus. Do you think these men will honor the agreement?"
Braid called out to them. The man radiated machismo, impatience, and the satisfaction of the cat that cornered the mouse. Fallon replied with something placating, earning back something like "well, hurry up!".
"Well?"
"They have to know we will go to Ocyl with this affront. His retribution will be harsh and final. They will sell the Valeer the moment we are out of sight then procure passage to a new verse. Valeers are valuable enough to earn them the old coins that still held wafers of currence in them." He shook his head. "It does not matter. You must give the Valeer over or trust the Ferals to see us through."
"Damn." While her Ferals seemed experienced and ready - their blank bone masks casting them in an inhuman and terrifying light - the gang outnumbered them at least two-to-one with who knew how many others lurking nearby. "Gah, fine. Valeer."
As Fallon turned and began to speak, Aida gently guided the Valeer forward. His babble-and-rub routine grew more agitated.
"It's okay, we'll get you back somehow. I promise."
Braid stepped forward, seized the Valeer, and yanked him away as if afraid she might change her mind. The Valeer cried out. Aida's heart lurched at his distress.
At Aida's gesture, the Ferals lowered their weapons. Feral sheathed her knives with suspect casualness.
Fallon's hand rested firmly on Aida's shoulder as he spoke softly but firmly in her ear. "We will get our Valeer back from these uncouth menials and see them all damned to Ferals, I swear."
Ghillie and White Spiral stepped close to her, weapons still at the ready.
Braid and Toothy stepped aside, the latter gesturing dramatically for them to proceed. As they passed, Aida and the others maximized distance from the ruffians.
Feral did the opposite, shouldering hard into Toothy.
Aida 's gut twisted tight. "Feral! Don't!"
Toothy smirked at Feral, then reached out to flick her chin.
Feral's knife buried to the hilt in the man's sternum before Aida even realized it had left its sheath.