In search of Alexander and his family, Hope and Brunhilde travelled south with their wagon of bandit treasures, and came to Sissine. After their journeys through deserted ruins haunted by ghosts, fights with cursed bandits and meetings with travellers doused with melancholy they were relieved to find peace and anonymity amongst the ever-changing faces of the city. Nobody asked them how they came by their wagon filled with treasures, where they were going, or what brought them to Sissine. All the locals wanted was to provide ready entertainment, food and drink, and in return accept the steady flow of coin.

Sissine was well-known as a stopping place, a town where caravans headed for the east silk road paused to rest and meet cargo ships travelling south along the river to the coast. Even more known as a place for adventurers to pause and reconsider their travails into the northern wastes. Coin often changed hand in Sissine, and not always under the knowledge of both parties.

Despite Brunhilde’s scolding, Hope squirrelled choice gems and jewellery from their pile and guarded them jealously. She could tell that the finer ones would have to be sold in a larger city where fences or nobles could open their purses. But the smaller cut gemstones were enough for her to rent a palatial room in a wayhouse, one that took up the entire top floor of the inn. Though the ale was dry and dusty and the attendants woefully lacking in manners accorded to her royal personage, compared to the drudgery of wandering in the wastes it was as if she had been lifted back up into the sky. She dragged a metal bath-tub into her rooms, filled it with steaming hot water and sat by the open window. She lounged naked in the water, one leg hanging out and dripping water on the floor. She drunk ale and watched clouds in the sky scud by with their freedom.

Brunhilde was more responsible. She had no need of riches. She wanted to gift these riches to Alexander and his family. They should be rewarded after losing everything to bandits.

After a few days asking around for Alexander, she decided that they must have continued on south, to the coast. She tried to persuade Hope to follow them, but the Princess was enjoying her brief respite too much. After shouting through the locked door of Hope’s room, Brunhilde gave up and decided to wait out Hope’s leisure. She could do with a rest too; the wastes had been tiring to travel and hunt in.

Hope was tired in spirit and body. She was a Princess without a court, a royal mage of the Sky Cities with no home and no way to return. She was lost in the dust of the forgotten earth. In her schooling she had learned of the outside world, but only in passing reference. The complicated rules of magic and society were so demanding that they blocked out the sight of everything else. She only knew the stories of how the cities had punished the earth dwellers during the Age of Storm. They floated above the land, blocking out the sun and causing all life underneath to wither. She had thought the earth to be lifeless and empty. She was living amongst the footnoes of history.

She was withering. She had spent too much energy to punish the thieves that had taken her sword, and for what end? She could have torn them to shreds with a fraction of that power. She was unsatisfied. The sword lay in its scabbard against the table of her room. She felt its power even in its sheath.

She ducked her head under the water and held her breath. Light wavered in the water above her. This was a luxury she could not have at home. Her trainer’s voice came to her:

“Vulnerability is the only crime a Princess can be guilty of. Awareness of your surrounding is what keeps you alive.”

She stubbornly kept her head under the water, as the hazy view of reality washed back and forth. Her arms ached to pull her up and scan the room, check the door was still locked, but she stayed hidden under the water.

She burst up and took gasps of air. It was liberating to live away from assassins and jealous cousins. Perhaps her mother had sired a sibling whilst Hope had been away. But what suitor could stand up to the icy mind of the Queen? The most virile stud would wither under the judging gaze of her mother. She laughed at her own impertinent imagination and stood out of her bath. Hot water and flattened suds sloshed onto the floor. She gripped her sword and span it around her lazily. There was a terrible power in this thing. Terrible enough that it had been abandoned down in the depths of her city. Terrible enough that it had frightened her mother. Terrible enough that even as it ate her alive, she dreamed it could stand up to her mother’s magic.

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Why was she weilding this sword against mortal bandits? Her mother's dead heart was a more worthy target.

She had grown lazy down here. Letting idiots come near and take it was a sign that she had forgotten where she came from. She was tired of running. She needed to find a way back.

She took a brief foray into the marketplace. It took her a day to find the proper tools, the largest telescope she could find and a fine astrolabe. With no sign of Brunhilde around she had to carry the fat telescope up to her room herself, struggling with it on the stairs and shooing away the attendants who tried to help. When it was safely in her room, she threw a handful of silver coins down the stairway and shouted down.

“Bring me some paper, and things to write with.”

After a while she heard a knock at the door, and opened it to see a serving boy holding armfuls of crude paper, quill pens and ink bottles. She pointed to the floor and he carefully dropped his burden, peering sideways at the strange instrument setup by the window. Hope grabbed him and pushed him out.

They day was still light, so she sat down to study the astrolabe. It was finely made of brass, light and simple so it could be used by travellers for navigation. Constellations and bright stars were marked on it, precise enough considering it was made by surface dwellers. It had none of the secret pathways in the sky scribed on it, but only those who lived in the Sky Cities would know them. She would have to use her knowledge of the sky to improve its utility.

She took a pen and started to copy parts of the astrolabe. Ink dripped onto the paper; a dark splotch spread out from under the still pen. She needed to scribe a line, one of the great leylines in the sky. Ink dropped. She doubted herself. More ink dropped. The pen touched the paper and a thrill of fear shivered through her, the same thrill she felt when she delved into the forbidden depths of her home. Nobody down here could understand the equations and symbols she was going to write, but the invisible grip of her tutors halted her. How curious. She thought she had escaped the harsh rule of her mother and the Court, but the pen hovered and the ink dripped.

She pressed the nib to paper and drew a long arc. Relief washed over her. She was her own master; she could act against her tutoring. She turned the paper and checked her diagram against the astrolabe. Satisfactory. She went to draw another line, and her hand froze again. She heard a babble of voices in her head, the sounds of the court; nobles reassuring themselves how learned they were, laughing at the idea of humans still living on the surface, like ants. Again, she forced herself to scribe another secret line of the sky onto the paper. Still, she felt a pang of betrayal, as if she were laying open the heart of her flying city for surface-dwellers to see.

She took a new piece of paper and started to write an arcane formula, the name of light that allowed her to wield its power. Halfway through her hand shook and the pen sliced through her work, spoiling it with an inky smudge. She dropped the pen. Her hand shook. She thought her tutoring had been to fill her with knowledge, but now she saw it was to lock knowledge within her.

Hope traced her fingers over the tattoos on her arms. Could they have scribed this compulsion into her skin even? She knew the meaning of every symbol tattooed on her body, but perhaps she carried more secrets than she knew. Did she have traitorous rules scribed into her very skin. Her fingernails dug into her arm.

She screamed and threw the paper and astrolabe away. She flung herself onto her back and kicked and punched the floor in a tantrum. She was a princess, she was a powerful mage, she could not live under the thumb of her stifling mother and her rules. She battered the wooden floor until her hands and heels ached and she was panting. She heard her mother’s voice, always the same after one of Hope’s tantrums. ‘Have you quite finished?’

“No, Mother dearest. I have not finished. I have only just begun,” she said to the empty room.

Hope rolled onto her knees and stood up. She gathered the astrolabe and papers and sat down again to scribe her maps of the sky. No matter if her hands shook or her belly filled with dread at every line. She would make a map of the sky to find her city in the sky. And then, and then… She bent herself over the paper and worked and sweated into the night. The work was hard and her back and eyes ached from it. But the morning sunlight shone through the window onto sheets of paper laid out like a rug, albeit a rug with arcane celestial diagrams. She flopped onto her bed, exhausted. Her eyes still burned and her hands were cramped. But she had a map that she could use come nightfall to track her home in the sky.