The human.
Eolh’s eyes shot open. He pushed himself up—or started to when a sunburst of pain shot through his severed wrist, making him gasp. Gods damn it! Even the touch of soft linens and cotton pillows was enough to make stars explode across his vision.
Every muscle was dead weight fighting against him, pulling him back down into the bed.
Get. Up.
Where is the human?
Get up!
He clamped his beak shut, and with a croaking growl, he forced himself to rise. To pull his long legs out of the warmth of the sheets.
Eolh stumbled to the wall while he waited for the world to stop spinning. The last thing he remembered was the Doctor coaxing him into one of the many infirmary rooms.
And then they gave me something to make me sleep. How long ago? How long until it wore off?
“Easy . . . Eolh . . .” an ancient voice whispered through the room. “You might rupture . . . all my work . . .”
It came from both the ceiling and somewhere under the floorboards.
“Where is he?”
Soft, leafy vines extended out of the wall. One of them had an eye, which blinked before focusing on Eolh. “Do not fear . . . I am watching . . . both of them.”
“Both?”
“They are . . . upstairs . . .”
Upstairs meant exposed. The whole world could see them, if they were watching. But Eolh found he didn’t have the strength to care. He sagged against the wall, still trying to exhale all his pent-up exhaustion.
A gleam of metal caught his eye. His wrist was capped with a circular plate of copper-colored steel. Somehow, it had been embedded in his skin, and already his scarred gooseflesh was scabbing around it.
“What the hells is this?”
“Smart metal . . . scavenged long ago.”
“Old tech?” He looked at it again. There was a whole tiny city of geometric patterns inscribed on the plate. Hundreds of parallel lines ran like rivers through mazes of dots and circles and hexagons. “You gave me old tech?”
“Our branches . . . are no longer tangled . . .” That was the Doctor’s way of saying “We’re even.”
“Got any implants to go with it?”
“Only . . . I’m afraid . . . new tech . . .”
One of the Doctor’s vines pointed at the examination table, where three handpieces sat on the wood. One was a two-pronged gripper made of brass, another a simple hook with a sharpened end. The last was a false hand carved of wood and wrapped in a leather glove.
Eolh could feel his fingers moving. But when he looked down at his wrist, there was nothing there to move. Just the coppery chrome plate.
With his other hand, he tested the tips of the gripper. The prongs bent too easily and would probably break within a day of heavy use. And why would he need a false hand? Who was he going to fool with wooden fingers?
The hook, then. At least it looks like a talon.
The hook was fitted to a leather sleeve, and rawhide laces tied the sleeve to his forearm. Inside the sleeve were two clips that secured the prosthetic to Eolh’s wrist plate. Magnetic, or something stronger.
The hook had a good weight to it. And at least with this, he could . . .
No. Eolh crowed a sigh. Nothing about this is good.
“Be not . . . anguished. You have done . . . well . . . Eolh . . .”
“Have I?” Eolh said flatly. “I didn’t exactly come out ahead, did I?”
“A hand . . . for the Achinwoan . . . is no price at all . . .”
Yeah, well, Eolh thought, unlike you, Doctor, my limbs don’t grow back. But it was a stupid, childish thing to think, so he kept his beak shut.
His first steps out of the basement were careful, but there were no guards on duty down here, neither avian nor cyran. Evening light filtered through the ground-floor windows. How long was I asleep?
Above, the higher apartments were mostly quiet. Two redenites were having a hushed, chattering conversation in the corner of a stairwell, but when they heard him approach, they scurried down the hallway.
Ryke and Poire were in a cramped apartment about halfway up the tower. They were sitting on the edge of the balcony, where the wooden railing had rotted and fallen away, leaving only three splintered stumps. Poire fidgeted with the twine and the plastic relic that hung around his neck.
An orange sun hung heavy over the western peaks of the Cauldron. The smell of spices and meats cooking in the taverns and brew hives wafted up to the tower, and he could hear the soft hiss of gas lamps far below. Two rigs floated silently across the rooftops, the larger following the smaller. Black balloons against the fiery orange sky.
He could hear the Queen’s soft, reverent tones as she whispered to the fledgling human.
“If you look up there”—Ryke was pointing to the cliff walls—“you can see the Hanging Palace. The home of my ancestors. Can you see the bridge there that connects with Asaiyam’s tower?”
But the fledgling made no response. Did not even nod his head. He was closed up, sitting with his arms wrapped around his legs.
Still, Ryke kept talking, trying to get him out of his shell. He really is just a fledgling, isn’t he?
“We built a chapel in Asaiyam’s tower, the most beautiful temple in all of Gaiam. One day, I’ll show it to you. And over there, you can see the Highcity, up those steps. Mostly royals and nobles live up there, or they did. Before . . . well, never mind. If you follow those steps down, they flow back into the Midcity and to the gate.”
Poire shifted at that last word. Looked like he was about to say something and then didn’t.
Ryke continued, “All roads in the Cauldron lead to the gate. Except maybe for that maze down there. They don’t plan ahead in Lowtown.”
Eolh’s feathers bristled. He could hear the regal judgment in her voice. As if she could sweep all of Lowtown away with a flick of her wing.
“Eolh’s from Lowtown,” Poire said, and Eolh smirked. You’re gods-damned right I am. “The rest of the Cauldron is lit up. Why is Lowtown so dark?”
“Well,” the Queen said carefully, “the people of Lowtown lack the means to care for their tier like the other castes do.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
Eolh scoffed, “No it isn’t.”
Both Ryke and the fledge turned their heads as he stepped out of the shadows and onto the balcony. Even though this tower leaned to the south, whoever built the apartments had accounted for the tilt, so all the floors were flat. Relatively.
“Lowtown lacks the means because someone let the imperials burn Lowtown to the ground.”
“That was years ago. The whole city was ransacked, and Lowtown has been given an equal chance to recover.”
“Equal? What do you know about equal? I’m sure everything looks great from up in your palace, Your Majesty. But the truth is, if you’re born in Lowtown, you die in Lowtown. Doesn’t matter what you do with your life or how hard you work. You never get out.”
“Thievery does not count as hard work,” Ryke said.
Eolh opened his beak to say something and shut it. Shook his head.
“What?” Ryke said, all her crest feathers standing on end. “What were you going to say?”
“For a Queen, you know an awful little about your city.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Then enlighten me.”
There was the Midcity, sprawled below them. All its twinkling lanterns, the pack beasts and night shift workers trundling along toward their business. Patrols moved through the streets that wound around temples and seastone houses and timber-frame storefronts. Old towering trees hung with ivy swayed in every street, and vines climbed up the venerable walls of manors and close-knit row houses.
The Midcity ended in a cliff. All along the edge, dozens of cranes sat vacant, their long, wooden beams spiked like a fringe of thorns, a hundred feet above Lowtown. Far below, a black, burned smudge on the cliff wall kept a record of the fire.
“You ever watch someone die in the streets?” Eolh asked. “Watch him stumble blindly toward you, choking on the blood in his throat? When he falls, you have to step over his body like he’s not even there.”
His eyes passed over the run-down hovels, the new timber buildings that were already starting to slant. The apartment blocks built on top of apartment blocks, which were built on top of more . . .
“Every day,” Eolh said, “the fledglings go begging. Scarred and malnourished and dying before they get to live. One of them has a crutch, and he begs you, he begs for a bite. That’s all he wants, a single beakful of food. You know how I know he’s hungry? Because I’m hungry. We all are. I need to eat too, but he’s so small, and the feathers are falling out of his pelt, and his parents probably got killed in the fire, or maybe the cyrans murdered them later. Just because they could.”
Eolh closed his eyes, trying to black out the vision. But it wouldn’t stop playing in his mind.
“You know you should give him something. That little one-legged fledgling. Anything. But instead, you shove him. You call him a thief, and you kick him. And when he gets back up and he’s still begging you, please, mister, just a coin, what do you do? You kick him harder. Because you never know who’s watching. You can’t ever let your guard down. And you just . . . you step over him. Like he’s not even there. Like it wasn’t your fault he’s lying there.”
He hated how they looked at him now. Their faces were wide with shock as if he were some horror story come to life.
He turned his back on both of them. Couldn’t bear to weather their judgment.
“Eolh,” Ryke said.
But she was a royal. What could she possibly know about his world?
“Eolh, there is always a chance to change.”
“Change?” He whirled on her. “You want to talk about change? We tried change. When all your royal cousins and sniveling nobles gave in to the cyrans, we stood strong. My crew and a dozen other gangs fought and bled and died to make a change. And where did that get them?”
So much ash.
“You let the imperials have our city. We tried to change. And the coward herself sold us all out. Didn’t you.”
The Queen didn’t answer. Didn’t meet his gaze.
“Didn’t you.”
“Yes!” she shrieked, her voice tearing at the warm, wet winds of the evening. Piercing even through the dull tolling of a temple bell. “I had to. While you and your thugs tore through the city, the Magistrate came to me, and he gave me a choice. I could serve, or I could watch my city burn. I chose to serve.”
“They burned the city anyway.”
“No. Only Lowtown.”
“Only Lowtown,” Eolh echoed acidly.
But Ryke didn’t care. Her shoulders were squared up, her feathers rigid with righteous fury. “I would make the same choice again a thousand times more.”
“Why?”
“The Magistrate would have killed us all.”
“Better to die standing than to live on your knees—”
“You would say that, corvani. What life matters to you except your own? You have no idea how heavy the burden is. I carry that with me every day. Do you think I wanted to work with the cyrans? Do you think I wanted my city to burn? Call me a coward all you like; I did what nobody else could do. I saved my people.”
“Saved? They enslaved us in our own city. Every time that damned gate opens, a thousand more cyrans pour in, and a thousand more avians are pushed out. Tell me, what is next in this brilliant plan of yours, Your Majesty? Should we just torch the city ourselves?”
There was a wild defiance in her eyes. “One day, the Emperor will awaken, and we will make him see that we are worthy of joining his Empire—”
Eolh almost choked. “You want to join the Empire?”
“There is no other way,” she said far too calmly.
“What is wrong with you? They burned the city.”
“Unlike you, I have studied them for the last nineteen years, corvani. I know how their government works. The Magistrate is a monster, Eolh, but he is not the Empire. And now that our Savior has come, we will bring him before the consuls and show them the truth.”
“The truth of what?” Eolh gave a cruel laugh. “That he’s a living, breathing god? They’re going to love that. Or did you think they would fall to their knees before him?”
“He is a god, Eolh. The one who was foretold.”
The Queen believed. She believed with every feather and every bone in her body. But behind her, Eolh caught a slight movement.
There was Poire, his head between his hands, quietly shaking it.
“Are you insane?” Eolh cawed. “If they find him, they will flay him alive. They’ll do worse.”
“The cyrans worship too—”
“Do they? The soldiers might, but the Magistrate couldn’t give a shit about your precious gods.”
“It was written,” Ryke said, taking a step forward. “He has come to save us.”
“Look at him. Look at what you’re asking of him. He’s just a fledgling, Ryke. This isn’t his world. And you know the Empire doesn’t share its power with anyone, much less a god.”
The Queen’s eyes were narrow and angry, as bright as a lantern’s flame. Eolh could hear her grinding her beak from where he was standing.
“Then what, corvani? Shall I hide him under a pile of rubble? In one of your dark, filthy murder holes? The Magistrate knows he’s here. He will tear this city apart. And this time, there will be nothing left to rebuild.”
Ryke held up one feathered finger. “One reason. That’s all the Magistrate ever needed. One reason to burn this city. Last time, the laws of the Empire stopped him. But now, he has his reason, which means we are almost out of time.”
Eolh crossed his arms. He had no answer. For the first time in nineteen years, they had the power. Not the imperials. It should be so simple. If Poire really was a god, he should be able to save them all.
But the fledge was as silent as the sun. He was sitting on the edge of the balcony with his back to the city, following their conversation, his face sinking with every word. At the impossibility of the task that lay before him.
This isn’t his mess, Eolh thought. If I were him, I’d run.
As the sun dipped below the Cauldron walls, the first notes of the Passing Prayer lifted from a street-side temple. Groups of lights marched down the streets, marking the movements of the imperial patrols. Now only the gas lanterns on the main avenues were lit, and even the Midcity was unusually dark for this time of year.
Lowtown looked like it was already dead.
Ryke’s talons made a sharp thunk in the wood as she turned to Poire. She bowed deeply. “Divine One, I must take my leave. I have risked much by being away this long.”
“Ryke?” Poire said.
“Yes, Divine One?”
The human opened his mouth, then seemed to change his mind. Ryke cocked her head, waiting for him.
Finally, he said, “Will you come back?”
“As soon as I am able.” She bowed again. “The Magistrate will return when the gate opens again, but that’s weeks away. We have time.” She said this last to Eolh. And then she did something that he didn’t expect.
“I never did thank you, corvani.”
“Me? For what?”
“For what you tried to do, back in the elevator. You stood in the face of death.”
“Yeah, well.” Eolh grunted and held up his hook. “I couldn’t exactly carry him out.”
“Eolh,” she said, holding his gaze with her own. Her eyes were a fierce golden yellow. “Thank you.”
The Coward Queen bowed before the Eolh the Listener. And he stood there, dumb, like a first-time thief caught in a trap.
The Queen fixed a pair of goggles over her beak. They formed themselves around her eyes, and when she turned her head just right, they glared with a dull green light. She stood on the ruined edge of the balcony and held out her arms, spreading her wings. Her feathers ruffled lightly in the breeze.
When she threw her arms down, the wind was almost strong enough to knock Eolh over.
By the time he regained his balance, she was only a shadow in the night.
***
Poire and the corvani dangled their legs over the balcony, watching the sparse lights twinkling up and down the tiers of the city. The pressure was building in his head, and the rasping waves of insect song ground his thoughts into a pulp.
What do they want from me?
Below, the city twinkled with yellow and orange lights. It was so complicated, so full of life. And all the roads here, all the alleys and avenues, and even those broad steps from one tier to another—they all led toward the gate.
It’s all up to you now. But it wasn’t all bad.
Poire even thought he knew how to help. You only have to do one thing.
Seven pylons, including the one they were sitting on, ringed the city. Cold stone brickwork covered the metal pylons he knew were underneath. They must’ve used the pylons as scaffolding to build their temples.
But there were only seven pylons.
“What happened to the eighth pylon?”
“What?”
“The tower. There were eight. One of them is missing.”
“Is it?” Eolh said distractedly. The corvani was rolling that android eye in his hand, pushing it around his palm with his thumb, as if it were nothing more than an old coin.
Before Poire could press the issue, Eolh spat his anger, “Join the Empire, she says. Doesn’t make any damn sense. Does she think they’ll just bow down before you?”
“The Sajaahin did.”
“The Sajaahin are nothing like the Empire. Cyrans are smart, wicked people. They make promises. But no matter what we say, or what we do, it always ends the same: with a knife in the gut. She doesn’t get it. She looks at you and sees the Savior of our people. It’s a gods-damned story, and it’s going to get someone killed. Someone like you, Fledge. That is, if they don’t find a worse use for you.”
Poire said nothing. What should he say? What was inside him so worth taking?
This world was huge and new and wrong. These people were so different to the ones he had known all his life. Messy and regal, cruel and kind, all at the same time.
And they wanted so much from him.
Why me?
It could have been anyone else. Why did I have to be the one who woke up?
It could’ve been anyone else. The cultivars. The directors. Even someone else in his cohort, like Nepeta or Crisanto or anyone but him.
Where were they?
Poire shook the thought from his head. If he was patient . . . if he waited a while longer . . . he would have his answers. And if these people needed help, he would help them the only way he knew how.
The breeze warmed his bare skin. They had given him a loose-fitting cloak with a hood to hide his face, and a pair of leather gloves hid his hands. He couldn’t pass for an Avian, but Ryke had said, in between her deep apologies, that if he kept his head down, he almost looked like a malnourished redenite or a taller gaskal.
Whatever that is.
Finally, the corvani pushed himself up with a groan and held out his good hand. “Come on, fledgling. Let’s go below before someone sees us.”
“Can I stay here? I’m not tired.”
That much was true. He couldn’t read his hormone balance without his wrist implant, but he knew from experience that he could keep going.
“Absolutely not,” Eolh said.
Poire didn’t want to tip his hand, so he let Eolh lead them both down the steps. The corvani went first, and when he crowed “All clear,” Poire followed.
Down in the basement, Eolh showed him to his room.
“Get some rest. Maybe we’ll figure this out tomorrow.”
But Poire had no intention of sleeping. Instead, he lay on the scratchy linens of his bed and waited until he heard slow, even breaths coming from Eolh’s open door.
He’d been shot at a million times before in the virtual games he loved to play. It was different in real life. Running away from bullets was easy enough, but running toward them . . .
Be brave, Poire.
Poire waited still to make sure the corvani wasn’t testing him.
When he was certain the croaking snores coming from Eolh’s room were real, Poire pulled the hood of his cloak low over his head and slipped out of the pylon.
The alleys and jungle hedges were an incomprehensible maze. But it didn’t matter. All the roads here led toward the gate.
Toward the statue of a human man.