Ryke av’Ryka, Queen of Aviankind, youngest grandchild of the last free king, was not born to rule.

Once, more than twenty cousins, sisters, and brothers stood in line for the throne before her. Then came the Cyran Empire.

They did what no one else could. They used the gate.

Nineteen years ago, the Empire activated that ancient, human artifact. A light pierced the Cauldron, and through the miraculous power of the old gods, a swarm of soldiers and war machines appeared on this world. The Empire flooded the Cauldron. They stormed up the Highcity’s steps, crashing through the noble estates, trampling the royal gardens. The militia and the King’s own falkyr warriors were no match for the imperial’s gunpowder.

The royals and all their servants took shelter in the great Hanging Palace nestled high in the Cauldron’s sheer cliff walls. Among them, Ryke could only watch as hundreds of cyrans crawled up the steep servant ways—or stormed over the bridge from the northern tower—using those gunpowder rifles to slaughter her people.

The grand balcony, the palace’s promenade that overlooked the Cauldron, was covered in avian blood. It dripped through the railings, raining down on the gardens and estates far below.

That was when her grandfather, King Rajennan av’Ryka, surrendered.

They did not accept his surrender. He died with his wings outstretched, his body riddled with bullets.

Of the royals who were left, the lucky ones fled into exile. The rest served the cyrans or lost their heads.

But—because certain elements in Lowtown refused to lay down their arms—the cyrans were never pleased with the royals. Ryke’s cousins and siblings were punished for failing to control the rebellious Lowtowners.

Feathers were plucked. Heads removed.

In the years that followed, Ryke grew up watching her family killed in this way, one by one. Some tried to resist. Some did everything they could to appease the imperials. But it never seemed to matter.

Slowly, the ancient Oqyllan line was cut to shreds . . . until it came to Ryke.

She did not bow, nor did she break. Like a feather, she bent in the wind. That was how the Coward Queen survived.

There was no doubt in her mind. There were more oqyllan among the nobles, many lesser relatives who could take her place. Which meant, to the imperials, she was expendable.

The Queen tried to remember that as she stepped onto the bridge that connected the Hanging Palace to Asaiyam’s tower. They called it a flying bridge because of how it soared over the Highcity.

The bridge was also old, older even than the Oqyllan dynasty. Some said it was built by the gods, but its simple, rough-hewn arch was too crude for their handiwork. And where the tower stood proud and unyielding to time, the bridge was cracking. Its stony guardrails crumbled in places, and no one had bothered—in these last nineteen years—to mend it.

Hot winds roared up from the city below, shoving and testing her balance, tugging at the tails of her ceremonial scarf, the feathers of her ancestors woven together and whipping in the wind.

She could almost see the lush, rippling green of the broad-leaf lilies and the water palms and the kapok trees, so far below. The flowers and fruit, brilliant blues and reds and yellows and whites, just specks of colors from up here.

It was a long way down. But no avian was afraid of falling.

Even the guards that dogged her footsteps did not frighten her anymore. Two huge black-breasted falkyr dogged her footsteps, their yellow eyes and yellower beaks following her every move. But even these did not frighten her, not anymore. Ryke av’Ryka had long since grown used to the traitors in her court.

There were no loyal avians in the Cauldron. How could there be?

Dozens of imperials lined the span of the bridge. The Magistrate’s Century, their crimson cloaks whipping around statuesque forms. Each one wore a mask of burnished brass (aren’t they sweating in there?), and each one held a rifle—not the endloaders that the other cyrans used. No, the centurions carried only the best.

None of them moved as she walked past. As rigid as stone. Their scales, mostly dark azures and ocean greens speckled with golds and silvers, seemed to glitter in the sunlight.

The bridge ended in a stone archway halfway up Asaiyam’s tower. Neither of her falkyr guards entered after her.

She turned to face them. “That’s it? That’s all I get? Why did you even follow me here?”

One of them almost looked ashamed. The other stared straight ahead, his face a careful mask. Yaharro, she thought his name was.

“Your Majesty,” Yaharro said, his voice deep and stoic. “We’re not allowed to enter. The Magistrate has instructed us—”

“I am the Queen. Not him.”

Both the falkyr shuffled uncomfortably. But it was fruitless. They were just as captive as she was. Do your duty, avian, or we’ll find someone who can.

“Fine,” she sighed. “Are you at least allowed to wait outside?”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” Yaharro puffed out his chest feathers. In another life, he might’ve been a proud member of the royal guard. Instead, he was little more than an imperial prison warden. And she, his prisoner.

Thus, Ryke crossed from the light of the morning sun to the shadow under the archway.

Inside, cold stonework rose all around her, a cathedral built on the skeleton of that human-made tower. Long ago, this place had been something else, one of seven metal spires—eight, if you believed the stories of the fallen tower—reaching into the sky. Why had the gods built them? Some believers thought the towers were like thrones, where the humans once ruled from on high, casting down their godly judgments on the first beings of this world.

So little was known about the gods.

How they had lived . . .

Why they had left . . .

The High Chapel, Asaiyam’s chapel, was the ultimate dedication to humanity. Rich stone balconies and steps and polished floors all swirled together in a spiraling octagon, surrounding the metal spire. Eight points, one for each of the Gaiamic gods. A shrine in each corner, adorned with gifts and tokens and fragrant offerings.

Asaiyam the Wise Lord-Ruler.

Kanya of the Iron Grin.

And the Foul-Faced Man.

And, of course, the Fallen One, of whom there was no statue, only an empty dais.

In a strange twist, the imperials embraced the Gaiamic gods. They folded them into their own pantheon on Cyre. They enforced only one change on the priests: in Asaiyam’s chapel and all the temples besides, they added a new god. His statue was placed at the very center of the Octum, on the altar at the center of the temple. The Everlord, the Emperor Almighty.

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The piece who will be made whole, as the cyran’s own priests declared.

When Ryke prayed, as she so often did, she did not pray to this last god.

At the entrance of the chapel, she knelt and pressed her forehead to the ground so that the top of her beak rested against the polished seastone floor, hard and cold. She ignored the dozens of silent centurions spaced around the pews and shrines of the chapel.

Ryke was still whispering her prayers, thanking the gods for each day that she drew breath, when she heard a crunching sound. She looked up.

Long, delicate-looking archways cascaded down from the highest walls, becoming pillars that held the floor aloft. Priests of the Divine, with their colorful ornamental feathers, meandered through the smoky shadows, tending to the candles and cleaning the shrines.

And then there was the Magistrate.

He was sitting in a pew in front of the shrine to the Fallen One. A growing pile of shells littered the floor next to him. The scales on his neck twinkled in the candlelight, illuminating the sunken lines of his face. Bored eyes scanned the grandeur of Asaiyam’s chapel with idle dissatisfaction. He wore the same gloves he always wore, a crisp white fabric, threaded through with an intricate silver design.

A young priest was slumped on the floor in front of him. His wings were spread out on the ground, his beak pressed flat against the seastone, his white robes spread in disarray around him. On her approach, Ryke could hear the avian priest’s heavy, pained breathing.

The Magistrate was looking at the Fallen One’s empty altar as if he hadn’t even noticed the priest’s agony.

“Magistrate,” Ryke said, trying to hold back the anger rising in her voice. “What is the meaning of this?”

In one gloved hand, the Magistrate held a cluster of pistolnuts. He made a slight gesture with the other hand, and one of the pistolnuts picked itself up and hovered in midair. Another gesture, and the shell cracked itself open.

With a flick of his finger, the kernel floated into his mouth. He chewed and crunched on it, the fins running down the back of his humanoid head flexing as he did.

“Ah, my Queen,” he said.

“Magistrate, this is a priest of the gods.”

“Yes, well, this priest tried to command me. Does he not know who I am?”

“Please . . .” The young priest struggled to move his head. It was as if there were a great, invisible weight pressing his body against the floor. “Please, Magistrate, I meant no offense.”

The Magistrate’s face twisted with disgust, his scales crinkling into deep wrinkles. Even in the dim candlelight, Ryke could see that some of his brighter blues were graying with age.

“A true believer would never need to grovel. Pathetic.” He made a motion with one gloved hand, and something under the priest cracked sickeningly.

The priest emitted an agonized shriek. The other priests in the chapel watched from the corners of their eyes, none daring to interfere.

“Magistrate.” Ryke had to raise her voice to be heard over the sound.

“Oh, don’t tell me you think I should show mercy. The Empire does not take its laws lightly.”

She wanted to say, What law could he have possibly broken? But that would only provoke his ire. So she tried to distract him.

“Magistrate,” Ryke said, “we have dire news to discuss. Private matters, not meant for . . . prying ears.”

“Yes, very well,” the Magistrate sighed. “I suppose you are correct.”

For a moment, she thought it had worked.

Then, the Magistrate dropped his hand delicately, as if he were only playing some brittle, invisible harp. The priest let out another strangled scream. His body made a meaty crunch as it was crushed too flat against the floor.

“There,” the Magistrate said, pleased with himself.

Ryke wanted to scream. The blood was pumping hard in her ears, and it was all she could do to hold herself steady. I will not break.

“Come now, Queen Ryke,” the Magistrate tutted. “How can you expect a tree to grow straight if you refuse to cut away the dead branches? These pious fools will never let go of their gods, but even they might learn from this one’s mistake.”

He tipped the pistolnut shells onto the ground, letting them scatter across seastone and corpse alike.

“Now.” The Magistrate wiped his hand on the nearest pew and turned to her. “What news of last night’s mission?”

Ryke swallowed hard. There was no sense in waiting. She would not cower from the consequences.

“Both of our agents were found dead.”

The Magistrate’s face was unreadable. His face was a gray ocean blue, though the scales around his eyes and lips glittered like silver. Proud cheekbones, hollow cheeks, and his nose sculpted to look almost like a human’s, something many cyrans prided themselves on. Even the fins atop his head were short and curled, almost like human hair.

“And the artifact?” he asked.

“Everything was stolen. Magistrate, there’s something—”

“You lost it?”

I told you to send more soldiers, she wanted to say. But you said, “No cyran worth his water would ever suffer a gang of thieves.”

“The android,” Ryke said. “My reports say she killed both our agents, and then she ran off with the artifact. But Magistrate—”

“The android?” The Magistrate snorted his disbelief. “The Historian’s machine was so old she could barely walk, let alone run.”

“It could have been an act.”

“If you think the Historians could muster such deceit, you are either naive or as stupid as the rest of your kind.” Though she was more than a head taller than him, the Magistrate somehow found a way to look down at her. He turned away, flexing his gloved hands. Traces of metal lined that strange, flexible material.

“No,” he said, “far more likely that some Lowtown thugs caught wind of our exchange. But how, I wonder?”

Ryke knew from experience that the Magistrate had already made up his mind. To him, all avians were the same: savage and motivated only by selfish interests. Traitors, all.

“The Historians,” Ryke said. “Their Book said that this would come to pass—”

“Don’t quote those fools at me!” The Magistrate cut her off with a brusque wave of his hand. An unseen force tugged at her, rippling through her feathers. “Those feebleminded gasheads couldn’t predict their next meal. Queen Ryke, if you value your life, then you had better say something I actually want to hear.”

She closed her beak and breathed heavily through her nostrils, trying to gather her patience.

“There is one thing, Magistrate.”

“Yes?”

“The artifact was no artifact.”

“Then what was it? Tell me why two of my soldiers lie dead in the gutters.”

“They found a human.”

He blinked. When he spoke, his voice was dangerous and low.

“Say that again.”

“It’s a human being,” she said, and no matter how many times she said it, the words still felt like music on her tongue. “It’s a living human being.”

The chapel was silent save for the distant scuffing of centurions’ boots. The walls of the chapel rose all around them, carrying their secret conversation up to where only the gods could hear.

“How certain are you of this information?”

“It’s only a rumor,” she said. “We haven’t confirmed it. It should be impossible. The gods were dead long before our first ancestors flew out of the deep jungles.”

“No, Queen Ryke. Tell me what you think.”

What Ryke believed, what she desperately wanted to believe, was that this rumor was true. In all her years as Queen, she had never been permitted to leave the Cauldron, let alone the planet. She knew each of the known worlds had their own religions, their own beliefs. But all of them—even the Historians, who lived above the skies of Cyre—shared this one thing, this one golden truth:

One day, from the depths of time, a human will return.

One who would deliver us into the light of salvation . . .

Salvation, of course, meant a thousand different things to a thousand different people. But if a living god had been discovered here on Gaiam, then surely salvation must start with her own people.

She hoped.

But until she had more information, all the Coward Queen could do was guard herself so that she could guard her people.

She tried not to look at the crushed body lying on the floor. Bloodstains crawling up his white robes. Dripping from his beak.

“I think,” Ryke said, “this rumor is too strong to leave alone. I have already summoned the hunters.”

“Spiderachs, I hope?”

Spiderachs were imperial hunter constructs, made for tracking through the vertical cityscape of the Cauldron. Each one cost a fortune, they were that rare. And because of their record, they were the last things she wanted to use. But if she hadn’t hired them, the Magistrate would’ve seen right through her.

“Yes. A full clutch of them.”

“Good. Spare no expense, Ryke. I don’t care if finding my prize bankrupts this entire kingdom. I don’t care if you have to starve the entire city for a decade. I am leaving for Cyre soon. Find this human—if it exists—before my return, or it will cost you dearly.”

“Yes, Magistrate.” She bowed her head, her mouth tasting of bile and hatred. “We will capture this human.”

He paused. And blinked at her. Pensive wrinkles formed around his mouth and eyes. “I know what your kind thinks. And I will not have another revolution on my hands because of some backwater superstitions. If things go poorly, Ryke, I expect you to handle them. The human will be far more useful alive, but I’m sure the Emperor would rather have a dead god than none at all.”

She had to grind her beak shut. His casual blasphemy, his utter disregard for the life of a god, made her sick.

Even imperial soldiers were not so profane.

“One last thing, my Queen.” He wrapped her title in scathing sarcasm. “To ensure your success, I will assign one of my own agents. I suggest you give him everything he needs.” The Magistrate crooked his golden scales into a dark smile. “Because if you don’t—if I find that this assignment has been impeded in any way—my agent’s next target will be you.”

“Yes, Magistrate.” Her face was more rigid than any centurion’s mask.

“Good. Go, then. For the glory of the Empire,” the Magistrate said, clapping his closed fist over his chest.

“For the Empire,” Ryke saluted him back.

She would not break. She would never give him the satisfaction.