“So as Written, so shall be.”

—The Decree. Author: Sacramount.

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At the sight of the blister of glass protruding in the center of the cracked metropolis, the stowaway thinks she’s awoken into a strange pocket of the Hells.

The construction reaches fifty, sixty, maybe seventy stories, she can’t tell. Its entrances are antechambers with sliding panel doors, some made exclusively for ropeway cord. Men wait inside the lower passages for their turn to be sprayed with foam neutralizer, and the lines reach to dirt roads of battered towns and villages.

The stowaway walks ahead of the presses, skips the line, and shows the airlock attendants her face. Before they can ask why she is here, she joins the next set of men inside, lets herself be sprayed down, scalded down almost to the point of burning off her arm hairs, and emerges into the core of the great city.

She finds a bridge and sticks to its edge, inspecting the churning froth and debris in the artificial river below. Among it is the same refuse and discarded effects of a city that’s been two years away but feels longer.

Her head swims from the soup of inoculations she had injected into herself in the preceding months. They do weird things to her memory, emphasizing sensations from the journey over: trapped in a cramped box, sleeping in it, eating food scraps, leaving only occasionally to stretch out her kinks.

As a young boy races past, the stowaway wonders what sound he’d make falling into the water. “Apologies, sir,” he says, lingering and looking ready to say more. If he had known who the stowaway was, he would think twice before addressing her.

Even underneath this enclosure, so much of the city has changed. The bullwheel terminals, great pinnacles winding the continental ropeway through the city, are no longer the dominant structures. Eager bulging precipices of brick surround them, bunched tight enough and built quickly enough that the gondola paths had to be carved through them. Some are hotels, casinos, multi-story brothels, and pleasure dens with lowly pubs clinging to them. Whores bunch the streets, passing kennels and bound up dogs and skirting aside rushing prison wagons. Yet despite all this clamor, the great bullwheels above still turn, ferrying thousands of gondolas over the city daily. The sound is worse than screeching maligned, worse than the shrill death screams of fallen men, worse than fingernails scraping on stone as bodies are dragged and turned.

As she trudges onwards, the stowaway counts seventeen pipes as thick as her arm, leaking pink and blue inhibitor agents and emerald clouds barely visible to the citizens going about their days, ignorant to the battles their bodies are fighting versus the strands. Infrastructure miracles like this and the bubbled enclosure must keep the city’s core pulsing with life. Underneath it, she has to squint and notice the five-foot layer of glass is even there. The Twin Pales—the name given to the world’s two suns—reveal the dome’s cracks.

The stowaway ponders why anyone would erect a building outside Kaskit’s enclosure in the current arrangement, save for the colonies that ferry precious minerals and resources back to the city. It appears a university campus sits right outside the enclosure’s south entrance, a line of students holding vesicles to their mouths as they walk. There are also private enterprises with long squat structures that look closer to tents or greenhouses, though she cannot surmise their function at first glance.

A crowd gathers in a semi-circle on the other side of the bridge. A portly man screams atop an upturned wagon, voice cracking. “Free us from the First!” he cries. “Melt these chains that bind us to our maligned enemies! The First Signature holds Man back from our true potential!”

Man or men? The stowaway reluctantly considers herself a part of the former. The latter is a liability.

She keeps her mouth shut and decides not to stoke this fire. She can feel it growing in the way the bodies press tighter, heating up, hotter than the box she’d crumpled herself in on the massive transport gondola. The smells come next: the sweat of intent, anger, and legions of unwashed men. She gags.

“Melt these chains!” Another man carries the chant, raising his fist as if the words are burning oil and he can hurl them.

The rest of the audience takes it up, and soon, the stowaway has to lend her voice to blend in. “Melt these chains!” she bellows, as masculine as she can muster. “Melt these chains!”

Melt these chains. She doesn’t make it evident that she knows these words, had heard them uttered years ago in basement hideouts, and even whispered them herself into the ears of dissenters.

She leaves the mob to their ravings, keeping her head down as she blends into the midday crowds. Despite her efforts, the odd gaze drifts her way, each tightening her spine into attack mode. A few minutes walking around like this, and she’ll be questioned. An hour, and she’ll join that debris in the river. Let them try.

The central terminal where the transport gondola must have docked still looms overhead in the district’s center, and though the shops at its base look unchanged, the people are new. It’s as if the city has cleaned and scrubbed away its populace and reinstated a new one. These denizens dress with color, smile brighter, speak of pedestrian topics like their homes, friends, and indulgences, and other points only mentioned when threats retreat from your foreground. The city’s core has softened under the protection of an inhibitor atmosphere, leaving the layers of walls for kilometers outside the bubble nothing more than reminders of a desperate time.

She stops at the mouth of a narrow alley. A stray cat scurries up to the feet of a slumping beggar, a bearded man lounging against a door that looks as secure as a curtain. The cat and the man are the only lifeforms the stowaway can see, but she keeps her guard up. She will never look at a living thing the same way again.

Strangers always attract suspicion in Kaskit, and where suspicion is, so are the city’s police. The KCP patrols scan their eyes across every inch of the sprawling metropolis, their lookout towers outnumbering the bullwheel terminals threefold. If they find her and notice what she is, the questions will come. After that, it will be straight to the incubation vats. She will never surrender to that fate.

“She’s not found you already?” It’s the beggar, still slumped against the door, his chin resting on his chest. His mouth, open for a second, closes.

The stowaway knows who he is referring to. What other reason would anyone stumble down this alley? “Where can I find her?”

The man chuckles. Spittle drips onto his beard. “Right around that corner! Good luck getting in, though.”

So, her estimation was correct. “Decree shield you.” She leaves him against the door.

The alleyway’s exit faces a tall stone wall that hadn’t been there two years ago. At the tip of it, the stowaway notices stalks of grass as wide as her flowing over, and more reaching for the sky, obscuring the rest of the buildings inside. The place beyond may as well be a concentration of weeds that burst through the city, though the stowaway reminds herself it was planted there intentionally

What looks like the tips of pitchforks litter the top side of the wall as well, each barb as sharp as bayonets, so using a rope isn’t an option. Leaping would be easier, but there’s no rooftop within ten feet of this surrounding wall of the Second Signature’s alcazar. Besides, even if she did make it over the side, there’s no telling what things would await on the complex’s grounds.

Her palace, her secure compound, her blister on humanity’s skin, her weeds in humanity’s garden. That demonstration at the bridge speaks of the First Signature, not the Second, but since the two beings operate in a sort of partnership, the men congregate outside these walls.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The stowaway slumps, the cobblestones cold beneath her. She could scale the height, but doing so would arouse too much suspicion, and the Second Signature would be more than happy to escort her to the fate the stowaway had fled Kaskit to avoid.

She leaves the wall behind, clinging to the back of prison wagons like a remora hitching a ride. She stays until they notice her, and maybe it’s her bulging figure that looks armored under the robe, but they decide that pushing her away is not worth the risk. She trudges onwards, skulking alleys, passing through shops, and leaving out their back doors.

The three-story manor is on the outskirts of Kaskit, pressed right up against the glass wall of the enclosure. There’s enough space for a small backyard with a shed, but the looming bubble’s edge casts a shadow that blocks off the entire property’s northern side. It had once looked out to a vineyard, but now the land on the other side of the bubble is gray, decaying raw ground festooned with roots and pustules. Far off, the Stowaway notices more enterprises daring the exposed atmosphere or perhaps unable to afford the expensive real estate underneath the enclosure. Suddenly, the tall buildings under the bubble make sense—everyone wants to be underneath that protective blanket.

The stowaway reminisces on the two years gone, the planning and the plotting that took place inside the basement of the house in front of her. Two years is short in a lifespan, but to other efforts, it could be an eternity. She suspects that many of those souls are long gone, abandoning the efforts even in that short time. Maybe it was better that she left when she did.

The box she hid inside on the transport gondola still presses around her, six walls squashing while she breathed through a hole the size of her eyeball. There is no time to admire the fresh air here on the outskirts of Kaskit’s core or frolic among those gentle breezes. Her stomach aches, and she could fill all the Hells with her piss. If she had a choice right now, she would be anywhere else, but she isn’t.

Beside her feet, a copper pipe juts out, painted with camouflage to match the surrounding bush. A faint mist rises from it, lingering near her forehead, pink and almost indistinguishable against the backdrop of clouds. She breathes in a chill as the inhibitor vapor enters her nostrils, travels down her lungs, and settles there. She can feel almost every chamber in herself, every crack and irregularity cleansed by engineered air.

She waits for a fleet of wagons to pass before approaching the house. Its hedgerow is shallow enough to push through, but the thorns seem as sharp as blades. She clenches her teeth tight as they scrape her legs, digging into her calf, burbs clinging to her torn pants. She’s pushed through worse, but it’s not just the pain that annoys her; it’s the relinquishing of her pride at being here again.

What if this isn’t the place? What if she’s invading some stranger’s backyard? If the same man owns it, he’s gotten soft in the two years since. The guard dogs are nowhere to be seen, and no tripwires line the gaping holes in the fences. Any determined invader could crawl through. Kaskit is indeed a softened city.

She emerges from the bush into a manicured backyard, hedgerows sculpted and hummingbird feeders arranged in calculated intervals. Whoever is inside must have given up other pursuits to make this place their hobby, for it would take hours to maintain without staff.

“Hold up. Easy now.”

The stowaway is halfway through the backyard when she hears him speak. It is still the same prodding, kind voice, even when sticking up a trespasser.

She turns and raises her hands. “Jethry. It’s me. Relax.”

Tale Jethry has balded since he and the stowaway plotted in his basement. He’s thinned out since that time, his bony elbows poking from the sleeves of a clean shirt, but he is still just as lithe, still crouches a bit when anyone else would stand. His flintlock pistol does not waiver in his grip, and he looks ready to throw it at the Stowaway. He’ll hit her if he tries.

“Leave.” Tale waves the gun, reminding her it is still there. “If you go now, I won’t make much of this. Else, I’ll splatter your brains across my lawn and burn you right there—right where you’re standing.” He gestures again with the pistol as if the location isn’t apparent.

“Still an anxious fucker, aren’t you?” With his shiny boots that are barely weather-beaten or bruised, Tale looks to be doing quite well. He did take the easy path, then. He gave up. Yet a distant part of her calls. Maybe it’s just a ruse. “Last time I saw you,” the stowaway manages between breaths, “you were barking up the First Signature’s tree. Now…” she examines the stars on his breast. “KCP?”

Tale Jethry almost drops his pistol, and through his eyes, the stowaway can see the two years between them return. What he had once been—what they had both been—flashes there. “Hells,” he says. “June? Is that you?”

June-Leckie breathes a long sigh, one she has been carrying the entire journey to Kaskit. “Hi, Tale.”

“Hells.” A smile writes itself on his face, but he masks it immediately out of some masculine pride. “What are you doing here?” He looks around. “Come in! Come in! It’s not safe out here. If they see me conspiring with a woman, well, you know. The climate hasn’t changed there. Hells, they might mistake you for a loose incubator.” He steps forward.

“Stay there.” She can’t tell him exactly why—not yet—but pulls her pant leg up and gives Tale a good view of her calf and the scar running down it.

He studies more than just her leg. “Looks terrible.”

“Felt worse when I got it, but the pain’s gone.” Jethry takes a step forward, but June stops him. “I mean it!” For all she knows, whatever had gotten her might hop to Tale and may already have gotten to the transport gondola crew she rode in with. The inhibitor agents of Kaskit’s enclosure should be enough, she hopes.

Tale stops. “Is everything alright?”

Thurmgeist training taught June to compartmentalize her fears and cast them aside as easily as a stray animal. How can she explain to Tale that what has happened has every right to be feared?

Tale looks as if he wants nothing more than to take June up in his skinny arms and carry her into his bed, where he’ll coddle her and more—if she’d let him. Every time the idea crossed her mind before, it repulsed her, and now is no different. Tale has never stopped loving her, which is doubtless his greatest weakness.

“I’ll get you something,” he says, running back to the house. June waits in the hedgerow she had crept through until Tale returns carrying a bulging drawstring bag. “Painkillers, antibiotics, daily inoculations; helps with diseases, colds. Some injections are contagious now. You’ve probably been breathing half the stuff in this bag since you entered the enclosure.” He tosses it over.

June catches the bag, opens it, and sifts through. Everything for temporary contagion control is tightly packed, neat, and ready to go at a moment’s notice. There is also food wrapped in thin twine, tied in easy knots. She undoes one of these and finds dried meat and nuts, the kind of food that preserves and can last a journey. “You’re still at it?”

Tale’s face glows. “Perpetually planning, isn’t that what you said? Always planning, always dreaming. Never really stopped.” A stunted look crosses his expression as if he’s holding back every thought since she’d left. He probably is. If he's still at it, a million things could have changed by now.

Tale looks around the neighboring houses, even though they are far from earshot. “I can’t keep you here, you know. KCP does regular inspections of their constable’s housings. There have been Chant agents inside the precinct.”

When she had left Kaskit, the cult of maligned sympathizers could only dream of such a feat. “I’ll take the shed, just for the night. Then I’ll be away. You’ll never know I was here.”

What is going on with you? She reads this line of questioning through Tale’s gaze. He pulls at the stubble on his chin, sighs, and looks as if he wants to espouse the world to her. He settles for something else, tapping the insignia on his chest. “I made High Constable, June. I could send you back to the Second Signature if I wanted.”

For a moment, June thinks of asking Tale to repeat himself. The man had come close to uttering threats to her before, but always out of anger and never acting on them. What compels him to pose such a question now?

Regardless, June holds her smile steady. “But you won’t do that, will you?”

Tale’s smile is brief, but something else decorates it and lingers. Is it speculation about what she is hiding from him? Or perhaps he is considering turning her over to the incubators after all—concluding a great victory against the woman who had rescued dozens of them from the vats and stowed them away to the Hyrnlak Archipelago. Still, June could not fear this man any less.

Tale purses his lips. “A great many women have been incubators. Don’t forsake your rightful place.”

So that is what has been bothering him. “Rightful place?” June breathes in hard, containing to herself a vivid image of Tale’s face on the bodies of the green pikemen that were crushed to pieces in front of her. “I’m not breeding for that bitch, and if you’re going to turn me over, just tell me so I can get a head start. You owe me that much.”

Another of his old smiles comes. “Haven’t changed a bit, have you? But what will they do to me if they find me harboring a woman? A High Constable of the Kaskit City Police?”

She knows exactly what they’ll do. They’ll burn him. “Who’s gonna go checking in your shed for anything?”

“I’ve got eyes on me. Prying eyes. It’s been quiet lately, but they still check on me. There are mouths, too, June; mouths that love to talk about anything involving the city’s civil servants. Anything to paint the Signatures in a worse light. Kaskitians don’t shut up. If the city doesn’t know you’re here by tonight, they will by the morning.”

That’s for sure. June wonders if the darkness behind the windows of the neighboring houses is empty or filled with those eyes Tale spoke of. “Is it unlocked?”

Jethry exhales and nods, accepting the predicament he has been forced into. “I’ll bring you food. Don’t go anywhere tonight.”

She makes her way towards the shed, unsure if she’ll listen.