Beasts of the Walking City (6 page)

I watch the wisps out of the corner of my eye. 

They’re gathering together, merging into larger shapes, which merge into others and those form into figures. The sounds from outside the ship grow fainter, and I can hear voices speaking, first a few and then more and more of them. In a very short time, it’s like I’m down in the middle of a protest in the Warrens.

“Don’t look at them,” shouts the fat mage. “Don’t look or listen,” but I ignore him. 

The green figures pass through the ship, stepping through the one hull and crossing through the other as if the ship wasn’t there, and they were simply on their way from somewhere to somewhere else. A few, at first. Then more. Some look confused, wandering lost. Others move with purpose. More and more join them, as though we’re at the center of a river of spirits. The figures are dressed in strange clothes, ancient armor with elaborate crests and inlays. They’re both old and young and many of them are human, but there are other races too: I recognize Stona and Talovians, but there are others that I’ve never seen before. Tall, snouted creatures like the ones in the ship. Stout creatures with large tusks and a single wing. Ethereal beings with spindly limbs and huge, shining eyes.

What gets me is that there’s this shimmer to them, the sort of double-exposure I find at the mouth of a corpse road. And all of my senses are on edge, the way they get when I’m walking the roads. It’s hard to describe what that feels like, unless you’ve walked them yourself. But it’s as if there’s something in the pit of your stomach that’s off, like you’re being pulled in several directions that just feel wrong. You feel like you’re spinning in place, and like there are bugs crawling up under your skin and electricity cracking across it.

I think I mentioned: corpse roads are places where worlds rub together. My secondfather explained to me that day when he brought me back to that wheat field. “Think of bubbles floating in the lake,” he said. “Sometimes, two bubbles press close. When this happens, sometimes things can slip through, one to another, without breaking the bubbles. Or sometimes those bubbles merge into one big one.

“All of what we are, Blackwell, is contained in a bubble in a giant lake full of bubbles, and it’s the aether that we all float in. Sometimes worlds drift close enough to each other, they touch. And it’s at those times that we can walk between them.”

That was the simple version, for the four-year-old me. 

It’s of course more complex than that. Imagine thousands of universes floating in this sea of aether. Some of them think they’re entirely alone, like Earth; in all of their history, they’ve never encountered another universe before, or at least they don’t realize they have. Other worlds, like Kiryth, bump into their neighbors all the time, and they get really good at building roads and bridges back and forth, reaching out across the aether and either invading, getting invaded, or just selling things to each other. When universes get close to each other, really close, sometimes there are these natural holes that open up between them, like the one I fell through. Hulgliev aren’t the only species that can sense them, and navigate them, but it does seem easier for us than most. The natural holes, or roads, are usually linked to specific parts of geography in each world, though they can shift and change without warning.

The closer the universe is, the more roads open up. And Earth has been getting closer to us for the last twenty years. A lot closer. Sometimes they even collapse into each other, which is how we got the Stona and the Talovian on Kiryth. And, my aunt would argue, the humans.

More about all of this later, but here are two strange fact I can’t really explain, so you’ll just have to take them for what they are. First, most corpse roads connect with each other somehow, once you learn how to see them. Something about how the aether works, and I’ll be honest I don’t really understand it, but I think of them like this elaborate maze of interdimensional tunnels that you can get lost in pretty easily, if you're not careful.

Second, while man-made roads and bridges link worlds together in their present times, many of the natural corpse roads seem to link into another world’s past.

That’s why we call them corpse roads—pretty much anyone you meet there is already dead.

• • •

Before long, the figures start to notice me, too. None of the other people in the ship, mind you: just me. They start going out of their way to pass near me. They’re peering and squinting, as if trying to see me from across a long distance, and then they begin to gesture and call out to me. Many of them are suddenly angry, and shouting, but while their mouths move the cacophony of distant voices is already so loud that it’s impossible to know who is saying what. Some of them draw weapons, and threaten me with them. Some of them gaze sadly at me, moving their lips as though they’re talking to themselves. Others are getting right up in my face and shouting.

I’m sure all the hair on my face and neck has gone pale, and I can see Kjat’s eyes are wide with fear. The bearded man and the female mage clung to the seats, their faces pale and their eyes shut, but the short mage ignores his own advice. He stares back at each figure intently, eyes wide, watching everything.

I shut my eyes and try to focus on the ship. The displays come back for a moment, flickering behind my eyelids, but they’re all hopelessly red, and they flicker out again. 

Whatever intelligence that’s in the ship is fading out. Navigation is useless, I just try and keep us level as best I can. 

I can’t judge speed. The ship bucks and kicks with the wind. There’s no way to tell if we’re gaining or losing altitude.

When I open my eyes again, I get a glimpse through the viewscreen: we're surfing on the edge of the storm, and there’s a high range of snow-capped mountains speeding toward us, lit up by the sun. 

We’re either going over them or through them, I realize.

We need more power
, I tell the ship.
One last time.

I feel it struggle to respond. 

Then the engines suck in lei and surge, and we arc up above the storm. The green apparitions fade abruptly. 

But we must have crossed out of the lei lines, because the engines cut out, then. Everything goes deathly quiet.

And there it is: a high gap, with a small, frozen lake and a broad stretch of deep, unblemished snow. We’re headed for it whether we like it or not, now. I’d tell everyone to hold on, but, well, it seems pretty damn obvious at this point.

I hear the engines kick in at the very last minute—maybe some last bit of reserve power. Whatever it is, I think that’s what saves us. 

But we still hit hard, belly-down on the snow, and we skid what feels like half a mile until we come to rest half-on and half-off the frozen lake. 

The ice shatters from our weight, and the nose goes down beneath the water. We slide a little more until finally we come to rest, all of us staring out the viewscreen at some pretty freaked-out fish staring back at us, fish that had probably been trying to catch up on some winter sleep.

7.

F
or a long minute, there’s silence, broken only by a quiet, irregular ticking coming from that knife in the console of the ship, cooling. Just to be on the safe side, I pull it out with two fingers and slide it into my sheath with my other one. Can’t be too careful.

“So,” I say. “That wasn’t exactly my best landing.”

“Thanks,” says the bearded man. He unbuckles and climbs awkwardly out of the seat, stretches his shoulders, takes off his bowler hat and brushes dirt around on it. Then he sets it carefully back on his head.

“Not a problem,” I say. It was
one
of my better landings, but I’ll keep that to myself.

The man stares at me. “Thanks for ruining one of the best planned, carefully executed, most expensive operations that I’ve ever put into motion. What are you, man—a devil? A demon?” He takes his hat off again, scrubs at it uselessly with his dirty sleeve.

I unbuckle too and stand up. The hair on the back of my neck ridges goes back, and my ears flatten against my skull. There’s a low growl low in my throat, and all of my fur goes jet black. I'm at least a foot taller than he is.

The bearded man pales, and takes a step backward.

“You know, he probably saved our lives, Ercan.” The female mage says. She’s as battered and dirty as the rest of us, but there’s something about her that still takes me by surprise. She has a round, dark face and large green eyes that are wide and clear, and her long, dark hair is bound back tightly beheath the bowler hat. Her arms are covered in thin metal bracelets, at least fifteen of them glinting on each arm, and they jangle as she moves. “You should at least give him that much.”

She speaks Fhirlo with a slight accent, and her voice is calm and resigned as she stands up on the slanted deck. She offers Kjat a hand out of her seat, and after looking at it a moment, Kjat takes it and stands, but then she edges closer to me and takes out her knife.

“And if he hadn’t shown up, hadn’t blasted his way in and woken up every damn Akarii mage in the complex, he wouldn’t have had to.”

“He’s got a point, Mircada.” The fat mage stays seated. One of his legs is definitely twisted at a strange angle, but it doesn’t seem to concern him much. I realize now he’s covered in fine brown hair—definitely not human, though I don’t recognize the race. One of the helmets from the skeletons had landed in his lap, and he’s examining the carvings on it. “And that trick of steering right into the storm? Well, by Jhestet’s Tits, if I’d been trying to think of a
better
way to destroy a tremendously significant and valuable artifact, I would have to work pretty hard.”

“An artifact with a huge strategic value,” Ercan said. “An artifact that could help turn the tide of the wars.”

“Not to mention your career,” said the fat mage, smirking. “Let’s not forget your precious career.”

“Gentlemen, and…” The woman looks quickly in my direction, and then looks away. “Gentlemen. First things first,” she says, taking charge. “Fehris, what’s with all the green spirits?”

“Fascinating, weren’t they?” The fat mage blinks.

“They could see me,” I say. “They knew I was there.”

“Yes, exactly!” Fehris, the fat mage, sits up a little straighter and looks at us for the first time. “And they weren’t happy about it, either! The common theory is that they’re the ghosts of the dead of Tilhtinora—when the city exploded and fell, it happened so quickly that the inhabitants didn’t realize it was time to move on, and now there looking for where they’re supposed to be. The problem with this, of course, is that you have to believe in ghosts, which is an issue for me. Now, if you study them closely, and they way they reacted to this creature here? You’ll see a few things that validate my own theories of cross-dimensional…”

Mircada cuts him off. “Why weren’t we supposed to look at them?”

“Because they’d drive you mad, Mircada. Or at least scare Ercan. You know how freaked out he can get.”

Ercan, the bearded man, sighs loudly.

“Seriously!” Ferhis says. “You remember that time at the College, when we got caught under the matrix platforms with the Provost’s case of single malt? You shook like a …”

Ercan clears his throat loudly. “So they’re part of the storm, then, and not really related to the ship.”

“Mostly, yes. There is another report of similar phenomena from a Solingi Retriever ship six years ago, who made the mistake of trying to weather a Dead storm without warding. Similar apparitions. Three crew went mad and ran out into the storm and probably got eaten by something. Only these ghosts did seem particularly vivid around our furry friend here, and I can’t really determine if that’s because of who, or what, he is. I’m assuming that he’s a he, by the way. Am I being too presumptuous?”

He looks at me, but doesn’t wait for an answer. “But it could also have been because he was connected with the ship, Ercan. The Solingi account didn’t lead me to understand there was a lot of shouting and commotion like that. Given the fact they’re not here now, I think we can predominantly link them to the storm, first.”

"So we probably don't need to be too concerned."

"Correct."

“All right. More on that later,” the woman, Mircada says. “Could we have been followed?”

Ercan shakes his head.

I say, “Agreed, it’s pretty unlikely. Even the Akarii would have a hard time in that. But if it was me, I’d have some sort of tracking mechanism on the ship. I think we’re off-lei now, so it shouldn’t be an issue, but the minute we’re back on, we have to assume they can find us if they want to.”

“Who’d want to find this battered ancient relic now, when it’s beaten beyond all hope of restoration?”

“Fehris,” Mircada says, “I said
enough
. And is your leg actually broken?”

“I suppose it’s possible.” Fehris’ eyes had moved back to the helmet in his lap. He was using a short finger to trace the lines engraved there. "Walking is overrated."

The woman turns to Kjat. “Can you help us find something to use as a splint? I think there are materials that might work back in the first compartment.” Kjat looks first at me. I nod—these three don’t look like a threat yet, and we’re better off working with them until we figure out where we are. 

She moves awkwardly up the passageway, and I wonder if she’s been injured? I’ll have to check with her later, when we’re alone.

Mircada turns back to me. “What’s the condition of the ship?”

“Not great. I’ve never seen anything like this …”

“You’re damn right you haven’t,” mumbled Fehris.

“…But we’re in pretty bad shape. Power reserves are entirely gone, though it's pretty amazing they were there in the first place. Displays aren’t working, most of the power conduits are probably fried. Some of the engines were barely working before that last landing, but I don’t know if they are now.”

The bearded man, Ercan, is studying me. “What are you, exactly? What’s your connection with the Retriever ship? Are you some sort of Akarii splinter faction?”