—TREATISE NO. 13BY MOST HOLY PREACHER HAL LOURDE, ORIGINAL CHAPEL FOUNDER
Once again, everything around me is light.
Once again, I feel it filling me up, streaming out of my eyes and my mouth and my skin. Just like it had out on the Copper Plains. It lances into the night sky, cutting through the carpet of skyliner airships and homesteads to get at the stars beyond.
I stare and stare at the impossible, brilliant color of it. The more I look, the more I think I see other hues mixed in with the blue-white—light purples, pale greens, soft pinks, gentle golds. Like all the colors of lightning in a magnastorm. But richer somehow. Purer. Brighter, even, than it was before.
I reach out a hand and almost feel a give to the air, as if this light is real and tangible.
Where are your wings, Valene?The voice sounds like me but also isn’t me.Why can’t you fly?
And then it’s gone. As suddenly as it came, it sputters and goes out, sinking back into the Crater, and complete darkness drops over us, so thick my skin crawls with the weight of it, with how close it presses against my body. It’s more than just the absence of the flare; it’s a lack of light in general. The few naphtha lamps in here have been snuffed out, and outside…
I blink hard, willing my eyes to adjust, trying to make out the haphazard shapes of the Shipyards on the other side of the window. The streets have all dropped into absolute silence, even the chapel bells have gone quiet, and there are no lights anywhere. No signs of power. Like all the naphtha to this parish has been cut.
Someone nearby shouts. Another person screams. I spot people pointing up, and I follow their gazes.
My heart plummets into my stomach.
Skyliner ships are falling out of the sky.
I drop to the floor as a small luxury airship smashes down into the building next door, the sound of rending metal shattering the air and blasting out the glass panes of the windows above me. Kelda screams, and I scramble over to her and Halle, throwing my body over theirs as a shower of rust and tiny shards fall from the ceiling.
What in every version of hell is happening?Shock ricochets through my bones. The other flares had been strange, alarming even.They had pulled at me in inexplicable ways. But they hadn’t done anything close tothis.
Behind us, the door to the warehouse slams open, and Orion and Dani duck through, jogging across the space toward us. I see the relief hit Orion’s face as he spots Halle and Kelda crouched beside me.
“What happened?” he asks me as they reach us. “Where did you go? We tried to find you, but you disappeared.”
“Hetried to find you,” Dani corrects. “I was too busy being greedy and untrustworthy.”
“We heard the bells.” Orion plows ahead, ignoring her. “Are they for you? Did someone see you?”
I flick a glance at the rucksacks he and Dani are carrying, no doubt stuffed with cash and records and that blasted Aaldenberg knot, and I turn pointedly away. I’m not going to dignify his questions with answers.
“Orion!” Kelda cries and wriggles free of Halle’s tight hold only to fling herself onto him instead. “I’ve missed you!”
He hugs her back with his one free arm. “Missed you, too, Baby Bruinn.”
She pulls back a bit and slugs him in the shoulder. “I am not a baby.”
“Not anymore you’re not,” he says, and the look on his face is soft and wistful. I suddenly realize that he hasn’t seen her since that night, when she was eight years old, and she has changed so much since then. Hell, sometimes I feel like she changes drastically between bedtime and morning.
“Yes, great, love the heartfelt reunion,” Dani snaps. “But weneed to get out of here right now. Everything is falling to pieces out there.”
I get Halle onto her feet and make for the door, but I have no idea where we can even go, where we’ll be safe right now, with every little drift ship, junk tow, and airship that had the misfortune of being in the air over the Crater plummeting downward.
I crane my head up as we step out into the street.
Fire and smoke bleed across the sky. Pockets of the parish are already burning, and airships are still falling—no power, no naphtha engines, nothing keeping them above the skyline anymore.
“Holy shit,” Dani breathes, so close behind me that her breath brushes my ear.
I follow her gaze just in time to see a fancy hover island and two luxury liners tumble downward, right into the Crater, where they’re swallowed up by the darkness. An old warehouse several blocks away from us crumbles into ash as an airship slams into it. The air is filled with parachute pods, stuffed with skyliners, floating toward the relative safety of the surface.
All around us is noise and confusion. The panicked shouts of people, the hiss and roar of fire and smoke, the distant wails of steam teams. Everything is shrouded in filmy gray clouds, like a thin veil, so it’s almost impossible to see much farther than a dozen or so feet in front of us. All I can make out are dark figures darting back and forth.
“Did you haveanykind of getaway plan?” Dani asks.
