As ifwantisn’t a word that dusters know intimately. A word that leaves a constant, bitter taste on our parched tongues.
Thunder from the magnastorm rolls through the dark, loud enough that it shakes the room. Kelda shivers, and I pull her and Halle a little closer, smoothing the hair away from their faces just like Mama used to do. Every inch of my body aches with missing her, with wishing desperately that she would wake up and tell us what to do.
The window flares with lightning, multiple flashes overlapping in a riot of washed-out colors, and thunder rolls through the dark, loud enough that it shakes the room. A few steps away, Mama sits cross-legged, unseeing, swaying. I can’t hear her humming from here, but it doesn’t matter because it’s already in my veins. Beautiful and relentless.
In this moment, I hate it. If the song had a throat, I would strangle it.
Another crack of thunder. Kelda flinches, and Halle squeezes her eyes shut, her arm heavy across my chest. Mama told us stories during magnastorms, the same handful over and over until we forgot to be afraid of the wind and lightning and fell asleep. She can’t do that for us now.
So I guess that just leaves me.
Hey, eyes on me.I wait until they’re both looking up at me, and then I smile, braver and stronger than I feel.Remember that one about the street magician and the dram shop?
Their bodies relax as I repeat the story, exactly as I’ve heard Mama tell it over and over again. When I’m done, I tell another. And another. And another. Until Halle and Kelda fall asleep, and it’s just me lying there, staring at Mama’s vacant face, waiting for the storm to pass.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“NO OFFICIAL CAUSE FOR THE PHENOMENON IN COVENANT LAST NIGHT HAS BEEN FOUND. SOME SPECULATE THAT IT MIGHT BE TIED TO THE RAPIDLY INCREASING HEAT, BUT THAT IS UNCERTAIN. RECOMMENDATION IS TO ATTRIBUTE IT TO A SIGN FROM THE HERALDS, PERHAPS DISPLEASURE AT DECREASING OFFERING AMOUNTS.”
—CONFIDENTIAL HERALDIC MINISTRY MEMORANDUM (YEAR 2120)
We put the chaos of Covenant behind us quickly, riding straight for the edge of the city, out into the Plains. My plan was to travel west and south toward the continent of Vicar. Very few people head for Vicar these days because it’s where the biggest and harshest magnastorms tend to hit. But Atlas says his mounts mean his rules, so we head north instead.
That’s fine. This is only temporary anyway. Once we get some distance behind us, I’ll take my sisters and head off in our own direction.
We ride the rest of the night, Halle with Atlas, Kelda with Liren, me with Orion, and Dani on her own, proving she’s almostas comfortable on a mount as she is at the wheel of an airship. The deep dark of the early-morning hours gradually gives way to a bright, burning-hot dawn over the gleaming Copper Plains. Covenant is a dark smudge on the distant horizon, but even out from under the thousands of eyes there, I don’t feel any safer. Honestly, I feel more exposed than ever, with nothing but flat alloy around us, and it’s a relief when we finally reach the edge of another town midmorning.
Concord is a mirage town, one of hundreds of smaller settlements that dot the Copper Plains, peppering the lightningrail lines between cities. Its humble collection of buildings sit clustered together on the edge of the Elysian Depths, right beside two bridges: one for the aqueducts, glowing their soft blue even in the hot sunshine, and another for the lightningrail that runs off into the distance. I’ve never been to a mirage town before or even seen pictures of them on the dailies, so I’m not sure what to expect when we ride in from the Plains. I keep my longcoat on and my hood up despite the heat in order to fend off any prying eyes, but the streets are virtually empty as we walk our mounts past a collection of tiny shops and row houses.
“Where is everybody?” I mutter to Orion as we follow Atlas along a lane lined with neatly kept homes and almost no people in sight.
“What do you mean?” He looks around with exaggerated effect. “This is busy for Concord.”
He grins at me, obviously proud of his joke. I grunt at him.
Liren stops us at a tall, narrow row house where we tie up our mounts before they usher us inside. The interior reminds me of Dani’s lodgings—worn, but well-maintained and well-loved—and the couple waiting for us in the parlor with several glasses and a small jug of water don’t seem at all surprised to have a bunch of ragged fugitives on their doorstep. They’re older, midfifties maybe, both with calloused hands, black hair heavily streaked with gray, and tan skin made darker by the sun. The man has the same dark, angular eyes as Liren, while the woman shares Liren’s round face shape. They watch, unbothered, as we tromp in, dusty and sweaty, Orion and Dani both dropping the big packs carrying their hauls from the Gentleman’s Rack heavily on the floor.
“We saw the news about Covenant in the dailies this morning.” The woman pulls Liren into a quick hug. “We figured we might see you sooner or later.”
The man looks past Atlas and Orion, his eyebrows slightly raised. “Although you have a few more in your party than we expected.”
“Old friends of Atlas and Orion,” Liren explains. They turn to me and Dani and my sisters, all of us hovering in the entryway, not really sure what to do with ourselves. “This is my dad, Garian, and my mom, Mira. They’ve got spare rooms here we can crash in until we figure out our next move.”
Mira’s gaze lands on me. “A saint, huh?” I stiffen, one hand going automatically to Wrath’s hilt, but she waves me off. “Put your teeth away. You don’t have anything to fear from us.”
“We’re not followers of the Heralds,” Garian adds as he sets out generous portions of water for each of us.
Halle takes a big gulp from one of the cups, frowning. “What… not at all? Not even a fringe sect like the Schismatics or the Apostates?”
Mira shakes her head. “Our religious practices are completely outside of the Heralds.”
Liren sets their empty cup down and gestures at us to follow them, explaining as they go. “For us, it’s not so much about some kind of omnipotent authority as it is about maintaining a spiritual link to our ancestors and those who came before us. We venerate them and show them respect, and they protect and guide us from the afterlife.”
Liren stops just inside the kitchen and nudges open a panel expertly concealed inside the wall, revealing a rectangular cabinet space with items inside arranged like an altar. There’s a metal tablet carved with names, and all around it are offerings—a tiny cup of water, little cylindrical naphtha lights, a pouch of something that smells sharp and spicy.
“We can’t make proper grave markers without the chapels coming down on us,” Liren explains, “so we have to do our best wherever we’re at.”
My eyes skim down the names etched into the tablet, one after the other, some of them sharper, newer, while others are worn from time. I couldn’t even name anyone in my family line past Mama and Papa; it hadn’t ever occurred to me to wonder about it. Seeing Liren’s ancestors laid out with such love and care makes me feel unmoored, suddenly aware of a loss I hadn’t noticed before.
