City of Burning Shadows (Apocrypha: The Dying World) (11 page)

“We’re all on the same side,” Iris said and let Copper go. I had to trust she knew what she was doing.
 

“Are we?” Copper looked at each of us. Looked at her gun, but she didn’t move toward it. “Micah’s waiting in the warehouse. I’m going to go get him and bring him back here. Don’t follow me.” At Iris. “I want to talk to him. Alone.”

“We’ll wait.”

Iris stood at the very edge of the roof and watched Copper go. Once Copper was safely out of sight, she brought me the gun. “Keep this.”

“What should I do with it?”

“It’s a gun, Ash. What do you think?” She sat down cross-legged on the tiles that lined the rooftop. It couldn’t have been comfortable, given the heat I could feel radiating up just standing here. “So what really happened?”

I slid the pistol into my bag. “Seems like she got my message after all. And the timing was
fortuitous.
” My voice twisted on the last word and Iris squinted one eye open at me.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but in the three years you were actually sleeping together, she never once invited you upstairs.”

“That’s right. Maybe it’s different now she’s a director. Maybe it’s because—” Reflexively, I pressed a hand against my pocket to double check the data stick was still there. “She asked for my help. Which is probably a sign of desperation right there. But probably safer for her to bring me up there where she knew we could talk without anyone spying. Even if my presence raises some perfect white eyebrows.”

Iris leaned back, basking in the warmth. Shifters. “But you know she has Spark’s technology?”

“Yeah, Desavris has it, but they’re having trouble with it. Seana thinks sabotage.”

Iris jumped to the same conclusion I had. “You think it’s a Jansynian conflict? Sabotaging Desavris while they try to whip the people of Miroc into a frenzy?”

“It occurred to me. But Seana thinks it’s an inside job.”

“What does she expect you to do about it?”

“Magic. She expects me to do what I do.” I glanced back at the street, but there was still no sign of Copper and Micah. “If I help her, she may help us.”

It wasn’t going to be easy, though. “This magic she needs, I haven’t done anything like it since before the Abandon. I’m going to need supplies and a real workroom.”

Iris nodded. She knew what I meant. She knew where I meant. “I better go with you. I don’t trust you to stay out of trouble on your own. We’ll go tonight, after dark.”

That settled, we had nothing left to do but wait.

#

Seana and I first met because one of Arisia’s directors loved the theater.
 

As I came to understand, he was a bit of an eccentric. He liked to watch non-Jansynians going about their lives and entertainments. Not unlike going to the zoo. I never met him face-to-face, so I don’t know if he was as unpleasant a person as he sounded.

But I did meet Seana as she and her security team scouted Kaifail’s temple in preparation for his attendance.
 

I drew short straw that week, so I’d been assigned to assist her and her team, to show them anything they wanted to see and keep them from getting lost on our sprawling campus. Four Jansynians in sleek black suits, taciturn and superior and—I was certain—quietly judging me. Because I wasn’t one of them. Because I was different. I knew enough about them back then to understand that, in their eyes, different was one of the greatest sins I could commit.

I hated it. Not just because they weren’t any fun to be around, but because I had research of my own sitting neglected while I played babysitter. I wanted it over with. I wanted them to go home.

Until Seana started asking me questions. Not just questions about how many doors there were into the theater and how many people we expected opening night, but questions about the art on the walls, the stories behind the topiaries in the gardens and the mosaics in the narthex.
 

Then she asked if she could see the library. Of course I was happy to show it to her. Her companions were impatient. What could Kaifail possibly have here that Jansyn hadn’t already collected, cataloged, processed? Seana sent them back to the Crescent and I escorted her alone on what I would later think of as our first date.

Seana was a sensualist at heart. As I walked her through Dark Kaifail’s cathedral, she traced her fingertips down leather bindings, inhaled the scents of old paper and ink. She marveled at the research room in the archive, and listened so attentively I rambled at length about my job.
 

We went for coffee and it was my turn to listen. She talked about Arisia, about the Crescent, what it was like to be born into a life where you knew there would always be a place for you, always someone to care for you—even if that someone was a company. No, not a company, she explained—a family.

Two nights later, she came to my house. In her hand was a bottle of wine, because she understood that was how humans pursued romance. I didn’t turn her away then, or any night that came after.

She was intense. Brilliant and interested in everything, and deeply passionate, even if she expressed that passion differently from any person I’d ever known.
 

I loved her. She loved me.

For three years, I believed that was enough.

#

When Micah and Copper arrived, neither looked pleased with the other. “What happened?” Micah asked as soon as he was up on the roof. “Are you all right?”

“Iris got to Copper before she could shoot me.”

“Before she could—what?” Micah rounded on Copper who’d just stepped off the ladder. “You tried to shoot him?”

Copper rolled her eyes. “I didn’t plan on shooting him. I just had the gun out so he knew I was serious.”

Which was a lie. Or maybe, now she’d had a chance to calm down, Copper believed that. Either way, it wasn’t worth arguing about. “It doesn’t matter. Everyone’s fine.”

Micah still looked uneasy but didn’t argue with me. “We should get out of the sun, at any rate. Let’s move this upstairs.”
 

“Fine,” Copper said. “Might as well show them where we’re hiding. Not like that’s a secret anymore, since he saw you from the lift. And then next we can send engraved invitations to the Jansynians.” She gave me one more black look, then waved for us all to follow.

From the rooftop, we crossed a rickety-looking plank bridge to another access ladder that ran up a girder. That terminated at a locked electrical box, but a rope web had been woven among the thick wires that led out from the box. Copper made it look easy, finding purchase on the rope with her overlong fingers and toes. Iris tugged on one of the ropes, then shifted to become a monkey and scrambled up behind Copper.

“It’s more solid than it looks,” Micah assured me.
 

Good thing I wasn’t afraid of heights. Even so, I didn’t look down as I climbed.
 

 
From the top of the rope-ladder, we stepped onto a walkway that led to a part of the Web like I’d seen around the lift. Platforms and hanging tents spread around us to form a city that was almost solid.
 

Above us, the Crescent offered shade from the punishing noon-day sun, but there was no escape—ever—from the withering desert heat. Even a couple hundred feet up, as I worked to catch my breath after the climb, I sucked in nothing but hot, dry air.
 

I’d lost sight of Copper. She hadn’t waited. “I’m sorry.” Micah wasn’t at all winded. “She’s been on edge all morning. Even before this business with you and Desavris.”

“Any particular reason?” I alternately flexed and squeezed my hands, trying to work out the stiffness the climb had put into them.
 

“One of the kids who runs errands for us—he died this morning.”
 

“I’m sorry,” I said automatically. “Was it the Jansynians?”

Micah shook his head. “There wasn’t any sign of violence. He just collapsed while he was giving Copper a message. Although that raises its own issues—poison or sickness—serious problems if that’s what killed him.”

I found the timing suspicious. On the same night we moved Spark into hiding, a kid working with Copper died. “No idea how it happened?”

“She didn’t want to talk about it, and I can’t blame her.” He added, “I wouldn’t bring it up.” As though I were looking for more ways to agitate the woman who tried to kill me less than an hour ago.

People called out to Micah as we passed through a maze of platforms and walkways. Most of them were human, and a surprising number were foreign. I saw skin both lighter and darker than my own, heard lilts and drawls and close-cropped consonants. I thought of university students, of tourists, of businesspeople—all the different ways people could have become trapped here when the intercontinental tubes shut down. Even assuming they had homes to go back to.

Hard as it was for those of us who had been in the middle of it to accept, Miroc had been spared the worst of the post-Abandon violence. After the Favored Children had been assassinated—after the world saw the gods no longer protected their own—all the lost and frightened people had turned against the priests. Miroc, as one of the few places in the world that hadn’t been born around or led by one of the churches, had come through relatively unscathed. Sure, there had been riots and fires and—things I didn’t want to think about—but our city leaders were no strangers to violence and had kept it contained while it ran its course.
 

I didn’t know for certain what happened elsewhere in the world. But I couldn’t imagine anything good. The mere fact that no one had ever come to our rescue, what did that say?
 

But that was too huge a problem to contemplate. Even Miroc’s dwindling water supply and growing desperation were too overwhelming for me. Manageable problems like keeping Spark safely hidden and helping Seana find her saboteur—they were more than enough to keep me busy.

Micah led me across and up and back and down and up again, until I had no idea which way was forward or back. I did know when we crossed into a different—what, neighborhood? Territory? Something had changed, no question.

First of all, there was electricity. Cables ran all about, connecting tents and shacks in a complicated snare, with dormant lights hanging down throughout. All around, I saw people working. Children sat on the edges of platforms, their feet dangling into nothingness, wrapping wires around various hunks of metal. I saw a man with a soldering iron, bent over a circuit board on a table that was little more than three rough boards hammered together. Two women sweated at a forge that had been welded onto one of the cross-girders. Scattered in among them, above them, below them, more armed men and women that I had seen all together in a long time.

“What is this, Copper’s army?”

“Nothing so organized.” Micah waved to people as we passed, smiling back at the friendly greetings, his actor facade plastered on his face. “Copper and Spark—they’ve helped these people. Especially Copper. I swear, Ash, you’re not seeing her at her best.”

In the center of it all, a large wooden dome with mismatched glass windows and an actual door. Micah took me inside to a cluttered mess of electrical and mechanical junk in various states of disassembly—or rebuild. It was hard to tell.
 

Copper and Iris waited, glowering at each other. Micah still wore his fake smile. And I resigned myself to a long afternoon.

#

There weren’t any chairs in here, and the two cots in the corner were full of mechanical odds and ends. I sat on the floor, next to Iris, while Micah found a stable pile of boxes and Copper squatted on a heavy-looking engine block. “So now Spark is safe—”

Copper cut me off. “Is she?”

“Of course she is,” Iris snapped back. “We took care of that last night.”

Under the Crescent’s shadow, only dim illumination made it through the windows, but Copper hadn’t turned on any of the electric lights. Even in the gloom, I could see her glowering at me. “I want to see her.”

I tried to focus on the fact it was her sister in danger, on the insurmountable resources of the Jansynians, on Copper’s precarious position, and not on the fact she’d tried to kill me. “Right now, Iris and I are the only two people who know where Spark is being kept. You have to see how it doesn’t help her if we share that information with anyone.”

“We talked about this.” Micah leaned forward, his voice soothing. “You’re just upset. And maybe that’s what they want.” He glanced up. Even if the ceiling blocked it, the Crescent still loomed over our heads. “If they do know Ash was working with us, they may have grabbed him just to prompt this sort of panic—to maybe give them another chance to follow you to Spark.”

I continued where Micah left off. “It’s not my decision, anyway. I’d have to clear that with Amelia and I know she’s not going to jeopardize the safety of her client, no matter how much you want to see Spark. You hired us to do a job. Let us do it.”

Copper considered, staring at me. I wished I could read her expression, decipher her alien face. “Very well,” she said, her voice soft. “Let’s move on. For now.”

“Right.”
 

But before I could frame the first of my questions, Micah jumped up and went over to a desk I hadn’t noticed, buried beneath bundles of canvas and wire. He rummaged around and pulled out a crumpled mass of paper.

“Vogg and Copper put this together.” He spread the paper out on the floor. Iris and I both leaned in, straining to see in the inadequate light. Copper didn’t offer to turn any on for us. Petty.

“It’s a map?” Iris asked. She traced her finger along lines and symbols without seeming to make any more sense of it than I could.

“Oh yes.” Micah held it flat and grinned.
 

I had no idea what I was looking at. Several thin sheets were stacked together so I could see different layers of drawings of tubes and lines and squares and arrows. I looked over at Iris who shrugged back at me.
 

“Oh for Fyea’s sake.” Copper came down off her perch and squeezed in between us. “There,” she pointed at one of the squares. “That’s an access panel. Here,” she pulled up one of the sheets, traced along a curving tube, “a maintenance hallway. At this point,” she peeled back another sheet, pointed to another square marked with an arrow, “only one thickness of wall separates the hall from another corridor that’s
past
the security checkpoint.”