City of Burning Shadows (Apocrypha: The Dying World) (3 page)

With the churches gone, Miroc’s council was the only thing holding our city together. They regulated what water we had left, negotiated with the Jansynians for the trade deals we could still manage, and organized the various police and security forces that kept the city from erupting into violent chaos. “What’s going on with the council?” I asked.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Amelia said smoothly. “But I think I will have you take that meeting.”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Me? Shouldn’t you send someone with experience? Iris or Josiah or—”

Amelia cut me off with a sharp shake of her head. “He approached you. He trusts you. Find out what he and his employers know—and, if you can, how they know it.”

“Isn’t there some kind of training? What do I say? What do I do?”

Amelia sighed, impatiently tapping her perfectly lacquered nails on the surface of her desk. “It’s the end of the world. We’ve moved past probationary periods and promotion tracks. Ask questions. You know how to do that. Whatever they tell you, bring it back to me.”

It sounded straightforward enough. It wasn’t what I would have chosen to do, but Amelia was the boss and I couldn’t say no. “I can do that.”

Amelia waved her hand, finished with me. “Off you go.”

Iris followed me out. “I can come with if you need me. Amelia won’t tell me no.”

The offer was beyond kind, especially after I’d snapped at her earlier. “Thanks, Iris. I appreciate it, really. But I should be able to talk to people without getting myself in too much trouble.”

She shrugged, and her eyes whirled a cheerful rainbow of colors before returning to violet. “We’ll see about that.”

Bathed in the warmth of her friendly amusement, I went back to my office to call downstairs and tell Micah it was done.

#

No surprise the nightmares came again. The fight at the tube station, the stress of seeing Micah—I should have expected it.
 

Tonight I didn’t dream of the riots. Which was a change, at least. If my subconscious was determined to make my nights a living hell, at least it was good enough to offer up some variety in its punishments.
 

We take the small comforts where we find them.

I was in an alley at night. The glass and concrete walls to either side of me reached claustrophobically high. The still-lucid sliver of my mind called out that I shouldn’t be here, that I should know better than to be alone, after dark, in this part of town.

It wasn’t enough to break the dream. Because I
had
been here. I
had
done this, even knowing at the time that I shouldn’t.

“Hello?” my dream self called out, and my voice echoed all around, the word stretching and twisting and growing louder and louder until I had to cover my ears from the deafening thunder.

I’d come here looking for other priests in hiding. I’d come alone because none of the other survivors huddled at the temple were in any shape to walk the streets. But the little girl who’d stumbled in this morning—dehydrated, bruised, and cradling a broken arm—had said her mother and four other priests were trapped. They’d been spotted coming back from a trip out to find food. Their attackers had set fire to the building and the priests had been caught when the building collapsed.

Ellie was the girl’s name. Alana was her mother. Alana had been one of mine, a priest of Dark Kaifail. I had to try to find her.

The bastards were waiting for me.

The blessing and curse of dreams is that they are not real. The pain I felt as they broke my bones, cut my face, caved my ribs—it was a shadow of what the reality had been. But the terror, the soul-deep anguish, the horrific loss—these things were worse for countless repetition and the knowledge I would never see any of these friends again—not the one I’d left behind in the temple; not the ones I’d come to save.

I woke to the echo of my own voice, a sobbing scream that no one but me was there to hear. Further sleep was out of the question. Once the nightmares started for the night, they’d keep coming back.

My apartment was small—a one-room efficiency—the best I could afford. These days, it wasn’t space that ran up your cost-of-living; it was the utilities to make it habitable. Water wasn’t the only thing that had become more expensive as Miroc limped closer and closer to being swallowed by the desert.

I stumbled over to the tiny sink that served both bathroom and kitchen functions and slid my hand over the panel that activated the small sconce above it. I dribbled water onto the washcloth that hung on the wall and scrubbed my face.
 

Reflexively, I rubbed again at the rough lines that traced my skin over my collarbone, across to my shoulder, several inches down my chest. Kaifail’s stone doorway, with the swirling vortex in the center and the basic symbols of magic worked in all around. I knew it well enough I only had to trace it with my fingers to see it in my mind. This morning, it had gotten me out of a beating. Other times, like the night I’d just been dreaming about…

Among the Thirteen, there were gods who taught tolerance and love. Who guided their followers to forgive their enemies and bear no judgment against those who wronged them.

Kaifail was not one of those gods. Which was good, because I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive those people. I wished them countless nights of nightmares worse than mine and eternal judgment from whichever god they belonged to—whichever god they had turned their backs on to commit atrocious acts against the servants of all the Thirteen.

“Ellie,” I said into the mirror. “Alana. Jason. Molly.” I’d lost them on that horrible night. When I woke up in the hospital, days later, no one could tell me what had happened. In the months of my recovery, I couldn’t get in contact with them or any other refugees from Kaifail’s temple. So many friends and colleagues and people I considered family—all gone. I’d assumed they were dead, but seeing Micah today had opened up the possibility that anyone could still be out there.

Amelia had found Iris, and Iris and found me, but who else was looking for these lost souls, these broken men and women who could be anywhere in the city, desperate and alone, condemned to their fate by the tattoo we all bore?
 

Kaifail couldn’t help us. Or Kaifail wouldn’t help us. It amounted to the same thing. For years we had served him, and then he and the rest of the Thirteen had disappeared without a word of warning. They’d left the world to this dismal fate, left their priests behind to bear the ire of a civilization slowly collapsing.
 

I couldn’t bring the gods back. I couldn’t save the ones they’d left behind. The best I could do was hope my friends found some kind of peace and shelter and fellowship as we all counted off the days remaining until the end.
 

CHAPTER THREE

Copper

Kaifail was a liar. I’m his priest; I can say that. And it’s not like it was any great secret, especially to anyone who took thirty seconds to look.

For followers of the Bright God, lies were a way of life. They celebrated Kaifail the storyteller, the trickster, the scoundrel: the Kaifail who stole the secrets of magic as a gift to his children, who conned three different goddesses into believing they were his one and only true love. The Bright Church was full of itinerant storytellers, actors, artists, and politicians—crafters of fiction, every one.

Those of us who aligned with the Dark God, we venerated a different Kaifail. Our Kaifail hoarded puzzles and stalked mysteries but he was no more honest than his other face. Maybe priests of the Dark God didn’t lie as often as our bright brethren, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t.

I didn’t want to see Micah again. Didn’t want to meet with his people. Had no interest in whatever they needed from Price & Breckenridge. But because Amelia had told me to, and because I still needed to pay my bills, I would go and I would listen and I would report back.

My apartment had no windows, but my bedside alarm informed me the sun was up and it was time to get moving. I had work to do. I dressed, packed up my NetPad and wireless and made for the tube station.

I transferred to the yellow line today, since I was headed for a different part of town. I rode to the last stop and still it spit me out with quite a few blocks to hike. I pulled up my hood as I stepped out into the glaring sunlight. I was alone on the sidewalk. Flat-faced warehouses offered neither canopies nor decorative trees for shade. Cargo trucks, the street’s lone occupants, jetted clouds of smoke into air that was already hot enough to suffocate. This was the only part of the city where regular traffic still moved, and all these trucks were going in and out of one place. I squinted up at the most visible landmark, the shining expanse of glass and steel, high above the city, shimmering in the heat. The beating heart of Jansynian industry: the Corporate Crescent.

After us humans, the Jansynians probably had the highest population in Miroc—in the world—but you’d never know it by faces on the street. They kept to themselves, lived, worked, and played in their private, glassed-in and fenced-off complexes.
 

Mostly. As it turned out, I knew a great deal about the Jansynian city above because of one woman who had stepped down from the sky to be with me. Years ago, before everything fell apart. Our story was as old and worn as time. We’d been in love, but life had intervened.
 

And then the world had ended. So points for originality right there at the end. Still, a failing grade overall.
 

The Crescent was the one place in Miroc that hadn’t changed since the Abandon and the subsequent collapse. It had always been its own world, a self-sufficient haven for those who belonged, an impenetrable fortress to those who didn’t. The Crescent didn’t seem to be suffering from any of the problems that plagued Miroc, but how would anyone know? I’d lived in this city all my life, and I’d spent three years intensely involved with a Jansynian woman, and I’d still never been any closer to the Crescent than this.
 

The city in the sky began a hundred stories above the street on which I walked. The outside was a shell of reflective, tinted glass, a sleek dome covering the Jansynian city that protected them both from the elements and any outsiders who might want in. A dozen different corporations each had their own enclave within, providing all the space their employees needed to work, live, and play. Most Jansynians were born in a corporate complex and never saw the need to leave. The Crescent had its own sources of food, water, and power. As Miroc starved and withered below, the Jansynians went on as they always had.

At no point had the Jansynians offered to share their bounty, but they at least had the good grace to ignore those who had taken refuge in what was quite literally their shadow.
 

Natives called it the Web. It had existed almost as long as the Crescent, but since the Abandon it had taken on a new life.
 

The city above was connected to the ground through one single, enormous lift. It was the umbilical cord through which all goods and all people moved back and forth between the Crescent and the freight yards on the ground. In between, a hundred stories of open air except for the spider’s network of girders and cables that kept the city aloft and stable. Within these supports, in the Crescent’s protective shade, a new arcology had sprung up. A tangled nest of canvas and plywood offered haven, if not safety, to a desperate community that grew larger every day.

As for the rest of this district, anything outside the protective shadow of the Crescent had already withered and died. Warehouses were useless when you had no goods to move and no way to get them anywhere. The only life, the only movement, was the line of traffic, like ants in a column, that travelled between the city and the Crescent receiving yard.

I crossed the street well before I reached the gates that opened onto Jansynian property. No reason to draw the attention of either the armed guards I could see, or the people watching through the cameras that kept a thorough surveillance on any space the Jansynians claimed. I knew enough about how Jansynian security worked to know I didn’t want to arouse the slightest suspicion I might be a problem.

Micah’s instructions led me further down the decaying street and around a corner, to a long line of run-down warehouses. I spotted him at once, the only person in sight. He waved me over to join him.

And what a location he’d found. Even in this neighborhood of neglected, decaying warehouses, the one he’d parked himself in front of stood out.

Blowing sand had scoured away all but a few small patches of dull white paint. That same sand had formed rippling waves that ran up against the building on all sides. This close to the city edge, the desert was hungry. Broken windows hadn’t been replaced or even boarded over, and one of the huge delivery doors along its side had broken off its hinges and gaped open at an angle.

“I’m so glad you came,” he said.

“I wasn’t given any choice.”

A shadow passed over us and Micah flinched. He squinted up, no longer smiling. I followed his gaze, but it was only one of the bird priests wheeling in the air. By now, even I recognized the patterns of a rain prayer. “Let’s go inside,” Micah said. “Get out of the sun.”

“Here? Really?”

He shaded his eyes and looked up again, but not at the bird priest. This time, his attention was focused on the inscrutable facade of the Crescent. “I’ll explain inside.”

#

The warehouse didn’t look any better on the inside. The small windows at the top of the walls provided insufficient light for the space. Towering metal shelves stood empty—the ones that still stood—but cast even deeper shadows between. The sand had made its way inside and crunched under my feet as we walked. The air was stale and suffocatingly hot.

“Is this where you’ve been living?” I asked, horrified, despite myself.

“Oh no, not at all. But we wanted this meeting on neutral ground.”

“Who’s we? And why all the secrecy?”

“Copper will explain. But, please, Ash,” Micah stopped, forcing me to stop with him. We faced each other in the gloom. “I know you’re upset with me. I get that. But you’re going to have to ease up. Copper, she’s touchy. And about as thrilled to be taking this meeting as you are.”