Ninth City Burning (59 page)

A
fter that, I just kind of wander around. It's about the first time I've been in the city when I wasn't doing some kind of work. I got put on repair duty approximately five seconds after I'd finished up my meeting with old Sorril, and from there it was pretty much nonstop until now. It feels nice, walking up and down the empty streets.

The streets aren't
totally
empty, I suppose. Now and then, I see someone walking up ahead, or down some alley or something. They're probably people like me, people who didn't want to be at the Forum. I never say anything. I just let them go by. The city is real quiet and peaceful, and I don't want to mess that up. It doesn't even seem like someplace people built—more like people haven't even discovered it yet. Like a deep, dried-out riverbed with high stone walls. You can still hear everyone at the Forum cheering like crazy, but it seems far away.

At some point, though, I hear music coming from somewhere. It isn't that awful Prip music Camareen hated so much, with all the drums and cymbals and whatnot. It's one small little sound, playing a pretty happy little tune that makes me think of something running and dancing. I follow it until I get to a sort of square, where a whole bunch of people are sitting and standing around listening to the music. And right there in the middle is little Naomi, playing.

This isn't the first time I've heard bivvie music. Sometimes when their caravans came through Settlement 225, a few of them would play for us. The best music, though, was what you'd hear at night, coming from their camp. Every so often, Camareen would take me to listen. We'd have to sneak out and like hide in a field so the bivvies wouldn't see us, but it was
always worth it. And that's the kind of music Naomi's playing now, the kind the bivvies played for themselves.

I'm imagining Camareen being here, how happy it would have made her to hear this music, when suddenly I get this idea that I'm thinking about Camareen the same way I was thinking about Mersh. What she
would
have liked. Like Camareen is dead, too. And even though she's just fine back on Granite Shore, it's still like she's gone forever because I know I'll never see her again, not unless she lives to be about a hundred and I get back to Earth alive. And what are the chances of both of those things happening? Not very good, I'd say.

As I'm thinking about all of that, the music stops, and when I look around to figure out why, I notice everyone's staring at me. Maybe I made a noise or something, I don't know, but I feel pretty embarrassed, especially since I probably look like I was creeping around in the shadows and whatnot. But then Naomi says, “Torro, come and join us.”

I'd forgotten how Naomi's one of those fontani, and how they're supposed to have really fantastic eyesight and hearing and everything. She probably knew I was there the whole time. Now that I'm paying closer attention, I can see that most of the people sitting around aren't even bivvies. There are a few, like that guy Thom and the couple others from Twelfth, and some more I don't recognize that are probably from other centuries. But most everyone else seems like someone you'd meet in the Legion, settlement people and Prips, too, people who could have just wandered out of the city the way I did.

“Yeah, sure,” I say. I feel a lot better here than I did at the Forum, and I'm about to go find someplace to sit down, when I realize I've got something in my hand—a piece of paper. It's the page of music Mersh brought me the day I got sent up to the Legion, the one with Camareen's message,
Come back
. I'd had it in my jacket, but somehow I ended up taking it out.

I've stopped short to look at it, and people are starting to stare again. I think about just putting it back in my jacket, but then I say, “Hey, Naomi, can you play something for me? I have a request.” I give her the page. “Do you think you could play it?”

She looks it over, all very serious. “This music is not written for a fiddle,” she says. “But I will do what I can.”

Everyone is watching us now. “It's music,” I tell them. “Like, old music,
from before the war.” That gets people interested. It makes me a little nervous, like maybe they'll all want to look at the page and accidentally tear it up or something, but Naomi asks old Thom to hold it for her so she can read it while she plays, and that settles anyone else's getting anywhere near it.

The song is slow and a little sad, but there's something else to it, too, like something hopeful. It's a real nice song. It really is. But after only a minute or so, it stops. You can tell there's supposed to be more, like from the way the notes are going, sort of picking up, but it just stops right there.

“That's all there is,” Naomi says. I think she's a little disappointed, too. “The rest is missing.”

I feel like a pretty big idiot. I've seen other songs written down, like when Camareen would play or sing for me, and they're almost always more than one page long. But for some dumb reason I thought this had to be a whole song. I'd been carrying it around all this time, not even knowing it wasn't finished.

“Play it again,” someone says. I don't even see who, but everyone else starts saying the same thing. Even though most of the song is missing, there's still something there that gets them. They all want to hear more, even if they'll never get to the end.

Naomi brings up her fiddle again and starts to play.

T
he song is titled “Over the Rainbow,” with music by Harold Arlen and words by E. Y. Harburg, or so I am told by the bold script at the top of the page, below the proud proclamation “Sung in the M-G-M Picture ‘THE WIZARD OF OZ.'” These references mean nothing to me, and I do not expect Torro knows any more than I, for they are written in English, as are the words arrayed beneath Mr. Arlen's bars of notes. The lyrics seem maudlin and daydreaming to me, but perhaps there is more substance to be found in the lines that follow. What those are I cannot say, for the music I have is only a fragment of the whole. I am certain there is more, and would be so even if the lyrics did not end partway through a sentence, for this melody is plainly the opening phrase of some longer composition.

Torro has brought us just the song by which to take our leave of Earth. I wish only that I had more to play. Until now, I have built my performance entirely of tunes learned at Papa's knee, heard a thousand times on wagon trails, scratched out on cold nights, sent dancing or weeping at weddings and funerals, familiar as old friends. They are fine songs, rich with flavors of home, with memories both happy and sad, and when I picked up my fiddle tonight and began to play, they called my people to me as surely as a bugle cry summoning scouts to supper.

Reaper Thom is still here with me, as are Apricot Bose and the Simons Grumble and Rumble, and Rae stayed for a time before running off to chase that boy Vinneas. She even asked for a turn on the fiddle, which was a surprise to everyone. Her performance suffered from a lack of practice, but when you have a face like Rae's, people do not stickle over the quality of your music, and reviews were positive for the most part. It was a large audience indeed: There are more Walkers on this island, I have learned, from other
codas, and the sound of these old ballads, well-known to every codesman on the continent, brought them out to listen. Others gathered also, people from cities and townships wandering from the dark streets in ones and twos and threes, strangers at first but friends after sharing this music with us.

And yet until Torro came, it was always the ballads of the Walkers here. I do not think anyone wished to hear the abominable clatter that passes for music in the Legion. Torro's song is something new, something different, a song that belongs to none of us and all of us, and as such is a good melody to embark on a shared journey. We have each traveled our separate ways to this place, but from here on, we go together.

The Consulate made some effort to relegate Jax and myself to duty on Earth, but we remain part of the Ninth Legion, and if the Ninth was to join in this mission, we would not allow anyone, even Consul Seppora herself, to keep us back. The Consulate proved unequal to our determination, especially once Charles took our part. He spoke at length in praise of our courage and fortitude and service to the Legion, and promised to impress upon us by his continued tutelage the importance of following orders. I believe this last comment was meant as an apology for withholding the evacuation plan from us, but I have not yet decided whether Charles deserves to be forgiven, even though his speech was what finally convinced the Consulate to restore our privileges as fontani of Ninth Legion. I think I may eventually offer some terms of peace simply to learn the meaning behind his final argument before the Consulate, the one that seemed to chip away the last of their resistance: “I'm going to need their help with your latest assignment.”

After that, only one person made any effort to prevent us from joining the expedition—or, I should say, to stop me in particular. Vinneas visited me privately and with an arsenal of clever and well-reasoned arguments attempted to convince me to stay behind. When that failed, he came as near to begging as a man can while still keeping his dignity, and, if I am honest, went a step or two over the line. I will own that I was a little moved, for I imagined Rae had put him up to it, and if so, the consequences of failure would be harsh for him indeed. Unfortunately for Vinneas, pity was not enough to undo my resolve.

I knew Rae would consider my decision nothing but childish hardheadedness, and anticipated a fiery confrontation. I determined at least to mention the effort Vinneas had made on the chance doing so might spare
him some of her wrath. But when I saw her again, Rae did not seem angry, only sad, and when I told her of my conversation with Vinneas, she professed ignorance on the matter.

“I know you can take care of yourself, Sunshine,” she said. “You have the bravest soul I have ever known. It is a privilege to fight at your side.” It was the first time she had ever treated me like a comrade, and in the pride of that moment, I could even forgive her use of my old nickname.

At the time I did not remark on the sadness I thought I saw in her, and it has not surfaced again. I did, however, recognize the same look in Mama when Rae and I went to see her that last time. My coda was offered a place in the new Ninth City, already being raised on the site of the old one, but they chose instead to build a small settlement of their own, albeit still within the bounds of the Valley of Endless Summer. There they will be free to pursue their own ends, safe within the valley's sheer walls from the harrying of tribal raiders and the harassing authority of such people as Ghalo and Qu. The town they are building, I am pleased to say, bears close resemblance to New Absalom.

Mama did not scold us for throwing in with the Legion or try by any means to keep us with her. She and the rest of our coda, even if they did not fully comprehend the extent of this war, understood that we had embarked on a new kind of scouting, an errand to head off danger before it could strike those less able to fight.

Baby Adam took the news of my departure as a kind of consolation for losing Rae, over whom he wept copious and bitter tears. He wiped his nose on my uniform, then surprised me with a mighty embrace and a “G'bye, Miss Priss,” and I felt in him a new and unaccustomed strength, the first spark of the man he might become.

Mama only laid a kiss on each of our foreheads, and uttered her constant “Come back to me, sweet girl.” I will admit I shed some tears of my own then, for I knew this would be our last farewell. Rae and I may one day see our brother as an old man, but Mama is already past forty, and I have little doubt the years of our campaign will be more than she has left. That was the only time I truly considered abandoning this expedition, but I had pledged myself to the people of the Keep, and I would not turn my back on them now.

My decision was the right one. I know that for sure, standing here among this motley collection of legionaries, their ears tuned to the sound of
my fiddle. This music has enchanted us all, holding us in thrall by its incompleteness. Again and again my audience calls out “encore!” as if they imagine I am holding the rest back. I try making more from what I have, varying pacing and key, looping the last notes back to the beginning, but the result remains jarring, a poor substitute for the real thing. I soon become somewhat incensed with Mr. Arlen's publisher for not being more economical with his printing.

It is during one of my many loops that Lunar Veil finally closes. The flash and the final vision of Earth have already come and gone. What I feel is more like a change in the air, as when a door nearby slams shut. I doubt any of those around me perceive it, except for Jax. I have only to look at him to know he, too, has had this sense of a world shutting away behind us. We are well and truly on our way now. We cannot know what awaits us, only that we will face it together.

This time, as I reach the final notes of Torro's page, I find another line waiting in my mind, and after that another, and another. It is as if this song has been sleeping somewhere in my memory, and only now awakened. I do not know if what I play is truly “Over the Rainbow” as Mr. Arlen wrote it, or if it is some invention of my own; nor does it matter. I allow the melody to unroll before me, feeling my heart lift as I chase along after it, eager for whatever comes next.