The Fifth City

The Fifth City

Liz Delton

THE FIFTH CITY
by Liz Delton

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 Liz Delton
All rights reserved.

Edited by Caroline Smith

Cover art and maps by Liz Delton

Seals for the Four Cities by Christopher Creed

Thanks

Just as Sylvia’s family and friends help keep her safe and sane, I, too rely on mine.  Enormous thanks to Jo Anderson and Sam Gati-Tisi for seeing what I could not.  Thank you to Christopher for uniting the Four Cities by creating their iconic seals.  And thank you to my husband Jeff—this series might still be sitting in a figurative drawer somewhere, without your help.

Success is not final,
failure is not fatal:
it is the courage to
continue that counts.

- Unknown

Prologue

Sylvia reached up to grab another handhold on the cliff face, but just as she did, the rock under her foot crumbled, and she slipped—left dangling only by the fingertips of one hand.

She fumbled to find another place to grab, and seized the ledge in front of her face, gasping as pain shot up through her fingers and she willed them to hold.

Her fingers strained with all her weight, white as death upon the stone.  Waves crashed in the moonlight beneath her as she swung her right leg back up, and wedged her foot back into another crevice. 

She could hear the others below, their shouts echoing over the wind, but they didn’t matter, not right now.

Shifting her weight to her leg, she raised her body, and searched for the next handhold.  But there weren’t any.

The cliff was a flat wall above and beside her.  It was a dead end.

She closed her eyes and tried to focus, but she couldn’t.  She sunk back down, sliding her hand into the crevice with her foot, lowering herself back the way she had come.

There had to be another way to the top.

The night-dark cliff towered over her.  She needed to make it to the top fast, before her muscles began to fatigue; before the waves crashing into the rocks below would be the last thing she saw as she fell.

One

As she gazed down into the solid darkness, Sylvia could feel the cold earth pressing in around her already.  She stood at the edge of a set of ancient stone stairs, the first person to set foot on them in a thousand years, for all she knew.

Having already said goodbye to her family hours ago, she was now waiting on Ven, who had said he needed to give her something before she left.

Sylvia took a deep breath of stale air to retain her composure.  The journey ahead of her had ruled her thoughts for weeks now.  She shivered from something more than the chill.

Governor Gero was crammed in here with her, in the cramped chamber that held the dark stairwell.  They were in the Citizen’s Hall, behind a ridiculously narrow door, tucked several levels down in a forgotten basement corner.  It was a place no one would ever find, unless they knew exactly where it was.  Gero hadn’t told her anything more about the hidden stairwell.  He had only said that he knew of a way she could leave the city undetected.

She thought it lucky that the Governor had lost a bit of weight over the winter; otherwise he might not have even fit into the secret chamber, missing out on the historical event.  The strain of the war had made lines around the Governor’s eyes, and the grey at his temples had spread like a weed through his dark hair.

Sylvia shrugged her padded jacket around her shoulders and tugged her knit cowl higher up her neck.  Her breath was nearly visible in the cold underground chamber.

Midwinter’s icy grip had only recently lifted.  At the first sign of the snows receding, Sylvia had gone to see Gero, ready to take on the mission they had agreed upon during the months spent entrenched inside the snow-laden city.  The Scouts prowling the wilds outside the city wouldn’t be able to track her as easily now that footprints in the snow wouldn’t give her away.

Fast footsteps approached from behind the narrow door, and Gero and Sylvia turned to see Ven edge his way through the doorway with a small package in hand.  He grinned at Sylvia, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Now with three of them in the chamber, Sylvia took a step down onto the first stair to make some room, and she felt the cold darkness press at her from below.

Ven looked past her down the dark stairs, and muttered, not for the first time, “Wish I could go with you.”

Sylvia’s insides squirmed, but she shook her head.  Ven knew he couldn’t go with her.  He was busy at all hours of the day helping to train Meadowcity’s new guard—the Defenders—in weapons handling and practice.  She was sure he was even missing practice right now.

When she finally met his eyes, she could see him looking at her hair again, with a small smile on his lips.

The newly-dark locks framed her vision, their length now reaching her shoulders.  Since it was paramount that Sylvia not be recognized where she was going, she had done what she could to change her appearance.  While hemmed in through the winter, she had let her short, sandy hair grow out and this morning had darkened it to a deep shade of brown with a concoction her mother had made.  It would last perhaps a month.

Hopefully it would be enough time to complete her mission.

Getting recognized had ruined their escape from Riftcity, jeopardizing her, Ven, Flint and Ember on their last journey.  Her burned leg—now healed—twinged at the memory of the fiery explosion that had separated the group, when Ven and Flint had been taken by the Scouts.

Flint’s aunt Rekha had managed to convince a Scout to release them, ultimately saving Meadowcity from the fate that still gripped Riftcity.

The city on the rift was still under the firm hand of Governor Greyling: still mining and processing their stone into the compounds that made Skycity’s bombs, which were powerful enough to rip apart any of the Four Cities in seconds.

The only reason Meadowcity remained independent—and intact—was their collection of pilfered firebombs that Ven and Flint had made off with when they escaped the Scouts.  Their possession of the small but powerful orbs was enough to keep the Scouts at a distance—for a time at least.

They hadn’t gone a week without spotting at least one of Skycity’s men outside their treewall, clad in fur and accompanied by their menacing beasts of the forest, now tame, and perhaps even more vicious.

Who knew how many years Skycity had been training their wolves and mountain lions, and sending them prowling around the wilds, perhaps keeping the other city’s Riders in check?  Maybe
all
of the wolves and mountain lions that roamed the wilds now belonged to Skycity.  Maybe the rogue city was responsible for all of the Riders’ lives that the wilds had claimed over the recent years.

Sylvia’s wolf Luna had grown to a gangly adolescent over the winter, far from the tiny white fur-ball that she and Ember had brought into Meadowcity in a backpack.  But Luna couldn’t come with Sylvia on this journey, and Ember had promised to look after her.

Despite her unease at leaving her family and friends behind in such dangerous times, her very blood ached for the promise of the open trail, after spending months pinned down in the city.

But she knew life on the trail would never be the same, now that they were at war.  She didn’t know what to expect of the wilds anymore.

A gust of cold wind howled through the tunnel below her, snapping her back to the present.

Governor Gero reached out and pulled Sylvia into an unexpected hug.  It was time to go.

Not meeting Ven’s eyes, she spoke to Gero, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

The older man nodded, and ran a hand through his greying hair.

“That’s what I like to hear,” he said with a small smile.

He grasped her hand firmly in farewell, then edged past Ven to make for the exit. 

“Good luck,” the Governor said steadily, giving her one last nod; his thoughts already turning inward, Sylvia supposed, to what their fates held next.

Now alone with Ven, Sylvia’s eyes trailed off toward the thick darkness into which she would descend in only a few moments.

The air in the chamber was thick with words unsaid, and she wondered—with her stomach in a knot—if those words would finally surface.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she repeated, still not looking at him. 
Why had he come? 
He was only making it harder.

She finally looked up at him, and immediately recognized the pain in his eyes.  Did he feel as bad as she?  He stood rigidly, grasping the small parcel he had fetched, not moving any closer.

She drew a shaky breath, but said nothing.  Why was this so hard?

“I know you can do this,” he said.

He hadn’t told her not to go.

She took the package from his outstretched hand and tucked it in her pack.  She would look at it later when she was alone.  Not now, when it was already hard enough to say goodbye.

If only she could rush forward and pull him into an embrace that she knew would be warm, and solid, and comforting—but she couldn’t.

She couldn’t do it.

She was leaving, and she couldn’t make Ven suffer any more over her.  She didn’t even know how
he
felt.

Meadowcity needed her to go, to find some way to turn the war around.  She was leaving them all behind, her mother and father, her little sister Sonia, Flint, Ember, and Ven.

But she had told herself over and over that they would be safe.  Skycity hadn’t dared touch them in fear of their own ghastly weapons.  She needed to go.  It was the first step in finding an end to the war. 

And she couldn’t leave Ven with promises of anything more.  She had a job to do.

With one last look into Ven’s eyes, her own becoming blurry, she lifted her orb lamp to peer down into the darkness.

“Goodbye, Ven,” she whispered, every nerve in her body warring with the urge to reach out and touch him.  He remained still, and she didn’t know what hurt more—the fact that she wanted him to reach out, or the fact that he didn’t.

She turned toward the stairs before she did anything she might regret.  She could figure it all out when she returned to Meadowcity, after they had figured
everything
out—when the war was over.

“’Bye Sylvia,” Ven whispered.

She shut her eyes briefly, and didn’t look back.

The ancient stone pressed in around her as she descended, on her way to Lightcity.