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There was a silence, then Hope said, “I thought it was me you hated, not you.”

This surprised me. I had never heard Hope use click; I didn’t think she understood it. And yet she had picked up on the self-loathing in my clicks.

“!¡
struggling to articulate
¡! I didn’t hate you,” I said. “I didn’t
understand
you.”

“You have to understand me?”

We fell silent again, and I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again she had edged away from my embrace and I saw that Marek had a hand on her hip, and he was staring at me, and I wondered how long he had watched me as I slept.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“!¡
AUTHORITY
¡! I
SAY
we send for them,” said Marek.

All seven of us sat on a slope in the atrium, and all around us small groups of Harmony’s citizens sat and played and talked and laughed.

We had been in Harmony for several days now. Long enough for the blisters and sores of the long hike to be easing; long enough for our stomachs to have lost that constant empty growl.

It was hard to believe that the people of Harmony could live like this, such an easy, comfortable existence, such a complete contrast to the lives we knew. The city’s ’singer provided everything.

Our hosts’ numbers were hard to estimate. In this spire alone there were hundreds, and we had barely set foot in the rest of the city. Alya and Mazar and the others were welcoming; they had no reason not to be, living in such abundance. They wanted to share all this with us, and their bond with Marek made them all the more attentive. And now he thought it was time to share this further.

“We have been here long enough,” he went on. “!¡
persuasive
¡! Every day we stay here without sending word back is another day when your friends and clan-folk are eking out a miserable, cold existence, battling with the elements, scratching for food... They could be dying of starvation, disease, cold. How can you live with that knowledge?”

“!¡
hierarchy
¡! We haven’t been here long enough to be sure,” said Frankhay. “How do we know it’s as good as it seems, eh?”

Marek waved a hand. “!¡
dismissive
¡! Ask your full belly, old man. Then ask your conscience.”

“!¡
hierarchy
¡! And what’s going to become of us if we stay cosseted like this? Full belly ain’t everything.”

Jerra spoke up, then. “Full belly dunnat do any of them any harm, does it?”

Frankhay stared at the boy in surprise. “!¡
aggressive
¡! You talk against your clan-father, lad? !¡
dismissive
¡! You leave the talking to the grown-ups, you hear?”

Jerra stood, and he leaned over Frankhay. Suddenly the clan-father looked old and frail in the shadow of the looming, menacing youth. Jerra bunched a fist and held it before Frankhay’s face.

“!¡
scared | threatening | violent
¡! You’re not my clan-father,” he hissed. “Remember? You gave that to Ash. !¡
erratic
¡! Right now you’s just an old man. You’s got no right tellin’ us this place ain’t what you want it to be. No right!”

The boy’s arm flexed as if he was going to strike Frankhay, but instead he straightened, turned, and strode away down the slope.

I turned back to look at Frankhay, then looked away again, quickly. His face had darkened, his eyes bulged and he was trembling with anger.

“!¡
authority
¡! So we send for them,” said Marek, ignoring Frankhay’s opposition and the fact that most of us hadn’t yet voiced an opinion.

“!¡
curious | probing
¡! Is it that you have a plan of action?” asked Saneth.

Marek turned to the chlick. “!¡
matter-of-fact
¡! We know the way. We can send supplies for the journey. We need someone resourceful and good at following the lie of the land. !¡
decisive
¡! I say we send Dodge.”

I stared at him. Was this really just a ruse to get rid of me? Mere jealousy of the time I had spent with Hope again recently?

“!¡
confrontational
¡! We can’t just send one person alone,” I said. “How about you come with me?”

Marek opened his mouth to answer, but now it was Hope’s turn to step in and rescue me.

“We can’t stay here,” she said. “We can’t stay in Harmony, no matter how safe it might seem.”

Now all eyes turned on Hope.

“In my dreams,” she said, her voice getting small and shaky under scrutiny. “A vast alien ship hangs above the city... a beam comes down, and the city is destroyed, it lies in ruins. We can’t stay here. We can’t bring everyone here when it’s going to be destroyed.”

H
OPE HAD DREAMED
again, since arriving at the city. She wished that it could only be a dream, but she did not believe it to be so.

Before we had arrived in Harmony, she had dreamed of the city, and it had been exactly as she had seen. So why should she doubt the rest of that dream now?

All the time we were there, she had lived in fear that now would be the time when destruction would come, and their great escape from Angiere and Laverne would have been in vain. The image of the city lying in ruins beneath the vast starship was one that stayed with her constantly.

“!¡
dismissive | confrontational
¡! How can you know?” demanded Marek.

She shook her head. She had no answer that could convince him.

“!¡
teasing | factual reporting
¡! All is known,” said Saneth. “That is the problem with the Great All. Knowing and mapping and plotting the All is not hard for a superior race. !¡
patronising
¡! This can be difficult for a junior, underdeveloped race to comprehend. !¡
musing
¡! When all is known, the All is a uniform and flat place.”

“!¡
puzzled
¡! You’re saying Hope is of a superior race?” I asked.

“!¡
disappointment for junior scholar
¡! Hope is as human as you are. This is a thing that you know. But Hope channels the All in her head. She channels the voices of your kind. She is a conduit to the ones who know.”

Hope stood, dizzy from the roar of voices in her head, which forevermore would be associated with images of the wall of people.

She backed away.

She was trying. She had been trying to make them see.

Tears streaming, she turned and ran, and didn’t stop until she was out of sight.

I
N HER TIME
in Harmony, Hope took some comfort in walking, just as she had in Angiere and Laverne. Exploring her surroundings, seeing where people went and what they did. Escape and observation. It was a reflex thing, for someone who did not fit in.

When she fled that discussion, and when she had calmed herself by watching the flow of water in a sparkling stream for a while, she walked from one side of the atrium park to the other. All was open grass, rich green trees, water running in small streams or gathered in lily-covered pools.

In the centre, she paused and looked up.

Dizzied by the perspective, she sat, then lay, and above her the inner spirals of the helical tower were hypnotic.

Eventually, she got up and continued her exploration.

There was a foyer in the far corner, much like the one we had entered by, although she did not think it was the same one. The far wall was a pearly white. She approached the wall and the surface started to ripple, to thin, to separate.

She stepped forward, through, out.

Outside was white.

Instantly, the cold bit through her thin clothing. A fierce wind swirled and swept through the city, driving frozen snow that pelted her skin, stinging and bruising where it struck. And in her head, the voices were wailing, screaming at her.

The buildings all about were in ruins, windows empty, walls crumbling. Snow piled high in deep drifts.

She looked at her skin, and the healthy brown tone now shaded to blue, and she felt sick with the cold.

Peering back up at the great tower, she saw that it too was a ruined shell. Large areas of its skin hung in tatters, revealing girders and fibres beneath. The tower only extended a few storeys before the walls ended in ruins, the whole building a ragged stump.

This was exactly how it had been in her dreams, only... only it was already in ruins. Her dream must have shown her what had already passed, not what was to come.

She almost fell to her knees, but somehow, instead, managed to keep her strength and stagger back towards the wall. Before her, it rippled, thinned, separated, and she staggered through, collapsing on all fours and throwing up with the shock of the warmth on her chilled body.

Out there... in here... which was reality and which was not? Or could they both be real? Her head swirled and she retched again, then slumped, losing consciousness.

S
HE WAS ONLY
out for a short time, but that was long enough for her to be found by a passing citizen, for word to get back to Alya, who found me and brought me to where Hope lay in a reclining seat by a small stream.

Her eyes flitted all about, checking everything, looking for gaps, flaws.

As soon as she saw me, she said, “We have to leave. We can’t stay here. It’s not safe. But...”

“!¡
gentle
¡! But what?”

She glanced at Alya, and then back at me. “I’ve been out,” she said. “Outside. It’s colder than it ever was, and the wind is fierce, and we wouldn’t last at all before we were frozen solid. We have to leave, but we can’t, and then when I looked back at the tower and the voices in my head were screaming I saw it in ruins. It was a vision, just like my dream, a vision of what is to come!”

I glanced at Alya, who reached out, put a hand on Hope’s bare arm, and said, “Everything is fine. You’re safe here. Our safety is sung by the Singer of the City.”

“But how do you know the ’singer will always protect you?” demanded Hope. “What will you do if it doesn’t?”

H
OPE WAS NOT
the only one who saw that there were gaps in the song that protected this strange and magical city.

That night, while Hope was sleeping, Skids and I slipped away from the rest of the group. Hope’s story had disturbed me, but more than anything it was the look of fear in her eyes that made me want to find out more.

All around the ground floor of the tower, rooms opened off into the flanks of the building, much like the chambers where we had been spending our nights. In some of these, citizens had made their homes, and as Skids and I passed, they smiled and greeted us and invited us to join them.

As we walked, we talked, and it was as if we hadn’t spent years apart. “!¡
fervent
¡! It’s like a dream,” Skids said at one point, as we entered another glossy foyer. “A city where we have protection, a ’singer devoting an aspect of its All just to us. This place would be nothing without the ’singer, it’d be the ruins Hope saw – the ruins this city used to be. No watchers will get to us here. Not while we have the protection of the Singer of the City.”

“!¡
concerned
¡! But how do we ensure that?” I asked. “Surely we’re insignificant to a starsinger. So how do we ensure that this protection will last?”

“!¡
factual reporting
¡! You don’t make a ’singer do anything,” said Skids. “But the ’singers have an interest in us, a strand of their collective All that’s dedicated to our well-being. We are significant.”

“!¡
argumentative
¡! A starsinger unsung parts of Laverne,” I reminded Skids. “A starsinger unsung Cragside... So either they’re not all dedicated to our well-being, or somehow someone
did
make a starsinger do that.”

We met a citizen Alya had introduced as Lori. She was short and dark, with the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. She kissed us both on the cheek in greeting and asked how we were settling in, then invited us to drink and sing with her family that evening, if we were around.

As we walked away from her, Skids said, “Did you notice anything other than her tits?”

I laughed and said, “!¡
intrigued
¡! Yes, I did. I saw it.” I’d seen the marks on others too, the tell-tale signs of the wraith. Lori and some of the others had been under the caul recently. It was hardly a surprise that the citizens of Harmony chose to commune with their ’singer in this way.

“!¡
craving
¡! It’s been a long time,” said Skids, and I wondered just how addictive it was. The caul was an alien symbiont: wear it across your skull and it joins you to the All, but also there’s a chemical exchange, a linkage. Wraiths were caul junkies, and my sib still had the need.

We came to another wall with symbols on it, great slashes and curves in a subtly different shade of pearly grey from that of the wall itself. I had always thought these symbols signified function, but I’d been told they were abstract, a kind of art that didn’t look like anything real.

When Skids put a hand against the wall, the surface shimmered and thinned, and I realised that this was another opening. He had been here before.

We passed through, and were in a sloping passageway that corkscrewed steeply down to some lower level. The light was dimmer here, emanating from a soft glow in the walls.

I glanced at Skids and was disturbed by the sudden intensity in his look.

As we descended, the air chilled and the light levels dropped. After two complete turns of the ramp we came to an open area. There was a sense of vast space, but it was impossible to see more than a short distance ahead in the gloom.

Skids put a hand on my arm, and I felt that he was trembling. It might only be the chill, I told myself, but I was spooked now, too.

“!¡
concerned | passionate
¡! Can you hear?” asked Skids, his voice little more than a whisper.

I strained. I held my breath. I heard my heart pounding. I heard our movements, a shuffle of feet, a rustle of clothing. A shift in the air, perhaps.