Rift (25 page)

Loon climbed a ladder into darkness. “Up,” she said.

Reeve began climbing. After several minutes, he was still climbing, his body prickly hot from sweat. As he continued upward he guessed they were scaling a distilling column, one of the towering cylinders that inhabited the center of the dome. Behind him, Reeve could hear the ring of the metal ladder as his guard followed.

At the top, the ceiling of the dome was within a jump, the fretted metal skeleton forming a madman’s jungle gym. The cooing of pigeons told who ruled these heights.

In the gloom, Reeve could make out Spar’s form, facing outward. Loon settled in by the claver’s side.

Grasping the railing, Reeve sat on Spar’s other side, letting his feet dangle. “Can’t sleep?”

“Slept.”

“You’re luckier than me, then.”

They gazed into the black rafters for a while. “Your Dante’s got a mean streak, all right,” Spar said.

“My
Dante?” Spar could always find a way to annoy
him, never mind he’d just given up a good night’s rest and climbed a thousand steps into thin air to help him.

Spar snorted. “He seem to like you, Reeve-boy. Give us all fancy beds to sleep in, and got people bowin’ to me, left and right. All for your big tech.”

“You’re the one brought big tech into this, there on the beach. We could’ve all been happily dead without my big tech!”

“Well, what you gonna do for these rats? Give ’em all breathers so they can swarm over the world?”

“Reeve’s good air,” Loon piped in, thoughtfully.

He sighed. He hadn’t thought that far. Lord of Worlds, he
couldn’t
think. Two women and a child had just been hurled from a height like this one. Any one of whom he could have saved … which
didn’t
make him a murderer, but which felt like the worst thing he’d ever done. And among all the ghastly things he’d ever seen, it ranked high, right up there with Tina Valejo.…

Reeve looked behind to see if the guard was within hearing distance. Testing the limits of his exalted-visitor status, he barked, “Wait for us at the bottom.” Soon he heard the retreating slaps of the man’s feet against the ladder rungs.

“I don’t even know what they
want
me to do,” he admitted. “I can’t make breathers, not even close. I can’t start this machinery again. I don’t know how.” It would take a specialized crew years to do the diagnostics and rebuild … all far beyond either Reeve’s knowledge, or Marie’s.

“You can’t figure out what they’re after?” Spar turned to gaze at him, and there was no need to see his face in the darkness to figure out his expression. “Close up the big hole in his house. Fix the air, so his high and mightiness don’t have to cough.”

Spar’s and Loon’s shapes were just separating from the blackness as a dull glow in the dome announced the coming of dawn.

“What do you want me to do?” Reeve asked.

“Do what you like. I ain’t your boss.” A sulky quiet claimed them for a moment.

In high pique, Reeve scrambled to his feet. “What’s your big problem, Spar? You want to come out and say it, or you just want to bellyache?” When Spar remained silent, Reeve turned to go.

“Lost,” he heard Loon say.

He swirled back to face her. “What the hell is
lost
?” If she wanted to communicate, let her damn well string a few words together.

“Spar’s sword.” She rose, facing him. “Lost.”

“Damn it, Loon, we
all
lost our weapons.” He waited for Spar to react to his use of her name, but, perhaps as a result of his funk, he didn’t even budge. Reeve went on, “We’re prisoners; don’t you get it?”

“You find sword,” she replied in her infuriating, single-minded way.

Lord of Worlds. “Did you ask the jinn yourself?”

Spar answered: “They scurried to find it all right, but came back a few minutes later. Said it’s lost.” He slapped the empty scabbard at his side. “Hard to protect Mam when I got no sword.”

“We’ll get you another sword, then.” What was he bothering with this for? He needed to be rested for the morning so he could outwit mad Dante. Lord of the galumphing galaxies, how did he let himself get roped into this craziness?

Spar bestirred himself, getting to his feet in a world-weary fashion. “You think one sword’s as good as another, don’t you?”

At this, Reeve started back down the stairs. “Yes.” He’d had enough.

After a few yards, he heard them clambering after him. Spar’s voice came from far away, like a ghost: “Trouble with you sky-wheelers, you think everythin’ comes easy. Swords, air, worlds, ships, you name it. So nothin’s got value.”

“Shut up, Spar.”

“You big-tech fellas, you think
thinking
is so important. You got all your big ideas. But you got nothin’ to hold on to. No world, no things.”

Reeve picked up his pace, slapping his hands around the rungs and trying to get away from Spar’s voice. Around him, the coiled pipes and water stains of the cylinder hove into view as the dome bloomed around them, a giant bubble of slow light.

Spar droned on, just above him. “You figure people can live up in their big brains. People don’t need ordinary
things
when they got those big brains. But old Lithia’s gonna show you that her stuff matters. Yes, sir, she’s gonna show you.”

Addled, the man was. Off on a tangent, and no way to escape it. “Well, I’m sure we’ll both get a dose of Lithia’s revenge,” Reeve hurled up at him.

Spar cackled. “No doubt, no doubt! And no doubt you’re glad I had my sword when we hammered on the rats that day! And if it was another sword?”

Reeve stumbled onto the floor of the dome at last, trembling with anger and ready to punch Spar when he reached the bottom.

In the next moment Spar was down, saying, “If it was another sword, you’d be dead by now, boyo! That sword kept us alive from the Stoneroots to the Inland Sea. And it’s gonna get us up the Tallstory River, by the Lady!”

Reeve’s fist was bunched and ready, and then it was unbunched and dangling at his side.

Loon jumped off the last rung and waited by the tank.

The Tallstory River. That was the way to his goal. Forget the crazy claver, and just try to keep the goal in mind. And this crazy claver had indeed saved his life, several times. So if the sword gave his arm its fighting passion, then he’d find the damnable thing. Forget logic. Forget trying to figure Spar out. He and Loon
and Marie were his only allies, and if they were a ragtag group, it was a lot better than going it alone.

Kalid emerged from the shadows.

Nodding at him, Reeve said, “Can you assign some crew to find Spar’s sword? It has sentimental value. I’d appreciate it.”

Kalid shrugged. “Likely traded by now. We’ll get him another.”

“He needs the old one.”

The group held an uneasy silence. Then Kalid bowed. “As you wish.” He nodded at the guard accompanying him.

Spar shook his head. “I better come along. You folks don’t know a good sword from a pipe wrench.”

Watching Spar and the guard march off together, Kalid said, “You rise early, Spaceman.”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Forget the Whale Clavers. It was their fate.”

A flicker of annoyance prompted Reeve to say: “No one is fated to be murdered.”

“You’ve not been long among us if you think that,” Kalid said. He gestured down the metal-grated pathway. “I’ve come to show you our fortress. Dante would have you study the machines.” He looked slyly at Reeve. “So you may fix them.”

“It’s a tall order.”

Kalid nodded. “So it is. But the queen will die, else.”

Leading the way into the rusted maze, Kalid said, “Already her lips are tinged with the indigo. My lord fears for her.” As though reminded of the poisons they all endured, he coughed, low in his throat.

A scuffle from above drew Reeve’s attention. Looking up, he saw a flash of green: Loon was scrambling along on top of a great vat next to them. Then she jumped onto a catwalk several feet away, spanning the distance in an effortless leap. She seemed healthier than any of them, but he’d asked her to wear a
breather anyway, as he’d asked Spar. When they both refused, it was something of a relief. His supply was running low.

“She has no fear of heights,” observed Kalid. “I could use such a one on my masted ships.” He walked on, saying, “You would not mind? If the girl served Kalid?”

Reeve minded. Did not, in fact, care for the innuendo. “She serves the Spaceman,” he said, carelessly. One did not gain the respect of a man like Kalid by being timid.

Kalid laughed. His boots clanged on the grating, echoing from the metalworks. “You grow bold, Spaceman. It was not long ago you would have lost fingers for such a remark.”

“Well, I have my fingers. And Loon.”

“For now.” As ever, his tone was genial. But walking behind, Reeve could not see his face.

2

Loon peered down on the two figures, crouched around a small hump of metal with dials and many pipes. They talked endlessly of engines and big-tech workings.

Her attention was focused on foraging for breakfast. Up here, atop a large metal vat, the soil was undisturbed. Pigeon matter had fallen from the ceiling, while the top of the machine supplied flakes of paint and rust. She sampled all but the very recent pigeon dirt and the paint, finding a snack here and there, enough to stave off hunger. It was a wonder to her that such a place held soil. Soil, she realized, could be made up of decay and death and droppings, and was the child of everything around it. So here in the great bubble in the sea, she didn’t look for the good brown taste. She could wait.

Lying on top of the machine, she looked down at
the two men. The dark one was frowning, as though he didn’t believe Reeve.

“… forming water droplets,” Reeve was saying. “It forms water when it encounters the cold metal. Like steam, when you boil water, it condenses on something cooler nearby, and forms drops of water.”

They went on with their talk of big tech. Kalid would know about things such as chemical re-cyc-lers and de-salin-ation. He was keen to learn but reluctant to be taught by Reeve. For Loon’s part, she loved to hear Reeve talk, for in big-tech things he showed the grace of a deer in its woods.

“Dis-till-a-tion,” Kalid was saying. “I have heard of this.”

“Right, distillation. You can separate substances according to their volatility. The distillate is carried off by those pipes there.” He looked up, and seeing Loon, waved at her.

She waved back, liking his attention. Standing, she jumped onto an exposed pipe and shinnied down to his level.

“Be careful, would you, Loon?”

She grinned. After everything they had been through, he now thought sliding down a pole was dangerous? But no one since her father had urged her to be careful, and she took this for a kindness. She grasped his hand. At this, a color rose to Reeve’s face, and the dark man’s lips tugged into a tiny smile.

Kalid asked, “Where did you learn to climb, my Loon?”

“Trees of the Stoneroots.”

“They must be tall trees, to teach you so well. You are graceful indeed.”

She smiled in response. At the slight stiffening in Reeve’s hand, she looked at him. He seemed uncomfortable. There was anger between the two men, but they pretended they did not feel it. Very odd.

The space where they stood was like a high, small
room, its walls formed by towering machines. Through this space the colorful jinn would thread their way now and then, carrying things, endless streams of junk, large and small. From deeper in the gut of the dome came the continual sounds of feet, collecting items to trade for other items, making heaps of belongings here and there. It was so different from the clave, where there were few things, and each useful.

The men were talking of dis-till-a-tion again. Loon put her hand to Reeve’s mouth, stopping him from talking.

Kalid laughed. “She is bored with these matters,” he said.

She shook her head. Not bored; she just liked to touch his lips.

“Perhaps she is uncomfortable with all this talk of things so foreign to her,” Kalid suggested. “Perhaps it makes her wonder, what good is all her life’s knowledge when she does not know
distillation
? Perhaps it makes her feel … uneducated.”