The Southern Sky

On the second night, the water stood at seven meters.

Mirabel never once moved from the foot of the tower. She slept by day and stayed awake at night. When a miner brought food, she thanked him and ate it. She asked for a second bowl. She asked for a third.

“The beans here are good. Food at Central has no taste. All nutrition, no taste.”

“You live at Central?” Marlow asked.

“Live there, or get kept there? I'm its property, see.”

“Property.”

“That's right. Same as you, kiddo. You're a container for blood. I'm a container for a blade.”

Mirabel lifted her left arm and held it up to the moon. The metal fingers opened one by one, and closed.

“I'm the one it tried to make first, you know. A blade to guard the water. You lot came after. After it worked out that a blade can't make the sea any smaller.”

“…How long ago.”

“Two hundred and ten years.”

Mirabel said it the way a person talks about the weather.

“I'm two hundred and ten. Don't look it, do I. Ahaha! You're allowed to say so.”

＊

The sound came a little after that.

Willa noticed first. She had been sitting by the fire with her knees pulled up, and her head came up all at once.

“…Hey. Isn't something making a noise?”

“I don't hear anything.”

“There is, I'm telling you. South. Off to the south.”

Marlow looked south.

There was nothing. Stars, and a horizon, and black above it.

Too black.

In one corner of the southern sky, the stars were missing.

Mirabel stood up.

A woman who had sat for two days rose without a sound.

“Ah. So they came.”

“Who did.”

“The Republic.”

＊

What was hiding the stars was a ship.

The Imperial transport that had come down over the market two months ago was sixty meters long.

This was five times that, at least.

Three hundred meters. Black belly turned down, it came sliding in from the south, slowly, making almost no sound. No wings. No griffons pulling it. Nothing held it up from anywhere. It simply floated.

Light leaked out from under the belly. White light. The same color as the light in the corridors at Central.

“That thing floats on grain,” Mirabel said. “No telling how many tens of thousands it's got aboard.”

“Tens of thousands.”

“Tens of thousands of oxen's worth. No, that one isn't running on oxen.”

Mirabel looked up at the belly of the ship and narrowed her eyes. Only the brown one narrowed.

“The Republic doesn't keep oxen. It keeps people.”

There were dots scattered around the ship.

The dots were moving. Beating wings.

Griffons. Marlow started to count them and stopped. Somewhere past forty, counting quit meaning anything.

Every one of them had a rider on its back.

＊

The drill site moved all at once.

The nineteen miners ran for the huts. Harlan shouted. It was the first time Marlow had heard the man shout.

“Put out the lights! All of them! The fire too!”

Drag had gone behind the cart and was checking what weapon he had left. The iron on the end of his rod had been cut in two by Mirabel yesterday. What he had now was a pickaxe borrowed off a miner.

Roslyn wrapped the stack of paper from her desk in cloth and held it to her chest. Then, still holding it, she got under the desk.

One stood at the foot of the tower, looking up at the sky.

“Hey. Get under cover.”

“What is that. What is that, hey.”

“A ship. A big ship. Never mind, get down.”

“Out for the first time in nine years, and on the third day, this.”

One's face went as if to laugh. He had forgotten how to laugh, so it didn't come out right.

Willa had both hands on Marlow's sleeve.

“Marlow, what do we do, what do we do about that?”

“No idea.”

“You don't know?!”

“How would I know. First time I ever saw one.”

He said it straight. Being told it straight settled her a little. What scares this kid is being lied to.

＊

The ship stopped directly above the drill site.

About two hundred meters up. Seen from straight below, half the night sky was the ship's belly.

The middle of the belly opened.

Light came down. A column of white light lit the ground a little south of the tower.

People came down inside that light.

One at a time. No rope, no ladder. They simply fell slowly through the light and set down on the ground.

Twelve of them.

At first Marlow could not take them for people.

The shape was human. A head, arms, legs.

Only, on every one of them, something was not human.

One had, in place of a right arm from the shoulder down, the foreleg of a griffon. Four talons, long enough to nearly touch the ground.

One had a throat swollen out huge, with slits like gills lined up along the side of the neck.

One had a second human of the same height growing out of his back.

No. Not growing. The two of them were joined at the spine, the two heads facing front and back. There were four arms. Both faces were the same face.

Mirabel took one step forward from the foot of the tower.

“Well now, they brought the twins too. They mean it.”

Her voice was in the same key as two days ago. The same key as when she was eating beans.

＊

Last of all, a thirteenth came down.

He came down the middle of the column of light, slower than the other twelve.

He had wings on his back.

Big wings. Spread, they were eight meters from tip to tip. The feathers were gray-white, and under the moonlight they looked the color of bone.

Marlow knew that color.

He had seen it at the old lighthouse. It was the color of the fur on the lion's body. Around the shoulder blades were two scars where something had been taken off at the root.

The man reached the ground and folded the wings.

He was an orc.

A little shorter than Drag. Skin a grayish green. Two lower tusks standing out past the lip. Hair cropped so short it lay flat against the skull. Eyes black and small, and they barely blinked.

Behind the cart, a pickaxe hit the ground.

Drag had stood up.

“…Kale.”

The winged man turned toward the voice.

He turned, and looked for a while.

“It's been a long time, Drag.”

The voice was pitched exactly like Drag's.

End of Chapter 26