Chapter 23
The sun beat down on him with a merciless glare. Arico glanced up at it with squinting eyes, and shook his head. So far, he was less than impressed with this New Day. Reliable sunlight was a boon to the farmers of course, but then he wasn’t really a farmer anymore, was he? At least the clouds were moving in. If they were thick enough to provide some cover, it might make his job easier for the next three months.
He thought of Jaas and Nemith at the celebrations, and couldn’t help but worry a little. He’d convinced the Hauld it was the right thing to do—letting her witness the New Day in all its glory. She had to see for herself what kind of life the stra’tchi lived, and that included their festivities. They had taken ample security precautions as well. Nemith would look after her, and help her escape if they were discovered. Still, worry gnawed at his insides, and he tried to push it down and concentrate on the task at hand. After all, the message he’d given the stra’tchi was only half the job.
Down the tunnel and waiting for him were Chanul and Otrul. Both were breathing heavily, having hoisted the massive contraption into place at the top of the incline. Ahead and downhill was a specially resized door—closed, of course—and just beyond that were the threads.
Chanul handed him a waterskin, and Arico sniffed at the opening tentatively. Knowing his friend, there was a bit more than just water in there. He knew how important Arico’s mission was, though. Whatever spirits inside were definitely not strong enough to interfere. In fact, Arico probably could use them to settle his nerves.
It made sense that Chanul carried something like that with him, actually. As the heir to everything in the Enclave, Chanul had needed to work twice as hard to prove himself, and even then there were still whispers that his instructors had favored him to get on the Hauld’s good side. Arico didn’t envy him. He nodded to the others, and they split up, with Chanul heading down the passage towards the special door and the torch next to it.
Otrul inspected the device for damage, while Arico carefully and slowly donned his bulky new backpack. He had been practicing with it when he could spare the time over the past few months, but Arico still felt ridiculous wearing it. As for the device… well, that looked even more ramshackle.
The dwarves had been master inventors for centuries, but even they had outdone themselves with this flying machine. Rather than imitate a bat or a raven’s flapping wings, they had eventually settled on mimicking a hawk and building a glider. It seated one person, and was unfortunately built in Arico’s size.
Arico was the only one who could fly the damn thing.. There couldn’t be even a hint of dwarven involvement, and Alzhi couldn’t fly it without blowing his cover. Still, Arico’s stomach twisted at the thought of what he was about to do. “You’re sure it’ll fly straight?”
“Are yeh havin’ second thoughts, lad?” Otrul asked with a smirk as he checked the cargo seal.
Arico shook his head. “We could always trade places. You helped build this thing. You probably know how it works better than anyone.”
Otrul’s smile died in an instant, and his face paled a little. “Nay, lad. It’s insane enough tha’ ye’re goin’ up there. Dwarves belong on tha ground, plain an’ simple. Or better yet, underground.”
Oh well. It was for the best anyway. “Wish me luck.” With a little effort, Arico wedged himself into the flying machine, trying not to dislodge his ‘backpack’ in the process.
Otrul gave him best wishes and then stepped back behind the glider. Arico tried not to think about what was at stake here. Months of work and a lot of resources had been spent on this project. A great deal hinged on the next few minutes.
Down in the tunnel, Chanul took the torch off the wall and smothered it in dirt, plunging the passage into darkness. It wasn’t a problem for the dwarves, who could easily see in the dark, but Arico had to fight the sense of panic. If Chanul didn’t open the door in time…
The wings trembled a little as Otrul gave him a shove, and Arico felt the glider accelerate downhill. Wind whipped past him, and he found himself grinning like an idiot despite the situation. Just as when he’d practiced, he could feel the wind rushing past him! It was exhilarating, given that the closest he’d ever come to wind before had been the small breezes coming from the threads.
Abruptly he’d entered the tunnel and the near complete darkness. Arico could envision the threads approaching, and instinctively braced himself. Otrul had been right. In many ways this really was madness, but it was fun, too!
The first step was easy enough. As soon as he found himself inside the threads, Arico opened a window to the neighboring patch and started navigating his way upwards, keeping careful count of how far. Because neither he nor the glider existed inside the threads, he didn’t have to worry about speed. As soon as he left, he’d be moving just as fast as when he’d entered. Arico ‘thought’ his way up to a place about as tall as his lookout tower, and then pushed his way forward out of the window and back into normal air.
The glider immediately started falling, almost straight down, and Arico clenched his teeth as he pulled on the rudder to reverse its direction. Sure enough, just before it was about to hit the ground, he maneuvered it to the side and back into the threads. Wash, rinse, repeat, he told himself, as he navigated back up again. This time a significant distance higher, though.
Walking from one patch to another was easy enough, but if you wanted to leave the threads at any kind of speed, you had to build it up first. Navigators had taken to running full-tilt at the threads in order to catapult themselves out on the other end. Some Sustained guards and Ascendants had even trained horses to charge at the threads at full speed. Sometimes with disastrous results. Despite all that, Arico seriously doubted anyone had ever considered going quite as fast as he was about to be going.
The third time he got back into the threads, Arico judged he was going fast enough. He felt a little nauseous from the constant speed changes—going fast one instant and floating at a standstill the next, even if it was all in his head. Grinning tightly, Arico made his way to the final exit point.
The glider left the threads high off the ground, speeding its way into the patch. From this high up though, it felt almost like a slow and gentle ride. For a brief moment, Arico could see pretty much the entire patch, including the twisting blue line of the Waters.
About ten seconds after the glider cleared the threads, Arico pulled the lever and the seat beneath him dropped away. A panicked moment of free-fall gripped him before he could pull another strap on his backpack, and a pair of much smaller glider wings deployed from his shoulders.
He caught a fleeting glimpse of the large glider continuing its path, before he white-knuckled the straps as hard as he could. He turned, slowly with his new wings, and made his way back towards the threads. He was still falling pretty fast. For a moment Arico was afraid he’d hit the ground first, but then felt his weight drop away into the threads.
Arico gave out a sigh of relief. He’d trained for this of course, but not as much as he’d wanted to. There were Sky Riders who spent years messing around with these gliding devices, and he was just an amateur by comparison. Still, he’d gotten the job done. Arico opened another window in the threads to get a look at his handiwork.
The glider was continuing on course, remarkably straight thanks to its dwarven design. Based on its slow rate of descent, it would probably make it all the way across the patch and into the threads on the other side before hitting the ground. Its oh-so-important cargo was now spilling out the back as it flew, floating down on the patch from above. Thousands upon thousands of papers: each one carrying the same revelations he’d given to the stra’tchi only hours before. Even now, Sustained revelers were probably picking them up off the ground and reading them.
The Sustained were, almost all of them, spoiled rotten by comparison to the stra’tchi. They had clean drinking water and could bathe whenever they wanted. They had better food, and more of it. They could read, because basic schooling was a guaranteed right to everyone born in Sustained patches. Despite the contempt that Arico felt for people who had been raised in such a soft environment, he had to admit that they were innocent. Technically. And he had lived as one of them for a time, with Nouma.
These people had never seen how the stra’tchi lived, or perhaps they’d never let themselves see. It was all too easy to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, if you didn’t have to look at it. Either way they deserved the chance to make up their minds, and Arico hoped those leaflets would force them to think about their nobility’s crimes against the stra’tchi.
Arico winced as the glider made its way over the Waters. Hundreds of leaflets would probably fall into the Waters and be ruined, but the rest would be pretty evenly spread across the patch. In the distance he could see clusters of people moving in response to the rain of papers.
Arico allowed himself a grim smile. Right now the Council was probably scrambling to cover up what he’d done at the stra’tchi Laentana. The High Penet would have been missing from the Sustained ceremony, because the wretched bastard had been knocked clean off his feet only an hour or so before.
They’d have a hell of a time covering this up, too. But there was still more for Arico to do. Two victories on the same day was a pretty good record, but he was flushed with success and determined to make it three.
-.-
They looked like huge birds at first, but Jaas quickly realized they were people. People wearing some kind of wing-like devices on their shoulders. With the evening backdrop, they looked particularly striking as they left the threads.
They soared over and around each other, gliding like hawks through the air. It was soon clear that they were performing for the crowd, arranging stunt after stunt before gliding back into the threads and being replaced by the next glider.
“They’re called the Sky Riders,” Marek whispered to her as the crowd cheered around them. “They’re Sustained who can actually fly!”
Jaas could see now how they got up there. Arico had told her that when he was inside the threads, he could exit anywhere within the city, even up in the air or under the ground. As a result these aerial acrobats would never have to climb up there at all. Their descent rate was slow enough that they had time to turn around and get back into the threads before they hit the ground! They probably had to build up a lot of speed first, though.
There were at least thirty people up there, but it wasn’t easy to count them. They kept on flying in and out of the threads. While they were outside the threads, it was just like a hawk dropping out of the sky to snatch prey on the ground. The crowd was growing quiet again. Something was about to happen.
At exactly the same time each glider started emitting white clouds behind them, which stuck in the air. They swerved as they moved, controlling where the clouds were and weren’t. From the crowd’s perspective down here, it was like watching a painter using the sky itself as a canvas! Or rather, thirty such painters. They moved intricately together, assembling a picture in the reddening sky.
All of that must have taken months of painstaking practice! Jaas suspected that each ‘painter’ must have some kind of hand valve running the length of their glider. That way they could control whether (and when) they left clouds behind by gripping or releasing the valve. The fact that many of the Sky Riders came within just a few feet of each other, but none actually collided, spoke to their skills. She was pretty sure she’d smash a glider into the ground under such circumstances, and probably lose her lunch before that. Even looking at it made her feel queasy.
The sky-portrait finally finished up, taking the form of a fish. It was the very same image she’d seen before on Alzhi’s uniform as he’d branded that little girl’s shoulder. The symbol of the current Lord Ascendant Berilo Fisher, and a reminder to the masses below who their master really was.
The crowd burst into applause and cheers, but Jaas turned away in disgust. Such beauty and capability! Men who could fly without magic, and paint wonderful images in the air for thousands of people to see! All of that, wasted just to support yet another hateful and oppressive society.
Marek had noticed her leave. With a concerned look on his face, he fell into step next to her as she wove her way out of the crowd and back towards the Ona fields. “I know cloistered people haven’t experienced much of the city,” he said hesitantly, “but you were there for the opening prayer, right? With the altar?”
Jaas nodded. “I was there.”
He walked with her in silence as they made their way back to the scaffold. “Do…” he trailed off at first, apparently gathering his courage. “Do you think that navigator was right? Did the Sustained and the penets really lie to us?”
She came to a stop and turned around, looking back up at the floating fish in the sky. Whatever smoke-substance they’d used to create their clouds was wearing off, and the fish itself was slowly fading. “What do you think?”
Marek shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. It’s been this way for as long as anyone can remember. Aquun chose the Sustained to watch over us. They protect us and give us the Waters, and we honor them and pay tribute. That’s… how things work!”
Jaas knew she’d have to tread carefully here. The urge to explain how things really worked to Marek was very powerful. Arico might want her to, as well. Even so… she was pretending to be a cloistered woman. Someone who’d been trained from infancy to eventually become an Aquunite.
But what was the point of knowing the truth, if she didn’t give him the chance to know it as well? Jaas climbed back up the scaffold with him, and then gave him an intent look. “If they are lying to us, would we ever be able to tell? They have all the navigators, so they have all the power. They could do it without any of us ever knowing for sure.”
Marek looked troubled, as his gaze drifted back down towards the Ona fields being set up again. She could sympathize. He’d been born a slave—though of course he’d been raised to think otherwise. This life was all he’d ever known, and Arico’s speech had been full of new concepts. Just like everyone else who’d heard it, Marek would need time to think it over.
“I’m not saying he’s right,” Jaas continued slowly. “I don’t know for sure. But if they really have been using us for centuries, isn’t it our responsibility to find out?”
