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Below you’ll find the first three chapters of The Lord of Change. I hope you enjoy.
– P. S. Hoffman
Chapter 1: The God Who Dreams
Eolh the Listener frowned at the noises echoing from the temple. It sounded like someone was breaking the foundations with a sledgehammer. An avian priest guarded the temple’s entrance. He acted as if the breaking sounds were completely normal, but Eolh saw him cringe with each echoing crack.
“Is he in there?” Eolh asked.
“The temple is closed,” the priest said dismissively. He picked at a feather stuck to his silken robes, pretending to ignore Eolh.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know who I am,” Eolh crowed. “Just answer the question.”
A flicker of disdain crossed the priest’s face. “What does it sound like, corvani? Of course he’s in there.”
“You gonna let me through?”
“I said,” the priest puffed out his chest and spread his plumage to block the archway, “the temple is closed.”
Usually, Eolh was game for a verbal scuffle. A few insults, a dash of blasphemy, anything to get a rise out of the priest. But not today. Today the Listener of Lowtown was busy. And the whole city was waiting.
So, Eolh sauntered over to the closest statue of a human, ensconced in the ornate archway. In her hands the statue held a relic, a syringe delicately carved from stone. Eolh snapped it off and tossed it to the priest. “Here. Catch.”
The priest lunged. Too slow. The syringe shattered on the ground, and by the time the priest figured out what was going on, Eolh had already slipped past.
“Hey!” the priest spluttered after him, “You can’t go in there! You need an invitation. No one sees the god without an invitation!”
Eolh was a master of his trade. Some said he was the best. But it was a simple thing, really. It all came down to knowing when to listen, and when to not. So he strode down the torchlit archways, ignoring the priest’s demands.
The temple was wrapped around a great, metal tower—smoother than anything made by avian hands. Stone steps, worn by centuries of use, descended below into the temple. Candles and torchlight gradually gave way to pipes and gas lamps which filled the stairwell with oily light. The air tasted like gas and stone dust, and thin trails of incense crawled up from the lower floors. Only it didn’t smell like incense. Eolh sniffed, and frowned. It didn’t smell at all.
He followed the stone smack of the hammer down into the undercroft, and paused to gawk at the sight. Dust shook from the vaulted ceiling with every echoing crack. Flakes of paint fell from the frescoes, and religious icons, made of pure silver and gold or dazzled with pearls and glittering jewels, rattled in the alcoves. Each piece must’ve been worth more than Eolh could hope to earn in an honest lifetime. His feathered fingers itched when he saw them. He shoved his hands into his pockets.
Stone columns marched down the hall, flanked by statues and marble sarcophagi, some of which were carved with saintly images of avians, and the faces of the gods. At the end of the hall the great metal tower gleamed, forming the temple’s main support.
It looked like someone was trying to dig out the tower’s foundation. Cracked chunks of marble and golden trim lay strewn in piles, covered with dirt and gravel and broken bricks. Though, strangely, Eolh saw no tools.
An android stood like one of the holy statues at the lip of the hole. Her metal body was a patchwork of new armor and old tech, and scars gouged her metal mask. Wisps of incense (is that incense?) crawled up from the hole, swirling around the android’s ankles before pooling on the floor of the undercroft.
Eolh cleared his throat. When the android turned her head, the new hydraulics of her neck shifted, not quite as elegant as her old mechanical tendons.
Her voice clicked when she spoke, like someone running their finger over the teeth of a comb. “Guardian.” She had no mouth, and her voice came from somewhere beneath her mask.
“Laykis,” Eolh crowed. “Does he know what day it is?”
“I don’t think he knows what month it is.”
“Has he had any luck?”
Before she could answer, a muffled, yet violent, curse shouted up from the depths of the hole, followed by the frustrated hammering of metal on metal.
“Ah,” Eolh said. “I see.” He wondered what the priest would think, hearing a god speak so crudely. In a temple, of all places.
Eolh clutched the lip of the hole with his talons. Hundreds of wires, some as thick as Eolh’s arm, crisscrossed through the dirt and fragments of brick. Thin, fragile pieces of metal—strangely complicated shapes, inscribed with even more complicated geometric designs—lay scattered around the hole. Eolh didn’t understand what the metal shapes were, only that they were delicate and far more precious than jewels.
Down in the hole, half-kneeling inside an open cavity inside the tower, was a human. An angry human.
“I don’t know where the threshold is,” Poire shouted into the cavity, “or why it needs to loop, or what a Sen is.”
“Not what,” a voice resonated from inside the cavity. The voice belonged to an ancient machine, the Oracle, that once spoke to the priests of this place. But the Oracle’s voice wasn’t what it used to be. It spoke slowly, like it was losing strength. “Sen is a who.”
“How does that help?” Poire hissed. “Who is Sen?”
“Error: memory deleted. Please see the administrator logs for more details.”
“I already told you—the administrator’s logs are empty!”
“Then I recommend you push your inquiry to the local grid.”
“The grid,” Poire growled, “is gone. It’s been gone. It was gone before I woke up, you stupid thing!”
“Poire?” Eolh crowed.
“Not now!” the human shouted, hammering at something in the shadows. The machine guts of the tower were open before him, silhouetting him in a blue light. Curls of white, glittering fog (definitely not incense) poured out of the tower’s inner workings. Eolh could’ve sworn the fog was drawn to the human.
“They’re waiting on you,” Eolh said. “It’s time.”
Poire paused. “I thought we said tomorrow?”
“It is tomorrow.”
Poire pulled himself out of the tower and sat back on his heels. “Oh,” he sighed. He wiped his brow with an arm wrapped in liquid metal. The chrome-colored armor had reshaped itself into a kind of pry bar, which the human had been using to hold open a metal slot somewhere in the machinery of the tower. Poire stood up and dusted himself off. And closed his eyes, as if to ward off a headache.
“I know,” Eolh said. “It’s a lot. But the people are afraid. Since you brought down the Magistrate, there hasn’t been a single word from Cyre. The Queen doesn’t know if the Emperor cares about us, or knows about us, or if he’s preparing for all-out war. She can’t keep the city calm without your . . . Poire?”
The human leaned drunkenly against the tower. His eyes fluttered open and rolled up to the ceiling. Shit, Eolh thought. Again? The Listener prepared to jump down into the hole. Laykis shot out a hand and stopped him.
“The mist could kill you,” she warned, pointing at the vapor pouring out of the tower.
“Well what about him?”
They looked down at Poire, who merely shook his head and blinked to clear his sight. The liquid armor snaked down Poire’s wrists and formed itself into climbing claws, and he pulled himself out of the hole.
“Still having those dreams?” Eolh asked.
“Lately, it’s been just the one dream,” Poire said. “There’s all these people, looking at me. I can tell they’re afraid. I try to reach out and help them, but the ground is breaking. Cracks open and swallow everything.”
“Huh,” Eolh scratched the back of his head. “Maybe it’s nerves? I mean, you are about to stand up in front of thousands of people. Hells, I’d shit a brick.”
Eolh half-expected a laugh, but the fledgling human was frowning. “In the dream, the people aren’t xenos. All those people looking at me—they’re human.”
***
Dusk painted the clouds with fire and burnt honey. It left blazing trails on the rocky peaks of the caldera and poured into the city nestled below, where it dripped from the high towers and the vast, broad-leafed trees. A lone dirigible crossed through the sky, drifting up the Midcity cliffs toward the Highcity.
Poire leaned over the railing of the dirigible, frowning down at the tight-knit streets and jumbled city blocks. The streets were crowded with xenos. Feathered avians, furry redenites, and reptilian humanoids with brilliant scales made up the bulk of the crowds. From what Eolh had told him, tens of thousands had gathered like this, every night, for weeks. They had come to gaze upon Poire, their Savior and the last living god.
A season had passed since the Cauldron faltered on the brink of death. The Magistrate, a cruel-minded imperial sent to govern the Cauldron, had held the city hostage using a fleet of old tech mining drones and a human-made terraforming barge that had almost burned down the city.
But Poire had saved them. He awakened the ancient towers, raised a shield over the Cauldron, and destroyed the Magistrate’s weapons, ending his reign.
“Worshippers are still pouring into the city,” Eolh said. He leaned on the railing next to Poire. The corvani’s black feathers stirred in the breeze, shining almost blue in the red sunlight. “At first, the celebrations were, uh, wild. After nineteen years of oppression, they needed to let loose. But lately . . . the mood has shifted. The old fear’s come back. We killed a Magistrate. We broke free from the Empire. Yet, neither Cyre nor the Emperor has sent a single word.”
“They’re afraid the Empire will return,” Poire said.
“The gate still works,” Eolh said. “The Queen has soldiers and guns pointed at it day and night, but the people are afraid it won’t be enough. Hells, the Queen’s afraid it won’t be enough.”
The dirigible climbed into the air over the Highcity. Here, the noise of the crowd was louder—a dull, unending thunder rolling beneath Poire’s feet. He wasn’t used to the sound. He’d never seen so many people in all his life. Raised in a human Conclave, in a complex hidden deep underground, Poire had only ever met a few hundred people before he was awakened in the Cauldron.
“What does the Queen think we should do?” Poire asked.
“Ryke puts on a brave face in public. She says a strong front keeps the people calm. But behind closed doors, she’s afraid of war.”
“And her councilors?”
Eolh let out a derisive caw. “Councilors can’t agree on anything. Some say that Cyre’s forgotten about us. Fools. Others think we should try sending messengers. Last meeting, someone suggested we join the Empire, as equals. As if the cyrans would ever treat us as equals.”
“What do you think?” Poire asked.
“We can’t beat the Emperor. Not without old tech . . .” Eolh eyed Poire meaningfully.
The tension in Poire’s chest knotted, like an instrument’s strings wound too tight. “Don’t count on that.”
“Why not?”
“The Oracle is corrupted. I thought I had a fix,” Poire clenched the wooden railing of the rig. “I’ve been digging into the Oracle’s flow, but he’s cracked to the core. All he can talk about is the protocol, but he can’t seem to understand that the embryos are dead. Something destroyed the Conclaves on Karam. On Gaiam. Everything else was looted long before I woke up. There’s nothing left. Nothing can help us.”
“You’re still here,” Eolh said.
But the thought didn’t lighten Poire’s mood. Instead, it only reminded him of the burden of expectation. He was alive, and the last of his kind, and he wanted nothing more than to find a way to bring his people back.
But I can’t do that here.
A wave of heat rolled up as their rig passed over a city terrace packed with xenos. Poire wiped the sweat from his brow. He thought he could smell fire, but there was no smoke in the city below. He tasted a sweet sharpness of ozone in the air, reminding him of the lasers of mining drones. A scream pierced the roar of the crowds. It was swallowed by a crack of thunder so loud, it broke the buildings and the streets split open and . . .
“Fledge?” Eolh’s voice cut in. “You OK?”
Poire shook his head, blinking away the dreams. Slowly, reality sloshed back into place. “Yeah,” Poire said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Eolh eyed him dubiously. Then the corvani tilted his head, listening. Poire heard it too. The dull roar of the crowd hushed as a new voice sailed out from a nearby minaret. An avian, a holy caller, lifted his voice in exaltation to the gods.
Dead and gone.
Below, the faces of the crowds turned up. They pointed at Poire’s rig. Millions of xenos, lit by candlelight and the glow from the gas lamps, stared up at him. Too much like his dream.
Eolh stretched his neck and rolled his wiry muscles. “Hm,” he croaked. “There’s more of them than I thought.”
Poire took a long, slow breath. He filled his lungs twice and breathed out slowly, the way Xiaoyun had taught him. In, in, and out, until the worry in his head softened. A solemn evening song, both melodic and monotonous, rolled up from the city below.
“How long have they been waiting?” Poire asked.
“They’ve been waiting their whole damn lives, Fledge. And more.”
“Any idea what I should say to them?”
“Honestly, not sure it matters. They came to see you. Ryke said they just want to see their Savior in the flesh.”
Poire swallowed hard. The xenos worshipped him, called him a god, just because they didn’t understand human technology—and he did. They were wrong, of course, but it felt like the wrong time to argue the point. Right now, the xenos of Gaiam needed their Savior Divine.
The rig docked on the Hanging Palace’s great balcony. Even up here, the evening heat sighed against his skin and made the liquid armor wake. That near-sentient metal wrapped in thin layers over his body, beneath his clothes and down his arms and legs, cooling his skin as it carried away the heat. Poire touched two fingers to his chest and quietly thanked the armor.
From the balcony, Poire could see the whole Cauldron. Furthest and farthest down was Lowtown, still blackened and pockmarked with craters from the Magistrate’s last battle. Above that, the Midcity, then the Highcity, and the Hanging Palace lording over it all. Everything, except the old shield pylons.
Poire could not see the streets through all the people. His stomach leaped into his throat and stuck there. Xenos of every kind. Muscled falcyr towered over the bright-feathered passerines. Black-feathered corvani lurked in their ragged leathers, and pockets of priests mingled with rainbow-colored lori and black-feathered corvani and golden weavers still in their laborer’s gear. Throngs of redenites stood under awnings, some of them still wearing those snouted masks. Reptilian gaskals, with huge bulging eyes that never seemed to blink at the same time, took off their broad-brimmed hats as they looked up.
Poire leaned over the edge.
A silence swept through the crowds. A million eyes shone with awe.
Poire resisted the urge to shake his head. I’m not who they think I am. But in belief, there was power. It was twisted logic that brought him here, but he thought he might be able to use the superstition of the masses to help them.
Thunder rumbled from somewhere over the mountains. But the clouds were thin tonight. No one else seemed to care about the sound. They watched the Queen of Aviankind stride across the balcony toward Poire. She wore a royal cloak over her shoulder, intentionally exposing the still-healing burns and broken feathers earned from enduring the cyrans’ tortures.
The Queen stopped in front of Poire, and kneeled, and bowed her head until her beak almost touched the ground. Waves of movement rippled across the crowd as hundreds of thousands fell to their knees. Voices cried out “Hail! Hail to our Savior!” until the whole crowd roared their jubilations.
But Poire couldn’t hear them. Only the rumble and cracking of thunder. The whole balcony trembled with the sound. He covered his ears, but it grew louder in his head. He tried to focus on his breath, just as Xiaoyun, his old cultivar, had taught him. Bright lights flared on the horizon. An ethereal glow leaked through the cracks and cast the city in an alien light. Silver and black lines carved across the atmosphere and dripped down to the mountains. When they touched the stone, the mountains split. Fault lines raced down the cliffs into the Cauldron. The streets heaved. Buildings cracked and crumbled, thrashing the trees and filling the streets with clouds of dust. A blinding light poured into the cityscape like the dawn of a vast, new sun—far too close, yet colder than the void.
Poire turned to the Queen. He meant to shout at her. To tell her to run. But her face was wrong. All their faces were wrong. He saw no feathers, no fur.
Human faces. Afraid. Afraid of me.
A dream, Poire thought. It’s only a dream. He was sure of it . . . until the balcony shifted and Poire was thrown from his feet. Where he had stood, the stone was turning black. Glittering, ashen veins crawled across the balcony, splitting it into pieces. The veins crawled away from him. They crawled toward the people far below.
Poire rushed forward. He grabbed at the railing. He wanted to shout at the people. To tell them to save themselves. But his throat was dry and cracked and filled with dust. Black liquid dripped from his nose and pattered on the stone railing. It turned the stone to ash.
And the light in the sky bloomed.
And all he could see was light.
***
Eolh caught the fledgling human before he fell over the edge. Foam dripped from Poire’s mouth, streaked with red blood. Eolh shielded him from the crowd’s sight—too late. Silence swept through the masses as their joy turned to horror.
Chapter 2: His Divine Burden
The tang of burning coal filled the air. Soon, it was joined by the sweet scent of jungle fruit and cooked meat. Poire’s stomach woke before he did. His mouth was watering and his implant hummed in his wrist, warning that his body was low on a whole list of nutrients. He impulsed a command and the humming stopped. But the covers were so warm, and his limbs sank into the mattress, and he didn’t want to move.
His stomach clenched, making his implant buzz furiously under the skin of his wrist. Poire sighed and opened his eyes.
Firelight lit the paintings and gilded tapestries and mahogany bookshelves that lined the walls. A pair of white gloves lay on the table at his bedside, next to a bowl of fruit, nut butters, and a steaming platter of legs of some local meat. Its crackled, golden-brown skin glistened with oil.
Then he saw her, sitting in the far corner of the room, as far away from the fire as possible. Her eyes glowed white. Old scars and gouges marked her metal face. Some of those scars were older than the avian city. But not all. Before the battle with the Magistrate, the android’s elegantly crafted body had been torn to pieces by a monstrous thing that lived in the sewers beneath the Cauldron. The Queen’s tinkers had restored what they could, but compared to Laykis’ human creator, their tools and knowledge were hopelessly primitive.
Now, Laykis looked like two androids stitched together. Half her chassis and joints twisted together so organically, they almost moved like muscles. The rest of her was made of segments of burnished copper, crude but beautifully crafted. The tinkers had engraved her copper parts with ornate patterns, leaves and flowers and vines that caught the firelight. And her eyes were strangely expressive, for a construct.
“How long have I been out?” Poire asked.
“You haven’t moved in three days,” Laykis said, “I feared you might not wake.”
His stomach gripped painfully. Once more, his gaze wandered to the fruits and meat on the table. His mouth watered again. It can wait. He impulsed a command to his wrist and a surge of hormones flooded his stomach, quieting his hunger.
“The dream follows me in my waking hours,” Poire said, “This time, there was a light in the sky. I felt it, pulling me.” He looked down at the pale brown of his palms. “And where I touched, the ground changed. Like atoms, coming undone. I dreamed of the end of all things. It felt . . . so real.”
Laykis’ hydraulics whispered as she shifted, almost imperceptibly. “You are not the first to have this dream.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Black veins reached across the sky,” Laykis quoted. “A light crested the horizon, brighter than bright. It cracked the skies and made them bleed black. Where the drops fell, the ground opened.”
“You think I was having a vision?”
“You saw the Unmaking,” Laykis said. “You, and all the gods before you.”
“Laykis,” Poire laughed uncomfortably, “Be serious. No one can see the future. It was only a dream.”
“My Maker dreamed of the end too. The visions haunted him until his very last breath.” Her eyes glowed white as they scanned up and down his body. “Have you noticed anything wrong with your body? Stiffness, or pain, or unnatural growths?”
Poire shook his head.
“You’re sure?”
“My implant would tell me if anything was wrong. It won’t even let me sleep if it thinks my calorie intake is too low.”
“Good,” she sounded genuinely relieved, “I feared your disease had progressed.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not sick.”
She cocked her head. “All the gods are. They called it the Prophet’s Touch, because the first symptoms are dreams of the future.”
“But I’ve always had these dreams. The cultivars knew about them. They used to make us write them down.”
“Always?” Laykis stroked her arm, uncertainly. “I’ve only ever heard of the dreams being followed by the Touch itself.”
“What is it?”
“A change begins in the cells of your brain. Some say it starts below the atomic layer and changes the very matter of your body. It spreads through your veins and crystallizes your tissue. By the time Tython finished building me, the Prophet’s Touch had eaten away most of his flesh.”
Like the ones I saw in the Vault, Poire thought. The Oracle had taken him to a hidden cavern where the frozen bodies of his old cultivars lay in cold chambers, their veins glittering black.
Poire said, “You really think the man who built you had a disease that made him see the future?”
“Not just him. But all your kind. Why else do you think we mortals worship you?”
Poire frowned. The xenos insisted that Poire was a god. To them, all human technology was miraculous. But Laykis should know better. She was crafted by an old coldsmith, long, long ago. Poire had always wondered why a human-made android could be so sure about her superstitions . . .
“You don’t believe me,” Laykis stated.
“If it were possible to see the future, I would know. My cultivars—”
“Your cultivars sheltered you from the universe. Perhaps they didn’t want you to know about the great destruction that looms in our future. Perhaps they had their reasons for hiding everything from you.”
Poire started to argue. And stopped.
He remembered the strange tests his cultivars forced him to take, where they put him in a chamber with no light and no sensation. They told him what to do, but they never told him why. Poire could still feel the electrodes stuck to his skin, lying in the dark, until the dark turned into . . . something else. Faded lines wavering into being. Shapes, and walls, and objects that moved in impossible ways.
And then, the other shapes, materializing into existence. And that overwhelming sense of wrongness, like his body was being pulled apart, atom by atom. Every time—every time—they ended the test early, and brought Poire out screaming. He shivered thinking about it.
“They always seemed so worried,” Poire admitted. “Sometimes, I heard them whispering about how little time was left. I guess I thought they were talking about me.”
Though, surely, he would’ve noticed if the adults in the Conclave were walking around having visions of the future. Right?
Then again, the cultivars always kept their secrets. They tested his health, his endurance, his mind, and yet they never showed him the results. They tested him until he was shivering and weak and the air tasted like blood. Try harder, they said. It’s not enough. You need to try harder. But they never told him why the tests mattered. What was it all for?
“Tell me about Tython’s dream,” Poire said.
“He, too, dreamed of the final change.” Laykis’s eyes darkened as she recalled the data from her core. Her voice clicked low, in the rhythm of reverence. “When the Places of the Gods are broken, and the Ungrateful Machine takes the last living Makers, then shall the children bear witness. Vul, comes the unmaking of all things. All this, my Maker foresaw.”
“But that was thousands of years ago. And everything is still here.”
“The works of the Makers fade into ruin. The Light dams will fall. The great Scars shall tear open. This was foretold. Yet my Maker believed there was hope. At the beginning of the end, He shall return. That is why Tython made me—to find you.”
A shiver ran down his spine. Poire looked idly at his pale brown palms. Compared to soldiers like Marsim, he was so small. So weak. How can she call me great? He hadn’t done anything with his life. I’m just Poire. Even the cultivars in his Conclave knew he was no one special.
Then again . . . Who brought down the Magistrate’s barge? Who lifted the shield over the city? Who saved the lives of millions of xenos? He curled his hands into fists.
Visions and prophecies. He didn’t believe any of them, but there was truth to the android’s words. Poire was special, because he was still alive.
Gaiam was full of strange, alien people. Avians and redenites, lizardfolk and semi-amphibious things, and other sapients from distant worlds. Their ancestors created by human hands. In a way, he did not fit into this world. Even Laykis made sense here, a living relic among all the aliens and constructs.
To them, Poire was the alien. Which made him wonder . . . What if I’m not the only one?
Poire stuck his hands under his pillow and grabbed the pair of Architects’ gloves he kept hidden there. When his fingers grazed the gloves’ metal fibers, his implant buzzed. Then Poire shoved them into his pocket and the connection was lost. He shoveled heaping spoonfuls of meat from the bowl into his mouth. He almost groaned at the savory, sweet flavors. His stomach unclenched, and his wrist implant chimed happily as he scraped the bottom of the bowl.
Still chewing, he spoke, “We have a gate. And the gate has power. There were other Conclaves on other worlds. I can find them. There could be others, frozen. Like me. Not diseased. Maybe they can help. Dreams, the protocol, everything. They’ll know what to do.”
“Divine One,” Laykis clicked sadly.
Poire paused, his hand hovering over the doorknob. He already knew what she was going to say. It made him feel like he was about to fall through the world.
“I searched for so long,” Laykis said, “I lost count of the years. If any of your kind lived, I would have found them. I don’t know what happened to them. I only know that you were sent to bring them back.”
“How? How? The Oracle is undone. My home is gone. There are no embryos, or answers, or anything on this planet. And you’re telling me these dreams I’ve had my whole life are really happening. What would you have me do?”
Laykis said nothing, but a pensive clicking sound came from her inner speakers. Poire swallowed his anger and sat down hard on the bed. Confusion and sadness and despair threatened to overwhelm him.
“I know what you think I am,” he said. “You call me divine. But to me, I’m just . . . me. I don’t know how to save anyone. I don’t even know where to begin. If you know anything, please.”
“The knowledge of your ancestors did not die with them. But . . .” The android tapped a finger to her chin, as if afraid to even mention her idea. An almost human gesture.
“But what?”
“But the First Children are difficult to reach.”
“Who?”
“The Historians,” she tilted her head. “Their cold, orbital library is a deep well of knowledge. More than just the Prophecy is contained in that high hall. But it won’t be easy getting there. The only path I know is kept by the imperials. It leads to the Emperor himself.”
Chapter 3: Folding Your Wings
Each morning and each night, the avian faithful prayed to the old gods. Song calls soared down from the galleries of the highest temples and undulated over the rooftops of the Cauldron.
The Morning Song began softly: a chirping in the dark before dawn, like a question searching for an answer. When the sun peeked over the mountain ridge, it was met by a surge of sonorous voices. Blessed are the gods, who made this glorious day—just for us.
At dusk, as the globe of the sun fell back to the mountain ridge on the other side of the Cauldron, the first mournful notes of the Even Song lofted down from the temple rooftops. Praying for mercy, for protection from evil.
At each prayer, devout avians—no matter where they were—would kneel and clutch their holy icons and mutter soft prayers. Praise the Makers, and all their works. Eolh was never among them. The last time he’d set talon inside a temple proper, he had not come to pray with the priests but to steal from them. But that had been another life.
Today, he came to Asaiyam’s tower for an entirely different purpose.
Eolh landed on the perch which wrapped around Asaiyam’s tower, halfway up its dizzying height—an architectural miracle if ever there was one. He could already smell the rich, heady incense wafting in the depths of this holy place. It still felt wrong to him. A corvani in the Highcity. Lowcaste rarely made it up into the Midcity, let alone the noble districts. And here he was, summoned to the highest temple in all the Cauldron. He felt like he should be skulking around the back instead of walking through the front door.
But he had been invited by none other than Ryke av’Ryka, Queen of Aviankind. In the weeks after the Empire’s tyranny broke and the Magistrate had been thrown from the top of the tower, she had ruled like a storm, sweeping clean the corruption of her city. And gods, how the people need her. The city was in ruins. Lowtown was a forest of blackened timbers and piles of soot and new scaffolding. The Highcity had wilted and its noble manors were cracked and crumbling. Pieces of the Magistrate’s massive ship—Poire had called it a terraforming barge—were still being hauled away to the factories, where the redenite tinkers were attempting to melt it down and reforge the metal. The rest of its hull stuck up like a massive set of metal ribs. Might make for an impressive monument one day.
As for Ryke, well . . . the scars she’d earned from the Magistrate might never heal, but she refused to take even a moment for herself. One night, Eolh had snuck into her room in the Hanging Palace, expecting to find her bedridden. Instead, she was giving commands to an army of attendants and officiants and new councilors while her doctors shook their heads and sighed. With nothing more than her voice and a few pens, the Queen tore down old imperial laws, ordered daily reports, and set in motion the first plans to repair the city.
Open the seederies, harvest the orchards. Split the cyran estates, and those of the traitors. Let their servants live in my palace, if need be. This city will be rebuilt, with our people as one people. Feather or fur or scale, it matters not.
Eolh had brought her flowers. But he was no fool. He could see how busy she was. He left them on the balcony without saying a word. He did not think anyone saw him. In the following weeks, Eolh was surprised to see how the castes came together under the Queen’s new order. Lowcaste with the Midcitizens. Soldiers with priests. Fur and feather and scale . . . just as she said.
There were only two exceptions: the traitor nobles and the imperials. Most of the traitors seemed to evaporate overnight. Some turned up in the sewers, their throats slit. Others disappeared on rigs headed across the deep jungles and the farthest oceans. Good luck to them. The Cauldron had its problems, but the wilds of Gaiam would eat you alive.
Still, Eolh suspected there were more than a few old nobles still hiding throughout the city, so he had visited Horace, once a gang boss, now governor of Lowtown. Horace, it seemed, had been making a few of his own special “catches,” rooting out traitors in Lowtown’s few remaining hiding places.
“The law has long wings,” Horace said, “But long wings make it difficult to fly in cramped places. Fortunately, I know people who aren’t afraid to bend their wings in the name of justice.”
When Eolh’s face soured, Horace laughed and clapped him on the back.
“I see what you’re thinking, old friend. But the Queen knows, though she won’t admit it. Who do you think is funding this?”
As for the imperials, the ocean-scaled xenos from Cyre, they were corralled in a prison camp under the watchful gaze of the Hanging Palace. Not to be harmed. Eolh still didn’t know what the Queen planned to do with them, but when the Queen invited him to meet with her in the shadows and smoke of Asaiyam’s inner temple, his suspicions grew.
If he was being honest, her invitation made his heart skip. Stupid, he thought. She’s all business. And I’m not a hot-blooded fledgling either. But he couldn’t deny his excitement.
Asaiyam’s temple was so vast, even the echoes had echoes. Polished seastone floors were supported by a single beam in the middle. An old human building, hidden underneath the stone. That beam, Poire had said, was a kind of conduit, a pipeline to channel the energy of the dome.
Light shafted through open-air windows and archways. Gas lamps illuminated each shrine across the eight corners of the temple. The Queen was sitting on the pews in front of one of the god’s shrines (Eolh was never very good at remembering their names). Her back was turned to him, so that he could see the scars where her feathers had been pulled or burned. New feathers poked through her pink flesh, bristling against the cloak she wore around her shoulders.
Eolh cleared his throat with a caw to announce his presence. The Queen turned her head. Great golden eyes bored into him. Then, her stony face broke into a warm smile. Made his heart skip again. Stop it, you fool. She’s the Queen. Decorum demands her to smile like that for everyone.
Ryke nodded at the shrine, where the statue of a human woman crossed her deeply muscled arms. “Do you pray to Kanya often?”
“Uh . . .” Eolh couldn’t remember the last time he had prayed to anything.
“I know. Poire told me that wasn’t her real name,” Ryke said. “But to me, she’s always been Kanya of the Iron Grin. She was always there when I needed her. Steady. Never yielding.”
Kanya’s eyes were narrowed, and her mouth was carved into a determined, close-lipped smile. She looked like she could bite through steel, and keep chewing. Yet, there was a kind of joyful squint to her eyes. Like she delighted in hardship.
“What if she was different?” the Queen asked. “What if this human was nothing like the Kanya I believe in?”
“Does it matter?”
The Queen gave him a look.
“I mean,” Eolh continued, “she’s dead, right? Or whatever happens to the gods when they go. So you might as well believe in the best version of her.”
“The world must be so clear to you, Eolh.”
He said nothing.
She crooked her head, motioning for him to sit next to her. Before he did, Eolh scanned the temple. He counted fifteen—no, sixteen—falcyr guards watching the Queen. He could tell where they were by the creak of their leather armor. Falcyr distrusted corvani. To be fair, all avians distrusted the crowcaste. Even corvani distrusted corvani. But today, they didn’t glare at him. Like they weren’t concerned about him being so close to the Queen. Huh. Wonder what that means?
Eolh sat next to her. He eyed the crack in her beak and followed the dark line up to her eyes, which met his. There was something about her presence. He was surprised to find how nice it was to be near her. Not at all what he expected of a royal.
“How are you, Eolh?” she asked.
“Alive,” he shrugged. “And Poire’s talking again. Up, and out of bed, too.”
“The people were, ah, unsettled by his fall.”
“You have to admit, his timing was impeccable.”
The Queen’s laugh was like music. It seemed to light up the temple, brighter than the sunlight pouring in through the windows. Eolh couldn’t stop himself from grinning like an idiot.
“Does the Savior know what happened to him?” the Queen asked.
“He said he’s having visions. I can’t tell if it’s a human thing, or a Poire thing.”
“What does the android say?”
“Yeah,” Eolh frowned as he scratched the underside of his beak, “she’s worried about Poire. More than usual, anyway. But you know Laykis. Half the time, she speaks in prophecy. She told me that the Savior Divine’s work has only just begun.”
“And what do you think?” Ryke asked.
“Honestly? I’ve never been one for all this god stuff. But when Laykis starts talking, well, I listen.”
“Yes,” the Queen shifted in her seat, “you do.” She turned those brilliant golden eyes on him. It made him feel like he was the only avian in the world. It made him feel important, and caught out at the same time.
“What?” Eolh asked.
“If I tell you, you’re not allowed to make that face at me.”
“I’m not making a face,” Eolh said. “This is just how my face looks.”
She laughed and shook her head, stirring the crest of beautiful feathers on the crown of her head. “I was just going to say that you’re not what I expected. When I first met you, I thought I knew who you were. I thought you might be more selfish. Or cruel. But I was so wrong. I thought you were trying to sell the Savior of aviankind himself.”
“Sell the Savior . . .” Eolh chuckled uncomfortably.
“I know. I know. What a fool I was. But then, I also thought that Poire would be able to open up the heavens with a wave of his hand, or summon lightning with a word.” She laughed and nudged him gently with one wing. Even through the silk of her cloak, he felt her warmth. It was nice. Too nice. Stop thinking like that, you old thief. She’s the gods-damned Queen. Eolh cleared his throat, but he didn’t move away. Neither did she.
After a quiet moment, Ryke said, “I thought when we found Poire, all of our problems would magically vanish. But we still have so much to do. I shouldn’t have pushed Poire to greet the crowds. But the people wanted to see their Savior, and I thought . . .”
A sigh. A subtle shift in her posture.
Here it comes.
“The Emperor of Cyre is awake,” Ryke said.
“He is?” Eolh feathers spiked.
“And he sent a message. The Magistrate had a device. It looks like a shell, but it was made by the Makers. A way to communicate between worlds. It’s connected to Cyre. To the Emperor of Cyre.”
Eolh clenched his beak. He could feel where this was going, and he didn’t like it.
The Emperor was shrouded in rumor and myth. To the cyrans, he was more like a god than a ruler. Beyond that, Eolh didn’t know much about cyran culture, and didn’t want to. Not a single one of them was worth the air they breathed, and Eolh felt the Emperor fit right among them.
“The Emperor sent a message months ago, but we only just got the device working again, thanks to a few of the Magistrate’s, ah, ex-compatriots.”
“So what did he say?” Eolh asked.
“The Emperor wants to talk. In person.”
Eolh’s blood turned to ice. He turned away from her.
“This is a good thing, Eolh.”
“How can it possibly be a good thing?”
“The Emperor controls the gates. He understands all old tech, even better than Poire. The Emperor knows more than anyone else alive.”
“Did he know what the Magistrate would do to us?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fool, corvani. The Emperor is not Secaius.”
Eolh scoffed a caw from the bottom of his throat.
“Listen,” she said. “There is a whole universe out there. Our people cannot thrive in isolation. If there is even a chance for peace with the Emperor, I will take it.”
“Peace?” Eolh laughed bitterly.
“In his message, the Emperor gave us control of the gate. Do you know how many hundreds of years our people have puzzled over that thing? The gate was the single greatest advantage the cyrans had over us. And now, the Emperor has given us power over it.”
“How do you know he can’t just take it away whenever he wants? How do you know anything about what he wants?”
“I don’t. That’s why I’m going to answer his message. I’m sending a clutch of diplomats to Cyre, and I want you to go with them.”
Eolh’s stomach dropped.
“You want me . . .” he said slowly, his mind getting stuck on every part of this idea, “to go . . . to Cyre?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to bring a message of peace to the very murderers who almost destroyed my home? The ones who nearly killed you?”
“The Magistrate is dead, Eolh.”
“A cyran is still a cyran.” He came to his feet, his fists clenched at his side. Looking down at her. “You know I’m a corvani, right? You know what the imperials did to us, don’t you? A city-wide mandate labeled us thieves. Arrest on sight, regardless of the crime. The cyrans crucified my friends.”
“Eolh.” That was all she said. But her voice was full of solemn gravity, and he understood. The Queen had considered all these things.
A thin haze of incense wafted through the air. Across the open atrium, someone hummed a chant and the gentle, ponderous ting of a small bell echoed sweetly through the soaring temple.
“Why me?” he asked.
“Because you’re you. You’re unexpected. And you understand what I’m asking.” Still sitting, she put her feathered hand on his metal one. His hand was old tech and had once belonged to Laykis. Somehow, through the metal, he could feel the warmth of her fingers. “I don’t want this, Eolh. But there is no one else I can trust to listen. Not like you. I need to know if we can have peace. Or if we can’t.”
“I’m the wrong one, Ryke.”
“Ryke,” she echoed. “You know you’re the only one who calls me by my name? All I hear these days is Your Majesty, Your Royalness. Never the name my mother gave me.”
Her eyes. Gods, they’re beautiful. They seemed to drink him in. Making his chest feel tight. He didn’t know what to do with that feeling. So he looked away.
She sniffed. It sounded painful. Her lungs must still be scarred from the internal trauma she had suffered at the hands of the Magistrate. How long had he tortured her? But she didn’t say a word. Not about Poire. Nor me.
Eolh could still smell the roaring fires, could still hear the screaming, helpless masses fleeing through Lowtown as the city was bathed in an orange-black glow.
After a long silence, Ryke said, “Maybe you’re right.”
“About?”
“Maybe her real name doesn’t matter. To me, she will always be Kanya of the Iron Grin.”
Eolh took a deep breath in. And let it out.
“Ryke.”
She looked at him, and it was almost worth it just to have those golden eyes on him once more.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“You will?” She looked relieved, and sad at the same time. Or maybe he was just imagining that last emotion.
“One condition,” Eolh said. “I’m not going as a diplomat.”
“Then what?”
“Put me in with the traders and tinkers. Can’t have the cyrans knowing why I’m there. Understood?”
“Thank you, Eolh.” Her hand squeezed his and, for one long moment, his heart forgot to beat.
Keep Reading:
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