Kantu wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Immediately regretted it. “It carries you, sure. Mik, a praying mantis weighs more than you. Question is, will it carry two?”
“Come on, Kantu.” Mikiel neatly avoided answering by hauling Kantu to her feet. Every time she moved it was a kind of dance, even weighed down as she was. “We can’t stay in the streets. Too damned dangerous.”
“Wait, wait, wait a second.” Kantu cupped one hand to the back of her skull, the other to her forehead, trying to keep the world in one place. “Just tell me one thing, you demonic curse-spawn of the North. Did we win? Is the city ours? Where is Viceroy Eriphet?”
“Eriphet?” Mikiel laughed. “Fled or dead. Who cares? Gone. Gone with all his guards. And every lordly wormling of the Audiencia who had a camel worth riding. May they cross Bellisaar in safety.”
“Safety!”
“Of course.” Mikiel’s smile was sour. “Let them belly-crawl back to Koss Var with cracked lips and swollen stomachs. Let Eriphet confess to High King Vorst Vadilar that he lost the Empire’s southern stronghold to the desert scum he swore to crush. And then—please the Flying Gods of Thunder—let Eriphet and the Audiencia sip of the High King’s mercy.”
As familiar as fear was the mercy of the Empire of the Open Palm. The broken treaties, the marches, the massacres, the prison camps and slave labor, the promises that oozed poison through honey-sweet lips. This mercy had the Viceroy Eriphet shown the Bird People during the forty long and bloody years of his reign.
Kantu barked with laughter. “May Vorst Vadilar show him the same!” Heedless of her throbbing face, a wrist that was surely sprained, a broken toe, and countless contusions, she did a jolly little shuffle, puffing up dust from the gutter. “The Viceroy driven to the Waste! Rok Moris ours!”
“Kantu.”
Those two syllables would have flattened a priestess’s miter. Kantu stopped dancing. Every cut burned. Every bruise clenched. She collapsed, panting, against the alley wall.
“Why grim, Mik?” she gasped, though she knew. “Why, when the city is ours?”
“Well—” Mikiel gestured to the unnatural darkness. The wind moved with a black glitter, as though a billion tiny eyes traveled on it. Kantu could not smell the air, but she could taste it beneath the copper, all the way down her throat, in the acids of her stomach. The way the air tastes of glass when lightning strikes the sands.
“It’s the Fa. The streets are overrun with Childless Men. They did not march into our city last night because Eriphet called for help. Nor do they seem interested in pursuing the Audiencia into the desert. But the Fa… When he came, he brought the night with him, and it stays. He has already taken up residence in the Viceroy’s Palace. Um, the parts we didn’t burn. Citizens are being rounded up for questioning. And…”
By the milky blue light on her shoulder, Mikiel’s eyes seemed wide as windmills.
“And?”
“Kantu, a reward has been posted.”
“For whom?”
“For the Rokka Mama.”
Kantu’s hands fell to her sides, too nerveless even to form fists.
“And for you.”
They flew in slow, staggering stoops across Rok Moris. Once they had to land behind a small branch library to let Kantu alight and vomit, and again after Kantu lost both her consciousness and her grip on the glider’s handholds. She landed on top of a noxious midden out back of the Star and Crescent tavern.
Mikiel said, worried, “We could walk?”
“I’m fine. This is faster. And safer.”
“If that trash heap hadn’t been there…”
“I’m fine, Mik!”
They passed the High Temple to Ajdenia, brightly lit against the unnatural night. Its corridors and courtyards teemed with refugees harried from their homes by the invaders and the insurgents and the panicked city guards.
Kantu sent them a silent blessing. Let Ajdenia hold them, love them, calm them, keep them. Kantu had no quarrel with the Lizard Lady or Her people. But Ajdenia was not her god, and Kantu had her own people to look to.
They made a final graceless descent over the barren mounds of Paupers’ Grave, at the southernmost edge of the city. After the mounds, the land ended in an abrupt cliff that sheered off into a dark crack of earth. This was the Fallgate, the boundary of Rok Moris, the end of the known world. The black aperture ran across the desert, too wide to cross. Like many a bloodstained altar, this cliff was a holy place. Viceroy Eriphet used to stage his executions there, at the very edge, proving once and for all that without their carpets, Bird People could not fly.
Beneath the mounds of Paupers’ Grave, the secret burrows of long-bygone builders spiraled down and down into the cliff rock. The labyrinth, the mazepaths, the Catacombs. Where, in secret, the Bird People dwelled.
Kantu dropped from the glider with a wrenched groan, massaging the death grip out of her fists. Mikiel tumbled after but regained her balance in an instant, shifting her feet lightly until once again her sandals settled like petals on the dirt. Kantu shook her head in fond disgust, but Mikiel did not notice. She was busy shrugging the contraption off her shoulders and folding it back into her pack. She stroked the patchworks and ribbing, murmuring sweet thank-yous.
“Good old thing,” she said. “Clever wings, clever threads, clever souls.”
From beyond the glowing circle cast by Mikiel’s blue button, Kantu spoke sourly.
“The rest of us get rugs. Rugs are good enough. They do the job. Only you would think of wings.”
“And you call yourself Bird People.”
“Know what kind of bird you are, Mik? A snowbird. Northern fluff flying south for winter.”
“Caw,” Mikiel deadpanned.
Kantu blew a sore but profoundly wet raspberry at her.
Laughing softly, Mikiel touched the blue button on her shoulder. The light winked off. For a moment, the two friends stood together, blind to each other and silent in the darkness. Something cold and fierce seized Kantu’s hand. She gasped.
“It’s just me.”
“Mik, you’re freezing.”
“Nerves.”
“Come here, my quivering ice maid. You and your thin Skaki blood. Put your arm about me. You can hold me up, and I’ll warm you up. You’ll find there’s a distinct advantage to having feverish friends. Better than bonfires, really.”
Mikiel twined her arm around Kantu’s waist. Kantu leaned in heavily, close to collapse.
“Easy on the ribs, Mik.”
“Lighten up, dead weight.”
They were used to doing this part of their work in the dark, for only thus had the Bird People kept the Catacombs secret from their enemy all these years. They counted their paces across Paupers’ Grave, the tombs and mounds and trenches that stretched along the entire southern border of Rok Moris, until they reached a certain burial mound. It was wider in circumference but lower to the ground than the others. The first and the oldest tomb. Their doorway underground.
As they reached it, Kantu’s knees buckled. Only Mikiel’s tightened grasp kept her from falling flat on her smashed face. Cursing, Kantu jerked to right herself.
Mikiel grunted in sympathy. “No rest for the recalcitrant.”
Kantu laughed, said, “Ow,” and sighed.
“Kantu?”
“Mmn.”
“What is the Fa?”
Kantu’s stomach lurched. Pretending a distraction she did not feel, she knelt before the mound, patting around for the trapdoor. Her hand caught on the round wooden dial, which, dried and splintered from centuries in the sun, scraped her fingers. Dust and sand fell away.
There, proud, the etched sign of the Thundergod, the Rok of Rok Moris, with her ragged wings shedding raindrops, and the diamond, bright upon her horned skull, shooting out lightning like a crown. The diamond needed no light to scintillate. It was older than the door, older than the tombs, the treasure of the Bird People. No thief could pry it loose from the dial, nor could even the sorriest beggar sell it for her gain. The diamond had some magic in it, deflecting attention and desire from the doorway. When the Bird People had fled to Paupers’ Grave in their hour of need, the diamond and the door had responded.