“Do we go there?” Reynard asked.
The girl nodded. “Only look,” she said. “The city still doth contain many spirits. We do not touch or move anything!”
They passed into the next room, and saw it was wide and high-ceilinged but maintained the woven, rigged, and airy design of the rest of the city. The wicker floor was marred by signs of struggle—the marks of axes and sword blades, scraps of cloth, a robe tossed aside—but no blood, no bodies from any combatant or inhabitant.
Reynard was alarmed by this lack. “Where are they all, those who lived here?” he asked.
“Many have likely been taken as slaves,” Widsith said. “But how none who fell remain… I do not know.”
“Few fell, and many were taken,” said a voice behind them, and Nikolias passed through the round door to join them. He carried a lantern and lifted it to reveal the room’s deeper contents. “I have never been this far and seen so much. But I do know that the servants lived in their own kind of luxury, and perhaps valued life too much.”
There were panels, like unto those that appeared in Zodiako over the corridor leading to the hall, but much larger, covered with arts and conceptions half sculpture, half paint, with much gilding to show sun and day.
Nikolias shined the lantern light along the closest panel and said, “Observe a plan, or a dream, or a fancy. All are the same to the servants of Crafters. Here was a Crafter design, being sketched and considered by masters of all arts and artifice… But here, our own people provided the details.” His expression showed both sorrow and pride.
The panel revealed a great palace sitting on a precipice overlooking extraordinary snow-covered mountains that seemed to march back, rank upon rank, to a radiant dawn. Another panel, half as large, showed another kind of palace, a great gray thing—and Reynard saw that it was not a palace, as such, but a ship floating on the water, buildings rising high from its hull, overseeing several ranks and levels of what might have been cannon, but arranged three to an emplacement, and far larger and longer than any cannon they knew…
Calafi pointed to the sky over the palace. Very small, as if far away, a strange bird flew, its wings doubled, one above the other, supporting a long body tailed by a kind of box kite, not feathers. No feathers at all.
Most definitely not a drake, however.
A mechanical thing, flying.
“This was never delivered and executed,” Nikolias said, wiping his eyes. “This pictured a time, a place, a history! And now it may never be. The Sister Queens have killed it!”
A sharp noise came from the winding hall beyond the door. Nikolias looked around them warily. “We must leave,” he said. “We attract attention.”
“From whom?” Widsith asked with a rasp of anger, sweeping out his arms at the emptiness.
The chief of the Travelers led them out of the room, but stopped, looking back—and gestured for Widsith to join him. They were facing a strange figure in carnival garb, backed by shadow, barely paying them heed, even when Nikolias spoke to it. It moved one arm, and a stick fell from the sleeve, along with other scraps.
Beside this figure, half-hidden in the entrance to another room, was a small pile of more sticks.
“Troy was here,” Widsith said. “This was his work. Its time is coming to an end—the length of a candle.”
The robe the figure wore faded and turned to tatters, and the rest of its body collapsed into coal and dust. When its dissolution was finished, Widsith—but none of the others—approached the remnants.
“This puppet is spent,” he said. He nudged the small pile of sticks beside the crumbled mass, and picked up a bone, gray and dry. “But Troy may yet have a few tricks to play.”
A Return
NEXT MORNING, a steady, hollow sound of hooves echoed from the pass behind the wagon, and Valdis reappeared on foot, leading her horse, head down and feet plodding. She walked by the warriors and the strong-armed Sophia to the wagon, where Yuchil poked out her head, as if expecting her, and handed her down a bundle of dark green branches tied with red ribbon.
Valdis laid the bundle before her horse, which acknowledged it with a shake of the head and a stamp of one foot, and then set to eating. Reynard could barely look into her face, she seemed so different now…
“What didst thou see?” Nikolias asked her, putting blanket and saddle on his own horse, as if they all must ride soon.
“The Eaters are convened at the next working quarry of souls,” she replied. “Not for this krater, which is dead, but the next.”
“All the Eaters? Pacted and unpacted?”
“All,” Valdis affirmed.
“They have not departed?”
“No,” Valdis said. “They tried, but it is now clear—we have no existence beyond the islands. Calybo says we have difficult duties before we retire to dust and shadows.”
“Duties to whom?” Widsith asked.
“I know not. But the Sister Queens have combined to drive a great horde and move on the last of the krater cities. Travelers resist, but mostly, they die.”
Nikolias stalked off and waved his arm for the wagon to prepare.
“Other news that is bad,” Valdis said. “The Spanish general has instructed the armies of the Sister Queens how to construct snares that trap and kill drakes. Many have died. I do not know if any of them were yours to command.”
This struck home. Reynard fingered the vial that Anutha had given to him, now empty.
Calafi had bent to observe the Eater horse’s meal. “Snakebane!” she said. “Such would kill our animals.”
“That is why I do not feed them snakebane,” Yuchil said. “But one must accommodate guests and their needs.”
“Even if they bring unwelcome tales,” Andalo said.
“We will stay another night,” Nikolias said, “and make sure none of our people are late in arriving.”
“Foolish hope!” Yuchil said.
Bela came up to her, held out a sloshing skin bag, and told her the scouts had found a spring. “Then there will be tea,” Yuchil said. She instructed him to pass it to the rear of the wagon and bring more, then sat back on the wagon seat and lit up a cobb pipe with a reed stem, not unlike the smoking flute Reynard had seen being sucked on by the unfortunate keeper of the fold. She puffed, blew smoke, passed it to Nikolias, and looked away, toward the great basket city and the fields and ruins below.
In its descent, the sun cut around the northern ridge, illuminating the land in a soft golden light that made it look even more desolate, yet strangely beautiful. A steady dusk wind blew grit from the fields. The upper reaches of the city, they all observed, were now crowding with birds—gulls, cormorants, puffins, and even a few hawks and sea eagles, who seemed to cause no stir amongst the others. All were silent.
“They have finally returned,” Yuchil said, as she and Sophia handed the warriors and guests steaming bowls of gruel. “And no one to listen!”
Reynard looked to Widsith for an explanation.
“Humans are not the only ones who report the ways of this world,” Widsith said, bowing his head over the gruel.
“This city always welcomed birds,” Yuchil said. “Others, inland, took tales and histories from insects, and still others…” Her words trailed off, as if even she did not understand what else might carry reports to the Crafters.
“Was that why Troy came here?” Widsith mused.
Yuchil said, “He of all I know might understand the songs of birds.”
Their bowls empty, Kaiholo scrubbed them with sand and carried them to the wagon. The young warriors and Sophia gathered wood and dried vines from the margins of the ruined village and made two bonfires to drive back the dark that would soon arrive. The Travelers gathered around the fires and stretched out their hands.