Rift in the Sky

Still no sky. Light spilled from the buildings that rose on every side. None were very large; none stood alone. They were stacked on one another in no order she could find and shared walls with their neighbors. Doors opened on roofs. Instead of roads or walkways, steps led from rooftop to rooftop. The stack meandered upward to a distant ceiling, obscured behind the lines hung with wet clothes that stretched across every open area.

Water trickled along pipes cut in half. They met or poured into lower pipes, the pattern continuing to produce a minor waterfall. It disappeared through a wide grate, half choked with debris, close to where the lift had brought her.

Everywhere, people. Aryl hadn’t imagined so many people could exist at once, let alone be in the same place. People leaning out windows. People sitting on steps. People walking along rooftops. Talking. Shouting. The sounds of work and life. Laughter and argument. Smells and colors and warmth.

Her mind said “people,” but these weren’t M’hiray. Human, most of them, if the similarity in shape mattered—though Human seemed to cover a remarkable array of possibilities—as well as a few, stranger, forms.

All this Aryl took in with one sweeping glance. Her quarry wasn’t that far ahead. The white coat helped, but she knew how it moved, now. Even in a crowd, it couldn’t hide from her.

As if it knew, it didn’t stay in a crowd. Instead, it scampered up a wall, grabbing laundry lines and windows for handholds to a chorus of amused—or angry—shouts, twisting its body to fling itself onto the next roof.

This was more like it, Aryl thought gleefully.

Haxel wants a report. A barely contained hint of worry, which wasn’t the First Scout’s.

Still following our guide, she assured her Chosen, tamping down her excitement. It knows this place.

Send a locate. I’ll help.

She looked up at the wall, but tactfully refrained from sharing that image. Too many would see. I’ll find a place.

And started to climb.

Messy. Cluttered. Busy. All things that made for handholds and footholds and a variety of ways to move through space without colliding with those who chose more predictable paths.

Aryl’s feet and hands rarely touched the same object twice as she surged over the rooftops in pursuit. For the first time, she had the advantage. Her quarry might know its terrain, but every part of her knew how to move like this, when to use balance and momentum instead of strength, when to use strength to increase speed and distance.

The sounds and colors around her blurred as she focused only on the next hand- and footholds, blurred into something else, into a dream of fronds and vines and branches that gave extra spring to her leaps. Where anything that moved was a threat.

So when her quarry slipped and fell in front of her, Aryl drew her longknife with one smooth pull and—

ARYL! Enris, with an urgency that made her stumble. A stumble that let her quarry leap to its feet and throw itself through the nearest open door. A guide, remember? he sent almost too calmly.

He was right. She might have killed it. What had she been thinking?

Aryl wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of one hand, and went through the open door.

Stairs led down, steep stairs.

Enris. Be ready. You first.

Aryl took the steps without a sound, staying to one side, knife still ready. The air thickened around her, filled with eye-straining smoke and odors that might have been food—or food after it had been dead too long.

She was alone. Aryl paused and sent the locate. Here.

Enris appeared beside her, grabbing for her arm and the nearest wall as he realized where he stood. “More stairs,” he complained.

Aryl chuckled. “I’ll see if I can do better next time.”

“So we have it cornered,” her Chosen said hopefully, easing down the stairs behind her. She heard him sniff. “Wonder if that’s edible.”

She wondered why such a knowledgeable creature would pick this narrow dark stairway for its hiding place.

Until the stairs ended at a pair of sturdy, closed doors.

“At least it’s private,” she grumbled, sharing her memories of the chase. “I’ll send the locate to the others.”

“No need.” He chuckled at her expression. “All our scouts are already on this layer.”

“How?”

“While you, my dear Chosen, were running through tunnels and up walls, we found a lift right beside the door at the top of those stairs.” A mock shudder. “Seeing it led to a nice empty building, Haxel took Naryn back to Council, I stayed to wait for you, and the scouts used that locate to get here.” He lifted a finger and twirled it once. “Naryn says this is the lowest inhabited layer of Norval and the most densely populated. She suggested, strongly, we keep moving up.”

Having seen the crowded buildings, Aryl agreed with that. “Have they found a way?”