She was neither fugitive nor evanescent. Her presence had a weight, depth, and clarity that nothing else did—not even Lixxa, and there were few things Lazlo knew better these days than the physical reality of Lixxa. After six months of all-day riding, she felt almost like an extension of himself. But the spectral seemed suddenly insubstantial, and no sooner did this thought occur than she melted away. The gryphon, too. There was only himself and the goddess with her piercing gaze and nectar scent and . . . gravity.
Not gravity in the sense of solemnity—though that, too—but gravity in the sense of a pull. He felt as though she were the center of this small, surreal galaxy—indeed, that it was she who was dreaming him, and not the other way around.
He didn’t know what made him do it. It was so unlike him. He reached for her hand and caught it—lightly—and held it. It was small, smooth, and very real.
Up in the citadel, Sarai gasped. She felt the warmth of his skin on hers. A blaze of connection—or collision, as though they had long been wandering in the same labyrinth and had finally rounded the corner that would bring them face-to-face. It was a feeling of being lost and alone and then suddenly neither. Sarai knew she ought to pull her hand free, but she didn’t. “You have to tell me,” she said. She could feel the dream shallowing, like a sleek ship beaching on a shoal. Soon he would wake. “The flying machines. When will they launch?”
Lazlo knew it was a dream, and he knew it wasn’t a dream, and the two knowings chased circles in his mind, dizzying him. “What?” he asked. Her hand felt like a heartbeat wrapped within his own.
“The flying machines,” she repeated. “When?”
“Tomorrow,” he answered, hardly thinking.
The word, like a scythe, cut the strings that were holding her upright. Lazlo thought that his hand around hers was all that was keeping her standing. “What is it?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
She pulled away, grabbed back her hand. “Listen to me,” she said, and her face grew severe. The black band returned like a slash, and her eyes blazed all the brighter for the contrast. “They must not come,” she said, in a voice as unyielding as mesarthium. The vines and orchids disappeared from her hair, and then there was blood running out of it, streaming rivulets down her brow to collect in her eye sockets and fill them up until they were nothing but glassy red pools, and still the blood flowed, down over her lips and into her mouth, smearing as she spoke. “Do you understand?” she demanded. “If they do, everyone will die.”
38
Everyone Will Die
Everyone will die.
Lazlo jolted awake and was astonished to find himself alone in the small bedroom. The words echoed in his head, and a vision of the goddess was imprinted in his mind: blood pooling in her eye sockets and dripping down to catch in her lush mouth. It had been so real that at first he almost couldn’t credit that it had been a dream. But of course it had been. Just a dream, what else? His mind was overflowing with new imagery since his arrival in Weep. Dreams were his brain’s way of processing them all, and now it was struggling to reconcile the girl from the dream with the one in the mural. Vibrant and sorrowful versus . . . bloody and unmourned.
He had always been a vivid dreamer, but this was something altogether new. He could still feel the shape and weight of her hand in his, the warmth and softness of it. He tried to brush it all aside as he got on with the morning, but the image of her face kept intruding, and the haunting echo of her words: Everyone will die.
Especially when Eril-Fane invited him to join the ascension to the citadel.
“Me?” he asked, dumbfounded. They were in the pavilion, standing beside the silk sleighs. Ozwin was readying one of the two; to save on ulola gas, only one would go up today. Once they reached the citadel, they were to restore its defunct pulley system so that their future comings and goings would not be dependent on flight.
It was how goods had been brought up from the city back in the days of the Mesarthim. It had a basket just big enough to carry a person or two—as they’d discovered after the liberation, when the freed had used it to get back down to the ground, one trip at a time. But in the wild hours of shock and celebration that greeted the news of the gods’ demise, they must have forgotten to secure the ropes properly. They’d slipped from the pulleys and fallen, rendering the citadel forever—or until now—inaccessible. Today they would reestablish the link.
Soulzeren had said she could carry three passengers in addition to herself. Eril-Fane and Azareen made two, and Lazlo was offered the last place.
“Are you sure?” he asked Eril-Fane. “But . . . one of the Tizerkane—?”
“As you’ve no doubt observed,” said Eril-Fane, “the citadel is difficult for us.” We are all children in the dark, Lazlo remembered. “Any of them would come if I asked, but they’ll be glad to be spared. You needn’t come if you don’t wish.” A sly glint came into his eyes. “I can always ask Thyon Nero.”
“Now, that’s uncalled for,” said Lazlo. “And anyway, he isn’t here.”
Eril-Fane looked around. “No, he isn’t, is he?” Thyon was, in fact, the only delegate who hadn’t come to watch the launch. “Shall I send for him?”
“No,” said Lazlo. “Of course I want to come.” In truth, though, he was less certain after his macabre dream. Just a dream, he told himself, glancing up at the citadel. The angle of the climbing sun snuck a slash of rays under the edges of its wings, shining a jagged shimmer along the sharp tips of the huge metal feathers.
Everyone will die.
“Are you sure it’s empty?” he blurted out, trying and failing to sound casual.
“I’m sure,” said Eril-Fane with grim finality. He softened a little. “If you’re afraid, just know that you’re in good company. It’s all right if you prefer to stay.”
“No, I’m fine,” Lazlo insisted.
And so it was that he found himself stepping aboard a silk sleigh a scant hour later. In spite of the chill that didn’t quite leave him, he was well able to marvel at this latest unfolding of his life. He, Strange the dreamer, was going to fly. He was going to fly in the world’s first functional airship, along with two Tizerkane warriors and a badlander mechanist who used to make firearms for amphion warlords, up to a citadel of alien blue metal floating above the city of his dreams.
In addition to the faranji, citizens were gathered to see them off, Suheyla included, and all were marked by the same trepidation as the Zeyyadin the previous evening. No one looked up. Lazlo found their fear more unsettling than ever, and was glad to be distracted by Calixte.
She came over and whispered, “Bring me a souvenir.” She winked. “You owe me.”
“I’m not going to loot the citadel for you,” he said, prim. And then, “What kind of souvenir?” His mind went at once to the god corpses they expected to find, including Isagol’s. He shuddered. How long did it take for a corpse to become a skeleton? Less than fifteen years, surely. But he wouldn’t be breaking off any pinkie bones for Calixte. Besides, Eril-Fane said that Lazlo and Soulzeren would wait outside while he and Azareen did a thorough search to make sure it was safe.
“I thought you were certain it was empty,” Lazlo pointed out.
“Empty of the living,” was his comforting reply.
And then they were boarding. Soulzeren put on goggles that made her look like a dragonfly. Ozwin gave her a kiss and loosened the mooring lines that kept the big silk pontoons firmly on the ground. They had to cast them all off at once if they wanted to rise straight and not “yaw about like drunken camels,” as Ozwin put it. There were safety lines that hooked to harnesses Soulzeren had given them to wear—all but Eril-Fane, whose shoulders were far too big for them.
“Hook it on your belt, then,” said Soulzeren with a frown. She peered up, squinting at the underside of the vast metal wings, and the soles of the great angel’s feet, and the sky she could see around the edges. “No wind, anyway. Should be fine.”
Then they were counting down and casting off.
And just like that . . . they were flying.