“Lady Cleopatra.” He nods. “I’m to escort you to the imperial palace.” He gestures for us to board the sondi.
“Alberich,” she says curtly. “Just like Edric to send his pet fish to do his bidding.”
He bristles at the insult but steps aside as my mother strides past him up the ramp, her gaze tilted proudly upward. I follow, eyeing the man suspiciously.
We sail over the Northern Sea. The horn of the sondi blares, and the carriage shakes. I peer out the porthole to look at the island receding from view. From the air, it looks like a sharp, white sliver against the blue-green of the ocean. Maybe that’s how she got her name—the Isle of Bone.
My mother squeezes my hand. I’m scared. I don’t want to say a word out of turn or give the emperor cause to throw me to the fires of the Pavaka. Every year following the Combat, children with birth defects are incinerated in large burning cauldrons.
“This is how the Nightsiders of Tao keep their race strong and pure,” the droning voice of the aquagraphic instructional had relayed.
I didn’t believe it to be true, but my mother confirmed that the practice was real. “Barbarian Nightsiders! Islanders do not murder their young because they are imperfect. We embrace our differences.” She held me close, wiping the tears of terror from my cheeks. “You are the scion of a noble house of the Pantheon, the firstborn son of Edric Leontes, the leviathan. No one would dare discard you.”
I felt the comfort of her breast against my face, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was not telling me the entire truth. I am different. I feel this way now as I watch through the porthole the sky turn from a deep cerulean to a pale violet as we sail across the latitudes.
“Tidal lock,” the gruff man, Alberich, grunts. “The light never sets on the Dayside, Lord Edmon, due to an asteroidal impact early in the star system’s formation—”
“I know,” I respond smugly to my father’s seneschal. It’s a big word that means he is in service to House Leontes but is something more than just a servant. “The force of the asteroid disrupted the planet’s rotation on its axis. It’s why the Dayside always faces the star and why the Nightside is always dark.”
“I see you have not kept the boy completely ignorant, Cleopatra. Will it be enough when the emperor questions him?”
The emperor . . .
I suck in my breath, and my mother grips my hand more tightly.
“Approaching Meridian,” the pilot’s voice cuts in over the loudspeaker.
Alberich unstraps from the harness and stands. “Come,” he says as he strides toward the cockpit.
My mother and I follow. I stand on tiptoes behind the pilot’s chair straining to get a peek. Meridian—the capital city, Tao’s only city, the first city I’ve ever seen. Monolithic skyscrapers of metal and glass rise from the earth like black claws, silhouetted against purple. Fireglobes blink in an array of colors, and aquagraphic screens display advertisements and images of fighters in the arena. Screamers howl as riders sail on their sound engines skirting the tight corners of the angular buildings. I’ve never seen land like this before. It stretches to the horizon as far as I can see.
“The Nightside of Tao is landlocked,” Alberich offers. “Our ice and dirt is as much as your ocean.”
My eyes go wide at the implications. The massive buildings are everywhere. Even my mother, who has been to the capital once before, seems impressed.
So many people! I think.
“The Dayside is always light. The Nightside is always dark. The Twilight Band is where the light and the dark blend. Meridian is the megalopolis that spans the vertical equator of the globe. Here there is just enough light for the strongest civilization humanity has ever known to flourish.”
“The most arrogant and self-righteous humanity has ever known, you mean, seneschal,” my mother says derisively.
The sondi arcs over wharves and harbors as the Northern Sea meets the land. Just as the Twilight Band is the habitat of the Nightsiders, the Eastern, Western, Southern, and Northern Seas are really one great Mother Ocean, where the many islands of Tao sustain the small population of Daysiders. The water is divided merely by name according to which way to sail toward Meridian.
I point to several large conical pyramids on the horizon. “Those are farms, aren’t they?”
Alberich nods. “Very good. Ninety percent of the planet’s food is grown hydroponically in such farms.”
“The surfaces of pyramids are solar collectors,” I recite from a lesson. “I read in the aquagraphics that they open?” No sooner do I ask it than the cones swivel and blossom like flowers, panels splayed to the sky.
“There is just enough solar energy in the Twilight Band for their collectors to harness the star of Tao,” Alberich says.
“What are those?” I point below. The cityscape is pitted with giant metallic shafts, dug into the earth’s crust. Lights blink from their gaping maws.
“Arcologies.” He nods at the giant pits. “Communities drilled into the earth, housing tens of thousands.”
“The underclass.” My mother’s voice is calm, almost sad. “That’s where your father was born and bred.”
Alberich tenses at my mother’s words. I’m confused by them as well. I always understood my father to be a noble. “Isn’t Edric the Patriarch of House Leontes, the newest noble house in the Pantheon?” I ask.
“Yes, because he won the Combat. Twice,” she affirms. “It’s a feat that lifted him from ignominy, made him more beloved than any man since the Great Song. It raised him even higher than Alberich, who was once the scion of a noble house himself. Isn’t that right, Alberich?”
The stocky man scratches at his bristly iron beard. “You know the history, my lady.”
“I know you called for mercy and chose servitude instead of imprisonment or an honorable death.” The big man remains silent. “Edmon, the reason your father is the most admired man on Tao is because of how far he had to climb. It’s why I admired him, too. He was born a commoner, like those of us from Bone. Never forget where you come from,” my mother whispers to me, “even if your own father forgets where he does. That is where Lord Leontes lives now.”
She points to two large glittering scrapers of glass and steel. They stand like monoliths surveying lesser troops of an army. A neon sign flares in my retinas—Wusong Palatial Towers. The imperial sigil of the sea monkey flashes across the enormous aquagraphic screen that runs between the two.
A giant tube snakes around the base of the buildings and continues through the city. Tributary tunnels radiate from the main tube. I can hear the supersonic whoosh of a train as it exits one tube and enters another.
“A train?” I point.
“The Banshee Rail,” Alberich corrects.
“Do we get to ride?” I ask.
“The name Leontes is noble now.” He shakes his head. “Nobles live in the towers and ride the skies in screamers or sondis. Plebeians dwell on the city surface and travel rail—”