Forge of Heaven

Hati said something. There was a faint rumble.

“What was that, sir?”

“Thunder,”Marak said.

His own pain dimmed. “Have you shelter? Are you in danger?”

“Dismiss concern for us. Listen. You never should have been involved with this Earth lord. Now the Ila has found a way to reach you, Brazis knows it, others in the heavens may know it, and Ian and Luz certainly know how it was done. This is a dangerous situation.”

Another rumbling of thunder. He heard beshti call out, that rare and eerie sound, as he sat shivering next to an ominous gateway in an alley nook. His teeth chattered shamefully. But it was a comfort to hear those sounds, to settle his mind down on the world. “I am safe at the moment, omi.”

“Take no chances,”Marak said. “Avoid all disputes with the Ila.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. The tap had never hurt, not since his first days on the system, but now it ached from the base of his skull to the roots of his teeth, and his forehead stung as if he’d been burned. The relays out here seemed at the point of overload. So did he. He bowed his head into his arms, intending to follow Marak’s advice and not budge or use the tap until he had guidance.

The pain became too much. He lost whatever Marak had said. He lost Marak. He was blind, beset with flashing lights that floated in his vision.

“Procyon. Answer me. Where are you?”Marak again.

“Trying to figure that out, sir. A street—near where I live. I have a terrible headache. I’m trying to get home.”

“How far is that?”

“Not that far.” Complications in his situation recurred to him. The lost coat. The dark place. Earther authorities were looking to get their hands on him. “I think it’s night.” Night was when they took the lights down on the streets, to satisfy the human need for night, for change in the day. White light went down and neon came up, and then a person trying to get home could be a little less conspicuous.

Unless police happened to be watching his apartment. Police had been following him. He thought they had been following him. He had a memory, a quick flash, finding blood on his coat. He’d lost the coat, thrown it away, to avoid detection. What else had he done?

“Procyon, are you safe?”

“I think so, sir. It hurts. I want to let the headache go away. It’s hard to think. Give me an hour, sir. About an hour. I’ll get on home. I promise you I’ll be all right.”

AN HOUR ON, the attempt at contact died in a confused flutter of noise and lights, and Marak, sitting cross-legged on the ground, gave Hati a worried look.

“I ca

“Brazis?”

“I have said all I shall say to Brazis.”

Twilight had come down, deep and strange. The contact he attempted kept fading out.

But the storm was coming on. Even near the relay, the signals might grow chancy.

They had not overtaken their fugitives, who had remained elusive and skittish with the weather. Cloud covered most of the sky now, flashing with lightnings, rumbling with thunder. The prospect of the oncoming gust front was what had persuaded them they should drive down the deep-stakes in the last of the light and take what rest they dared. The strange smell on the wind increased with surface air sweeping out of the west, a smell like old weed, wet sand, heated rock. It would be a blow. It would be a very strong blow.

“He is injured, whether by the goings-on with this man from Earth, or by the Ila’s recklessness.” He was angry at the entire situation. He clenched one hand over the other wrist, arms about his knees, gazing out into the murky distances of the basin below them, the spire-covered descent of sandstone terraces. “I will try again before we move.”

The beshti, double-tethered with deep-irons right beside their sleeping mat, grazed on sweetweed that grew in a drift of sandy soil, as content as beshti could be, in this isolate, dangerous place, with the skies muttering warnings and the wind rising.

Their legs ached from their long, generally downward ride, constant jolting against one bracing leg or the other. It should have been a profound relief, too, finally to reach Procyon and prove that he was alive.

“Perhaps we should tell Ian,” Hati said. “If not Brazis.”

“Neither,” he decided. “Neither, until I have some indication where his safety may lie. He claimed he was going home, which by no means sounded safe, if enemies were looking for him. An hour, he said. Now the contact fails. Perhaps the weather. But we have nothing from him. We have nothing from Ian.”

“Husband, we have to look to ourselves. Time to go up.”

Events pressed hard on them. They had come within hearing of the herd, and lost them. They camped now right at the crest of the rocky slant that was the herd’s last and most frustrating escape. Contact with the Refuge had gone. Their terrace was broad and well away from overhangs, which protected them from quake. But that was not saying what layers of soft sediment underlay it, and what the rain might do.

Worse, they were about to lose the tracks, once rain came coursing down the myriad cha

“Shut your eyes,” Hati said, hugging him in a little shiver of the earth, so slight even the weary, feeding beshti were indifferent to it. “Rest for what time we can, and hope the fog holds off. If we have to climb in a hurry, we climb, and hope the fool beshti out there do the same. The boys will meet us up on the ridge. For now, rest. We have done all we could. We ca

He put his arms around her and they lay down together, he lapping his robes across her, and hers across him.

In the dearth of information from the heavens, who alone had a comprehensive view of the situation, it became the only sane choice: get as much rest as they could before the weather turned, then pack up and climb back to relative safety. They would have to find the boys and walk down off the ridge, at the best speed they could manage, with their two beshti to carry canvas and supplies.

They might see their new sea. They only hoped not to see it yet.

11

THE HALCYON SAID it didn’t take credit cards, which was just crazy. Every place in the universe took credit cards. But the Halcyon said it didn’t, wouldn’t, or maybe the manager just meant this card, which could be risky to raise a louder fuss about, Mignette thought, if her father had finally put a limit, or worse, a trace, on it. So she shut up, near to tears.

She was tired, she’d had a drink, she felt a little sick, and scared, and she and Noble were going to do it together if she could get a room at all, which at this point didn’t look as likely as before. Michaelangelo’s had turned out to be shut to anybody but current tenants. She was sure her father had done that, likely looking for her and making an untidy amount of noise about it.

That meant all the people that might have been partying late at Michaelangelo’s, where they were supposed to meet Tink and Random as a last resort, were all scattered out all up and down Blunt, maybe competing for other rooms, which could mean there weren’t that many to be had up and down the street. Someone said all the other places with rooms had raised the single night rate, because of Michaelangelo’s shutdown. And they’d only found this one room, here, in a place they ought to be able to afford, a place that wasn’t too dirty, and now the stupid asses who ran it decided they didn’t want to take her card. She just wanted to scream, and didn’t dare. It was only her self-restraint that brought her close to tears. It was pure temper, and the effort not to curse them up one side and down the other.