Chapter 2
Tomb of the Old Gods
Amala jumped down through a crack in the glass window of the fallen apartment and fished out her pocket flashlight, an old device fitted to run on solar power. It should last at least an hour, even with the battery as waterlogged as it was. She’d have replaced the thing summers ago, but good tools were hard to come by, and the artificer saw fit to ration most of the well-preserved tools to the settlement’s defenders. Heaven forbid she be allotted weaponry more deadly than a hunter’s knife.
Each settlement held its own set of codes, though most strayed from direct contact. However, in Ich’tal, explorer castes like Amala didn’t face threats directly. At most times, she would fly faster than a Wildling to evade capture from her foes, but today, she’d rather have stolen something handy on her way out. She pointed the flashlight down toward a countertop and switched it on. The tool flickered on and off a bit before it stuck on a dim setting, casting forth a more or less steady beam of light at the apparatus.
“It’s just like the ones at home,” she said. “Only better.”
The lodging seemed to lay on its side, a towering piece of architecture that far outstretched any of the buildings in Ich’tal or any other settlement for that matter. Dozens of pots, pans and sundries had fallen against the wall on which she currently stood. For now, she’d call it the floor, since it made more sense from her orientation. Dried piles of mold sprayed from their containers in a variety of colors, from green sludge to brown and red beads to white webbing. She covered her mouth to hold in her breakfast and searched elsewhere.
The table, laid on its side, had been fashioned from old oak, the same as the trees, except pristine and soft to the touch. She ran her fingers along the outer width and down to her feet, expecting putrid sludge to seep onto her fingers from the grains, but she lifted them to find little more than particles of stagnant dust. She wiped her fingers dry on her jacket and pulled open a drawer by the knob on the side of the table.
Amala cautiously pulled the drawer open and peeked inside to see papers and ledgers, the same as those in the archives. She pulled out a pile and spread the pieces out on the floor beside the table, carefully scanning them with her flashlight. The colors and imagery had aged beyond recognition, but some of the text was legible. She had to imagine the blank spaces and mentally complete half-formed letters after she wiped off the webbing and mold that stripped off most of the ink.
“Paradise Colony,” she said, reading the brochure heading. “Is that up in the sky somewhere, or farther than that?”
She glanced up toward the clouds of Miasma looming overhead. She saw where the spire faded into the atmosphere a few hundred meters high, leaving her primary question more or less answered and her ultimate more or less not. Whoever lived here, god or man, no longer did so, but the cage itself seemed so mortal, like the relics she’d heard of in the surviving literature.
“Excuse me, Madame?” someone said.
Amala jumped like a hare and rushed into hiding. Her instincts took over, and she drew her knife before she peered around a broken countertop. She gained a slight bead of vision, and her eyes fixated on an old suit-wearing gentleman with a bowler hat. He wore a suit of impeccable quality for the era with a moustache neatly trimmed. Something seemed off, though. Amala glanced over his shoulder and noted a flashlight of some kind projecting a soft beam toward the back of his body.
“Are you a guest of Mr. Adamson?” the man asked.
“You speak my language?” Amala asked.
“Anglo, of course,” he said, taking a bow. “Forgive me, but I overheard you speaking the words earlier. I should ask again, Madame.” He paused. “Are you a guest of Mr. Adamson?”
“I don’t know who that is,” Amala admitted. “Is he the God of this region?”
“I’m not sure I understand the nuances of your dialect,” the man said. “But yes, he does preside over this region of the world, and he is of noble blood. I take it that was what you meant?”
“Are you his defender?” Amala said, slowly easing up on her grip. “Should I fear you?”
The man chuckled and dabbed his forehead with a cloth. “By no means, Madame. I am Mr. Adamson’s personal assistant. I help with his financial matters and cater to his needs. You may call me Winston.” He paused and rubbed his chin.
Amala sheathed her knife and examined elsewhere. “I’m not giving you my name.”
She crawled over broken glass and some spilt mold to another section of the dwelling in search of some tools. She kicked open a sideways door and broke it in two with one swift blow from her boot. Amala eased inside through the opening, and a bright light beamed in her face moments before the gentleman appeared again.
“Can I help you with something, Madame? You look as if you are searching for something.”
Amala paused and examined Winston again. This time, he stood within arm’s length, so she reached forward to touch him, instead waving her hand through his body. She wasn’t ready for the ease of the transition and lost her balance for a brief period before she regained her footing. She shot a stare behind him and caught on enough to assume two things. First, he wasn’t really standing in front of her. Second, whatever allowed him to exist in his transient form projected from those specialized projectors. Amala frowned.
“I’m looking for something powerful,” she said. “Something to help defend my settlement.” She paused and smirked at Winston. “You wouldn’t happen to have a gun or a bomb hidden here, would you?”