"Cards! What do you think you're doing?" Skids said, as loud as a hammer and as demanding as a thumb that had been hit by a hammer.
"Waiting for you."
There was an awkward pause as we all waited for Spire to chip in.
"This wasn't where we arranged to meet if I had to take Charity underground. And what's the purpose of lurking in the shadows and startling us, huh?"
"To make a point."
"What point?"
"You're not thinking clearly."
"Because you made me angry! And I'll be angrier if you don't tell me what your point was!"
"No, that was my point!"
I stepped between the pair of overexcited mages. "Hush, both of you. You can argue once we're away from the city of mage-haters, alright?" Looking back and forth, I could see they were both staring at me in the partially lit cellar. Belatedly, I remembered that they were not just angry, but also armed.
A string of tense moments passed, like a rumbling, slow-moving freight train.
Skids stepped to the side to see around me. "Explain," dro hissed, not quietly but far less audibly than before.
"If you were thinking clearly, you would have spotted me sooner, or kept trying to contact me over the ventril," Cards said more moderately.
"I was a bit busy trying not to get lost to keep trying that."
"Did you use your magestone to check directions?"
A gap in the cellar's ceiling perfectly illuminated Skids' frozen expression of dreadful realisation. "...Oh."
Cards' answering chuckle was cruel. "You forgot to use your magestone. Are you sure you're even a mage?"
"Hey, now is not the time," I interrupted, feeling the bravery that comes from protective anger. "We're all here now, and we need to be somewhere else as soon as possible. Preferably somewhere with shoes. And something to drink."
"Spire's only a few minutes from here, guarding our exit," Cards said. "Sa's got your boots."
"I'm out of bottled water, and all I've seen is definitely not for drinking," Skids said, now much calmer. "Did you top up your water bottles?" dro asked sa — no, not sa, sarm. It was dro, drome, sa, sarm for drones and casters.
"Not exactly," Cards said.
I continued trying to remember what I had learned of the mages' language. Carers were ra and rarm, and seers were confusingly she and sheem, but what were the rest?
Cards pushed a metal bottle into my hands, startling me. "What's this?" I asked.
"I swiped a jug of something. Couldn't read the sign," sa said, clearly annoyed by that. "Try it."
I had a hunch, and was very glad to be correct. "Mmm, ginger tea!"
"Save some for the rest of us," Skids said, reaching out for the bottle. I reluctantly handed it over, after taking another sip.
"We really should get moving," Cards said after we'd all drunk our fill. "I really am hungry, and Spire has all the food."
Unlike Skids, Cards's gloves had enough aether to light our way, which made the remainder of my barefoot journey less unpleasant, though definitely far from pleasant. We did not have to worry about losing our way either, now that we were not lacking a scryer. The city patrol did not seem eager to chase us in the dark, though we did hear a few people above yelling that they had heard us when we were too loud. They probably had other more immediate concerns keeping most of them busy, such as partially burned buildings and panicked citizens. My father was probably still recovering too. And grieving.
I could not stop to think about that now. I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, taking care where I stepped as I left the place where it had happened.
"Spire, we're coming around the corner in a minute," Cards said, presumably using the helmet ventril to call ahead.
Cards was correct, as we were reunited with Spire soon after. The shorter caster looked relieved to see us. "Good thing you called ahead. This situation's got me on edge." Sa was standing by another metal door, which I knew connected this small tunnel to the much larger railway tunnel.
"Are they still patrolling out there?" Cards asked.
"Yeah, the same pair of whatever the topsiders call thall's casters."
"The city patrol?" I guessed.
"The ones trying to shoot sharp sticks into us, that's them," Spire said.
"They've been out there for hours, as far as we can tell, walking the length of the rail tunnel" Cards added.
"How can you tell?" The door was tightly sealed, offering no way to see what was outside.
Spire passed me a scryer. "What...? Ohhh!" This scryer was more sophisticated than Skids', reminding me of some of the dynamic illuminated signs I had seen in Yiwarra hive. It was a reproduction of an image, like a projection or a photograph, but made of coloured dots rather than using lenses. The image did not look like patrolmen in a tunnel, not at first. But after remembering what I had seen though my goggles in the burning building, I understood what I was seeing. "Heat?"
"That's right," Spire said.
"You're smart for a — Ow! For someone new to magic," Cards said warily, and tried stepping out of range of Skids' elbow.
"Magic makes people smart?" I asked rhetorically.
"Er, let's not argue about that," Cards said.
"Good idea," Spire added, amused. "As I was about to say, the benefit of looking for heat instead of shining a light is that they don't know we're watching."
I examined the scryer's perspective. "It seems that there is an eye on the ceiling of the tunnel."
"Yeah. A spy winjeel, actually."
"And it can see in the dark. And so can our goggles." Why had we been stumbling about in the dark all this time? Oh, it probably required 'aether'.
"Goggles, of course! Your outfit is in that sack," Spire said, indicating a lumpy brown sack in front of sarm.
I stepped over as quickly as my bruises allowed, and yanked the top of the sack open. The expected dark grey shirt and deep blue jacket and trousers were inside, though the blue had become somewhat blackened. Though the clothes had stood up well against the fire's heat, they were not immune to soot or smoke. I brushed my feet as clean as possible before pulling on the trousers under my cotton dress, then pulled on the socks and boots. I added the jacket, goggles, helmet, and gloves, but left off the grey shirt. I looked ridiculously mismatched, but I didn't care.
I did care a little about the strong smell of smoke which now hung about me like goats around a goatherd carrying food. That was soon solved after I retrieved one more item from the sack: my trusty handbag. Looping its strap over my head was like embracing an old friend after years of separation, or so I imagined. Inside the handbag, I soon found a bottle of perfume which I kept for emergencies such as this. Not that I had ever imagined a situation comparable to this one.
"How are we getting from here to our bikes?" I asked after the air around me had cleared.
"Oh, that's easy," Spire said. "Are we ready?"
"As we'll ever be," Cards said.
Spire activated something on sa's scryer. A loud voice sounding a lot like Cards began to echo through the main tunnel.
"Wait for it... And they've taken the bait! Punch us out, Cards."
Cards had retrieved sa's weapon from Skids, and now used it to bust the final door open. "Now we run!"
By the time the patrolmen realised that they were chasing a recording of a voice, made by a flying magical construct which they had no hope of catching, we were far enough down the other end of the tunnel to be relatively safe for a while. I was much more willing to run now that I had proper footwear, but my bruises soon slowed me down.
I started to fear capture or impalement, but Spire made the winjeel act like a swooping bird, which soon dissuaded them from chasing entirely. The mages had so many unimaginable tricks and advantages that I began to wonder how long we would last if they ever attacked us seriously. Fortunately, they seemed as disinclined to war as we were. That was without accounting for the demons, which may or may not be responsible for the destruction of Nearton's Bend. And which might not actually be under the mages' control. Mostly not, according to Skids.
We slowed to a more sustainable pace once we were clear of the city. It was a pleasant afternoon, with few clouds in the sky. A combination of sun and a light breeze helped Skids and I to dry out from the puddle we had fallen into, and we soon warmed up from the cold of the dark tunnels.
"Just a few more minutes of this and we'll be back to our bikes," Cards said after we had climbed up the eastern embankment of the railway's safe zone.
"And then we can get back to Wonambi and be done with all this," Spire added.
"Actually, I'm not quite ready to go back to Wonambi, City of Darkness, City of Magic, where the blind fish stares and the water spouts," Skids said, earning annoyed and impatient looks from the casters.
"Really?"
"After everything that's happened?"
"Well I don't want to go back empty handed," Skids said. "So I have to try at least one more city."
"That was never in doubt."
"Yeah, all you've been looking for is information. Useless information."
I had been left wondering for long enough. Too long. "Skids, what is all this about? What are you really looking for?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes," I said. "If it's important to you, then it is important to me. And if I know what it is that you are looking for, then I can help you properly. But if you keep hiding this, then we might as well all go back to Wonambi now."
Skids sat down heavily on an aged tree stump, surrounded by sparse grass and a few wildflowers, long past blooming. "Fine. You might as well know. I don't like talking about this, but..."
"Dro really doesn't," Cards agreed. Sa remained standing, facing Skids.
"Hush," Spire said, finding a grassy spot to sit beside Cards. "This is Skids' story to tell."
I tried crouching, to keep my dress from getting any dirtier, but decided it would be far more comfortable to sit.
"There's not a lot to tell," Skids said. "That's the problem. Three years ago, I was... about your age. Perhaps a little older. Who really knows? They say the Over Seer brought me to the hive."
"And?"
"And some carers took me in and I adjusted to life in the hive and became a drone."
"I meant what happened before that?"
Skids shrugged. "That's what I'm hoping to find out."
"You are the missing person," I said, finally understanding. "You are trying to find your origins... You think you might not be a mage!"
"None of the hives have any record of my growth," Skids said. "So I can't have been a mage originally. Unless there's more mages we don't know about."
"What about the other group you told me about?"
"Skids, a Titan? Not likely!" Cards said.
"Dro's far too normal to be a Titan," Spire added, sounding supportive.
"No one really wants to talk to the Titans," Skids said. "Maybe after I've run out of Pure cities to investigate. But Spire is right. It's probably a waste of time to look there."
"What about barbarian groups?" I suggested. "The raiders and traders, I mean."
"I did track down some traders, on a previous trip. I even paid them to ask around for information in some of your northern cities. But that all turned up empty. I didn't expect much. The 'barbarians' as you call them aren't known for meticulous record keeping. Or keeping anything beyond what they can carry, really. And there's so many of them scattered around that it would be a huge waste of time to track down every last trader group, and that's without the problem of the raiders being raiders."
"That's no worse than the problem of the Pure wanting to 'purify' you," I said.
"Yeah, well I don't expect to meet a reasonable raider. The traders are the only halfway reasonable ones, or that's what I've heard."
"I've heard the same about the traders. They occasionally trade with Forrester's Crossing, and work for food," I said. "But no one ever knows where they will be at any given time."
"At least I did meet one reasonable person in Forrester's Crossing, so it actually turned out better than it might have," Skids said. Dro stood and helped me to my feet. "Alright, story time is over."
I half expected Cards and Spire to joke about not knowing what 'reasonable person' Skids might mean, but they relented.
We continued walking, using scryers to navigate to where the spinnerbikes were safely hidden.
"So, are you in, Charity?" Skids asked.
"I'm not letting you blunder through any more Pure cities without supervision," I decided. "So I'll help you. To minimise damage. And I must admit that your story is intriguing. I would very much like to know where you are from and who you really are, Skids Dro. And what part the 'Over Seer' has to play in all this." And if I could learn the truth about numerous other topics in the process, all the better! "Do you have a destination in mind?"
"Yes, I was thinking of Miranda."
"Miranda? But that's across the gap!"
Cards was not pleased to hear that. "You mean it's back the way we came from?"
"You had us race all this way yesterday and now you want to go all the way back? And beyond?" Spire added.
"Why not somewhere closer? Or somewhere on the way back to Wonambi?" I suggested.
"I've already ruled out the cities closer to Wonambi, city... of... Er, with the help of the traders," Skids said, choosing not to strain the casters' patience further by using the hive's full name again. "And I don't think we're ready to take on Empyreal just yet. So I was thinking, we could swing over to Miranda, then back to Yiwarra hive to rest and resupply. Then we can look into Exaltation or even Empyreal on the way home from there."
"We've already had a pretty big ride today," I argued. "Perhaps we can go directly back to Yiwarra, and then tomorrow we can visit Miranda. With better disguises."
Skids was not satisfied with that suggestion. "I want to at least visit somewhere today. The 'gap' is not far out of our way if we're going to Yiwarra. Perhaps there's something to see."
I shook my head. "There is nothing left of the city."
"Are you sure? Perhaps there's something underground to find and explore. And even if there's no city left, it must be an interesting place to visit. We might learn something!"
"I... suppose."
"Yes!"
"But only if we go around the cities, not through. I do not want to be chased or shot at again." And I did not want to cause any more trouble for my fellow citizens.
"Fair enough," Skids agreed. "No more rails. We'll stick to the open plains, and take our time so we don't have to worry about exhausting the aetherbottles again. Those should be full by now, right, Spire?"
"The spinnerbikes' aetherbottles should have replenished by now, yes," Spire said. "Unless the solaetheric blankets blew out of the trees we tied them too."
"I still think we should go directly home to Wonambi though," Cards said, scowling.
"Turning tail, again?" Spire said, surprising me. I would have expected Skids to be the one to taunt Cards like that, not Spire.
"Fine, we'll come along. But we won't be going into any more cities, so don't expect us to rescue you if you get caught. We'll just take your bike and leave."
Wanting to prevent any further arguments on that subject, I changed the subject by asking, "How do the aetherbottles replenish? You mentioned blankets. Do they collect aether from trees?"
Cards and Skids looked at each other blankly.
"This might surprise you, but the solaetheric blankets actually make aether from sunlight," Spire said. "They're useless underground, but invaluable if we're away from the hive for multiple days. It's as simple as spreading out a blanket somewhere sunny and attaching the aetherbottles. We use trees so animals don't trample them."
If I understood correctly, Mages could use the power of the sun to do work, without making steam. Fascinating! But where did they get aether while living deep underground? I had so many questions. "Magic, from light?" Spire was correct in thinking I would find that surprising. "But light is a visible emanation of purity, while magic is an unseen force of... well, something else."
"Not so! According to the seers, what we call 'visible' light is merely a combined aethermagical phenomenon. Light and magic are inextricably linked."
"I always said you should have become a seer," Cards said, rolling sa's eyes at Spire's technical explanation.
"Aren't you glad sa didn't?" Skids replied.
Cards merely grunted in reply, but I could see that sa was smiling.
"Don't worry, Spire, even casters can have a bit of seer in sall," Skids said.
Spire looked encouraged by that, which I figured was Skids' intention. "And drones can have a bit of caster in drome."
"Me? Nah."
No one seemed entirely convinced by Skids' dismissal.
"Come on, I left my bike on the other side of this hill," Skids said, running ahead.
"Ours is a little to the south, at the edge of those trees," Cards said, pointing. "Meet us back here?"
"Sure," Skids said. "Ventril if anything goes wrong."
Nothing went wrong. We found the spinnerbike where Skids had left it, in a decent hiding place among some thick bushes. We retrieved the blue, metal-like 'aetheric blanket' from the top of a nearby tree, and Skids folded it away while I finished changing into my full riding outfit. The casters were ready to leave when we joined them a few minutes later.
After some lively discussion, we stuck by our earlier decision to take a new route rather than follow the tracks again. This let us travel fairly straight, rather than needing to circle around each city. I quite enjoyed the new view and slower pace, even though there was nothing especially unique about it. But so far from anything man made, the hills, fields, and trees somehow felt different to those I could see from home.
The sun had almost disappeared beneath the horizon when I spotted the odd flatness of Nearton's Gap. I should have felt dread to be near such a cursed place, especially with the dark soon approaching. But I was comforted by the presence of two armed casters, my goggles which could see in the dark, and by Spire's assurance that our slow pace had left us with enough aether to race back to Yiwarra twice over.
Cards and Spire had begun bickering from the start of the trip. I had found it entertaining, and Skids had not bothered to silence them like dro had before, so we spent most of the trip listening rather than talking. I knew I wanted to speak privately with Skids, but every time I had considered asking dro to exclude the casters from our voice-linked helmets, I realised that I didn't know how to start. So I settled for occasionally commenting on Cards stories of weapons training accidents, and trying to figure out how an aetherrailer worked based on Spire's incomplete, jargon-filled explanations. At least sa's descriptions of what sall's weapons could do practically were clear enough.
"We are almost there," I declared, before Cards could reignite the longstanding argument about heavy vs. light weapons.
"We know," Cards said. "The scryer—"
"Never mind the scryer, I can see it right in front of us! See the shape of where the city used to be? Trees and bushes do not grow in rows like that by themselves."
"It's quite uncanny," Spire agreed. "Makes me worry if this could happen to one of our hives."
"We'd be able to hold them off," Cards argued. "The right weapon can take out a whole pile of demons in a single shot."
"Not if they keep coming from every direction. Given enough time, they could tunnel through from anywhere and take out our aether-plants. If they wanted to," Spire said.
"They can't keep coming forever."
"You don't know that!"
"Then someone should find out where they come from, and utterly destroy it before they decide to destroy us! Turn the place into slag, and then we can put hives wherever we like."
"There are so many reasons why that would never—" Spire began, but Skids did not let carm finish.
"Enough of that! Arguing about this now is about as productive as mining using your tongues. If you think something needs to be done, take it up with the Think Tank."
"Fine, fine," Cards grumbled. "We were just making conversation."
"Yeah, I was just putting the idea out there because of where we are."
"Well we're not quite there yet," Skids said. "And I think it's high time we had a proper race. Are you up for some speed, Charity?"
"Sure. The sooner I can relax my arms and stretch my legs, the better," I said. "Where are we racing to?"
"And what are we racing for?" Spire added.
"Whoever passes that line of four skinny trees is owed a favour by the other pair," Skids suggested. "The green needley ones, I mean."
"I think you already owe us a favour," Cards said.
"So how about double or nothing?" Spire added.
"Yeah, sure, whatever. Skids stopped our bike, and Cards pulled up beside us. "Standing start from here on four. One, two, three, four!"
With mismatched whines, the spinnerbikes accelerated, spraying dirt and bits of dry grass behind us. In spite of Skids' best efforts, Cards was able to get slightly more speed out of sa's bike, and dro was forced to pull to the right to avoid being choked by the other bike's dusty wake.
I was sure there was no chance of us catching up, when something went wrong for the other team. Their front wheel stopped dead, flipping the back of their bike into the air. It tumbled gracelessly and came back down to bounce and grind to a halt, riderless.
Screams assaulted my ears through the ventril. Skids veered off even further to the right, rather than ride over whatever had caused the crash.
"Report, report!" I heard Skids yell.
I heard voices yell in return. No, not in return, and not from Cards or Skids.
Then I saw the spear sticking out of the spinnerbike, and the matching spears of the party of raiders stepping out from behind bushes and trees.
Terror gripped my mind, and sent my heart racing wildly. We'd been ambushed.