Chapter Text
The silver flash embedded in the silt caught Akira's eye.
She knelt down to fish it out with the tip of her dagger. The creek had been more swollen with snowmelt than usual this rotation, but it was finally returning its normal course. The tarnished zodiac wheel glinted in her palm as she held it up to the shafts of sunlight piercing through the tree canopy. Maybe the water had washed it down from somewhere else, or it'd been buried here all along.
The blue gem in the center of the wheel refracted inner fire. Maybe it'd been a button, or a brooch before, but it'd make a pretty pendant now, Akira decided. It looked too new to be a Firstcomer artifact but she was sure it'd be worth something to someone. She dropped it into the satchel at her side — it'd make a lovely piece once it was cleaned up and restored.
Akira straightened up and looked upstream, where the creek flowed down from the mountains, and wondered again what it would be like to follow the creek from where it came, but she wasn't allowed to, not yet. Take advantage of the bounty the water brought? Of course. Explore beyond it, climb the Spine Mountains and see beyond? Well, there were some things she couldn't change.
She squinted up at the light filtering through the tree canopy. Not long before shadefall, and then the woods would come alive with creatures who preferred the dark-cycle. She'd wandered far without paying attention to the time. She had to get home, and quickly. Her finger tapped the hilt of her dagger, belted on her other hip. Not all of the creatures of Conviction Woods were friendly, and she needed to be home before then. Home was safer, but she also had the Ceremony to worry about, and being late for that would be an unforgivable trespass. She flipped her long black hair over her shoulders, seeking out a well-worn path that would take her there.
For sixteen rotations, she'd been longing for — and dreading — the Ceremony. The elders said the tough treatment the Sting-tail's progeny got during the Ceremony was done to toughen them up for the trials they'd face later in life, but Akira had her doubts about that.
Not for the first time, Akira mused that she'd never seen a sting-tail in real life. She and everyone else only knew it from old illustrations and paintings. The Firstcomers had brought sheep and goats, but Akira supposed that sting-tails and — what was the Ancient Aenglysh word — horses weren't important enough. But they named a star-lattice after the creature anyway. And the people of Gardian followed the traditions handed down through the ages, regardless of what Akira thought of them. Some of them she didn't think much of — at all.
The underbrush tugged at her trouser legs as she walked, head up. The leaf litter muted the sound of her soft-sole leather boots. Insects trilled. The canopy above was dense enough that the overgrowth on the forest floor was minimal. The scent of green wood and pollen tickled her nose, and ahead of her she could see a lantern tree, its bioluminescence providing her a familiar landmark to guide her through the forest. Not that she really needed landmarks, she sighed to herself. She'd been exploring the woods around her home since she was little, once walking as far as a full day-length, following the narrow mountain valley that was her home — from shaderise to shaderise — but the forest still stretched on.
In the distance, she heard someone calling. "Akira!"
Her ears pricked up. "Avia?" she murmured to herself. That was her sister's voice, far away, floating on the sweet-scented forest breeze.
She picked up her pace, she was running out of time —
— and the sky dimmed as the day-gate slid between the sun and the inner surface of the world, the light abruptly lowering. Like a curtain being pulled shut, illumination greyed out until it was gone, plunging the forest into dark-cycle.
Something growled in the ebon murk. Lupou. Maybe they'd been tracking her for a while, waiting for the shuttering of the day-gate and shadefall. Akira grasped the handle of her dagger, pulling it free of its sheath. If Avia was looking for her then she'd better hurry up — her powers were more useful than Akira's, something she'd been jealous of from time to time, but no jealousy now. "Over here!" she yelled in the direction of Avia's voice as she backtracked a short distance. "I'm by the lantern tree with the blue light!"
An amber gleam flared, tree trunks throwing long shadows in silhouette. "Akira!" Avia called again, closer now, but not close enough.
The underbrush rustled, and she thought she saw the glowing-teal tips of a lupou's poison spine darts. "I'm sorry I lost track of time!" Akira yelled to no one in particular. Maybe she'd spent so much time exploring the forest she'd grown complacent. In short, this was embarrassingly idiotic, and she quietly hoped Avia wouldn't gossip about it. If Akira ended up as lupou feed, she'd certainly give a lot to gossip about.
Her back bumped up against the lantern tree. Beyond its bubble of light, she saw two — no, three undulating bodies, the teal-tipped spines marking where the lupou were, their cold eyes reflecting the steady glow of the tree. Her dagger's blade was nearly as long as her forearm, but it seemed flimsy and inadequate in her hand, and her blood thrummed in her ears. By Arkhe, she was so stupid to not track the time.
Calm, she told herself. A Sting-tail could not let emotion guide their actions. Rigid, objective impartiality, passing judgment even if the decision tore them open on the inside. The people needed arbiters who would not be afraid to make hard choices.
Calm. She exhaled, her eyes darting to the lantern tree, her mind snapping to a decision. This choice wasn't hard at all.
She grasped one of the lantern tree bulbs and it came off in her hand with a crack. "Get out!" she shouted, throwing the bulb at the pack of lupou, and felt a small bit of satisfaction as one of them flinched and skipped back as the bulb hit the ground in front of them. It lit up the predators, and now she could see their black, scaly forms clearly. She straightened her back, making herself look taller, more imposing. The lupou circled, ears flattened, their posture more hesitant now. One turned and darted back into the underbrush, but two were left. She flashed the dagger's blade in the lantern tree's light. "No? Come closer then!"
A Sting-tail cannot afford sentiment when in danger. A Sting-tail must not endanger others by acting on sentiment.
Snow-blooded.
One of the remaining lupou made a tentative lunge, and she saw the needle-like fangs coming for her extended arm. She parried, her dagger eliciting a yelp of surprise from the creature. "Hah! You want more?" she taunted, and maybe — just a little — she found herself liking the idea, and she could feel a smile twisting her lips. Akira forced her face back into impassivity.
Cold. Sharp. You are a blade laid edge up. This is the way of the Sting-tail's children.
The bravest — or more desperate — lupou yowled and leapt at her, its breath hot and foul on the bare skin of her arm. Akira angled her dagger upwards to meet it mid-strike —
A whip of flame slashed dangerously close between her and the lupou, searing Akira's vision. She could hear its frightened whines and shrieks as she tried to frantically blink away the green-tinged afterimage. The acrid smell of something burning filled her nose.
"Get away from my sister, you stupid mutts!" she heard Avia yelling, and through green and blue hazed eyes, she saw long tendrils of flame coiling around Avia's arms, her small but solid form between her and the lupou. Relief blew through Akira then. Avia. Thank Arkhe.
Avia raised her arms above her head, and the flames writhed as she drew upon the machine spirits in her blood — the same machine spirits that existed in the air, the water, and all things alive or not. If one knew how to command the machine spirits within, one could also learn to command the machine spirits without, and become a shaper. And Avia's mind had the fortitude to harness the little machines, and probing sparks grew to infernos at her bidding.
The last of the lupou disengaged with yelps and almost child-like squeals, and the flames faded. Akira exhaled, relieved, and she felt Avia's hands on either side of her face.
"Did they get you?" Avia peered at her, turning her sister's face from side to side, inspecting her for any cuts or bumps. "It was getting late so I was trying to — oh whoops, I think I burned your hair!"
"Is that what I smell?" Akira said, fingering the tips that'd been too close to Avia's flame and then singed. She giggled, suddenly feeling lightheaded and silly. "I guess that serves me right for not checking the time."
Avia snickered and then laughed heartily too, and hugged her little sister. Akira hugged her back, her arms tight. "I'll burn it all off if you forget again."
Akira smirked at her. "Promise?"
"Promise!" Avia said with a grin, her tawny eyes glittering. "C'mon, let's get home. We can catch the last barge to Hub!"
Akira gulped down another deep sigh of relief as she and Avia cleared the treeline into the valley below. The small village of Rayka lay ahead of her and Avia. It was lit with cultivated lantern trees and glowshells set into pathways so people could find their way during the dark-cycle.
"How long do we have?" Akira called at her sister's back as they hurried back to their home. Their breaths came loud and wheezing, hearts pounding as they ran up the path to their home on Rayka's edge.
"Now? An interval at best, an interval and a half at most," Avia called back.
"Sorry," Akira puffed out. "I found a … thing, though. I think you'll like it."
Above them, the Sky-Band glowed, a faint, thin curve of light and dark rising and vanishing improbably far away. The Star Road with its billions of glittering pinpricks splashed across the Outer Dark. For a moment, Akira remembered when one of her schoolteachers had taken the class out by the lake during the dark-cycle, and let them look through a far-seer at the Sky-Band. Telescope, her teacher had called it by its old Aenglysh name. And through it, Akira had never felt so small. She could walk for a dozen rotations, a hundred, and she wouldn't even make it a tenth of the circumference of the Sky-Band — the Ring.
The sun was eclipsed by a day-gate, its feeble faint corona illuminating the edges of the massive orbital structure that gave people a way to measure the passage of time. In school, everyone got to see the ancient etchings of the Firstcomers, how they had come to the Ring from distant, lost Aerth. How they had found Arkhe — the Over-God — joyfully welcoming them. But some of the Firstcomers had been frightened of the little machine spirits that Arkhe gifted them with, and fought among themselves. It became too much, and some of them choose to flee, following the Star Road back into the Outer Dark on their strange silver boats. The people of Gardian — and whatever other survivors that existed in scattered fragments, were their abandoned children.
The seas around Gardian's shores roiled with danger, but it made Akira determined that one day — one day — she'd see what lay on the other side of the vast waters that surrounded her homeland. There were other lands out there. She'd glimpsed the sprawl of vast cities, colossal blocks of unbroken wilderness, and the squares of great agricultural zones through the far-seer. If only she could see them with her own eyes. And she wondered if there was anyone down there looking up at her.
But, no, not yet. She couldn't go. She had the Ceremony. She had the heavy mantle of responsibility and objectivity to don as befitting a Sting-tail.
"Made it!" Avia called, her breath coming out in loud gasps as the two of them came to the path that lead to their home. Instead of bothering to stop and open the front gate, Avia vaulted over it, her boots landing with a whump on the flagstones. Akira, however, remembered the last time she tried to vault the gate, and paused long enough to shove it open. Their goat looked up with only kind of boredom an animal could muster and went back to her feed as the two girls flung open the door to the house. The chickens had retreated to their coop as they usually did when the day-gate closed.
The Hotoke family home — like many others in Rayka that weren't livestock sheds or other small purpose-built structures — had been shaped. Plantshapers coaxed living trees to grow and form into rooms, creating homes for people. Lighting strips crafted from bioluminescent algae and fungi ran along the ceilings and walls, throwing a warm, inviting glow throughout. Despite this, a few stray dishes were heaped on the kitchen counters and table, clothes draped forgotten over furniture, books lying open where they'd last been read. They tried — both of them did — but it'd been easier when Mom and Dad had been around.
A sprig of wildflowers had been placed next to the shelf where their fotographi were displayed. Akira wasn't sure of the process, but the thin metal sheets with their images allowed her and Avia to look at their faces and still remember them. Dad's boots were still next to the door, like at any moment, he'd come down the stairs and put them on to go out. Neither of the sisters had the heart to move them in the rotation and a half since they'd been last used.
She heard Avia crash upstairs. "Wooly gathers, where's that bag I was gonna use?"
The two of them had help from well-meaning neighbors, and they could have accepted housing in a residential block in Hub until they came of age. But they'd decided to stay in Rayka instead. Now, as Akira threw clothes out of her way trying to find the dress she meant to wear, she scanned the room and wondered what would happen to this place once she and Avia were gone. In another nine spans, Avia was going to the enforcer academy to begin her service as her Ram's birth-caste dictated. She'd be a guard on land, but she was musing about joining the navy to help defend Gardian's shores from the always-threatening Sea People.
And Akira? She'd be alone for a little bit, and then she'd be required to attend the arbiters' academy, where all of the Sting-tail's progeny ended up.
She could give the goat and chickens to the neighbors, but what to do with the house?
No time for that now, she thought. Calm, she reproached herself. What was the next rational step that a Sting-tail should take? Execute. Then she could think of the next step, execute, and then the next. Repeat.
The green wall in the kitchen was ripe with natural pitchers full of water. She pulled one down to drink the liquid inside, and then grabbed containers out of the cupboard to fill them for the journey to Hub. As she topped off one container, she spotted her red woolen traveling cloak in one of the living room's corners. It lay crumpled there, and she couldn't remember when she discarded it like that. She picked up and threw it over her shoulders.
She flung open the doors to another cupboard. "Avia! Your bag's down here!" she called, pulling the traveling bags down from their shelf. One of them had a rip in the side, and Akira frowned. She could fix it, though.
It was a stupid power, nothing impressive like Avia's flameshaping. Her fingers touched the tear in the bag's side, and she could feel the machine spirits under her skin and in her blood reaching out —
It was plantshaping, but only on dead plants. Clothes made from natural plant fibers, wood long gone dry, even paper. And the travel bag was woven out of hemp and yur-rika grass. The bag's fibers hummed under her touch, the ragged edges of the rip drawing closed. Maybe if she washed out of the arbiters' academy, she'd make a decent carpenter.
Akira inspected her work. Good as new. She wouldn't be able to mend her cloak if it tore, however, as it was spun from sheep's wool. Maybe she'd be a good carpenter or a tailor if she failed out of the academy, but she didn't want to be either of those. She didn't know what she'd do if she did fail.
Avia's boots clattered back down the stairs, some clothes already crammed into a too small bag. Her tawny hair was a wreck and her skin flushed. But instead of reaching for the bags Akira held, she said, "Wait, I got something for you!" She unceremoniously dumped the load in her arms onto the floor, and began digging around in her pockets.
"Avia, you didn't have to," Akira protested. They got a set stipend from the government every month to make up for the loss of Mom and Dad until they were of age, which they supplemented by scheduling odd jobs around their classes at school. That and selling eggs and goat milk when they had more than they could use.
"Bawbsyerunkle, you're my baby sister, and there's only one Ceremony in anyone's life. I had mine last rotation, now it's your turn! Ah hah, found it!"
"Baby? You're only a rotation older!" Akira protested, falling into their long habit of arguing but-not-really.
"You're still the baby," Avia shot back. She held up her treasure to the steady illumination of the glow lanterns. "Like it?"
The heavy necklace was made out of hammered brass beads strung on a leather cord, but the centerpiece was a gem fashioned of red marbled Firstcomer plastik. Not as ludicrously expensive as Akira had feared, but it was still rare and eye-catching for those who knew its origin and value.
Avia draped it around her neck, and Akira examined herself in the polished steel mirror by the door. It was beautiful, but she was becoming an adult, and she didn't feel like one. Instead she saw the same slip of a girl with long dark hair and lightly tanned skin staring back at her, one eye colored scarlet and the other the same tawny gold as Avia's. Her hand touched the heavy brass and plastik. The red gem matched the shade of her one red eye. "Thank you," she murmured, feeling humbled. She flipped open the latch on her satchel, but her gift now felt inadequate in comparison. "I found this in the creek today."
Avia held up the little zodiac wheel to the light, a smile on her lips. "I love the gem, it's such a pretty blue!" She clapped her hands excitedly. "We can get a metalshaper to fix it up when when reach Hub. What do you think?" She pulled Akira into an excited hug. "Aww, my little sister's getting all grown up now!"
"Ugh," Akira grunted, but not unhappily. She laughed, giving Avia a playful push. "There has to be some clean clothes around here we can pack. Did you see my comb anywhere when you were upstairs?"
After another half-interval had flown by, Avia locked the door behind them. One of the neighbors had offered to take care of the goat and chickens while the two of them were away in exchange for picking up some goods in Hub for them.
Akira looked up at the Sky-Band and took a deep breath of the air. She could smell sweet flowers, the musk of livestock, and the thousand tiny scents that accompanied human habitation. By next shadefall, they would be in Hub, a dense and busy place that was unlike Rayka in every respect. She would begin a new phase of her life.
"Ready?" Avia said, pulling up the straps of her bag, her free hand on Akira's shoulder. Band-light glimmered on her hair.
"No," Akira answered honestly. She turned to look at her sister. "Let's do this."