Second Contact Read online

  “Hail?”

  Hail nodded. “Glass Peaks.” She turned to Isavel. “It seems, Herald, you can’t leave the city for long before something goes wrong.”

  Isavel could only imagine the kind of cataclysm to cause such a blot in the sky. Something had gone terribly wrong. Her instincts told her to run, to jog north through the forest, to return and see what had happened, what she could do, how she could help.

  She bit her lip. “The gods did nothing to keep me there.”

  “What about this?” Hail pointed. “Whatever this is, I think it’s calling you back.”

  She was sick of being pulled about in the wind. Sick of trusting on people’s hunches that something involved the gods. But seeing that smoke also filled her with tension and guilt, a tautening of the chain that anchored her to the heart of that city. She would have to cut that chain entirely if she wanted to leave. She would never be able to return without remembering she had abandoned the city in its time of need. Without them remembering it.

  She clenched her fist, relaxed it, clenched it again. She didn’t want to go back. “We have to go back.”

  Hail nodded, though she looked on Isavel with concern. “We only need to see what happened. We have not lost much time. We can leave again when all is well.”

  When would that be?

  They made their way back into the forest and walked north, retracing their own steps from where they had camped for their first night. Isavel wished they had chosen to skip that night, walk on, press so far into the wilds that they could neither see nor hear whatever had happened. The gods didn’t care about her, and the people of Glass Peaks only cared about her as an extension of the gods.

  But they didn’t deserve to suffer.

  It took them the better part of the day to come within sight of Glass Peaks again, and as they approached it became clear that the smoke was not rising from the city itself - not exactly. Its glassy towers still stood solid and tall, glimmering in the late summer sun. The metallic flowers that bloomed on every rooftop stood bright, tracking the sun at its slow pace, feeding the city’s machines. Birds flocked from peak to peak, alive and well.

  The smoke, they realized as they came closer, came from the bridge. The very bridge they had crossed the night before, an ancient thing that had stood a thousand years, was now a shattered spine drowning in the inlet. Huge concrete slabs jutted out of the water, blocking naval passage in and out of the city. The pillars that had once supported the bridge were now smoking ruins, fire somehow smouldering inside them, cracked open and blackened like charred bones with their dusty, ashy marrow pouring out into the sky.

  “Gods above.” Isavel had never seen something so great fall so utterly. She knew, in her mind, that all the ruins she had ever seen had once been something grand, but she had never truly understood the fall in her heart. But just yesterday, she and Hail had crossed that bridge in the dead of night, had felt it underfoot.

  The city, she realized, was unusually silent. There were people walking around, barely visible even to their hunters’ eyes in the distance, but it was less alive, more fearful, than it had been the day before.

  “The ghosts.” Hail’s jaw tightened. “They must have done this.”

  She looked at the damage, at the blocked inlet. She saw no fires beyond the ruins of the bridge themselves; she saw no bodies; no signs of war. This had been quick, precise, and devastating. This had all the marks of high technology, or ancient magic. “We don’t know what happened.” She sighed, and looked at Hail. “We need to ask someone in the city.”

  Hail nodded, seeming eager to return to Glass Peaks. “Yes, Herald.”

  The title hurt Isavel, but she said nothing. It might as well be true. It might be all that was left of her, after all was said and done.

  They skirted the inlet, making their way through the old ruins and sparse fir forest until they reached the gates again. Isavel used her pathfinder’s gift to pale her skin to a blotchy white, paler than Hail even, and kept her hood down. With luck, nobody would see her for their olive-skinned Herald.

  She remembered just how disorienting it had been to step through these same gates, for the very first time. It felt easy now. Too easy for her own comfort, really. She wished it were stranger, but she turned to Hail and nodded further into the city. “Let’s find someone unlikely to recognize me.”

  “Isavel, most people have never met you up close.” Hail’s smile was thin. “Unless they’re hunters, I doubt they’d be able to spot you with different colors.”

  “I want to be sure.” She glanced around them, her skin rippling various shades of whitish pink, trying to settle on something both different and suitable unremarkable. It was hard, in such a place. “If they don’t need me, I want to be gone.”

  Hail nodded again and pressed further into the city, Isavel following. She watched Hail as she went, seeing the tension in her spine, the snappy readiness in her arms. She trusted Hail to be loyal to her, but she wasn’t certain Hail agreed with her on leaving the city. Hail still believed in the power of the gods over mortal life, as far as she could tell. It would matter, eventually; Isavel only hoped that day was far enough off that she didn’t have to worry about it now. She had enough to worry about.

  They reached a small tavern on the edge of the docks. The boats bobbed sadly on the water, as though in defeat. The bridge wreckage closing the inlet meant they would no longer bounce along the open waters of the sea, not unless dozens of strong men and women carried them through the streets by hand to the opposite side of the city, to the larger inlet to the north. The tavern was filled with people who bore similarly defeated expressions, their heads bobbing over drinks less salty but more potent than the sea.

  She and Hail slid up to the bar, and while Isavel kept her eyes and hood down, Hail spoke to the bartender, a burly woman with her hair cut ragged and short. “Excuse me - we just got in the city this morning. What happened to the bridge?”

  Isavel could tell a few eyes were on her, but it was better a few be suspicious than many be certain. She kept her head down and listened as the bartender grumbled something under her breath. Then she spoke more clearly. “I don’t know if it was ghosts or what, but in the early morning something started shooting at the bridge.”

  Hail glanced to Isavel, and Isavel was certain the other hunter had also felt a twitch in her palms at the words. “Shooting? What, with a big gun?”

  “I didn’t see shit.” The bartender sighed. “Just saw huge fucking shots coming in from the sea. It was smart stuff, all planned out. Started with one in the middle, then further and further towards both ends. It was over quick, and now the whole fucking creek is blocked off. Nobody’s moving their boats.”

  “Ghosts!”

  Isavel had to restrain herself from looking straight at the source of the word. It wouldn’t do to give herself away. She did tense up, though, hoping her pale skin would throw them off as the man continued rambling.

  “It’s fucking ghosts. Hunting parties took boats from here to the island to hunt the fuckers. They want to stop us.”

  Hail was clearly looking at the man, and answered. “They’ve been doing that for weeks. Why strike now?”

  Somebody else shouted out. “Guy left last night with a party, said they were going to try and hit the city itself.”

  “The city?”

  “The outer city.” The mood in the tavern grew darker. “The ghost city. All those fuckers. Now they’re going to kill us if we don’t kill them first.”

  All of them. Everybody in that city. Isavel’s eyes widened. She had known this would happen, deep down, but she had done everything she could to make it known that people should stay home. Leave the war behind. Get on with their lives.

  They hadn’t. As soon as she stopped spouting words they expected a gods’ champion to say, they had stopped listening. They had hunted. They had attacked.

  They had struck at the very city where Ada Liu was living, and Isavel couldn’t imagine Ada l
eaving such an attack unanswered.

  She was already standing and heading for the door when Hail stammered, trying to catch up to her. “Hey - hey, wait -”

  She was outside, the smell of saltwater filling her nose again as her nostrils flared. She rounded on Hail, just in time to see the canvas door to the tavern fall back into place. “Hail, it was Ada.”

  “Ada Liu? You mean -”

  “I mean she did this.” She stared at the devastation, at ruins made ruin again with precision and intent and power Isavel wholly believed could be in Ada’s. What was not Ada’s, apparently, was common sense. “She hit back too hard! She’s going to start the damned war all over again.”

  Hail’s eyes widened, and she looked genuinely distressed. “Isavel, we need to talk to someone. You need to be the Herald.”

  Isavel turned around, staring at the blocked creek, wondering what in the thousand worlds she was supposed to do about this. She had heard the voices in that tavern, had smelled the mood. She saw the city differently, now. It was not retracted or subdued - it was a coiling snake, preparing to strike. People were walking with purpose. With anger. Their minds might not know it themselves, yet, but their bodies were preparing for war.

  “Zoa. Ren.”

  Hail blinked, confused. “The… coders?”

  “Yes. I want them.” She pointed into the city, towards the temple. “Hail, I can’t go there without -”

  “Isavel, why can’t you go back?” Hail looked scared. “Why do you want to talk to them? I need to know what you’re planning. ”

  If Hail told anyone, it could bring a swarm of people to her, begging for help. She wanted nothing of the sort. She also trusted Hail completely. “I need them to pilot a hauler for me, and I need them to tell me about Ada.”

  “Why?”

  Isavel crossed her arms, knowing full well Hail wasn’t going to like this. “We’re going to that island, tracking her down, and talking to her. I need to get to her before she takes this a step too far. Hail, she didn’t hesitate to side with the ghosts, she killed people in that war, and I’m pretty sure she killed the old Mayor of Hive. She’ll fight to the death if she feels cornered.”

  “And you think you can stop her?”

  Isavel sucked in a deep breath, rubbing the back of her neck and turning to look at the ruined bridge again. Could she? Ada owed her her life, for one thing, but there was something else. She wanted to stop her. She didn’t want Ada to walk down that path, to become an enemy. She remembered the feelings she had had as their journeys intertwined, meeting again and again as they drew closer to their goal. She remembered the look in Ada’s eyes when she had realized she would have to fight Isavel to stop her from destroying the afterlife. She hadn’t wanted to be enemies.

  Isavel nodded. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. Go!” She pointed into the city. “Get me those coders and bring them to the waterfront. They knew her, and they can drive one of the haulers. They can help.”

  Hail looked at her worriedly, her head tilted to the side a bit, but she nodded and rushed off into the city at a healthy jog. Isavel walked towards the waterfront, sitting on one of worn concrete slabs here that passed for a bench. She took a deep breath, and rested her face in her hands, thinking hard.

  Ada didn’t want to be her enemy, and she didn’t want to be Ada’s. They didn’t need to meet as enemies at all. She reached into her pack and rested her hand on the gun she had taken from Ada in those ruins. Borrowed .

  She smiled at the thought. They said coders knew little of social graces, but she had a suspicion Ada wasn’t completely blind to the implications. They were not children anymore, not for a few years, but those memories had yet to fade for Isavel, and she rather suspected they lived on in Ada as well. And even if they didn’t… she could close the distance. She had to.

  Ada. She mouthed it silently, wondering why she was praying to a mortal. Don’t do anything crazy. I’m coming. Let’s start over.

  She imagined the other woman standing in front of her, sharp angular eyes flaring up to the sides of her face, jet black hair framing a look of surprise and conflict, one she had seen in those eyes before. She couldn’t imagine a single thing to say - only a thousand, each of them played out one after the other in her mind, each of them sounding equally impotent or silly.

  Something interrupted her thoughts, and it wasn’t the sound of a hauler. There was a crowd further down the shore, she realized, one building up along the part of the waterfront closest to the ruined bridge. Keeping her hood close to her face, she stood up and strode closer, and it wasn’t long before she could hear a voice echoing across the waterfront - or rather two voices, one old and feeble, the other young and strong. Mother Jera, and somebody she didn’t know repeating loudly after her.

  She had clearly missed the beginning, but what she did hear was not comforting.

  “And we will fight to ensure you no longer have to live in fear!”

  Fists raised into the air, and people cheered. Nobody was looking at Isavel, and she found herself looking upon their ferocity from much closer than she was used to, feeling the roars rattle her ribcage, sensing the sweat and the heat of the crowd. There was anger here - a great deal more anger than seemed warranted for a bridge with no casualties. But she knew it was more than that - the attack was an insult to Glass Peaks, greatest city in the north. To them, it was an attempt to shove them into a corner, force them to stick to their territory.

  Nobody liked to be contained, and so they raged.

  “As soon as preparation are complete, gods be with us, we will cross those waters and let the sea run red with the blood of those who had forgotten that this world belongs to humanity .”

  Preparations? Gods, they were preparing to attack already. The dark cloud Isavel had thought she saw on the horizon was closer, rumbling louder, than she had anticipated. She didn’t have much time. She turned and walked further down the docks, trying not to imagine the forests dotted with bodies and running with blood. There had been too much war already in this place.

  As she sat back down where Hail expected to find her, she looked at her hands. She couldn’t stop this, could she? Even if she tried, the city’s pride was wounded, and they would do as they had already done - attack, with or without her.

  What good were all her damned gifts if she couldn’t stop this bloodshed?

  What were the gods thinking, when they made her? If they made her. That was still an open question.

  Whatever she was, there had to be a way to use it. Being the Herald wasn’t enough, but somewhere in her blood, if she only understood it, was something she could use. She felt sure of it. She had to - everything she had had before was lost, and this body and its strangeness were all she had left.

  The loud thrumming of an ancient hauler broke her concentration after time uncounted, and she looked up to see the hauler skimming the edge of the docks, with Hail sitting uncomfortably on the flatbed with Zoa. Ren was in the driver’s seat, controlling the ancient vehicle with ease while watching her.

  She stood up and jogged towards the flatbed, her hood falling back as she did. She leapt up and thumped the metal cockpit with her palm. “Go. Cross the strait.”

  Even as the hauler turned to speed out of the city again, past the western gate and out to shores the bridge had not blocked off, she let her colours fall back to their natural olive hue. She sat down on the flatbed, completing a triangle between herself, Hail, and blue-haired Zoa, who was looking at her in shock, her mouth gaping open.

  She waited until they had cleared the city and passed the ruined bridge before speaking. “If you’re wondering where I went - I don’t think the gods need me around. I don’t think they mind.”

  “We were looking everywhere for -”

  She held up her palm. “I don’t need to hear about that. Did Hail tell you why I wanted you two?”

  Zoa looked around at her hands in confusion. “You told Ren to cross the strait. To the island? The outers’ island?”
r />   “There are human villages on the island too. But yes.” Isavel nodded. “I’m going to see Ada.”

  Zoa’s eyes widened, but were quickly pressed closed again with a scowl. “Ada? What the hell for? She’s crazy. Did she do this? She must have done this.”

  Isavel glanced at Hail. It might be an accurate assessment, but it was remarkably quick and brutal. She nodded to the coder. “I don’t know, but I think so too. Why was that your first thought?”

  “Because she’s a…” Zoa seemed to consider her words, and after a moment her frown turned from anger to confusion. “She’s a heretic.”

  Heretic. Isavel had heard this word again and again from the coders, whenever they talked about Ada. She had thought she knew what it meant, but perhaps she didn’t. “What does that mean?”

  Zoa stared at her, suddenly aware of who she was speaking to again, and her tone gained a note of deference and politeness. “The Institute is a community. We have rules, traditions, stories, expectations, relationships with each other.” She took a deep breath. “Ada didn’t just ignore them whenever she felt like it, she actively spat on them. She broke rules she knew she shouldn’t break. She disrespected people she knew she was supposed to respect. She questioned our stories, the things we valued. She… did some damage.”

  Isavel nodded, waiting for more, but after a second nothing was forthcoming. “Damage?”

  “She tried teaching her heretical coding techniques to someone else. To a girl she was with.”

  A girl she was with. Isavel leaned in. “Oh?”

  “Young woman. Whatever. They were intimate, apparently, and Ada taught her to do things that were, well, improper.” Zoa sighed. “This girl, Jinna, almost killed her parents. Ada helped her do it.”

  Isavel’s eyes widened. “What? She tried to kill someone?”

  “Jinna was always fighting with her parents, and Ada had gotten into arguments with them too.” Zoa shook her head. “They didn’t want their daughter being influenced by someone who was, frankly, only still at the Institute because of people’s lingering goodwill to her dead parents.”