Chapter Four
“WHAT IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ELYSIAN DEPTHS HAS LONG BEEN THE SUBJECT OF DEBATE, BUT IN THIS AUTHOR’S OPINION, IT IS NOT FOR US TO KNOW. THE HEART OF TRINITY SUSTAINS US; IT IS TOO PRECIOUS A GIFT FROM THE HERALDS. IT IS FOR THE DEAD ALONE, AND THE LIVING MUST BE SATISFIED WITH THAT.”
—TRINITY: A TOPOGRAPHICAL OVERVIEW, PROFESSOR BEATRICE BARTLEWICK
In an abandoned shop stall on an old market street in West Parish, I hurriedly stuff my hastily cleaned Butcher kit into a rucksack that smells a bit like old blood and tie it off tight, my hands shaking as I sling it over my shoulder.
Which definitely isn’t like me. But I’ve also never had a job go ass-up like this before, and it’s rattled me. Made me feel unsteady, unsafe.
I just laid the big boss of the Gold Town Gang out on the decks of an airship.
Even worse: Someone set me up to do it.
Halle and Kelda are at home, completely unprotected. I need to make sure they’re safe. The quicker, the better.
It’s almost fully dark already when I step out onto the streets.
This far into low season, the aquamarine sky darkens early, the far edges soaking with orange and plum and black.
Narrow windows set into the faces of all the buildings and betterments brighten with the blue-white light of naphtha lamps.
Tinkerers and market vendors are locking up and heading home, and the twisting alleyways and brightly painted streets are filling up with nighttime inhabitants.
Clusters of people looking to unwind drift about, following the music seeping out of saloons, dram shops, and other entertainment establishments, their murmurs of conversation cut through with sharp bursts of laughter.
Magdalena houses light their purple lanterns, throwing an intoxicating glow across their doorsteps.
Street apothecaries draw small crowds with their over-the-top performances, shilling so-called magical trinkets and concoctions that will cure your problems and ailments.
A handful of people ride by on rickety four-legged automaton mounts, their metal bodies patched with rust and animated by the mechanical, naphtha-powered heart and veins that glow dimly beneath their plating.
At almost every street corner and intersection, screens a dozen feet tall play the dailies—newsreels of wavery images and footage in shades of amber and gray and black, beamed to us straight from Trinity’s Heraldic Ministry.
It’s updated three times a day—morning, midday, and evening—but in between, it repeats again and again.
In case you missed it the first time. Or you just love to listen to a constant stream of chatter about how great Trinity is, but also how all our greatness and way of life is under attack from all sides so be very afraid.
I move through it all as fast as I can without drawing any unnecessary attention, hands shoved into the pockets of my pants, the hood attached to my loose shirt pulled up to conceal my face despite the heat still hanging heavy in the air and the sweat dampening my hairline.
When I was younger, I remember the temperature used to plummet at night, chilly enough that people would wear longcoats and sometimes even gloves.
But lately, we don’t get a lot of relief at night, with heat lingering long after sunset, radiating off the metal alloy that makes up the ground, the rooftops, the building walls—just about everything.
Right now, I welcome its warmth. It keeps my muscles loose and fluid, keeps me moving.
I always phase somewhere different after a job—someplace unoccupied, where I’ve stowed my change of clothes just before.
It’s safer for me if no one is ever really sure where the Butcher comes from or where they go.
It’s one of many ways I keep the two halves of my life separate, so that the things I do on the edge of a blade never follow me home.
But now it’s biting me in the ass because I’m going to have to hoof it across half of Covenant to get home to my sisters.
I’m cutting across Samuel Street when my eyes catch on the nearest flickering screen showing the dailies.
They’re broadcasting an arrest notice with the image of a young man.
Shaved head. Irises as deep brown as his skin.
A beautiful face, though the image doesn’t really do it justice because it can’t capture the spark of humor always lurking in his eyes.
Or the brilliance when he flashes his wide smile.
My jaw clenches and I cut my eyes away as I hurry past.
Not your problem, Val. Just get home. Make sure your sisters are safe. That’s all you need to do right now.
I can’t borrow any more trouble when I’m already neck-deep in a botched job and still trying to sort out what the hell happened up there.
Maybe Dani will be able to get to the bottom of it.
She’s got an ear against just about every door in this town, stashing away information like rations.
It’s one of the main reasons I took her on as my frontperson.
I’ll get ahold of her first thing tomorrow and we’ll sort out the situation. Get things back on track with whoever’s next on the Gold Town throne. This was just a misfire.
A massive, massive misfire.
I pause on a corner and wipe at my mouth, wishing I had anything left in that little canteen, but I drained it all back on the airship. I’ll have to just bear with the dusty feeling in my throat until I get home.
“—the arrest of Orion Booker,” the droning voice of the announcer on the dailies interrupts my thoughts.
“Booker is also known as the Skywayman, a degenerate whose string of thefts has terrorized skyliners across Covenant. He was apprehended in his latest attempt at larceny, caught in the act and convicted of the sin of greed. He is being held by the esteemed wardens of Covenant, awaiting transport via prison train to the Ninth Circle, where he will attempt to earn redemption through a life of service.”
A shudder ripples through my body.
The Ninth Circle. The worst prison on the whole of Trinity. A hellish construct suspended far down into the darkness of a section of the Elysian Depths. They say the Ninth Circle is so deep into the Depths that you can’t even see the sun when it’s directly overhead.
My head swims as I step off the corner, so distracted that I knock shoulders with someone and get an earful of what they think about me and my questionable parentage.
The dailies are everywhere, flashing in my peripheral vision as I sweep by, and despite all my efforts to not look at any of the screens, I’m still hyperaware of the face that pops up again and again as the reels repeat.
Orion Booker.
I can still picture him as he was when we were kids—laughing, running the streets with me, stretched out beside me all those bright, warm nights that we’d lie on rooftops and watch the rhythm and flow of skyliner airships above us.
I remember, too, the last time we saw each other. I feel little echoes of the emotions that swamped me back then—the anger, the fear, the hollowness in my chest. That sense that something precious and real in my life was falling to pieces. Again.
Papa called them unmaking seasons. Told me that every quiet, stable period in your life would be followed by a season of unmaking, where upheaval and chaos and change would push at your edges and force you to grow.
I feel like I’ve had too many unmaking seasons already in my life. After Papa died in the dock accident. After we lost Mama. And then again, after Orion.
And now, all of a sudden, here he is, just as a giant crack appears in my—in the Butcher’s—relationship with the Gold Town Gang.
I scrub my hands down my face and suck in a deep breath, willing my feet to move a little faster, like maybe I can shake the ghosts on my heels if I’m quick enough. I’ve worked so hard to carve out this space and this life, but I don’t know how long the walls will hold.
I finally reach the steps of the boardinghouse in East Parish where we rent our lodgings, and just as I start to climb, I feel the change in the air.
The taste of ozone, sharp and bitter. The shift in the wind.
Harsh white clouds boil up across the southern horizon, and spidery forks of lightning, tinged with vivid colors, follow behind them.
A magnastorm. That came up fast.
We used to know about oncoming magnastorms hours before they happened.
They’d boil up on the hottest days of high season in predictable ways.
But the past few months, every day has felt like the hottest day, and the magnastorms have started coming from nowhere, with no warning, moving fast and whipping up winds that wreak havoc on the surface.
Tearing at old, rusted-out buildings and kicking up a red-brown haze of dust and grit that coats your skin, irritates your eyes, and makes everything you eat taste a bit like rust for days afterward.
Another crackle of lightning, colored turquoise and pink, lances downward, and I shiver like I can feel its electric touch dancing down my spine.
And then, a flash of light slices across the edges of my vision, flaring up in the distance, far off to the north in the opposite direction of the storm.
It’s enormous—a searing surge of blue-white light that shoots upward, reaching past the clouds to claw hungrily at the distant stars.
It has to be miles and miles away, but for a second, it’s all I can look at, all I can see.
It floods my eyes and skin, blotting out the town and the skyliners and the stars.
Trinity’s song rises, sharp and loud in my ears, louder even than it is when I phase—
It dies away as quickly as it came. The song drops to barely a murmur, and I’m left, blinking, on my own doorstep.
It’s an unmaking season, Val.
I wait, breath caught in my throat, for one heartbeat after another. I don’t even know for what. For the light to come back? For the chapel bells to ring? Some sign—any sign—that I wasn’t the only person in Covenant just now who witnessed that?
But there’s nothing. And somehow that’s worse.
Somehow, it feels like an omen.