Chapter Eleven
“THE HERALDS BUILT TRINITY FROM THEIR OWN DIVINE BODIES, TURNING THEIR SKIN TO METAL SO THAT WE HAD A PLACE TO WALK, THEIR brEATH TO AIR SO THAT WE COULD brEATHE, AND THEIR BLOOD TO WATER AND NAPHTHA SO THAT WE COULD LIVE AND THRIVE.”
—THE DIVINE ORIGINS OF TRINITY, THE ARCHIVAL COUNCIL OF THE HERALDIC MINISTRY
I was born in the middle of the stacked buildings and twisting streets of Covenant, so I’ve never been out on the Copper Plains before, let alone ridden across them.
As dangerous as it is in the city, at least it has shade.
Out on the Plains, the metal ground bakes in the sun, creating a furnace of heat that lingers even in the dead of night.
We slowed our mounts to a walk about an hour ago to conserve a little power and have been plodding along under the open blue-black sky, moving steadily toward Covenant, keeping the distant, pitch-black ribbon of the Elysian Depths square to our backs to make sure we’re going in the right direction.
The dry and dusty wind cuts across us in a way that seems to pull even more moisture from my body, quickly leaving my lips cracked and mouth parched, even after I guzzle down the water Atlas offers me.
I’d always assumed the Plains would just be an unchanging spread of smooth coppery metal, but it’s more dynamic than that.
The high winds have worn gradients into the color, subtle shifts that are hypnotizing close-up, and the magnastorms have left shallow crater points and dramatic black scars that soak up all the light.
I can’t get over how big the sky looks out here.
How sharp the stars are and how the moons actually have a pale lavender sheen to them, something I’d never noticed before what with all the skyliners cluttering the view.
And Trinity’s song right now—it’s so strong. It’s like the whole Copper Plains are ringing with it, vibrating up through the automaton beneath me. There are more voices, more harmonies blended into it than I’ve ever been able to hear before.
I’m not holding on quite as tightly to Orion now that we’ve slowed down, but I can’t let go of him entirely.
For one thing, it’s not like there’s enough space for me to go anywhere, and for another, I still feel uneasy riding it.
The sway of its motion, the mixed sensation of sun-warmed metal and cool naphtha, the sense that I’m not in control of this thing in the slightest …
It’s just better if I keep a grip on Orion’s shirt and ignore how closely we’re pressed together.
I focus instead on Trinity’s song, humming in the back of my head.
It’s strange—to have something you always hear but haven’t really listened to in such a long time.
I keep picking up on little things I’d half forgotten about.
Soft harmonies and blended chords, even notes that sound off here and there, like little mistakes Trinity is making as it builds the song.
It catches me up inside it, and I start to hum along without even realizing.
The gusty wind drops away abruptly, and a deathly stillness falls over the Copper Plains. Shivers skitter across my skin. Not like fear, though. More … anticipation.
I twist like a compass needle toward the pull of the song—north and east, always north and east—and scan the flat horizon. Trinity’s song calls me toward it, rises in volume and pitch until it is a roar inside my ears, and then—
A flash of blue-white light. Just like what I saw on the steps of my boardinghouse the other day.
It surges up out of the Depths and spreads in all directions, filling the sky until I can see nothing else.
Everything is light and song.
I’m suspended inside it—timeless, limitless.
I can’t see Orion or Atlas. The melody keens, high and sweeping, sharp and wild, resonating in my bones.
It vibrates so loud and fierce inside my chest that I can hardly hear or feel or think about anything else.
I tilt my head back to the sky and the stars I know glimmer somewhere out in the blackness that surrounds Trinity.
A voice inside me, muddled and distant. I can’t tell if it comes from me or from the song.
Where are your wings, Valene? Why can’t you fly?
“Val!”
I snap my head back down, blinking in the sudden darkness.
I’m standing on the ground, a few steps away from the automaton mount, and Orion is in front of me, his hands clamped tight on my arms, his eyes wild with worry.
The blue-white flare is gone again, although bits of it still halo around my vision.
Trinity’s song has dropped to a soft melody, and the hard wind of the Plains snaps at my clothes.
I frown down at his hands. He’s gripping me so tight it almost pinches. “What are you doing?”
“What am I— Is that a joke?” His hands drop to his sides, and he straightens, staring down at me. “First, that light comes out of nowhere, with no warning—”
My eyes narrow. “Wait, you two saw it?”
“Of course we saw it!” He’s staring at me like being out in the heat has finally fried my brain. “We saw the one a few nights ago, too. Big light, very alarming. But then you—your face went all blank, and you just jumped down and started walking toward it?”
I look behind me, to where Atlas and his mount are stopped several feet away. I don’t even remember moving.
“I must’ve just gotten disoriented,” I say, putting a dismissive edge on my voice.
I don’t know what just happened, and I really don’t want to think about it.
Or how it had me hypnotized or the voice I heard inside it.
My skin is still tingling all over. “Come on, we should get moving. We want to make it back to Covenant by sunrise.”
I spin and clamber ungracefully back onto the mount, and after a moment, Orion joins me, his brow furrowed as he takes up the reins and starts toward town again.
Atlas looks me over in that steady, searching way of his and then kicks his mount into step beside ours.
I don’t say anything to either of them—I don’t feel the need—but Orion keeps clearing his throat as he shifts around, like he’s searching for something to fill the awkward silence.
His eyes keep flicking over his shoulder to me and then away. The weight of it is itchy, heavy.
“Stop that,” I finally snap.
Orion raises his eyebrows. “Stop what?”
“Looking at me. You keep looking at me.”
“Well, that’s terrible of me. Maybe I should just throw myself back on that prison train, see if the wardens can take me down to the Ninth Circle, after all.”
I make an irritated noise in the back of my throat. “You know what I mean. You want to ask something, Booker, spit it out and get it over with.”
“Your personality has only gotten more charming, I have to say.”
“Don’t act like you still know anything about me.”
“Trust me, I won’t.” Orion straightens his shoulders, his eyes fixed on the silhouette of Covenant as it gets ever closer to us. “Because what I saw back there on the train? That was … some brand-new stuff.”
“Orion…,” Atlas says quietly off to our right. “Stop.”
I shake my head, glaring at Orion’s back even as I’m forced to keep my hands tight on his waist. “No, it’s fine. Go ahead and get it off your chest. Tell me how awful I am.”
He sighs. “I didn’t say you were awful, V. It’s just … The person I knew definitely didn’t know how to kill like that. They had a lot more lines they wouldn’t cross.”
I snort. “Ah, yes, because everyone knows that on Trinity it’s all about having a moral code. Give me a break, O. We dusters have ten times that shit done to us. But somehow it’s worse when I do it?”
“Yeah, it’s worse because it’s you doing it. I expect it from them.”
His words cut sharply across the air between us. I glance up at him, but his eyes are fixed on the Plains in front of us, his jaw clenched tight.
“It’s all just survival, O,” I say finally. Biting off the words like I can dismiss this whole argument.
“It shouldn’t be.” His voice is almost wistful. “We deserve better than that. We deserve to live for something.”
He sounds like Halle. Words that had come spilling out in the midst of one of our many fights in the last few years.
Surviving can’t be all that matters, Val! I want something better than that! I want to do something big and amazing and stupid!
It hits me hard enough that it steals the breath out of my lungs. The awful blankness of my sisters’ absence every moment, the guilt and fear and failure dragging at my body. I ball my weighted gloves into tight fists, hardening myself so I don’t crumple underneath it.
The truth is, I never did understand that part of Halle and I never really tried to, either. When I was a little kid, all I wanted was to leave Covenant. After Mama was gone, all I wanted was for us to survive. And lately, I just wanted cash. Because cash bought water and food, cash bought safety.
Or at least, it did. Until I messed everything up.
“You’re still an idealistic sop, huh?” I say, all sharp edges, more cutting than anything I keep in a sheath.
Orion shakes his head at me, lips pulling into a tight, brittle smile. “And you apparently still have no patience for idealistic sops.”
“That’s enough.” Atlas moves his mount up closer, his low voice coming down like a gavel, shutting us both up. “Rehashing old grievances isn’t going to help this situation.” He sighs, muttering under his breath. “… literal children…”
We ride faster after that, the Bookers kicking their mounts into a stride that looks easy and flowing but actually results in me bouncing around ungracefully on the automaton’s back, clinging to Orion to keep my seat.
But we have to make sure we’re not out in the open before dawn, when the lightningrail is scheduled to arrive at the Ninth Circle.
Once they see no Skywayman and train cars full of eviscerated wardens, the skies above the Copper Plains will be flooded with airships looking for us.
It’s about an hour before sunrise by the time we reach the edge of Covenant and its low, sprawling buildings.
It’s a relief to hear and see and smell everything that’s most familiar to me.
The little bells outside the magdalena houses tinkling.
The clatter and calls of apothecaries and tinkerers as they open up their shops for the day.
The air bright with the smell of spices and hot cooking oil.
I lean hard against Orion’s back as we move down the streets, sagging with a bone-deep exhaustion that’s been coming on for the past two hours.
I keep thinking I see other people walking with us—Halle.
Kelda. Mama and Papa. But then I blink and they’re gone.
The landscape of Trinity swims around me, switching from buildings to strange, towering plants, from flat copper metal to impossible greenery.
One time I even think I see the skies overhead darken with gray clouds that unleash sheets of water all over me.
But then the mount beneath me jostles and my gaze clears and Trinity is Trinity again.
Dry wind and dusty plains and that all too familiar thirst aching in the back of my throat.
It’s just the hair of the dog. More hallucinations. I need to get ahold of myself.
Orion tilts his head back over his shoulder, eyeing me. “Maybe we should go with Atlas. Let you get some rest before we make any moves.”
I straighten immediately, putting distance between us. “No. I’m good.”
“Val—”
“I just rested for hours, doing nothing on the back of this thing. If you have a lead on where we need to go, then I want to go. Now.”
He blows out a frustrated breath and doesn’t answer immediately, following Atlas into a back alley where they pull their mounts to a stop.
“I don’t have any guarantees,” he says. “Just, like, one little scrap of Gold Town knowledge I picked up.”
I slide gratefully to the solid ground. Shit. My legs are so shaky. How are they so shaky when I just sat there for so long? “Okay, great. Let’s use that. What is it?”
Orion swings a leg over, dismounting with considerably more grace than my awkward tumble. He looks at Atlas, who’s frowning, shaking his head. Clearly not a fan of this plan. Or of me, maybe.
I shake out my sore legs and stand straighter, looking Orion square in the eye. “We made a deal.”
There’s a beat, and then Orion nods, resigned. “You’re right. We did. You got something to cover that Butcher kit? We’ve got a little bit of a walk in front of us, and it’ll be better if you don’t attract notice.”
I grab my rucksack, rummaging around for my long hooded cowl, plus the stimulant tinctures I’d stuffed at the bottom. “Where are we headed to?”
He ties up his mount to a hitching post, his expression grim. “The Old Clock Tower.”