Chapter Text
i.
On the onyx crags of the Isle of Voldsoy, the last colony of Nedarii gathers to hear a course of the future.
They sit encircling their fire. The leaping flames reflect in the marble of their eyes. Heat turns the ice to glittering dew that slicks the walls of the cavern. Rarely is this cave full. Every creature that still lives upon the Isle has come tonight. Foragers sort their sticks and twine, and explorers share sweet berries with eager-eyed fawns. Infants barely old enough to open their eyes are bundled against their parents’ backs, and aging elders lean against their children. Still, the last colony is few.
In their language of notes and shapes and letters, plucked from drafts and polished beauty, they speak of their livelihoods. They pass broth between their paws—a drink brewed from bone and sea salt and inspiration. They leave space by the cavern fissure, where the sky shines inside, in deference to the long-dead Beast of Paladin Straight. The dragon and the colonies had been Voldsoy’s skeleton, once. Now, there are only a few scattered Nedarii ribs.
Quiet falls when a paw lifts above the flames. It belongs to a Nedarii with a full rack of branched antlers. The leader of the colony is called by a name approximating its beauty, one poemrhythmgrace, and it bids quiet among the cavern. A fawn cries, and is shushed.
In the language of the Nedarii, it speaks to its friends. Voldsoy is strong. Your numbers show the fundament remains. Thank you for being here.
The Nedarii sing and cluck and metaphorize. What news? What news of Trench?
Our fellows across the Straight tell of a great change. This was strange news to poemrhythmgrace, who had lived very long and seen very little change. There has been music in Dema.
Whispers and titters echo amongst the last colony. A voice.
A Voice, corrects poemrhythmgrace. Our fellows heard it from fissures and the cliffs. It was strong, like those of the lostpriests.
It came from Dema? Doubt, from the Nedarii. The City strips the Voices from its citizens with blood, and the colony has not seen someone that took after their ancient friends in a very long time. It was not born of Trench?
Indeed. The dance of poemrhythmgrace hides its hesitance. Though the dragon is dead, it still has a duty not to deceive. It creates, but it is in defiance.
What would you call it?
A breath. A paw traced along the curve of antlers. Art. At least, its potential.
Art. There are motions of excitement. The Nedarii turn grins and black eyes upon each other, extending their paws as pledges. Let it be so.
Let it be so, says poemrhythmgrace.
Perhaps one day, we may give our gift again.
At this, the leader of the last colony balks. That day may be near, it says. That Artist may be this one.
How? How?
You know of the Trenchwalkers. Those who escape the City, says poemrhythmgrace. They walk in the footprints of a human.
The Nedarii know of this creature. They know it is bright like a compass is bright. Yes. Yes.
Our fellows dwelling in Trench say that it knows the Artist’s power, too, poemrhythmgrace says. Creation is strengthened by number. There have been Voices before, and there have been escapees before, but never in tandem.
The Nedarii regard their elder and the sky behind it. They have watched the suffering of humans for a long time. They have tried to provide respite, to lead the lost to the joy the Nedarii burn with. But their power is the lifeblood of the City. Every Nedarii lives with the guilt of this, and the grief for the colonies long-extincted.
The leader of the last colony lifts its paws to its antlers, and its eyes to the stars. Hear this, it says. Know what is to come.
Far within, fear turns to conviction. Far above, a vulture with yellow eyes circles on dead wings. Far away, a man clings to the stem of a golden flower and begins to question.
Say the Nedarii, it will come:
A car. A torch. A death.
ii.
Sixteen years ago
A boy walks the border of the Necropolis. He is not supposed to be there, and he knows this in the way a child knows things—idly and incompletely. He is still a child, though he would insist otherwise. Adulthood is an honor in Dema, and age is a disgrace.
The Glorious Vista drops away beneath the boy’s right hand, mud and rock sloping down toward the gathered districts of the city in its center. The Vista is perfectly circular. Asphalt roads cut radiating lines of grey from each sector to the lip of the Necropolis, which stands at the boy’s left. Vast and flat, the Necropolis is churned black mud and the smell of tombs. The stark white light of countless gravestones makes the mud gleam like oil-slick. So far away that they look like toys, the Walls of Dema stand unbroken. The boy can see figures shambling through the lines upon lines of white tombstones, washed out to black silhouettes by the harshness of their light. Gravediggers—loathsome, godless creatures.
The boy looks across the fields of graves and shies back. He made the journey in secret. It had been so simple in his mind, and climbing those hundreds of stairs was unexpectedly pleasant. His feet had struck the concrete in a particular rhythm, and he’d hummed while he ascended. The boy likes humming.
But there are simply so many graves. Even more, he thinks, than the stars he used to count on rare clear nights when he snuck from his bed in the bunker and pushed away the curtains to look beyond the Towers of Silence.
The boy has come looking for one grave in particular. Evan had been very lucky; only fourteen when the Lights chose her and she went home to paradise. Barely older than the boy now searching for her gravestone. They had slept near each other in the bunker, and though the boy is glad for her, proud of her honor, he has a strange feeling when he thinks of her. When he goes to perform his duties and knows she will not do the same.
She is free of Dema. Is he envious? He knows that feeling. Perhaps envy is what he feels now, in a way.
The boy’s feet slide in the black mud. He tries to steady himself on one of the gravestones. The glass burns, the misty white light inside dreadfully hot. He pulls his hand back, hissing.
“Hey,” says a ghastly voice. “Don’t do that. What are you doing here?”
The boy turns. He nearly breaks into a run back to the stairs, but he thinks the mud has swallowed him up to knees. One of the gravediggers is standing before him. It’s a tall, gangly thing, a boy with strangely curled hair and rags covering its mouth and nose. Mud and rot cake its hands. It looks barely older than the boy himself.
The boy makes the Sign of Nine. “The disgraced aren’t permitted to speak to citizens,” he says.
The gravedigger does something odd—it circles its eyes in its head and groans. “And smarmy kids aren’t supposed to come to the Necropolis without Glorified supervision. Here you are.”
“I’m looking for something,” says the boy.
“Aren’t we all?” says the gravedigger.
“Evan went home two days ago.” The boy looks over his shoulder, then down at his hands. He wonders if the gravedigger can poison him somehow, can mark him a way that will damn him when he returns to the city. “She was of district four. Nico.”
“I’m sorry,” says the gravedigger.
The boy doesn’t understand. “She is honored among us. Why would you be sorry?”
“I used to feel bad when people got chosen. I still feel bad,” says the gravedigger.
The boy scoffs. “You are disgraced. You rejected paradise, defiled Vialism and your Bishop. Of course you feel shame.”
The gravedigger does that strange movement with its eyes again. “God, what an ideal citizen you must be. Look, I don’t want to debate this with you; I have things to do. So, are you coming or not?”
The gravedigger starts to limp through the lines of light. The boy calls out, “coming where?” He has heard such terrible stories of the Necropolis in chapel.
“To Evan’s grave. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“You’re going to help me?”
The gravedigger says, “sure. What more can they do to me?”
The boy trips over himself to catch up. This time, he doesn’t touch the gravestones. The light inside them hisses lowly, just beneath what he can comfortably hear. It’s a thunderous buzz throughout the fields. The boy can hear his own teeth shifting at its frequency, and it’s not quite painful. He begins to hum. The way the gravestones pulse makes an interesting layer beneath the notes.
“That’s… nice,” says the gravedigger. It sounds surprised.
The boy stops humming sharply. He hadn’t realized the gravedigger could hear him or would care. Singing outside chapel is punishable. “What is?”
“I’m not going to tell on you,” the gravedigger says, and now its voice is gentler. “It’s okay. I promise. Evan is here.”
They stop before a grave. It looks akin to all the others—churned black mud, reflecting the boy’s face. It’s a single vertical post of white, about five feet high and thin enough that the boy could touch his thumb and forefinger together around its circumference. It glows blindingly.
The boy looks at it and feels… nothing. The same, really, as he had walking through the Necropolis, the same as he had that morning, the same as he will feel, he is sure, every day that follows. It was stupid of him to come here.
“Hey, are you alright?”
The boy blinks. The white light is blurring in his eyes, and his cheeks are wet. “What’s going on?” he says. “What is it?”
“Oh,” says the gravedigger. “Nothing, I suppose. Nevermind. Just—it’s okay. You’ll be okay, even though she’s gone.”
“Of course I will,” says the boy. “And when they Light the Road for me, I will join her.”
The gravedigger’s face moves in a way that the boy sees very rarely. When his coworker, Saratal, had sliced his arm on one of the engines they were constructing, he had made an expression like the gravedigger. When the Glorified that used to watch over the bunker had grown sick, she had made that expression. The boy wonders if he has ever looked like that. He hopes not.
“It's not so bad,” says the gravedigger, “being alive. I mean. It's bad. But it's good too, it can be. I know it.”
The boy makes the Sign of Nine to ward off the curses this creature is spewing. The gravedigger lurches forward.
“Just promise you'll consider it. When you're chosen. You can always live, instead. Always.”
“Don't say such things, disgrace,” says the boy.
“It's Josh,” the gravedigger says.
“What?”
“Not ‘gravedigger’, or ‘disgrace’. My name's still Josh.”
It's a familiar name. Normal. There are three with that name in the boy's district that he knows of, and he wonders how many others are scattered throughout the City. Just humans, waiting to die like all the rest of them. Hearing it here does something to the boy, like when his bench-mates sing the wrong note of the Vialistic harmony. It’s unpleasant.
“You shouldn’t tell me that,” says the boy.
The gravedigger tugs the rag away from its face. It—he, the boy supposes—has chapped lips and blood around his nostrils. “I think I should. I think I should do whatever I want. I think you should tell everyone your name, as often as you can. We have nothing else, so we might as well give all we can. Don’t you think?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just… ugh. I also think you shouldn’t have to go back to the City because of what they’ll do to you if they find out you were here, but that one’s not something I can do anything about right now.”
The boy looks back toward the Towers of Silence, and he can see the sun shining between them. When had it gotten so late? His hands scramble for his elbows, crossed in front of him. He turns to the gravedigger, and takes a careful step away. Something seems wrong, as though he is leaving the warehouse without being dismissed. Can he simply leave?
“It’s okay,” says the gravedigger. “You don’t have to say anything.”
It’s true. He doesn’t. He has nothing to say to the lowliest of Dema’s citizens, the criminals that disgrace the peace of the city. The grave beside him flickers and spits moon-white sparks. The mud slithers beneath his shoes. He doesn’t stop clutching at his arms.
And he halts, a dozen steps closer to the Towers. Perhaps he does not wish to let a gravedigger have the last word. Perhaps he wishes for a few more seconds outside the looming district walls. Perhaps there is something the gravedigger said that lingers, that reminds him of something he might want to understand. Someday.
He looks over his shoulder. The gravedigger does, too, and they wait, the pulsing grave between them.
“I'm Clancy,” says the boy.