Chapters (41)
- Title
- Indicia
- Steel Frame
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Acknowledgements
- About The Author
- 'Ironclads' by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- 'NineFox Gambit' by Yoon Ha Lee
- 'Grunt Life' by Weston Ochse
COME WITH ME
to the bottom of the sea.
That’s the way it goes, if I remember right. I don’t have any more of the song, even if I’ve still got the tune. There’s enough that I can whistle it, and add the little skips and hoops where words are supposed to be. It’s a habit I picked up off of Salt; everything half hummed but mostly mumbled, like phantom sounds on the comms, strange voices rising out of the static when no one else is speaking.
Maybe Salt is where I heard the song. Caught off the edge of his marching tune, or sung while I was sleeping. You don’t sleep when you’re in chains, but you’re not awake either. You aren’t alive, not really. I spent most of that time dreaming. That’s why I’ve still got the sound, but don’t have the lyrics. It’s stuck someone near the back of my head, coming up on reflex rather than memory.
I’VE BEEN FLYING six hours now, but I don’t know how far I’ve come. The Juno’s keeping track, projecting the numbers up against my eyes, but they don’t mean much to me. The currents feed us endless dust and shadow, the same winds wrapped around the same storms for a hundred thousand years. It gives you a kind of tunnel vision, creeps in through the corners of your eyes until all you’ve got is the same deep-field blur.
Maybe that’s why I can’t find the words to the song. Maybe I’ve had them all along, picked up somewhere before NorCol took me in. Before Salt and his singing, before the Eye, before I had any reason to remember. All I have to do is make the right shapes, give the words enough space, and they’ll all just find their ways back to me. It feels like they’re only just out of reach, hanging off the tip of my tongue.
“Come with me
to the bottom of the sea—”
I run out of song just as fast as I did before, but I don’t lose the tune for another thirty seconds or so. I keep it running on a hum, then a whistle. I can manage thirty seconds, so long as I keep myself focussed on the dark currents outside. The storm means there isn’t much to see, but that’s what I need. Something to keep my mind occupied while half-forgotten things work themselves into the blanks.
Another storm rolls into our path, catching broken light through the cloud tops.
Another dark shape looms on our starboard side, just for a second.