Page 130 of The Only Way Out Is Up

“It’s me.”

There’s a pause.

“What do you want?” she says.

“To apologize. I know you were trying to help. I shouldn’t have… said that, about your father.”

Another pause. The door lock clicks, and the door swings open. Ky stands there in her nightgown, face smudged with tears, hair loose like a silver torrent tumbling down her back.

“I want to find out who killed him,” she says quietly. “Of course I do. But it’s Above. Even if I wanted to, how could I?”

“How could you get back to Hod with no money and everyone trying to kill you?” I smile at her. “You’ll find a way.”

“And you’ll put the blame for all this where it belongs?”

“Where’s that?”

“On Alzimyth, obviously.” She smiles slightly. “He’s not some irresistible force. He’s just a guy with a lot of sigils, right?”

“Right.” The crushing band of iron around my heart eases, but only by a fraction. “All we have to do is win, right?”

“One more fight.” She holds up a hand, and I reach out to match it, our fingers interlacing.

“One more fight.”

The moment stretches. I fight the yawn, but I can’t help it; something in my jaw pops.

“First step: Get some sleep.” I pull my hand away. “Star’s already on my case.”

“Star usually knows what he’s talking about,” Ky says. “You should listen to him more often.”

“Probably.”

[Interjection: definitely.]

FORTY-ONE

In the morning I have time for another few hours’ frenzied labor in the workshop before word arrives that we’re to report to the Council Lift. Ky reads the message, eyes wide.

“They’re really doing it. Taking you up there.” She flicks her eyes at the sunlamps, now at full glow.

“Taking us, you mean.” A night’s rest hasn’t fixed all my problems, but they feel a little more bearable now. “Obviously my sponsor has to accompany me.”

“I…” Her eyes harden, and she gives a quick nod. “Of course.”

We ride anti in the carriage, following a road through the seemingly endless manicured estates and tame forests. Eventually something new comes into view: a metal wall five meters high, topped with razor wire. A bank of tall trees tries to conceal it from view, like a half-hearted apology. Behind the barrier, thick cylindrical structures rise even higher, all the way past the sunlamps to the ceiling.

And beyond, I realize, my heart speeding up. Those have to be lifts, reaching all the way through the cap overhead to the surface.

“This is the processing district,” Ky says quietly. “Where bulk cargo comes down from Above and scrap and sigils get packaged for the return trip. It takes up close to a third of the tier, but respectable people ignore it as much as possible.”

“Cargo goes up and down. But not people?”

She shakes her head. “It’s all handled by runics. Only the Council Lift takes passengers.”

For a moment I find myself thinking as Alzimyth and his dwellers Above must; our world, with all its tiers and its people living and loving and dying, is no more than a mechanism like a furnace or a laundry mangle. Inputs go in—water, mash for the desperate lower tiers, goods and luxuries for the upper—and outputs emerge, reforged scrap and stacks of red sigils bought with the lives of sigworkers. What happens inside, who lives and who dies, is none of their concern. Except that every so often, one of them has to come down and watch toy runics batter each other around an arena…

No wonder Alzimyth seems so bored with our honors and entertainments. Imagine descending into an anthill where the inhabitants do their pathetic best to entertain you, and all the while you’re thinking about how you could crush their entire world underfoot.