Mara stifled her own chuckle at the fantasy scrolling through her thoughts. She reached another corner in the pillar and grasped it for support, quickly turning the sharp angle. Hightable towered over the rest of Sollan, and so the world she knew slowly shrank into tiny points of light and miniature roofs topped by chimney whiskers.
Her foot found another brick. She leaned onto the step. It cracked and sent a line of dust trailing to the ground.
Cold sweat rolled down her back. It glimmered on her chest. It wet her palm and stained her son’s burlap a deep shade of brown.
Looking down at him, she glimpsed the ground below. The broken step crumbled and fell away, leaving a gap like an old man’s smile, his throat the deadly drop looming beneath her.
Mara forced her eyes straight ahead. Her fingers clawed for a handhold that did not exist. She pressed her back against the arch and inhaled, looking to the stars.
“Gia,” she whispered, “I’ve never been this high before. I’m not so sure if I like it. I think I might prefer a bite from a coral shark to cracking my neck after a long fall.”
Mara inhaled. She stretched her foot over the gap. Thankfully, the next step held tight against the pillar. Mara exhaled and continued on her way.
Once again, her thoughts drifted. Her son had grown and stood just above her belly. She had to remind herself every time she saw him how far he’d come from a baby wrapped in burlap in her arms.
He spoke often of going on adventures in lands far from the House of Sin and Silk. He had dreams of hunting for titan relics and discovering the lost kingdoms of the Second Sun. He fashioned swords out of broomsticks and fought imaginary alp demons. He crafted spell books out of Olessa’s discarded ledgers and worked miracles in his imagination not seen since the Six first waged their war against the titans. All the while, Mara would watch from her station in the kitchen, patiently peeling shrimp and cutting soft fin bass for hungry patrons.
He loved spells and stories of magic. His jaw would go slack and eyes wide whenever Gia snuck into the kitchen and whispered stories of the miracles the Six’s priests worked throughout Urum. He wanted to serve them one day. He wanted to work miracles people would remember, and not just the people in Eloia. Eloia was just a kingdom to him. He wanted the whole world to know his name.
Mara reached the middle of the stairs. The wind was an endless howl in her ears, and her heartbeat a pounding war drum with it. She turned to the next flight, and her stomach dropped. Most of the steps on that side of the arch had crumbled away, leaving a dangerous breach for her to cross.
If she wanted to reach the top, it would require a great leap.
“Gods, this is awful.”
She peeled her back from the wall and came to her knees, both of which barely fit onto a step. One hand cradled her robe where she’d tucked her son. The other hand gripped the broken step before her.
Mara leaned forward. The drop seemed to stretch ten leagues more as she stared down the length of the aqueduct’s arch.
“I can do this,” she said. “The silent sons believed in me. They are gone now, and if I do not do this, I will join them.”
She gripped the stair. Her muscles tensed. She leaned forward and froze, eyes still glued to the ground.
“Come on, Mara, you can do this.” Mara clenched her teeth. “Do this!”
With a deep inhale, Mara leaned onto the balls of her feet. Her toes dangled from step’s broken edge. She sprung, and her body flew from the laughable safety of the stairs.
The chasm of empty space loomed beneath her. She leaned forward, flailing for the broken step across the gap, realizing in a moment of horror her jump wouldn’t take her completely there.
Mara wrapped her arm around her child as her ribs slammed against the jagged brick. Air rushed from her lungs. Her feet dangled over the deadly drop. Her weight and the uneven steps threatened to tug her to her death.
“
Nnnn
…no! No!”
Mara clawed at the stair. She dug an elbow into the stone and pressed her weight onto her arm. A single, deep grunt rumbled from deep within her.
Using her elbow as leverage and her free hand to keep her steady, Mara heaved herself higher. Her body inched up. Her arm strained and trembled. Her slick palm threatened to slide from beneath her any moment.
She lifted a leg, straining to pull her knee to the broken stair. It raked against the rock, and she winced at the hot flash of pain it scraped against her shin.
Her knee planted on the bottom step. The tears from her pain turned to a wide smile, and she pulled the rest of her body onto the stairs.
Mara twisted to her side. She kissed her son’s brow and turned so her back pressed firmly against the pillar.
Laughter bubbled from her lips. If she had more room, she would have danced for joy. As it was, with her luck, dancing would have brought the steps crashing down and alerted a serpent priest or simply sent her plummeting to her death. She had no desire to turn a corner and come face to face with Ialane’s snake or break her neck on the flowers of the Blooming Ring.
Mara licked the sweat collecting on her lip and came to her feet. She continued on, trying her best to ignore her throbbing shin.
“Let’s see,” she murmured. “How old is he now?”
Her son had grown closer to manhood and stood just as tall as his mother. His voice cracked awkwardly at times, and the hair on his lip and chin made him look as if he’d been eating soot from a brazier.
One of the strong boys offered to teach him how to shave his face, but he refused. It was a sign of him becoming a man, and he wore his soft beard like a badge of honor bestowed by a high priest of the Six. So too he brandished a wandering eye. He tried little to hide it, seeing how the barge’s patrons cared little to hide their own gazes from washing up and down the maidens.
Mara often caught him gazing at the younger girls. She warned him that Olessa would beat him silly if she caught him drooling over one of her assets, but it soon became clear the boy pondered if a beating might be worth a wayward glance or three.
It would be around then that he finally gathered enough courage to tell her he would leave the House of Sin and Silk. Mara fought him at first, but she knew in her heart there would come a time when her child would want to see the world beyond Olessa’s floating kingdom. Growing up with Gia’s stories and eavesdropping on sailors’ drunken, boastful tales had addicted his heart to whatever might lay beyond the horizon. He would never be truly happy unless he struck out on his own so he could find his way.
Mara’s heart twisted.
She didn’t know if she could let him go.
Her gaze drifted to the pouch of her cloak where he rested. Her arms clasped around his body. Her dirty arms. The arms beneath the old burlap. The arms stained by sweat and blood and her dark travels.
“What that I would give to have these dreams come to pass,” she said.
Mara turned to the arch. She placed her palm against the cool brick and pressed her brow onto the stone. “You are a fool, Mara. He will never know steaming stew or Faratta’s scoldings. He will never defy you and swim without fear of the coral sharks. He will never make swords from broomsticks and spells from ledgers. He will never look longingly at moon maidens and twist your heart into a worried knot by sailing the Sapphire Sea for relics of lost ages.”
She clenched her fist and rapped it softly on the stone. With a heavy sigh, she continued on her way, turning yet another corner. Only then did she realize the top of the aqueduct waited one short flight away.
Mara steadied her steps despite the excitement racing through her veins. She climbed the lest steps. She hoisted herself onto the aqueduct with a smile.
A river rushed through through a deep channel carved down the middle of the structure. Water dumped out the aqueduct’s mouth and careened like a crystal ribbon into Upper Sollan. A stone walkway bordered each side of the channel leading toward Hightable’s wall and the heart of the city beyond.
She nearly strode toward Hightable without another thought but hesitated instead of marching onward. Mara turned. She walked to the edge of the aqueduct. She straightened at the overlook and smiled at the city.
First came the fine apartments and estates of Upper Sollan. Lanterns lit its walls and gardens in soft blues and golds, glittering off the glass windows of the buildings around them. Smoke curled from slender chimneys and drifted toward the stars. The avenues sloped like rivers on a mountain toward Lower Sollan. There, she barely made out the cramped shops and homes, the streets bustling with bobbing lanterns and revelers dancing with full cups of wine as drums and cymbals played happy tunes.
Lower Sollan halted at the shoreline. The docks formed long, thin lines, like the fingers of a dead silent son reaching for the horizon. Beside a stretch of empty water that led to the open sea, the faint lights of the Floatwaif glittered on the waters. She could barely see the barges from where she stood, yet she swore she could smell the rich scent of coral shark stew and fried shrimp seasoned with a hint of salt ever-present on the breeze.
Mara had never stood so high above the world. She looked down at her son and smiled.
“Do you think this is how a god sees Urum?” she said. “No wonder Good King Sol wishes to ride his great serpent to the stars. He has outgrown this world of men and titans’ bones, lusting for higher things.”
Mara held her son before her. She lifted him high and turned him to the city. “This is Sollan, my son, the grandest city of Eloia, and even if it is only for a moment, know that you rise higher than all others in it.”
A gust of wind roared around her. It threw back her hood and sent her burlap flapping around her legs. Mara closed her eyes and committed the city and the moment she shared with her son to her to memory. She might never rise so high again, and it would be a shame to forget such a view.
Mara had successfully scaled the ungodly wall that protected Hightable, the beating heart of Sollan and jewel of the kingdom of Eloia. She thought it odd the past kings of Eloia would build a wall so high it hid the kingdom they ruled from their eyes. If she could have woken every day to see the world from so high, every home and tower in Hightable would have had walls of polished glass.
Yet the residents within Hightable viewed the world much differently than Mara. None of their buildings eclipsed Hightable’s towering barrier. They lived in a garden world all their own and desired not to look upon anything beyond their gilded cage.
Squat towers dotted the wall at even spaces like the spokes on a king’s crown. Midway between each tower, an aqueduct like the one Mara scaled struck out over the Blooming Ring and sent water careening into Upper Sollan.
Within the wall’s massive circumference, beautiful lawns brimming with blooming flowers and willows cloaked in white and scarlet blossoms snaked in curling patterns around sprawling estates. Channels of crystalline water ran throughout the neighborhood. Gentle arches formed causeways over the rivers and connected gardens and estates to one another like veins and arteries might keep a titan’s heart pumping blood to the giant’s body.
Deep within Hightable, beyond the gardens and the mansions, clustered like the soul within the city’s heart, Mara spied a mass of buildings scaling a hill crowned by Good King Sol’s gleaming gold palace. One of those temples housed the statue of the Mother, and at her feet, the Ever-Burning Flame.
She shook her head, pulling her hood higher over her brow. “The priests are prisoners in houses of worship. The nobles are prisoners of Hightable. The fortunate are prisoners in Upper Sollan. These people, they live in beauty, but really, only the poor are free to come and go. I would risk a beggar boy with a knife clutched behind his back over living in Good King Sol’s shadow any day. For all its beauty, this city is one prison built around another.”
Mara looked to her son and adjusted his burlap. “And tonight, blood will stain those prison walls,” she whispered. “I know it. Before this night is done, we will witness more of the Serpent Sun’s insanity.”
The aqueduct disappeared within the barrier. She stepped onto the wide wall and peered into the noble district. A dizzying drop greeted her, ending in a labyrinth of thorny bushes and ponds brimming with lanterns floating on crystal lilies.
She peered to the side along the long curve of the structure. Far from where she stood, a few estates dared to grow to the height of the wall. Their tiled roofs rested at gentle angles against the barrier’s smooth stone side. If she could make it to one of the estates unseen, she could perhaps leap to the roof and descend without breaking both her legs.
Mara glanced behind her. In the distance, bobbing lanterns slowly worked their way around the top of the wall. No doubt a patrol followed behind those lights, searching for any sign of the ashwalk pilgrim.
She darted in the opposite direction, but her legs wobbled and protested, so she slowed her pace. The arm supporting her son ached and trembled. Her shin throbbed from the bloody scrape the aqueduct stairs gifted her. Her vision lost some of its clarity, a sign Olessa’s glimmer faded from her blood. The deep blue of the night paled against the horizon. Her climb had gobbled much of her time. Dawn waited in the wings, ready to seal her fate.
Mara reached the first tower and crouched within its shadow. Dark windows spanned the side facing the lower city. The tower was capped with a flagpole proudly waving the flapping banner of Good King Sol like a feather in a cap. Rolling her eyes at his crest, she ducked beneath the windows and darted across the wall’s walkway. Voices from within drifted to her ears, grumbling guards complaining about missing Harvest Festival’s boisterous parties and smiling women.