The Never Tilting World Read online

  Dedication

  For all the best doggos who drag their leashes over to my part of the sidewalk, because I give the best pats. Good doggos.

  Map

  Epigraph

  A demoness

  Is what men call

  A goddess they cannot control

  —fragment of Inanna’s Song

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Epigraph

  Chapter One: Tianlan of the Catseye

  Chapter Two: Arjun, Son of Clan Oryx

  Chapter Three: Odessa, Breaker of Storms

  Chapter Four: Haidee of the Golden City

  Chapter Five: Lan of the Two Lives

  Chapter Six: Arjun, Lucky Son of a Bitch

  Chapter Seven: Maleeyah, Formerly Odessa

  Chapter Eight: Haidee the Debutante

  Chapter Nine: Lan the Hunter

  Chapter Ten: Arjun the Sandpilot

  Chapter Eleven: Odessa of the Wildlands

  Chapter Twelve: Haidee of the Dolugongs

  Chapter Thirteen: Lan in the Mist

  Chapter Fourteen: Arjun, Son of Clan Oryx, Going to Hell

  Chapter Fifteen: Odessa the Life-Giver

  Chapter Sixteen: Haidee and the Pirates

  Chapter Seventeen: Lan Underwater

  Chapter Eighteen: Arjun, Worm-Milker

  Chapter Nineteen: Odessa the Gatebringer

  Chapter Twenty: Haidee of the Sacred Spring

  Chapter Twenty-One: Lan and the Sixth Galla

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Arjun, the Prey

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Odessa the Gatebreaker

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Haidee the Life-Giver

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Lan the Captive

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Arjun the Domestic

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Twins at the Abyss

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Twins of the Breaking

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Twins in the Aftermath

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Rin Chupeco

  Back Ads

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Tianlan of the Catseye

  IT WAS CLEARLY HIS FAULT I’d punched him in the face.

  It was still the man’s fault when I did it again, and when I did it a third time, and when I did it the next twenty-one times. I lost count after that—his fault too, because I’m the kind of woman who keeps score.

  It was his fault I’d kicked in his ribs, heard that satisfying crack the instant my steel-toed boot hit vulnerable flesh. It was his fault I’d broken his fingers when he wouldn’t drop the knife. His fault I’m painting the sides of the broken street with his filth.

  Strangers passed us, looked away. People minded their own business in Aranth; ignorance was a strength here, inattention a survival trait. The passersby were smarter than my current victim. Their eyes took stock of the heavy robe I wore, the blacker-than-black piping lining the edges of my cowl. If not that, the enormous blade strapped to my back would have at least suggested to the average intelligence what my job required.

  It was one thing to intervene while a man was being beaten, but it was another thing entirely to intervene in Catseye business.

  Especially with a Catseye who’d just been stood up by her date.

  I flexed my fingers, hauled the man up by his collar. His face was an abstract mess of blood. It reminded me of those Lichtbachter paintings squirreled away in rich old Vanlersmit’s attic, where he thought no one would find them: people with faces dribbling down canvases like liquid, drawn ugly, surrounded by objects painted square when they ought to be round, by cats with beaks and fish with legs in putrid patches of color. Never understood how those hideous things sold quickly and for large amounts of cash, even after the Breaking—not that I was complaining. I wished I could package his face up and sell it like I had those old Lichtbachters, because then my day wouldn’t have gone to waste.

  Or rather, night. No such thing as day anymore. Not in Aranth.

  “Had enough?”

  A low groan was my answer.

  “Was it worth it?” I waved the book in front of his face. It was a first-edition volume of classic mythology dating back to the Golden Age, mint condition. Or it was mint condition when I bought it, before this carrion feeder tried to knife me during the brief lull between storms.

  He opened his eyes. I could see at first glance that he was one of those rare Acidsmiths, although an inept one; the patterns of Water around him were nearly nonexistent, and the fire-gates in his eyes were faint—the thin rings of color around his irises were redder than what his apparent alcoholism allowed for, but not enough to show he could use his skill. Most people were born with the capacity to see patterns and manifest gates, albeit at varying strengths, but fire-gate users were never strong enough in Aranth to do much of anything; that, plus his lack of sobriety, meant he could barely spit dirty water in my direction. He was certainly inept enough that he’d chosen a knife as his weapon of choice instead of channeling poison.

  Neither would have worked on me.

  His gaze fell on mine and widened in horror. My eyes glowed like shining glass despite the heavy gloom, one as golden as an idol and the other a pale silver. “B-bright Lady,” he stuttered.

  I grinned. “Not a lady,” I said, and let the aether-gates within my eyes flare.

  He recoiled, whimpering at the back of his throat. I knew what he was seeing, what he was thinking. I could siphon off his life, reduced him to nothing more than a skeleton and sagging flesh. I could introduce festers and sores on his body, accelerate them so that his last few days would be spent in untold agony. Assaulting a Catseye, even unsuccessfully, was punishable by death, the sanction to be carried out at our discretion.

  Instead, I healed him. I felt the bones under his skin knit quickly, the muscles firming. There was a click as his rib cage re-formed and the joints in his fingers reattached. The painful gashes on his face and arms thinned out and closed at my touch. Aether patterns seeped into his insides, finding the familiar contours of spleen, heart, and the last stages of liver decay. Corrosion at that stage required at least a good month to treat, but I scoured and cleaned the wreckage as best I could. Then I washed away his insobriety, but not the hangover he’d be suffering tomorrow, because where’s the fun in that?

  “Take some milk thistle for the next three weeks when you can find it, and for the Good Mother’s sake, find other means than ale to drown your sorrows.” I let him go.

  He scampered away on his hands and knees without another look back, until the night swallowed him up.

  I had little faith that he would take my advice, but I could hope my tough love had ensured that he would at least think twice next time. Because there was no doubt there would be a next time, and the Good Mother help him if another Catseye—or Starmaker Gracea, if he was that unlucky—became his target. People tend to hold fast to their baser natures. These days, they were the only things they had left.

  I examined my book and sighed. There was a long gash across the leather cover, slicing through the first few pages. I’d paid thirty crowns for this and three other books—penny romances I wouldn’t have been caught dead with, had Ame not enjoyed them.

  “She never even showed up, you idiot,” I grumbled aloud, still raw from the rejection, and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, careful not to remove the colored-feather pin Mistress Daliah had given me. The fight hadn’t even dislodged it.

  I resumed my trek toward the tower. Somewhere in the city, bells began to toll, signaling the final Hour of Waking. I cursed the la
teness; the goddess’s daughter would be fast asleep by now, if she and her mother weren’t still waiting up. Not a good impression for what was my first night on the job.

  Above me, houses huddled together, little sign of life within save for occasional sparks of light; glowing Air-and-Fire-patterned rushlights for those who could afford the luxury, and tiny stubs of candlelight for the less fortunate. The majority of the population were either Stormbringers, Windshifters, or Icewrights—redundant talents when you live in a storm-swept city surrounded by ever-expanding ice. Water was abundant, but food was scarce, limited to what we could catch in the seas and what little vegetation could thrive in the absence of sun.

  I quickened my pace, aiming to reach the Spire before the next storm broke in—I scanned the sky—twenty minutes, as swift as the furies and as predictable as clockwork.

  When I passed through the gates that separated the Spire from the rest of the city, I was met at the entrance by a couple of Icewrights, encased in the heavy Water-patterned armor they were expected to maintain until their shifts were over. I had argued against such idiocy; they would be weak and depleted by the end of their rounds, ripe for attack. Starmaker Gracea, however, had remained adamant—it would do good for morale, she insisted, and it would be an excellent exercise in endurance.

  But Starmaker Gracea wasn’t in the tower tonight. “Stand down,” I ordered the guards, to their obvious relief.

  The bright blue rings in their eyes faded as their water-gates closed, and their sleet-enchanted armor disappeared to reveal simple chain mail. “Thank you, Bright Lady,” one voiced his gratitude, taking in a deep breath of cold wind.

  Not a lady, I kept myself from saying, and grunted instead. “Stay alert.” I reached out to grasp them both by the arms. Patterns of aether swirled, and I focused my gate on their minor aches, cleansing them of both exhaustion and cold. “The Banishing takes place tomorrow, and nothing must be allowed to disturb the goddesses’ rest.”

  “Understood, Catseye Tianlan.” One of the men looked uncertain. “But Lady Gracea won’t be happy about this.”

  “Lady Gracea manages the Spire for Her Holiness, but I’ll be guarding the goddesses from now on. Tell the Starmaker she is free to take the matter up with me at her next visit.” I knew Gracea wouldn’t like it, but had I a habit of admitting truths to myself, I would say the opportunity to tweak her nose was partly why I did it. Instructions given, I began my climb up the spiraling tower just as the rains began.

  From my vantage point, I had a good view of the chaotic sea that the city overlooked. Wind-tossed waves the size of small ships fought one another for supremacy, while lightning flashed somewhere in the distance, accompanied by the rolling of thunder. The seas were wine-dark, the color of bitter dregs lingering at the bottom of a tavern keg. They surrounded Aranth on three of its four sides, whipping higher with every passing month. Had we settled farther east, nearer to the Great Abyss, the city would be vulnerable to the strange unearthly creatures corrupted by the breach; farther west, and no one would have survived the freezing temperatures. There was no escape from the endless cycle of night.

  Directly below us were the man-made ice floes surrounding the city; waves frozen in motion, a glacial ice wall that stopped seawater from flooding in. The constant tsunamis crashed uselessly against these walls, kept successfully at bay. But already I could see faint cracks in the glittering ice as water trickled through.

  Winter had traveled closer this year than it had the previous one; I could make out the glittering caps of ice on the horizon, creeping toward the city. The goddesses will have a harder time of it tomorrow, completing the Banishing. Past the ice was a mantle of impenetrable darkness that leached away all illumination, held at bay—barely—by the city’s meager lights. Nobody knew what lay in wait beyond it, and nobody wanted to find out.

  For a brief moment, in the spaces between the howling wind and the unending downpour, I thought I saw a shadow rise. It was a deeper color than even the darkest of Aranth’s nights, and taller than even the Spire.

  No. No no no no no no . . .

  I drew my sword and pointed its tip at the darkness, unable to steady it. I was shaking.

  It was here.

  I stood rooted to the spot, petrified, remembering. The screaming. The dying. Catseye Madi, ripped apart by clawed beings that crept out from the bowels of the world, summoned by that terrible shadow. Stormbringer Cecily, drowning in a pool of her own blood. And Nuala. Good Mother, Nuala. My team, lost in that swirl of death and darkness.

  How could something so massive get past the perimeter, past the guards—

  Choose your sacrifice, Catseye.

  No!

  I blinked again, and it was gone.

  Not real. It’s not real, Lan. Just like the other dozen times you’ve imagined this. Stop thinking. Stop thinking about—

  Nuala’s screaming face, her terrified gaze locked onto mine as misshapen hands snatched her away—

  Stop thinking about it! My skin broke out in a cold sweat, and my hands shook. Stop thinking, Lan!

  Catseye Sumiko had done her best to stopper my recollections of that ill-fated excursion into the wildlands, but the mind was trickier to cure than the body, and they bubbled back up to the surface at unexpected times.

  She wanted me to talk about it. Dedicated sessions would help me come to terms with my trauma, my shock—my guilt. Everything I’d managed to suppress since returning.

  I refused.

  I was better off forgetting.

  My sanity demanded it.

  We were the first team to enter those wildlands, tasked with finding the Abyss.

  I wanted us to be the last.

  Asteria had reassigned me to guard duty soon after. Which brought me here to the Spire.

  You’re alive, aren’t you? Be grateful and keep moving. You can’t stay weak when you’re supposed to be protecting them.

  I meditated briefly, focusing on the sea before me. I imagined myself rolling with the waves until I felt myself relaxing, until I remembered not to worry about the things beyond my control. I inhaled and exhaled noisily until the anxiety passed, until my legs started working again and my breathing didn’t sound like a panic attack. All good, I thought, feeling my heartbeat return to its normal pace. I sheathed my sword, ignoring my clammy palms. All good.

  All good.

  The inside of the tower was spacious, warmer than it looked on the outside, and by then I had left most of my panic at the door. Noelle was waiting for me with a mug of tea in one hand and a dry towel in the other, because Noe was better at her job than I ever was at mine.

  “Are they still up?” I peeled off my cowl and discarded my cloak, pretending everything was fine, like I hadn’t been hallucinating monsters on the way here. Noe took them, hung the dripping garments where they wouldn’t cause a mess. I rubbed my hands and breathed noisily against them, willing heat back into my chilled fingers.

  “I’m afraid so.” There was a note of disapproval in her voice.

  I sighed. “Not my fault I’m late. Someone tried to skewer me near Wisham’s.”

  “Most imprudent timing, milady. Her Serene Highness will not be pleased.”

  “It isn’t my fault someone wanted to knife me.”

  “Two weeks ago, you said Lord Selk was too dirty to even be spat on, and he—”

  “It isn’t my fault someone wanted to knife me this time. And have you smelled Selk? Water drowning us on all sides and he can’t spare a bath before meeting his liege? Why do you always think everything’s my fault?”

  “Stabbings have never slowed you down before.”

  “You’re a cruel woman, Noe. No consideration at all for my well-being.” I accepted the tea and gulped it down noisily, warmth blooming down my insides.

  “As you say, milady. Shall I let Her Holiness know you’ve arrived?”

  “I’ve kept them waiting long enough. And stop calling me milady. You don’t call me that on your days off.”r />
  “This is not my day off, milady.”

  I had to grin at that. “I missed you too, Noe. It’s been a while.”

  “Three months, to be more precise.” Noelle’s expression was deadpan as always, but the warmth in her tone told me everything else. “Try not to stay away for too long next time, milady.”

  I winced. “They’re not mad I’m late, are they?” Asteria wasn’t draconian about punctuality, but she’s not the type of person you want to keep waiting. And Blessed Mother, I hadn’t even met the daughter yet. Not exactly the best start to a relationship.

  “I’m sure you’ll find a good explanation for them. You’d best be going, milady.” Noelle was the tower’s redheaded steward, a no-nonsense woman with clear blue eyes unringed by gates, making her rise all the more extraordinary. She occasionally condescended to have a drink with me in one of the chintzy tea shops that passed for culture in the city; Noelle’s mother had once been a genteel woman of sorts, a lady attendant to some powerful noblewoman back when the world still sanely spun, and the teahouses reminded us of better days.

  Noelle’s job was to be a glorified domestic, which I found hilarious at first because she was fond of spiders. But we’d fought off gangs and run cons back when we were street rats without a future, and I knew she would have no qualms about doing some stabbing herself if needed—would probably know the appropriate dinner knife to use, too.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said with a groan, but took her advice. Toweling vigorously at my face, I proceeded up another flight of stairs. There was little I could do to stop looking a mess, but I combed fingers through my hair anyway, tried to wipe off as much rain and grime as I could. You’re not supposed to keep Aranth’s most important people waiting past the final Hour of Waking, and I’d already taken far too long with the drunkard and the books.

  Asteria waited for me at the next landing, and she was beautiful. If real daylight ever found its way into Aranth, the kind that was as golden as butter and warm like a mother, and wrapped itself up all graceful and purposeful like a woman, it might resemble the goddess.