Glitter + Ashes Page 20

  The dress blazed like a rough-gilded rose, pink and gold as the dawn. The only spot of darkness left was the coiled tresses crowning her head.

  “Look upon my fierceness, ye bitches, and despair!”

  Aurora snatched the black wig from her head and flung it away. Red-gold curls cascaded down her shoulders as the music shuddered to a climax and the sun finally rose on Aurora Thunder, self made whole and beautiful by that annealing flame.

  Silence.

  It stretched out long and glittering and still until someone in the crowd yelled, “Fuck me!” and loosed the floodgates. The audience went berserk.

  “Calm thy tits, you maniacs!” Our Glass fought back against the wall of sound. “Let’s see what the judges think!” He turned to the table behind him. “What have you got for us?”

  ”Ten, ten, ten, ten, ten! Dachas across the board! Ladies, gentlemen, and those who have yet to make up their minds, I think we have our winner!”

  Aurora’s smile blazed like lightning, but her gaze was fixed on a single person.

  Matron Mother Vainglory Valenziaga sat directly across the room, a small eye of calm in a sea of exultation. Her face a frozen mask, the perfect bow of her oxblood lips an uncharacteristic flat line, she stared. Virtus seized her eye and held it, neither one flinching until Matron Mother Vainglory of House Valenziaga blinked, slowly inclining her head in recognition of Aurora’s victory, the fading sun forced to bow before a bright new dawn.

  Laughter bloomed from Aurora’s lips, a blue-bright cascade of morning glories broken only by a single alabaster blossom, wry and vain. Applause thundering around her, Aurora sank into a deep curtsey. Rising, her stiletto found the vainglorious bloom, and, turning to leave the stage, ground it beneath the heel.

  The Four Sisters stand between me and the lake, towering concrete cigarettes against the setting sun. I wave to them as if they’re old friends but I’m really waving to their protectors, to show that I’m here and friendly and it’d be best for everyone if they didn’t put themselves in my giant shadow. The one and only time I had to scrape congealed guts off my boots, I had nightmares for weeks after. Picking the crushed swords and guns and bones out with tweezers was the worst. That was what made it real.

  I don’t have to wave, but I do. Decency is decency, no matter how tall you are. That’s what Nora said, back before everything fell apart. I pick through the wreck until I find the red-and-blue signal flag the Three Rivers merchants told me to look for, and I lower three hundred and six tonnes of coal onto a cracked and faded parking lot that’ll never see another car.

  “Can’t tell you how thankful we are,” says the person with the money. The sack of coins they set out for me has buying power from here to the edge of the Lakes. “We’re getting close to the bottom of the hoppers, but this’ll keep us going until the next ship puts in.”

  “Great.” The entire place already reeks of smoke and coal dust, as if someone’s trying to summon a new apocalypse. “You ever heard of a woman named Nora? About as tall my fingernail, red hair, loves swords?”

  “I don’t get out much. You could try the Friendly Get-Together, but—” They gesture to a little wooden building about as tall as my ankle. “It’d be a hard time for you to squeeze in.”

  I take a breath and imagine how much compression I’d need to duck through a door frame, and my heart races. It’s been so long since I last squeezed myself ordinary. I’d be vulnerable and too small to run away.

  “Yeah.” Back when I took the Dreadnought Oath and touched the monolith, I’d thought about the people I could help and protect. I’d thought about how I could still show Nora the love she deserved when I towered over her.

  I didn’t think about all the places I’d be far too big to go. I definitely didn’t think about everything I might lose.

  There was only so much Melody could do to make the scrapwagon quiet. Even the finest axles and smoothest bearings had to fight against the boneyard’s rough, broken roads, and it was a long time since Melody had seen anything close to fine or smooth. All those loose shards of aluminum and steel and everything else jangling together weren’t exactly symphonic, either.

  So it was more of a disappointment than a surprise when a squad of Imperial Protectors stepped out of the night, directly in Melody’s path. Their midnight armour, harsh and severe, reminded her of demons.

  “Funny meeting you in this neck of the wreck,” said the one in the center, carrying a mean-looking rifle with a bayonet made eager to cut. Melody groaned. Blaine. “I thought we went over this last time, girl. You’re not trying to dodge your contributions, are you?”

  “Give me a break, Blaine,” Melody said. “It’s scrap. Garbage. Nothing that’d make the Empress’s eyes glitter.”

  “It’s material for reconstruction,” Blaine said. “And seeing as how you perverts haven’t been putting in your share, well, there’s a lot of need.”

  “What, is rusted steel the hot new thing this week?” Melody said. “Better tell ‘em it’s bad for piercings. They’ll get infected.”

  “I’m not going to ask you again.” Blaine stepped forward. His bayonet flashed in her night vision. The men flanking him shifted into combat stances, guns at the ready. “Your contribution.”

  Her fingers twitched. It would be so easy to grasp her pistol. So quick. She’d practiced. She might even get it out of its holster before Blaine’s men made her cry blood. That way, the Empress would never be able to make her beg.

  She couldn’t do it. She let go of the scrapwagon and fell to her knees.

  “At last, common sense,” Blaine said. “Smith, McKay, secure the cart.”

  Melody watched with smouldering rage as two of Blaine’s men heaved the scrapwagon out of her reach. When its wheels squeaked and its cargo groaned, all she could hear were cries for help. Cries she couldn’t answer.

  “Thanks for your donation,” Blaine said, once the scrapwagon was well out of reach. “Remind your deviant friends.”

  It would have been so easy to shoot him in the back as he left. One practiced motion, one squeeze, one problem solved forever. It might even be worth dying for. It wasn’t as if she was worth much, after all.

  Instead she sank to the ground, empty-handed and small.

  One thing they never told me about becoming a giant is that your nightmares get that much bigger. The stars say it’s about four in the morning. I’ve got a sense for that now. Not like when I was small, when I still had luxuries like beds and doors and roofs and love.

  “Fuck,” I grumble. I stretch and shift, looking for some modicum of comfort on the little rubble-strewn meadow, and that’s when I hear the murmuring voices. In the moonlight I find a pair of bedbugs who weren’t smart enough to run back home the instant I started moving.

  “Shortage at the blood bank?” The bedbugs drop their little improvised syringe—more of a scraper, really—when they realize I’m talking to them. So many people forget I’m not a curvier-than-usual mountain. “Lucky for you I’m O negative.”

  The bedbugs fall over each other as they scurry off. Men like that, and they’re always men, are full of piss and vinegar when they think there won’t be a lick of danger, but when danger licks its lips they’re the first to run.

  I toss and turn, but I don’t find any more sleep before sunrise makes it impossible. I’ve heard talk of a few settlements sheltering beneath the old city’s bones, and Nora could have visited any of them. If it turns out she hasn’t, at least my list gets that much shorter.

  One inescapable truth of life is that people tend to get helpful once you do things for them, and one inescapable truth of being a giant is that there’s a lot of things I can do for people. Between hauling, clearing, and heavy lifting, I can make a settlement’s day pretty quick. After I spend a few hours decluttering the roads in Streetstown, with a name like that, you’d think they’d have managed without me—one of the braver locals points me toward a community down by the lakeshore, in an old railyard not far from the
Four Sisters.

  “They get a lot of people coming and going,” the local says. “It’s that kind of place. Even if they are a bunch of disgusting deviants.”

  “Excuse me?” One thing they did tell me about becoming a giant is that you don’t have to take any bullshit. “Sorry, I was too busy being a big giant lesbian to hear you. Care to repeat that?”

  I smile, really wide. I let the little guy see my teeth. It’s the sort of message that’s hard to misread.

  “They...they get a lot of people coming and going,” the local says. “Lots of variety.”

  “Is that so?” After this I’m sure I won’t be welcome in Streetstown again, but there are plenty of wrecked cities. “Thanks for the hint, and don’t forget, be kind to each other. The world’s not going to do it for us.”

  The city’s one of the old suburbs, built for space and speed and assumption that everyone in the world wanted their own little cardboard castle, and so there are plenty of roads big enough to fit my feet and then some. I can’t imagine what the builders were thinking. For an ordinary-sized person they’d be asphalt rivers. Every once in a while I set off mines with little frumps meant to blast legs off. They don’t even break my skin. Public service.

  The railyard’s the biggest clear space I’ve seen in ages. No trees, no greenery, just expanses of track gone to wreck on gravel beds. Here and there, old train cars quietly rust where they sat the day the world went askew. I see a riot of cloth ceilings strung up around a long, low building. That must be where everyone’s hanging out. I’ve seen villages built inside everything from shopping malls to shipping containers.

  At first there isn’t much to grab my attention, and then I see it. A mural covering the side of a shipping container with smooth, bold lines, bright colours, and soaring birds. It’s hope for the future done in brushstrokes. Nora’s work, certain and sure.

  The world deserves brightness, I hear Nora say, or at least a dream of her. Reality is dark enough. It’s my responsibility to add some light.

  I step over a long, low perimeter wall and hear alarms go off as if it’s someone else’s problem. Murals can take a while to paint, and this one doesn’t look too weathered. Maybe she only left recently. Maybe there are people who know where she went. I don’t let myself hope that she’s still here.

  Shouts rise to accompany the alarms, but I’m careful where I put my feet and kneel in front of the mural. My eyesight’s keen, but I’m too big to pick out the signature. I bite my lip and take a breath. I could always keep doing what I’ve been doing, after all. Wandering from ruin to ruin, sleeping in rubble fields, following dim hopes until it gets too dark to see.

  I close my eyes and take another breath. I don’t have to compress myself much. I can make myself just small enough to get a good look at the mural while still standing tall. It’ll be good to flex those muscles again. Never know when I’ll need to squeeze into tight quarters, after all.

  I summon my energy, focus my abilities the way the dreadnought captains taught me, and force myself small. Slow, steady, careful. Until I feel a surge of energy that envelops me, seizes me, squeezes me down.

  My feet never leave the ground, but I fall just the same.

  Melody was halfway through organizing the parts for a new scrapwagon chassis when the alarm shattered the world. Not the bone-chilling rise-and-fall of an attack warning, but she’d learned there were no good alarms. That was one of the things Samantha had made sure Melody learned when she was inducted into the community. It had been a rise-and-fall alarm that had broken their nighttime embrace, and it had been by the dying tones of that alarm that Melody had found the only woman that had ever loved her slumped dead against a wall, clutching her rifle close, as if an instrument of death could save her life.

  Back in the home she’d abandoned, people would destroy such an obviously cursed object. Here in the boneyard, things were different. Besides, when she cradled it, she could feel Samantha’s warmth. She kissed the rifle’s wooden stock, swept it from its rack, and charged out to answer the call.

  “So, she finally makes an appearance!” Sylvia-Three might as well have been waiting at Melody’s door to see if she’d ignore the bell. “And not melting in the sunlight after all. Looks like I’m gonna be five chits richer.”

  “Someone’s gotta bring in the scrap,” Melody said. “Or the walls’ll get hard as hell to patch.”

  “I don’t know how you handle it, spending all that time in the dark.” Sylvia-Three didn’t bother to hide her shudder. “All the worst people come out when it’s dark.”

  “Night vision goggles.” Melody tapped her temple. “They can’t hide from me.”

  She didn’t bother to mention Blaine and the Imperial Protectors. She knew the only reason they hadn’t stolen her goggles as well as her scrap was that only desperate farmers killed the cow.

  “So, any idea what the problem—” Melody’s question died in her throat as she got out from under the roof and saw the giant woman. When she leaned back for a better look, her legs kept going and sent her falling back into the dirt, eyes open and mouth agape. She’d seen pictures and heard stories of the skyscrapers they’d built in the old days, and this woman looked like she could knock a skyscraper over with the flick of a finger. Concentrated magic poured off her titanic body, electrifying every strand of hair Melody had.

  “Holy wow,” Melody said. “Wow.”

  She picked herself up and holstered Samantha’s rifle—no way would it be anything more than a pinprick to a lady like that—before charging toward the giant woman. No one, she noticed, was following her. Maybe they were waiting to see if she’d get squashed like a bug.

  “Hey!” Melody shouted. “Hello! Down here!”

  The giant woman didn’t look at her. Her gaze was locked on the Calmness Wall, until she kneeled in front of it with eyes closed as if she’d come to worship. Then, without even so much as a sound, the giant woman shrank and kept shrinking as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. When Melody found her curled up on the ground, the once-giant woman was smaller than she was.

  “Damn,” Melody said, half to herself. “Hey there. Are you okay?”

  The no-longer-giant woman groaned and stirred, sluggishly until she caught sight of Melody. Then her eyes went wide and she scrambled backward.

  “Oh no,” she said. “This can’t be happening. It can’t.”

  “I’m afraid it is, whatever it is.” Melody crouched down and gave what she hoped was a friendly gesture. She couldn’t place the woman’s accent, but it didn’t sound too far from familiar. “My name’s Melody. What’s yours?”

  “Grace.” Her voice was flat, with no emotion behind it. She looked at her hands, the ground, and the sky. “Oh, goddess, I’m tiny.”

  “That’s a matter of perspective.” Melody offered her hand. “It’s good to meet you, Grace. What brings you to the Railyard?”

  “That painting over there.” Grace gestured at the Calmness Wall. Her whole face was alight with hope and she spoke quietly, as if a shout would shatter the world. “Do you know where the painter is?”

  “No idea,” Melody said, and Grace’s gaze fell. “That doesn’t mean no one does, though! We get lots of wanderers here. Someone must know.”

  Grace looked at Melody’s hand, then at the crowd running toward them both, now that there was no threat of anyone getting crushed underfoot.

  “I’ve already screwed things up,” Grace said. Fear boiled inside her, enough that Melody could feel its heat. “What’s going to happen now?”

  “I don’t know,” Melody said. “But I know a good way to find out.”

  Grace bit her lip and took Melody’s hand. Her skin was smoother than Melody had expected. There couldn’t have been many giants wandering through the wreck of the world—how long had it been since she’d touched anyone like this?

  “Welcome to the Railyard,” Melody said in the seconds before the crowd swept over them. “It’ll all be fine.”

  T
here’s no way it can be fine. How could it possibly be fine? I’ve forgotten so much about the terror of being tiny. What if I’ve lost control? What if I’ve locked myself small? A few minutes ago the railyard was clean and organized and understandable, and now it’s full of dust and dirt and it’s all around me and there are so many walls and bushes and tumbledown wrecks and they’re so close, I’m so exposed, I can’t see—

  Don’t be like this. Nora’s voice, echoing inside my skull. The fragment of her I’ve managed to hold on to through everything. You’re better than this. Be strong. Be the woman I loved.

  “Everything all right?” Melody asks. I can’t get over the patina of dust on her face and the grease stains on her overalls. Before, people were too small for me to linger on details like that. “Need a minute?”

  “I’m fine.” I can almost believe it myself. I force myself to be calm, so I don’t have to think about what’ll happen if my worries are real and all the rest of my minutes are this tiny, this compressed. “Where are we going?”

  “To meet Elder Jennifer,” Melody says. “She’ll know what to do.”

  Melody leads me to an old train car shaped like a squashed octagon, with a few die-hard flakes of green paint hanging on. Cloth awnings hang over the doors, and most of the windows are shaded. I put one foot on the wooden steps inside, and I freeze. Before, when I slept in old hangars or barns or warehouses, the walls were never stronger than me. Now I’m tiny enough for walls to trap me.

  “Are you okay?” It’s Melody. From a thousand miles away, underwater. I gasp for breath but there’s not enough air. I want to scream but my lungs are empty. I fall for real this time, dash my palms against the ground. Hard gravel. There are scratches, but no blood yet. I make a noise, a long, low note that encapsulates all my fear.

  I hear new voices. Muddled, distant. Then Melody. “—like a panic—” I’m being crushed, I’m being squeezed, I’ll keep shrinking until they’re all giants, then the pebbles, then—someone’s squeezing my hand. Warmth, presence, connection. It’s been years. I’d forgotten what it felt like. I force my eyes open and there’s Melody, my hand in hers, her gaze meeting mine.