“Long journeys start with small steps, Shkyna.”
“And slow journeys may end in disaster.” Ishkyna pulled on her coat for the cold walk above. “Best you quicken your step.”
Dawn had yet to break when Atiana rode through the streets of Baressa with the strelet, Irkadiy. He was a logical choice for her escort; he had already been trusted once with her protection and the knowledge of her mission in the cemetery. He was a crack shot with a musket, and the best huntsman and tracker in Galostina. Best of all, he knew the area. He’d spent many summers here as a youth, visiting his family on his mother’s side. He still took dinner with many of them when he could, and raised glasses with old friends besides. It gave Atiana a sense of comfort that she had someone that knew not just the lay of the land, but the people as well.
Irkadiy rode a healthy black gelding and wore the garb of a Galaheshi merchantman-a round turban and billowing coat and brown woolen pants with black boots that stopped halfway up his shins. His musket was slung in a holster affixed to the saddle. It was behind his left leg, mostly hidden, especially from someone viewing them from the front.
Atiana rode a pretty roan mare. Her garb was that of a merchantman’s wife-an ornamented headdress with a yellow veil that hid her face. The dress she wore was intricately embroidered velvet with ermine accents. It was rich clothing, to be sure, but not so rich that it would mark her as a noblewoman.
The streets near the Mount were nearly empty, giving the city much the same feel as the cemetery, but as they approached the famed Baressan market, more and more people populated the streets, most of them with small carts or wagons clattering along to set up their stalls for the coming day. Some eyed Atiana and Irkadiy, but most bowed their heads in greeting, and those that didn’t took little notice.
Not far beyond the market, the cobbled street they rode along ended abruptly. Ahead there was little more than a curved edge to the street and a strip of green land before the straits opened up before them. They turned left and headed up the street toward the Spar.
Atiana had heard stories of, but was still surprised to see, especially at this hour, a long line of merchantmen and landsmen waiting to cross the water. Goods were heading out from Baressa to Ramina, the port city on the northern end of the island. They would typically be bearing goods meant for windships bound for Oramka or the Empire proper. They waited their turn, and eventually came to the front of the line, just before the pulley houses, where the tariff master asked them questions about their destination and their purpose. He saw them as easy pickings, which was what Atiana had been hoping for. The more he felt they were a normal part of his day, the more quickly they’d be forgotten.
They managed to gain passage while losing only a handful of coins, but the way the master watched Atiana as Irkadiy paid him was unsettling.
Seven pulley houses stood at the edge of the cliffs. They were built outward into the air over the cliff such that strong ropes could be lowered below them. Outside of each were massive capstans, each with eight or more mules harnessed to them. The pulley masters called “Hiyah!” and whipped the ponies when it was time, and the ponies trudged, causing the ropes that ran above them and into the pulley houses to turn and force the inner workings to raise or lower the wooden cage that contained either cargo or people.
Atiana and Irkadiy were led to the third pulley house, one of the smaller ones meant for a handful of people.
The pulley master approached Irkadiy and held out two burlap cloths with ropes tied to them. “Blinders, for the ponies.” He stared at Atiana and smiled, revealing teeth stained brown by tabbaq. “You can wear one, too, if you like.” He laughed at that, but stopped when Irkadiy waved him away.
“They’re good climbing ponies,” Irkadiy said.
“Good or not, put them on. If they’re not used to it, they’ll be skittish. They won’t enjoy it, and neither will you if you’re caught in the cage without these.” He waggled the bags again.
Irkadiy accepted them with a nod and put one over each pony’s head so that their eyes were covered. Only then did the pulley master swing open the large door, and allow them into the cage. The cage swung slightly as they stepped onto it, giving Atiana a strange feeling-as if she were stepping onto a small waterborne ferry.
Her pony stamped her hooves loudly and threw her head back, perhaps trying to knock the mask from her eyes, but Irkadiy took the reins and ran his hand along her neck and spoke into the pony’s ear softly until she calmed down.
The doors came closed with a creak and a bang. A bell was rung, the massive ropes and pulleys began to turn, and then they were headed down and out into open air.
Atiana had ridden in dozens of windships and yachts and skiffs. She’d been a passenger on a waterborne ship a handful of times. She had never been bothered by them, even while she was sleeping in a cabin, unable to see much of the outside world. But riding in this contraption made her stomach churn. It felt as though the rope would snap at any moment. The cage itself was little more than four wooden fences, head-high, built onto a wooden platform. The platform seemed fragile, as though her feet, or their ponies’, might crash through at any moment.
When it happened-and she was sure it would-they would plummet and buffet against the ivory cliff before plowing into the lower pulley house in the split second before their deaths.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, moving to the edge of the cage if only to pretend she was standing on the deck of a windship.
To her right, two more sets of pulleys were drawing their cages up, or perhaps down. She wasn’t sure; she couldn’t see either of the cages yet. To her left four more moved, their cables swaying gently in the wind. As they neared what she judged as the halfway point, she saw a crowd of people packed like fish into a single cage-there must have been thirty of them, rising up along the cliff. Most of them wore the simple clothes of workmen. Nearly all of them took it as easily as taking a stroll, but one young man near the corner watched Atiana with a look of barely concealed terror. The two of them watched one another silently-one rising, the other falling-until he’d passed out of sight.
She had wanted to study the Spar on their descent, but she found herself unable to. She could focus on nothing but reaching the bottom. Her foot began to tap of its own free will.
“My Lady, please,” Irkadiy said. “You’re making them nervous.” He was standing at the reins of her pony, rubbing her neck, staring at Atiana’s foot.
Atiana had to concentrate to stop it, but that just made her fears resurface.
Ponies be damned. If she wanted to tap her foot, she was bloody well going to.
Only after they had finally landed and boarded the large ferry did the terror leave her. She and Irkadiy shared the deck with dozens of others, a handful of ponies, and twenty cords of wood. She stood at the bulwarks, staring up at the bridge as the ferry’s drum beat time and the twelve oars below her cut into the blue-green water.
“Can they have built the Spar in only four years?” Atiana asked Irkadiy.
“It doesn’t seem possible,” he said.
Far above, dozens of Aramahn stonemasons were moving along the bridge and the supports beneath the open section that had yet to be joined. It was stout, and massive, and yet Atiana couldn’t get the notion out of her head that after a surge of tide water below or a squall above, it would all topple into the sea.
“I saw it in the dark,” she said.
“And what did you see?”
“An edifice. A structure every bit as impressive as what we see before us.”
“It’s nothing more than a bridge, My Lady.”
“If you could see the world through my eyes you would not say such things. This is a place that has been anathema to the Matri for centuries. To have it spanned so, and in such a short amount of time, smacks of hubris.”
Irkadiy snorted. “The line of the Kamarisi is nothing if not proud, My Lady.”
Atiana shook her head. “I speak not of Hakan, but the Lady Arvaneh.”
They made it to the other side of the straits, passing two ferries as they did so, and they gained the top of the cliffs after another harrowing ride-though Atiana had to admit that it wasn’t so bad as the first.
It was freeing to move beyond the straits and into Vihrosh, Baressa’s smaller sister that stood on the northern side of the straits. It was much smaller than Baressa. An eighth-league beyond the cliffs and it was little more than a village. They were through it and into the hills beyond well before the sun had reached high noon.
The land sloped downward beyond Vihrosh. They made good time, passing into the lowlands and into the
