CHAPTER 26

  Sleep held no sleep, or at least no rest. He opened his eyes to the soft sunlight through his window and it was as if he'd just blinked. No sense of a barrier, of one day split from the next. It was all one misery now. His last haven razed.

  Movement but no depth. Brushed teeth, clothes changed. A grunt to Sarge as Ran passed him in the hall. Nothing stuck, really. Nothing was important enough to stick.

  "Gone?” Ran held the trash bag’s mouth wide as the world finally settled around him.

  "Left at dawn,” Kiyo sighed. Such a sweet thing, Rina. Only known her two days and I miss her. Doing all that work for us, and Nail too. Better Given than most. Ran muster have done something. for Kiyo said. "Sweetie, are you ok?”

  Ran lied with a nod.

  "Sleep ok? You got in real late last night.”

  "Yeah, it was ok.”

  Kiyo looked into his eyes. "I don’t buy this. Did Urba help you? If I have to, I’ll take hostages to get in to see Word Ferapa.”

  Ran shivered. "I’m ok, Kiyo.”

  Still she stared.

  "I promise.”

  Kiyo pursed her lips, "You can always tell me the truth, kiddo. I'll always help as much as I can.”

  "I know,” Ran shifted his feet. "Can I take the trash out now?” She smiled, nodded, so he turned and walked out the backdoor and straight into Sarge. The big man was in the middle of adjusting a scarlet tie. They were all decked out in their best Given red.

  "Geez. Seen your brother? I do not like this pink handkerchief,” he pushed the thing deeper into his pocket.

  Tek had avoided him all day. "He was out front with Nail last I saw.”

  Sarge frowned, "Hold up, the Rockman’s coming to Gift with us?”

  Ran shrugged.

  "Kiln comin'’,” Sarge chuckled. "Given joke for Gift. Hurry with the trash, we gotta move.”

  Get through today, Ran thought as Kiyo squealed with pleasure at her husband’s appearance. Day by day, he thought as he reached the dumpster. Day by day I’ll learn to live with it. He tossed the bag in. If I live. Will Pilgrim do it? Of course. Why? Me? Why would he ever do anything for me?

  He turned into sunshine and yellow eyes. So close. Ran stumbled back into the dumpster, and as it rocked back closed the lid nearly bit off the back of his head.

  "Kinda jumpy,” said Pym. She wore a pink sundress with red fringe and piping around her shoulders and waist, a small ruby coat covering her torso and arms.

  "Vision.”

  "What?”

  "Buh-hey, Pym! I meant to come find you yesterday.”

  Pym narrowed her creamy golden eyes through loose strands of unbelievably free hair. She smiled.

  He must speak or die. "I got your letter.”

  Still she only smiled.

  "Um, how are ya? You look . .healthy.” Existential crises be damned. He’d trade all the depression in the world to shut up.

  Pym tilted her head down, stared at her shoes. Her eyes flitted back up. "Amazing.” She took a deep breath. "I know what I want. Finally, I know what I want.” Her eyes darted between his, like she was trying to read him.

  "That’s--”

  Before he could finish, Pym began continued. "It’s hard though, right?. So hard. So many choices. You ever want something that you’d do anything for? I mean, anything? I thought I knew what that was like already.” She blinked. "That’s why I started scavenging, I mean. To save something up. Something to get free of this,” she gestured all around them, "this shitmaw.” Her eyes watered.

  Ran saw more purple and black splotches lacing both arms, even close to her neck. With an unusually clear mind, Ran said, "Pym, are you ok?”

  "What? Oh," she wiped the water from one eye. "No. I mean, I really did, but not now. I was so wrong. Now I want something unlike everything I thought I wanted. I mean, I’ve never liked any boys. Not a one. It’s like whiplash. I can’t take it. It’s making me sick. That’s why I wrote the letter.”

  "Pym. . ."

  "Have you ever felt completely out of place? Like you're separated from everyone and everything else to such a degree that even when everyone’s pressed around you, a great big sweating pile of flesh, thousands and thousands and thousands, yet you still feel all by yourself?”

  "Pym.”

  She seemed to just now realize she'd been holding out wide all this time, followed his eyes, then pulled them in, hugging herself. She seemed to shrivel.

  "Pym," gone was any wanton desire, now replaced by concern for a friend, "are you ok? Do you need help?”

  The question fired something inside her, and she scowled. Tek always said she had a bad temper. That she was loath to give up any find even if wailers were close, but he'd never seen it. "Help?” She hugged herself tighter, breathing. "I. . .hate this place, Ran.”

  Ran nodded. "We can talk to Ki--”

  "Answer my question!”

  "What?

  "You don’t feel right with these. . .these. . .people, either. Do you?”

  "I. . .” Ran rocked back on his heels. "Yeah.”

  "That’s why we’re friends. Why we became friends. We don’t fit here. Neither of us. We’re both strangers. I’m tired of being alone. I want someone to know me. Understand me. Yesterday, when I saw that, that, woman, and all these new people around, I got scared.” She stepped forward and before he knew it she had taken his hand.

  A strong sensation of pushing and pulling came over Ran, and he suddenly felt like he’d swallowed a hair.

  Pym misread this as nerves. "I just want to talk for a few minutes. Maybe we can take a walk--"

  "Ran!” Sarge bellowed from the front.

  "We’ll talk. . .” Was this true happiness? Ragdoll in the wind? Again, Sarge called. "We’ll right on talking, er after. . .” he began to step around her, scared to let go of her hand, scared to keep touching her.

  She blocked him. "Shaking Heir, I’ve just poured my shaking heart out to you. I think you can manage a few shaking seconds.”

  "I want to talk, it’s just, I have other stuff I have to do first.”

  "Like what? Gift? Just tell them you’ll meet them at Central.”

  "I can’t.”

  "RAN!” Kiyo managed to be louder than her husband. "MOVE!”

  "Did you mean what you said to me or not?”

  "RAN!”

  "Just wait!” Ran finally yelled. "Dammit!”

  Pym flushed so red it matched her shoes.

  "EXCUSE ME?!” Kiyo sounded as if any moment she would claw her way over the fence.

  "Sorry. Give me a second, Kiyo. I stubbed my foot!” He flipped the lid on the dumpster. Kicked it. Stupid day of the dumpster. Stupid. Sorry!”

  "Hurry then!"

  Ran stared at his hand, knowing what this was and wasn’t. Even as he loved Pym, this was but a crush. A rare crush that had cut in his direction, sure. But he had other problems first.

  Why did it feel like something more? Not a choice, but a choice? A branch in the road.

  "Pym,” he said, "you broken?”

  Not even a blink. "Yes. Rokk, yes!”

  "Does it get any easier?”

  She frowned, clearly not understanding.

  "Will I ever feel right?” He swallowed, "Again?”

  Pym smiled, but there was a gloom in her eyes. "I knew we were the same.”

  Ran took a deep breath, "I want to go with you. If I had my way, I’d get out of the whole shaking city.” Pulling, pushing, like his core could be hauled down deep into the Nameless and smothered. "I can’t do it now.”

  Pym closed her eyes. . .

  "I have something I have to do first.”

  Her crimson lips squeezed into a line.

  "We’ll meet tonight, to talk about it. How’s that? I’ll show you I’m serious.”

  Pym shook her head, seemed about to cry.

  "Look, I mean it! Pym, I feel alone. I feel nameless. You have no idea how many nights I’ve cried myself to sleep. I mean it! I’ve never told that to anyone. Not even Tek. I don’t belong here. I hate it! I don’t even know what I mean when I say that! Any of it.”

  The girl he loved trembled.

  "Remember that day you and Tek took me outside the walls? We’ll meet tonight. It’s close enough that I can get there quick, even though its after dark and Kiyo’s already mad at me for last night--"

  Pym kissed him. A peck, but still, the mouth's the mouth.

  She whispered into his ear, but his brain was over.

  "RAN!”

  -------------------------------

  He rubbed at his lips, grafting the gift to memory.

  But Central was truly a different place on Gift. The sky above the murmuring crowd of Given was filled with giant red banners, balloons and sashes that draped out from each Canton across to the other two. The cloudless sky allowed the perky sun to sprinkle down through the canopy so that everything on the ground was overlaid in shades of red and pink. Stalls on the outskirts of the crowd sold bags of peppermints -- Nail and Tek availed themselves -- cinnamon rolls with drizzled, pink frosting, and sweet fizzing drinks. Songs were taken up sporadically by the crowd, carried for a time, and as randomly dropped, only for another.

  Were it not for crippling depression overlain with unspeakable dread following directly on the heels of the best thing that had ever happened to him, it coulda been fun maybe.

  He was tired of standing, though. It had been nearly an hour since they’d arrived, and his feet were rejecting his blocky dress shoes. He and his family were close enough they could see the risen platform the three Words would take at any moment, but far enough away that Ran was confident he wouldn’t be seen.

  Nail, misunderstanding his fidgets, said, "She’s a pretty little thing, lad. I understand why you’re looking for her.” The Rockman and Tek, sent by Kiyo, had both watched a blushing Pym emerge from the alley before him. She gave Tek a lollipop and kiss on the cheek, and then sprinted off.

  Tek snickered. Ran nudged him, Tek nudged back, Kiyo frowned, and they both snickered. Ran sighed. The kid didn’t hate him, so that was good.

  Then he saw Ferapa.

  The Words, led by Ferapa, each glittering scarlet stars in special robes, climbed the platform to the resounding cheers of the city. Ferapa’s brilliant white smile sparkled to life on every screen around them great and small, and was a nightmare to Ran.

  Ferapa waved, Urba scowled, small Heracla stared up into the flowing ribbons above and clutched his triangle hat just as it fell.

  They spoke in turns about the fleeing of the three estates from Olde Honour and Ovon, setting their faces to free and open set; of the discovered valley and founding of the Given city atop its highest hill. Peace. . .until the Firsts, who were mere narokk bandits from rise.

  Historically it was prattle. Ran knew First was almost as old as Wordheal. Many valued and impressive historians, Given all, gave many evidences that the same group of rise refugees founded both cities after a sundering.

  "Is it always so,” Nail sucked on a peppermint as he spoke, "dramatic in estate? I was given to understand Gift as a peaceful, reflective time.” He looked sidelong at the Given who, with increasing rapidity and ferocity, booed and hissed at every mention of the hateful city.

  Tek also sucked on a peppermint, and shook his head. "This is usually Founderday stuff.”

  But each moment began to wear on Ran, and fear began a slow crawl across his insides. He need only look at the great digital clock to know why. The Words had been speaking for nearly an hour.

  Where was he?

  Ran began to count backward from one hundred, as Kiyo had once suggested, but this only made the seconds each a long dagger, stabbing to his hearbeat. Faster than his heartbeat.

  "Boy?” Sarge whispered into his ear, his strong hand gripping Ran’s shoulder, "you alright?"

  Ran could only smile.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Sarge nodded to the stage as one of the Words, he couldn’t say which, shot off a list of Given-speak in-words: "inheritance,” and "insurgent,” and "bloodvomit” etc. etc. "Big-talk used to overwhelm me when I first got here, and I’m not smart like you. Just pretend to be simple for a minute it doesn't feel so big.”

  "You’re not simple.”

  Sarge grinned. "Don’t worry, just a little more standing and listening and we’ll be home.” Sarge patted his head.

  Though he knew not the stakes, Ran was heartened by these words, and so stood straighter, if only for a moment, for the wisdom that Ferapa couldn't cow everyone.

  Then saw Missy a few heads up and to the left. She brushed her braided hair back with a quick jerk of her neck just long enough for Ran to see a gleaming black eye. Was that why she’d not been to work? She twisted her neck once, twice, seemed to bat at something near her head that he couldn't see only to look down at her hand in confusion. Ran wondered if Kiyo’d seen her.

  "Fritz,” Ran turned at the sound of Nail’s rumble. The tall, chestnut-haired rokkae of a woman from breakfast the day before was standing right behind him. When did that shit happen?

  Fritz nodded. "Nail.”

  Her presence, confidence without measure, strength unbounded, gorgeously pale. . .skin. . .was so familiar. She gave him a breathtaking green-eyed smile-and-wink when she caught him staring, and so he turned with a burning face back to Urba’s tedious, comatose voice, made worse by the shrill whine of mic feedback.

  He thought then he saw Pym, but it was just some other blonde hurrying through the crowd. Should he feel guilty?

  He slapped himself. More important things right now.

  Green-eye. . . so familiar.

  Nameless.

  It wasn't possible. Not now.

  The cycle of words barely thought ran, one after the other, Vanity. Meaningless. Alone. Alone. Alone. Alone.

  He would start gasping soon. Never had this happened. Gasping in a crowd. Screaming after that.

  It can't get worse, he thought. It can't it can't it can't.

  -----------------------------------------

  It was getting worse. Why? She couldn’t say.

  Danger, the air whispered to Rina. Something was wrong. Something bad was happening.

  She’d the perfect vantage point: three hundred and sixty degrees, hundreds of feet in the air, perched on one of the hundreds of lines connected the buildings, down from which flowed the endless red tatters. But little shine to shore up her balance and conceal herself.

  She ran the sea of biodata. Big anomalies, she thought. Too many, too much to find anything more specific. All across the crowd she spotted random biochemical events: cortisol rushing, adrenaline spikes, rising blood pressures, blood rerouted to muscles in great pulses. . . anger. More than that: rage. Lots of it. Building. Every bit of it was incongruous with the situation. Every bit made no sense.

  Why?

  Her eyes circled from Ran and out across the crowd and back again. Danger, dummy. No matter how hard she tried to ignore the data, she couldn’t suppress her instinct. Maim would have loved it. Gam would have punished her with another book by weeks end.

  Nail and Fritz stood near the boy, and that wasn’t good, as it solidified her growing suspicions of both. Crazy, and stupid. Even I couldn’t sense the kid without touching him, and that was an accident! Sensory shiners of her ability and delicacy were a rare thing in an already rare world, if all Gam had forced her to study was to be believed.

  Further, the idea that three shiners just happened across one another in this cesspool--she looked at the banners in the warm light--fine, pretty cesspool--stretched the limits of credulity. Instead of scrutinizing them, analyzing them, she’d painted with them, debated them. . .

  Her finger tapped Doe’s hilt and Rina tried to forge a plan.

  Wisdom, she called to her Rokk, please.

  "The mistaken and dangerous assumptions of a barbarous people?”

  Rina stopped, looked down at the word speaking now.

  "In their childish, rokkish naivety,” the ugly, hawk-faced man contined, "the Sebi are little better than Ligan. Obsessed with rokkae who think and act and look like psychotic, tribal, men. Primitives, all.”

  Only the creaking of her tightening fist around Doe's leather hilt brought her again to reason. The deep continents of her blue gauge growled as Rina, for the first time in a long time, strained to keep them from erupting.

  What did these people know? This Given fool know about the screaming, marauding, rapacious sea-killers who ate the roasted meat of man and and threw babies in pools and coves to either drown or be ripped to pieces by sharks?

  Ligan like Sebi? Like Sebi? The same as Sebi. . .

  Her gauge growled.

  -----------------------------------------

  E cocked her head and flashed a grin as this Urba guy absolutely torched the Sebi. How little it took to make the rokkists turn on one another.

  Had not been expecting so much vitriol, though. So much like Wag’s. Don’t they share the same stupid book?

  What was she thinking about? Grabbing the kid at the perfect moment was all that mattered

  She looked at the boy’s parents, the other kid. Kiyo’s worked herself to exhaustion at the shelter. The kid too. The man, Sarge, had his big hand on Ran’s shoulder. Whatever he’d said to the kid had made him stand straighter. Guilt spilt her light lightening.

  Maybe he ain’t it. But so what? If Ran wasn’t the shiner, after she cleared him, she’d bring him back. No harm, no foul. Sweet kid, she thought. Can’t look at me without blushing. E flexed a fist.

  Shine. Someone used shine behind her., somewhere. Only a bit, only a moment.

  In her wildest dreams she couldn't tell how far. Had Nail flinched? Did that shaker just flinch?! For that matter, had she flinched? Had he seen her flinch? Damn. Damn. Damn.

  "The Firsts adore suffering for their evil, this I truly believe,” the one called Ferapa said. Some people hooted at this, others clapped, whistled. "Tezm’s razing should have taught them something. No, Given! They are more proud in insurgency today. A thousand Tezms, were we so lucky, couldn’t correct them. Even still, narokk blood will fill this valley one day. And as their trash-city crumbles around them, we’ll laugh. We, the Given of Wordheal, will laugh from behind the safety of these, our walls! Truly are the Firsts called 'Broken." Because Rokk will beat and squeeze and and shred them until they break! To pieces, will they break.”

  Strauss’ head cracked like an egg. Splayed out. Cut open like a pig. Tezmite soldiers laughing. The Given around her laughing.

  E did not feel.

  ---------------------------------------

  Nail had no issue with narokk punishment, in principal. He knew nothing of Tezm save what Sarge had said, and that was enough for Nail to be glad the place gone. The wicked ought to be punished. Weakness, stupidity, forgetfulness, rebellion, all must be corrected. The Speech and the Mate’s Notes, spoke at length on dry death, the husk existence, the Given's 'maw.’ Nail shuddered.

  This glee however. . .

  Ferapa continued his rant, for rant it was, as Nail sensed no themes or form to any of the Words talk, the crowd actually began to growl responses. A pithy verse carried about Nail, almost mocking of the happy ones they'd arrived to:

  Cheer and laugh,

  As they die,

  Meat all in a pile,

  More room for I.

  Poor poetry that almost offended. Only Amalric, thought he, Amalric Childkiller, the Innocentblood, that they follow in fire disguised as a man, that. . . Nail shook his head. Only Amalric had he ever hated thus, but according to Sarge Wordheal and First had never, truly, declared war. Only skirmishes here and there. Whence this almost palpable bloodlust, then?

  Nail adjusted his mantle, re-wrapping it carefully around his arm. Copulators. Even Pilgrim, possibly, paradoxically, the craftiest Given Nail had ever met, had failed to make the Gift intelligible. There is almost no good in trying to understand them.

  Simple sentimentality. Weeping like wellwomen. That’s why the Foolmen don’t, had never, respected the Given. Given think too little of man. One and Only had made analytical beings. The Rock makes sense; the Gift does not. We take responsibility, they don’t.

  "So, too, is the rest of Nameless broken,” said the small fat one. "Rockmen, who live in holes like rats; oh I'm usually not so combatgive, but how often have they attacked the glorious Millenislands? With Sebi and the narokks they are Broken. We are Given because Rokk-before-the-Pillars made us so. Made us better. Not because of eye color or any other such thing,” there were boos at this, "but because we are. Rokk loves us so that he could not help but make us so. We are Given, the greatest gifts are ourselves!”

  This is just the same arrogance I have always seen from Given. Pity.

  Muscles tensed. Shine vibrated around Nail in gasps, and his sun wanted to burst cascading flares in response. This he calmed. An attack! He’d hoped he’d have more time to study Ran, to better plan his next move. His enemy, apparently, had no intentions of allowing this.

  As if it mattered, Nail Starson was nothing if not resourceful.

  ----------------------------------------

  "And now,” Ferapa’s bellow came so suddenly that the crowd, indeed even Heracla, started, "my Given, it's time for us to give you a gift for this Gift. One thousand-five-hundred-and-nine Gifts within these mighty walls calls for a treat.”.

  The waves of chatter, of questioning throughout the crowd were but the chittering voices of legion they follow silent or else the dead and gone from Old Nesgoh tales to Ran. His heartbeat echoed through his head and down into Nameless.

  This was it.

  Ferapa let the city stew a moment, and said, "My own gift this Gift. A single man who has taken the Gift to more men than any since Letter at the very foundation of Estate.” His grin widened. "We’ve all heard his stories. Exotic cities, formidable perils, savages and daring escapes. Friends, he’s here with us now, our guest, our friend.” Ferapa’s eyes floated across them all. "I know you’re out there, Wayfarer. Mr. Pilgrim Wayfarer. Wordheal, give him welcome!”

  Cheering, jumping and dancing. Jubilation so violent and sudden that Ran feared the floor of the city might cave. Red ribbons and flags, like the banners of a great marching host waved as red poppers and firecrackers filled the air with red, acrid smoke. Above, on the screens, Sitor bounded across the edge of the crowd, bobbing back and forth, searching.

  Seconds passed. Almost a minute. Roaring faded.

  Silence.

  Someone coughed.

  Such was the weight of awkwardness that Ferapa, whom Ran had never seen look even slightly uncomfortable, began to shuffle his feet. Was that sweat?

  "Got him!” Sitor’s unmic’d exclamation from the other side of the circle barely registered to Ran.

  Ferapa coughed, adjusted his robe’s neck. "Here he is, Wordheal!”

  Pilgrims filled the air, a shiny head emerging from the crowd on a hundred hundred screens. The peculiar jacket seemed to trap all the red around him as he, one hand raised high, walked forward at a gentle pace. Those around him soon realized who he was, and began to part.

  When Pilgrim reached Sitor the Word’s assistant moved to grab an arm, apparently trying to speed his approach, but Pilgrim shrugged him off.

  The man reached the stairs to the stage, his bulky belt sparklded as he ascended.

  It was then that the cheers began in earnest. Pilgrim. . .Wayfarer. . .Pilgrim. . .Wayfarer . .Pilgrim. . .

  "It’s him!”

  "--greatest!”

  "-- founded the estates in Big Sky!”

  "--cute. . .for a bald boy.”

  "--that was on Red Isle! Hydrobolt Town! The red-eyes tried to surf him. Bard--.”

  "--hold his breath a loooooooong time. . .”

  "--courage--”

  "--faith--”

  "Some scantily-clad Shield queen tried to gut him! Its all in this comic.”

  "--gray eyes! The pyramids that wander!”

  "--like to get some of that gray eye--”

  "Grandpa!”

  "--ugliest belt--”

  "How famous is he?” Ran barley heard Nail. Pilgrim was there. He’d kept his word.

  Ran gasped, cried, caught his breath, glad for all the attention not on him. He refocused on the stage where Ferapa, two heads taller, took Pilgrim’s hand and held it high with his own.

  Somehow Central became louder.

  Sitor, now wary, threw a mic battery in Pilgrim’s jacket pocket not unlike how one might into the jacket on a crocodile. The man himself, cooly, wrapped it around his head to hook an ear and then down to his mouth, stared at the retreating assistant.

  "Something's wrong," said Tek. Only Ran heardmust have heard, for no one else did anything. "He doesn't look right."

  "Ain't that that dude Ser Pau's been dragging around?" said Sarge.

  "That's him," said Kiyo.

  "Damn it. We should have him put out a word on the Pub."

  "Sarge!"

  Ran fully toook him in then, and was amazed. There was no hunching or rolled shoulders, no dashing eyes, as with a cornered animal or balled fists seeking wrath. No knitted, brow or defiant chin. He was not relaxed or tense or even bored, and nothing like fear could be found on him.

  He was just. . .there. Standing as Ran might alone I his room, composing bad poems to himself. No. That was wrong. He was totally alert, soaking in his surroundings as might something darker than black might light. As if he, Pilgrim, were at the center of a painting but instead of this drawing and holding the eye, it shrugged it off.

  Nothing.

  Ran’s anger, justified the previous night, now soured in his stomach. Tools. That's all they both were to Ferapa. What would he do to Pilgrim now? Why hadn't he thought of that?

  Ferepa held up his hands. "Yes, yes. Wonderful. That Rokk has brought Wayfarer now is, well, I’m just going to say it, miraculous. Everywhere he goes, unity to the estate surely follows. We, your Words, labor in heat and rain to maintain unity in this city, but even we’ve felt the stress in these, uh, not dark but shall we say, dim times. A cracking of common foundations. Some common to all: work, family. Some more specific: new estates, catering to our uh, baser yearnings. Serving our city in the continued struggle against First.

  "No one more than I, my Given, appreciates the creativity you all bring to the Gift, to the Text. How many of you have heard me say that the Text lives and breathes? It didn’t die thousands of year ago, else why are we here? Why didn’t it all end with him? Heir wants his estates diverse, but unified. Unified. That’s what matters. That we remain a solidly whole.” He nodded to Urba, "This can be hard at times. It requires sacrifice on our part. We can’t afford to be rigid in anything but our security, our walls. Heir cares nothing for our silly squabbling about the Sebi and their place, or lack thereof, in our history--"

  ------------------------------------

  I profoundly misjudged this place, these people, Rina thought.

  She stared down at the triangular-capped heads of the Words, Pilgrim’s dome. Had I realized it was so fragmented that its leaders feel need to beg the people to follow...

  Rina sniffed aggressively. The enemy was all that mattered now. They made a big mistake assuming she couldn't find them in the crowd, though she herself assumed bio-functions akin to her own when she used shine as she ran the data, so it was a wash.

  She'd find them soon.

  ----------------------------------

  Ferapa continued, "or that there is but one way to honor Rokk. The Dead Light celebrate Rokk’s Nameless world in the fable. The Cresters, how they love their, uh, art! Lively. We all know how loud the Watch is. The Watch who so love to emphasize how deadly a foe our Rokk is, how he crushes those who oppose him to dust. If only we had more of these in the Set Wars!”

  ------------------------------------

  Nail shook his head. At least Amalric had known what he believed. Why. His officers too. They never pretended lto be ike Heir. Heir was but their hammer. This city is a dead ship. No captain, no crew. Silent floating until the light burns out.

  -------------------------------------

  ". . .not even those who say that Heir, well, ttruly set foot on Nameless. I can’t imagine it, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Different. I don’t care, and please pay attention to my point here, if they don’t think Heir took our inheritance. I hear the gasps. It shocks, friends, but I don’t. None of these matter as much as the unity of the Gift against the chaos of the world outside! The only thing that matters, as our Pilgrim and his worldwide trek demonstrates, is that we are not Sebi, cave dwelling Rockmen, or narokks. We are Given, Wordheal! And as long as we stand as one we will watch as Rokk erodes our First enemies into ash, just as he did Tezm!”

  ---------------------------------------

  E’s fingers ached, teeth creaked. I did that, and she actually growled aloud. Not your air kind! Your invisible friend! She’d pry open this Word's mouth until his its corners tore in fleshy strips, until his jawbone cracked, pour her shine in and saturate every fiber, every cell, disintegrate him, taking her time with each layer of skin, each--

  The maw was she doing?

  E Shook herself. Uncurled clawed fingers, relieved tender, crushed teeth.

  Not good. She’d almost lost it.

  Stop it! You’re a big girl. What would he think? A mistake, thinking of her teacher. Dead. Gone always.

  She was losing to herself.

  Gone. Always. . .because of the Giv. . .

  A girl. Standing merely thirty feet away, her lemon eyes wide with fear. E blinked. The eyes were gone.

  I’m cracking up, thought E. Eterna was right. Rokk, I’m going mad.

  ----------------------------------

  Motionless was Pilgrim’s face, his unblinking eyes all that moved, boring into the back of Ferapa’s head as the Word worked the crowd.

  "That’s why we don’t need anything else, Wordhealer. That’s why we need not satisfy baser lusts, at least not always.” Scattered boos. "Those who come to my estate know the one thing I say more often than any else is that the Text tells us, look it up, it’s there, the Text tells us that if we can think it, we can do it. We can! We can! Let's make Wordheal strong.”

  Ran brushed at his ear.

  "Help Rokk and myself keep it glorious, FOREVER!”

  The sound was in his other ear now, but greater. He swatted at what could only be a cloud of flies, but hit nothing.

  "Aid myself, I know our dear Wayfarer will, in this. United we can beat back the dark, rise above the maw, stand over the broken of this Nameless world and even bring down our Inheritance, Kiln!”

  Layers of humming as Ran pried at his ears. Kiyo said something but it he couldn’t hear. No one else heard it!

  Why can only I hear it?!

  The squeal of shattered glass, of crumbling glass. Of grinding metals shearing and peeling, ripping with their sound through skull and tooth and eye. Waves of hollow booms at his feet.

  Ran felt Nail’s hand on one side, Fritz’s on the other as they pushed him to the pavement. Tek was already there. Sarge had done the same for he and Kiyo.

  They heard now. All of them.

  They drowned in the vile noise as Central joined them on the floor and he watched mouths wailing unheard and eyes bulging.

  A wave crashing into rock and then rushing out, a storm roaring and then coasting away. The awareness of something great replaced with stillness, and the sound was suddenly not.

  Gently, Ran lifted his head. Other than a very thin layer of dust in the wind, he couldn’t see any change.

  "Ok?” said Fritz. "What?”

  "Wait,” said Nail.

  A woman, somewhere, wailed. Many joined. Ran followed their gazes and fingers to the sky above Freedom Tower. That telltale pillar, that unmistakable smokestack, that grey snake winding its way up into the a, bright, cloudless Gift morning sky.

  Another demolition.

  "On Gift?” someone shouted. "How? Isn’t everyone here? Are they making someone work on Gift? Didn’t we just have one yesterday?”

  "If the wind wasn’t blowing so hard to the north,” another said, "we’d be choking dust! It wasn’t even twenty years old!”

  Fear gave way to anger.

  "How dare--”

  ". . .are you idiots doing?”

  "Get out of my way!”

  Anger to rage.

  "--don’t touch me!”

  "Shaker, you best back--!”

  "On Gift?”

  "I’m out of here.”

  "On our Gift?”

  "--this how you treat Rokk’s Given?”

  Frothing mouths, rolling eyes, gnashing teeth. . .all Ran saw everywhere he looked

  Someone was laughing louder than all this.

  Wordheal grew steadily silent again, waited as the laughter drenched them.

  Ran, absurdly, thought of men turned to fish, of rending the flesh of one dearly loved.

  It was coming from the speakers. Insanity pouring as sound from the speakers.

  The city looked to the stage.

  None of the Words, who in the crash had all fallen behind Pilgrim and now stared up at his back like frightened children, moved.

  On and on Pilgrim laughed, but not as normal. Ran found himself longing for Pilgrim's real laugh. This was a stiff, insipid, gutless thing. The laugher of a corpse. The final gasps of a herd of dying beasts.

  Pilgrim put a hand on his forehead and ran it back across his scalp. He stopped laughing. "All right. Fine then. All you shakers, all right.” He dropped his arm and said, "I am really, really gonna enjoy this.”