Chapter 1015 The Sea Above Them

Lema’s mother opened the bakery door with a peel in one hand. She lowered it when she saw the man on the board.

"Clear your flour bench for him now, Mother. He cannot put his weight on that hip."

"My table has dough on it. Bring him to the flour bench."

Lema led the workers inside. Ty carried the front corner of the board with his right hand. His left shoulder was strapped against his ribs, and the white collar on his jaw chain knocked his wrist whenever the carrier moved. The old man watched it with less interest than he gave the ovens.

"You burn the bottoms in the right one," he told Lema’s mother.

"I burned one batch six years ago, Orren. You’ve been telling the story at every crossing since."

"Then you know whose house your daughter pulled out of the mill."

He let them settle him on the bench before he tried to sit up again. Lema’s mother folded a flour sack and put it under his bad leg. Orren looked for the board he had ridden in on, as if he meant to return it to Asti before anyone found him missing.

"Asti stayed with the rest of her street, and Nessa is keeping the roof count beside her," Lema told him.

Orren searched her face for news of the loom.

"The mill roof struck a plate. She saw what happened."

Orren pulled the flour sack flat under his thigh. For twenty years he had mended other people’s cloth on that loom. Lema’s mother had traded him bread for repairs when the city still made the old landing. She set a cup beside him and gave him time to drink.

Ty stood by the door, craning his skull to look back through the lower walk. The gate where he had crossed was already beyond sight. Asti’s street had drawn away from the creature. Rillhold was farther behind it, and Jade farther still.

"Will she take us back toward the road we left?" he asked.

Lema’s mother put the peel back against the oven. "Tavra can turn. She won’t do it for a man she’s never met."

"She hasn’t met most of the people she just ate houses for."

"Those houses were in her path. There’s a difference."

Lema took a loaf from the cooling rack and split it for Orren. The city needed flour from the mill roof that had broken beneath them. By morning her mother would have to decide which customers went without. She had already taken another person’s place on the bench for Orren. If Lema asked her to feed Ty too, the argument would begin where Orren could hear.

Ty saw the bread and moved toward the window. The street below the lower walk was still visible from there, its lamps shrunken to pinpoints.

"Jade is still at Solla’s kitchen, and I need to reach her," he said.

"I heard you say her name when the chain ran out," Lema answered. "At the crossing there are carriers going the other way. I can ask their crews where they land. I can’t put you on one while we’re moving."

"Ask them where they’re landing before this city carries me farther away."

Orren bit into the bread and winced. The turn had jarred his hip again. Lema’s mother put a hand on his knee until he stopped trying to straighten it.

Through the bakery window, Lema saw a lamp hood caught between two of the creature’s lower plates. Its yellow glass had survived the bite. A salvage worker climbed down on a tether to free it before the plates closed and crushed his arm. He dropped the hood into a net already holding stone from Rillhold’s west house.

Ty came to the window beside her. "I saw people crossing at Solla’s kitchen before Tavra reached the house; I hope Mira was among them," he said.

"I watched Solla bring them through the balcony, but I still see their house in that net."

"They won’t feel saved when someone sells the last piece of it."

Lema watched the salvage net rise. She had spent the last hour telling Asti to leave grain, a loom, and four roofs behind. On the city, a stranger’s loss came aboard in pieces and became somebody’s building material by supper. She had done that work herself. There were walls in her mother’s bakery made from places whose owners had no idea where the stones went.

"I can have them keep the hood together," she said. "If Mira comes looking, it won’t be melted down."

Ty looked at her. "You knew Mira was inside that house when it lifted?"

"Your cook shouted it across the balcony. I listen when people tell me who they’re losing."

She sent a worker to the salvage team. He wanted to know how to recognize Mira if she came for the hood. Lema had no answer beyond Solla’s name, so she told him to keep the glass intact and bring anyone who asked for it to her. From the bench, Orren turned his face toward the ovens. He knew how many things had been taken apart before an owner could ask.

The carrier’s back rolled under the city. All three ovens shifted in their frames. Lema’s mother caught the nearest door with her peel and called to a boy at the upper stair. He ran to the bell deck, two steps at a time.

"The crossing came early enough to ruin the last trays," her mother said. "I have bread that won’t be baked before we land."

"I’ll tell the deck you need the lower ovens held level."

"Tell them the flour has to last until morning. They can have a level oven or hungry workers at the next landing."

Lema left her with Orren and Ty and went up the outside stair. The city had been built from houses with no common street plan. At one corner she passed a wall painted with fish whose bones ran on the outside of their bodies. Next door, someone had carried an entire tiled bath from a place Lema had never seen. It held herbs now. Two girls kept their hands under the pots so the soil would not slide when the carrier turned.

Beyond the last roof there was no horizon. A strip of night stood upright between two bright banks of cloud. The first of the other carriers was entering it sideways. Its homes leaned away from its hide as families pulled shutters closed. A second carrier moved beneath it, belly up, with a village spread across the plates like a row of cups balanced on a hand.

The bell deck had three people working, not counting the boy Lema’s mother had sent. Neral kept the course bells. Her youngest sister watched the carrier’s mouth through a glass set into the deck. Lema gave Neral the bakery message, then waited while she finished a signal to the crew below.

"Mera’s inside sea should be on the far side," Neral said when she could speak. "We can put your mother by a grain market before the ovens cool."

"The mill’s flour went with its roof. Mother won’t refuse Orren tonight, even if she should ration for breakfast. Keep course for the grain market."

"I said we’d land before breakfast, and I meant it. Go tell her I’ll hold the ovens level through the crossing."

The off-count bell sounded behind them. It came from the direction of the city whose lower streets had passed Rillhold, not from Neral’s deck. One of the other carriers answered with its ordinary crossing note. Their own creature lifted a pale plate beneath Lema’s feet and held it there.

"Why does Tavra keep listening to that one?" Lema asked.

"Because she’s heard it since before we found Asti’s street. I can’t shut another city’s bell with my hands."

Neral pulled twice on her own rope. The creature eased the plate down and turned toward the upright night. Lema watched its mouth clear the roof of the last house from Asti’s street. The cook struck his cup three times, and a reply came back from a roof she could no longer see. Nessa was still counting. Lema had brought Orren here, but Asti would be the one to explain the broken loom when her uncle asked again.

Ty climbed the stair slowly. He had stayed until Lema’s mother found a place for Orren to lie without blocking an oven. The climb shifted his bound shoulder each time the creature breathed. Neral saw the skeleton appear and reached for the alarm clapper.

"He came through my gate carrying Orren, and he hasn’t threatened anyone on this deck," Lema said.

Neral let her hand drop. "I wasn’t going to ring for a fight. The mouth crew need to know he’s aboard before they find him on a ladder."

"Tell your mouth crew his name before they reach for weapons."

"Then give me his name yourself, because you brought him here."

"My name is Ty, and I’d like to know where you’re taking your city," he said.

Neral pointed through the upright strip of night. "Mera, if the port is open. The crossing after that goes north. I don’t have a chart that takes me back to your woman tonight."

Ty’s jaw chain tugged toward the dark between the two clouds. He caught the collar in his right hand before it could swing against a bell stand. The pull pointed farther into the crossing than their course. He tested it against the grooved rib he still had, then made himself watch the upside-down carrier passing below them. Its crew fastened children to their balcony rails for the turn. One woman shouted at a man who kept trying to go back inside for a chest.

"You can follow that collar when we reach a place with a floor," Lema told him. "I’m not taking my mother through that dark because your chain wants it."

"I wasn’t asking you to steer toward whatever it points at, and I won’t start now."

She believed him. She had also seen people do damage while insisting they hadn’t asked. She stood beside Neral until their carrier entered the crossing on its own course.

The street under Lema’s boots tipped. The clouds became a floor on one side of the deck, then vanished. Above her was water. It curved against the inside of a stone shell large enough to hold a night sky beneath it. Boats moved across its surface with their keels pointed toward Lema’s head. She had grown up at Mera’s lower harbor. She had forgotten how small the first fishing boats looked until a carrier came up beneath them.

"The market should be beneath that ring of terraces if the awnings are still green," Neral said. Lema found the green awnings her mother had described, then lost them behind a row of vessels moored across the landing mouth. No fishing nets hung from those decks. Their bows faced outward, toward the entering carriers.

The harbor signal burned yellow, then changed to three dark shutters. Neral gave the answering note for a food landing. No light came back.

A woman in a blue harbor coat came to the bow of the lead vessel. She raised a speaking funnel. "Keep your carrier beyond the moorings until your bell crew proves it can hold course. An off-count call pulled two boats loose this morning, and our net crews are under the green awnings with broken legs."

"That call followed us here from another carrier," Neral shouted through her own funnel. "Tavra answers it, but my bells haven’t sent it."

"Then take her around the outer shell until it passes. I have patients on the quay and no room for a city that follows a sound it cannot name."

The woman lowered her funnel and spoke to the nearest gun crew. Lema knew the outer shell route. It would carry them past the harbor, not back to the grain market. Orren could survive the turn if the bakery held level. Her mother’s flour would not last every household another day. Lema asked Neral to bring Tavra in over the vessels toward the old mill quay. Neral gave the slow approach note rather than the landing call.

At the bakery below, a fresh oven bell rang. Ty could hear Lema’s mother shouting at somebody who had let the loaves slide. He started down the stair to help and stopped when a shot passed under the bell deck. It struck the creature’s hide; a plate clamped shut beneath the lower walk, throwing families against their doors.

The boy from the bakery ran onto the upper stair. The jolt had knocked Orren off the flour bench. Lema’s mother had him back on a board, but his bad hip had twisted beneath him. The last hot tray lay on the floor. Lema sent the boy down to keep the ovens shut until her mother could move him away from them.

"Was that shot aimed at Tavra or somebody on the walkway?" Ty asked.

Neral had both hands on her course rope. "They shot at the landing board. If she turns hard here, she’ll throw the houses on her back."

Lema looked over the harbor vessels. Stretcher bearers on the green-awning quay halted while a boat crew lowered a chain from above. The bakery boy’s report left no time to circle the outer shell.

She could turn her carrier toward the next crossing. Orren’s hip would spend another night without a surgeon. Her mother would stretch the flour among strangers who could not eat a promise. Lema had brought people aboard without asking Neral to make that choice for them.

"Bring her in over the moored boats so the signal tower can see my gate," she told Neral. "There’s a mill quay on the inner wall. I worked it when I was fifteen. The boards were wide enough for grain carts."

"Their gunners will have a second shot before your gate reaches the quay."

"Then don’t hide behind the city’s houses. Keep us where their signal tower can see my gate and its people. I will talk from there."

Neral sent her youngest sister down to tell the lower walk to clear its balconies. The girl took the stair three at a time. Ty followed far enough to keep the bakery door in sight. He could not protect a whole city from a harbor gun with one hand, and no one on the deck had asked him to. Lema caught him looking at the collar.

"Mera has couriers who know the crossings better than I do," she said. "If I get ashore, I’ll ask which crossing goes back toward Rillhold. Stay alive long enough to hear the answer."

Ty put the collar against his grooved rib and went down to warn her mother. Lema remained on the bell deck as Neral drew the carrier above the moored vessels. A fishing boat below overturned its empty nets to make room for the guns to traverse. On the quay, someone raised a white cloth over the stretcher line, trying to keep the patients visible to both sides. Lema took off her yellow gate scarf and climbed onto the forward rail where the signal tower could see her.

The second gun tracked her across the harbor. Its crew had a clear view of the bakery beneath her feet, the carrier’s crowded lower walk, and the stretcher bearers on the quay. Lema held the scarf high until the woman in the blue coat raised her funnel again.

"You had your warning, gatekeeper. If your beast crosses those moorings, my next shot goes through the bell deck."

"My bells will stay quiet until we’re past your vessels," Lema called. "I need one board at the mill quay for a man whose hip broke on the crossing. His niece is still out there with her street, and I’m the person who brought him aboard."

Neral turned sharply toward her. "I need the low bell to keep Tavra from rolling her lower walk into the boats. You cannot offer both ropes to a gunner."

"Keep your low bell free or the lower walk will hit those boats," Lema said. "I promised her the call would stop. I didn’t promise to let our houses fall while she watches."

Neral muffled the upper bell with her coat. The harbor woman watched her do it, then waved a gun crew off the second shot. She pointed toward the mill quay and held up one finger. One board. Lema brought her scarf down to her chest and watched Neral steer Tavra clear of the moored hulls.

The off-count bell rang under Mera’s water.

Every gun crew on the vessels turned toward it. The surface above their heads shook around a fishing boat still tied to the harbor, and its bow began to lift against the mooring chain. Neral’s upper bell remained wrapped in her coat. Lema saw the woman in blue lower her funnel and run toward the chain winch as the boat pulled its first anchor free.