The horizon, p.1
The Horizon, page 1
To Strange Horizons—
My anarchic collective
and my sanctuary
Contents
Characters
PART ONE: COMPOSITION
Prologue
ZeroDhara
PART TWO: OPENING
OneThe Judgment of the Council
TwoTree and River
ThreeThe Matriarch and the Councillor
FourThe Book of Alora
FiveThe Night of the Carnival
First Interlude
SixThe Lost City
SevenThe Bard’s Song
EightAn Unexpected Reunion
NineMarwana
TenThe Maidan
PART THREE: MIDDLEGAME
Second Interlude2
ElevenThe Council Hall
TwelveThe Banner
ThirteenThe Barricade
FourteenThe President’s Proposal
FifteenThe Select’s Protocol
PART FOUR: ENDGAME
SixteenThe Ambush
SeventeenGhada
Third Interlude
EighteenThe Citadel
NineteenThe Alliance
TwentyThe Shattered Three
Epilogue
Appendix
Acknowledgments
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
Characters
The Elders
Hansa, President of the Council
Raja, Officer of the Public Peace
Varsha, Farmland Administrator
Paras, a senior Councillor
Malati, a member of the Progressive Faction
Rama, Speaker for the Eleventh
The Shoortan Priesthood
Minakshi, the Matriarch
Rastogi, the High Priest
Tefnakth, leader of the Coterie (now expelled)
The Acolytes
The Scientists (the ‘Select’)
Marwana, leader of the Select
Kanu, a scientist
The Young Tarafians
Mithila (Seventh Mandala)
Alvar (Ninth Mandala)
Lamon (Eighth Mandala)
Mankala (Eleventh Mandala)
The POUM
Prana, representative of the Farmers’ Union
Meghana, representative of the Farmers’ Union
The Unforgiven
Maji, the leader of the Unforgiven
Carina, a singer
Others
Elmandar, leader of the Hedonists
Ananta/Savarian, Mithila’s father
Kodali, Head of the Carers’ Circle
Bhavi (Eleventh Mandala), a farmer
Aashna (Eleventh Mandala), a farmer, and Bhavi’s wife
Sekri (Ninth Mandala), a weaver, and one of Alvar’s fathers
PART ONE
COMPOSITION
Prologue
Twenty-seven years ago…
‘Come back when you’ve saved the Revolution.’
Maji remembers Upar’s last words—only half-joking—just before she’d drawn him into a kiss and stopped his mouth. ‘The Revolution doesn’t need us to save it,’ she’d murmured into his ear. Then she’d torn herself free, and run to join the others.
Moonlight glimmers on an iron blade. The sky is the colour of lampblack. His laughter rings inside her, holds her body together, even as her heart threatens to explode.
She moves in silence through the rahi fields, at the rear of their ten-person expedition. The farmlands are deserted. Far to the South, an orange light glimmers. Cries carry over the air. The Circles burn tonight, like a dying blaze that flares up one last time before dwindling into ash.
Ahead of a dark knot of trees, their leader raises an arm, halting them.
‘One final time,’ Rahul-Eleven says. ‘We go in—we get her—we get out. We’re back before Wallrise. Any questions?’
There is no sound but their breathing, ragged after the wide loop they took through the farmlands.
Rahul signals. They run into the bamboo grove.
Far from the Dooma, the grove is forbidden to all but the Elders. Maji has never been here before. The bamboo stalks loom above her. They blot out the sky for a deeper darkness. As she runs on uneven ground, she feels the fronds brush against her skin, fleeting little touches.
The only sound they make is when they cross the wooden bridge that spans the Rasa tributary, running through the grove. Then the sky opens again, the trees thin out, and Maji sees a scattering of starlight.
They burst into the clearing that houses the woad garden. It is larger than she thought. There is a wall in the middle, surrounded by a labyrinth of hedges. In the shadow of the outer hedge, a young woman looks calmly back at them.
‘Get the President!’ Rahul shouts.
Hansa turns and ducks into the labyrinth. Savarian’s soldiers leap after her—but Maji stops for a split second, because she has seen the President’s blue gloves in the moonlight, the gloves of battle, and something gives her pause.
Beneath their running feet, the ground opens. With horrible yells, four of their men plunge through, upon the bamboo spikes ten feet below.
The others pull up short. The screams of their fallen comrades rend the night. Shouts of ‘Council!’ join their cries. The Watch rushes upon them from the grove.
Maji spins, her blade out. Instantly, she is fighting for her life. Iron meets iron; a parry, a duck; she sticks her leg out, tripping her assailant as they go past her, sending them headlong. The spikes do not discriminate between rebels and the Watch.
‘Formation!’ Rahul calls.
The six of them move together, a tight unit, blades covering all angles. The Watch presses, outnumbering them by two to one. The rebels dig their feet in, backs to the treacherous ground. They fight at close quarters. Maji’s blade is a blur, anything to maintain a sliver of space, to avoid letting them catch her sword and heave her on to the waiting spikes.
Out of nowhere, there’s an arrow sticking out of someone’s back.
It is her companion on the left. As if in a dream, Maji sees his eyes widen in surprise. His head jerks back. He drops his blade and pitches back, into the pit.
Hansa has reappeared in the clearing. There is a bow in her hands.
The President takes aim again.
‘Break!’ Rahul shouts in the night.
Maji attacks. She takes wounds on her shoulder and her side, but fights her way to the edge of the clearing, helped by the Watch choosing to focus their energies on her remaining companions—hardened veterans. And then she’s in the grove once more, sprinting back through those narrow, twisting paths.
She sobs as she runs. She sobs because Upar was wrong. The Revolution was already lost. All that is left is for the dream to die, the dream of a City without Circles.
Outside, in the fields, she realizes that she no longer wants to run. She stops, grits her teeth, and turns to face the grove. Already, she can hear scrabbling, and the sound of quick feet. She crouches and grips her blade, ready.
Rahul bursts out from the grove. ‘What the fuck are you waiting for? Move!’ He runs past. Maji turns and follows, numb.
They race South, towards burning Sumer. The wind is in their hair. An arrow whistles past her ear. There are shouts from the edge of the grove.
A part of her wonders why they are running straight into the Upper Circles, where the fight is on, instead of North to the empty farms.
But Rahul seems to know where he’s going. The Rasa appears before them, a dark line bisecting Sumer. Rahul sprints across the thin wooden bridge, and into the First Mandala. Maji hesitates, then follows.
The stone mansions of the First Mandala surround them. Another place that Maji has never been to, in her twenty-three years within the Wall. As they run, she takes in the clean-cut flagstoned roads, the rows of lit flame lamps, the two-storied houses set apart from one another with their gardens and porches, all in darkness.
Rahul takes two quick turns and stops outside one of those houses. He raps on the door.
A face appears in the first-floor window.
‘Who is it?’ a woman’s voice calls out.
‘We beg for sanctuary,’ Rahul pants. Maji’s hands are on her knees, and she takes deep, juddering breaths to deal with the crick in her stomach. ‘We’re rebels,’ Rahul continues, ‘we’re trapped—they’ll kill us if they find us.’
The head pops back in. Silence takes back the night. After a thousand eternities, they hear footsteps from close within. They grow louder.
The woman opens the door. ‘Inside.’ She jerks her thumb. ‘First floor. Crawl under the bed if you need to.’
‘Councillor Malati—thank you.’
‘Go!’
Maji sees her lighting a lamp in the hallway as they rush through the passage and take the stairs, up into the Councillor’s bedroom.
Every limb in her body aches, but Maji doesn’t dare go and collapse upon the bed. She stumbles to a corner of the room, next to the window, and slumps to the floor, her back against the wall. Her right shoulder—where she’d taken a blade—has begun to sting, sending out little ripples of pain. Maji winces.
Rahul walks past her to stand by the window.
‘What was the point of running?’ she says.
‘Don’t you care to live?’ Rahul asks mildly.
‘We failed….’ Maji trails off.
‘Why did you join the Revolution, Maji-Fifteen?’
The question throws her. She is back in the Fifteenth Mandala. It is a summer
She shades her kajal-limned eyes with her palms—wouldn’t you deck yourself up for the day the world will change, with lampblack you can’t afford?—and looks at the man who stands before them. He is perched precariously on a parapet, dressed in rebel blue that she knows he can’t afford. His arms are spread, his body taut, his eyes dancing.
‘Can you see it?’ he calls.
The vision fades.
‘Just for a moment,’ says Maji, ‘Savarian showed me a City without Circles. It was enough for a lifetime.’
‘And dying in the rahi fields will help you?’
‘What is left to live for, Captain?’ She adds as an afterthought: ‘What has my life been for?’
‘You won’t know unless you live—’ he stops, putting a finger to his lips.
Maji’s eyes struggle to adjust to the dark, even though moonlight is streaming in through the window. She can hear herself breathe.
Below them, there is a rapping at the front door.
A creak. ‘Yes?’ Malati’s voice floats up to them.
‘Councillor Malati—sorry for disturbing you so late—’
‘—or early.’
‘Yes—there are rebels on the loose in the Mandala.’
‘I thought we were winning?’
‘We are, but they’ve come in from the North, the farmlands.’
Rahul stands rigid at the window.
‘Bit lax of you, Madeesh,’ Malati says, after a pause. ‘Good luck with your search.’
‘Councillor—’
‘Yes?’ Iron enters Malati’s voice.
‘We’re doing a house-to-house search.’
‘No, Madeesh-Six,’ Malati says. ‘You’re searching empty houses in case they’ve crept into a garden or a study. I am very much in my house.’
‘But they might have climbed up through a window—’
‘Do you want to try climbing, to test that theory?’
Beneath the window, there is muttering.
‘Councillor,’ Madeesh speaks again, ‘President Hansa specifically told us to—’
‘I will answer to the President, Six,’ Malati snaps. ‘Now stop wasting my time and find those rebels—isn’t there a barricade that needs tearing down?’
More muttering. Maji can hardly move—her body is hurting too much—but Rahul is crouched by the window, blade in hand. A few minutes pass in silence. Rahul relaxes.
‘Safe.’
Maji breathes. Rahul allows himself to slump, sliding down against the wall, dropping his blade. Maji hears it clatter. For a while, neither of them says anything.
‘Dooma,’ Rahul whispers at last.
‘Mm, captain?’
‘Is it really true what they say—about the Unforgiven?’
Maji laughs in her throat. ‘What, you think I’m mad?’
‘No, not you, no. You know.’
‘I know what?’
‘Don’t make me say it.’
She looks at him in the dark. ‘How long have you been waiting to ask?’
‘Ever since Savarian assigned you to my company,’ Rahul says, ruefully.
‘Never spoken to someone from the Dooma before?’
He rubs his neck.’Not as a companion. Not until the Revolution.’
‘Only as labour. I’m not surprised.’
‘I know, I know. Could be that Savarian has the right idea, with his whole integration thing.’
Maji smiles.
‘Alora,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Alora the Builder, captain. The only Builder we of the Dooma acknowledge, who stood against the Wall and was punished for it; who asked us to have faith, because light will come from light. Alora.’ She lets her voice deepen. ‘We will carry the memory of your name like hot iron beneath the tongue.’
He turns to her. ‘There is so much I don’t know about my own City, this side of the Wall. Things I’ve begun to see, to touch—ever since I joined the Revolution, because the Sumer Savarian dreamt of felt more real than the one we live in. Will you take me to the Dooma, once this is over? And tell me how you live? That is not an order,’ he adds hurriedly.
She is touched, in spite of herself. They both know it is never going to happen.
‘Yes, captain. You can come.’
‘Thank you.’
To fill the silence, she says: ‘I have a question too.’
‘Ask.’
‘You of the Eleventh—I’ve heard you talk among yourselves upon the barricades. You have your own name for Savarian: garuda. Why’s that?’
It is his turn to laugh. ‘We have our stories too.’
‘Go on.’
He thinks for a while. ‘Listen, then,’ he says at last, as if he’s been waiting to tell. ‘Season after season, in the long afternoons, when the sun shines golden upon the rahi fields, we have seen the garudas fly.’ Rahul’s voice changes, growing soft like dew. ‘They come from beyond the Wall, and there they return. From the sky they look upon us while we toil, as if language is a memory that has been taken from them, and they would speak to us if they could remember. But in the fields, we remember.’
His voice quickens. ‘Two brothers, there were. They flew together. Garuda flew too high, too close to the Sun. But before she could burn him in her rage, Samati interceded. He took upon himself the bolt meant for Garuda. His wings were charred and he was hurled down to the ground.
‘Garuda escaped. But in punishment, words dried up in his throat forever, turning to ashes, like Samati’s wings. And to separate the two brothers, the Wall of Sumer came to be. This side we dwell, the daughters and sons of Samati, doomed only to gaze upon our sky-faring cousins, who come back to us from beyond the Wall, but can neither speak nor stay.’
‘I’ve never heard this story,’ Maji whispers.
‘A story spun in the forever hours upon the rahi fields, watching the sky in the shadow of the Wall. And we call Savarian garuda because that is how he came to us, on the wings of a dream, to show us what we might have been—and what we might be again.’
Maji smiles. ‘Don’t think me rude, Captain. But I’m from the Dooma. We’re on the side of the lost. So I can’t help seeing this from Samati’s point of view.’
‘What?’
‘That if you want to fly, someone must sacrifice themselves for you.’
‘Oh—’
The door swings open. Rahul leaps to his feet, but it is only Malati at the threshold.
‘Wallrise. You need to get out of here.’
‘We will,’ Rahul says. ‘Do you know the lay of the Upper Circles?’
‘They are only guarding the bridges,’ Malati says. ‘If you go carefully, you’ll be able to get as far as the Seventh without meeting the Watch. Then it’s up to you.’
Maji blurts out: ‘But why are you helping us, Councillor?’
Rahul winces, but Malati does not appear to take offence.
‘You’ve lost your revolution,’ she says. ‘I can afford to save two lives.’
In the cold light of Wallrise, they creep through the Upper Circles.
Rahul leads. Shadows of patrols pass them in the distance, murmured voices and footsteps along adjoining streets. They stay away from the bridges and swim across the Rasa tributaries to cross the Circles. By the time they reach the Sixth, the sun has appeared over the Wall. There is mild autumn warmth in the air. Their clothes are soaking.
Rahul walks slowly now, almost crouching. He pokes his head around corners before turning, and stops every other moment. Maji’s calves begin to hurt.
Then she sees sunlight glint off the flagstones of the Maliot, and hears the gurgling of the river.
In the shadow of the last row of houses, Rahul halts, motioning to her to stay behind. He peeks around the corner—and pulls his head back.
‘What is it, captain?’ she whispers.
Rahul looks up at the brightening sky. Then he turns to her and grasps her shoulders. ‘Will you do as I say?’
‘Wha—yes of course,’ she says. ‘Your orders?’
Gently, he nudges her forward until they’ve exchanged positions. She stands in front of him, sheltered by the wall.
‘When I say “go”’, he says, ‘Run. Into the river. Don’t come up until you’ve crossed the barricade.’
‘And you?’
She feels him smile at her back.
‘Remember Samati. Remember me.’
‘But—’
‘Go!’
Maji sprints. In the two seconds that she is upon the Maliot, she sees many things.
