The Prince of Exiles, 35

Svaathe is singing a song in her own language, a lament, it sounds like, rising over the anguish of the stolen Sky-Chariot's engines.

The Prince of Exiles, 34

Something in me rises. It catches in my throat, settles behind my eyes, and then evaporates, as it always does.

The Prince of Exiles, 33

"What do we do now?" I have no idea, feel the grip beneath my diaphragm, a twisting, a constriction, at once strange and utterly familiar.

The Prince of Exiles, 32

In a stolen Sky-Chariot we take off from the oblique dock, rise above the factory ziggurat, watch as beneath us the soldiers breach the gates with a cannon shot, a beam of pinkish blue light that illuminates the massed ranks below, painting a thousand tiny faces with light in the fading night.

The Prince of Exiles, 31

The smell of flowers, of furniture polish, of shelved books, the sun through a double-glazed windows, dappled through green sycamore.

"And then what? What do you do? Do you do what he asks?"

The Prince of Exiles, 30

I'm sitting on an inactive conveyor. Around me the slaves, those who can, are preparing for a fight.

The Prince of Exiles, 29

Moh has already, I notice, looking up from my task, another manacle on the floor, taken charge of the slaves.

The Prince of Exiles, 28

I'm burning through a manacle using a dead guard's gun, trying to ignored the stickiness of the handle, those last traces of blood I couldn't manage to wipe off in my haste.

The Prince of Exiles, 27

I have no one left to fight. At the end of the ridged corridor, I take a breath, come to myself. I am holding a short blade in my right hand, a gun in my left. My right arm is spattered with blood, up to the shoulder. The sound of machinery is louder than ever.

The Prince of Exiles, 26

The cargo ship has gone, and the sky dock is all but uninhabited; the slaves who would have loaded have gone to work; both guards, also slaves, abandon their posts as soon as we appear over the edge of the still-slippery platform and Makara levels her cannon at them.

The Prince of Exiles, 25

It's through the sky dock we'll get in, scaling the side of the steps, avoiding the lights. Everything stinks, everything is slick with blood and slime, and the obsidian walls are slippery, hard to grip.

The Prince of Exiles, 24

"Your hair's growing back." I am mildly surprised; it's grown back an inch since I saw her a couple hours ago, thick, glossy.

Makara gives a little half-shrug. "Wanted it to."

The Prince of Exiles, 23

The sounds of marine fauna raining from the sky subside; I can hear now over the trickle of rainwater, changed in note, the sound of a man crying, a panicked, hysterical voice, lost in terror.

The Prince of Exiles, 22

The rain has stopped; yellow streetlamps dye the lowering blanket of clouds a purplish shade that looks like dawn.

The Prince of Exiles, 21

"Hello," I say.

The Prince of Exiles, 20

The hammering of the rain outside echoes through the white marble corridors.

The Prince of Exiles, 19

We are not invited to dine with the governor; instead we sit in an airy room listening to the rain outside, the lowering advance of thunder, the heartbeat of the far-off factories, as two ostentatiously collared slaves, male and female, naked so we can see the scars of their neuterings, serve us with foul-smelling, heavily spiced sweetmeats and curried offal. None of us, hungry as we are, can touch much of it.

The Prince of Exiles, 18

"We cannot. You do not understand." Cambren's head is shaved like Xipil's but where the priest is slender and graceful, Cambren, the Governor, is bullish, squat, broad, his delicate diadem of office and silk robes somehow at odds with a chin like one of the blocks in the city wall, his brutal brow. His voice is a gentle tenor. His breath stinks. All of them have terrible breath, all the officials around us in the room, sitting at the table, staring us out, these men and women and others with their clear complexions and shining eyes and shaved heads and strong teeth, the benefits of a diet of offal and spiced oils and rotted fish sauce and the halitosis that comes with it.

The Prince of Exiles, 17

Where did they take you? 

I don't know. I'm lying on a couch. I can smell the flowers on your table, the sourness of my own breath. I ache.

The Prince of Exiles, 16

Dream logic: you become aware that you have travelled somewhere else, that time has passed.