The Tensorate Series by Neon Yang

Author:Neon Yang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Chapter Eleven

SECOND-SUNRISE GLIMMERED IN THE sky as Mokoya plunged back into Bataanar’s labyrinthine anatomy. The city’s public spaces were hemorrhaging people under the pressure of the raja’s sunup curfew, and she found herself a solitary figure wandering the hollow bones of streets, with only an occasional straggler and a circulation of iron locusts, looming and vigilant, to keep her company. Stripped of life, the white walls of the city appeared bleached by the brightening sun.

Across the city from the oasis gate, the main royal guardhouse perched on the eastern city wall, a squat edifice of dull brick protruding from the fortifications. Mokoya’s way up was barred by two of the city guard, set across the bottom of the stairwell. Both of them were tall as she was, and half again as broad.

“Entry is forbidden,” said the one on the left, a woman.

“You shouldn’t be out here anyway,” said the one on the right. He looked too young to be holding a job like this. “There’s a curfew on.”

“I’m here to see my brother,” Mokoya said, impatient. “Your captain.”

Confusion blurred the boy guard’s syllables. “We don’t allow family visits—”

“Zak, wait.” His colleague frowned at Mokoya, studying the planes of her face, the broad collection of scars. “Right, you are Captain Sanao’s sister, I’ll believe that. But we weren’t told to expect anyone.”

“I just spoke to Akeha on the talker, not a half hour ago. He knows I’m coming.” This was a fucking waste of time. She thought about cracking their skulls together and leaving them heaped at the bottom of the stairs. She might, if they delayed her further.

“Let me check,” the woman said.

She pushed back a sleeve, exposing the voice transmitter strapped to her wrist. Mokoya blinked. It was an open secret that the city guard sheltered the Machinist rebellion in Bataanar, but parading Machinist technology under the raja’s nose was a fresh, trenchant show of boldness.

The woman tapped the transmitter. Metallic noise screeched from it before Akeha’s voice surged through, thick with irritation: “What is it now?”

“It’s Lao. Your sister’s h—”

“Is your head rotting? Send her up. Stop wasting my time.”

The signal dropped like a man with his throat cut. Lao smiled thinly at Mokoya. “Well. You heard the boss.”

He hadn’t let her finish a third word. That was impressive, even for Akeha. The meeting with the raja must not have gone well.

In the gloom at the top of the stairs stood the guardroom door, metal-boned and solid in its frame. Mokoya pushed it open.

Light and chaos swallowed her.

If the transmitter had been a brazen display of Machinist affiliation, Mokoya was stepping into the beating, brawling heart of that daring. The guardroom boiled with enclosed sweat and steam, heated by glass balls of light that hung from an overhead forest of wires. Machine schematics papered the walls. Fifty-odd faces turned to stare at her, distracted from their tasks: Stacking boxes. Opening boxes. Screen-printing circulars. At one long table, about ten people sat, halfway through assembling and polishing guns.

Over this

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