Then the towns are replaced by sprawling estates and mansions, palaces like the Hall. Made of stone and glass and swirling marble, each one seems more magnificent than the last. Their lawns slope to the river, decorated with greenwarden gardens and beautiful fountains. The houses themselves look like the work of gods, each one a different kind of beautiful. But the windows are dark, the doors closed. Where the villages and towns were full of people, these seem devoid of life. Only the flags flying high, one over each structure, let me know someone lives there at all. Blue for House Osanos, silver for Samos, brown for Rhambos, and so on. Now I know the colors by heart, putting faces to each silent home. I even killed the owners of a few.
“River Row,” Maven explains. “The country residences, should a lord or lady wish to escape the city.”
My gaze lingers on the Iral home, a columned wonder of black marble. Stone panthers guard the porch, snarling up at the sky. Even the statues put a chill in me, making me remember Ara Iral and her pressing questions.
“There’s no one here.”
“The houses are empty most of the year and no one would dare leave the city now, not with this Guard business.” He offers me a small, bitter smile. “They would rather hide behind their diamond walls and let my brother do their fighting for them.”
“If only no one had to fight at all.”
He shakes his head. “It does no good to dream.”
We watch in silence as River Row falls behind us and another forest rises up on the banks. The trees are strange, very tall with black bark and dark red leaves. It is deathly quiet, as no forest should be. Not even birdsong breaks the silence, and overhead, the sky darkens, but not from the waning afternoon light. Black clouds gather, hovering over the trees like a thick blanket.
“And what’s this?” Even my voice sounds muffled and I’m suddenly glad for the glass casing over the deck. To my surprise the others have gone, leaving us alone to watch the gloom settle.
Maven glances at the forest, face pulled in distaste. “Barrier trees. They keep the pollution from traveling farther upriver. The Welle greenwardens made them years ago.”
Choppy brown waves foam against the boat, leaving a film of black grime on the gleaming steel hull. The world takes on a strange tint, like I’m looking through dirty glass. The low-lying clouds aren’t clouds at all, but smoke pouring from a thousand chimneys, obscuring the sky. Gone are the trees and the grass—this is a land of ash and decay.
“Gray Town,” Maven murmurs.
Factories stretch out as far as I can see, dirty and massive and humming with electricity. It hits me like a fist, almost knocking me off my feet. My heart tries to keep up with the unearthly pulse and I have to sit down, feeling my blood race.
I thought my world was wrong, that my life was unfair. But I could never even dream of a place like Gray Town.
Power stations glow in the gloom, pulsing electric blue and sickly green into the spider-work of wires in the air. Transports piled high with cargo move along the raised roads, shuttling goods from one factory to another. They scream at each other in a noisy mess of tangled traffic, moving like sluggish black blood in gray veins. Worst of all, little houses surround each factory in an ordered square, one on top of the other, with narrow streets in between. Slums.
Beneath such a smoky sky, I doubt the workers ever see daylight. They walk between the factories and their homes, flooding the streets during a shift change. There are no officers, no cracking whips, no blank stares. No one is making them watch us pass. The king doesn’t need to show off here, I realize. They are broken from birth.
“These are the techies,” I whisper hoarsely, remembering the name the Silvers so blithely toss around. “They make the lights, the cameras, the video screens—”
“The guns, the bullets, the bombs, the ships, the transports,” Maven adds. “They keep the power running. They keep our water clean. They do everything for us.”
And they receive nothing but smoke in return.
“Why don’t they leave?”
He just shrugs. “This is the only life they know. Most techies will never leave their own alley. They can’t even conscript.”
Can’t even conscript. Their lives are so terrible that the war is a better alternative, and they’re not even allowed to go.
Like everything else on the river, the factories fade away, but the image stays with me. I must not forget this, something tells me. I must not forget them.
Stars wait for us beyond another forest of barrier trees, and beneath them: Archeon. At first I don’t see the capital at all, mistaking its lights for blazing stars. As we sail closer and closer, my jaw drops.