The iron overhead frame jutted out three hundred feet into empty air, suspended above the limestone deep gap of the northern rift.
Out here, beyond the shelter of the Great Round hall’s copper dome, the morning wind roared like an ocean surf. It tore at Ren’s wool tunic and whipped the greasy hem of his lambskin apron against his shins. Far below, bathed in the pale, misty dawn, the entire city of Alexandria-Khorat lay spread across the canyon floor like a shattered mosaic of white limestone, dark slate, and winding canals. The sheer limestone walls of the canyon dropped two thousand feet into shadow. There, the white rapids of the underground river boiled over jagged teeth of black dark rock.
The city was burning with paper.
From this dizzying height, the ten thousand leaflets launched through the air-powered spreading tubes looked like a blizzard of white snow drifting across the slate roofs. But unlike snow, the paper didn’t melt. Wherever it landed—in the market squares, across the timber-yards, upon the arched bridges of the Weavers’ Ward—crowds coalesced into dense, dark swarms of shouting humanity.
The clamor of the town alarm bells rose on the heat updrafts. A wild, clattering iron discord that fully smothered the dignified chants of the Solstice Convocation. Smoke was already rising from the courtyard of the Guard’s Barracks in Low-Khorat. There, three hundred apprentice scribes and weavers had overturned the conscription wagons, piling the registry desks into a roaring bonfire of pitch and dead-house cedar. Across…
