IDOD

“We’re not here for the children,” Law answered. He sighed. “We’re here for the Rosary, and you know it.”
“Sure, sure. That’s what our directive said.” There was the sound of Naav shifting in his seat, and a hint of dismay in his voice. It was the first time Var had ever heard his superior not poking fun at something or drowning in his own sarcasm. “But it always comes down to the children. Always.”
Law didn’t answer, and neither did Yusus. The captain was silent as he had been since they came to the Lower Lands on the crystalport’s elevator. The inside of the truck grew colder than it had when the storm danced in, icy transparent fingers threatening to gouge out Var’s eyes. He exhaled and looked off to the unchanging world again, bringing himself as deep into his indigo half-jacket as he could, eyes narrowed and reflection merging with the flatlands.
They called this part of the world the Wastes. It had been nonsensical to him at first – how could any land be a waste? Var had, of course, read all the books, seen all the pictures… he knew, as everyone did, of the Great Separation and the world’s new age of ice. But even knowing all of that, he did not expect everything to be as bleak as it was on the actual surface. Did not expect to truly see nothing as they drove south in the country, that no cities and very few signs dotted the landscape. He had been naïve, he knew, to imagine that their world’s ruin was exaggerated – just as naïve as he was to imagine that the Margrave Squad XIX had been mobilized to subdue a sighted Rosary, not to eliminate two children with the Tyrant eyes.
Outside the truck the sky was broken, clouds sprinkled like shrapnel, and blood stained on the fringe of gray. Yusus walked with eyes closed, ears piqued, and walked only on her toes. Var followed behind her as usual, imitating her posture, hoping to hear what his mentor could on the dead wind when it blew, lifelessly, lazily.
The cold was unfamiliar, more piercing than a bullet. The only song it sung to him was mournful and lonely, the wail of a child in solitude condemned to starvation. It drained the life out of them, he realized; that was the reason for the silence. Uniforms of black and midnight violet fell apart, melted into siege of silver and gray and white; the wind manifested and walked along the drifts with them, with forbidden eyes of golden.
Var had never seen a city beneath the earth before and knew not where to look. When he told his mother they would be going to an under-city she wept and he knew why. His father had died in an under-city cave-in, and the grief had driven his mother to emigrate above the clouds without any savings and with him still within her. She had said something in her sleep about greeting his father when he was beneath the earth again. Var left that night without waking her or saying a word.
And the south opened up to them. They walked through the edge of the world, like the grave would lead them to its center. Captain Tatvy was always in the front ,his back translucent wall keeping nothing away except the cold. Every day and every night after the terrain grew too difficult to walk through, the cold bit and grew on them. It silenced Naav, infected Law with it and began to freeze his veins. The captain said he had a year to live if it entrenched itself in his body, if it did not dissipate when he returned above the clouds. Yusus kept her eyes closed. Law said he had a year left to serve only. Naav’s silent eyes: “A year left to dig graves only.”
They rested when the under-city’s maw opened to them. The stars were missing, or dead. Law told a story of his first captain who now was missing, or dead. His ear looked likely to freeze in the night. Yusus cut it off for him his sleep and he felt nothing. The captain told Var he would do fine, but Var heard him sobbing in his tent when sleep took the others. Var could not sleep and did not try to.
The descent was through the rigging of the false sky. The inside of under-city Varcyon was dead as well even with life inside it. Metal was the atmosphere, false were the clouds, and absent even here was the sun. Even this far beneath its domain they heard the wind of the dead.