The First Strike

How many seconds would it take six trained killers to realize they were walking under two hundred gallons of fermented tree-resin? Tala crouched along the high rafters of the Great Banyan market, fingering the notched flint knife at her thigh as the morning trade flutes echoed across the canopy. Below her, three tiers of rope walkways bustled with fruit-mongers, beetle-tallow refiners, and pterosaur handlers hauling dawn cargo. Tala needed every ash-cloaked scout cleared out of the lower slipways before Roda cast off, and she needed it done without swinging a broken kinetic club that existed only as kindling in the gorge.

Her gaze swept the swirling crowd on the second tier. A casual eye would see only merchants haggling over salted river-eel, but Tala knew the rhythm of canopy hunters. Five paces past the amber-polishing stalls, a broad-shouldered trader in an indigo poncho walked with his weight rolled onto the balls of his feet, his right shoulder dipping slightly to balance the heft of a concealed bronze harpoon armature beneath the weave. Ten paces behind him, two porters carrying empty rush baskets kept their chins tucked, matching the lead man's gait stride for stride. Further out by the stair-well, three more hovered near the timber pillars, their hands resting flat against their thighs where quick-release cords would hang on standard Sun-Chieftain combat harness.

All six were closing a loose perimeter around the stair descending toward Roda's secluded mooring cradle.

Tala slid forward on her belly along the damp cedar beam until she reached the main suspension knot. Pulo's market did not use iron chains; everything hung on braided liana vines counterweighted by heavy stone baskets and suspended casks of raw cedar pitch waiting for the evening caulking crews. Directly above the lead scout hung a two-hundred-gallon vat of sticky resin, flanked by three pneumatic cargo nets loaded with spiky durian rinds and sour honey-grubs.

She drew her flint knife. The blade was serrated and honed on river slate, biting cleanly into the hemp tension cord with three rapid sawing strokes.

"Fresh breakfast for the vanguard!" Tala shouted, her voice ringing off the hollow banyan canopy like a cracked bell.

She severed the final cord.

The overhead counterweight dropped with a groan of stressed timber. The suspension vat tipped instantly, sending a thick, amber-colored torrent of pungent resin cascading down through forty feet of air. The lead scout looked up just in time to catch sixty gallons of sticky sap across his chest and face, knocking him flat against a stall of wicker fruit baskets. Before his companions could draw their concealed armatures, the secondary cargo line snapped, dumping three nets of prickly durian husks and sloshing buckets of fermented honey-grubs directly onto the remaining five trackers.

The market erupted into pandemonium. Pterosaurs tethered at the outer railings screeched and battered their leathery wings, scattering feather-down and straw into the air. Fruit-mongers shrieked, diving behind counters as the drenched scouts struggled to gain footing on planks slick with sap and squirming grubs.

"Sun-Chieftain thieves in the fruit lane!" Tala yelled down from the rafters, leaping lightly to a swaying liana rope and sliding forty feet to the market platform.

Two of the scouts lunged through the mess, ripping away their indigo ponchos to bare their brass-plated breastplates and ash-smeared war collars. The nearest man swung an ironwood cudgel at her head. Tala ducked beneath the heavy blow, planted her heel on a crushed durian rind, and drove her shoulder into the man's hip, sending him skidding across the resin-coated deck into the display cage of an outraged giant mud-crab. The creature's jagged pincer clamped shut around the scout's bronze shin-guard with a resounding crack.

The second tracker lunged with a three-pronged flint dagger. Without her kinetic club to parry, Tala caught the wrist of his strike with both hands, using his forward momentum to pivot and pitch him headfirst over the railing into the lower cargo hammock twelve feet below.

Pulo's harbor guards were already running up the central gangways, their heavy hardwood shields clattering and whistles screeching in triple-burst alerts.

"They carry Sun-Chieftain bronze!" Tala shouted, pointing toward the four trackers still struggling to peel sticky durian nets from their helmets. "Check their belts for the solar wheel!"

With the market watch converging on the trapped scouts, Tala turned on her heel, vaulted the outer banister, and grabbed a descending hoist rope. The oiled hemp burned through her leather palm-wraps as she dropped past three levels of leafy understory, landing with a soft roll on the moss-covered planking of the lower repair slipway.

Roda's double-ended sky skiff was already floating free of its cradle, buoyant on its twin bladder-floats of dried lung-fish skin. The battered single mast was stepped, its broad pterosaur-hide lug sail shivering in the morning breeze rising from the gorge.

Roda stood at the stern steering oar, a heavy woolen scarf wrapped tight around her neck. "You took your sweet time making a mess," the old navigator grunted as Tala hit the deck timbers.

"The whole market is eating honey-grubs and arresting Baya's vanguard," Tala said, catching her breath and securing the dockline with a quick hitch. She ran her hand over the locked tool chest lashed to the mainmast. "The mammoth hide?"

"Still dry in the cedar chest alongside that noisy conch of yours," Roda said, leaning her weight into the steering sweep. "Cast off the bowline before the harbor master figures out who dumped the sap."

Tala sliced the forward tether with her flint knife. The skiff's bow caught the rising gale, swinging cleanly out from under the shadow of Pulo's mossy boughs into the bright open air above the chasm.

The atmospheric oxygen river roared two hundred yards below them, a wide, luminous band of rushing emerald air snaking between floating island-moons toward the distant rings of the gas giant. Behind them, the neutral docks of Pulo shrank into a clutter of moss roofs and swaying lantern poles. The wind tore at Tala's hair as she hauled the main halyard tight, locking the yard into place. The hide sail filled with a resonant snap, surging the light skiff forward along the river's upper slipstream.

For a heartbeat, the sky felt wide and unbroken.

Then the air above them began to hum.

A piercing, crystalline vibration cut through the roar of the atmospheric wind, resonating in the teeth and making the mast timbers shudder in their ironwood steps. High above Pulo, through a split in the pale morning cloud-shelf, a circular glare opened against the blue.

Tala shielded her eyes with an arm.

A colossal ring of bronze and polished volcanic glass hung in the high void, catching the morning light of the central sun and bending it downward into a single needle-sharp point. The focusing lens of the Great Tree had aligned.

With a sound like tearing hides, a column of golden-white solar fire punched down through the upper atmosphere.

The beam struck the oxygen river four leagues downstream, right where the emerald current split toward the outer settlement moons. Where the light touched the stream, the rushing air did not merely heat; it detonated into blinding sheets of white vapor. The emerald glow of the oxygen river withered instantly under the solar lance, boiling away into thin, unbreathable vacuum as the current fractured into violent eddies.

The sky had begun to burn.