An Unlikely Ceasefire

Could an oath sworn in sunlight survive forty spans of falling masonry and the cold air of the void? Danique Oosterkerk kept her palm open between them, watching the bronze spark-spike rest heavy in Joris van Veldt's gauntlet. Ten spans above their heads, the ruined floor of the high sanctum burned with black tallow smoke, while below their boots four thousand spans of empty cloud-belts pulled at the edges of the sheared stone. She wanted his spear leveled at the upper ruins instead of grounded in defeat, because staying on this cracked cantilever alone meant dropping into the mist before the bells rang nones.

Joris did not take her hand, but he closed his fingers over the stamped bronze spike, concealing the ivory balance seal beneath iron-ribbed leather.

"If we drop below the cloud-belts, there is no returning to the garrison," he said, the words measured and low.

"The garrison belongs to the woman who put a fuse beneath your heels," Danique said, her chin lifting toward the scorched foundation timbers jutting from the cliff face. "At least my criminal record never dropped half a ziggurat. My ropes leave far less rubble than your high altar."

A sudden rasp of iron against stone cut through the rising wind.

Danique spun on the balls of her feet, her falcata blades dropping into a low guard. Along the exterior maintenance gantry four spans above, the three figures in soot-streaked tunics stepped out from the drainage gutters. They wore thick river-dredger respirators of stitched hide and hammered tin. One shouldered a double-bowed arbalest, the second carried a heavy bronze pry-bar, and their leader, a squat man with a scarred neck, held a burning brand over a wicker basket packed with sulfur pots.

"The Champion lives," the leader called down, his voice muffled behind the respirator valve. "The Lady said the vault floor would crush the thief. She did not say the Dawn Shield shared her ledge."

Joris stepped forward until his sabatons touched the fractured rim of the slab. "Stand down. By authority of the Sun Well and the martial charter, drop your weapons and yield the terrace."

The leader spat a glob of brown paste onto the masonry. "The Sun Well is empty, soldier. The lady pays in coin that actually buys bread down in the lower basins. Kill them both and dump the stone."

An iron bolt hissed from the arbalest.

Joris swept his eight-foot spear in a tight, rising arc. The heavy bronze shaft intercepted the missile mid-flight, snapping the bolt with a sharp metallic clatter that sent both halves spinning into the mist. He angled his bronze breastplate against the updraft, planting his boots firmly along the fracture line without slipping.

"Still want to read me the municipal penal code?" Danique ducked beside his hip, using his broad armored flank as a windbreak. "Or do we kill the sweepers before they pry the anchor pins?"

"Stay close," Joris said.

"Not likely," she muttered, rolling her shoulder to check the strap of the Falcon-Aegis beneath her harness. "I fight better when I see the drop."

"Do you have the ladder line?"

"Give me two heartbeats without bolts in my skull and I'll reach the high altar."

"Two heartbeats," he said, his jaw setting hard. "Then move."

A burning sulfur pot tumbled from the gantry above, spewing thick green smoke and sputtering tallow across the stones. Danique did not wait for the smoke to clear. Hooking the rim of the blazing pot with the tip of her falcata, she whipped the vessel across the stone, hurling the sulfur flame directly into an exposed ballast winch beneath the catwalk. The grease on the drum caught in a brilliant blast of blinding sparks and hissing fire, driving the upper saboteurs back from their perches and creating an open path for Joris.

She bounded along the narrow lip where the sheared slab rested against the temple wall.

The stone groaned beneath her weight. The blast had severed the primary balance struts, leaving the entire thirty-foot platform wedged on a single bronze cantilever pinned into the basalt cliff. Above the cantilever, a snapped counterweight cable whipped wildly in the updraft, its frayed bronze strands threatening to foul the remaining support pins. If that cable snapped the secondary pin, the slab would tilt sixty degrees and spill them into the lower cloud-belts.

Danique leapt over a patch of boiling sulfur pitch. She caught the whipping bronze cable with the hooked tip of her left falcata, wrenching the heavy braid downward. Her right hand seized an iron torsion clamp bolted into the cliff face. Bracing both boots against the shuddering stone, she jammed the cable's loop into the clamp's jaws and kicked the locking wedge home with her heel.

The slab shrieked as tension transferred to the granite cliff, arresting the fatal tilt.

"Left flank!" Joris shouted.

The cultist with the pry-bar dropped down via a knotted hemp line, raising his iron weapon as he landed on the slab. Before the man could balance on the shuddering rock, Joris closed the distance in two thunderous strides. The eight-foot bronze spear lashed out, the heavy butt-cap striking the attacker square across the chest. The cultist slammed hard onto the fractured rim of the cantilever, his boot tangling in the knotted descent line as he lay stunned against the stone.

Danique lunged across the shuddering rock. With a swift twist of her blade, she severed the fallen man's belt harness, snatching up his heavy iron cable-hook and coiled ascension lead. An instant later, the man's limp weight tore free of the hemp cord and slipped over the lip, vanishing into the churning gray vapor below.

She clicked the bronze carabiner to her own cross-strap, securing their only stable ascent anchor to the upper gantries.

"I have their line!" Danique called, sliding along the tensioned cable toward a narrow inspection sill three spans higher.

The crossbowman on the catwalk snapped a hurried shot through the greasy smoke. The bolt sparked off the stone an inch from Danique's shin, clipping the hem of her trousers. She vaulted onto the iron catwalk, falcatas flashing in a twin arc. She struck the arbalest's stock with her right blade, splitting the dried ash wood, and drove the pommel of her left falcata into the shooter's bronze respirator. The metal crumpled inward. The cultist stumbled back, lost his footing on the slick iron mesh, and tumbled off the gantry into the void.

On the gantry above, the leader dropped his burning brand into the remaining sulfur pots. Flames erupted along the wooden decking, cutting off the southern stair.

"You're out of help, foreman!" Danique shouted over the hiss of burning tallow, circling toward the central gantry with both blades raised.

The leader did not reach for a weapon. Instead, he lunged toward the massive iron housing of the central mooring gantry, where the temple's primary anti-gravitational anchor chain hung from a reinforced titanium-bronze winch. The links were as thick as an ox's thigh, vibrating with the immense levitation torque that held the ziggurat aloft above the planetary void.

The man drew a heavy hardened steel wedge from his belt and wedged it directly into the release pawl of the winch. In his other hand, an iron sledgehammer swung upward.

"If the Sun Well falls, the whole mountain follows!" the cultist screamed through his cracked mask.

"Joris!" Danique lunged forward, her boots catching the slippery mesh of the catwalk.

Joris hit the lower ladder rungs in a surge of bronze plate and furious momentum, his spear leveled at the winch platform. But the leader was already driving the sledgehammer down toward the release wedge with a furious two-handed swing as the iron head descended.