Free Storm Thief by Chris Wooding Page A

and purified before being released from a colossal reservoir to flow back towards the ocean, travelling north, south and west along the Arteries. It had flowed east, too, until some time ago when the canal had disappeared during a probability storm. Most of eastern Orokos was flooded. Since then, those areas had become slums, and were plagued with Revenants.
    Vago sprang out of the alleyway and on to the bridge. It went from one side of the Artery to the other with no visible means of support. He was terrified by the amount of space around him, by the misty sky and the sensation of great height. He could see the rushing water far below. There was nothing to stop him falling off except a low parapet.
    Down the canal, he could see all the way to the edge of Orokos, many miles away. In the other direction, towards the centre, he could see the spires and rooftops of the city. There were cranes and derricks, and the rotted tooth of an occasional mountain shrouded in a white haze. Among them were the magnificent and obscure shapes of constructions left over from the Functional Age.
    People were screaming again, and whistles pulsed. The men and women on the bridge scattered. Running towards Vago were three more Protectorate soldiers. He stumbled to a halt and looked back desperately, but he could see the two more soldiers pushing through the alleyway he had just come from. There was no escape there. He was trapped.
    The soldiers levelled their aether cannons. The people cried out and cowered against the parapets. Vago took one step and sprang over the side of the bridge.
    He had been hoping, perhaps, that instinct would take over, that he would spread his leathery wings and fly. He was mistaken. As soon as his wings unfolded, the wind caught them and the impact sent him spinning, flailing uselessly.
    Hopelessly tangled, he plunged like a rock towards the water below. Calculations flickered through his head, judgements of distance and velocity. The massive canal raced up to meet him, unstoppably fast. After falling this far, the surface would be like concrete.
    He hit the water at bone-shattering speed, and after that there was darkness.

The streets of Orokos went deep.
    The city sat atop a plateau of rock in the midst of the ocean, and there was nothing beyond it. Over time, it had grown to cover every square inch of the island’s surface, except for the sides of the blunt, lonely mountains that thrust up into the sky here and there. They were too steep to build on.
    When there was no more space on the surface, the people in forgotten days built upward. They constructed spires and towers and great obelisks of shiny black metal with thousands of chambers inside. But they also dug down, into the rock. They tunnelled out labyrinths of underground waterways, service ducts, and strange chambers whose purpose had long been lost to history. And there were streets down here, long corridors full of apartments, dozens upon dozens of levels. An old superstructure left from a departed time that nobody knew how to maintain.
    But whether the city above was basking in the sun or pale under the light of the moon, the Dark Markets were always open.
    The market that Rail and Moa found themselves at, some time after they had fled their home, had sprung up in a cavernous Functional Age chamber with a barrel-shaped ceiling. Great branching pillars supported the roof, made of some black substance that was the texture of glistening wood but harder than metal. In between these pillars were dozens of yurts, tents of stiffened fabric that resembled beetles. They were pitched anywhere, and in no apparent order. One end was always propped open, to display the wares within. And in the Dark Markets, everything was for sale.
    Rail and Moa trod carefully through the chamber. It was busy at the moment. Gyik-tyuks and rickshaws made their way among the foot traffic, and the noise of conversation echoed dizzyingly all around. Burning globes of sharp white energy