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‘She was small and he was small too; but he was big enough to do this wrong. He pushed her away and she fell. In that part of the Imperial City where we lived was the ward, near the army house and the trulano. That’s a place where the City is layered on a slope, so that each ledge from below sticks out further. It is like that for ten or twelve ledges, so my daughter only fell a little way. But she was small and boudun and she broke many bones. She lived a week and then she died. But I think he had no thought to kill her and after he was very sad. There was real pain, I think, in his head,’ and again Vievre made the gesture, tapping his head, ‘not headache but his feelings, you know? We say: confla.’

‘Conscience,’ said Tighe.

Vievre was silent.

‘What did you do?’ asked Tighe.

Vievre shrugged with his shoulders and made his way over to the door to fit the windbreak. The howl of the evening winds was starting to become audible. As he wedged the panel in place he said nothing, then he returned to Tighe’s mattress and sat himself, cross-legged, on the floor.

‘In the Empire there is only one treatment’ – he used the medical word –’for such a thing. For cramla, for killing another, in your family or in the city. Even if it is a child who cramla deriginal, it is the same. If an adult kills, the adult is cast off the world. That is the law. If a child kills, it is the same. My son was crying, saying again and again how he had killed.’ Vievre was looking at the floor; without raising his head he made the shrugging gesture with his shoulders. ‘My son was thrown off the world for what he did. So now I have no daughter and no son.’

A silence settled between them again. Tighe wanted to say something, felt uncomfortable in the speechlessness of the moment, but wasn’t sure what to say. Eventually he asked, in a tiny voice, ‘You have a wife still?’

‘I have two wives, as is right for a man of my position. But they were very unhappy with what happened. Very saddened. Now they live together in the Imperial City and I am with the army. The air between me and my wives’, he made a nonspecific gesture with his right hand, ‘it is not good. Sick, now. They and I cannot be together long without shouting and swearing.’ He looked up and Tighe was a little shocked to see that he was smiling. ‘But I go to war soon, and maybe there I will find another wife. With another wife, maybe more children. War makes many things possible.’

The candle threw shuddering patches of light on the floor and walls and roof of the ward. For a while Tighe watched the pattern.

After a long silence, Vievre got slowly to his feet. His joints creaked and sang as he rose. ‘Anyway, my little bird,’ he said, in a soft voice, ‘I think it is that, well, with you I dreamt of my boy
flying
– do you see? You fell and you are alive. Perhaps he fell, past the Downwall Lands of the empire, past the empty stretch below – fell many miles, perhaps. But maybe he is still alive somewhere, far far downwall. Maybe he lived, somehow, and now has a new life. You are a good omen, they say. Perhaps you bring luck to us all.’

And he squashed the candle flame between finger and thumb like killing a butterfly, lay down on a mattress by the wall and fell asleep.

In the morning Tighe practised some more walking, making several circuits leaning on Vievre’s shoulder, and several more hobbling along by himself. ‘It will get easier with use,’ said Vievre.

He seemed subdued and Tighe could think of nothing to say to cheer him up.

At some point in the morning a young girl came in with a bundle: it was a rolled-up blue tunic that stretched down almost to Tighe’s knees. She also had some leggings, but they proved much too baggy and she went away again to fetch a smaller size. ‘You will need the clothing,’ said Vievre mournfully. ‘Flatar feel the cold, out in the air. You should wear as much clothing as you can get.’

Tighe nodded at this. When the girl returned with the smaller leggings she was accompanied by a uniformed boy. He was taller than Tighe, but skinny and angular. His skin was also less sick-looking, although not as dark as a normal complexion. He marched through the door and struck a particular stance, planting his feet an arm apart and putting both hands on his hips. ‘I am flatar,’ he said, putting his head on one side. ‘My name is Ati. I have been told to come fetch the bird-boy. He is to be trained as a flatar and fight in the war against the enemy.’

‘Here he is,’ said Vievre, ‘as you can see with your own eyes if you weren’t acting so mensona. What did you say your name was?’

‘Ati,’ said the boy, a little taken aback. He shifted his stance so that it was angled towards Vievre. I have orders.’

‘Ati,’ said Vievre. ‘Is that a Downwall name? You have a Downwall look about you.’

‘My family’, said the newcomer, with a little spurt of pride, ‘are from downwall, it is true.’

‘All Downwallers are the same,’ Vievre said loudly. ‘You are all bad. I never met anybody from that far downwall who is good. My little bird,’ he turned to Tighe, ‘believe me. God puts culpaiden further down the wall, further away from Him. I was born upwall from the Imperial City and so I know.’

‘My family is a good family,’ said Ati, outraged.

‘You are shit, as all Downwallers are,’ said Vievre, his temper rising. ‘Your family is shit as well. Shit falls downwall, as the proverb has it, and you are proof of that. Do you contradict me?’

‘Have you ever travelled downwall?’ demanded the boy.

‘Ati – my rank is Prelette. Are you calling a superior a liar?’ Vievre was speaking very loudly now. ‘I will report you – I have met the Air Cardinelle of the whole army. I
will
report you for pride and un-army behaviour.’

‘Sir,’ said Ati, in a quavery voice, ‘I meant nothing, only …’

‘Shut up! This boy is as a son to me,’ said Vievre, gesturing with both his hands. ‘You will watch him, estarre him, treat him well. If not, you will be thrown off the wall! Shut up!’

There was a frozen moment. Then Ati saluted – Tighe was later to learn that this gesture, a touching of the forehead with the hand, was an Imperial army tradition, from a junior to a superior. ‘Sir,’ said Ati in a dull voice, ‘I have orders to bring the sky-boy to the flatar house. He will be trained and will become an assievre to the flatar platon.’

‘I know he will,’ growled Vievre. But when he turned to embrace Tighe, there were tears in his eyes. ‘Goodbye, my little bird,’ he said. ‘Go with this boy, even if he is downwall shit. And you,’ he said, turning again on Ati, ‘take care of this boy.’

With that Vievre dashed out of the ward, with Tighe and Ati staring after him in varying degrees of astonishment. For a moment there was silence and then Ati turned to Tighe.

‘You,’ he said. ‘Sky-boy. Will you please to come with me?’

They stepped through the door and on to the ledge outside. It was a bright morning, the sun was below their feet and shining straight up into their eyes. Briefly Tighe couldn’t see anything other than the great wash of white light, the heart of silence and a clear morning. There was the hush in his ears of morning air settling after the dawn flurries. Then he blinked and his eyes adjusted. The boy Ati was standing next to him, looking at him strangely.

‘Your doctor has gone I think,’ he said.

Tighe scowled at him. ‘My foot hurts very,’ he said.

Ati snorted. ‘My foot hurts very!’ he mimicked. ‘My foot hurts
badly
, you ignorant barbarian. Your hair is stupid. How do you keep your head warm with that stupid hair? It looks like grass, it is so feeble.’

Tighe felt a wave of weariness go through him. His foot was throbbing uncomfortably. He leaned against the jamb of the ward door and breathed out. ‘Is it far to walk?’

Ati picked something out of a pouch from around his neck, slotted it
into his mouth and started chewing. ‘Far?’ he said. ‘Not far. You smell funny. I don’t
like
your smell. I’ll tell you something, you
azhnazd
barbarian.’ Tighe felt certain that word wasn’t part of the Imperial language. It didn’t sound right. Ati spat a little globule of black spittle from his mouth. ‘I’ll tell you something. When you get to the platon, you won’t have any high-rank doctor to look after you like a mummy-mummy. You’ll have Waldea and he’s a hard father. And you’ll have
us
, you little barbarian, with your golzg hair and funny smell.’ He was suddenly in motion, striding away along the narrow ledge and Tighe hurriedly bundled himself into a halting limp behind, trying to keep up.

‘Hold!’ he called. ‘So fast! Wait!’

The ledge sloped down, rimmed with wild mushrooms growing on the far edge. They turned a dog-leg and rounded a spur of the worldwall, and suddenly – breathtakingly – the whole base was laid out before them. Tighe forgot his discomfort for the moment in the splendour of it.

He had never seen anything like it.

The landscape was a series of ripples across the face of the worldwall; perhaps it had been a village once, although now it was entirely taken over by the military. Tighe could see that ledges had been dug through, diagonals had been excavated, narrow crags had been bulked up with planks of what looked like wood (but surely couldn’t be!). Doors led into the world and there was a single broad shelf away below him. Presumably the shelf was the reason why the military had been attracted to the place to begin with. But what really caught Tighe’s eye was the sheer number of people.

There were more people than he could count; people diminished by the distance to the size of fingers, of insects, all dressed in blue. There must have been hundreds. Tighe had never seen so many human beings in one place together before. They swarmed along every ledge, and congregated in a mass on the shelf.

And there, moored off the shelf, were what – in a flash of understanding – Tighe recognised were the calabashes Vievre had talked about. There were half a dozen enormous spheres, bright blue with red lizard stripes running vertically. They looked like perfectly round pebbles, painted and polished, except that they were so huge. But what was most unsettling about them was the way they simply hung in the air. Like clouds made solid: painted clouds made solid and smoothed by the fingers of God into perfectly spherical shapes.

Tighe paused, and stepped closer to the edge, dropping a little to steady his balance. He wanted a better look at the scene. He could see there were ropes draped from each calabash to the shelf, some drooping, one drawn tight. There were two little wooden (again: could it really be
wood
?) piers
poking out from the wall, and there were even people making their way along the precarious walkway. That was because – Tighe could see – there were what looked like pots hanging from underneath the calabashes. Perhaps the calabashes could go up and down according to some method, carrying the people beneath them as passengers. It was breathtaking.

The globes, he could see, were not steady in the air as he first thought. One of them was drifting very slowly towards the wall. It bumped gently into its neighbour, and Tighe saw the skin of the great sphere buckle like flesh. So, they were soft, like big fat bellies hanging in space.

So, that was why the fall hadn’t killed him. He shut his eyes, trying to remember. There were only confused images in his mind.

He dropped to his haunches and put his hand out to steady himself. His foot was throbbing, and the prospect of going over the ledge and falling again was horrific to him; but he wanted to take a closer look at these astonishing sky devices. His hand squelched on some of the wild mushrooms growing at the limit of the ledge and he swept away a patch.

‘Hey!’

It was the boy Ati yelling at him. ‘Hey! Sky-boy! Take care!’

‘What?’

Ati was running up towards him. ‘Watch where you’re stepping.’

Tighe had been so overawed by the sight below him that he had forgotten about Ati. He leant towards the wall and got cumbrously to his feet. ‘What is it?’

‘What are you doing with those chemmia?’

‘What?’

Ati was beside him now, breathing heavily from having sprinted up the ledge. ‘Are you crazy? Destroying the chemmia like that is a punishment offence. You want they should throw you off the wall?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Understand this, barbarian. You may be the sky-boy, the good omen for this campaign. But they’ll throw you off the world as well as anybody if they discover you destroying the chemmia.’

‘Chemmia?’

With a little squeal of frustration, Ati gestured at the mushrooms. ‘Those!’

‘They’re only mushrooms,’ said Tighe.

‘That’s right,’ said Ati, grabbing Tighe’s arm. ‘Now leave them alone. They’re military mushrooms.’ And he hauled him away.

Tighe yelped with pain and it took several steps of this enforced pace before he could slip into his halting limp. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘They would throw me off the world for a few mushrooms?’

‘You don’t know anything?’

‘Wait,’ said Tighe, trying to catch his breath, to get into his stride. ‘Why? For mushrooms? Why.’

‘They’re military mushrooms. Do you really not know?’

‘I really not know.’

Ati let go of his arm, and spat over the ledge. ‘You’re supposed to bring luck, you know. If you don’t bring luck, then what are you?’

‘Tell me about the mushrooms,’ said Tighe.

‘They make fire.’

‘Fire?’

‘The army take the mushrooms and dry them. They have a – a –’ he stopped, and then positively shouted with frustration. I do not know the Imperial word for it! In my family’s tongue it is burzhum. It is, like, earth – yes, Dry? Dry, small, much of it. Plants have it and they put it in the air, and it goes in the air to another place and settles in the earth and new mushrooms grow.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Tighe, leaning against the wall on his right to rest his bad foot. I do not know the word for it either. It is a kind of
dust
,’ he added, using his native word.

Ati shrugged. ‘This burzhum, this
dusht
, when it is dry, is packed in boxes and cases. With a flame it makes fire – great fire.’ He clapped his hands together and shouted
Bah!
so loud that Tighe jumped. ‘It is in the army’s weaponry. We have rifette in the army, and they are filled with the burzhum. That is how the weaponry works.’