Serpents and Stairways

Chapter III - Part 4

Dinah sat and leaned back. The cage flew up the mountain with immense speed, but even still their ride went on, until the spruces too were taken by the fog that had erased the Lower city.

Distortions. What did Servantes mean? An obstacle to finding truth? Some filth that had infected it like miasms—that's what they used to call the "infecting principles", the nature of which medicine hadn't discovered yet. But what would it look like? Was it even possible to imagine what he saw—not through his oculars, but with his aetherial, informational being.

What was left of the frail sun had faded. They've entered a pencil sketch, the gray world of graphite dust.

"Are we passing through the clouds?" Dinah asked. But before she could finish her thought—how thin was the difference between clouds and fog this high up—sunshine had flooded the gondola and it came to a stop. Uncertain, the girl stepped out into the light, frost and air.

Up there was a viewing platform, open to all attendees: dames in furs, under parasols, hoping they'd protect them from snow sunburns (they won't); kids; painters... Dinah and Servantes walked past them through a door for 'Authorized Access Only' into a watchman's striped booth, and exiting it on the other side, they saw it.

Between the mountains and the sky, where regular people couldn't reach, towered the fairytale architecture of Silen. Tall, woven out of glass and gold, the spires looked like nails that someone from beneath the surface had hammered through the rock into the heavens.

The city of spires, the city where airships parked on the rooftops, the youngest of all cities of the Old Light, all year round buried in snow—it was almost her age, built out of modernity and dreams. Dinah knew that eighty eight witches had laid its eight hundred eighty eight (three infinities!) magic circles. She saw Silen on postcards from her aunt Olga, had read through its descriptions, yet it was hard for her to believe that they were—here.

"Tell me about it, Servantes!"

"I'm afraid we'll have to introduce ourselves to our escort first." He said after a delay. Dinah looked into the direction that his body was turned to.

The Upper city—the only city concealed fully from the eyes of people who didn't bear the kiss of aether—in all its glory was still far off. A road spiraled down from it to the rocky platform that they had arrived at—the hubbub of the viewpoint still reached them here, but its image had disappeared behind them, just as they had disappeared from it. Here, a black smudge of a carriage stood, drawn by two winged soot blots. An automaton sat on the perch—round like a barrel, with an enamel coat of arms of the Decafold empire. Judging by the squeaking, it waved its arm at them.

"In our honorable coachman's side there's a sizable dent," Servantes whispered to her, "and the right ocular is new and smooth, as if replaced just yesterday."

"So what? Does this necessarily mean he tumbled down a hairpin turn?"

"With all due respect to your deduction prowess, what else could this mean? I do not wish to appear ungrateful, but perhaps we undertake the journey on our own?"

"How far is it?"

"About sixty thousand feet"

"At an inclination? Pass. Given the choice, I'd prefer to die without sweating all the way through my S-bend corset. Who's idea was it that these are comfortable?"

"Lady!"

"Besides, the horses have wings—if we fall, they'll put them to good use, I hope."

Servantes was going to say something else, but the carriage door opened and a maid stepped out—dressed just like the ones who were escorting Dinah yesterday. Black dress, black shoes: a jackdaw head to tail.