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Chapter 5: Where the Ropes Sing

Halidom was no empire. It was a towered village with a memory longer than its streets and just enough people to argue over whose memory was right.

The spires stood close enough that a rigger could cross from one to the next in minutes, their shadowed gaps bridged by rope, pulley, or plank. Small enough to change its shape. Stubborn enough to keep it.

Dren called mornings "lesson time," though Jax never remembered agreeing to them.

Dren was short and broad-shouldered, his gray beard clipped short. He wore reading glasses on a cord, forever smudged with soot. Even his eyes worked hard.

The city was still waking up. Steam vents hissed somewhere below. Someone's breakfast basket groaned past on the pulley line, trailing the smell of fried bread.

Dren tugged at Jax's harness, checking the buckles twice. "Come on. You've seen Ashgrove a hundred times. Time you learned how the rest of Halidom hangs together." He nudged him toward the edge of the scaffold.

Jax squinted at the ropes strung like veins between towers. "By falling?"

"By not falling." Dren's beard twitched. The closest he came to smiling before breakfast.

"Now put your goggles on." Every rigger wore them. Thick glass to cut the glare and keep mist out of your eyes.

Dren gave the rope one last tug, testing its weight. "Fear chains the hands; faith teaches them to—" He yanked. "There. That'll hold."

He gave Jax's back a shove toward the rope. "Now climb."