Each morning and each night, most avians sang to the old gods. Their prayers could be heard, soaring down from the highest temples, washing over the rooftops of the Cauldron.

In the mornings, the song always started weakly. A few chirps and squawks in the darkness before the dawn. And then, the just as the sun crested over the mountain ridge, a hail of voices would trumpet out from the highest temples. Praise to the old gods for this glorious new day.

At dusk, as the globe of the sun began to touch the mountain ridge on the other side of the Cauldron, the first mournful notes of the evensong would soar down from the temple rooftops. Praying for mercy, for protection.

At each prayer, devout avians - no matter where they were - would kneel and mutter and clutch their holy icons as they let the songs wash over them.

Eolh was never among them. To tell the truth, the last time he set foot inside a temple, he had not come to pray with the priests, but to steal from them. But that had been another life.

Today, he came to Asaiyam’s tower for an entirely different purpose.

Eolh landed on the entry perch that wrapped around Asaiyam’s tower, halfway up its impossible height. He could already smell the rich, heady incense pouring out of the depths of this holy place.

It still felt wrong to him. A corvani in the Highcity. Lowcaste rarely made it up into the Midcity, and here he was, summoned to the highest temple in all the Cauldron. Feels like I should be skulking, not walking in the front door.

But he had been invited by none other than Ryke av’Ryka, Queen of the Free Avians, Monarch of the Cauldron.

In the recent weeks, after the dam of the Empire’s tyranny had broken, the Queen was a flood, determined to bring new life to the city. Gods, how the people needed her.

The city was a ruin. Lowtown was black and flattened. The Highcity had wilted. And pieces of that massive ship - Poire had called it a terraforming barge - were being hauled away to the factories, where the redenites were attempting to melt it down and reforge the metal into something useful. The rest still lay, smashed against the ruins of the Midcity.

And while the Magistrate’s tortures left wounds that would never heal, Ryke refused to be contained. This was her first, best chance to serve, and she would serve, damn it. In these first weeks, despite her inability to get out of her own bed, she lived up to the legendary nobility of the oqyllan Queens and Kings before her. With so many attendants around her, she ordered daily reports, new decrees, and set in motion the first plans to repair the city.

Open the coffers and seederies, harvest the orchards. My people will eat. Tear down the estate walls. Let them live in my palace, if need be. This city will be rebuilt, with the people as one people. Feather or fur or scale, it will matter not.

All this, Eolh had seen while sitting at her left hand. Whenever he found time to slip away from Poire and the an-droid, he would go to her, to offer his assistance.

But when did she ever need him?

Eolh was surprised to see how seamlessly the castes came together under the Queen’s direction - after all they had been through. Lowcaste with the Midcitizens. Soldiers with priests. Fur and feather and scale...

There were only two exceptions:

First, the old nobles. The ones who had betrayed their own kin to the cyrans. After Poire raised the dome and brought down the Magistrate’s last ship, all the old nobles seemed to evaporate overnight. Some said they were dead, and there was evidence of that. Throats slit by their own servants. Others said the avian traitors disappeared on rigs headed across the deep jungles and the farthest oceans.

Good luck to them. The Cauldron had its problems, but at least those problems wouldn’t try to eat you alive.

Still, Eolh suspected there were more than a few old nobles still hiding throughout the city.

So, he had visited his Horace, one of the old gang bosses, now governor of Lowtown. Horace, it seemed, had been making a few of his own special “catches,” rooting out traitors in Lowtown’s few remaining hiding places.

“The law has long wings,” Horace said, “But sometimes those wings beat too slowly. Fortunately, I know people who understand the importance of swift flight.”

When Eolh’s face soured, Horace laughed and clapped him on the back.

“I see what you’re thinking, old friend. And yes, the Queen knows, though she won’t admit it. Who do you think is funding this?”

And the second exception: all those imperials - the soldiers, the citizens from Cyre - were placed in a temporary prison camp, in the heart of the Highcity, directly under the watchful gaze of the Hanging Palace. Not to be harmed.

Eolh still didn’t know what the Queen planned to do with them.

But now, as he stepped into Asaiyam’s inner temple, where the smoke played in the shafts of light, Eolh had a growing suspicion.

The temple was so vast, even the echoes had echoes. Polished seastone floors radiated out from the slender beam in the middle, using the old human metal as the main support. That beam, Poire had said, was a kind of conduit, a pipeline to channel the energy of the dome. Or something like that.

Light shafted down from the wide open windows and archways carved into the walls. Numerous gas lamps illuminated each shrine across the eight corners of the temple.

The Queen was sitting on the pews in front of one of these shrines. Her back was turned to him, so that he could see the scars where her feathers had been pulled. The spines of new feathers were beginning to poking through her pink flesh, bristling against the cloak wrapped around her shoulders.

Eolh made a low caw to announce his presence. The Queen turned her head, her stony face breaking into warm recognition.

She nodded at the shrine. At the statue of a human woman, her muscles deeply detailed in the marble.

“Kanya, of the Iron Grin.” Ryke said, “That’s what I’ve always called her. That’s what she’s been called, for the last thousand years. Maybe longer. Poire says she was real. And that her name was never Kanya.”

“Did he tell you what it was?”

“I’m not sure if I want to know. Kanya has always been there for me. I was so certain she always would be.”

Kanya’s eyes were narrowed, and her mouth was steeled into a grimace. Pain. And joy. The statue’s head was half-shaved, and the rest of her short hair was across over her scalp.

“I started to wonder,” the Queen said, “What if she was different? What if this human was nothing like the Kanya I believe in?”

“Does it matter?”

The Queen’s gave him a look.

“I mean,” Eolh continued, “She’s not coming back, right? So you might as well take the best version of her.”

“The world must be so clear to you, Eolh.”

He said nothing.

She crooked her head, asking him to sit next to her.

There were a dozen or so falcyr guards patrolling the temple. Eolh could hear the creak of their heavy leathers. Falcyr were culturally disposed to distrust corvani - to be fair, even corvani distrusted corvani. But over the past few weeks, the guards had grown used to Ryke’s easy trust in Eolh, and their watchful, yellow eyes no longer followed his every movement.

Eolh eyed the crack in her beak. Followed it, up to her eyes, which met his. There was something about her presence. So real and full. It was easy to be near her.

Suddenly, he felt tense. Felt like he had to start talking, or something would go wrong.

“Poire’s talking again. Up, and out of bed, too.”

“Good!” A kind of tension seemed to ease in her, starting from her chest and rising to her face. “Does he know what happened? What caused the, ah, the problem?”

“He says he’s having visions, Ryke. He won’t even look at me. I can’t tell if it’s a human thing, or a Poire thing.”

“Does the an-droid know anything?”

“If she does, she’s not telling me. There’s something wrong with her, too. What’s her word for it again? Re-interpreting. At least, that’s what Laykis said. She’s working on re-interpreting. I thought about listening to them, you know. Eavesdrop. But it didn’t feel right. They’re my friends and- why are you looking at me like that?”

Her bold, brown eyes were filled with laughter. A smile creased the corner of her beak. It seemed to light up her face, as bright as the sun that poured in through the windows.

“What?” he said.

“If I tell you, you’re not allowed to make that face at me.”

“I’m not making a face,” Eolh said. “This is just how my face looks.”

Her smile deepened the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “I was just going to say that you’re so different. When I first met you, I thought I knew everything about you. I thought you might be awful. Or cruel. But I was so wrong. And I thought you were trying to sell the Savior of aviankind himself. What a fool I was. But then, I also thought that Poire would be able to open up the heavens with a flick of his wrist, or summon lightning with a word.”

“You never know.”

She laughed, and nudged him gently with her cloak-covered shoulder. Even through that heavy silk, he thought he could feel her warmth. It was nice, in a way that shouldn’t have been. He moved an inch away from her, and she pretended not to notice.

Ryke continued, “I thought that when we found Poire, all of our problems would magically vanish.”

“No. But some of them did fall from pretty high up,” Eolh said, “You have to admit. It is better now.”

“I admit, yes, but-” and here, the smile slid from the corner of her beak, “But we still have so much to do. I wished I hadn’t urged him so much. But the people wanted to see their Savior, and I thought...”

A sigh. A sudden, subtle shift in her posture.

Here it comes.

“The Emperor of Cyre is awake,” Ryke said, “And he sent a message.”

“How? What did it say?”

“The Magistrate had a device. It seems to be connected to Cyre. A way to communicate between worlds. The Emperor seemed to know that it was in our possession now.”

Eolh clenched his beak. He could feel where this was going, and he didn’t like it.

The ruler of the cyran empire was shrouded in rumor. And myth. He was more than a king to the cyrans. A god, maybe. Eolh didn’t know much about cyran culture, and didn’t want to. Not a single one of them was worth the air they breathed, least of all this distant emperor.

“We’ve got the device - the clasp - working again, thanks to a few of the Magistrates, ah, ex-compatriots. The Emperor wants to talk. In person.”

Eolh’s blood turned to ice. He turned away from her.

“This is a good thing, Eolh.

“How can it possibly be a good thing?”

“The Emperor knows things that nobody else can know. He can help us. All of us.”

“What did the Magistrate know?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fool, corvani. The Emperor is not Secaius.”

Eolh scoffed a crowing sound from the bottom of his throat.

“Listen,” she said. “There is a whole universe out there. Our people can not thrive in isolation. If there is even a chance for peace with the Emperor, I will take it.”

“Peace?” Eolh laughed, mirthless. And angry.

She ignored him. “The Emperor has given us control of the gate. Do you know how many hundreds of years our people have puzzled over that thing? It was the only source of power that the cyrans had over us. And now, the Emperor has given us the key to it.”

“How do you know he can’t just change the lock whenever he wants? How do you know anything about what he wants?”

“I don’t. That’s why I’m going to answer his message. I’m sending a clutch of diplomats to Cyre, and I want you to go with them.”

Eolh’s stomach dropped.

“You want me,” He said slowly, his mind getting stuck on every part of this idea, “To go to Cyre?”

“Yes.”

“A planet full of the murderers who almost destroyed our whole way of life?”

“Yes.”

He came to his feet, his fists clenched at his side. Looking down at her. “You want me, a corvani and a street thief, to put myself in the hands of a government that crucified my people?”

“Eolh.” That was all she said. But he understood. The Queen had considered all these things. And yet, she would still ask him to go.

A thin haze of incense wafted through the air, cutting through the tension. Across the open atrium, someone was humming a chant and the gentle, ponderous ting… ting… of a small bell echoed sweetly through the soaring temple.

“Why me?” He asked.

“Because you’re you. I know what I’m asking. And… And I don’t want you to go, Eolh, but there is no one else. I don’t trust anyone else to listen, not like you. I need to know if we can have peace. Or if we can’t.”

“I’m the wrong one. Ryke. You know I’m the wrong one. ”

“You’re the only one who calls me that, anymore. By my name.”

Again, her eyes fell on his. There was a tightness in his chest. He didn’t know what to do with that feeling.

So, he looked away.

She sniffed. It sounded painful. Her breathing was still ragged from whatever internal trauma she had suffered at the hands of the Magistrate. How long had he tortured her?

But she hadn’t said a word. Not about Poire, nor Eolh.

He traced the metallic fingers of his right hand over the leathery skin of his right, almost as black as charred wood. He could still smell the roaring fires, could still hear the masses of screaming, helpless people fleeing through Lowtown as the city was bathed in an orange-black glow.

After a long silence, she said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe her real name doesn’t matter. Kanya. She will always be Kanya.”

Eolh took a deep breath in. And let it out. Gods, why am I doing this?

“Fine,” Eolh said. “I’ll go.”

When she looked at him, there was sadness in her eyes. “You’ll go?”

“One condition,” Eolh said. “I’m not going as a diplomat.”

“Then as what?”

“Put me in with the traders and crafters. I don’t want anyone to know who I am. And I especially don’t want the cyrans to know who I’m doing this for. Understood?”

She nodded, a slow smile spreading at the corners of her beak, reaching all the way to her eyes. She put a hand on his, “Thank you, Eolh.”