When Fintan told the others about the mist pipes, they decided to dissolve the cart rather than leave it for the Xingren.

  “If we trap the mists with cellophane, we can repurpose the cart into backpacks,” Cherry said.

  Despite her centuries in the afterlife, she wasn’t very good at manifesting, but her inclusion improved the cart.

  The cart was a group effort. The wood was lightweight and hollow—called bamboo by WuXin. Apparently, it was a grass, but the slats were six inches in diameter.

  Fintan hadn’t seen that before, and he thought the cells would have been useful to the Free People, but the Union didn’t have bamboo. All of the trees on Critos were cloned from a seed archive. In many ways, the colonies were the opposite of the Union, and the afterlife they created was the opposite of Union life. Instead of unification, they had division.

  In a stark realization, he concluded the Adversary might be behind it all if the gods had abandoned the afterlife to him. How do you fight a power that feeds on conflict?

  The cart wasn’t a single manifestation. RuTing manifested bearings of solid oak, beveled so they wouldn’t bind, and Cherry manifested a grease from a compound the doctors used for high viscosity lubrication.

  Like their attempt at a compound bow, the cart was more durable than what he could manifest, and dissolving it required equal effort. His newfound strength since absorbing Angus hadn’t measurably improved his manifesting ability, although he felt almost no pull toward the river and was stronger than he had been before.

  They gathered close to the wagon, and he focused his desire on dissolution. The mist wafted off the cart and disappeared into the dry air, but before it could disappear, Cherry created a plastic sheet thinner than paper folded in her hand.

  They spread the sheet until they tarped the entire cart with them inside. It wasn’t weighted, and the plastic was so thin he ripped a few holes in the covering, but when they focused on dissolution, the mist didn’t disappear as quickly.

  “If we don’t hurry, the mist will eat through the cellophane,” Cherry said.

  As she spoke, the nearly translucent cellophane became spotted with white corrosion, but RuTing went to work.

  The Free People were experts with backpacks. They walked everywhere, and she created gear with straps around the waist and shoulders so they could distribute the weight of the silver and gold to their center of gravity. She manifested the backpacks with wooden frames and canvas, and as the cart disappeared, WuXin stacked the well-packaged spools into the rectangular compartment.

  The cellophane dissolved into tatters before they were done. Fintan tried to patch the holes with paper, but it was heavier, and the cellophane sheet tore where he bonded the two materials.

  The mist disappeared in the dry air, and the cart was reduced to a single wheel attached to half an axle and a few strips of leather cordage they used for binding.

  Fintan was tired and thirsty, and they still had a long night. They returned to Laoda’s inn and avoided the common room.

  Fintan carried RuTing’s pack in case she needed to defend them, but there was no resistance. They found an empty room with the broken remnants of a bed and a cushion of patched burlap lying on the floor.

  The Xingren’s microphone hung from wires in the squalor, but Fintan doubted it worked. He wouldn’t test it, though, and kept his conversation to a minimum with a discreet gesture to the broken fixture..

  “We are off the road,” RuTing said. “Tomorrow, we can find something better. We can rest in shifts.”

  Needless to say, Fintan wasn’t planning on resting at all. He’d positioned himself on the floor in front of the door and had his poniard in his hand. His throat felt raw, and swallowing was difficult, but he knew he was in better shape than the rest of his friends.

  “If they come, they wouldn’t come through the door,” RuTing said. She pointed down. She didn’t need to say more. The floor was little better than the rest of the inn.

  She spread them out. When the rubbish moved, Cherry let out a shrill squeak, and a nest of cockroaches ran across the floor. The dim light from the lamp overhead left darkness around the room's edges, the perfect nesting place for nesting vermin.

  Her shriek was met with laughter from below, and their neighbor on the right banged on the wall. It was going to be a long night.

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  The thumping laughter and cries lasted until nearly dawn, or at least so Fintan suspected. The one window in their room was boarded, and the street light hid the new day's light. He didn’t trust it until he saw people walking around the street.

  They left the inn bedraggled. Pipes in the common room were locked. Laoda was nowhere to be seen, but several of his clients slept under the table—wrung out, near death, and barely breathing.

  Cherry only made it a few hundred yards before stumbling on the road. Fintan grabbed her pack. She was sallow under a mop of red hair that no longer flamed but looked washed out.

  “I need water,” she said, and relieved of the pack, she sprang to a fountain and thrust her eimai into the slot. The pipe coughed and billowed mist, and she put her head over the indentation and sucked in the wet air. Compared to the Loada’s pipes, the fountain gushed mist, and she returned a moment later after the tap stopped. She held out her eimai for inspection. There was a small hole in the metal card.

  “It’s worth the risk,” WuXin said. He went next, and the hole in his gold card was even smaller. RuTing and Fintan succumbed as well, finding the mist more than sufficient to manifest water and food but not even close to what he would need to manifest metal—the higher the density of the metal, the higher the cost in mist. “YouRan said nothing of us being trapped in the city,” WuXin added.

  Fintan relayed their conversation with the affable innkeeper, but that didn’t mean they knew all the cultural faux pas in the city. The map they’d seen yesterday gave him an inkling of the main market in Yuxia. If they could sell some thread and make some gilders, he would feel better about a city with fealty to the Adversary.

  The contrary god didn’t require these people to worship him, but that was a solace that razed the hackles on his neck. They were missing something, and he was afraid the jaws would close around them before they could escape.

  With the morning, the streets returned to life. Trolley cars skated on metal tracks sparking with electricity that left an acrid scent in the dry air. Food carts appeared in the streets, hawking to traffic garbed in fine cotton clothing. He had never seen shirts and pants with razor-sharp lines, but WuXin concluded was entirely normal for steam-pressed cotton.

  The technomancer had remained silent about most of his past, and Fintan felt there was more to tell. WuXin had fallen into the hands of the Zeusopolans, but Yuxia had access to the portals through the Adversary’s caravans. His arrival to the afterlife had not gone as planned.

  Food was for sale everywhere in the city, but to sell their goods, they had to find the market, and with the walkers by, they found directions with no difficulty. No one was concerned about RuTing’s name since she didn’t show them her eimai. By dress, they were obviously foreigners, but no one cared. They were more interested in what they had to sell.

  “Fine gold thread,” Fintan said to a Yuxian kind enough to offer directions. He had a box with a spool in hand. They were closing in on the Maker’s Market, and he’d been asked so many times he kept the spool on hand. If they got lucky they might make a sale before the market. A quick walk inside to officiate the deal would be all that was necessary.

  The Yuxian stared at the thread and reached with a finger before tilting his head to Fintan. Fintan understood the question and nodded. Everyone wanted to touch the gold and feel it for themselves.

  “So smooth and delicate. This is going to sell fast. I haven’t seen a thread like this since the Everlasting Scrolls.”

  “The Everlasting Scrolls?” Cherry asked. Her eyes squinted underneath her flame-red hair.

  “The thread is only found in Bannerburg,” the Yuxian said. At his words, another merchant stopped. They were close to the market, and buyers and sellers were going to the gates.

  Many had servants or slaves that carried goods on their backs, and the wealth of Yuxia was on par with any of the cities Fintan had seen. Even the slaves had circlets of gold woven into their hair. A symbol etched in the gold adorned the front of each circlet, and the owners carried a box with a matching symbol.

  “The scrolls are an anomaly,” the merchant said. “A Skill like no other. They are priceless for their durability.”

  “This thread is their equal,” Cherry said glibly. “Do you know how to test it?”

  She handed the merchant a spool, and he touched the thread with a tiny hammer.

  “At least it's real gold,” he said, returning the spool to Cherry, “but if you want to sell it as pure, you should go to a crown maker.”

  “That would be the best place to sell your thread if it's pure,” the first Yuxian admitted. He said the words with distaste. He offered them a few more directions before parting ways.

  A few hundred more yards and they found the entrance to the Maker’s Market. Over the years, the market expanded, and four streets with eight gates opened to hundreds of acres of booths, some temporary, many permanent. The buildings around the gates had been removed to accommodate the traffic, but Fintan could tell where the old foundations were torn away, and a line of foreigners waited for an introduction or a license. They had no more money, Fintan hoped their shells would be enough. An attendant waited in a tiny outbuilding that might have been a small carriage house.

  “All sales over a gilder must be officiated with a sanctioned auditor,” the attendant said. He pointed to an engraving on the side of his office. Five yellow stars on a red background over a hammer. “They have the shield of the Builder. If you don’t see the shield the transaction is forfeit. The seller must pay one gilder out of every ten in tariff to Yuxia.” The attendant had a similar shield cast in bronze on his shirt, and the pin pulled at the fabric on his throat.

  “Only ten percent?” Cherry said.

  Fintan wasn’t surprised when she asked; the Ogres were known for tacking on fees.

  The attendant nodded, but his smile was cold.

  “Break the laws of Yuxia and become a slave to Yuxia,” he said.

  They were ushered on before he could say more, but he confirmed their eimai on a foil sheet, and the electric gates whizzed open at the touch of a button.

  They leapt through the gates, not waiting for the heavy bars to open all the way, and the gates swung closed as quickly as they opened. A small rock ground between them before it was pulverized into powder.