‘These cities saved a generation from the floods. We house millions of happy, productive citizens. We can’t look after everyone. You would ruin all those lives just to share out the misery? Wreck the future of our innocent children? Kill your own people?’ ‘There are millions of innocents abandone...
Mara peers through the tints cast by the shattered stained glass windows that reach up to the vast, vaulted ceiling. A million sparkling motes of dust drift like minuscule floating lanterns. Even amid the noisy games and quarrels of the urchins there’s a sense of peace, pure and deep, distilled b...
She finds a free cupule nearby and settles down to pretend to work but really she’s listening hard to Dol and the others around her. Halfway through the morning a bell rings and the cyberworkers stop for a break. Mara sips the warm, frothy, bittersweet brew that has popped out of a hidden compart...
She sits up, heart thumping, when she sees it’s Tuck’s curved cutlass. They’ve been here long enough to see the thin crescent moon grow fat, yet there’s something about Tuck that she still doesn’t trust. But he’s only cutting down the few strands that remain of the tough sea grass that overhangs ...
Now, what’s that? Ah, see here,’ Gorbals taps the page, ‘it’s an old word for a bridge-builder. Listen to this, Tuck. In ancient times, people thought the making of a bridge was such a miraculous skill that it must be inspired by the gods. A pontifex was an almost sacred title. A great bridge-bui...