Waybound by Cam Baity Page B

ribbon and a coat of scraggly, wine-colored feathers with eyeholes she had cut out using the Multi-Edge. Micah was draped in a coarse, musky pelt, with a frizzy pink puffball swamping his head.
    â€œWhy I gotta get the goofy lookin’ stuff?” he grumbled.
    â€œIt brings out your eyes,” she teased. “Can you see?”
    â€œSorta.”
    â€œThen follow me.”
    They emerged from hiding and were instantly caught in a surge of mehkans. She and Micah raced along with the horde, plunging through clouds of fragrant cook-fire smoke and passing under giant, multicolored lantern bags. The crowd poured through the marketplace, winding uphill on ground that was smooth and bone pale, streaked with gray and black like marble.
    A cluster of crimson-costumed mehkans erupted into a dance in the middle of the crowd.
    Phoebe cut around the disruption and trudged up another incline. She looked back through her eyeholes to ensure the pink puffball was still behind her. Then the crowd parted for a moment, and she saw the city looming ahead.
    The entire metropolis was carved in a series of ripples, concentric rings that grew increasingly steep as they approached the center. Soaring facades were pocked with oval doors and windows that indicated dwellings within. The heart of the city was an explosion of pearlescent waves hundreds of feet high, ivory swells cresting like fingers that stretched toward the swirling evening sky. It looked like someone had tossed a boulder into a pool of milk, and the resulting ripples had frozen solid.
    Phoebe ducked her head as the mob plunged through a tunnel that led beneath one of the sweeping waves. The winding passage buzzed with clattering echoes of music.
    â€œGraz’go roh rohk-li-hee-hee!”
laughed a squealing Rattletrap voice as she emerged into bright light. Something grabbed her costume, but she managed to pull free. A swollen face leered at her, pink and crinkled, with hideously warped features and squinty glaring eyes. It took Phoebe a second to realize that it was a mask. The figure spun away.
    There was a group of these strange mehkans with oversized heads and baggy pink outfits. They were bumbling into one another, performing tricks, and taunting the crowd. A few got into a pretend fight, and one of them feigned striking the other. In a flamboyant display, the victim spewed a cascade of bright red streamers where he was hit, and the crowd burst into cheers. Next thing she knew, the play combatants were shedding sprays of confetti and foil in a festive shower of pretend blood.
    Bleeders. They’re pretending to be us.
    Mehkan spectators watched the crowd from gaping windows and tossed down spirals of sparkling red wire, obscuring the view. The rowdy mass plunged through another yawning tunnel, and as they emerged onto a main thoroughfare, Phoebe held her breath. The red crowd was spilling over a ledge into a crater the size of a sports arena. It was teeming with costumed mehkans so that the whole thing looked like a porcelain bowl filled with boiling blood.
    Micah pulled Phoebe around a secluded corner.
    â€œThis is some shindig,” Micah remarked, leaning in close.
    â€œAnd we’re the surprise guests,” she said over the noise.
    â€œLet’s keep it that way. Pretty sure they wouldn’t want a couple of humans crashing their ‘kill all humans’ party.”
    â€œSo now what?” she asked.
    They glanced at the massive crater. The crowd was headed to the far end of the basin, gathering around a brightly lit area that seemed to be the source of the tooth-rattling music. But Phoebe’s eye was drawn to a squat dome in the middle of the crater, barely visible beneath tinkling red banners.
    Her skin tingled under the coat of prickly feathers.
    â€œ
Heart of prayer
,” she mumbled.
    â€œSay what?”
    â€œ
Make the descent. To the heart of prayer
,” Phoebe called out to him, pointing to the dome down in the crater.