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"Gray Town," Maven murmurs

Factories stretch out as far as I can see, dirty andwith electricity It hitsme off my feet My heart tries to keep up with the unearthly pulse and I have to sit down, feeling , that my life was unfair But I could never even drealooreen into the spider-work of wires in the air Transports piled high with cargo oods from one factory to another They screa like sluggish black blood in gray veins Worst of all, little houses surround each factory in an ordered square, one on top of the other, with narrow streets in between Slums

Beneath such a sht They walk between the factories and their hoe There are no officers, no cracking whips, no blank stares No one isdoesn’t need to show off here, I realize They are broken from birth

"These are the techies," I whisper hoarsely, re the nahts, the cauns, the bullets, the bombs, the ships, the transports," Maven adds "They keep the power running They keep our water clean They do everything for us"

And they receive nothing but ss "This is the only life they know Most techies will never leave their own alley They can’t even conscript"

Can’t even conscript Their lives are so terrible that the war is a better alternative, and they’re not even allowed to go

Like everything else on the river, the factories fade away, but the i tells et them

Stars wait for us beyond another forest of barrier trees, and beneath the its lights for blazing stars As we sail closer and closer, e runs across the wide river, linking the two cities on either side It’s thousands of feet long and thriving, alive with light and electricity There are shops and e itself a hundred feet above the river I can just picture the Silvers up there, drinking and eating and looking down on the world fro the lowest tier of the Bridge, their headlaht

Both ends of the Bridge are gated, and the city sectors on either side are walled in On the east bank, great round like swords to pierce the sky, all croith gleaiant birds of prey More transports and people populate the paved streets that clis to the Bridge and the outer gates

The walls are dialass, like back at the Hall, but set with floodlit metal towers and other structures There are patrols on the walls, but their unifor red of Sentinels or the stark black of Security They wear unifor into the cityscape They are soldiers, and not the kind who dance with ladies This is a fortress

Archeon was built to endure war, not peace

On the western bank, I recognize the Royal Court and the Treasury Hall fro white h they were attacked barely o It feels like a lifetiht My old teacher used to say it was carved fro piece of the white stone Fla walls