The Bridge is vast and ancient. And it is long. In living memory, only I have crossed it. There were nine of us at the start, but only I reached the Far Kingdom, and what I found was terrible.

From the Journal of Ennai Ehnee

Bird awoke to chirping. Nothing new—his Master’s lair was always awash with whispers of some plot or the drunken revelries that followed—but tonight’s seemed more urgent. Hurried footsteps pounded outside the storeroom where he dozed, and when he rolled over the edge of his pile of empty sacks and peeked through a gap between the timbers, he barely pulled back in time as a stout man thudded along the worn brickwork towards his door, flung it inward and stood panting in the archway.

There was no mistaking the portly silhouette of Orbok. As the Master’s head enforcer, he was not exactly delicate, and his burly frame blocked the light as his beady eyes swept the storeroom.

Bird was not supposed to be here. His quarters were in the roost with the other child thieves, but there was always one kid weeping, one squabbling with another, and of course, the constant threat of theft. He could not claim innocence in that regard, and had taken to sleeping elsewhere whenever he thought he could get away with it. Now, he might have considered hiding but it was already too late. Orbok’s gaze pinned him against a barrel of mist-ale.

If the Master’s strongman cuffed him for being here, it would not have been the first time the oaf had punished Bird, beaten him, taken issue with his tone, or simply vented his frustration on the boy. That same fear draped Bird now. On the cusp of manhood but lingering on the wrong side, the slender shoulders and skinny limbs that had earned him his nickname would snap like twigs if he fought. So he didn’t. Forcing the trembles from his hands, he took a breath, pushed to his feet and stood before the larger man, eyes slightly lowered.

“You’re awake.” Orbok sounded more relieved than enraged. He strode towards Bird, clapping a firm hand on his arm, and though he pressed hard enough to cause some pain, Bird sensed anxiety. “Hurry.” Orbok turned to face the corridor.

Through the open door, a flurry of activity flashed past with running feet, sweeping robes and jumbled voices. The den’s inhabitants carried boxes and crates, rolls of parchment, sacks of mist-knew-what, and everyone appeared frantic, like they were whisking away their worldly possessions before the Bridge collapsed. Despite his puzzlement, Bird laughed. The Bridge could not collapse. It was too mighty. After all, if it had survived Worldfall and still stood thousands of years later, surely it would last forever.

Orbok noticed his amusement, and the cuff to side of the head Bird had expected soon arrived. He winced, but he’d suffered worse, and despite the sting he suspected Orbok had held back. He stifled his reaction while the brute checked the corridor again.

“What’s happnin’?”

“Somethin’s up with the royals.”

“Is the king dead again?”

Orbok spun around, clearly in no mood for children. “He wasn’t never dead. That was just … ” He swung his pupils upward, and though Bird saw only the ancient beams and crusty brickwork of the vaulted ceiling, he knew what Orbok meant. The king hadn’t died. He remembered now—it wasn’t even the king, some other royal—but stories persisted about what had really happened, where he’d really been. Up there, they said. But Bird had no time for flights of fancy as Orbok glared at him, grabbed his arm and flung him against the sideboard where his clothing hung. “I said get dressed.”

Bird threw on his least threadbare shirt and his deep-pocketed trousers. They hadn’t always been this short, but years of scaling walls had worn the fabric so thin at the knees he’d torn the rest off, then sewed leather patches to the inner thighs. His shirt, too, he’d upgraded, reinforcing the elbows. Good for grip, and whatever had made Orbok hurry to find him, he expected it had to do with climbing. It always did.

“With me, boy.”

Bird followed Orbok between and around the scurrying thieves, spies, bandits and worse. Orbok barged through them, shouting and waving his hands to clear a path. To one of the Master’s assassins, he called, “Relocate to the secondary den. Kingsguard will be sweeping the Bridge.” To a scholarly man whose back was so stooped that his white beard drooped almost to his toes, he shouted, “Get the scrolls to the new hideout.”

The elder hurried past, breathless, seeming in too much of a fluster to respond, argue or curse his bad luck. Bird ducked out of his way. People had a tendency to run through him, and though he liked to think it was due to his skill at going unnoticed, he figured that was probably not the case tonight. Regardless, now was not the time to assert himself, so he trailed in Orbok’s shadow, listening for any clue as to what could have happened.

“Oh, it’s terrible!” a woman was saying. “There’ll be war!”

“Over the Steward?” a pickpocket scoffed. “What’s he ever done for the Bridge anyway?”

“T’ain’t what he’s done. Tis what they’ll do to us what lives here.”

“Sure, we dun’t done nothin’.”

Despite her claim, Bird harboured doubts. If the Master and his Guild of Thieves were not involved, why would the lair be insuch a panic? He tried to hear more, but people surged past so quickly their conversations popped into and out of his hearing in bursts, then faded down the brickwork passages, replaced by other snippets of frantic, puffed dialogue. He heard nothing else of value before Orbok stopped, fished in his pocket for a key, and opened a locked door.

Bird stopped, stunned. He knew this door—they all did—and they all knew it stayed locked. That is, unless the Master summoned you. Bird had been in the Master’s private den only twice, and hoped not to repeat the experience. He swallowed as Orbok pushed him inside and prodded him onto the first rung of a timber staircase.

“Don’t keep him waitin’,” was all Orbok said. He locked the door, banishing the glow but for three lanterns, two below, one above. Bird made for the single point of light at the top, reluctant, but certain his punishment for whatever he had done this time would be far worse if he refused.

The Master’s door was unmarked, like all doors in his lair. With so much loot passing into and out of its cubbies, there was no reason to label one’s plunder. Most were locked for much the same reason, so Bird was caught off guard when his tentative knock pushed the timbers inward. Meagre candlelight flickered in the space between door and jamb, and the ruffle of parchment and hurried packing stopped.

“Is that you, Bird?” a gruff voice called. “Quickly, get inside.”

Bird did as told, closing the door behind him, as was the custom of the den. He stopped ten paces from the Master’s desk, noting the golden bracelets, Wilathi shillings, gemstones and other trinkets the Master hastily shoved into crates.

The Master was well past fifty—unfathomably old—but still lithe and strong. He clicked a finger, and Bird perched at once on a rickety stool by the desk. His bare feet clawed at the stone floor, and he expected another black eye for sleeping where he shouldn’t have. But the Master continued stuffing parchment and misappropriated spoils into boxes, barely looking at Bird. When he finally settled, his greying brows rose and he looked up from his work. “Have you heard?”

“About the king?” Bird shrugged. “Heard he was dead.”

“He’s not dead,” the Master snapped. “And it’s not the king. It’s his brother, the Steward Ankiros. He’s been abducted.”

Bird nodded, not appreciating the difference or caring much one way or the other. What did it matter if the king’s brother had been kidnapped? Ankiros might be the high and noble Steward of the Western Edge, but Bird had never seen him. Word had it he was not like the other Astridians, frequently in trouble, drunk and ranting. Now he was gone. Bird shrugged again. People vanished all the time on the Bridge. Over the edge. Gravity was a fact of life, as was the mist that swirled in the chasm beneath. A falling body had never made it all the way down, it was said—consumed by the wraiths whose disembodied torment begat the eternal fog. So long as the occasional tumblerfed their need, they mostly left the Bridgegoers alone, so Bird had larger things to worry about, and a kidnapped king’s brother did not feature highly. More than that, he wondered what it had to do with him.

He failed to notice the Master approaching him, and his arm ached when a strong hand gripped his bicep and yanked him close. The older man’s foul breath sullied the air an inch from his nose. “You’ve done all right by me, Bird. What’s it been—thirteen years since I took ya in?” He drew back, replacing his hold with a pat on the arm. “Let me look at you. Hmmm. Still scrawny, but less so these last two years. You’ll be a man ’fore long, and you’ll be no good for scurryin’ through cracks and tunnels if those shoulders broaden.”

Bird froze. He knew no other life. Bridgeborn orphans usually found their way over the edge, one way or another. The best they could hope for was to be taken in and trained up by one of the guilds, and Bird had been fortunate. The thought of being cast out, to fend for himself in the gutters and alleys of the Lowers, sent a shiver through him. He suppressed it as a flash of anger surged, and though he kept it from his tone, he spoke more firmly to the Master than ever before. “I never took nothin’ from that storeroom. I just sleep there is all. It’s quieter and—”

“Relax, Bird.” The Master backed away. “I’m not exilin’ you. How’d you like to step up? You’re almost grown. You’re good at climbin’ and with what’s happnin’, I got need of loyal men right now.”

Bird sensedatension in the Master’s stance, some unspoken anxiety, but if the Master would not share more, he would have to ask. “You’re involved with the Steward’s kidnappin’, aren’t you?”

“Involved?” Taken aback, the Master laughed. “Kidnappin’ Astridians would draw far too much attention. We’ve no part in it, but they’ll come sniffin’ about just the same. What do you think the Kingsguard will do to find a missin’ royal? And the Steward of the Western Edge, no less! They’ll tear the Bridge apart, and yes, they’ll poke their dirty snouts in here. And when the dust settles and they rescue Ankiros, or find his corpse or accept that he’s swimmin’ in the mists, they’llremember whatthey seen here. They’ll turn their attention to us.”

The thought of city-dwellers swarming the Bridge, rifling through the den, filled Bird with terror. The Guild operated quietly, in the shadows of the lower tiers, and though raids on the Mids were common, so long as the Middies weren’t too out of pocket, the Bridgeguard didn’t get involved. It was a different world up there, and an urchin from the Lowers would be spotted. The Master had assigned Bird to small stuff: pickpocketing, opportunistic snatching, crawling through cracks and vents to eavesdrop. Important jobs on the midlevels were reserved for the Master’s most trusted, his most skilled, so it was quite the shock when the Master said, “I think you’re ready for a job up above.”

Bird gasped. “In the Mids?”

The Master shook his head. “Top of the Bridge. I can’t send my regulars. Things is too hot what with Ankiros’ disappearance. Guards’ll be on alert.” He threw up his hands. “Truth is, everyone I’d normally send has to be seen out an’ about. Minglin’, you know? They’ll need an alibi later. Everyone else is clearin’ out the lair. You’d have been with ’em if you’d slept where you were s’posed to, but that’s just it—you were forgotten about, and I need someone who won’t be noticed. That’s you, Bird.”

Any potential insult washed over Bird. He’d never been so happy to be an afterthought. Moving unseen was, after all, a key tool in a thief’s arsenal. Before he could respond, the Master continued. “I know you can reach the Mids fine, prob’ly been skulkin’ round there by yourself for years, but up above is a different matter. There’s sentriesto pick off climbers. Guard towers always on watch. Most who try end up fodder for the chasm-wraiths.”

Bird felt a chill as surely as if their disembodied forms were swirling around him. He knew of what the Master spoke. All Bridgeborn did. The Bridge was the only way across the endless chasm where the wraiths coiled in the mist, and for those who made their home on the great roadway’s stacked levels—especially the Lowers—the wraiths were never far from their thoughts. At night, the mists caressed the Bridge from beneath, and it was not uncommon for people to simply vanish. That’s what befell his folks, they’d told him, and it was this dread that spurred him to scale the Bridge from as young an age as four. So a trip to the Mids did not perturb him. He knew a way up, where to hide, how to fit in. Only today,‘up’meant ‘Upper’, and that would involve climbing higher than he’d ever been.

He found his voice. “I can do it.”

“Good.” The Master rolled out a parchment displaying a map of the Bridge.

The details drew Bird in, and he watched the parchment unfurl, roll by roll, until it spanned the length of the Master’s desk, its end trailing over the far edge almost to the floor. On the western extent of the hand-drawn diagram, the walled city of Wilat’Wilath guarded the entrance to the ancient Bridge. Further into the chasm, mighty pillars of godstone supported the endless viaduct, stretching into infinity for all Bird knew. He scanned the bit dangling over the Master’s desk for a sign of the eastern edge, trying to see the far side, but the Bridge’s extreme length exceeded the parchment, and whatever lay beyond was not depicted. Whoever inked it probably didn’t know either, he figured.

His attention turned to the task at hand, and he switched his appraisal from horizontal to vertical. The Bridge—it had no other name—could more accurately be called Bridges. The lower tiers, whereon his discarded kind eked a living, were a maze of dank, enclosed hovels, ignored by those who built their streets and shops and homes above. The Middies as they were called, though never to their faces, enjoyed far easier lives illuminating scrolls, sewing and mending, trading and selling. Not wealthy folk, but respectable. They kept taverns, even transacted with the Uppers, but Bird didn’t envy them: they were shunned as much as he was, for the Bridge did not end where the Middies clamoured. The support pillars were strong enough, the base broad enough, that the ruling class had done what the Middies did centuries earlier, and built an entire city atop that below. Little by little, new streets were laid, walls were constructed, and fortresses rose. It had taken centuries, but when the higher tiers were finished, the Uppers enclosed the Middies as much as they in turn enclosed the Lowers.

And that was how it worked: three distinct strata, one weighing down the other, spanning the chasm from the Bridge’s western end to whatever lay eastward. The far side was shrouded in mystery, and though Bird had long-yearned to see it, tonight his mission would take him up, not over. The idea of seeing that high city goose-pimpled his arms. He imagined the gleam of moonlight on marble streets, stars twinkling their tiny reflections off polished spires and stained-glass windows. And the sky. To look up, and not see the undersides, gutters and leaky sewage pipes of those who lived above. No wonder the Uppers guarded their realm so jealously.

The Master stabbed a finger at a tower on the map. “You know what this is?”

Of course Bird recognised it—every Guild member did. He’d seen more experienced thieves drool at the thought of scaling it. “Lord Foom’s mansion.”

“He’s no Lord,” the Master sneered, “but he has somethin’ that gives his claim credibility. Many years ago, when relations with the city-folk weren’t so tense, he stole somethin’ from the royals. And he stashed it in his tower with a direct line of sight to Castle Astridia, the cheeky bastard. They never found out it was him, but I had a spy in Foom’s household, and she saw it. The Astridians would do anythin’ to get it back. I need you to retrieve it, so if the Kingsguard think we’re involved with Ankiros’ disappearance, I’ll have some leverage.”

“What is it?”

“Just a statue. About this tall.” He spaced his fingers apart around six inches. “Foom keeps it in a room at the top of his tower. The inside’s guarded, so there’s no way up ’cept by the outside. I need someone with the stamina to climb that high, stealthy enough to avoid bein’ seen, handy with lock-pickin’, and smart enough not to get caught.”

Bird swelled with pride, though he knew what ‘not getting caught’ entailed. A leap into the chasm would end him, but so would an arrow or a spear. It would not come to that, he swore.

A key appeared in Bird’s hand. “My spy made a copy,” the Master said. “It’ll unlock the case where the statue is kept. Go now, and meet me at sunrise at the safe-house near the Western Edge. You know it?”

He nodded, and before he left, the Master dropped a folded garment into his outstretched hands. “Uniform for Foom’s household servants. You’ll need to cross his estate to reach the tower. Should allow you to blend in.”

Blending in ... with the Uppers! Bird couldn’t believe his luck. This was his moment. The Master was trusting him, and he’d rather die than fail.

* * * * *

Bird preferred those tight spaces where adults couldn’t fit. He rarely used doors, and he chose that same strategy now as he climbed the rafters in the storeroom where he’d slept, crawled through dusty attics strangely empty of loot, and wriggled into a dead end in the eaves. It was tight, and he didn’t remember having to squeeze himself so much to get through it. Like the Master had said, any further broadening of his shoulders and he’d have to stop thinking of himself as a child. But not tonight. He forced his arm between the wall and his rough cotton shirt, and eased open the loose cobble in the street above.

A dim lantern shone through the crack, gleaming from its nook on the wall of a smithy. He had hoped the street would be quiet at this hour, but as he poked his head up, a general directionless urgency gripped the Middies. Merchants scurried with sacks of their wares tucked under each arm. Scribes fumbled with parchment, dashing past in frantic strides. Even the tavern doorways were free of stragglers and those seeking the company of alley-whores.

When the street quieted, Bird checked each way, then lifted a larger slab and clambered out. The back of a tavern hung in grubby disrepair to his left. To his right was a windowless house he knew for a brothel, but tonight it lay in silence. Above, the only sky was a row of support beams that ran from roof to roof, hemming in the Mids with an oppressive streak of mortar, stone, wood and gloom. His goal lay beyond, in the pale square of moonlight that glimmered where the street ended and the chasm began.

He made straight for it, ducking around drunks and avoiding all-comers. This late, no legitimate business would be taking place, but that was the world in which he’d been raised. Still, when he reached the strip of moonlight, he gasped for breath. A quick glance behind revealed no pursuit, and the stillness of the night air soothed him. He surrounded himself in it like a cloak, imagining himself blending into the darkness, masked in starlight as he moved unseen. It had been a fantasy of his early childhood, and despite such notions now seeming foolish, he allowed himself to revisit them when he felt the need. Now, that need pinched his chest, and he would shun no advantage, fanciful or real.

He leaned on the crumbled brick of the wall, picking at his toenails, presenting himself as just another waif out after dark. Under cover of his fringe, his eyes scanned his surroundings. Along the Bridge’s span the terrain varied greatly from the compressed, ancient block-work of the Lowers to the skilled-but-utilitarian craftsmanship of the Mids, to the ornate, sprawling magnificence that crowned them all. He could see dark shapes patrolling far above—Middies pressed into service by the Uppers, allowed to live as underlings on the higher levels so long as they defended them ruthlessly against their own kind. He lingered until the sentries ranged out of sight, andwith practiced confidence, sprang outward and up. His hands caught a ledge his eyes couldn’t see, but he knew it was there, that if he clung to it, hauled himself left about ten shoulder-lengths, he’d reach a windowsill where a pipe would lead him upward. He wasn’t long finding it. His fingers knew every crevice, his toes every nook, and he scrambled over the sill and up the pipe before any overhead guardsman swept back into view.

Keeping to the shadows beside a protruding chimney breast, he scanned left and right. The moonlit city of Wilat’Wilath glowed at the Bridge’s western edge where the chasm ended and the world began. Its lanterns and glimmer-lamps bled into one another, forming a luminous pyramid that spiralled up the hill on which the city was built. Even the summit, where the great castle of the Astridians rose, was dwarfed by the fortresses of the Uppers. The Bridge outshone all, and as Bird climbed higher, he felt a sense of wonder. He, a lowborn, gutter-dwelling Bridge-orphan, was moving up in the world, and it was about time.