Curiosity sent Pietro to investigate the collapsed bridge and try to assess the damage for himself. He wasn’t the first one to have this idea. Dozens of people were lined up a prudent distance from the edge to gaze out at the mangled mess of metal, the yawning gap, and the skyline of the city, tantalizingly out of reach. Pietro worked his way over to one side to get a better look.
The rods and cables still appeared to be solidly anchored to each bank, but the gentle metal arch had inverted and now hung in a twisted, dispirited loop over the striated gray and white walls of the canyon. The damage did not look like it would be simple to reverse. He stifled a sigh.
The crowd shifted around him and he became aware that some of the bolder souls were massed closest to the edge, shouting across the canyon to people on the other side. The city dwellers were shouting back, waving their arms in emphasis.
“What’s going on?” Pietro asked, in case anyone nearby knew the answer.
A young woman glanced over. “I think they’re trying to figure out how to get a pulley system across the canyon so they can send supplies over. Not much luck so far. They tried tying a rope to an arrow and shooting it over, but it fell into the canyon. Three times.”
“Not promising,” he admitted. She snorted.
He took a moment to give her a closer inspection. She was fair-skinned and blonde-haired, with dark brown eyes set into a serious face. A little less than medium height, lean and compactly built, possibly in her middle twenties. She wore a leather vest over a cotton shirt and leather pants, all the clothing loose enough to be comfortable without leaving floating bits that would impede her movements. Even before he glanced at the flat silver band welded around her left wrist, he knew he would see it stamped with a series of crossed swords. Her coloring marked her as being from one of the tribes that inhabited the sandy stretches of Oraki on the southern border of the continent. Her bracelet proclaimed her a professional soldier. It was not a combination often to be found in the city.
Pietro added, “But Corcannon is filled with scholars and engineers. They’ll figure something out.”
“Maybe,” she replied. “Have you ever been here before?”
“Lived here the first sixty years of my life. I’ve been wandering for the last ten, but I can’t imagine it’s changed much.”
She didn’t ask him why he’d left or why he’d come back, and by that omission he judged she didn’t want to answer any such questions, either. “I’ve never seen a place with so many buildings,” she said.
He nodded and lifted his gaze so he could take in that spectacular view. Corcannon was set on a broad, flat plateau nestled against a jagged black mountain. The plateau featured just the slightest incline, so the buildings and districts rose up in ranks, one behind the other, cut through with a network of well-planned streets. From this vantage point, it seemed possible to discern every building, every door, every monument, every road. Pietro thought he could even make out the Quatrefoil, the four-petaled plaza that formed the heart of the city and held memories of all the events that had made Pietro run away in the first place.
“Many buildings,” he said, “and many marvels. Technologies that exist nowhere else on this continent. Gifts brought by the god Cordelan when he brought us all our other gifts.”
She shrugged so slightly it was possible to miss the motion. Outside of Corcannon, Pietro had learned, a lot of people didn’t have much use for Cordelan. He was a late arrival on the scene, after people had spent centuries worshipping the mountain goddess Dar or the ocean deity Zessaya.
But Cordelan had reshaped their world, literally. Someone might choose not to worship him, but he was impossible to deny.
Pietro craned his neck to see if he could determine what kind of progress was being made. The groups on both sides of the chasm were continuing to shout at each other as they debated the best ways to get a rope across the ravine. “I’m optimistic that they will be successful in this endeavor,” he said, “but it may take longer than people are prepared to wait.”
Before she could answer, a teenage boy trotted up and raised his voice to the crowd. “Hey, they’ve set up a place to treat the wounded, and they’re looking for help,” he called. “They want anyone who’s strong and doesn’t mind the sight of blood.”
The men and women standing nearby shifted and muttered, but none of them volunteered. The blonde woman next to Pietro glanced at him and shrugged again. He nodded, and they both stepped forward.
“We can help,” Pietro said. “Where’d they set up an infirmary?”
“Infirmary” was too grand a word for the arrangement of bedrolls over travel trunks that had been organized in a space defined by a few confiscated crates and some canvas tarps. There were maybe a dozen people lying on the makeshift beds or seated nearby, waiting their turn to be seen by the two women who had styled themselves as doctors.
“Here to help? Good,” said one, a tall, spare woman with Cordelano coloring and an abrupt manner.
“We need someone to assess who needs the most care and someone to help clean and bind wounds,” added the other woman, shorter and heavier, but Cordelano like the first.
“I can bind wounds. I’m Pietro, the way,” he said.
“I’m Jayla,” said his companion. “I’ll assess. Let’s get to work.”
Pietro found himself almost enjoying the next two hours of work. He liked the rhythm of moving between beds, fetching supplies, offering comfort—having a purpose, no matter how temporary or insignificant. The air grew decidedly warmer as morning arced over into afternoon, but Pietro didn’t even mind the film of sweat that built up under his arms and across his face. He preferred hot to cold, sunshine to clouds. He had had enough gloom to last a lifetime.
By the time the afternoon was fairly well advanced, most of the patients had been treated and sent back to camp. Soon the only ones still waiting to be seen were two women and a small girl who hovered outside the corral of crates, as if uncertain whether they should enter. Pietro stepped over and offered his usual reassuring smile.
“Does someone need medical attention?” he asked.
One of the women came forward. She had the stocky build and all-over tan coloring often found among the people of Marata. “We think she’s hurt, but we can’t be sure,” she said, urging the little girl in his direction.
Pietro surveyed the young patient, whom he guessed to be about seven or eight. With her wildly curly auburn hair, freckled skin, and delicate build, she looked nothing like the Maratan woman. Pietro could only assume she was from the islands, one of the small, clustered land masses that created a scalloped border on the extreme western edge of the continent. “She’s Zessin,” he said.
“Yes. We think she might have broken her wrist, but she doesn’t speak Cordish, and neither of us understands Zessin.”
“If you can’t talk to her, how do you come to be traveling with her?”
The second woman spoke up. “We’re not. She was in the company of an older woman who was taking her to Corcannon. She at least knew a few words of Cordish, so we could make a little conversation. They were supposed to be meeting some relatives somewhere, I’m not sure. But she died about a week ago. A heart attack, maybe.”