Gears of the City (Thunderer, #2)

by Felix Gilman

This is how a city is built. Bit by bit it all locks tight together. When the light comes back the visual world will force itself on him; in the dark he can build the city himself, from these familiar fragments. He closes his eyes tight. Listen: this is how a city is built from music.

Those who wandered in the City Beyond, in the Metacontext, among the shifting Gears of the city—the visionaries, the madmen, the lost, the unmoored in time.

like to think they made the city as a kind of prison, but perhaps I only say that because I have spent so long in cages.

The Mountain is the engine of creation. The Gods are its fuel, its energies, its agents. Its hands and its knives and its fire, to cut and burn and shape the city. On the Gears of the Mountain the city spins. He who rules the Mountain rules everything below it.