Fury of a Demon

by Brian Naslund

  “The man who went after her wasn’t as good as me, but he was skilled. I never knew him to botch a job, besides that one.” He gave her a look. “But you are better than him by a significant margin.”

  Vera nodded.

  “I’ll tell Osyrus Ward that I killed you. Good luck, Vera. I hope that you find what you’re looking for.”

  27

  NOLA

  City of Deepdale, the Swine Pens

  The leader of the Ghost Cat Gang was a skinny, terrifying man named Elondron.

  The grime and scars and lines on his face made him look to be about forty, but Nola knew for a fact he wasn’t a summer past twenty-five. Those twenty-five years had just been filled with rough living and a commonplace sort of violence that came with running a Deepdale gang of criminals.

  He was carrying four knives that Nola could see. Butchering tools. All of them within easy reach of his twitchy, grease-blackened fingers.

  “So, you want a pig,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Swine’s in high demand, these days. I’m sure you heard that the supply ships are having a little bit of trouble delivering food now that they’ve been turned to splinters.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “And I got eleven other people in the market for a piggy today. Meaning they ain’t going cheap.”

  “Nothing does, these days. But I can pay.”

  Elondron narrowed his eyes. “How much?”

  There was no way to avoid making the opening bid. Not while Elondron and his gang had all the pigs and were holding all the knives and Lord Bershad and his wardens were nowhere to be found in the city streets. But that didn’t mean that Nola had to be stupid about it.

  She pulled out a pouch of coin—held it for a moment like it was all the money of hers in the world—and then tossed it forward.

  “Fifty silvers,” she said.

  That was half the silver she’d earned from the last few weeks at the tavern, and five times what a pig was worth under normal circumstances. But the circumstances weren’t normal. She’d fucked over Kellar for that piece of paku. Fucked over the Papyrian sisters for the rice wine. And now it was her turn to get fucked over.

  Wasn’t fair. It was just reality.

  “Now, where did a young girl like you get her grubby hands on fifty silvers?”

  “Since when do the Ghost Cats care about the source of coin that’s dropped before them?”

  “Hm.”

  Nola could see him bending. He’d raise her bid up a little—sixty or seventy—for appearance’s sake, but not much more. She’d squeeze by without having to barter any of her more valuable supplies, and make triple off that pig inside of a week. Bacon rashers would sell faster than a Red Skull can kill sheep in an open field.

  But then one of Elondron’s goons stepped up behind him. “That girl owns the Cat’s Eye, boss.”

  A spark of greed lit up behind Elondron’s cold eyes. Nola’s heart sank.

  “A tavern, is it?” he asked, turning to her.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “That’s right,” Nola said.

  “How is it that a little whelp like you owns a tavern?”

  “My three brothers built the place. Ran it for years. But when the wars started up again, they unhooked their masks from the walls and fought for the Dainwood.”

  Nola took a long turn glaring at each of the men in the room. A few kept their stupid greedy grins up, but most had the decency to be embarrassed. They were all men of a fighting age, but they’d chosen crime over defending their homeland.

  “They dead, then?” Elondron asked.

  That grinning idiot had pushed her into this fix, but Nola wasn’t stupid enough to dig herself deeper.

  “Fighting alongside Lord Bershad himself, last I heard.”

  “Ah, see, there’s your mistake. Little too big of a lie, there, all three of them still alive and fighting in this war. One, maybe. Two, possible. But all three? Naw.” Elondron spat. “I think your brothers are all ten leagues down the river, which is too bad for you, because you seem like a savvy girl. Savvy enough to still be squeezing silver out of your tavern when there’s barely any food left in this shit heap of a city. And I’d imagine that makes you smart enough to know that a tavern without any warden brothers coming back to claim it is very … interesting to a businessman like myself.”

  “You’re not a businessman,” said Nola. “You’re a criminal. Now are you selling me this pig or not?”

  “You can have the pig. Free of charge.”

  “There’s nothing free in this world except the seashell that takes you down the river.”

  “Fair. Let’s call it one silver, then.” Elondron stood up. Rested his hands on the knives at his hip. “And permission to sell my other wares out of your tavern.”

  “Wares? You hawking pottery or something?”

  “Black sticky,” Elondron said, face serious. “Salvaged a whole crateful from a skyship that crashed on the rim of the valley.”

  Nola stood up, too. Grabbed her coin. There was no chance that she was going to let a slimy criminal like Elondron worm one of his little tentacles into her tavern. It starts with a little sticky in the back and it ends with her owning less than the dirt on the opium den floor they’d turn the Cat’s Eye into.

  “Forget it.”

  “Hey, now. No need to start canceling the whole deal. We’re negotiating, right? You let us run our sticky through your tavern, you don’t just get the one pig. You get one each week. And you get our protection.”

  “I don’t need protection. Lord Cuspar owns a stake in my place.”

  “Cuspar? That bastard’s the biggest leech in Deepdale. Not a man known for offering up anything other than an open palm, waiting to get filled with someone else’s coin.”

  “All the same, I’m not interested in new partners or weekly swine.”

  Nola headed for the door, but two of Elondron’s men moved to block it.

  “We can do this the easy way,” said Elondron. “Which is with a handshake agreement that benefits the both of us, or we can do it the hard way, which involves you leaving this room with a lot fewer teeth than you walked in with.”

  Nola turned around.

  “So, you’re the kind of criminals who hoard pigs and beat the shit out of girls so you can sell opium in new places?”

  “Please. Nobody told you to show up at our doorstep today trying to make this deal. You could have waited in the scrap line along with everyone else. But you wanted to be the tavern with a pig. You wanted the profit.”

  Nola dug her fingernails into her palm hard enough to draw blood. Tried to think of a way to improve her situation, but failed. Truth was, law and order in Deepdale was hanging on by a very thin thread, and while Elondron and his gang couldn’t quite sell their opium in the street, there was definitely nobody stopping them from tuning her up real good and getting away with it.

  “A pig a week?” she asked.

  “Guaranteed.”

  “How many pigs did your little gang steal, exactly?”

  Elondron smiled. “Oh, don’t worry. We got enough to keep your customers in bacon until the Balarians cut through the great lizards and kill us all.”

  Nola chewed on that a little longer. If it was just her, she might think about taking her silver and disappearing into the Gloom. Leave this rotten city to eat itself from the inside. But she couldn’t risk that with Grittle. Couldn’t risk watching a Blackjack swoop down and eat her sister because she was too afraid to get her hands dirty.

  “Deal.”

  28

  BERSHAD

  Dainwood Jungle

  After they returned from the skyship crash, the leaders of the Jaguar Army met on a ridge overlooking the Daintree grove where the rest of the army had camped. Below, Bershad could hear wardens laughing, joking, and—most importantly—eating their fill of the rations they’d delivered.

  “This is the best food I’ve ever tasted,” Willem said, putting
down his spent bowl of rice and beans and pork. He’d been raiding Wormwrot patrols to the north, and had just rotated back through the camp the day before Bershad and the others had returned. “How do you Dunfarians get so much flavor in the swine?” he asked Kerrigan.

  Kerrigan smiled. “That’s a Dunfarian secret.”

  “I’d like to know why I was denied my request for a second wedge of cheese,” Simeon said, scooping up the remains of his beans and rice with a chunk of flatbread.

  “Because you’re allergic to it,” said Kerrigan. “Your farts damn-near killed us when you ate the first one.”

  “But a small wedge would be—”

  “No!” Willem, Ashlyn, and Jolan all said at once.

  “Fine, fine. Assholes.” He scratched at the side of his neck.

  “You should enjoy the food you can digest,” said Kerrigan. “We’re all going back on strict rations starting tomorrow. Need to make this food last as long as possible.”

  “How long will that be?” Willem asked.

  “All the way through autumn, so long as nobody cheats.” She took a bite of rice. “For the time being, our ration problem is solved.”

  “Which just leaves the whole ‘destroying a far larger army in possession of flying ships’ problem to contend with,” said Oromir.

  “I actually might have some ideas there,” said Willem. “We had a little discovery while you lot were gone. Turns out those maps Felgor stole are more than just a list of locations.”

  Willem took out a map and spread it across the ground. Weighed the edges down with tiny rocks.

  “It took a while to figure it out, but the Balarians are pairing drop-offs and extractions together based on time. Extractions always come three, six, or nine days after drop-off. The men work their way to whichever location is attached to the day. For example, if Wormwrot gets dropped off here, the extraction is here three days out, here six, and here nine.”

  “Why bother with something so complex?” Simeon asked.

  “I wouldn’t call that complex,” Oromir said. “And you know how the clock fuckers love time and all that shit.”

  “Once again, I take offense to that term,” Felgor said, using a silver fork to shove a huge bite of smoked pork into his mouth.

  “Felgor, where did you get that fork?” Bershad asked.

  “Won it.”

  “Won it how?” Bershad asked.

  “Cheating at dice.”

  “Of course you did, Felgor.”

  “Anyway,” Willem cut in. “To answer Simeon’s question, they do it so the Wormwrot patrols always know where to go for the extraction ahead of time without needing to communicate with command. Once you know the pairings, they’re pretty easy to follow.”

  “How many have you figured out so far?” Bershad asked.

  “About half. And I have scouts all over the jungle mapping the rest. But here’s the real beauty: a skyship comes to each extraction location regardless of whether the patrol is there to be taken out of the jungle. And each time, they’re expecting to find a group of Wormwrot in red face paint.”

  “You wanna do it the same way we got into Blackrock to steal that skyship,” Oromir said. “Disguised.”

  “Yeah. Except this time we don’t need to sneak through a whole city and fortress and climb up an anchor wire. We just need a quick way to destroy the skyship and get out again.” He turned to Ashlyn. “I was hoping our witch queen could help us out there.”

  Everyone looked to Ashlyn.

  “I could do that,” she said. “But it won’t be enough.”

  “Why not?” Willem asked.

  “Because Ashlyn can only be in one place at a time,” said Kerrigan. “If this is going to work, we need to be hitting skyships all over the Dainwood within a pretty tight timeframe. If we rely on her alone, Ward will rebuild the fleet faster than we can wreck it.”

  Ashlyn nodded. “Exactly.”

  “A score of wardens storming those ships have piss-poor odds of success,” said Willem. “We might take down one or two in every ten we attack, but the rest’ll be shredded by the grayskin that’s aboard every ship.”

  There was a silence.

  “I can solve that problem,” said Jolan. He removed a copper orb from his pack and placed it on top of the map. There were wires sprouting from the top like the leaves of a beet. “Wardens don’t need to go into the ships at all. Just this.”

  “What is it?” Simeon said, squinting at it.

  “For weeks, I’ve been trying to find another use for the salvage we took from all the dead acolytes,” Jolan said. “I finally found a way to trigger a reaction based on the collapsing of gears around the blasting powder we pulled from the artificial heart ventricles, which—”

  “What kind of a reaction, kid?” said Bershad.

  Jolan licked his lips. “An explosion. Not a huge one, mind you. But in an enclosed space, it should be powerful enough to cripple a skyship.”

  “How many of these do you have?” Willem asked.

  “Right now? Two. But if we send someone back to Deepdale to get the rest of the salvage and bring it to Dampmire, I can make more. A lot more.”

  “That’s not a problem,” said Willem. “And while you build more of those orbs, we’ll finish the mapping. Then we’ll start attacking the extractions. All of them. Every day. We can hamstring the Balarian fleet inside of a week, before they truly understand what’s happened. Ward will either have to pull ships away from the other cities in Terra that he’s conquered—which will lead to rebellions—or give us a clear road to Floodhaven. Either way, it could turn the whole tide of the war.”

  Bershad looked at the map. Itched his beard. “It could work,” he admitted.

  “Definitely,” Oromir agreed.

  “That won’t be enough, either,” said Ashlyn.

  “Decimating Ward’s fleet isn’t enough?” Oromir asked. “You drunk, Queen?”

  “Think the situation through to the end,” Ashlyn said. “What happens when we get to Floodhaven? If we lay a siege, Ward will just send grayskins over the walls and tear us apart. Then he’ll rebuild the fleet and we’ll be right back where we started, except our army will have been massacred at the gates of Floodhaven.”

  “Well that’s depressing,” said Simeon.

  “We need to destroy Ward’s ships in order to reach Floodhaven, but we also need a way to take the city in a single night.”

  “All due respect, Queen, but I don’t think that’s possible,” said Kerrigan.

  “I do,” said Ashlyn. “Jolan and I finally broke through Ward’s security measures at that crashed skyship. We found a way to give the acolytes commands. They were pretty basic. Blink the eyes. Stand up.”

  “You gonna sack Floodhaven by making the acolytes blink themselves to death?” Oromir asked.

  “There’s another set of commands we couldn’t reach. It was called a manual override.”

  “Doesn’t sound that useful,” said Simeon.

  “We didn’t think so either,” said Jolan, removing a sheaf of papers from his satchel. “But when I took a closer look through the acolyte schematics that Felgor stole, I found a few mentions of it. One of the commands hidden behind the lock is called the annihilation protocol.”

  Simeon’s face brightened. “I like that much better.”

  “Of course you do,” Kerrigan muttered. “You’re a murderous bastard.”

  “It could mean a number of different things,” Ashlyn warned. “But our hope is that if I can access it in one acolyte, I can find a way to apply it wholesale to larger groups. I could kill hundreds of acolytes in seconds.”

  “And that’s how we take Floodhaven?”

  Ashlyn nodded. “Exactly.”

  “I’m sold.” Simeon burped. “Let’s do it.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Ashlyn said. “To test the theory, I need a living acolyte.”

  “Why?” Willem asked.

  “As soon as an acolyte dies, the path to their brain close
s. That’s why we’ve never found this before. They’ve always come back dead.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Bershad. “They tend to cause problems if you don’t kill them in a timely fashion.”

  “I’m aware of that, but we need to capture one that’s alive,” said Ashlyn.

  “You’re insane,” said Oromir.

  “I’m just telling you what I need,” Ashlyn said.

  “How long would you need to keep it alive once we capture it?” Bershad asked.

  “Hard to say. Breaking into the manual override system could take days. Weeks, even.”

  “There’s no way we can keep a war acolyte contained for more than a few seconds,” said Oromir. “Forget days or weeks. There’s just no way.”

  “True,” said Ashlyn. “But a harvester model would be easier to control.”

  “What do those do?” Kerrigan asked.

  “I’d imagine they fucking harvest,” Simeon said.

  “Oh, why don’t you go bite your own dick off, Simeon, I was just—”

  “Enough,” Ashlyn interrupted. “Simeon is crude, but correct. The harvesters are the ones they send into the dragon warrens. They have no weapons, no armor. They’re far weaker, too. A basic sedative would keep it under control.”

  “I’ve read through those protocols that Felgor stole, too,” said Willem. “The harvesters always travel with a score of Wormwrot and three war acolytes. So, what’s the plan there?”

  “We lure them to a place that we control,” Ashlyn said, clearly having thought this through already. “Neutralize Wormwrot. Then I’ll kill the war acolytes with blunt force, and lock down the harvester’s spinal loop before it can backfire.”

  “As I recall, Jolan had to run a wire from Ashlyn to the acolyte to do that in the skyship,” said Bershad. “Doubt you’re gonna find another one that’s willing to sit still for that.”

  Ashlyn nodded, but seemed to have a solution for that, too. “Jolan?”

  The boy took a breath. “The diagnostic is a problem on two fronts. There’s the wire, and the fact that it doesn’t parse signals of living acolytes very clearly. But I can build a new tool that solves both issues. I just need a little time.” He paused. “I also need to, uh, borrow Felgor’s astrolabe.”