Storm of Ash

by Michelle Kenney

  Their tumble slowed, and as Max forced August into a headlock he looked up, and for just one split second I thought I detected something.

  ‘Max?’ I repeated, willing him to force blood into the quiet forgotten areas, willing him to remember.

  And then there was a moment’s pause where I dared to let my damned hope flicker, before he reached forward and ran the Diasord directly across August’s throat.

  A silent kill.

  It was the manoeuvre Bereg had taught us both, for use when dispatching an animal cleanly and swiftly. Except we weren’t in the forest any more, and as he dropped August’s limp body into the red dirt, a hush spread across the entire circus.

  I stared as the world faded to ghosts and hatred, to more fighting and bloodshed and battalions of soldiers spilling into the arena without check.

  Hades was here after all. In front of me, scorching my skin.

  Inside me.

  And then he turned to salute Cassius’s balcony. It was the salute of a charioteer who’d fulfilled his duty, with something else besides.

  A smile of quiet victory.

  Chapter 17

  I pelted straight for my childhood friend, who only stood and lifted his remorseless face towards me.

  Cold, bloodied. How could he not know what he had done?

  He raised his Diasord as though I would be next and I readied myself, not caring if I was.

  And I nearly reached him, before a jolting tackle stole the air from my body, propelling me away until we collided with the upturned chariot. I blinked, trying to clear my vision. Max was holding a fist to the crowd, taking his due, August’s body crumpled at his feet.

  ‘He’ll kill you too, Tal,’ Aelia rushed, strained and desperate. ‘He’ll kill us both. He can’t handle the vaccine. We have to leave now! We’ll come back,’ she pleaded.

  I shot a numbed look around, at the arena awash with valiant Outsiders and Prolet rebels. There were more than I ever hoped for, but we were still no match for the battalions pouring into the arena, for the teams of molossers being unleashed, and for the archers releasing clouds of arrows from the balconies.

  The only certainty was that every second I delayed, I risked the lives of everyone remaining.

  The last Outsiders. There was still an outside to fight for. Come what may, nature finds a way.

  She was white-faced, always the doctor, saving those she could.

  I nodded abruptly, before reaching around the upturned chariot to grasp one of the abandoned bugles. It wasn’t the ibex, but it would do. I lifted it to my lips, and a moment later, the call of Arafel’s hunters was echoing through the arena. Aelia jumped to her feet, and with fire in our bellies, we flew through the bloody chaos towards the top of the fray, towards a pair of two figures barely holding off a pack of guards.

  Rajid and Grey? I couldn’t quite fathom how it had come to this – running from August and Max, towards men I’d all but hated hours ago. It was brutally ironic.

  Aelia didn’t hesitate, delivering a short punch into the burly guard’s lower back, who dropped with a groan, while I lashed out with a high kick that took another guard off his feet. Then the loyal sabre-tooth sprinted up, and sank his jaws into the shoulders of a third, which scattered the rest instantly.

  Rajid and Grey straightened, sweaty, and dishevelled, as I threw a look back over my shoulder. The arena was a hot dust cloud of chaos, but Outsiders and Prolets were emerging from every corner, running towards us. Hope written into their faces.

  I threw a look of desperation at Aelia. We were against the arena wall, with nowhere left to run. What now?

  ‘Grey!’

  Her voice was urgent and gritty as he reached down to grab the broken remains of one of the chariot’s sculpted wings. Then he and Rajid lifted it to reveal a slim black hole and, beside it, a round metal plate. It looked like one of Pantheon’s maintenance shafts.

  ‘The tunnels,’ I whispered, suddenly understanding how so many Outsiders had infiltrated the arena while I was unconscious.

  And as I gazed, an ugly realization swirled up inside. I’d sworn never to abandon any of my family again, and even if it was impossible to save Max, Mum was still here.

  ‘Stop them! Seize them immediately!’

  Cassius’s voice boomed through the arena’s media system. I glanced up at the balcony, never more conscious of the dart tube resting beneath my tunic. It would never be over until I finished it. I could sprint now, and try my luck. I’d never make it out, but the dart had to be a good one – Ida had made it. And with a little luck Rajid had tipped it with some of his bat poison.

  ‘We leave now!’ Aelia hissed, pushing Therry and the young Prolet girl towards the hole.

  They jumped without hesitation, and were swiftly followed by an Arafel hunter and Komodo who muttered something unintelligible before dropping into the black. I scowled, urging Aelia forward but she eyed me stubbornly.

  ‘Mum?’ I whispered, entreating her to understand.

  ‘She’s safe!’ Aelia exploded in relief and fury. ‘You think we don’t know you? We got her first. What do you think took us so long!’

  Raw, furious words had never held so much comfort. Yet it was enough. Finally. I took her outstretched hand, and together we dropped into the hole, like two broken halves of an arrow.

  Care for the seed and it will care for you.

  Grandpa’s wisdom whispered around as the black enveloped us. There was a simple poignancy to it. I’d always thought he was talking about the tiny seeds of nature, but now I knew his simple philosophy was much broader. That he was talking about outside life, each other, and the future.

  We fell like stones into the abyss, and I would have known the steady tree trunk arms that reached up to break our fall anywhere. Unus. He set us on our feet gently, before retraining his pale eye on the circle of light above as another Outsider dropped through. And then another, and another. There were shouts, and even the clatter of the odd arrow as, one by one, the small courageous army that had risked everything to rescue me and defy Cassius, made the leap of faith.

  Grey never appeared, and as the circular plate was heaved back into place from above, I could feel this was his way of atoning too. So many of us, caught up in Cassius’s dark web.

  And then at last, silence.

  There was little light and the stench-filled corridor was thick with the sound of rapid breathing. No one was labouring under any illusions. We’d escaped one hellhole, but we were now in the underbelly of Cassius’s lair. And I couldn’t imagine any of his favourite pets were that far away.

  I leaned back against the tunnel wall as reality raked down the inside of my gut with gritty fingernails. I swallowed, trying to ease the fireball of pain spreading down every nerve.

  Iris-blues smiling, teasing, wanting, protecting … dying in front of me. At Max’s hand? Had I subconsciously fanned the hatred?

  It’s not your fault.

  They were his last words. If I’d known it was the only chance I’d have … The fireball reached my lungs.

  I’d let him leave Arafel believing I didn’t care.

  It was too much, and I turned and retched against the inside of the tunnel wall, only faintly aware of the slim hand at the base of my spine.

  ‘It wasn’t him!’ Aelia whispered, the white of her eyes stained pink with arena dust. ‘I was deceived too … but there was … no recognition or visible scars that I could see … I’m sure it wasn’t him.’

  I was so conscious of the tremble in her voice, about how much I wanted to believe her fantasy because it was much easier than reality.

  ‘It was one of Octavia’s original test subjects,’ she hissed, ‘reissued! It wasn’t him, Tal. I just know it. He’s still out there!’

  Her whisper was distraught, needing me to believe so she could believe, and yet perhaps it was a way of getting through too. I could see how sunken and hollow her eyes were, and how all the hurt was writing itself into her face. She’d lost so much to
o. I’d never been blind to her affection for Max, and now he’d killed her only brother. Probably. It was enough to send anyone into a vortex of denial.

  ‘He’s … not … dead,’ I whispered slowly, ‘but Max?’

  She lifted her jaw stubbornly and I knew her medical brain was trying to rationalize it, to find an explanation for such an indefensible act.

  ‘Some subjects can’t … have no intrinsic ability or resource to reject the vaccine. They can have extreme reactions, a form of induced psychosis.’ Her voice cracked.

  Her blue eyes were as dark as the indigo sea.

  I nodded. It was the only lifeline we had. I stood up to face the small silent army gathering in the tunnel, acutely aware of a fresh responsibility. So many injuries and lives traded, all to rescue a feral girl who was supposed to know how to change it all.

  I steeled my nerve, counting swiftly. There were fifteen familiar faces from Arafel and perhaps the same again of Komodos, Eurasians and Lynx. And there was something in their proximity, in the way they stood together, that was new. They were Outsiders, united by persecution, something Pantheon could never understand. And there were Prolets too, at least ten grubby-faced children: Therry, twin girls, the boy with the tiny griffin and more young satyrs. My eyes drank in their solemn, hopeful faces.

  Were these all who had rejected the vaccine?

  So many were missing. The thought raked my gut anew, and yet there was no time to lose. I ran my gaze over the valiant group, bereft of words. Thank you wasn’t enough, and this wasn’t the place. But the smiles were real, and I hoped they could read my eyes.

  ‘Unus?’

  His ponderous shuffle echoed through the darkness as the group divided to let him through. And as he loomed up in the darkness, one of his plate hands reached out and patted my shoulder kindly. Relief cascaded through my body, though a lump the size of a boulder prevented any words from escaping. He inclined his huge head and I knew he understood, and moreover, that there was no time to waste standing here. He turned, and we started down the dank tunnel, his company comforting in a way I’d almost forgotten.

  We made steady progress, and although a faint clattering and scuttling proved we were undoubtedly in strix territory, Unus’s rumblings kept them all at bay.

  ‘Oh good, bottled bats,’ Aelia muttered, as Rajid slipped up next to her, holding one of his homemade lamps, courtesy of Unus.

  He smirked, his inked Cerberus dancing in the shifting low light. I nodded. Who was I to judge loyalty, when I wasn’t even sure what it looked like any more? I could never forgive him for betraying us at the cathedral, but I could see I owed him some sort of small reprieve. For now. And it distracted from the fact Max had ripped a hole so large I couldn’t even think straight.

  I felt Aelia’s hand touch mine and I gripped back with real warmth. Like a pack of cards, our house had come tumbling down, throwing everything I held to be real and true into the flames. So much lost, so much confused and yet she was here. We were both still here.

  ‘Mum?’ I whispered.

  ‘She’s OK,’ she reassured me, ‘she’s waiting … with the remaining survivors, in the new camp. Said it wasn’t so bad?’

  I nodded, unable to smile but feeling a huge weight shift from my chest.

  ‘You all need your heads read,’ I muttered.

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ she retorted, though I could tell the effort was costing her, the same way the effort not to give in to the pain was costing me.

  ‘I suppose you were forced to make that crazy leap into an arena packed with sabre-tooths. Yeah, I mean that’s what any sane, rational person would do!’

  ‘You started it!’ I retorted, nearly choking on a forgotten sensation reaching up my throat. ‘You snuck a rebel army into one of Cassius’s Ludi arenas!’

  ‘Where have you been … How on earth did you manage …?’ I started, my mind clouding with a million memories.

  Letting her cold body sink into the glass river, waking up beside Eli, witnessing August’s pain when he thought he’d lost her, and the appearance of the rebel survivor army when I needed them most. So many questions I couldn’t even begin to fathom while my mind was so clouded.

  ‘Servilia … Rajid … Grey … the Prolets who’d voided …’ she responded, reading my thoughts.

  ‘Just stay alive!’

  Grey’s gritty whisper echoed through my head along with Servilia’s friendship, her snatched conversations with the Prolet bath women and then the smuggled dart tube. I’d nearly strangled Rajid, when he’d been brought into the detainees’ unit simply to gain access to Servilia and Ludi. So much careful manoeuvring and I hadn’t even guessed.

  ‘And the Oceanids never explain, but they always have their reasons,’ she alluded.

  A tiny smile warmed her pale face.

  ‘Arafel has a lot of friends, Talia … Once Eli began formulating a plan of rescue, it was just a matter of timing.’

  ‘Eli! He’s …?’ I rushed, finally summoning the courage to ask the question I’d been terrified to ask all along.

  ‘Bossy!’ Aelia filled, eyebrows forking.

  A river of relief flooded my limbs, making the tunnels waver.

  ‘But how did you organize it …? Get word around on the inside?’

  Aelia ghost-smiled. ‘Rajid and Grey were slowly building a small rebel army, made up of those few Prolets unaffected by the vaccine. We used the old Roman tunnels to find our way into Isca Prolet, and found a handful of the old PFF resistance there, they were more than happy to help their old General.’ She paused to smile.

  ‘We got word to Grey, Rajid and Servilia via the baths’ Prolet workers – and used the laundry shifts to access your mum’s safe unit. She was anxious, but completely lucid! She made me promise I’d make sure you didn’t do anything stupid.’

  A dart twisted inside my chest as I felt a second rush of relief and pride. I’d been so terrified Mum would give herself away once she started remembering. It seemed she’d evaded detection until she was rescued.

  ‘And Servilia?’ I whispered, remembering how she’d risked her life to help me.

  Aelia hesitated before shaking her head. ‘She was … found out.’

  My eyes blurred as Rajid dropped his gaze to his feet, and suddenly I knew exactly why Servilia had seemed so familiar. It seemed even unpredictable, Prolet rebels had family.

  I sucked in a shaky breath, trying to find some words, but Rajid chose that moment to melt away again, back into the gloom.

  ‘Eli hasn’t stopped looking for Lake, the whole time you’ve been gone.’

  I shot a look at her exhausted face, trying to remember how much she knew before the cathedral.

  ‘He told me everything when I got back …’ she whispered.

  ‘I suspected Cassius was experimenting with Hominum chimera, but not that he’d made so much progress so fast. Rajid told me about the chimera ward in the laboratories months ago, but that Lake was … is actually an attempt to re-create the oldest secret of the Voynich.’

  ‘She’s possibly the best and worst thing Cassius has ever done.’ My head conjured up Lake’s fiery will and unforgettable serpentine eyes.

  ‘So why isn’t Eli here?’ I whispered finally.

  I knew of course, my instincts had been telling me for weeks – I just hadn’t allowed them to become conscious thoughts.

  She threw me a strained look.

  ‘He went out every day with Unus, trying to track her. Evenings were spent planning your rescue. He barely slept. Then two days before we came here, he went out – and didn’t come back.’

  I swallowed hard. Her words weren’t a surprise; they were a confirmation. And while I could tell she was worried, for some reason I wasn’t. I knew Eli so well, I’d know if he was hurt or worse …

  I sucked in a deep breath. So long as he was on the outside, there was very little that could hurt Eli. He was a trained hunter, and gifted animal-whisperer. Lake could be the one exception, but for some reason
I doubted she’d hurt him either. She was complex and volatile, but she was also multi-genus. Eli stood four times the chance of managing her than anyone else.

  ‘There was never any doubt we were coming to get you, he planned it down to the last detail,’ she finished.

  ‘And you?’ I asked hesitantly. ‘Where have you been?’

  She hesitated, a sudden shadow in her eyes.

  ‘Do you remember anything about the underwater kingdom of the Oceanids?’ she whispered after a beat.

  I hesitated before shaking my head.

  ‘I thought as much – memory is a common trade for recovery,’ she mused.

  I analysed her profile carefully. ‘Memory? Common trade?’ I repeated slowly, ‘I thought …’

  I inhaled sharply. I suspected I’d got it all wrong, that August and I hadn’t traded our hearts, but everything had become so fogged.

  ‘I thought we traded …’

  Aelia looked at me, the sadness in her eyes telling me she knew. ‘They’re loyal only to themselves,’ she added softly, ‘but they’re not cruel.’

  ‘So do you remember?’ I returned, thinking furiously now at last I knew the truth.

  It was real for me, Talia.

  My skin started to prickle. I’d suspected I was only hiding from my own pain, and now I had confirmation. I’d been cruel to August because I couldn’t cope – not because anything had changed between us. Some kind of feral legacy I was turning out to be, when I didn’t even have the courage to face my own emotions. Cassius and Livia’s trials had never held more relevance and yet, what of the strength that grew from being broken? What of Aelia’s fairy-tale hope he might still be alive?

  And if he was still alive, where in this hellhole would he be?

  ‘If I stop trying to remember, it comes back,’ Aelia began.

  ‘The shadows inside the sea caves, and the sway of the kelp … their cool healing hands, the soft sound of their harmonies …’

  ‘… and the gleam of oyster pearls along the pathways,’ I finished in a whisper.

  And as she spoke, she stirred up near-forgotten memories of dark, deep-sea ovoid eyes silently clamouring for an end to Pantheon.