Ashes of the Sun

by Django Wexler

The boy blinked. “’Scuse me?”

  “The Katre ’49,” Gyre repeated, raising his voice.

  “What the fuck is a Katre ’49?” the boy said.

  One of his companions behind the bar, an older man with a salt-and-pepper beard, leaned in with a growl. “This look like the kind of place that keeps a bottle for fifty fucking years?”

  “It’s still my order.” Gyre drummed his fingers on the bar top and glanced around. “Katre ’49.”

  “Well then, of course, m’lord,” the older bartender said, putting on an obnoxious Republican accent. “Would that be the north or west side of the vineyard you’d be wanting? And would you care to sample the cherry-crusted sparrow penis?” He barked a laugh, and the boy snickered. “Order a real drink, or piss off.”

  Maybe it’s a test. Gyre’s finger tapped a little harder, and he took a deep breath. “I think—” he began.

  He got no further, because someone grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him, and kissed him hard. This was so unexpected that it took Gyre a moment to react. He got the impression of a young woman, pressed against him by the crowd, her lips soft against his. His hand went to his back, where a knife was hidden under his coat.

  “This is my man,” she announced, pulling away from him and turning to face the crowd. “And he’s a hundred times better than you Auxie scum.”

  Gyre blinked.

  There was a long, dangerous silence.

  It gave Gyre the chance to size things up, at least. First there was the girl at his side. She was his age or a little younger, dressed in dark pants and a tailcoat, with a scavenger’s leather jacket thrown over the top making a decidedly odd ensemble. Nearly his height, she was long and lean, with only the slightest of curves. Her hair, a brilliant teal, was cut short in wild spikes.

  Second was the group she’d been speaking to. There were half a dozen of them, all large men, wearing identical trousers and gray shirts. Now that he was looking at them, Gyre could identify these as the underpadding for Auxiliary armor, dark with sweat at the armpits and collars. This bunch must have just come off shift. The closest, with a shock of red hair and a thick beard the color of old blood, was just starting to turn his attention to Gyre.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Gyre saw more gray shirts moving in the crowd behind him, heading his way. So much for a quick exit. He returned his gaze to the red-bearded man in time for the Auxiliary to grab Gyre’s collar with one massive fist.

  “What the fuck is this, then?” the man said. His breath, of which Gyre was the unfortunate recipient, was thick with alcohol.

  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Gyre ventured. His hand was still on his knife.

  “I’ve been buying this plaguepit drinks for an hour,” Red-beard said, glaring at the blue-haired girl. “Now you’re gonna come in and take her? Fuck that. She’s mine.”

  The girl raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond. Gyre started to make another attempt at politely disentangling himself, then paused.

  Plague it. His mission here was totally fucked at this point, whatever happened. Plague if I’m going to bow and scrape to an Auxie. The look in the girl’s eyes—not afraid in the least, almost expectant—played more of a role than he’d care to admit.

  “I don’t think she belongs to anyone,” Gyre said. “And I don’t like your language. And furthermore—”

  At this point he kneed the Auxie in the balls. Holding someone’s collar, while it might be intimidating, left you open to all sorts of nastiness. Idiot’s just lucky I’m not spilling his guts.

  Red-beard doubled over, letting go of Gyre’s collar. Gyre gave him a shove to send him to the floor and danced clear. The Auxie’s closest companions pushed forward into the rapidly clearing space around the bar, roaring threats. Gyre met the first one with a downward stomp to his extended knee, buckling the leg and turning his shouts into screams of pain. The second one swung a punch at Gyre’s face, and he ducked, came up inside the man’s guard, and drove an elbow into his jaw from below. There was an audible clack as his teeth came together, and he stumbled backward, blood bubbling between his lips where he’d bitten off a chunk of tongue.

  There was a brief, hushed silence. The remaining three Auxies had squared off, but for the moment they didn’t charge. Behind Gyre, the bartenders had vanished into whatever secret place bartenders go when fights break out, and the rest of the crowd had backed off far enough to be out of danger but close enough that they could still see the show.

  To Gyre’s mild surprise, the blue-haired girl hadn’t taken the opportunity to run for it. She stood beside him, looking down approvingly at the groaning Auxies.

  “Not bad,” she said. “I’m Kit. Duck.”

  “What?”

  “Duck.”

  He ducked. A moment later her foot whistled through the space where his head had been, a perfect arc of a kick that connected beautifully with the jaw of another Auxie who’d been creeping up on him from behind. The momentum of it picked the man up and sent him tumbling across the bar top, scattering mugs and glassware.

  Gyre looked around frantically. It was worse than he’d thought—there were at least three more groups of Auxies, maybe twenty men and women in gray shirts closing in. At the edges of the room, the establishment’s security wasn’t rushing to interfere. This probably counts as tonight’s entertainment.

  He looked back at Kit. “What do you say to getting out of here?”

  “Probably for the best,” she said with a grin. “The beer is frankly swill.”

  “Great.” Gyre stuck his hands in his coat pockets. “Follow my lead.”

  Most of the Auxies were between Gyre and the front door, making a quick break in that direction impractical. The stairs, however, had only five gray shirts in front of them. One decision made.

  His hands came out of his pockets with an alchemical cracker in each. These were smaller versions of the stunner he’d used against the Legionary, not much more than a distraction, but it couldn’t be helped. In the dense crowd, a stunner was likely to seriously hurt someone who didn’t deserve it; Gyre had no sympathy for Auxies, but most of the patrons of the Smoking Wreckage hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, he amended after a moment, they haven’t done anything to me, anyway.

  Darting away from the bar, he lobbed the first cracker in a low arc behind him. It landed among the groaning Auxies just as their comrades gathered their courage to pursue, detonating with a crack and a brilliant flash. He waved the second one in front of Kit, who got the idea and squeezed her eyes shut. Gyre hurled it forward and put a hand over his good eye.

  The group in front of him scattered when they saw him hurl the bomb, and the detonation disoriented them. The closest was a dark-haired, well-muscled woman who got her hands up in a fighting stance in spite of eyes streaming with tears. Gyre didn’t even slow down, ducking under her clumsy blow and sweeping her legs out from under her. She hit the ground with a meaty thud, and he popped back up, just in time for a younger girl to slam a fist into his face. Gyre wobbled backward, head ringing, but had the presence of mind to grab her wrist and sidestep her next blow, twisting her arm to send her into a painful flip that landed her on her downed comrade.

  Another Auxie was down at Kit’s feet, and he looked up in time to watch her confront the largest of the group, a barrel-chested man with a much-broken nose. He used his longer reach to his advantage, keeping her at bay for a moment with roundhouse swipes. Kit bulled forward, taking a hard jab to the cheek, and got inside his guard. She bent her knees and popped up, forehead slamming into the taller man’s chin, sending him reeling backward. Her kick caught him in the stomach while he was off-balance, doubling him over, and he toppled to the floor wheezing.

  The last Auxie, a boy younger than Gyre, scrambled out of their way as they reached the base of the stairs. Gyre, still wobbly from the girl’s blow, sprinted up, glancing backward to make sure Kit followed. She was right behind him, blood streaming from her nose and dripping off her chin, a
huge grin on her face. A mob of Auxies a dozen strong pounded after them. Gyre hurled his last cracker at the base of the stairs and watched them scatter.

  “Sir,” a large man in a dark suit was saying, “you can’t be up here without an escort—”

  Kit did another one of those high kicks, her foot scything through the air at head height, and sent the security goon crashing against the wall with a clatter. Gyre stared at her.

  “Well?” she said. “Are we escaping or what?”

  “Right.” He shook his head, trying to lose the image of her bloody-toothed grin.

  The stairs led up to a long hallway lined with doors, with several crossing corridors leading off it. At the other end, a tight spiral stair led upward. Gyre pointed and Kit nodded, blood scattering. They took off down the corridor at a run, as the doors started to open and the footsteps of the Auxies drummed on the stairs behind them.

  Men and women leaned out to see what was happening, then ducked back in alarm at the sight of the two disheveled figures sprinting toward them. The Auxies were shouting for help, and a few of the bystanders stepped out to try to block Gyre’s path. A pair of shirtless mustachioed men grabbed for him as he went past, but he avoided them with a quick twist and kept moving. From the other side of the hall, an enormous woman erupted from a doorway buck naked, which was startling enough to give Gyre pause. Fortunately Kit was faster, spinning to plant an elbow in the woman’s solar plexus that left her sprawled back inside her room. There was more shouting behind them.

  The second set of stairs was steeper than the first, with a locked door at the top. Gyre hit it with his shoulder at full speed, and it gave way with a splintering crash, letting them out onto the roof. Gently sloped tiles stretched ahead for a dozen meters, then cut off abruptly as the building ended at the edge of the abyss. In the other direction, one of the third-story additions loomed, cutting off their escape.

  Kit skipped fearlessly out across the tiles and turned on one heel. “Now what?”

  Gyre drew his knife, and she raised an eyebrow. He understood her concern—the unspoken etiquette of Deepfire bar brawls said that, until there were weapons involved, the losers might expect a beating and broken bones but would probably escape with their lives. Once the blades came out, however, all bets were off.

  Gyre wasn’t sure where alchemical explosives ranked on that scale. Not that it matters. I don’t plan to lose. He grinned at Kit and turned back to the door, jamming the knife through the iron handle and driving it as deep as he could into the doorframe. It wouldn’t hold for long, but they didn’t need long.

  At the bottom of his pouch, a pair of long linen gloves was rolled up in a tight bundle. He extracted them, shook them out, and tossed one to Kit.

  “Put that on,” he said. “I’ve only got the pair, so put your ungloved hand on top, and for Chosen’s sake don’t let it touch the line. It’ll take your fingers off, never mind your skin.”

  Kit blinked. Her eyes, Gyre noted inanely, were the same bright blue as her hair. “Line?”

  Gyre walked carefully along the tiles to the edge. From here he could see the near face of the cliff, separated from the island supporting the Smoking Wreckage by perhaps twenty meters of empty space. Jagged, splintery rock stretched down into the Pit, disappearing into the sullen red glow of the cloud below.

  Aligning himself on the half-broken chimney he’d used as a landmark, Gyre slipped the glove onto his right hand and leaned over the edge. The soles of his feet tingled furiously, as though they expected the tiles to tip him over at any moment. He groped until his grasping fingers found what they were looking for: a cable, about as thick as his thumb, heavy and slick in his grip and so translucent that it was barely visible.

  “Just grab hold and step off,” he said. “Grip tighter if you’re going too fast. If I’ve set this up right, we should be fine.” It had taken him most of the afternoon to arrange, climbing the outside of the Wreckage in a shadowy corner.

  “Clever,” Kit said, another broad grin spreading across her bloody face. “Very clever.”

  “Well.” Gyre felt more pleased at her smile than he probably should have. “I don’t like to go anywhere without an emergency exit. Always prepared.”

  Footsteps sounded behind the door, and he heard angry voices.

  “You want me to go first?” Gyre said. “If I plummet to my death, you can take your chances with them.”

  “I’ll go first.” She pulled the glove tight. “I trust you.”

  “Why?”

  Kit laughed. “Call it a hunch.”

  There was a crunch from the door. “Better move, then.”

  She took the line from him with her gloved hand and stood poised on the edge of the roof, staring down into the glowing abyss. “Just step right off, huh?”

  Gyre nodded. Kit heaved an exaggerated sigh.

  “Story of my life,” she said, and stepped off the roof.

  For a heart-stopping moment, she plunged straight down and disappeared from sight. Gyre started breathing again when she zipped into view, riding the line’s downward slope in a long parabola, sparks trailing from where the specially treated glove gripped the rope. It was only a few seconds before she reached the end and he lost sight of her against the darkened cliff.

  The door gave way with a splintery crash. Gyre grabbed the wildly juddering line with his own glove, turned to give a mocking salute to the enraged Auxies, and hopped over the edge.

  There was a moment of free fall, until he ran out of slack and the line jerked him upward, brutally hard. He felt it whirring past under his glove and concentrated on keeping his other hand firmly atop the protected one. The lights of the city approached, shockingly quickly, and he belatedly remembered to squeeze to shed some speed. He hit the crumbling edge of the cliff hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and clung to the edge with his ungloved hand.

  “That,” Kit said from just above him, “was a rush. You could sell tickets.”

  She extended her own hand, and he grabbed it. Muscles bunched in her shoulders as she hauled him up.

  Figures were visible milling around on the roof of the Wreckage. Kit looked at them, eyes gleaming. “You think they’ll try to come after us?”

  “If they do, they’ll probably lose a finger,” Gyre said. “But we can make sure.”

  He dug a firestarter out of his pocket, flicked it open, and applied the tiny light to the end of the cable. It caught immediately, burning with a cool blue flame that zipped up the way they’d come, briefly outlining a curve of light through the red-tinted darkness. Then it fell away in pieces, still burning as it dropped into the Pit.

  “Where do you get these toys?” Kit said, delighted.

  “I know an alchemist,” Gyre said, closing the firelighter.

  He realized, abruptly, that he didn’t have a clue what to do next. They were standing at the end of a dingy alley. A single lamp provided the only light, throwing Kit in profile as she leaned her head back and squeezed her nose.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  “I’ve had worse.” She looked down her bloody nose at him. “You?”

  Gyre touched his cheek. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t know how to break this to you,” Kit said, producing a handkerchief from somewhere, “but your scar is coming off.”

  “My—” Gyre explored his cheek more thoroughly and found that the pasted-on scar was indeed falling apart where the Auxie had punched him. Damn. He slapped a hand over it, feeling stupid, and turned away.

  “I imagine that’s why you usually wear a mask,” Kit went on. “More durable.”

  Gyre froze.

  “You are Halfmask, aren’t you?” She cocked her head, still holding the handkerchief to her nose.

  “That depends,” Gyre said. He turned back, hand behind his back creeping to the handle of another knife.

  “On what?”

  “On who’s asking.”

  “Oh.” She swept her arm out and performed a
wide bow, inadvertently letting a stream of blood patter on the stone. “Kitsraea Doomseeker, at your service.”

  “Kitsraea—” He stopped. “You sent me that note?”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “And you kissed me?” His lips tingled. He’d almost forgotten that part.

  “It seemed like a good way to start a fight.”

  “Why?”

  “So that I could see if you could handle yourself,” Kit said. “You have no idea how many people don’t live up to their reputations.”

  Gyre’s hand clenched into a fist. “This was a test.”

  “And you passed! With flying colors.” She looked admiringly back at the Wreckage. “I was not expecting that, I must say.”

  “What did you think I was going to do?”

  “Start killing people, frankly. Isn’t that your line of work?”

  “I…” He shook his head. “It feels impolite to kill people on their day off. Even Auxies.”

  Kit barked a laugh. She lowered the handkerchief, waited a moment to see if the blood would resume, then tossed the soiled fabric over the edge. It fluttered down into the Pit, drifting lazily on the updrafts.

  “So now what?” Gyre said.

  “Now I have a proposition for you,” Kit said. “I’ll be in touch, the same way as last time. It won’t be long.”

  “But—”

  “Thank you, sir, for a very informative evening.” She bowed again. “Good luck with the scar!”

  Before Gyre could say another word, she was gone, trotting past the lamp and vanishing into the shadows. Gyre prodded the torn edge of his paste scar with one finger, then tore the whole thing off and tossed it over the cliff. He scratched the real scar underneath, which was a blessed relief.

  Okay. What in the name of all the Chosen was that?

  Chapter 5

  This time, Maya arrived at Baselanthus’ office early.

  She knocked on his door, shifting uncomfortably in her rarely used formal tunic and trousers. It felt like a long time before anyone answered, and she fancied she could hear the low buzz of conversation.