Ashes of the Sun

by Django Wexler

  “Shit.” Gyre looked up and saw two figures approaching from the edge of the roof. Nowhere to hide—

  “Stay here. I’ll take care of it.”

  Kit faded into the shadows, a dark shape that was hard to track even with nighteye. Gyre hunkered down, oil bottle still in hand, watching the pair get closer. It was a man and woman, with spears and pointed helmets. Either they didn’t have nighteye themselves, or they’d already neutralized it, because they ought to have seen him by now—

  Silent as a specter, Kit rose behind the woman. Something fast and messy happened at her throat, and she collapsed with only a faint gurgle. At the sound of her body hitting the tiles, the man turned quizzically, and Kit surged forward to meet him, driving a dagger up under his jaw. He twitched spastically for a moment, spear clattering away, before she let him drop.

  “Better,” Kit said, shaking blood off her hand. She bent to wipe it on the Auxie’s uniform. “You going to be able to get that open?”

  Gyre coughed to cover his momentary hesitation. “Yeah. Give me a minute.”

  He turned back to his task, shaking his head. It’s not like I haven’t killed Auxies. They were part of the Order and the Republic, after all, just as much as the centarchs or the duxes. But there was something about the utter casualness of Kit’s violence that gave him pause. Don’t get soft, he chided himself. You’ve done far worse things to get to the Tomb. And, if he did find the power he wanted, no doubt there would be worse yet to come.

  With a final hiss, the acid burned through. Gyre jammed a handle mounted on a corkscrew-shaped tine into the wood and gave it a few twists. When Kit rejoined him, crouching at his side, he opened the door.

  There was a ladder leading down into a junction of two hallways. Everything was dark and still. Gyre listened for a moment but heard no sign of movement.

  “I’ll get the bodies,” Kit said. Gyre started a little at the thought, but it only made sense. Hopefully there’s no one watching inside. Leaving them out here makes it more likely someone will trip over them and sound the alarm. His scar itched, and when he went to scratch it, his finger tapped irritably against his mask.

  Gyre climbed down, waiting at the bottom of the ladder until Kit returned carrying the dead Auxie woman. She lowered the corpse carefully by the arms until Gyre was able to catch it around the waist. Blood still oozed from the broad gash across the woman’s throat, and her blank gaze made Gyre shudder. Don’t. Get. Soft.

  Kit let the other Auxie’s body down, and Gyre piled the two corpses against the wall. Kit herself jumped to the ground, eschewing the ladder and landing with catlike grace. With his nighteye, Gyre could see the darker stains spattered across her black clothing.

  “From this point, we’re going in blind,” Gyre said. “Any ideas on how to actually find this stasis web?”

  “Given how heavy it is, it’ll be on the bottom floor,” Kit said. “And it’s big enough that they won’t have just tucked it in a corner.”

  Gyre turned in a circle, but one way seemed as good as another. He picked a direction and started walking. This floor of the warehouse was divided into many smaller rooms, all carefully closed and locked. Kit darted ahead of him, checking the doors.

  “Think we’ll have time to search some of these on the way out?” she said. “Raskos must have a lot of interesting things stored up.”

  “Let’s just get this done,” Gyre muttered. Kit gave an exaggerated pout.

  As he’d hoped, the corridor led to a stairwell, iron steps corkscrewing downward. Gyre descended carefully, wary of creaks and groans, and was relieved to find that the bulk of the warehouse was a single open space. A network of catwalks ran above it, with circular landings around the massive stone pillars that supported the roof. Below that, the main floor was a jumble.

  Even with nighteye, it was hard to get a sense of just what Raskos had been collecting. There were boxes, barrels, and sacks, piles of stones and bricks, but mostly there were bits and pieces of arcana. Long metal tables were covered in smaller artifacts of every possible description, crystalline shapes embedded in dull ceramic or iridescent unmetal, ancient tools with no clear purpose or broken pieces of who knew what. In between were larger objects resting on wooden pallets. Some seemed tantalizingly familiar—an unmetal pod, bigger than a man, with delicate crystal vanes on either side, or a sort of chair with three wheels and a tall protruding spike. Others were just lumps, veined with crystal, complex and incomprehensible.

  I had no idea there was so much. A consul’s ransom didn’t begin to cover it. What is he keeping it all for?

  “There!” Kit said. Gyre winced at her excited tone, but they seemed to be alone in the warehouse. Following her pointing finger, he saw a misshapen lump of volcanic glass, about the size of a coffin. It looked like a black bedsheet thrown over a stack of rocks, then frozen in place.

  “That’s it?” Gyre said.

  “That is it.” Kit hurried forward. “It’s really fucking here. Plague and fire, I thought for sure…”

  She reached a narrow iron stair near the thing and descended, Gyre close on her heels. The objects were arranged with aisles between them, and they came down a few rows over from the stasis web. Rather than find the nearest junction, Kit vaulted over a pile of stones etched with strange patterns, then dodged around the edge of a table spread with dull, broken sunsplinters. Gyre followed more cautiously.

  The destabilizer, the black rod they’d found in the ghoul tunnel where Harrow had died, was already in her hand.

  “Here we go,” Kit muttered. “Here we go here we go.” Her free hand was clenched and shaking.

  “Is there a trick to it?” Gyre said.

  “No,” Kit said. “You just jam this into this”—she pressed the end of the destabilizer against the slick black surface of the stasis web—“like so. And then you wait for a moment.”

  Light spiderwebbed out along the surface of the stasis web from the point where the two touched, like a crack spreading through glass. There was a low buzz, and the black surface started to dissolve, motes breaking away and drifting into the air like fine ash. Kit tossed the destabilizer carelessly aside, staring at the disappearing surface as though it were all that mattered in the world.

  Most of the web was empty, leaving nothing behind once it had finished its dissolution. Then, in the very center, something came into view. Kit let out a long breath and staggered back against Gyre, who put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

  “Is that it?” he said.

  “That’s it.” She bent to pick the thing up. “We actually fucking found it.”

  The Core Analytica, after all that, wasn’t much to look at. It was cube-shaped, about the size of a man’s head, made of some dark, metallic substance without the sheen of unmetal. At first Gyre thought it was solid, but on closer inspection he saw it was formed of interlocking metal rods, slotted over and around one another to form a three-dimensional grid. The largest of them were as big as his thumb, but through the gaps he could see smaller and smaller grids inside the thing, delicate hair-thin rods, like filigree.

  “What does it do?”

  “Don’t know. Didn’t ask.” Kit stared at the thing in reverence. “Naumoriel wants it bad, and that’s good enough for me.”

  His hand was still on her shoulder, and he gave her a tentative squeeze. “Then, let’s get it back to him.”

  Kit nodded breathlessly.

  Something rumbled, the sound coming in through the walls like distant thunder. The arcana shifted and clattered on their tables. A few windows, set high and narrow like arrow slits in a fortress, momentarily strobed with brilliant light.

  “What in the plaguing fuck?” Kit said.

  “I think,” Gyre said slowly, “that we should get out of here now.”

  A moment later, the front door blew in.

  Maya

  Maya had learned to ride, of course, but she wouldn’t call herself an expert. She’d had a few turns around a yard on a broken-down old w
arbird, and once Jaedia had let her gallop a swiftbird up and down an empty field, but that was about it.

  Fortunately, her current mount was well trained and responded easily to the reins and her half-remembered whistle commands. She clung to the saddle as it raced back into Deepfire, other traffic giving her a wide berth. When she had a moment, she glanced up at the Spike on her right, using the huge building to gauge her progress.

  In her breast, rage and shame wrestled back and forth. She saw the light of her power as it consumed the rebel girl, Yora’s face as Tanax cut her down, Sarah’s muffled scream. Behind them was Jaedia, smiling her sad smile.

  Raskos used us. Centarchs were supposed to be exemplars, both protecting civilization and demonstrating why it was worth protecting. The dux had turned them into his personal assassins.

  He’s not going to get away with this.

  The chimneys of the manufactories loomed ahead of her. It took a few turns to find Third Street and Broad Way, but eventually she reached a broad stone building, entrance blocked off by a high iron fence. Auxiliary guards lined the front, more than she’d seen last night, and there was a carriage parked just inside. For a moment, Maya hesitated.

  Jaedia… She touched the Thing, a hard lump in her chest, and her resolve hardened. Jaedia would find some way to get the truth.

  She whistled the warbird to a halt well short of the gates, dismounted without much grace, and turned to face the line of guards. There were a half dozen of them, with spears and pointed helmets, already watching her in the light of lanterns hanging from the fence. Maya stalked over, deiat still threaded into her panoply.

  “Open the gate,” she said when they moved to bar her way.

  “This is private property,” said a nervous woman with a sergeant’s marks. Maya stopped a few meters from them and drew her haken.

  “I am an agathios of the Twilight Order,” she said as the blade ignited with a whoomph. “I answer to the Council of Kyriliarchs. Now, open the gate before I open it for you.”

  The Auxies were edging sideways, out of her path, but the luckless sergeant was stuck. The woman’s throat worked nervously.

  “I can’t… my orders…”

  Maya closed her fist. A spear of white-hot fire flashed past the sergeant’s head, frizzling her hair and hitting the door where it was secured by a thick iron bar. The center of the bar and a good chunk of the ironwork splashed into liquid metal, which sprayed, sizzling, across the gravel courtyard. The two halves of the gate swung inward with a groan as the remnants of the bar fell away.

  The Thing felt hot in Maya’s chest. Deiat was flowing through her like blood, the power bubbling just below her skin.

  “Thank you,” she snarled, “for your cooperation.”

  The sergeant stood stock-still as Maya passed, shoving the broken gate aside. At the far end of the courtyard, another squad of Auxies was forming up. She recognized Guria Fairshot at their head. Each of the dozen men and women had a blaster pistol trained on her. Raskos must have sent his inner circle to keep his precious treasure safe.

  “Agathios,” Guria rumbled. “I didn’t think to see you here.”

  “Get out of my way,” Maya said. “In the name of the Twilight Order.”

  “My instructions come from the dux,” Guria said stolidly. “No one is to enter.”

  “The dux is not a centarch.”

  “Neither are you,” Guria said.

  She raised her haken and stepped forward. “Take it up with my master, then.”

  The blasters followed her. Guria looked uncertain.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Agathios.”

  “I was about to say the same thing,” Maya said, taking another step forward.

  “Stop—”

  An Auxie with a nervous trigger finger robbed Guria of the chance to give the order to shoot. An energy bolt lanced out with a crack, followed by a dozen more as the rest followed suit.

  A blaster was a simple device, at its core. It held a sunsplinter—a bit of arcana that stored deiat—and channeled that power down the barrel in its simplest, most destructive form. Jaedia had taught Maya to respect the weapons. As Chosen arcana, they could be dangerous, even to a centarch, and her panoply would strain to protect her from more than a few hits.

  However powerful the bolts were, they were infinitely simpler than even the basic attacks Jaedia had used in their sparring. With plenty of time to prepare her defense, Maya stood in the center of a ring of fire, discs of blazing power shifting and whirling to block the incoming shots faster than the eye could follow. An instant later, she released the trapped energy as a wide burst of divine flame, blasting the Auxies off their feet and sending Guria sprawling against the warehouse doors.

  With time to think, she’d done better than that moment in the tunnel. The soldiers might be scorched, but they weren’t incinerated. Every lesson Jaedia had ever taught her, all the lectures about careful control, ran through her head as she saw the rebel girl burn to ash once again.

  “You can’t,” Guria croaked as she walked past him. “The dux…”

  “Let’s see what the dux is so eager to hide,” she said. She raised her haken and slashed across the doors, and they fell in flaming pieces around her.

  Gyre

  Gyre stared down the long aisle of artifacts at the broken doors. With his nighteye still active, the light was painfully bright, a flaming sword like an actinic bar of agony etching itself onto his retina.

  “That’s a plagued centarch!” Kit hissed, ducking back behind a large, multijointed unmetal crab claw.

  “I figured that out,” Gyre said. He pressed in beside her, eye streaming. “Now what?”

  “If anyone’s in here,” a young woman’s voice called out, “surrender now in the name of the Twilight Order!”

  “Raskos must have figured out we were hitting the warehouse,” Gyre said.

  “How?” Kit snarled, clutching the Analytica to her chest.

  “Does it matter? We have to get out of here.”

  “Shit.” Kit’s lip twisted. “Shit shit fucking plaguefire.” She clutched the thing tighter. “I’m so fucking close. But we’ll never get back upstairs now.”

  “Just… calm down.” Gyre took a deep breath. “I’ve got some alchemicals. That might put her off-balance.”

  “A blaster can hurt a centarch,” Kit said. “Or so I hear. I haven’t had the chance to test it myself.”

  “Okay. You get up to the catwalk. I’ll try to stun her. We just need to buy enough time to get clear.”

  “This was not part of the plan,” Kit muttered, and then, under her breath: “Fuck. Here.”

  She held out the Core Analytica. Gyre looked at her questioningly.

  “It won’t fit in my pack,” she muttered, “and I’m going to need my hands free. Just… don’t let her get it, all right? No matter what. If you want your trip to the Tomb—”

  “I got it.” Gyre shoved the cube into his pack. “Ready?”

  “No,” Kit said. She grinned, a little shakily.

  Gyre spun out from behind the claw-thing, running down the aisle long enough to catch the centarch’s attention, then hopping over a table full of loose coins. He judged the jump wrong and scraped half of them to the floor, where they pinged on the flagstones and rolled away.

  That definitely got her attention, at least. He heard footsteps and caught a glimpse of the flaming sword getting closer. He pulled a stunner from his belt pouch, judged the distance carefully, and hurled it over the row of junk, squeezing his eye closed and looking away. It went off with a whump and a brilliant light, and almost simultaneously a crack of blaster fire came from overhead.

  “Not going to surrender,” the centarch said. She sounded younger than he was. “Okay, then.”

  Gyre was already moving. Behind him, a pile of bricks blew apart in a wave of flames, and the girl stepped through the wreckage after him. He turned long enough to hurl another alchemical, but a pinpoint blast of fire caught and incinera
ted it in midair.

  “I have some questions for you,” she said. “So just stop before someone gets hurt.”

  Her haken snapped up in time to intercept a blaster bolt, the blinding energy vanishing into the sword. The centarch turned and spotted Kit’s dark figure hurrying along the catwalk.

  “That’s getting really irritating,” she said, and raised one hand.

  A blast of flame scythed out, and Kit threw herself flat. The burst was aimed not at her but at the catwalk behind her, and a chunk of the wood-and-iron walkway was blown into flaming splinters. As Kit bounded back to her feet, the whole structure started to twist, brackets popping away from the support pillar. Kit rode the still-burning catwalk down, pieces falling away and crashing among the gathered artifacts, raising clouds of dust and smoke.

  “Kit!” Gyre shouted as he lost sight of her. He started in that direction, then pulled up short as the blazing haken interposed itself, eye-wateringly bright.

  “I said I have some questions for you,” the centarch said. Her hair had gotten loose, blowing in the rising heat of the flames, red as blood. “Drop your weapons.”

  No! Gyre squeezed his good eye shut. No no no. For a moment he was eight years old again, watching as Va’aht Thousandcuts casually destroyed his family, took his eye, showed him the truth about the Dawn Republic and the Twilight Order. Republicans might sneer at the subjects of the Splinter Kings, call them slaves under the heels of vicious despots, but as long as the centarchs existed, the people of the Republic were something worse. Ants, to be crushed or brushed aside.

  Under his mask, pain lanced through his scar.

  No. He let out a breath, heart pounding, and opened his eye. Then he moved, with all the speed and ferocity he’d spent twelve years learning.

  Another alchemical bomb slipped into one hand, and he lofted it high over the centarch’s head. She reacted as he’d hoped, sending a blast of fire to intercept the thing, and it detonated with a sharp crack that staggered them both. In the brief moment of distraction, Gyre drew his blades, long and short. The long blade slashed at the centarch’s face, and she had time to bring her haken down to parry.