“You don’t need to do this,” Basel said. “Maya, please. The Council understands—”
“With respect to the Council,” Maya said, “my decision is made, and the challenge has been issued. How do you respond?”
“You don’t understand what you’re doing,” Basel said. “If you lose—”
Maya cut him off again. “If I lose, I give up my status as agathios and any chance of becoming a centarch. I will be confined as the Council sees fit for the rest of my natural life.”
She’d flinched on reading that part. But the Order’s rules were harsh for a reason—anyone who could touch deiat, especially after receiving most of a centarch’s training, was far too dangerous to be allowed to roam free.
“I understand the consequences,” she went on. “How does the Council respond to my challenge?”
“I…” Basel shook his head, but Nicomidi jumped in angrily.
“I move that the Council contest the challenge,” he grated. “I call for a vote at once. All in favor, stand.”
The Dogmatics got to their feet all together. The Pragmatics rose one by one, more hesitantly, all except Baselanthus, who looked down at the desk as though he’d lost something there.
“I… abstain,” he muttered. “I cannot…”
Prodominus was the last to get on his feet, still wiping his eyes. He grinned at Maya.
“I hope you win, girl,” he said. “But I have to see you fight for it.”
“That’s eleven votes in favor, with one abstention,” Nicomidi said. “The Council will contest Agathios Maya’s assumption of the title of centarch. I volunteer as champion, and—”
“Oh, no,” Prodominus said. “That’s not what the rules say.”
“Correct.” Maya forced herself not to smile.
Nicomidi’s eyes narrowed. “Then enlighten us, Prodominus.”
“The code specifies that the centarchate is a chain through the generations that is only as strong as its most recent link,” Prodominus said. Maya blinked in surprise—that was practically word for word from the Inheritance. “The member most recently raised to their title represents us all.”
“In this case,” Maya said, “I believe that would be Centarch Tanax Brokenedge. I look forward to facing him in the dueling ring.”
Chapter 17
An old saying held that there were only two roads out of Deepfire.
Like most old sayings, it wasn’t literally correct, but it contained a grain of truth. There were a dozen roads leading south, either passing through tunnels that pierced the edge of the city’s crater or switchbacking over the top, but after descending into the foothills they all joined to become the Republic Road. This highway ran through the Splinter Kingdoms of Meltrock and Drail before finally reaching Obstadt, the great entrepôt of the northern Republic. Merchant combines like the Moorcats had made their fortune running caravans along the route, putting up with plaguespawn attacks and the taxes of the Splinter Kings to bring the salvage of Deepfire—and the cheap goods of its manufactories—back to the Republic.
Going north, on the other hand, there truly was only one road. The Hunter’s Gap was a notch in the wall of the crater, where part of the mountain the Chosen weapon had blown apart had collapsed into a narrow valley, creating a broad slope of melted, misshapen boulders and bits of twisted glass. Scavengers had cut a crude stairway through the debris, descending from the crater’s edge into the valley of the Brink. The tiny river led into the network of valleys and passes that were the only practical way to move around the Shattered Peaks.
Standing at the top of the Gap, wind viciously cold against his face in spite of a thick knit muffler, Gyre looked out at the serried ranks of snowcapped mountains and felt his heart sinking. He told himself they didn’t have far to go, all things considered—Kit’s ill-fated delve toward the Tomb had started on the flank of a mountain called Snowspear, which he figured they could reach in less than a week.
“Having second thoughts?” Kit said cheerfully, coming up behind him.
“Just contemplating freezing my balls off,” Gyre muttered.
“I suppose I’ve got one up on you there,” Kit said. “Come on. It’s not much warmer down in the valley, but at least we might get eaten by plaguespawn!”
She pushed past him, trooping down the uneven stone steps that ran back and forth through the scree of broken rock. Kit’s slight figure was swathed in so much cloth and leather it was a wonder she could move, with fur-lined trousers and a jacket on top of several other layers, her blue hair concealed under a leather cap, and a wool muffler like Gyre’s over her face.
He’d had to provide gear for both of them, naturally, since Kit’s funds had disappeared with her ghoul allies. Fortunately, Gyre had a few stashes of thalers for emergencies, and cleaning them out had been just about enough to cover what they needed for their expedition. Between food, tent, bedding, and a selection of useful alchemicals, Gyre’s pack was bulging, and Kit’s was scarcely lighter.
He’d also replaced his long blade and packed a couple of spares. Kit’s banter aside, plaguespawn were no laughing matter this deep in the mountains. One thing they hadn’t been able to afford was a spare sunsplinter for Kit’s blaster, which had an unknown but probably small number of shots remaining.
In spite of an early start, it took all afternoon just to reach the bottom of the steps. By the time they got to the relatively flat ground of the valley floor, Gyre’s knees ached abominably. If Kit was fatigued, though, she didn’t show it, hurrying ahead to find the loosely marked path that paralleled the narrow river. Gyre muttered to himself but kept walking.
At least the scenery was spectacular. The valley floor was low enough that it was clear of snow at this time of year, and a narrow belt of stunted trees and tough grass survived by the banks of the river. A few hundred meters to either side, the slopes of the neighboring mountains rose steep and unforgiving, shrouded in white. Streams flowed down to join the Brink at regular intervals, some emerging from the rocks, others tumbling down from on high in streamers of spray. Big brown birds wheeled and called out overhead, and now and then Gyre saw a few goats in the distance.
“See?” Kit said, her breath puffing into steam as she walked. “It’s not so bad. There’s not even any snow.”
“People really live out here?” Gyre had made the ascent to Deepfire safe in the confines of a caravan. Like the majority of the inhabitants, he’d never ventured outside the crater.
“A few,” Kit said.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Scavengers pass through. They’ve got money, and they need food, booze, and bed warmers. There are worse ways to make a living.”
“It’s hard to think of many.”
“There’s this little… not a town, really, but a couple of buildings next to each other. It’s not far from Snowspear; we could pass by. They might even remember me.”
“Just as long as you didn’t kill anyone the last time you came through.”
“I don’t… think so?” Kit looked at the sky. “Maybe—no, that was farther east. It’ll be fine.”
Gyre snorted a laugh, and they walked on.
The sun vanished early, hidden behind the mountains to the west, and they walked for a while in the long twilight. Eventually, though, the light drained from the sky, and Kit found them a spot to camp in the lee of a rock outcropping, which would provide defense on two sides and keep them out of the wind.
“Risk a fire?” she said inquiringly.
“What’s the risk?”
“They say it attracts plaguespawn,” Kit said. “Though I don’t think anyone really knows for sure.”
“We’ll be all right,” Gyre said. “Go ahead.”
He dug in his pack for the roll of alchemical camp-guards while Kit went to work on the fire. The little things were the standard clay balls of most alchemicals, connected to a fine wire mesh. He unrolled them around their little nook at the distance of a couple of meters. The clay balls were full of
explosive powder, enough to make a flash and a loud bang, connected to the wire with a clever mechanism. Once it was set, any pressure would set them off and sound the alarm. As a general security measure, it wasn’t ideal, since it was easy enough to step over the wire mesh if you saw it, but plaguespawn weren’t smart enough for that.
“You are well prepared,” Kit said, tending her small pile of twigs as the fire grew. “More of Lynnia’s work?”
Gyre nodded. “She’s got a temper, but she’s the best alchemist in Deepfire.” He sighed. “Not that she’ll ever work with me again, most likely.”
“Ah.” Kit shook her head. “It’s too bad about Yora. I’d hoped you were right about her calling off the job—”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
Gyre settled down next to the fire, drawing his legs to his chest. He still wondered if there was something he could have done, some way out of the trap. Warn her, and risk losing everything. Except we lost everything anyway.
“Fair enough.” Kit pushed a larger piece of wood into the flames and sighed pleasantly as the fire rose. “Can I ask you something else, then?”
“Maybe,” Gyre said cautiously.
“That centarch,” Kit said. “She let us go. And I thought I heard you talking to her.”
“You were unconscious.”
“I was in and out.” Kit cocked her head. “So what happened? Do you know her?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Gyre sighed. “It was Maya. My sister.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wish I was.” He shook his head. “Or maybe I don’t. If it was anyone else, I doubt we’d have gotten out of there alive.”
“What did she say? Was she glad to see you?”
“She said…” Gyre paused. “About what you’d expect. What the Twilight Order taught her to believe.”
“Was she surprised to find out her brother is a notorious rebel?”
“I think so. She said she doesn’t remember what happened the day they took her.” Gyre sighed. “I wouldn’t blame her for not wanting to remember.”
“Family,” Kit said in a long-suffering tone.
“Do you have any?” Gyre said, genuinely curious.
“Just my mother. She ditched my dad before I was born, and I only saw him a couple of times before he drank himself to death.”
“And what does she think of…” Gyre waved vaguely, as though to encompass Kit’s entire life.
Kit held up a hand and waggled it so-so. “I ran off when I was ten. Spent the next five years fighting with her by letter. I thought we were through it, and I was planning to visit her, when I found out about…” She tapped her chest. “Since then I haven’t been able to figure out what to say.”
There was a pause that stretched into an awkward silence. Kit yawned.
“Well,” she said. “I’m for bed. Long way to walk tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Gyre muttered. But he stared into the campfire for a long time after she’d crawled away, seeing the blinding light of a flaming sword.
They saw their first plaguespawn the following day.
When you lived within the well-guarded borders of the Republic, Gyre reflected, or in a protected city like Deepfire, you thought of plaguespawn as occasional disasters. Like storms or earthquakes, they could never be banished entirely, but for most people they weren’t a pressing risk. And when they did turn up, everyone knew what to do. Gyre had participated in a few plaguespawn hunts as a boy, sticking close to his father and a crowd of other farmers as they cornered some dog-sized monstrosity and beat it to death with clubs and farm tools. And once they’d found it, the threat was over, and everyone went home and congratulated themselves on a job well done.
It was easy to forget that most of the world wasn’t like that. The Splinter Kingdoms didn’t have the manpower of the Republic, or the weapons the Order maintained for the Legions, blaster rifles and unmetal armor. Every city and town had its wall and its watchtowers. Villagers fortified their houses and went armed in the fields. Travelers and traders moved in well-armed groups. And that was in the lowlands—no nation claimed the mazy valleys and narrow passes of the Shattered Peaks, and no army swept the wilds.
The Twilight Order liked to take credit, but Gyre thought the only thing that had saved humanity, after the fall of the Chosen, was the sheer mindless stupidity of the abominations. Plaguespawn wanted only one thing—to find living animals, humans above all, and incorporate their freshly slaughtered flesh into their own twisted bodies. They had no strategy, no sense of caution, not even the simple instincts of an animal. They didn’t set ambushes, or try to hide when they were overmatched.
Consequently, Gyre heard the thing coming long before he saw it, a rattling sound of bone on rock. He glanced at Kit, who drew her saber at once. Gyre pulled out his long blade and took a long step away from her, giving her room to fight.
The plaguespawn came into view a moment later, scuttling around a boulder. It was a big one, the size of a pony, with a mismatched collection of a dozen legs rising and falling on either side of its body in weird, synchronized waves. Like all plaguespawn, most of it consisted of yellow, splintered bones and ropy red muscle, the organic wreckage of several creatures stripped and repurposed by dhaka. Bits of its past prey remained intact—its head was a pair of goats’ heads partially fused together, mouth horribly extended, four horizontal-pupiled eyes blinking in unison.
It came straight at them, legs rising and falling. Gyre intercepted it, darting forward to deliver a slash across its snout that left a flap of wet flesh hanging loose, dripping dark blood. The creature came after him, goat teeth snapping, and he danced backward, slashing at it whenever it got too close.
Kit came in behind the thing, delivering a heavy downward cut to its rear with her longer, heavier blade. Three legs fell away from one side, twitching spastically on the ground, and the thing staggered off-balance. It screeched and chattered madly, trying to turn, but Gyre slammed his long knife into its throat, putting all his weight behind the blow. As it reared, trying to bite him, Kit reversed her saber and brought it straight down through the center of the creature’s body. Blood gushed from its underside, and all its legs twitched violently, then went limp.
“Nicely done,” Gyre said, putting his foot against the monster’s skull and pulling his knife free. Something crunched wetly under his boot.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Kit muttered. “At least up here they’re mostly goat. You wouldn’t believe how big they can get down in the tunnels with only bats and rats to eat.”
“Did you ever ask your friend Naumoriel why the ghouls created the plaguing things?”
“He claims they didn’t,” Kit said. “But trying to get straight answers out of a ghoul about the war is… challenging. You’ll see.” She wiped the blood off her saber on a cloth, then frowned at the rag and tossed it away. “Assuming we get there. And that they don’t kill us immediately when we do.”
“So many wonderful possibilities,” Gyre said.
A few more plaguespawn turned up before nightfall, but nothing nearly so large. The smallest of them could be crushed under a boot or dispatched with a kick, like twisted rats but with none of a rat’s natural intellect or caution. As far as Gyre knew, no one was quite sure where new plaguespawn came from, but the popular theory was that smaller monsters periodically budded from larger ones.
That night they didn’t light a fire. Gyre double-checked his alchemical alarms before retiring to the small, single-person tent he carried in his pack, little more than a raised frame to protect his bedroll from wind and rain. Once again, nothing disturbed them, and in the morning they turned away from the valley of the Brink and started climbing into Goatskull Pass.
The pass was barely worthy of the name. Really, it was just a narrow saddle of ground between two mountains, the bottom of a ravine dotted with boulders. It sloped upward, enough that patches of snow appeared on the rocks. Here and there a drift blocked the way, remnants
of an avalanche. It was enough to make Gyre glance upward nervously, shading his eye against the glare.
Two days went by as they worked their way along the pass. Here and there, they found evidence that humans had been this way before, a few steps carved into a particularly difficult section or boulders arranged into rough stepping-stones. For the most part, though, they might have been alone in the world, aside from the ever-present plaguespawn. The air grew thinner and colder, and Gyre slept with every blanket he had.
Eventually, Kit had told him, the pass would crest and then start downward into another valley. Before that point, they would branch off, following a narrow shoulder of ground to a hidden tunnel entrance. On the fifth day out of Deepfire, Gyre’s legs were burning long before the sun had reached its height. Kit slogged at his side, relentless and uncomplaining, and once again he found himself wondering how so much strength fit in such a slight frame.
“We’re going to need to rest soon,” Gyre managed as they edged around a boulder and kicked through another patch of snow. Kit looked at him sidelong, and he gasped out a laugh and amended, “I am going to have to rest soon.”
“Wimp.” But she slumped against the boulder eagerly enough, digging her canteen out from under her coat and taking a long swallow. “You should come up here in winter.”
“Have you been?”
“No, but I heard stories from a scavenger who tried. And he was short an ear, three fingers, and seven toes, so I’m inclined to believe him.”
Gyre snorted and looked upward. The clouds were heavy and low, masking the sun, like when Deepfire’s fog pulled in tight. Something brushed his eye, and he blinked.
“Hmm,” Kit said. She held out a gloved hand and watched as several fat flakes landed on her palm. “This could be a problem.”
It turned out to be more than a problem.
At first they’d pushed straight on, but the clouds grew lower and more threatening and the snowfall intensified as the wind picked up. It wasn’t even properly dry snow, either, but a mix of snow and half-melted sleet. Sprays of white whipped down the throat of the pass, picked up by the wind from the slopes of the mountain, and blasted Gyre’s face with stinging grit. In no time, he felt like his weight had doubled, inner garments soaked and outer layers crusted with snowfall.
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