Ashes of the Sun

by Django Wexler

  Beq was about to respond with some facts about the dimensions of the skyfortress, Maya was certain, but Kerchwite shouted to them from the road. “Keep moving, you two! You can get a closer look tonight.”

  As they continued downward, Maya realized that the scale of the thing had tricked her once again. The sheer size of the skyfortress made distance hard to judge. There was still most of a day’s travel between the edge of the valley and the city wall, and the whole time Grace in Execution’s broken frame loomed larger and larger. By the time they were on the flats, following a packed-dirt road away from the Chosen highway, the wreck looked more like a mountain than a ship, its huge shadow sliding across the valley floor to provide a preview of night.

  The city that huddled against it was decidedly less impressive. The wall was a human-built thing of mortared stone, only four meters high, and already crumbling in places. It seemed to be intended less for defense and more to channel people to a few well-guarded crossing places, so the queen’s tax collectors could take their due. Traffic was brisk, carts loaded with food mixing with larger wagons like the caravan’s, carrying manufactured goods from the Republic. Loadbirds, thickheads, and other beasts of burden squawked, rattled, and hissed at one another. Guards on warbirds with lances and red tabards passed by at regular intervals, halting to sort out disputes between rival carters.

  Maya endured an exuberant hug goodbye from Kerchwite, which both Beq and Tanax emphatically waved off. The three of them collected their packs from the caravan’s wagons and hiked past the queue of farmers and merchants to a smaller gate for those on foot. The armored soldier waiting beside it gave them only a cursory look before waving them onward, under the arched gateway and into the city.

  Immediately beyond the wall was a broad, muddy square, packed full of makeshift market stalls. Wares were spread on portable tables, arranged in the backs of carts, or simply laid on blankets on the ground, their owners standing nearby to shout to the crowds and keep an eye out for pickpockets. It was a familiar sight for Maya—she’d been to any number of market days, in cities much larger than Grace—but Tanax looked overwhelmed by the sheer chaos.

  “Doesn’t Skyreach have a market?” Maya said, raising her voice to be heard.

  “Of course it does,” Tanax said, a bit wide-eyed. “It’s just a little bit more… orderly.”

  Another difference, they soon discovered, was in the kind of goods available. There was food, of course, and the usual things any city needed—leatherwork, masonry, smithing, medicine, and so on. But here in Grace, it all seemed like a sideshow beside the city’s economic heart: the trade in alchemical products and arcana. Maya had thought the market in Deepfire was vast, but this was on another scale entirely, and far more permanent-looking. Staples like quickheal, bone-break potion, firestarters, and glowstones were everywhere, but that was only the start. There were bombs and torches, powders and philters, stoppered bottles roiling with colored gases and greasy tonics promising the impossible. Maya doubted half of it was real, but that didn’t seem to discourage the sellers from shouting over one another about the fantastic benefits of this or that elixir.

  “Dhak,” Tanax muttered, setting his jaw. “A whole market full of dhak. Chosen defend us.”

  “It can’t be that dangerous,” Beq said. The lenses in her spectacles clicked and whirred rapidly as she zoomed in on one interesting tidbit after another. “The city’s still standing.”

  “That doesn’t tell you how many people have been killed by contaminated medicine,” Tanax said. “Or sacrificed by dhakim. Life is cheap in the Splinter Kingdoms.” His lips tightened. “We ought to have burned this place to the ground decades ago.”

  Maya shook her head silently. Nicomidi’s flight might have made Tanax question his place, but apparently it hadn’t shaken his Dogmatic sympathies. His face only grew more thunderous as they made their way through the market, to a section where the stalls were watched by armed and armored men. The merchandise was displayed in locked cases fronted by iron bars as well, a necessary precaution when a sneak thief could slip thousands of thalers into a pocket. The goods on offer ranged from broken junk—bits of unmetal, cracked crystals—through rare but comprehensible devices like rockcrackers and blaster rifles, all the way to apparently complete but utterly incomprehensible machines. The latter drew Beq like a fly to honey, and Maya was forced to take hold of her arm and pilot her away from one crystal-and-glass mechanism after another.

  “That one is a flight motivator,” she muttered. “And that one looks like the amplifier from a relay node, but the bottom part is different. Maybe…” She trailed off into incomprehensible jargon.

  Maya exchanged a look with Tanax, who frowned.

  “It’s a miracle they haven’t blown themselves up yet,” he said. “No good comes of meddling with unsanctioned arcana.”

  “Without Chosen or centarchs to power them, most of this stuff isn’t going to do much,” Beq said. “And sunsplinters are apparently hard to come by.”

  She nodded at a table where several dozen of the small hemispherical jewels were laid out. None of them had the warm, healthy glow of a fully charged stone. Most barely flickered, and a few shone fitfully. Maya’s eyebrows went up when she saw the prices. A splinter that might power a blaster pistol for a few shots sold for enough money to keep a family fed for a year.

  “You could always charge a few if we run out of cash,” Beq said with a weak smile. Maya chuckled, but Tanax only scowled.

  “All right,” Maya said, catching his eye and lowering her voice. “We’re here to find Jaedia, not clean up the trade in unsanctioned arcana.”

  “Right.” Tanax let out a breath. “So where do we start?”

  “I have the location of the Order safe house,” Maya said.

  “The one that Jaedia supposedly destroyed?” Beq said.

  Maya nodded. “I thought we could take a look for ourselves. What’s left of the Order team in Grace has a new base, but Basel thought they might have someone on watch. If they do, we’ll make contact and get their help.”

  It felt odd, saying that. Maya was used to petitioning for assistance from the Order. But she was a centarch now—even if I still don’t have a proper uniform—which meant that any Order agent was obligated to drop everything to assist her.

  “That seems like a reasonable plan,” Tanax said. “How do we get to this safe house?”

  Maya opened her mouth to answer, looked around the teeming market, and paused.

  Grace lacked signposts or any other way of identifying its twisted warren of streets. Maya doubted that half of them had names. The roads were also too narrow for wheeled vehicles, so there were no cabs. Instead, palanquins were everywhere, little wooden huts on long poles carried by two, four, or six bearers. For a few thalers, they hired one of the larger models to bring them to the site of the Order’s old safe house, which turned out to be most of the way across the city. The confines of the palanquin were close and dim, with gauzy curtains shielding them from the streets outside, and the ride was bumpy and uneven. Beq looked like she was going to be ill, and Maya patted her sympathetically on the shoulder.

  “This is what happens,” Tanax said, “when you don’t have a proper authority in charge.”

  “They have a queen,” Maya said. “That’s an authority.”

  “She’s apparently not interested in street planning.” The palanquin gave a bump, which made them all lurch. “Or leveling the ground. Or cobblestones.”

  “The current queen of Grace is only fifteen,” Beq said. “There was a regency council at first, but her uncle tried to take the throne for himself, and she had him strangled. After that—” The vehicle lurched again, and she cut off, looking green.

  Finally, they came to a halt and the bearers lowered the palanquin. Beq hurried out with unseemly haste. Maya paid—Basel had arranged for travel funds, most of which were stashed deep in her pack—and waited while they trooped away. They were left alone on a wide dirt road, fronted o
n either side by wide two-story buildings made of red brick, with sloping slate roofs and heavy shutters on their windows. From the look of it, they were mostly residences, and Maya guessed this was a wealthier part of town.

  Their destination was obvious. A little ways along the road, one of the buildings was in shambles. The door hung open, dangling by a single hinge, and several windows on the bottom floor were broken. At one corner, part of the roof had collapsed, and there were marks of fire on the surrounding walls.

  “I guess this is the place,” Tanax said, looking it up and down. “Do we know how many people were here when it happened?”

  “Nine,” Maya said numbly. Basel had let her read the report. “Nobody made it out.”

  Beq fiddled nervously with her spectacles, lenses flipping and whirring.

  Maya gritted her teeth and stalked up to the building. The front door had been broken open by a single enormous blow, cracking the hardwood planks. Inside, much of the ground floor had been used as a common room by the agents stationed here, with several tables, a bookcase full of ledgers, and a small kitchen. Whoever had attacked the place—Maya refused to admit the possibility that it had been Jaedia, even in her own mind—had broken everything that came easily to hand. The stones of one fireplace had been torn apart, which had presumably started the fire, and that corner of the house was blackened and charred. There were vast brown stains spilled across the floorboards. Maya could easily imagine where they’d come from.

  Something’s wrong. Maya took a few steps forward, leaving the other two in the doorway, and knelt to examine the remains of a table. She held up a broken leg for inspection and frowned.

  “This is smashed,” she said, waving it in their direction. “Look, the end is splintered.”

  Tanax raised an eyebrow. “Is that important?”

  “You’ve never seen Jaedia fight?” When he shook his head, Maya went on. “She uses blades of wind. Very thin, very sharp. I’ve seen her dissect a leaf in midair and barely disturb its fall. The cuts are always clean.”

  “Maybe she was angry?” Tanax said.

  “Jaedia doesn’t get angry,” Maya said. “And… here.” She picked up part of a tabletop. “See this cut?” It looked like someone had gouged a long line with a chisel.

  “It’s ragged,” Beq agreed, lenses clicking as she bent to examine it. “Like someone ripped at it.”

  “That’s not much in the way of evidence,” Tanax said. “Jaedia might not have been alone.”

  “She was alone,” a woman’s voice said, behind them.

  Maya turned, hand automatically reaching for the haken concealed at the small of her back. She stopped with a conscious effort and glanced at Tanax, who’d dropped into a fighting crouch. He grimaced and straightened.

  The woman leaning on the doorway was tall and lean, with long copper hair pulled into a twisted ponytail and very dark skin. She wore scavenger’s leathers and a sword, her features weathered by the elements. Her bright yellow eyes were wary, but she didn’t seem surprised to see them.

  “Did you, um, live here?” Maya said.

  “Am I an Order agent like you three, you mean?” The woman gave them a humorless smile. “You’re new to covert work, aren’t you?”

  “You might say that.” Maya straightened up. “I’m Centarch Maya Burningblade. This is Centarch Tanax Brokenedge and Arcanist Bequaria.”

  The woman pushed herself lazily off the doorframe and offered a half-hearted salute. “Scout Faressa. The Grace outpost is at your service, Centarch.” She slumped back into her relaxed posture. “What’s left of it, anyway.”

  “You said Jaedia was alone,” Maya said. “How do you know? Were you here when the attack happened? I was told there were no survivors.”

  “There were no survivors in the safe house,” Faressa said. “I was on sentry duty down the road. There’s a rooftop that has a good view of the approaches. I spotted Jaedia on her way in and signaled ahead to the house to tell them she was coming.” Her lips twisted. “She’d visited several times in the past couple of weeks, so I didn’t think it was unusual. Next thing I know, the place is on fire. By the time I got back here, Jaedia was gone.”

  “No one in the house survived long enough to say what had happened?” Tanax asked.

  “She didn’t leave them in any condition to,” Faressa said. “My husband was here. He was an arcanist. I found most of him about where you’re standing”—she pointed, then swung her hand to one side—“and his head and one shoulder over there. The rest were… similar.”

  There was an awkward silence. Maya swallowed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s the risks of the service,” Faressa said. “Giving our lives for humanity and all that. But getting torn apart by one of our own centarchs wasn’t the way either of us expected to go.”

  “I don’t…” Maya stopped. She wanted to say that Faressa hadn’t actually seen the attack, that it hadn’t necessarily been Jaedia, but the tight lines of the scout’s face made her think better of it. She cleared her throat. “How many others survived?”

  “Three of us scouts. We’ve been poking around as best we can, but there’s not much to find.” She frowned. “I told the Kyriliarch all of this when he got here. Are you three supposed to be his backup?”

  “Kyriliarch?” A chill went down Maya’s spine, and her hand brushed the Thing. “Which Kyriliarch?”

  “Nicomidi.” The scout’s frown deepened. “What’s going on?”

  “When was he here?” Maya said. “And what—”

  Faressa shook her head. “Strict orders, on Council authority. He told me all this was being investigated by the Kyriliarchs personally.” Her expression went sour. “I’ve probably already said too much. If you’re not backing Nicomidi up, what are you doing here?”

  “Kyriliarch Nicomidi fled the Forge after accusations of treason,” Maya said. “By now he’s been stripped of his Council seat.”

  “That’s—” Faressa shook her head. “That’s quite a story.” She glanced at Tanax. “You support this?”

  “I do,” Tanax said.

  The scout looked at Beq, but the arcanist’s attention had wandered, and she was examining some of the debris close-up with her lenses. Faressa shifted uncomfortably and looked back at Maya.

  “You don’t happen to have any documentation of this, do you?” she said. “I haven’t had any messages from the Forge.”

  “You wouldn’t have,” Maya said. “We left the day after it happened.”

  “Nicomidi must have taken a swiftbird across the plain,” Tanax said. “That’d gain him three, maybe four days, if he was willing to risk having to fight plaguespawn.”

  “That’s a serious risk,” Faressa said. “If the queen’s people got word there was a centarch in her territory, it’d be plaguefire for all of us. What’s so important that he’d come here?”

  “I don’t know,” Maya admitted. “I don’t understand what he’s aiming for.”

  “But you’ve come after him anyway?”

  “We’re not following him; we’re following Jaedia,” Maya said with a glance at Tanax.

  “And Nicomidi expressly instructed me to say nothing about Jaedia’s activities here to anyone without a Council warrant,” Faressa said. “Well, this is a fucking brilliant situation all around.”

  “Whatever orders Nicomidi gave are invalid,” Tanax said. “He has no authority.”

  “Assuming you two are telling the truth,” Faressa said, straightening up. “If you’re lying, and he’s not, then helping you might be betraying the Order.”

  “We’re not—” Maya cut off, frustrated. “I just need to find Jaedia. The rest of this can be straightened out later.”

  “We could send someone back to the Forge for a Council warrant,” Tanax said.

  “And wait here for a month?” Maya shook her head.

  “What’s your hurry?” Faressa said. “One of the boys here your brother or something? That eager to get revenge?”
/>
  “I’m not…” Maya took a deep breath. “Jaedia was—is—my master. I know her better than anyone, and she would never do this. I’m certain she didn’t kill your husband.”

  “Somebody fucking killed him,” Faressa growled.

  “I know. I’m not sure if Jaedia’s been… captured, or replaced somehow or… something. But I have to find her. Please.”

  “Shit.” Faressa chewed her lip. “How am I supposed to—”

  “It wasn’t Jaedia.” Beq, on her knees, looked up. Her pupil was a huge black dot filling the entirety of one lens. When everyone turned to stare at her, she blinked and wilted a little. “At least, it wasn’t only Jaedia. There’s all kinds of damage here.”

  “It only takes one centarch to cause a plaguing lot of damage,” Faressa said.

  “I know,” Beq said, “but there’s different kinds. Look at this.” She pointed to the scorched, tumbled stones of the fireplace. “See the central burst point and halo of spark burns? That’s a blaster bolt. Why would a centarch need a blaster?”

  “Maybe she was feeling lazy,” Faressa snapped.

  “There’s more.” Beq crawled across the floor on hands and knees and found a spot where the floorboards were stained nearly black. “This isn’t a burn. It’s blood.”

  “Of course it’s blood,” the scout said. “The whole damn place was practically—”

  “Not human blood,” Beq said. She pried at the wood, and part of it crumbled under her fingernails. “It’s corroded, look. That’s blood from a plaguespawn.”

  “Plaguespawn?” Faressa looked uncertain. “They couldn’t get so far inside the walls without starting a riot. And plaguespawn don’t use blasters.”

  “Dhakim do,” Maya said. “And a dhakim could keep his plaguespawn on a leash, hide them somehow.” She looked from Beq to Tanax. “You remember the gang in Litnin. They had the things in crates like dogs.”

  “A dhakim.” Faressa shook her head. “I know the Forge likes to imagine dhakim everywhere, but they’re rarer than a clean vulpi. You really think there’s a cult here in Grace?”