Ashes of the Sun

by Django Wexler

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Maya said. “Jaedia must have come here to investigate them and gotten trapped somehow. Then they found out about this place and attacked.”

  “Fucking plaguefire. If I end up locked in a cell over this…” Faressa took a deep breath. “All right. Listen. That fits. I met with Jaedia a couple of times before… all this, and she asked for information on a group of smugglers bringing arcana and dhak into the Republic. They’re a really nasty bunch, and there’s always been rumors that they’ve got a dhakim for a leader. A guy named Cyrtak, though nobody knows much about him. The last time we saw each other, I had a line on a place they might be meeting, and Jaedia was going to take a look.”

  “Where?” Maya said.

  “I’ll have to show you the entrance. It’s in the caves under the skyfortress.” She hesitated. “That’s dangerous territory.”

  “Just show us the way, and we’ll handle it from there,” Maya said. “I know you have other responsibilities.”

  The scout nodded, relieved. “All right. Meet me at the old Chosen temple, just after dark. Any bearer will know how to get there.”

  More palanquins. Maya suppressed a shudder. “We will. Thank you, Faressa.”

  “Yeah. I just hope I’m not making a big mistake.” She shook her head. “I’d better go let the others know where I’m going.”

  “One more thing,” Maya said, conscience prickling. “Did Jaedia ever have anyone with her? A boy a little bit younger than me?”

  “Not that I saw,” Faressa said. “But we only met here at the safe house. She had a room somewhere else, as far as I know.”

  Faressa gave another salute, a little more seriously this time, and slipped out through the broken doorway. Maya heaved a sigh, then turned to Beq.

  “That was great,” she said, grabbing the arcanist’s hands. Beq colored slightly, glancing at Tanax. “I didn’t think she was going to help us without a note from the Council. Thank you, Beq.”

  “It’s. Um. Just the sort of thing they teach us?” Beq grinned back cautiously. “I’m glad it wasn’t Jaedia.”

  “We don’t know if it was Jaedia,” Tanax said, looking down at the spot of plaguespawn blood. “Faressa still saw her.”

  “I told you, Jaedia would never—”

  “I know,” Tanax said. “But if we’re dealing with an actual dhakim here, we have to consider all sorts of ugly possibilities. They say that dhaka can alter someone’s mind.”

  For a moment, Maya was back in a basement under Bastion, facing Hollis Plaguetouch. “Fortunately, your cooperation is not necessary. I can change-change you until you want to tell me. Memory and desire are only matters of the flesh-flesh, after all.” She put her hand on the Thing and took a deep breath, searching for calm.

  “The ghouls are supposed to be able to alter minds with dhaka,” Maya said. “I’ve never heard of a human dhakim doing it.”

  “There’s a great deal we don’t know about dhaka,” Tanax said. “We still have to face the possibility that Jaedia is working with the enemies of the Order. Willingly or not.”

  “If she is, then we’ll take this dhakim alive,” Maya said. “And then whatever he did, he’ll undo.”

  “And if he refuses?”

  Maya’s fists tightened. “Then I’ll convince him.”

  Even after dark, the heat lingered, radiating from red bricks that had spent all day baking in the sun. Another palanquin took Maya, Beq, and Tanax to the old Chosen temple, after some discussion with the driver and a few extra thalers. As they moved north and west through the narrow, twisting streets, away from the gate and the markets and toward the looming bulk of the crashed skyfortress, it became clear why the extra payment had been required—this was the poor part of town, condemned to permanent darkness much of the year by Grace in Execution’s shadow, and there was no chance of a fare on the way back. Ramshackle dwellings lined both sides of every alley, pressed three or four stories high with no planning or organization. One building had partially collapsed, stabilized only by the hurried addition of several long beams braced against a neighbor, and someone was building a fresh shack on top of it.

  “I don’t understand these Splinter Kingdom people,” Tanax muttered, holding back the curtain to peer out the window.

  “They’re poor.” Maya watched the thin, hard-faced people on the side of the road. “What else is there to understand?”

  “But why live here?” Tanax said. “I’m not going to pretend Skyreach doesn’t have its bad neighborhoods, but even the lowest laborers live better than this. If this is what their vaunted freedom looks like, why not come back to the Republic?”

  “You think they get a choice?” Maya said. “It was the nobles and merchants who broke away, not servants and beggars.” She thought of the tunnelborn, back in Deepfire. “And now the Republic isn’t eager to let their children become citizens.”

  “It was the mill workers who started the Khirkhaz Commune,” Beq volunteered.

  “And see what that’s gotten them,” Tanax said.

  The palanquin shifted, coming to a halt, and Maya pulled the curtain to look out her window. “I think we’re here.”

  “Thank the Chosen,” Beq muttered.

  The palanquin and its bearers trooped away, leaving the three of them in a large open area. In the middle of the roughly circular space were the remains of a rectangular building. It was stone, crude and unmortared, with gaps where neighbors had helped themselves to free building materials. Somehow, the walls were still standing, enclosing a couple of rooms. There was no roof—they were so close to the skyfortress that its sloping unmetal skin was barely twenty meters overhead, and Maya imagined the ground here never saw rain. A single arched doorway stood open, and the space inside was dark.

  “This is old,” Beq said, lenses flipping and whirring. “See the inscription over the arch? ‘May Their power shelter us until Their return.’”

  “Not many still praying for that,” Tanax said.

  Maya thought of Prodominus and his handful of Revivalists back at the Forge, keeping the dream of the Chosen’s return alive. Cults worshipping the Chosen and praying that they come back and rescue humanity from the new world had been common in the first century after the Plague, but they’d waned since. After four hundred years, the old temples were almost all abandoned, though the fact that this one hadn’t been torn down attested to the superstitious awe that still clung to them.

  A shadow moved inside the archway, and Faressa appeared from the darkness. She beckoned them forward.

  “Best get under cover,” the scout said. “There are eyes all through these slums.”

  “Whose eyes?” Tanax said as they passed into the shadowy quiet of the old temple.

  “Smugglers, mostly,” Faressa said. “The gangs are always fighting each other for routes and suppliers. The queen turns a blind eye as long as she gets her cut, so it can become a free-for-all.”

  She shook a glowstone and by its blue light led them into the back room. The temple was empty except for bits of shattered glass and clay, any furnishings long gone. Faressa walked around, occasionally stamping down hard, until she found a spot where her boot made a hollow wooden sound. A few moments’ work uncovered a trapdoor, concealed under ragged cloth and rocks. It swung up on well-oiled hinges, revealing a ladder into a dark tunnel.

  “Here,” the scout said, handing Maya a scrap of paper. It was a crude map, with tunnels and chambers sketched in pencil. “That’s the best information I have, and the same directions I gave Jaedia. It’s a maze down there, so be careful.”

  “Thank you,” Maya said. She handed the map to Beq, who examined it under her lenses. “When we get back, how can we find you?”

  “Ask at the Butchered Hart inn, near the market. Any of the servers can get me a message.” Faressa hesitated. “I hope you’re right about Jaedia. That she… wasn’t herself. I didn’t know her well, but she always seemed… kind.”

  “We’ll find her,�
� Maya promised. “Along with whoever was really behind this attack.”

  “Good luck.” The scout handed Maya the glowstone and stepped aside.

  It wasn’t a long descent, just a few meters under the earth. The tunnel was narrow and claustrophobic, nothing like the broad, smooth ghoul passages Maya had seen in Deepfire. She hung her haken from her hip, for easy access, and brushed her hand against the Thing. Tanax climbed down behind her, and Beq followed, still peering at the map.

  “This takes us directly under the skyfortress,” Beq said excitedly.

  “Wonderful.” Tanax cast a wary eye upward. “It’s not going to come crashing down on our heads, you don’t think?”

  “It’s been there for four hundred years; I think it’ll stand for another day,” Maya said. “Beq, stay behind me and navigate. Tanax, keep your eyes open.”

  It was the kind of command Maya would have given Marn, but Tanax fell in without a murmur of protest. It was a stark contrast to the arrogance of his behavior in Deepfire. What Nicomidi did must have really shaken him.

  Maya held the glowstone high as they advanced, illuminating a long stretch of passage, with side corridors like black holes in the walls. Beq kept her eyes on the map, counting turns under her breath. As they moved forward, the buzz of city noise filtering down from overhead grew quieter, until they walked in total silence.

  “I think…” Beq stopped, grinning, and pointed to a dark shape sticking out of the wall. “Yes! Here, look.” She tapped the protrusion, scraping off a dark patina to reveal the iridescent white gleam of unmetal. “This is the outer hull! We’re going inside the skyfortress.”

  Tanax examined the jagged edge of the hull fragment. “It doesn’t look like it’s in great shape.”

  “Presumably the forward sections took the brunt of the damage when it hit the ground,” Beq said, looking back at the map. “And of course it’s been four hundred years.”

  “We’re here to find Jaedia, not go scavenging,” Maya reminded them. “Stay alert.”

  They moved on. The tunnel grew taller and wider, expanding periodically into large, irregular rooms with more tunnels leading out of them. At times they saw parts of the skyfortress, floors canted at a forty-five-degree angle. Everything beyond the bare walls had been stripped by hopeful scavengers long ago.

  “Some of these tunnels lead up,” Beq said. “Into the heart of the skyfortress. Supposedly it’s all been sealed off by the Order expeditions, but the scavengers must still be trying to find a way in.”

  “Is that where we’re going?” Maya said.

  Beq shook her head. “The place Faressa marked is just ahead. Looks like a big chamber, with… pillars, maybe? She’s not much of an artist.”

  Up ahead, a hatchway from Grace in Execution had once been intact, dogged with an unmetal hatch. The barrier now lay in blackened pieces on the ground, showing the characteristic burns of blaster fire. Repeated blaster bolts were a slow and expensive way of breaking through unmetal, but about the only method available if you weren’t a centarch. Maya picked her way across the fragments and clambered through the ragged gap into a much larger room, the ceiling rising several meters over her head. Long, dark shapes hung down in a regular pattern, some reaching the floor, others ending a meter or so above it.

  Not pillars. Cables. The things were massive, thicker than Maya’s arm, and there were dozens of them, with cut lengths strewn across the ground. Where they were severed, they ended in a spray of fine silver wire. Maya tried to picture what the place had looked like when the skyfortress was aloft, and what purpose it had served.

  “Wow,” Beq breathed, turning in a slow circle. “This is… wow.”

  “I don’t like it,” Tanax said. “Too much cover.”

  Maya had to admit he had a point. The forest of hanging cables made it hard to see the limits of the room. She stepped forward cautiously, then stopped as something moved in her peripheral vision. A cable was swaying slightly, several rows away.

  “What do we look for, now that we’re here?” Beq said.

  “Anything useful. This was the base of the smugglers Jaedia was investigating.”

  “Given the lack of guards, I’d say they’ve moved on by now,” Tanax said.

  “They’ll have left some kind of evidence,” Maya said. “We’ll search the whole place if we have to.”

  She held up the glowstone, and the shadows of the cables twisted wildly against the walls. Then, distantly, she heard a moan.

  “Someone’s here,” she hissed, putting her hand over the stone and plunging them into darkness.

  “Not much point in hiding now,” Tanax said. “We’ve already announced ourselves.”

  Maya scowled at him while he couldn’t see, then brought out the glowstone again. There were dark shapes ahead and she started pushing forward, one hand on her haken. The heavy cables she bumped swung like metronomes in her wake. The moan repeated, louder now.

  “Maya,” Beq hissed. “Something’s behind us.”

  “Where?” Tanax said.

  Beq turned, lenses flipping wildly on her spectacles. “Don’t know—I can’t see—”

  Maya pushed the last of the cables aside and broke into a clear space. At the same time, the smell of filth and rotting meat assaulted her, and she nearly gagged.

  Ahead of her was a shallow pit, half-full of a mass of garbage—fragments of bones, chunks of meat, entrails and organs, all stirred together and rotting into black sludge. On the other side of the pit, a stretch of much-trodden dirt was strewn with chains, empty manacles, and small piles of torn rags. A single figure lay on its side, hands fastened behind its back, moaning faintly.

  What in the name of the Chosen—Whatever it was, it was nothing good, and Maya’s haken was already in her hand. She summoned the blade, fire igniting with a whoomph and the pinprick warmth of deiat spreading through her body. Her panoply bloomed—this time, she and Beq had tested the belt themselves—and surrounded her with its faint blue tinge.

  “… Maya?” The figure raised its head, trying to look at her through the light of the flaming sword. “Maya!”

  He was unrecognizable, but Maya knew the voice. “Marn?!”

  “Maya, run!” He sat up, chains clanking. “It’s a trap—”

  Blasters cracked and spat fire.

  Tanax had drawn his haken at the same time as Maya and taken up a position on the other side of Beq. A dozen bolts of raw deiat flashed across the room, but the blades of the two centarchs were a blur. Maya could feel the energy coming, drawing her weapon into position like one magnet pulling another, and she surrendered to the motion, letting the blasts vanish harmlessly against the greater flame of her blade.

  By the light of her weapon, Maya could see shapes moving through the forest of cables. Some were humanoid, but others were not, loping awkwardly on asymmetrical legs. Plaguespawn.

  Marn dove to the ground, curling in on himself. Maya glanced at Tanax and Beq, making a fast tactical assessment. We need something to put our backs against.

  “Beq, get to Marn,” she said, pointing. “Tanax, cut through to the left. I’ll take the right and meet you over there.”

  “Got it,” Tanax said, and spun away, the twisted space of his blade humming. Beq’s eyes were wide behind her spectacles, but she gave a quick nod, put her head down, and started to run.

  She’d be an easy target for the blasters when she stopped to help Marn. Which means it’s up to me to get their attention. Maya gave a shout and charged.

  Cables slapped and bumped all around her. She aimed for the center of the oncoming line of men and plaguespawn, haken dancing to deflect more blaster fire. A bolt exploded against a cable, severing it in a massive shower of sparks. Maya’s off hand snapped out, sending blasts of flame whipping toward the opponents she could see only as darting shadows.

  The plaguespawn closed around her, and from the pack-like way they moved she could tell they had the will of a dhakim behind them. The smallest, fastest monsters reached he
r first, dog-sized creatures of jutting bone and rippling black muscle, and they leapt at her with no thought for their own safety. Maya cut one clean in half, sidestepped another, then staggered as a third hit her and flared her panoply in a wash of cold. She made a half circle with her free hand, and a wall of flame sprang up to her left, catching three of the things and turning them into twitching pyres. She pressed forward, slashing to clear cables out of her path, letting fire drip onto the floor in tiny seedlike chunks.

  Another plaguespawn rose in front of her and died, but the rest were closing from behind, a hissing, squelching mass. When they were over her fire-seeds, Maya released her grip, and the tiny things bloomed in concussive flowers of flame. The trap that had failed against Jaedia tore through the plaguespawn, sending bits of muscle and bone spraying wetly around her. Another volley of blaster bolts came at her, and she stopped them all, moving with unconscious grace. She could feel the Thing growing warm in her chest, standing out against the waves of cold from her panoply.

  Maya took an instant to look over her shoulder. She’d come halfway around the pit, and as planned she and Tanax seemed to have attracted the attention of their assailants, letting Beq skirt the edge of the mass of rot and reach Marn. Maya turned, heading in their direction, and across the pit she could see the twists and ripples of space that said Tanax was doing likewise.

  Two more plaguespawn came at her, a pair of larger monsters as big as loadbirds. One had no legs and writhed forward like a worm, with a dozen disturbingly human arms surrounding a maw jagged with splintered bones in place of teeth. The other was a crab-like thing whose oval body rolled and turned inside dozens of too-long limbs, waves of muscle rippling along their length. Eyes of every color looked down at her and blinked in unison.

  Maya sent a wash of flame toward them, buying time as she backpedaled. They bulled through it, unfazed, and split up, the worm going right and the crab slipping to the left. Maya concentrated and sent a lance of more potent fire at the multilegged creature, but it adroitly moved its body out of the way, sacrificing only a few lengths of leg. At the same time, the worm closed with shocking speed, its arms reaching out for her. Maya spun away, slashing, and a woman’s delicate hand and forearm went flying. She sent another wave of fire at the worm, and it took light, burning from maw to tail. Even still, it kept coming, and Maya found herself rapidly backing toward the pit.