Ashes of the Sun

by Django Wexler

  A blaster bolt slammed over her shoulder, white-hot, and blew apart the top of the worm’s head. It reared up, screaming like an angry cat, and another bolt hit it lower down, leaving a crater that wept black fluid. Maya left the thing thrashing in the dirt and charged the crab, letting its arms curve around her as she hacked toward its central body. She felt its claws scraping at her panoply, drawing flares of blue and draining her energy, but before it could close its arms around her she reached the oval mass of eyes and cut it in half. The plaguespawn’s limbs twitched and shuddered wildly, and Maya spun free, dancing past the dying worm and reaching the other side of the pit.

  Beq was waiting there, on one knee with her blaster pistol in both hands, all her lenses extended and capped with smoked glass. Maya grinned at her, and she smiled back. Beyond her, Marn was on hands and knees, free of his chains. He’d been down here a long time, Maya realized—his hair was long and stringy, and through his ragged clothes she could see the shape of his ribs.

  Another plaguespawn, this one nearly as big as a bear, loomed out of the forest of cables on the other side of the pit. It reared for a moment, roaring, then came apart in a half dozen chunks. Tanax turned away from its remains and retreated in their direction, blocking more blaster fire with his twisted-space haken. Maya’s own blade snapped up to intercept incoming shots, while Beq fired back from just behind her. The shadowy figures were advancing, and she saw at least one of them go down. She closed her off hand, and a pillar of flame engulfed another, but there were at least a dozen more, and she felt her power ebbing. The Thing was a hot coal in her chest.

  Abruptly, the cacophony of blaster bolts and deiat halted, leaving only the crackle of Maya’s blade and the buzz of Tanax’s. Their attackers were spread in a rough semicircle on the other side of the pit, among the last of the cables, with a few more dog-sized plaguespawn at their sides. Directly across the pit from her, a big man stepped out of the shadows. He wore scavengers’ leathers, augmented with bits and pieces of broken arcana and fragments of unmetal plate, and a long, heavy coat that swirled about his ankles.

  “Cyrtak,” Marn gasped out. His breathing was wet and raspy. “Careful. He’s—”

  “—a dhakim,” Maya said. “I gathered.”

  Cyrtak looked at them, head cocked. His eyes focused on Maya, and he seemed almost disappointed.

  “Take the girl alive,” he said. “Kill the others, and the bait.”

  “Come and try,” Tanax said. Twisted geometry whirled around him like a rippling hurricane.

  The attackers hesitated. As Maya had intended, she and Tanax now had a wall behind them, and she was confident they could deflect their blaster fire while Beq picked them off. The big plaguespawn are all down, too. We can take them. She tried to inject arrogant confidence into her voice.

  “Cyrtak,” she shouted. “I am detaining you in the name of the Twilight Order. Come quietly and you will have an opportunity to present a defense.”

  He barked an astonished laugh.

  “The rest of you,” Maya said, “are free to go, if you drop your weapons now.”

  A murmur ran through the attackers. Cyrtak looked around, eyes narrowing.

  “You pack of fucking cowards,” he said. “Fine. I’ll take them myself.”

  He thrust out a hand, palm down. In the pit, the miasma of rotting flesh and bone quivered.

  Beq lined up a shot and pulled the trigger, but a tendril of black goo flung itself upward, intercepting the blaster bolt in an explosion of slime. A moment later, the whole mass was heaving itself upward, a gelatinous blob of deliquescing meat, studded with chunks of bone and skeins of gut. It hurled itself up the side of the pit, splitting into a dozen tendrils as it reached for the two centarchs.

  Maya and Tanax blasted it simultaneously, a wave of flame and a blade of twisted space slashing into the thing from opposite sides. The fire charred its surface for a moment, and the blade slashed it apart, but it kept coming, burns sloughing away and wounds closing with a gloop. Each tendril split and split again, until a mass of finger-thick ropes were coiling around Maya. She slashed desperately, but each tentacle she severed simply fell back into the central mass and spread outward anew.

  Tanax gave a shout of surprise as the tendrils closed around his legs, lifting him off the ground. Black rot splashed and sprayed as he flayed the thing with blades of deiat to no avail. Beq fired her blaster until the creeping rot grabbed her hands, dragging her forward toward the bulk of the blob.

  It’s not a plaguespawn. Monstrous as they were, those creatures had bones and muscles like any other living thing and could be destroyed by cuts or burns. Cyrtak is using dhaka to… animate this thing. She’d never heard of anything like it. So if it isn’t alive, how do we kill it?

  “Maya!” Beq’s voice rose to a scream as a wave of foul-smelling stuff boiled around her, holding her arms pinioned and running up her legs. “Maya, help!”

  Maya pushed toward her, slashing and cursing. Blasts of flame made the vile stuff retreat, but only momentarily, and she didn’t dare direct them too close to Beq. Black tentacles grabbed at her ankles, dragging her backward, and a scream ripped from her own throat as the wave of gory darkness rose ever higher.

  All at once, the world shifted around her, space folding in on itself in a neat circle. Tanax’s power. The goo vaporized, falling away, and for a moment Maya was free. She started toward Beq, whose head and shoulders were all that remained visible.

  “The dhakim!” Tanax shouted, stopping her in her tracks. He was upside down, a meter off the ground, haken flailing. “Maya, get the fucking dhakim!”

  Plaguefire. He was right, but turning away from Beq was harder than anything Maya had ever had to do. She screamed a curse as she ran into the pit, sending a wave of fire in front of her to drive the rotting mass from her path. In a moment she was past it, pounding along the packed earth, haken blazing as she closed on Cyrtak.

  A half dozen smugglers were between her and the pirate leader, blasters leveled. Maya let her haken move on its own, soaking up the bolts. The closest smuggler, a big woman with a vividly blond spike of hair, gave a wild cry as Maya got within arm’s length. She shoved her blaster forward, directly in Maya’s face. A brave move, Maya acknowledged. She ducked, then came back with a rising stroke that removed the woman’s arm cleanly at the shoulder. The next man came at her with a curved sword, which melted into glowing liquid at Maya’s parry. She ran him through, tossed him aside, and blasted the next smuggler with a bolt of fire that sent him sprawling backward in a blazing inferno. The rest of her opponents were already scrambling away, leaving her face-to-face with Cyrtak.

  “Let them go now,” Maya growled.

  The dhakim only laughed. He gripped his right arm with his left hand, and his biceps writhed and twisted, leather splitting as his limb unfolded into two long, twisting whips of flesh and bone. They curved toward Maya, and her parry sent one of them spinning away, but the other lashed her panoply hard enough to make her stagger. Cyrtak’s other arm hardened into a long, bone-edged blade, and he came at her in a whirl, whip and sword together. Maya stood her ground, letting her overextended panoply take one more blow as she aimed a counterstrike at his shoulder. Her hold on deiat flickered, and her vision grayed at the edges, but she carved his whip-arm away. Her next parry shattered the bone-blade, and she kicked him in the stomach, driving him backward. Another slash took one of his legs at the knee, and Cyrtak fell backward. Maya planted her boot on his chest and leveled her haken at his throat.

  “Let them go,” she repeated. “And tell me what you did to Jaedia.”

  “What I did to Jaedia?” The big man laughed, fast and insane. The skin of his face seemed to boil, bubbles forming, tiny scraps tearing free into miniature tendrils that reached up toward Maya. “It was Jaedia who brought us here. She told us to wait for you. She’s so eager to see you again.” His lips split, and his tongue distorted as though he’d swallowed a snake. “Mayaaaaaa—”

  Maya
closed her fist, and flame engulfed the struggling dhakim, hot enough to char flesh and bone. It whipped around her as he blackened, his body still shifting and changing. Finally he collapsed, leaving only a patina of ash and twisted bones behind, his ribs cracking like twigs under the weight of her boot.

  Beq. Maya turned away and sagged with relief at the sight of Beq and Tanax sitting in the dirt, surrounded by quiescent globs of black ooze. Behind them, Marn was pressed against the wall, eyes very wide. Cyrtak’s remaining smugglers had taken the opportunity to run for it, and they were alone in the smoke-filled chamber.

  Jaedia… Maya turned to look at Cyrtak, now little more than a misshapen skull. Her hand touched the Thing, and she yanked it away immediately—the little arcana was hot enough to scorch her shirt and blister her finger. Maya swallowed and let her haken blade fade away.

  “Maya?” Beq was on her feet, scrambling across the vile pit. “Are you all right?”

  “’M just…” Maya mumbled, and shook her head. “Tired.”

  She didn’t even remember hitting the floor.

  When she awoke, they were still in the tunnels, though thankfully no longer in that charnel house of a smuggler’s lair. Instead, she found herself propped against the unmetal wall of a smaller chamber, with Beq and Marn sitting anxiously beside her. Tanax, waiting at the corridor entrance with his hand on his haken, looked over his shoulder as Maya groaned.

  “Maya,” Beq said, leaning forward. She was coated in gobbets of black goop, mixed with larger bits of rotting flesh. Maya’s sense of smell had thankfully shut down long ago. “Maya, can you hear me?”

  Maya nodded dully. Marn handed her a canteen, and she drank until it was empty.

  “Are you hurt anywhere?” Beq said urgently. “We didn’t want to move you too much.”

  “I think… not.” Maya shook her head. She felt exhausted, with the hollowed-out sensation that came with overuse of deiat, but the only actual pain was in her chest, around the Thing. It felt as though the arcana had been replaced with a hive of stinging wasps. “Drew too much power. Give me a minute.”

  “As soon as you can walk, we should get out of here,” Tanax said. “We don’t know when those Chosen-damned smugglers will come back.”

  “They won’t,” Marn said. His cheeks were hollow, and his filthy hair hung around his head, but his eyes were still bright. “Cyrtak was the one who brought them here. The rest followed him because he could pay.”

  “Are you all right?” Maya said, sitting up a little straighter. “How long have they had you?”

  “I don’t know,” Marn said. “A long time. They kept me there while they brought in other prisoners and… used them to create those things. Cyrtak told me he was looking forward to what he could build out of me.” He hunched in on himself a little, shuddering. “I’m glad you killed him.”

  “We’re all glad you killed him,” Beq said fervently, trying and failing to clean her spectacles with her already filthy shirt.

  “Marn.” Maya touched his shoulder gingerly. “What happened to Jaedia?”

  “Jaedia…” The light in Marn’s eyes faded. “She brought me here. Gave me to them.”

  “What?” Maya shook her head weakly. “She would never. You know her.”

  “I…” He swallowed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it… wasn’t her. It seemed… I don’t know.” He shook his head. “She left me in the inn when she first arrived. After a few days, she came back and told me to come with her, and we went into the tunnels. Cyrtak chained me up, and Jaedia told him to keep me around until you got here. I was… bait, I guess.” He blinked rapidly. “I tried to warn you.”

  “You did well,” Maya said, squeezing his shoulder. “But where’s Jaedia now?”

  “Gone. Out of the city. I heard her talking with Cyrtak. She was going ahead with Nicomidi, now that he’d arrived, and Cyrtak was supposed to follow once he’d taken you.”

  “Wait.” Tanax turned away from the tunnel and stalked over. “Jaedia left with Nicomidi?”

  “I didn’t see him,” Marn said. “But that’s what she told Cyrtak. She gave him instructions on how to find them.”

  “Do you remember the instructions?” Maya said.

  “I memorized them,” Marn said. “I thought… maybe they’d help you. When you came.”

  “You…” Maya grinned at him, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I’m sorry…”

  “You saved me,” Marn said, smiling back. “I knew you would.”

  Midnight had come and gone by the time Maya finally got the chance to sit down, every fiber of her being limp with fatigue.

  Fortunately, Grace was the sort of city where there were rooms and services available at any hour. Faressa had been waiting at the tunnel exit, and she’d nearly fainted at the smell coming off them. At her insistence, they’d stripped to their underwear, and she’d hurried off and procured cheap, ill-fitting coveralls for them while Maya piled their soiled uniforms together and incinerated them with a touch of deiat.

  Marn had started coughing halfway through the trek, deep, wet-sounding retches that doubled him over. Faressa had agreed to take him under her care and to send him back to the Forge at the first opportunity. Marn had tried to argue that he should stay with Maya, but his protests were half-hearted, and he’d eventually agreed.

  The scout arranged rooms at an upscale inn for the rest of them. Maya suspected it was at least partly a brothel, since the well-dressed woman in the front hall was unfazed at a party of guests staggering in in the small hours and there seemed to be a lot of good-looking servants hanging around without very much to do. Regardless, it was clean and well furnished and, most important, offered private baths. Burning her clothes had done nothing to get the stench of rot out of her hair and skin, and Maya wasn’t far from setting herself on fire.

  Not long after they’d settled in, a handsome young man had knocked on her door with a tray of pleasant-smelling soaps and washes. She’d waved off his offer to apply them himself and retreated to the washroom once other servants had filled the iron tub with pails of steaming water. Fancy or not, the inn fell short of the accommodations at the Spike, but after two weeks on the road and the chaos of the night, it felt like unutterable decadence. Before climbing in the tub, Maya spent half an hour scrubbing at herself until her skin was red and sore, then rinsing and rerinsing her hair. Feeling tolerably clean at last, she slipped into the near-scalding water, gritting her teeth at the spike of pain as it lapped at the swollen skin around the Thing.

  She prodded the little arcana idly as she soaked. It had gotten hot enough that it had left a blister on her finger when she’d touched it, but where it was actually embedded in her flesh it didn’t seem to have burned her at all. The flesh was puffy, as though swollen from bruising, but the skin was unbroken.

  I need to talk to Basel about it. He would know something. After I find Jaedia. After all of… this. Her mind shied away, and she yawned, slipping farther into the tub and sending the water sloshing.

  The next she knew, the water had gone tepid, and a knock at the door had her sitting bolt upright. A wave of bathwater went over the side of the tub and wet the washroom rug. Maya hurriedly hoisted herself out of the bath and shrugged into the fluffy bathrobe the inn’s servants had left hanging on the door.

  “Who’s there?” she said. “I’ve got plenty of soap—”

  “It’s Beq.”

  “Oh.” Maya looked down at herself, suddenly fully awake. Her skin was shriveled like dried fruit, and her hair hung in a limp rattail, but there was nothing to be done about either at a moment’s notice. She hurried back into the main room to unlock the door. “Come in. Sorry, I was in the bath.”

  “Me too,” Beq said. She’d evidently had more time to clean up afterward, because her long green hair was neatly braided, and she wore her spare uniform, slightly rumpled from days at the bottom of a pack. “Chosen defend, I thought I’d never get that stuff off me.” She sniffed at her
arm and shuddered. “I can still smell it.”

  “All I can smell is floral… stuff,” Maya said. “So I think you’re all right.”

  “Do you mind if I come in?” Beq fiddled awkwardly with the dial on her spectacles, one lens flipping back and forth. “I know it’s late. I just…”

  “I think I’m still too keyed up to sleep,” Maya lied, stepping aside.

  “Me too.” Beq closed the door behind her. “Nice décor. My room has a sort of nautical theme. Lots of mermaids.”

  Maya hadn’t taken the time to look around much. Her room was large, but much of it was dominated by a wide, fluffy bed, with only a small table and a couple of chairs pressed into one corner. The motif seemed to be hunting, with paintings of people on horseback riding merrily across the countryside, presumably in pursuit of something inoffensive.

  “I might prefer the mermaids,” Maya said. “Sit, if you like.”

  Beq glanced at the bed, which made Maya’s heartbeat kick up a step, then went to the table and pulled out one of the chairs. Maya took the other and poured them water. For a moment they looked at each other, Beq’s eyes huge behind her lenses.

  “You saved my life,” Beq said. “Again.”

  “And you saved mine. Again.” Maya grinned. “I think we don’t need to keep score, do we?”

  “Probably not. That… thing.” Beq shuddered. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  Maya shook her head. “Not even close. I thought plaguespawn were bad enough.”

  “Still. You won.”

  “We won. I couldn’t have done it without you. Both of you,” honesty made her add. “Tanax kept his head when I got distracted.”

  “And now we go after Jaedia?”