“This… this is what you’ve been looking for?” said Kit. For once, even she didn’t have a sarcastic remark.
“Of course,” Naumoriel said. “My father led the team that created it. It was designed to assault the Chosen in the heart of their power, to crush their precious city and bring their empire to ruin.”
“What happened?” Gyre said. “Why is it still here?”
“My father was betrayed,” the old ghoul snapped. “Before the Core Analytica could be completed, he was brought down by those who wanted to hide instead of fight. Those who thought it better to cower in the earth while our children were burned like vermin than to strike back and inflict the same pain on our destroyers.
He took a deep breath, something in his chest rattling wetly. “And since then, I have worked to bring it to life. Scavenged what I needed from the rubble of our empire. It was built to fight the Chosen at their height. Once it is activated, nothing in this fallen world will be capable of stopping it.” He looked down at Kit. “It hosts a swarm of constructs, all controlled by the Core Analytica, to gather organic material from the land around it, and so it can power itself indefinitely. It is perfection, and all that remains is to deliver the last piece.”
Gyre tried to catch Kit’s eye, but she kept looking at Naumoriel with a disingenuous grin.
“So,” she said. “What happens now?”
Naumoriel pulled his canopy closed again. The war-construct started forward, toward the end of the—dock, Gyre realized; that was the best analogy. Ahead, there was a tower, stretching up into the darkness and connected to a bridge that arched over to the top of the vast construct. The pair of constructs that had flanked them doubled back, toward the archway where they’d come in.
“I will install the Core Analytica,” Naumoriel said. His tentacle-arm flourished the code-key that had opened the door. “Once it is in place, this key will mark me as the Leviathan’s master. It will obey only me.”
“I see.” And now she did look at Gyre, and raise her eyebrows suggestively.
“And us?” Gyre said. “The things you promised us?”
“Elariel will provide Kitsraea’s cure when you return to Refuge,” Naumoriel said dismissively. “As for you, boy, Leviathan and I will grant your desire ourselves. The end of the Republic and the Order, and the final destruction of all the works of the sun-lovers.” He reached the base of the tower, and one tendril stroked its surface. “You only need to watch.”
There was a boom, echoing out of the tunnel behind them, and a puff of dust emerged from the arch. Gyre half turned, frowning, and saw the two soldier-constructs moving into the murk, blades gleaming. In that moment, the base of the tower opened, revealing a chamber barely big enough for Naumoriel’s war-construct. He stepped forward, and the doors began to close behind him.
“The Order comes,” he said. “You must delay them until my preparations are complete.”
“Wait just a fucking—” Kit began, but the door closed on her words. Gyre heard a whirr as the lifter chamber sped upward, toward the top of the tower, where the bridge connected it to Leviathan.
“Plaguefire,” Kit swore, skidding to a halt at the doors. She pressed her fingers to the metal, searching for the seam. “I have to get this fucking thing open.”
“I can set off the bomb,” Gyre said, moving to shrug off his pack to find the detonator. “Stop him.”
“No!” Kit said, turning to him and grabbing him by the shoulder. “No. Not until Naumoriel finishes installing the Core Analytica. Don’t you get it?” She gestured at the hulking shape of Leviathan, eyes gleaming. “This is exactly what we wanted, Gyre. Can you imagine if we were in control of that thing? Forget selling it to Refuge. They’ll fix me, or we’ll crush them underfoot. And the Order? You can take the Forge to pieces. This is it. This is what I’ve been looking for my whole life.” She gulped for breath. “All we have to do is get there.”
Gyre was about to protest that she hadn’t known about it until five minutes ago, but the desperate look on her face stopped him. He glanced over his shoulder, where the sounds of combat echoed from the archway.
“Just hold them off,” Kit said. She put her hand on his face, cupping his silver eye. “You can do it, can’t you? Give me enough time to get these doors open, and we’ll take that key off Naumoriel and blow him to the Chosen.”
She raised herself onto her toes to kiss him, arms wrapping around the small of his back. Gyre leaned into the kiss, feeling the hot, bright spark of her pressed against him.
“I’ll do what I can,” Gyre said when he pulled away. Kit grinned, like a kid with a plate full of cookies, and turned back to the door. Gyre loosened the silver sword in its scabbard and ran back along the dock.
Shapes were struggling and clashing in the dust, the murk periodically illuminated by a flare of brilliant fire. One of the soldier-constructs came staggering out of the cloud, missing one arm at the shoulder and with its faceless head slashed to pieces. A young man strode after it. He was covered head to toe in gore, his traveling leathers sodden and caked with it; dried blood smeared his face. He wielded a haken, its blade a line of shimmering distortion, doing odd things to the eye.
A centarch, not much older than Maya. As Gyre watched, he extended his off hand, and waves of twisted space snapped out. They vanished when they hit the construct, splashing harmlessly into nothingness, and the centarch clicked his tongue in disapproval as the thing swung its remaining arm at him. He ducked, but one of the bladed protrusions on the construct’s arm caught him on the shoulder. Instead of leaving a cut, blue energy flared, stopping the blow. The centarch surged upward, his distorted weapon slicing the construct from armpit to shoulder, and it fell in two pieces in a welter of black blood.
The boy looked up and saw Gyre. His eyes narrowed.
“Who are you supposed to be?” he said.
“Gyre Silvereye,” Gyre said, with more bravado than he felt. He resisted the urge to look back at Kit.
“And I am Centarch Tanax Brokenedge,” the centarch said, stepping over the broken body of the construct. “Now, drop your weapons and get out of my way.”
Gyre took a deep breath and drew his silver sword. With a click at the base of his skull, the world splintered into shadows.
“I see,” Tanax said, gravely. He raised his haken to a guard position. “As you wish, then.”
Before Gyre could take a step forward, the centarch’s free hand shot out, summoning a wave of twisting, boiling energy. Gyre held his ground, silver sword extended, and he felt it part around him as it had parted around the construct. The energy bottle at his side grew warmer as Naumoriel’s augmentations deflected the deiat. Tanax’s eyes narrowed.
Gyre didn’t intend to give him time to puzzle it out. He charged, coming in high. Tanax responded contemptuously, sidestepping and extending his own weapon. Gyre saw the blow coming, shadow-haken hardening into reality, and he twisted to let it slide by. At the same time, his silver sword came close enough to nick the centarch’s sleeve. Energy crackled along the silver blade, as though earthing itself, but the blue-white shield did not appear. Fresh blood bloomed. Tanax spun away, recovering opposite Gyre and glancing at the wound.
“You have some… interesting abilities,” Tanax said. “Once you’re in chains, I’ll have you explain them to me. At length.”
Gyre felt a grin spreading across his face. “Come and get me, then.”
Now it was Tanax’s turn to charge, low and fast. Gyre brought his blade down to meet the haken, twisted space scraping against ghoul silver with a high, shivery whine. Tanax disengaged and came in again, and Gyre parried, feinted, and left another line of fresh blood on the centarch’s leg. Their two blades flickered, meeting over and over, but the shadows playing out in Gyre’s silver eye kept him half a step ahead, and that was enough.
He felt exultant as his opponent’s expression shifted, going from arrogance to fierce, desperate concentration. A centarch, the elite of the Twilight Order, inher
itors of the power of the Chosen and all the rest—and he’s not good enough. Of everything Naumoriel had promised him, Gyre realized, this was what he had longed for most of all. He felt like he could reach into his own past, find Va’aht Thousandcuts, and with the power of eye and blade tear him to pieces. As they clashed and whirled, Gyre found himself laughing.
“Who are you?” Tanax grated through gritted teeth.
He threw out his free hand, sending distorted waves to either side of Gyre, ripping up the ground to box him in. Gyre retreated, reaching into his pack and working by feel. When Tanax lunged, he slipped to one side, leading with his blade to disperse the deiat in his path. The centarch turned, haken raised to guard against a counterattack, but Gyre kept moving, opening the distance. Tanax frowned, then looked down. There was a fist-sized clay sphere at his feet, and in that moment the little fuse burned away.
The blast sent a shivering concussion across the dock and raised another cloud of dust. Gyre skidded to a halt and spotted the prone figure of the centarch lying beside the fresh crater, haken dark and silent next to him. One down. He glanced at the energy bottle at his side. The glow had dimmed, but he had a few minutes. One spare left. He forced himself to breathe. I can do this.
A bar of brilliant flame became visible beside the fallen centarch. A moment later, Maya strode into view, dust roiling around her.
Maya
It had been easier than Maya had expected to reach the cliff face. Whatever drove the plaguespawn to tear at one another overrode even their normal desire for human flesh, and only a few had tried to confront the two centarchs. Twisted space and boiling flames cleared this handful from their path, and they arrived in the lee of the mountain. Tanax, with Jaedia slung over his back, was panting, and Beq’s face was tight with pain, her leg now bleeding freely.
“How do we get in?” Beq said. “I don’t see any controls.”
“The simple way,” Maya said, and raised her haken to the stone. Four quick slashes later, and a block about her height fell inward, collapsing with a boom and a cloud of dust, revealing a dark passage beyond. “Let’s go.”
None of the plaguespawn seemed inclined to follow them, but Maya and Tanax propped the broken piece of stone in the opening anyway. They settled Jaedia against one wall, and Beq sat down beside her. Maya looked between them, and her feelings must have been clear on her face, because Beq gave a weary sigh.
“Go,” she said. “Jaedia asked you to, didn’t she? We’ll be all right.”
“You’re sure?” Maya said, wavering. “Your leg—”
“Nothing a bandage and quickheal won’t fix,” Beq said, twisting the knob on her lenses. “It’s the Republic and the Order at stake, right? Go.” She smiled weakly. “But come back, okay?”
“I will.” Maya bent down and kissed her. Her lips tasted of blood and dust. When she straightened up, Tanax was looking at her.
“Are you coming?” Maya said doubtfully. Tanax was clearly exhausted, wobbling on his feet like he was punch-drunk. The blows his panoply had taken must have been draining.
“As far as I can,” he said. “If you believe that the Order is at stake, don’t hesitate to leave me behind if you must.”
Slowly, Maya nodded. She checked her haken and her panoply, then followed the tunnel up into the darkness, Tanax keeping pace by her side.
Dust still billowed around them from where they’d cut their way into the tunnel. Maya touched her haken and created a small sphere of light, but it still only showed a little ways ahead, as though they were walking into a fogbank.
“This place has been quiet for a very long time,” Tanax said. “Do you think—”
Two figures lurched suddenly out of the murk. Maya recognized them as the strange plaguespawn whose corpses they’d seen earlier—human in shape, underlying muscle black instead of red, with metal skins instead of splintered bone. They looked—better constructed, somehow, than the usual nightmare amalgamations of human and animal parts, as though someone had put them together deliberately instead of simply pressing fresh bits in whenever they could be had. Barbs and blades gleamed all across their metal armor.
Maya raised a hand and sent a wave of fire at the first one. The flames reached it but broke across its surface, withering into nothingness. She glanced at Tanax.
“That’s new,” she said.
He raised his haken, the twisted blade forming. “Let’s see how they like being cut to pieces, then.”
Tanax charged, meeting the second monster head-on, ducking the swing of its bladed fist and slashing up and across its blank faceplate. Part of its head fell away, and it staggered back a few steps but quickly recovered. The other plaguespawn turned to attack Tanax from behind, and Maya ignited her own haken and drove it through the thing’s midsection. The creatures might not have looked like plaguespawn, but they bled the same, thick black gore gouting from the wound. It spun, both arms reaching for her in a bear hug, and Maya danced back out of range.
The monster was smarter than it had any right to be, too. It used the greater reach of its long arms to keep her at bay, as though it were playing for time. Maya chopped a dozen small pieces out of each limb but couldn’t land a killing blow, and in the meantime Tanax and the second monster had vanished up the ramp and into the billowing dust. Frustrated, she feinted to one side, then bulled forward, letting metal blades scrape against her panoply field as she pivoted on one foot and brought her haken around in a horizontal arc. Blood hissed and charred in the flames, and the strange plaguespawn fell into two pieces, bisected at the waist. Even then, it kept struggling, and Maya skirted its remains as she hurried onward. She was breathing hard, the chill of drained energy from her panoply fading only gradually.
The ramp opened onto a flat surface, but she was still lost in the dust. Up ahead, she heard Tanax shouting, and then a boom and a brilliant flash, brighter than a blaster bolt. That wasn’t something she’d ever seen from Tanax’s powers, and she broke into a run, emerging from the dust cloud and skidding to a halt as she tried to take in the vast chamber.
There was a… thing, only barely visible in the gloom, the light from her blade glinting off metal plates running high overhead and far back out of sight. In the gaps, she could see striated black muscle, like what ran beneath the skin of the plaguespawn she’d just defeated. This was clearly something similar, but—
The size of it. She couldn’t see far enough to get her head around it. The closest part, a vast curve, resolved into a limb big enough to crush a good-sized house underfoot. Chosen defend, it must be the size of a city!
“The ghouls are here,” Jaedia had said, and talked about a power that could destroy the Republic. This thing must be a ghoul weapon. Their answer to a Chosen skyfortress, maybe, a plaguespawn big enough to break mountains. And someone wants to wake it up?
A moment later, the eddying dust swirled away, and she saw the crater in the stone floor, with Tanax’s limp body lying beside it. Standing over him, a silver sword in one hand, was—
Gyre?
He looked different than when she’d last seen him. Leaner, more dangerous, unruly dark hair grown long enough to curl at the ends. But when the light of her haken fell on his face, there was no doubt it was him. Pale, shiny scars stood out against his brown skin, overlaying the old wound that had taken his eye. Now something glowed in the depth of the socket, a silver orb shining from within with an eerie green light.
Watching him stare down at Tanax, Maya felt a sudden surge of guilt. I let him go. Because he was my brother. I knew he was a rebel, that he’d killed Auxiliaries, that he hated the Order and the Republic, and I let him go. And now… Now he was here, with this monstrous thing, and she had no idea how badly Tanax was hurt. Her heart triple-thumped, and she touched the Thing with her free hand. It had cooled and was just a hard lump under her fingers.
Tanax is probably all right, Maya told herself. His panoply would have absorbed the attack, even if it rendered him unconscious. And I won’t make the sa
me mistake again.
Gyre looked up and saw her. Something about his expression, in the moment of recognition, tore at her heart, but she pushed it down ruthlessly.
“Maya,” he said. His voice was thick.
“I should have known.” Maya stepped forward, haken raised, flames crackling in front of her. “You as good as told me you were a traitor to humanity. I should have…” She shook her head.
His expression hardened. “Should have what? Killed me? Thrown me in in a cell? Probably.” He sidestepped away from the crater and Tanax, and Maya moved to match him, beginning a slow circle. “That’s what a good Order slave would have done, isn’t it? Judge, jury, and executioner all in one.” He extended his silver blade like an accusing finger. “What gives you the right?”
“We are carrying out the duty left to us by the Chosen,” Maya said. “It’s not a right. It’s a responsibility.”
“You’re the enforcers for a gang of corpses,” Gyre said. “Dogs keeping the flock in line, even though the shepherds are dead and gone.”
Maya raised her hand and smothered him with a gout of flame. Not hard or hot enough to kill—she wasn’t ready for that, even now—but it ought to have blown him off his feet. Instead, when the fire cleared, Gyre was unmoved, silver sword extended without a tremble.
“Of course,” he said. “That’s the Order’s answer to everything, isn’t it? Just burn it, break it, smash it until it can’t talk back anymore.” He slashed his blade, real eye blazing, silver eye still glowing that eerie green. “You know, I never met a Chosen. Maybe they really did deserve to run the world. Maybe they were better than us—smarter, more moral, superior. But you centarchs are only human, with a little fizz in your blood. Just because you can kill anyone who disagrees, that means you have the right to rule?”
Ashes of the Sun Page 52
