by K. Eason
Iari took her hand away. Gaer watched her fingers flex. His optic showed him the ripple of shield-hexes on the gauntlet. A templar’s battle-rig was a marvel of arithmancy and alchemy. Unorthodox by vakari standards, but effective.
An alarm flashed in the top edge of Gaer’s optic. He’d set the display for auras, expecting, well, to see auras. But the passive scan had caught something else, something it read as a battle-hex. He cycled the display.
And there in the middle of the setatir street was a battle-hex, all right, and one Gaer recognized (any vakar trooper would). Roughly a meter square, intricate glyph-work, glowing bright about the filth of the not-really-pavement. And Brisk Array was about to walk into it.
“Wait,” he said. “Stop—”
Brisk Array’s foot came down. Lightning sheeted out from that point of contact, spread to the glyph’s limits and lit their frame white and blinding. Lightning climbed Brisk Array, too, like electromagnetic vines. White light, that Gaer could see with both eyes, as well as wavelengths he could see only with the optic.
Brisk Array shuddered. The trap’s charge wasn’t quite enough to take the riev offline, but Gaer guessed they wouldn’t be moving far until their systems recovered.
Alwar materialized from the shadows, ranged themselves across the width of the street. A gang, clearly. Five, by Gaer’s count, armed with sidearm jactae and maybe some gutter-trained arithmancer. The one on the far left was wiggling fingers like she thought that was necessary to throw a hex.
Iari made a fist of her left hand and deployed her shield. Whitefire edges, blinding bright, the center muted and tinted Aedian red.
The alw in the center, clearly the leader, raised empty hands. “Templar. Our fight’s not with you. Or the veek.”
Gaer could hear Iari’s eyebrows go up. Her hand came down on the axe. Not drawing it yet. “Gaer, get that trap off our riev. Char. Make sure no one interferes with him.”
Five pairs of beady little alwar eyes landed on Gaer. His heart kicked against his ribs. He bared his teeth, the vakari way to say hello, I’m about to kill you.
“Yes, Lieutenant.” Char stomped forward. The line of alwar wobbled, bending back from the leader, who stood like his boots had fused to the pavement. That was, Gaer thought, because the little neefa-shit couldn’t see auras. Char was all reds and purples and almost as bright as Iari. Please, dear dark lords, let that riev remember he was an ally when they started smashing people.
Gaer blinked the optic’s setting from passive to active scan as he edged up to the trap. The auras winked out. Plain angry riev, plain angry templar, plain nervous alwar. The trap’s perimeter blazed into view. It was already starting to spark, would come down on its own soon enough in ten, twenty seconds. He squinted through the plasma-glare at the hexes themselves. The trap wasn’t military issue; these hexes weren’t vakari work. But it was a good forgery, good enough to stop a decommed riev. Although. Gaer glanced at Char. Might be a fortunate thing that the trap had gone off on Brisk Array. He didn’t think it would’ve held Char, even with Char’s damaged hexwork.
“Well?” Iari said.
“A moment, Lieutenant.” He made a show of flaring his jaw-plates. He lifted his right hand and pointed at the glowing hex. Counted down, in his head, as the hexes unraveled, and at the last heartbeat, curled his fingers into a fist.
The trap died. Brisk Array, caught in mid-step, slammed their foot down and made a noise not unlike water on hot metal.
Two red-auraed riev within arm’s reach. This just wasn’t safe.
Something on the ganglord’s face said he’d just realized the same thing. He retreated a step.
“Templar—”
“My rank’s lieutenant,” Iari said gently. “And that trap’s illegal. Way I see it, I can arrest you and take you up to the Aedis for questioning, or you can cooperate and answer a few questions here. You choose.”
The ganglord slapped a sneer on his face as if he’d just put on a mask. Stiff. Unconvincing. “Not your business, where I got it. Self-defense isn’t illegal.”
You had to admire that kind of audacity. You just didn’t want to be standing near it.
Iari lifted the left corner of her mouth, revealing the capped tusk. Dull metal, brushed and muted, meant to absorb light so it didn’t draw attention. Funny. Everyone’s eyes always went straight to it anyway. “That wasn’t my question. Right now I don’t care where you got it. I want to know about riev. Might be one of them came down here last night from Hightown. Late. Might’ve been bloody. You see something like that?”
The alw closest to the ganglord—female, a little round in the gut, with a face that’d rival a tenju for ugly—turned and said something in a rapid street-cant Gaer couldn’t understand. The tone was clear enough, though. Ugly wasn’t happy.
The ganglord held up a finger, and Ugly shut up. His sneer settled, made itself at home. “You’re asking about who killed the artificer, templar, then you want Tzcansi.”
“Tzcansi.” Iari tried out the syllables.
“That is not a riev designation,” said Char.
The alw puffed up a little. “Tzcansi’s a person.”
Iari stared at the ganglord. “Rival gang leader, maybe. You trying to get me to settle a turf war for you?”
The leader’s sneer slipped. “No. I’m telling you, Lieutenant, no lie. Tzcansi’s the one who killed the artificer. Or had him killed, you know what I mean. She’s been expanding.” He thrust his chin at the riev. “Used them to do it. That’s why we need traps. Them running around. Used to be gang muscle was people.”
“Gaer.”
He flipped the optic’s setting. The alw bloomed into a palette of yellows and anemic blues. “He’s sincere that he wants you to go after this Tzcansi, and sincere in his belief she is responsible, and sincere in his fear of riev.”
The alw bared his teeth. “Not afraid of them, veek.”
“Setat you’re not.”
“Thank you, Gaer.” Iari raked the ganglord head to heels, wearing a face like she wasn’t sure she liked what she saw. “Huh. And where would I find this Tzcansi, then?”
The alw pointed. “That way. When you get to the fountain, you’re in her territory. Ask there. Someone’ll know.”
“Brisk Array. That the direction you saw Sawtooth going?”
A fistful of eyestalks inclined the direction the ganglord had said. The rest pointed at Iari. “Yes, Lieutenant.”
“All right, then that’s where we’re going.”
The alw turned an unhealthy shade. “You can’t take them with you. You’ll end up like that artificer and Tczansi’ll have two more of them on her side.” He stabbed eyes at Gaer. “Last thing we need, ’specially now I’m down a trap.”
Iari stared hard at the alw, like she could see into his skull. She could, Gaer thought, if she’d just use the axe. But she turned to Brisk Array and Char instead.
“I’ll take point with Gaer. You two stay behind us. Come on.”
“That’s neefa-shit,” Gaer said, when they’d gotten another fifty meters down the street, well clear of alwar earshot. “There’s no arithmancy that can hack riev. If there was, my people would have figured it out already.”
Iari side-eyed him. She twisted her wrist, and the shield disappeared in a breath of ozone. “Maybe one of you did. Vakari arithmancy gave us the Weep.”
Gave was the wrong word. Misfired was more accurate. An arithmantic attempt to turn back Confederate forces, to end a war the Protectorate was losing: the best arithmancers working together, feeding their hexes through quantum-linked turings across the whole Protectorate front line, trying to disappear the Confederate fleet into the void. A simultaneous working, momentous, ambitious. Ultimately disastrous.
“Protectorate arithmancy,” Gaer said primly. “And no vakar on either side ever cracked riev artificing.”
&nbs
p; “Someone has.” Her tone said shut up, enough. She had infinite patience with him until she just didn’t, and he’d learned, after almost a year of association, when to stop pushing.
The fountain was just up ahead, partly visible around a curve in the street. (No one built anything straight in this place, it was maddening.) Gaer got a mouth-and-noseful of humidity, heard the faint spatter of running water. Heard voices, too, for the first time. A buzz of Comspek and Dwerig, the most common alwar dialect, in varying pitches and volumes. Normal, in other words, in a day that had been anything but.
Gaer traded a look with Iari. She thrust her arm out like a bar, keep back, and slowed down. It was Iari’s right side, her weapon side. There were scuffs on the gauntlet. Gouges on the forearm that’d been polished, you could see that, to disguise the worst of the blemishes. A line of scoring jumped from forearm to chest, ran the breadth of her on a diagonal up to the left shoulder. Two not-quite-parallel lines, patched at the shoulder joint where something had punched through the plating.
No, not something. Brood had done that. Brood effluvia (all Brood fluids had the same composition and effects, whether they came out of orifices or injuries) had discolored the rig there and there, too, streaked the armor’s dull black with swirls of pink and green, like an oilslick burned into the alloy.
“Gaer.” She was looking at him, frowning a query. “You see anything?”
He brushed her frown aside, hid his own scowl in a head-tilted squint through his optic. “There’s . . . something here. Not exactly a barrier, but.” He blinked. “Check your visor. Maybe your Aedian unorthodoxy will see something I don’t.”
Her mouth stretched and flattened, baring the upthrust islands of her tusks. Iari tended to carry her jaw pulled back, the artifact of what had clearly been some attempt to minimize her tusks behind her lips and pass as what, human? Those tusks were still as visible and as obvious as her nose and her eyes and those wide flat wedges of cartilage she called ears on the side of her head.
This particular twist of her mouth was a grimace, differentiated from a grin only by the narrowness of her eyes. Then the helmet’s visor deployed in a soundless slide. Gaer was left looking at himself reflected in featureless black. Not much of a reflection—the alloy, like the cap on Iari’s broken tusk, was meant to absorb light. But he did see a hint of his own brow ridge and jaw-plate and the rectangular glow of his optic, faint blue-white and translucent.
That same optic showed him the dusting of hexes along the helmet’s seams. Aedian glyphs, which Iari would call blessings. To Gaer, they were proof against Elemental incursion: plasma, liquid, aether, solids. Proof against void, too, in short bursts, though this particular rig didn’t carry a rebreather. Most Brood needed atmosphere as much as any other organic. Brood who swam the void, well, you met those in ships, because they were too big for planets (unless you were on a planet where the Weep had opened, and then you met those Brood and died.)
And why was he thinking of Brood now? The closest tangible danger was nervous Confederate citizens, mostly alwar in this district, whose pointed features of various pigments peered from doorways and windows with more open dismay (their auras yellow and orange, mostly, shot through with pinks) than the gang had done. Well, of course there was dismay. How many of them had seen a vakar before, except in a vidcast, or as the villain of some third-rate drama?
Except. Look, you setatir idiot, don’t assume. Arithmancy revealed auras. It didn’t diagnose causes. That was a task for eyes and brains and sentient judgment. And the sightlines of those peering alwar aimed mostly at Brisk Array and Char. So.
“Gaer.” Iari’s voice leaked out her rig’s external comms, all the usual rough depth squeezed flat and thin. “Get your visor down. I need reads on all the auras in the area, and anything else arithmantic. Don’t want to walk into another hex.”
He did as she asked with a cold twist in his chest. His optic, sensing its arithmantic superior in his faceplate’s hexwork, switched to transparent standby. His HUD bloomed into a border of status reports. His biometrics, rig integrity, a whole spectrum of electromagnetic feedback. The ubiquitous hex-scans, which flashed pure alarm at the number and disposition of riev in proximity.
And his rig comms, which flashed incoming transmission, accept y/n in the lower left.
“Yes,” he murmured. Iari wouldn’t have to speak to her rig comms to activate them. It was a matter of Aedian heresy: that needle-socket in her spine, the implants, the nanomecha permeating her body that linked biology to machine and made the battle-rig an extension of her nervous system. A synthesis. Syn.
The idea of machines inside his skin was revolting, horrific, rather eat spoiled meat than do such a thing. But void and dust, the convenience of that connection. Gaer made a face Iari wouldn’t be able to see behind his faceplate, and molded his voice to match. “I know why you people won the Expansion war.”
“Yeah. Because the Five Tribes split off from the Protectorate, which interrupted the Expansion and allowed the wichu to defect and bring us the riev. Listen. What’re you seeing, for hexes? Because my rig thinks there’s major arithmancy around here, except not arithmancy.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means my HUD’s lit like the Double Moon Festival without any directional indicators.”
“My rig’s more upset by the nearness of two riev.” One very large, flashing frame on his HUD, and his arms-turing trying to come online and acquire targets.
“Fantastic. Big help. Thanks.” Iari thrust her faceplate back toward the fountain. Lowered her arm and began walking again. Hands open, loose, but not swinging.
Whatever normalcy was happening in the fountain stopped the instant two battle-rigs and two riev came walking up. Conversations stopped mid-syllable. Faces turned like anxious flowers to a capricious sun. It was good, Gaer realized, that he’d lowered his visor. The optic did fine for general reading, even detail for a single subject, but it didn’t have the processor to handle this volume and detail.
And oh, there was a full spectrum of auras sparkling through the fountain square. Curiosity—from children, mostly. From adults, the expected suspicion, the expected hostility. Fear, sunbright-yellow, when eyes passed over the riev. But then they saw Iari, marked the Aedian battle-rig, and the auras splintered bright blue with hope. And that hope lingered, despite his own presence. Despite the riev.
It was a surprising thing, no matter how often he saw it, the trust and faith the bulk of the Confederate citizenry had in the Aedis. How Iari could walk under all that weight defied reason.
“They’re remarkably happy to see you.”
“Huh. Can you tell why?”
“Not from their auras. But at a guess, I’d say they expect you to save them from something.”
He couldn’t see through her visor any more than she could see through his. But he sensed the look she cast at him. Felt it, punching through armor, scorching the side of his face.
“Then let’s see if they’ll tell us what I’m supposed to save them from.” Iari pivoted neatly and aimed at the fountain and a cluster of citizens—alwar, mostly, but there was a tenju street vendor selling something formerly living, now thoroughly charred, from a handcart whose phlogiston tank needed adjustment. Gaer’s HUD told him the parts-per-million on the exhaust were above safe regulation, and being heavier than aether, those particles weren’t dispersing neatly.
“Iari,” he said. “Avoid sparks.”
“Huh.”
He rolled his eyes and trailed after her. Yes, of course, Gaer, I understand would be too many syllables. And he said aloud, softly, trusting the riev’s audio feeds: “Don’t do anything flammable. There’s a phlogiston leak.”
“Acknowledged,” Char said, in a surprisingly quiet voice. He looked at them, startled. The big one-armed riev was holding position, scanning the crowd, the square. Presumably surrounding buildings,
too. Brisk Array stood in their shadow, eyestalks waving like wheat in a summer breeze.
Splinters of hope and expectation or not, the food vendor’s customers weren’t sticking around. The last one snatched up her flat-bread-and-dead-thing roll and darted sideways, leaving the vendor alone with her cart and her leaky tank. Gaer noted the pair of monofils hanging from her belt, one of which might be within legal regs for civilian, but probably wasn’t.
Iari’s rig hissed and her visor snapped up. The vendor jerked, surprised. Then she straightened. The vendor had much bigger tusks than Iari’s, much sharper, jutting out of her block of a lower jaw. Buttery-pale skin, contrast to Iari’s sepia-dark.
“Help you?”
“Hope so. I’m Lieutenant Iari. Need to ask you a couple questions. That okay?”
The vendor shrugged. “Ask.”
“You know the name Tzcansi?”
“Know of her.” The vendor shifted back on her heels. She looked at Gaer again, then past him. Not at the riev, he realized; they were still behind him, back the direction they’d come. She didn’t offer her name. “Why?”
Iari’s aura bristled with scarlet. Her tone stayed steady. “What can you tell me?”
“Not much. She’s not someone you mess with. Alw, you know? Not my problem.”
“Oh. I think she is. I think she’s this whole neighborhood’s problem. It’s her territory, isn’t it?” Iari propped a casual elbow on the edge of the cart. Pretended great interest in the rack of roasting meat. “She’s got you scared. This little alw.”
Gaer rolled his eyes. It was a baldly obvious jibe. The Aedis made a very public deal about inclusivity and equality and strength coming from difference. Legally, that held true. Socially, well. That was another matter. All the old inter-species prejudices were alive and well.
The tenju’s aura fractured into bands of red and violet, with a band of lingering, sickly yellow. Physically, she stiffened and thrust out her lower jaw like a weapon. Flat-footed, wearing no armor, she was eye-level with Iari, and equally as broad without the setatir rig.
