by K. Eason
Iari made the syn drag her back onto her feet. Then she charged. She aimed at the back of Sawtooth’s skull and raised the axe and swung it for the seam in their wrap-around optic. Chopped, and again, and again, the same dogged violence Sawtooth was using on Char. It was a matter of whose armor gave first, that was all, and whether syn-strained muscle gave out before artifice.
“Setat m’rri,” Gaer hissed, and then he shouldered her aside, which shouldn’t have worked and did only because she was tired, the syn tailing off and taking her balance with it. Her rig managed to keep her upright. Gaer climbed up on Sawtooth’s back and jabbed down, burying his monofil to the hilt in Sawtooth’s optic. Her HUD added another weary alert
arithmancy
to the litany of warnings already flashing.
“—clear,” Gaer was shouting, Comspek gone thick with a vakari accent. He snapped the monofil off at the hilt and jumped at her. “Get clear, get back.”
The syn tried to relaunch, but all it had left were slivers of ice and lightning. So Gaer managed to snake past her shield and smack one spiked forearm across her torso, to lend force to his directive.
Right on the voidspit crack in her armor, right in it. She lost breath with the shock of it, feedback slinging between rig and nanomecha already stripped bare by the syn. She landed flat on her back, Gaer on top, just as Sawtooth burst open with a shriek of metal and raw riev agony.
Gaer squirmed, shifted his weight to look back at his handiwork. Iari took advantage of that, bucked her hips and used the shield to scoop him sideways and off. She got herself mostly upright, stagger-stumbled back to Char.
Who was, somehow, still moving, under what remained of Sawtooth, the top of whose skull was just gone, the plating open like petals, the contents—
Iari clamped her jaw in a grimace. The insides of things were always slimy. She popped her faceplate. Got a faceful of cooler air that smelled like Brood-slime and scorched metal and the not-quite-ozone nothing of spent hexwork. Sawtooth’s limbs still twitched. Smoke curled up where their squishy bits touched Char’s plating, thick and eye-stinging. Iari heard the hiss of corroding metal.
“Gaer, help me.” Iari deactivated her shield. Dropped the axe outright. Then she wedged a shoulder against Sawtooth and shoved. “Get that off Char.”
Together they rolled the dead riev clear. Iari dragged Char back on their feet. Like pulling on a building, hard to say how much help she could give. “You all right? How bad is it?”
“I retain basic function.” The riev sounded surprised. Char touched one of their chestplate splits with careful fingers. “The damage is extensive.” Char’s teslas moved in their sockets, the only motion in that mask of a face. “Lieutenant. You are injured.”
Iari licked blood off her lip. Hard to tell where that came from. Nose. Mouth. “Yeah. I also retain basic function.” Iari paused. Looked hard at Char. “You called yourself I, just now. First person. Not third.”
Char straightened. Stepped carefully clear of Iari. The riev’s remaining hand flexed, then relaxed. “Yes.”
“Aha. Look.” Gaer had gone over to examine Sawtooth. Now he came trotting back, something gore-smeared and foul-smelling in his palm. “I got this out of Sawtooth’s head. I don’t think it’s standard—what?” His visor swung between Iari and Char, throwing back distorted reflections.
“Nothing.” Iari decided to leave Char’s personal pronoun for later investigation. She poked at Gaer’s palm. “It’s a—what is that?”
His visor retracted. “I’d like to say it’s a chip of some kind. Some version of comms, maybe? Assuming I am correctly interpreting the interior structure of riev-skulls. I’d guess Pinjat got Oversight restored after all, but this chip also stinks of Brood. And alchemy. And arithmancy.”
She couldn’t tell the chip’s Brood-stink from the rest of Sawtooth. She could smell Gaer quite distinctly: like burnt sugar, which was vakari fight-or-flight chemistry, their version of adrenaline and stress chemicals. Her syn prickled. Aedian implants had been made first to combat vakari reflexes, to give templars some kind of edge in close-quarter combat. It was only after the first field tests that they’d discovered the biochemical side-effects to both species. She’d read about them. Never experienced it before. The burn in the back of her throat, the prickling under her skin that was neither fight nor flight and just as primal.
Gaer’s nostrils spread. His pupils flexed. He didn’t look at her. Didn’t comment on whatever he smelled. Instead he bent all attention on that chip. He lifted his palm and stared across it, and the chip, at Iari. “I bet Swift Runner has one like it, too, if we crack them open.”
“That is not standard hardware.” Char had drawn up to their full height, like they wanted distance from the thing in Gaer’s hand. “It is a contamination.”
“Interesting word. Yes. And appropriate.” Gaer turned the chip over. “How does one get something like this into a riev, Char?”
“With permission.”
Iari snorted. That was both funny and not. One thing to imagine someone had hacked Sawtooth and Swift Runner. Another to think they’d agreed to . . . this insertion.
Riev didn’t kill civs. Riev couldn’t be hacked. Riev didn’t use personal fucking pronouns. Betrayal was on that list of riev-don’ts, too.
Iari cut a glance at Swift Runner. A spreading puddle of noxious slime slid toward the drain under the altar, draining from the ruptured limbs. “Well, bring Sawtooth’s chip. We’ll leave Swift Runner’s in their head, for the moment. We need to secure this site. See if we can lock the hatch back down. Once we’ve got comms, I’ll ask the Knight-Marshal to send people down here.”
“Iari.” Gaer was looking at her, narrow-eyed. “You all right?”
“Functional. Yeah.” She touched the split in her chestplate. Looked back at Gaer and made sure she had eyelock. Then: “Thanks. You didn’t have to do that. You made a deal for library access, not to fight with corrupted riev.”
The vakar’s gaze broke. His chromatophores warmed, then chilled again, emotions locked down. “The dark lords know who the Knight-Marshal would assign to my security next, if something happened to you. Someone more humorless. Someone—” He waved his fingers. “Who doesn’t appreciate music.”
She stopped the laugh before it had a chance to really hurt. Confined it to a shallow, wheezy snort.
Char took a step toward the stairs. “Someone is coming.”
Gaer’s head snapped up, cocked. His plates flattened. He rolled a thoughtful eye at Char. “It’s outside my rig’s range.”
“Mine, too.” Iari heard only ringing in her ears. She sniffed back a mouthful of blood. “Brisk Array? Or did Sawtooth get them, too?”
“Unknown. I.” Char paused. Then, firmly: “I told Brisk Array to deliver a sit-rep to the Knight-Marshal. Sawtooth was more concerned with gaining access to this cellar than with preventing Brisk Array’s departure, so it is likely he survived to complete the mission.”
He. Ungentle Ptah, did all the riev have personal pronouns? “So it could be templars up there.”
“Or not. Could be your Tzcansi, or a horde of tenju enforcers armed with phlogiston bombs.” Gaer quietly scooped up his jacta. “This time, maybe you stay behind me.”
“No.” Iari checked the charge on her shield. Within functional parameters. “You’re vakari. If it’s not templars, if it’s PK again, best they see me first.”
“And if it’s some ganglord enforcer?”
“I’ll leave you something to kill.”
She took the deepest breath she could manage. The edges of what was possible marked themselves out in knives, steel hooks, the cold triangle of a staved-in rig pressing on her ribs. She climbed past Char (ungentle Ptah, walking hurt) and lifted her shield head-height (which hurt worse). It would deflect any incoming shots, if they weren’t whitefire. It would also announce who she was, in cas
e that mattered.
“Iari.”
“Got this, Gaer, hold position.”
She cleared the lip of the hatch. Daylight—was it really that bright?—had invaded the warehouse interior from the hole where the doors had been. Bounced off the walls and the pavement outside and sent beams criss-crossing through the dust. No one in the doorway, which meant they were already inside. Iari reached for the syn, tasted the metallic backwash that meant over-strained nanomecha.
“Lieutenant!”
Oh, merciful Mishka. Iari let her breath go in a shuddery gust. She knew the voice. Turned to meet its owner, who stepped out from behind the cover of crates, and lowered her shield.
“Corporal Ren.”
“Lieutenant! Are you all right?”
Youngish woman, Ren, part of Peshwari’s unit. Iari counted a squad behind her, more of Peshwari’s people, all privates and initiates. All human, because that was Peshwari’s (bigoted) preference, and Peshwari’s Seawall aristocracy that made that preference stick over Tobin’s less politically connected objections. “I am, and please tell me you’re not all the help there is.”
“I—yes sir.” Ren flushed. “The riev you sent found us on patrol. Its report sounded urgent.”
So Brisk Array had gotten through. Good. “Did Brisk Array keep going for the Aedis?”
Ren blinked. “The riev? Yes sir. It said it had orders to report to the Knight-Marshal. We thought we should investigate. But, sir, we haven’t called the report in yet. We lost comms at the end of the block.”
“Just one block? That’s promising. Perhaps the Brood are getting further away, or there’s just not that many of them,” Gaer said from behind and below her. And then here he came, with much more grace than she had, climbing the steps from the cellar two at a time. “Char would like to come up. Move over, Lieutenant.”
Someone’s jacta whined. Several others clicked as their wielders raised them.
Voidspit privates.
“Stand down,” Iari snapped. “It’s just G—the Five Tribes ambassador.”
Ren’s face settled into that careful, professional mask as she took in the state of Gaer’s rig. “Sir. I didn’t know the ambassador was with you.”
“No reason you should have.” Iari moved over and made room as Char limp-thumped up the steps.
Ren’s head tilted up, and up a little bit further as Char climbed all the way out. Surprise slivered her professional mask: wide eyes, lips o-ing. “Sir, what happened down there?”
Iari grimaced.
These kids would be looking for some action. They watched her now, caught between curiosity and envy. None of them, not even Ren, had seen Brood. And if Iari said compromised riev, said unknown, non-Aedian altar, said hostile arithmancy, she’d have four sets of nervous fingers on whitefire jactae in a neighborhood where human wasn’t the typical resident. Tell the whole truth, she’d set this entire squad off.
So, “Brood incursion,” she said. “Swarm. They escaped down the drain. We need to make sure they don’t come back up. Secure this warehouse, Corporal, until the Knight-Marshal sends reinforcements. No one down those stairs until you’ve got a priest on site, or without the Knight-Marshal’s explicit orders. Clear?”
Ren nodded sharply. “Sir. Yes sir. Understood.” She snapped a salute.
Iari returned it, a little less crisply. “Char. Ambassador. With me.”
Then she turned and marched (no limping) for the doors and the alley, outside and into the sun.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Iari didn’t look good. The split in her chestplate had stopped leaking smoke. It leaked EM instead, a power core hemorrhage that lit up Gaer’s optic. Her hair was drying into spikes where the wind touched it. Still dark and wet at the roots, though, which meant she was still sweating, which meant—pain? Her armor’s cooling system offline? Setat if he knew.
Gaer’s jaw-plates spread reflexively. The tang of Aedian syn tingled in the back of his throat and all the way into his sinuses and then south from there, pooling in his gut and further down. Dear dark lords. That was going to be a distraction.
“Iari. The Aedis is that way.” He pointed, for effect; he could feel the Aedis brooding behind them, on the top of the hill. “Shouldn’t we be going back there? Report to the Knight-Marshal?”
Iari side-eyed him. “Eventually. What you did back there in the cellar. That’s not a diplomat’s arithmancy.”
“And there are those who wonder why trust is so difficult between our people.”
She snorted. “We’ve got a Weep fissure running through this planet. I’d be surprised if the Five Tribes didn’t send someone military. What are you? Intelligence?”
“Sss. Let me keep my illusion of professional camouflage and refuse an answer.”
“Special Research, I bet.”
“I should have let Sawtooth smash you flat.”
“Yeah.” Her mouth bent. “Glad you didn’t. Are you coming or not?”
Gaer raised his hands in vain supplication to whatever imaginary persona looked down from above. “Yes. Fine. Safer than staying here with a bunch of jumpy young templars. Seriously, though.” He pointed. “Your nose is bleeding. And I don’t think it’s arithmancy.”
She sniffed. Wiped and frowned at her glove. “It’s the syn. Overdid it.”
“If you collapse down here, I’m not sure I can drag you all the way back.”
“Char can. And I won’t collapse.”
“You want to say where we’re going?”
“We’re not going to find Tzcansi now without some help. She’ll’ve gone to ground. Just so happens I know a guy.”
“You—now you know a guy? Why didn’t we ask him earlier? Oh. Oh.” Her aura looked like a stained-glass window, colors thick and solid, nearly erasing the sparkle that came from those Aedian implants. Gaer sifted through the kaleidoscope. Dark, intense, streaks of orange, the whole thing laced with black like webbing. No. Like fracture lines. “I see.”
“Doubt you do—oh voidspit. You reading my aura?”
“Reading suggests some interpretation would be required. What I’m seeing is quite definitive. This is not a happy association you are eager to renew.”
“His name’s Corso Risar. We served in the army together. Infantry.” Iari’s mouth twisted. The expression drew attention to the scar crossing her lips and the capped tusk. Gaer wondered, not for the first time, what had made that scar, and, not for the first time, did not ask.
Whatever history Iari had with this Corso fell into that same just-don’t-ask category, and staring at her aura was too much like asking those questions. Gaer found somewhere else to look. Look, there: the scrap of someone’s lunch wrapper. Waxy paper stuffed with the remnants of bread and a few strings of onion, smeared with something viscous and orange.
“All right,” he said carefully. (Was that orange business meat? Surely not.) “Then why go find him now?”
“Information.” She shook her head carefully, like the motion hurt. “We’ve got Brood in the city. People are going to hear about that. And if people start connecting Brood and riev, we’re going to have a mess. So the sooner we find Tzcansi and end it all, the better. I was hoping we could handle it ourselves. Tobin wanted to keep this investigation need-to-know. Talking to Corso, well. Tobin also said use my discretion.”
“I’m not criticizing your choice. But, you know. You’re bleeding, you’re limping, you look like a three-day-dead neefa. You could do this after we get you checked out.”
Her mouth bent again, this time in a new direction. “My nanomecha will deal with the worst of my injuries. But when I come back with the rig looking like this, there will be reports to file. The more I can get done before there’s a requisition for massive repairs to a battle-rig, the better. Things like that get questions, and attention, and that’s what the Knight-Marshal doesn’t want.” Iar
i’s expression twisted again. “That’s why we’re going to see Corso now.”
* * *
—
Truth: Iari wasn’t sure she’d be able to find Corso. He might’ve moved in the intervening years. Might’ve, oh, gotten killed.
No. He was too fucking stubborn for that. And the pain in her chest when she thought too long about him being dead, well, that was a cracked rib. A bruise.
Gaer had gone uncharacteristically quiet. She wondered about his hurts, under the layers of his armor and pride. They’d stopped at a public lav to clean up. He’d been more successful. Emerged from the stall with no sign of nosebleed, no visible scuffs on that dark vakar hide. No limping, either.
She had a bloodspot in one eye from a burst capillary. Under the armor, well. Just a guess, she hadn’t looked, but it’d be colorful. A pulpy mess. A match on the surface for how it felt every step, every breath.
Gaer might feel like that, too. Maybe that’s why he was so quiet. Or maybe he was taking his cues from her aura. Or the neighborhood—tenju now, and so the residents were larger—had him on edge.
Or maybe—she closed her eyes. The blood-spotty one felt hot, scratchy under the lid. Gaer was a distraction, something for her mind to play with. Truth was, Char was more of an eye-draw than he was. And truth, anyone who decided to indulge anti-vakari prejudice would think twice, three times, just give up the idea, with Char there.
And with her there. Templar. Rigged. Shield deployed, axe in her right hand, like she expected (more) trouble.
