by Myke Cole
“And I will go,” Xilyka said, “because I am not leaving your side.”
“You don’t want to seek your mother?”
“Mother would never forgive me if I left you to look for her. We will find her when this is done.”
Heloise moved the machine close to her father, bent it at the waist. For once, Samson did not plead with her to stay, only reached in and placed a hand on her foot. “Do not die, Heloise. My heart could not bear it.”
“Lead the villagers until I get back. Barnard will be your strong right hand.”
Sir Steven surveyed the few troops he had left to him. “He will have a score of strong right hands.”
Samson nodded, too choked with emotion to speak. When he finally mastered himself, all he said was “Hurry back.”
Heloise turned to the long passage that led to the postern door. “Find some way to brace the doors.”
Wolfun nodded. “Might be we can scavenge some of that iron from up top, though that red-cloaked bastard is like to screech like a bag of cats.”
“We’ll keep him quiet,” Sir Steven said. “Heloise, you need to get going.”
Heloise nodded, motioned for Xilyka and Tone to go before her down the dark passage. Tone rushed past her, and Heloise saw his hands were empty.
“Your flail?” Heloise asked him.
“It will not serve against this foe anyway,” he called back over his shoulder.
He approached the postern door and reached into a niche beside it, yanking on something inside. The door shuddered and the locking bar slid aside, drawing out of the iron brackets and into the wall. Tone pushed the door wide with the same smooth silence that had so startled Heloise when she’d first entered. The light washed across her face and she blinked it away, stepping out behind the palace, shield raised, anticipating a blow, the scraping of iron sharp claws across the shield’s surface.
There was nothing. She heard growling, but it was distant. She slowly lowered the shield, blinking at a wide boulevard that shot arrow-straight toward the other side of the capital and its outer wall. The sight was breathtaking. It was as if all the chaos and violence Heloise had just witnessed had taken place in some other world. Here, the city was pristine and deserted, the cobbles recently swept. The houses and storefronts were shuttered but otherwise untouched. The stone and wood was in good repair, the leaded glass unbroken.
“Come, Heloise.” Tone was already moving. “Perhaps the devils have not found the postern gate. It will not be manned now. We can get out right under their noses.”
They jogged down the central boulevard unmolested, the thick silence nearly as frightening as the sound of the devils had been. Not a single soul stirred. Heloise didn’t see so much as a stray dog or a bird perched on a rooftop. The postern gate was, as Tone had predicted, abandoned. The thick gates were shut fast, the massive locking bar across them, the iron portcullis down. Looking at the clean surface of the stone, the empty cobbles around the gatehouse, Heloise could almost believe the devils had never come, that they had been an invention of her fevered imagination.
Tone disappeared inside the gatehouse, and moments later, the clinking of the great iron chain that lifted the portcullis snapped her out of her reverie. “The bar is too heavy for me to lift,” the Pilgrim called to her from inside.
As soon as the portcullis had winched up high enough, Heloise advanced the machine and set the tinker-engine to the task of raising the massive piece of ironwood, a mighty trunk carved down into a single beam. She let it thud against the cobbles as Tone emerged panting from the gatehouse. The doors drifted open under their own weight, and Heloise pushed them wide enough to admit the machine, joining Tone and Xilyka on the other side.
A cobbled road ran straight from the postern gate through a village of tents and shacks cobbled together from cart wheels, blackened timbers, and branches. It was as squalid as the houses inside the city were beautiful, and like the city, it was utterly deserted. Heloise felt anger rise as she considered the ravaged slum around her. Right outside their walls, people had lived here, in this filth. The people inside, with their fancy jewels behind their leaded-glass windows separated by a simple wall, had done nothing.
Tone set off down the road, heading toward a pillar of black stone where signs had been affixed.
“Come on,” Tone said, following one of the signs onto a dirt track that led off the main road, “it’s this way.”
“Shouldn’t we close the gate?” Heloise asked.
Tone shook his head. “We cannot set the locking bar from outside, Heloise. And there is nothing out here that can trouble our people more than what is in there.”
“It is better to leave them open,” Xilyka said. “Folk might be glad of a quicker escape, should things go poorly before we return.”
She’s talking about Father. About Barnard. Chastened by the thought, Heloise hurried after Tone. “Then we must return quickly.”
They ran.
The dirt track meandered some, but mostly ran straight to the east, finally falling in beside a river, where it became dotted with hoofprints and piles of dried mule dung. They pushed on in silence until Heloise realized that the sound of her companions’ footfalls had grown quieter, and she slowed the machine, looking behind her. Xilyka and Tone were stone-faced, jogging along behind her, but they were panting, and Heloise knew they wouldn’t be able to keep pace with the machine unless she slowed it to a jog. Panic creeped its way up her spine. “We must hurry. If we don’t make it back in time, the congregation could be lost.” And Father.
Tone and Xilyka ran on, but far too slowly, and Heloise at last could stand it no longer. She ran the machine to them and scooped Xilyka up, setting her on the machine’s shoulder. Tone she held to the breastplate, nestled behind the table-sized shield, as she had carried him into the gates of the capital.
“Heloise, put me down!” the Pilgrim said. “This won’t work!”
“It has to,” she said. “We’re moving too slowly. We don’t know how long it will take the devils to break into the palace!”
She set off at a run, and knew right away that it was useless. The machine shuddered and bounced as she lengthened her stride, and within moments, both Xilyka and Tone were shouting as they held on for their lives. After a moment, she heard Xilyka’s boots crunch on the snow as the Hapti girl leapt from the machine’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Heloise, I can’t hold on at this pace.”
Heloise set Tone down and let out a frustrated growl before she could stop herself. The image of the Congregation lying slaughtered rose in her mind, her father’s corpse gray and blood-streaked among them. “We have to move faster!”
“Not if it kills us,” Tone said. “Give me a moment.”
Heloise gritted her teeth while Tone stripped off his armor, leaving it in a pile as he refastened his cloak.
Xilyka laughed as he settled the cloth on his shoulders and raised the hood back up over his head. “You look … smaller.”
“I’ll move faster this way,” he said, then hunted around on the ground until he’d found a solid-looking branch, nearly as long as he was tall. “Lend me one of your knives.”
Xilyka’s eyes narrowed. “That is an … intimate request to make of a Hapti caster.”
Tone fought to keep the frustration off his face. “I’ll give it back.”
Xilyka exchanged a glance with Heloise and shrugged, handing it to him. “I don’t have time to teach you to cast, priest.”
“What are you doing?” Heloise asked. “There’s no time!”
Tone ignored her, kneeling, and placed the branch across his thigh. Using Xilyka’s knife, he stripped it of its branches and knots. He worked quickly, muttering under his breath. Heloise didn’t need to listen to know they were verses of the Writ. Her father and Barnard were not here to overhear. She needn’t protect their faith. “How can you … after what you … what we saw?”
“I saw nothing,” Tone said.
“That’s right,” Heloise said. �
��It was an old, empty chair.”
“The Emperor is more than a chair, Heloise.”
“Stop lying! I know you felt it too! You were struck dumb until that Sojourner beat you!”
“I was shocked, yes, and my faith was tested. But I have found it again.”
“How can you say that? Maybe the Emperor lived once, but he is gone now!”
Tone never took his eyes from his work, but the knife moved more quickly, his cuts becoming savage. “I do not presume to know the Emperor’s will in all things, Heloise, and neither should you. His will is like…”
“… like unto the wind, unseen, yet touching all. It rippleth the wheat in the field and draweth the wave across the still water. I know the verse, Tone. I am a factor’s daughter.”
Tone stood, tossed the knife back to Xilyka, spun the branch in his hand. Bark still clung to it in patches, but it made a passable staff. “A factor’s daughter may recite the Writ word for word, but that does not mean she divines its meaning. It does not mean she understands. You are brave, Heloise. But you lack the humility you will need if you are ever to truly work His will.”
“Why should I believe you?” Heloise felt heat rising in her cheeks. “You, whose army I destroyed. You, who I found cowering in a ring of carts on the road. You, who wept at the sight of that empty chair you claim means nothing. You, who would still be stuck behind the postern gate without my help.”
Xilyka made a great show of testing the edge of the knife Tone had borrowed. “This will need sharpening.”
Both Tone and Heloise stared at her, until at last Tone said, “Now I can run. Let’s go,” and set off running again.
Xilyka was right, he did look smaller. Without his armor, Tone was of a height with her father, but nowhere near as broad, practically a child beside Barnard. The stave, too, without the black iron head of the flail, made him look more an old man than a warrior. But Tone’s pace gave the lie to that thought. No old man could run this fast. Before long, Xilyka’s breath was coming in tense, tight puffs as she struggled to keep up.
It was then that Heloise realized that the unseasonal snow had broken. It hadn’t fallen since they’d arrived at the capital. The wind that lifted the leaves and stirred the branches around them was still unseasonably cool, but not nearly as biting as before.
* * *
They found the cage the next morning.
It was a small fortress, even smaller than Lyse, with a wooden wall instead of stone, made of logs stood on their ends and sunk into the earth, sharpened at their tops. There was a tower, standing not much higher than the palisade itself, a rickety thing, leaning so precariously that Heloise wondered that it didn’t fall when the wind blew.
There had been a fight here. An Imperial banner lay trampled in the grass, and Heloise could make out a mound of fresh earth. She had seen similar too many times since she had left Lutet, the kind of hasty pile that came of burying many dead quickly. Here and there, the grass was marked with the tacky brown of blood dried not too long ago.
“The devils made it here…” Xilyka began.
“Not devils,” Heloise said, pointing with her knife-hand to where the back end of a wagon was visible drawn up behind the fort. The edge of the Sindi trefoil could be seen on its canvas housing.
Xilyka frowned. “Traveling People … here…”
“It must be Onas,” Heloise said, “and those who went with him.”
As she spoke, a man appeared behind the palisade, walking along some hidden parapet. It was Poch Drover, his thick paunch held in by a stolen Imperial cuirass, his big head squeezed into a plumed helmet with a visor tied up with a leather thong. He had a halberd over his shoulder, and he kept switching it from side to side, unsure how to carry it.
“Of all the refuges for them to find, it had to be here,” Heloise said.
“The Emperor tests us,” Tone said.
“There is no Emperor,” Heloise said. “This is the world, Tone. It is the world where the wolf eats the rabbit, where lightning splits trees, where a bad winter leaves a village to go hungry. The world doesn’t care about any of us, it only wants to devour everyone in it. That’s why it put you over us, why it put Onas and his people here. The world wants to eat, and by my knife-hand, I will see it starve.”
Poch turned and called something up to the tower, the distance too great to make out what it was. Heloise followed the direction of his eyes and saw Giorgi, leaning out over its rickety railing. Beside him was an old woman in a black gown sewn to fit her, the high collar rising all the way to her ears. Her face looked younger than her withered body, and Heloise realized that it was because she was smiling, delighted by something Giorgi was showing her. The Sindi man gestured and Heloise followed the path of his movement to where two of his flame men danced beside the fort, pirouetting around a small fire that must have been built to provide the fuel for them.
Giorgi spread his fingers and the flame men threw their shoulders back, raised their heads to the sky, growing brighter, larger. Giorgi stood back, tugging his forelock and bowing to the woman, who laughed and set her hands to the railing. Her face grew serious, brow furrowing. She bent at the waist, her knuckles tightening on the wood. A wind picked up, whipping through the grass around the fire, so that clumps of it were uprooted, flung into the air. The wood scattered, embers swirling, dancing like fireflies. The flame men were pulled apart, flickering pieces of them torn away, but they bent back toward themselves, reforming. They reached out to the remaining pieces of burning wood and drew from them, their fiery bodies regrowing as they were reduced, becoming whole as the wind cut them apart. The woman bent deeper, thrusting her shoulders out over the railing and gritting her teeth. The wind rose higher, howling now. Heloise could see the edges of a funnel, drawn by the embers, the tufts of grass, the burning fragments of twigs. The flame men swirled within it, shrinking as the rising wind cut across them, fighting to reach closer to the ground. For a moment, Heloise thought they might be snuffed out, but at last the old woman slumped against the railing, panting. The wind died as quickly as it had come and the flame men settled back onto the ground, burning brightly. Giorgi clapped, laughed, and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“No Traveling Mother would ever dress like that,” Xilyka said.
“No villager, either,” Heloise agreed.
“That must be your Nightingale,” Xilyka said. “She seems to be getting on well with Onas and his ilk.”
“Where is Onas?” Heloise asked.
“If Giorgi is there, then so is he,” Xilyka said.
“No matter her allegiances, if that is the Nightingale, she must come with us,” Tone said. “Let us go speak with her.”
“Are you mad?” Heloise asked. “That is Onas and Poch and the rest of them. They left because I took up with you, Tone. They will not be happy to see you.”
“Perhaps,” Tone said, “but the Nightingale is the Emperor’s servant, and we must trust in Him to deliver her unto us no matter who surrounds her.”
Xilyka looked at him as if he had sprouted a second head. “Your Emperor’s will seems a fickle thing, and that woman seems quite happy to be in Giorgi’s company. It would be best if you stayed out of sight until we figure out their mood.”
“I am the Emperor’s Own,” Tone said. “She will answer to me.”
“You’re a man in a gray cloak, leaning on a branch,” Heloise said. “You shouldn’t even be wearing the cloak, anyway. That Sojourner stripped you of it.”
“That was not—”
“Tone. Please. We are bringing the Nightingale out of there one way or another. I brought you along because I thought we’d be dealing with Imperials. But those are villagers and Traveling People. They hate the Order, and you most of all. Giorgi is a powerful wizard, Onas is the greatest knife-dancer in his band, and if all the rest of them are there, they outnumber us at least ten to one. We don’t want a fight. Xilyka and I will go and speak with them.”
Tone’s cheeks went red, his eyes fl
ashed. Heloise gestured to the woods behind him. “Tone, please. You can watch from hiding here. The moment we need you, I will call for you.”
Tone had faced down Heloise willingly enough on horseback, in his armor and with his flail in his hands. But the man before her now was different, stripped not only of his arms and armor, but of something far more important. It had gone from him the moment he had set his eyes on that empty chair, and without it, he was just another man standing before the might of the war-machine and the steel-eyed Hapti knife-caster beside it.
Tone ducked his head. “Very well. I will wait here.”
“Thank you,” Heloise said, turning toward the fort. Giorgi and the woman had left the tower, and Poch was no longer visible on the walls.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I think they’re going to kill us.” Xilyka shrugged.
“So we should go back empty-handed?”
Xilyka laughed. “The question, Heloise, is where would you rather die? In the streets of the capital, shivering in the dirt as you flee from the devils? Or outside these walls, trying to fix this broken world?”
“Asleep in my bed,” Heloise said, “so old that I must mash my food.”
She looked down at her feet. “And next to you.”
Xilyka grinned, rapped her knuckles on the side of the frame. “Well, then, our way is clear.”
The Hapti girl started for the fort, and Heloise was so surprised by her sudden departure that she had to hurry the machine along to keep up. Xilyka stopped them close enough for a parley, but far enough from the walls that an arrow’s force would spend itself before it struck home. “No sense in making it easy for them. You are the saint and the leader of our ragged band, no? It should be for you to open the parley.”
Heloise nodded. Unbidden, her mind began to compose a prayer to the Sacred Throne, begging for guidance. She squashed it angrily. No. There is no Emperor. There is only what I can do.
The thought was oddly comforting. What had the Emperor done for her? Heloise, on the other hand, had done much herself. Just one more impossible thing.
