Beasts of the Walking City

by Del Law

  Kjat stares at them, not quite getting it. Why are they so blurry?

  She takes out the old drone’s knife and looks at it, curiously.

  The lead mage, a human, yells at her again.

  Kjat feels a tracer settle on her chest.

  She looks up at the woman with tears streaming down her face now. “I’m having a very bad night,” she tells the woman, numbly.

  Then something dark rises up in her. She reaches up with the knife, and slits the cord around her neck that’s holding the Buhr’s totem. The amulet falls to the deck and bounces away.

  Penned for too long, the featherwolves and the blackjackals surge upwards, ready to burst free.

  And as they explode within her, she hears her lips tell the Tel Kharan woman quietly, in a voice filled with blackness “And your morning is not going to be any better now, is it.”

  26: Nadrune

  Nadrune sits up in bed, moves the concubine’s steaming hand off of her expansive waist, and touches a finger to the knife on her bedside table. It had been her mother’s knife, and her grandmother’s before that, and even now Nadrune hates it. It has the sinuous curves and the jeweled embellishments of a much more indulgent age, back before the Grohmn-Elite’s invasion had forced them all to get focused, sharper, to become the family the Akarii are now. But it’s her family’s knife, and so she carries it. But when it lets Bakron reach her directly it pisses her off all the more.

  She makes him wait, and tells the concubine to get dressed and to get out. This one was her current favorite, sinuous and smart, nimble and eager like a monkey, with pale white skin and bright green eyes and a prick the size of the Alabaster Tower.

  She pats it thoughtfully on its bare rump as it dresses, enjoys seeing her handprint scorched there in red, enjoys seeing the concubine’s resulting grin. He likes the heat, or is smart enough to pretend he does. Later, she’ll have another tube of burn cream wrapped and delivered to his room.

  The great black heron in the cage beside her bed shifts to watch her. The bird and the concubine are probably to two closest things she has to allies now. It’s a shame she’ll have to have the concubine’s tongue removed soon. It is so…artful…with it.

  She touches the knife again, but doesn’t take his image. Voice only. “Lieutenant-Marshall. I think instead your men are drunk. You seriously expect me to believe…”

  Bakron cuts in. “I want that Beast, Nadrune. I want that Beast dead.”

  “You’re not getting it. I thought your men are claiming it was some sort of giant black bird-thing?”

  “It killed one of the tiAkarii family. And then it killed several of my mages. I have a witness, Nadrune. It's on your ship.”

  “The Beast is bound, Bakron. Declawed and defanged. Your own men did the binding, and Semper oversaw it himself. Yes? And he’s watched all of the time by someone, whether he knows it or not. All this noise you’re creating with your men all over this ship, the lockdowns on downbelow, are getting in the way of preparing for our mission. I will have you focused on the invasion, Bakron. Not chasing monsters in the bilge.”

  Bakron pauses. “I’m logging all of this to my records, Nadrune. I will bring it before your father if I must. He, at least, respects tradition.”

  Nadrune feels her face grow hot and the flames lick at the edges of her eye sockets. “Log this, Lieutenant. In six days when we reach Tamaranth, I will expect your men to be completely prepared to take and hold the city. Any mistakes, any failures, any errors of even the smallest magnitude and I will gut you and string you alive in your own rigging and let the gulls have at you. You can call my father all you want to from up there.”

  She breaks the connection and hurls the knife across the room where it sticks, quivering in the wall by her door. She rises from the large bed, throws a light robe over herself and goes into the sitting room, where the servants have set out a tray for her and a bowl of live fish for the heron. She brings them back in to the bedroom and sits on the edge of the bed.

  When she is sitting at the head of the Lunar Council, she thinks, and she has forged and wears a new Winged Crown across her brow, she will have to have Bakron killed.

  He was all too useful to her now, though, a great mage and not a bad tactician, either. His plan for overrunning Tamaranth was really quite effective, and had a great chance of succeeding. The Free City’s defenses had always been more economic than military, but it still wasn’t smart to underestimate the Chancellor. She’d met him once, at some Akarii function her father had thrown, and while she understood him as much as she understood any Kruk, which wasn’t very much, she knew he was bright, canny, and he wouldn’t hesitate to use every resource at his disposal.

  She eats mechanically, plucking the food from the tray. She’s gotten used to most things tasting of charcoal by now, and even though the kitchen laces her food with the hottest Solingi spices they can find it’s still flavored ash that clots her throat. She washes it down with wine that hisses and steams and she watches the fleet through her great windows. They keep in tight formation. Her pilots are well trained and obedient (or they tended not to live long). The pilot of the Beard, she notes, is trailing a bit farther back than she should be. Isn’t that one Bakron’s little favorite this year? Nadrune makes a point to speak with her directly and blows a smoke ring at the window in the Beard’s direction. She smiles to see it entirely consumed.

  She notices her robe is starting to smoke at the shoulders, and she takes a deep breath. She takes it off and tosses it to one of her niche mages. Another mage brings her a thicker one, lined with leather inside—they tended to hold up a little longer.

  The Tel Kharan will quickly overrun the city, she thinks. They will secure it, and she will build it out as a base from which to take the rest of the continent. She’s sure has the old Kerul well in line with her threats and bribes. Even if the young Family Chair isn’t biting, there isn’t much he can do without backing. And they were the only Family with enough resources near to the city to marshal any significant resistance. If she’s right, the sky city of Tilkasnioc and the militant Fjilosh Family in the north are the only obstacles that might present significant challenges after, and she will deal with them by land and sea, as well as air when the right time comes. Tamaranth is the gateway to the western continent. Holding it, she can bring over no end of supplies and reinforcements, and she can also take back the vast Akarii Reserves that stretch all along the central ridge of mountains, land that’s gone back to wilderness in the last hundred years. It will be a tremendous source of raw materials. With the harbor, the forests, and a way to import anything else she might need, all other families will quickly see it’s in their better interests to fall in line behind her.

  And as the head of the new Lunar Council, she will be nothing but magnanimous.

  And then there is the Hulgliev.

  She grins. She hasn’t mentioned him to her father, yet. And frankly she doubts that Bakron will either; he has nothing to gain by it, and a lot to lose. He was in this undertaking as deeply as she was, now.

  The Hulgliev is an unexpected gift, and with him at her side she will keep even her father in line.

  Truth be told, she hadn’t told her father much of anything. Not about the Hulgliev. Not about Bakron. Not even about the small fact of her taking a whole fleet of the First Family to war, though doubtless he’s heard about that by now.

  It was her own fleet, after all.

  His silence means he’s watching to see how she does, she thinks. If she fails, he disavows her.

  If she succeeds, he swoops in to supplant her claiming it was his idea all along. He was as ruthless as any of them and would not stand for being upstaged, even by his own daughter, for long.

  She picks up the bowl of live fish and feeds them to her heron one at a time.

  Her hands are hotter now from the food, and the fish cook as she grasps them. The water in the bowl turns to steam.

  The heron, a practical bird, watches her with its st
eely eye and reaches its beak carefully between the bars of the cage to take the food. It knows from experience not to risk nicking her fingers with its wickedly sharp, black beak.

  Nadrune smiles to herself. With the Hulgliev at her side, she is Dekheret reborn. Let’s see her father stand against that. Even before Dekheret, there had been Hulgliev standing with the all of the great Akarii. Surely Semper will see to it that this one will understand enough of its history, and it will be practical.

  And surely the other steps she’s taken with that Kerul woman will bring him to her side.

  Really, what other options does he have?

  27: Blackwell

  The two wannabe tough guys find me pacing the observation platform on the very top deck of the city. My collar has been getting tighter the closer we get to Tamaranth, or at least it feels that way to me, and now as the ship is moving through the Devil’s Grip and only a few days away it’s getting even worse. My fur is growing back with a vengeance now and it itches like crazy. I’m restless and edgy and I can’t sleep, unless I’m with Mircada, and I haven’t seen her now for the last two days and I’ve gotten no answer from the couriers I’ve sent. Another Akarii history lecture this morning with Semper, while I’ve grown to like the guy, hasn’t doing anything to help my mood. My head throbs from the lack of aether. I could use a good espresso, only the beans don’t grow off Earth, and the best we’ve got is some black tea that tastes like water. (I've made a note about a future import business here, by the way.)

  The first guy is tall and thin, like someone grabbed hold and stretched him. His face is pockmarked from acne, his hair is slicked back with grease, and he’s holding a mech-rolled cigar. While he’s dressed like an Earth gangster in the impeccable suit and the fedora, he’s clearly Akarii. He’s got the dark skin and eyes, the Karandelh accent that makes his affected speech sound strange. He’s also wearing a loud, checkered fleece vest that one of Capone’s actual men wouldn’t be caught dead in.

  “Yo, Beast,” he says, gesturing a lot with his hands. “We represent a very important man. We would like to discuss a certain investment he has made in you.

  “Yeah,” says the second guy, puffing out his chest and trying to look tough. This one is short and round, with a bulbous nose off center in his fat face and the smallest ears I’ve seen on a human. There’s a ridiculous feather in his fedora, a big colorful one like peacock’s or a gaitherbird’s. Leave it to an Akarii to add a feather to any outfit. “We would like to understand your plans to make good on this investment, see?”

  “That’s right,” says the first guy, waving the cigar around in the air. I’m not sure he knows what he’s supposed to do with it. “You have to admit it’s looking a little dicey that you’re gonna be able to deliver the goods the way you’ve promised to, see?”

  I study both of them. “What makes you say that?” I take a step closer, so I’m in the tall guy’s face. I show him my big, tooth-filled smile.

  “Well,” they exchange looks. “Mr. Capone says he’s getting a little nervous, see,” the tall guy continues. “He wants to speed up delivery, and we got a new place for you to make the drop.”

  “Mr. Capone has expressed his nervousness with you directly, has he.”

  “Um, yeah,” says the second guy. “Through the Buhr.”

  “Through the Buhr.”

  “You know, those little barrel guys? His guys got one, we got one, and they talk.”

  “Did the Buhr sell you those clothes, as well?” They exchange more looks, and I can see I’m right. The clothes probably came with a bunch of old gangster movies, too. The tall guy is starting to sweat, and he takes a step backwards.

  Were they really on Capone’s payroll? Hard to tell. They could be, but I'm guessing the Buhr set them up.

  “Do you know what the item is?” I ask.

  The two of them nod, solemnly. “It’s very valuable,” says the tall guy, gesturing with the cigar.

  “Very,” the round guy echoes.

  “So valuable, we probably shouldn’t be discussing it here!” The tall guy looks around the observation platform.

  I look around, too. There’s no one here except for Semper, and he’s over by the stairs. He raises an eyebrow, and I roll my eyes at him.

  “I’ve got it with me now,” I say. I pat the pocket of the robe I’m wearing. Outside, I can see the podships are in the air now, practicing maneuvers.

  The tall guy’s eyes go wide. “Really? We can deliver this thing for you, you know. To Mr. Capone.”

  “We could, easy.”

  I nod. “I’d appreciate that, boys, I would. But I think we better stick with the original plan.” I clap the tall one on the shoulder, almost knocking him over. “I’ll contact Mr. Capone directly when we get to Tamaranth, ok? You tell him not to worry, that we’re just a little delayed by this war thing.”

  They look comically disappointed. Surely even the Buhr can do better than this? “But, there’s a new drop…” says the round guy, his feather drooping.

  “You just let him know,” I say. I give them one of my teethy grins.

  “Is there a problem here?” Semper has come up behind the men with two burly mages, hands on their knives. The two startle, and the round one loses his fedora.

  “No,” I say. “These gentlemen were just leaving.”

  “Yeah,” says the tall guy, in a surly voice. “Leaving.” He turns to me. “But we’ll be back in touch, Beast, you understand?”

  “I’ll look forward to that,” I tell him. They slink off, followed by the two mages.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Semper says. “I don’t know how they got up here. Unfinished business?”

  I shake my head. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Nadrune can fix that for you, you realize. ”

  “Good to know.”

  Semper pulls out a chair, and I worry he’s going to launch into another history lesson, but he doesn’t. We open the glass dome to the sea air, and sit and watch the podships fly. I’m forced to admit, grudgingly, that the Tel Kharan are very good flyers, and do a great job holding their crafts together in tight formation despite the obvious differences in the ships themselves. They fly mock strafing runs low over the fleet, and launch bombing runs at some of the standing rocks and isolated stretches of reef that dot the sea in this stretch of water. They bank and turn well as a group, break formation and regroup well, and they hold a relatively steady line while flying low over the water. Two of the ships today are basic transports, and tend to lag behind the rest. One of the sleeker ships has trouble keeping level and tends to want to roll to starboard, though I’m wondering if that’s an issue with the pilot and crew versus the actual ship.

  And one ship—our ship—tends to outpace the others when the pilot isn’t being careful to keep it in check. I can’t say that bothers me. Ours is the sleekest and fastest of the group, and the way it cuts deftly through the air on long, sweeping turns, scattering the light of the sun across the water takes my breath away.

  The pilot is clearly enjoying herself. Their turns are crisp, their dives swift and deep, and they slalom precisely through the sea rocks, raining down fire onto them as they pass, while the other vessels fly cover overtop. I count nine mages locked into the external netting, and can’t help but grin when, on a sharp turn, all of them lose their bowler hats.

  The mages all seem well-trained. I can’t see how Tamaranth has much of a chance, and that’s depressing. They have no podships, only the city guard riding ancient (and erratic) grohvers. They have few mages near the caliber of Bakron’s marines, and not much weaponry. They’d need other families to come to their aid—and I bet the Chancellor is even now working to make that happen, but I don't have any idea if it will help. They certainly hadn’t helped the city out lately—most of the public areas are falling apart, and the residential districts have mostly closed their gates and fend for their own. Most of the Warrens are filled up with starving people, struggling to figure out how to put s
ome food on their table.

  But for all of its faults, Tamaranth is my home. It has some magnificent art and architecture, and a great diversity of cultures that you don’t find in other cities in Kiryth. You know by now I’m no expert on history, but Tamaranth is where seven great walking cities came to rest, and you can still see the mix of that today. It’s gritty and dirty and poor and wonderful, and I’d hate to see all of that plowed under by Nadrune and her marines.

  Semper calls for tea. As we’re drinking it, something against the horizon catches my eye. All of that day, the city-ship has moved slowly through this section of the sea, that's filled with rocks and reefs. Some of the rocks lurk just beneath the surface. Others twist into the air like large, bird-splattered skyscrapers, reaching up as high the observation platform, and sometimes higher. Some say that all of the rocks here are the remnants of an ancient moon, long ago wrecked and fallen. The ocean, churned by all of our moons, rushes fast through the canyons, backing and filling and threatening to grab and break the smaller ships of the fleet. Many ships dodge this area and go around, but they have to go off-lei to do it, but I’m guessing that’d be even more work for a fleet this size.

  The pilots move carefully. Horned moose-seal and eerily humanoid merbitches hoot and howl up at the ships as we pass.

  But the spire that stands up on the horizon, silhouetted against the rising retrograde moon, stands out to me. It’s taller than any other spire I’ve seen, and the shape of it against that moon’s blue glow, like a three-fingered hand bent back at an angle, looks exactly like the glyph Aleya, one of the first Sartosh ever taught me.

  Aleya represents the aspect of hidden, secret strength. It’s a glyph that goes to the heart of Bakarh teaching.

  “Can you see that?” I say to Semper. “That strange rock at the horizon?”

  Semper shades his eyes and squints. “I’m afraid I don’t,” he says. “Too much time studying old manuscripts, I guess.”