The Last Lies of Ardor Benn

by Tyler Whitesides

  The dying woman clicked back the hammer, turning the barrel toward Quarrah. There was a puff of smoke and a loud crack. Quarrah flinched, but the shot had come from the Reggie behind her. Cinza Ortemion fell backward with a hole in her chest. Her gun went skyward, lifeless finger pulling the trigger.

  Then everything was still.

  Ard reached out for Quarrah’s hand and she felt him trembling. She was having a hard time comprehending what had just happened. For some strange reason, the next lines from the blazing song cycle were stuck in her head.

  He looked at me helplessly, big eyes imploring,

  And I thought his life looked pathetic and boring.

  The man standing beside her was certainly neither. She clung to his hand, wondering how she had gotten here again. Wondering why she was still beside him. Then someone shouted a warning and all eyes turned upward.

  The Trans-Island Carriage was coming down.

  The thick rope that was supposed to be keeping it tethered had gone slack and the whole thing was dropping steadily toward the stage.

  “Sparks.” Ard released her hand, eyes to the sky.

  Quarrah saw what Cinza’s final shot had done. The ball had struck one of the curved wooden slats that formed the balloon’s frame. It had splintered, rending a long tear in the side of the sailcloth.

  “Keep it up!” Ard bellowed, sprinting across the stage. Quarrah took off after him, ducking around the acoustic shell to the area where the flying carriage was tethered.

  San was standing as still as a statue, the limp rope in his hands, a coil of it at his feet. Around him, the Regulators were in full panic, some of them hopelessly hurling clay pots of Heat Grit at the falling balloon.

  “We’ve got to keep her up!” Ard screamed.

  “There’s nothing…” San muttered, staring upward. “We can’t do anything for her, sir! She’s coming down.”

  “The trees…” Quarrah muttered, an idea coming to her. She raced to San, ripping the rope from his shocked hands without an explanation. Throwing it over one shoulder, she sprinted in the direction of the tall trees that bordered the area like walls of shadow.

  Ard was at her side in a heartbeat, dragging against the weight of the settling balloon. In moments, Evetherey’s basket caught the treetop and nestled out of sight into the darkness of the upper branches, the sailcloth balloon collapsing over the top. Quarrah and Ard eased off the rope, hoping the tree would hold the basket’s precious life-saving cargo.

  “I’m guessing you didn’t finish the song?” Raek’s voice cut through the darkness. Quarrah turned to see his glowing eyes drawing toward them at a run.

  “She’s dropped too far,” Ard cried. “The outer edge of the Char won’t be protected. Flames! We’re lost, Raek!”

  “Not yet.” The Glassmind slid to a halt in the mud, his eyes flashing upward at the tree. “Every foot counts, and she’s not on the ground. The population is most dense in front of the stage, and the basket is secure at a height of fifty-three feet. Considering the maximum range of her absorption at three hundred feet, we’re looking at an eighty-two percent decrease…” He trailed off, sprinting away from them.

  “Where are you going?” Ard shouted. “We need to get her back up there!”

  “Too late for that,” replied Raek’s booming voice. “The Moon has touched too much of the Char now. Redeye line is much closer. It’s time to cut our losses and put up a new Barrier.”

  Quarrah felt her stomach sink. A single shot fired in senseless revenge had reduced humanity’s sole chance at survival from a square mile to… what? Mere yards?

  “Well,” Ard said with a weary sigh. “I guess this means you don’t have to sing that stupid song.”

  Quarrah scoffed at how trivial it all sounded now. What would the morning bring? The world wouldn’t know for sure about the spread of Moonsickness until the symptoms started showing up. That gave people most of tomorrow to worry and stress.

  Then their voices would be silenced.

  Then their sight would fade.

  Then the world would tear itself apart in a mindless rage.

  When the music swells around me, I am nearly deafened by the choices I’ve made.

  CHAPTER

  38

  Afternoon sunlight angled through the tavern’s broken window, spilling across empty tables and overturned chairs. It was the quiet that Quarrah found most unnerving—an eerie silence that pervaded places that should have been teaming with liveliness.

  She squeezed through the open door, a pot of protective Barrier Grit clutched in one hand. The place smelled of mold and spilled ale, and a dozen rats scurried away at her arrival.

  A mere three days since the Moon Passing and Quarrah Khai could clearly see that the world was dying. Her boots crunched over broken glass as she crept for the stairs. This place had been ransacked, just like the rest of what she’d seen in the Northern Quarter. Not by Bloodeyes; they weren’t ripe yet. This place had been torn apart by desperate people. What could they have possibly wanted? Ashings? Ale? Neither would protect them from what had already infected their bodies.

  She rounded the bar, a cloud of flies buzzing up from a corpse on the ground. Quarrah drew back, surprised to recognize the man in the bloodstained apron. Folks at the tavern had called him Jingles, probably for the large ring of keys he often wore. The bartender’s throat was slit and his right hand still clutched a spent Singler. Jingle’s glazed eyes were fixed open in a death stare, and Quarrah could tell by the whites that he had been killed before the second phase of Moonsickness had taken him.

  Feeling her stomach churn, Quarrah moved up the stairs toward the third floor. Beripent wore the consequences of the Moon Passing on its damp sleeve, the city so quickly devolved into a cesspool of lawless fear. From what she’d seen since leaving the Char on her secret mission, slums stood abandoned while wealthy neighborhoods like the Northern Quarter were completely pilfered. Outside, bodies littered the streets, murdered like Jingles without so much as a scream to offer.

  Sliding a key from her pocket, she headed down the hallway. Numbered doors lined both sides, leading to simple, single-room apartments. Most were broken open, some of the doors knocked completely to the floor.

  The hallway came to a T and she rounded the corner, nearly crashing into a man who stood with a broken board tucked under one arm.

  “Sparks!” She reared back, raising her Grit pot. The man also readied for action, bringing up the wooden slat like a club. They faced off for just a moment, the man’s swollen eyes a pinkish hue as he squinted against his fading vision.

  Quarrah recognized him, too. Didn’t know his name, but she’d seen him plenty of times on her way to and from her apartment here.

  He lowered the board, taking a curious step toward her. The man tried to say something, but not a sound escaped. He tried again, mouthing the words with more emphasis so she could read his lips.

  You speak? There was hope in his sickened gaze.

  Quarrah shook her head, stepping sideways to move around him. The man blocked her, holding the board in front of him like a shield. His reddening eyes were fixed on hers, a desperation shining through.

  Help. Help us!

  He might have said more, but Quarrah looked away so she wouldn’t see his lips moving. The door behind him cracked open and a woman’s face peered out. Ragged, Moonsick. She rapped softly on the doorframe to get the man’s attention.

  He spun, gesturing to Quarrah and pointing at his eyes. He mouthed something more. A child’s face appeared in the open door. A little girl of maybe five years, who looked even farther along in the Moonsickness than the adults. She was holding a handful of nails and a hammer, offering them to the man.

  She can help us, Quarrah saw the man mouth to the others in the room.

  “No.” Quarrah decided to break her silence. “There’s nothing I can do for any of you.” Her words sounded strange in the hollow corridor, and the woman shuddered at the sound. “I’m sorry.”
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  Are there more of you? the man mouthed.

  Quarrah thought of that recent night, Evetherey’s perch crash-landing in a tree top, silhouetted by the Red Moon.

  Eight thousand four hundred and forty-eight survivors.

  There should have been ten times that number, but Elbrig and Cinza had crippled humanity with their oath of vengeance.

  “Not enough,” Quarrah answered the man.

  He nodded in solemn understanding, tears welling in his rotting eyes. Then he held up the board and mimed an action toward the apartment door.

  “It’s a good idea.” Quarrah found it surprisingly easy to lie. What good would it do to barricade his door against the inevitable violence ahead, when that same violence would soon awaken within his own family?

  In a rush of pity, Quarrah reached out and offered him the clay pot. “Barrier Grit,” she said. “It’ll only last ten minutes, but…”

  The man accepted it, his quivering lips mouthing a sincere thank you.

  She stepped past him, wishing she could have done more. There were additional Grit pots on her belt, but nothing would actually save this family.

  Quarrah reached her room at the end of the hallway. As it turned out, there was no need for her key. The lock was broken and the door was ajar like all the others. She pushed it a few more inches, slipping inside.

  Of the many apartments Quarrah kept across the city, she had always liked the location of this one. The respectable neighborhood meant she had never worried as much about the things she’d stashed here. Now the bureau in the corner was toppled and ransacked, even the mattress torn open and slid off its frame.

  Amateur hiding spots, Quarrah thought, flipping back the rug and taking a knee on the wooden floor. Poking her finger through a knothole in one board, she pried it up with ease, revealing the things she’d hidden between the floor joists.

  A sack of a hundred Ashings, a diamond ring, a ruby broach…

  Noises from the street outside brought her to her feet. The glass window was smashed, white bird droppings spattered across the sill and floor, but the view was still the same.

  From the height of the third floor, she could see across the broad intersection of five major roads below. Normally, the confluence was bustling with carriages and pedestrians at nearly all hours of the day and night. The usual bustle of business might have been lacking today, but the intersection was not empty.

  Glassminds were coming down Pole Avenue. At least half a dozen of them, the afternoon sunlight glinting on their glass skulls. Behind them marched a massive group of citizens, several hundred strong, their faces weary but eager.

  Even from this distance, Quarrah could hear the words the Glassminds were calling, their voices sounding in an unnerving unison, like a choral recitation.

  “Come unto the Homeland! Your salvation awaits you with a mind of clarity and a body perfected. Do not fear us, but rather join us. Your willingness is the cure you so desperately seek.”

  She’d seen a similar gathering at the edge of the Central Quarter this morning. That mass transformation had resulted in at least another hundred Glassminds, and a heap of dead ones whose minds did not live up to Garifus’s standards.

  Quarrah imagined that these kinds of gatherings were happening all over the Greater Chain. The Glassminds rounded people up with a great deal of efficiency, but the clock was ticking, even for them. Once the people hit the third phase of Moonsickness, their minds would be too far gone to undergo the transformation. That meant the Glassminds would reach their maximum population in the next three or four days. After that, Garifus’s only concern would be the paltry clump of human survivors.

  “Stand close together!” called the Glassminds in the intersection below. “You shall all receive the cure at once.”

  Everyone at once? Quarrah studied the crowd more closely. There had to be close to four hundred speechless followers down there! The implication was terrifying. She knew that Garifus relied on a majority mindset to keep control of his hive. He wouldn’t risk transforming more people than there were faithful Glassminds for fear of tipping the balance. Even with this method, their numbers would grow exponentially. Four hundred would become eight hundred, would become sixteen hundred…

  Telepathically, they could communicate their exact numbers across any distance, maintaining the integrity of the group while scouring every inch of the Greater Chain.

  Directly below, Quarrah saw three figures exiting her building. It was the family from down the hall, and the man was waving his arms as if begging the Glassminds to wait for them.

  In Quarrah’s limited interactions with them, they had always seemed like respectable people, not prone to extremes or radicalism. She knew they were simply desperate for a cure, and what harm was there in trying the transformation, since they would soon lose their minds to Moonsickness anyway? Of course, Garifus and his team would have a peek into their thoughts and memories first to see if—

  “Oh, flames,” Quarrah whispered, suddenly realizing what this could mean. The Glassminds wouldn’t have to pry very deep to see that the family had just spoken with her. Spoken. They would know she was close by, and they’d want to know how she’d escaped the Moon’s rays.

  Quarrah backed away from the window, her mind already tracing through the fastest route to exit on the opposite side of the tavern. Her foot caught on the edge of the rug and she glanced down at her concealed treasures.

  Was this all she had to show for her life? Expensive jewelry and money? It suddenly seemed almost comical in its unimportance and she stepped over the stash. She hadn’t really come into the city to gather these treasures anyway. What did they matter?

  She had come to spy. Because sitting inside their bubble of safety in the Char was driving her mad. Because she couldn’t stand to wait and wonder about the fate of the outside world.

  Because sneaking around Beripent felt right when nothing else in the world did.

  Through the window, red lights caught her eye in the intersection below. The skulls of the Glassminds were glowing, preparing for swift and merciless assessment of those who were about to transform. It was happening so quickly. On the road, hundreds of civilians of all ages and sizes were literally crawling out of their skin, emerging as something new. But Quarrah couldn’t afford to wait around and see how many of them survived Centrum’s judgment.

  She turned, sprinting out the open door and down the hallway. Past the partially barricaded door of the family that had just turned themselves over to a different fate. Past the corpse of the bartender and out the back door.

  She was a long ways from the Char, but she would reach it well before sundown if she didn’t run into trouble. Raek would let her through the Barrier, just as he’d let her out earlier that morning.

  But Quarrah would have to be extra careful to avoid any Glassminds. If that man, woman, or little girl had joined their ranks, Quarrah’s face would be shared among every connected mind in the city. And if they caught her, they might uncover details about the survivors… about Evetherey.

  Things out here were every bit as bad as she’d imagined. And it was only a matter of time—probably short—before the Glassminds turned their attention to the Char.

  What chance did eight thousand four hundred and forty-eight frightened humans have against an unstoppable force like that?

  “Of course we’ve got a chance!” Ard slammed his hand on the table. “It’s not over until it’s over. And it’s not over.”

  He didn’t appreciate the glum looks that surrounded their makeshift council table. Only five of the seven council members had survived the rearrangement of Raek’s Barrier wall when Evetherey had crash-landed. Apparently, Lady Volen of Espar and the aged Lord Ment of Strind had pitched their royal camps farther from Oriar’s Square and hadn’t joined the others for the concert.

  By now, Ard imagined that they either had undergone the transformation into Glassminds, or were shredding their fingers to the bone in a senseless desire to
tear apart any manmade structure in Beripent. By the sound of Quarrah’s report, most of the city had been ransacked before the Bloodeyes had even gotten ripe in the sickness. Now it had been almost a week since the Passing, and things were sure to be downright apocalyptic outside the little Barrier where the eight thousand survivors huddled.

  Queen Abeth Ostel Agaul sighed deeply, rubbing her forehead. Her hair was down and her face untouched by makeup. She had exchanged her gown for a pair of sensible trousers and a loose-fitting blouse, which was now smudged with soot from their campfires.

  Ard thought she looked more war general than queen. Fitting, since most of the commanding officers of the Regulation had been cut off in the realignment. Now Abeth had given up her palace for this single-story historic site, one of the only Char ruins with something that resembled a roof overhead.

  “We can’t keep saying we’ll put up a fight,” said the queen. “We need actionable strategies. Any day now, the Bloodeyes will be at our border.”

  “It’s not the Bloodeyes we should be worried about,” said Raek. “They’ll never get through the Barrier wall.”

  Their defenses hadn’t dropped in a week. Even now, Evetherey was outside, taking her turn to maintain the small dome of Barrier Grit that surrounded the last of humanity.

  “It’s the Glassminds that should scare your pants off,” Raek finished.

  “I’m not so sure,” said Lord Blindle. “It’s been six days and we haven’t seen a single one of them! We have to consider the possibility that the Glassminds are simply not interested in us.”

  “Don’t fool yourself,” Ard said. “Garifus Floc won’t stop until his Glassminds have sole occupancy of this world.”

  “Then why haven’t they come yet?” barked Blindle.