The Fire Eye Chosen_Sequel to The Fire Eye Refugee

by Samuel Gately

  Jenna had her hand on Kay’s hood. Its weight was reassuring, as Yamar’s had been below. But where Yamar had been pure steadiness, fearless even with enemies ahead and behind them, Kay could feel Jenna’s fear through the tremble in her hand. “How are you holding up, Jenna?” she asked.

  There was a pause before the girl answered. “I’m terrified.”

  Kay turned, taking Jenna’s hand from her hood and drawing her face-to-face. “I didn’t bring you along to scare you. And not to impress you. I’m going to need you.”

  The flame in Kay’s hand danced in the air between them. Jenna glanced at it, swallowing hard, and asked, “What could you need from me?”

  “It’s okay to be afraid. For now, your only job is to stay close. Stay safe. As for what I need from you, I’ll tell you when the time is right. I wish I didn’t have to expose you to more danger after all you’ve been through. But I think you’re the only one who can save them.”

  Kay didn’t answer the questioning look in Jenna’s frightened eyes. She just turned again and pressed forward, taking the lead from Joah. As she slipped past him, Joah slid his hand back, catching Jenna’s and pulling her close to him. Together they followed Kay through the black.

  At the front of their small group, Kay shifted the smoke, making a tunnel before them. She walked within it as it carved its way through mile after mile of smoke. They had half a city to cross and no time to waste. She wondered how many hearts beat in the darkness, just inches or feet away from their passage. They encountered no one. They could have been on another world, the line of fire leading them anywhere.

  Eventually, Kay began seeing black snakes in the smoke around them. This time they were of no bother to her. They fled the light as they would flee her, squealing and squirming away into the cracks, if she turned their way. And their dark lord, Jug-Desh, if he were to be on his own hunt through the smoke-filled streets, he would steer far clear of their group. He hunts the children, feasting on the helpless who have no one to protect them. Kay had no need of protection. The Fire Eye was above and her spark was lit. If anything in the streets was to be feared, it was her. The line called them towards Devero Tower.

  …

  The path to Devero Tower ran straight along Merchant’s Run, a major artery through Celest’s highest neighborhoods. The smoke dampened the sounds of their boots on the stones as they followed the line of flame along the street. Once a horse ran past them, panicked in the unnatural dark. Kay had tensed at the clatter of hooves, no idea how to turn it if it barreled into them. There was a crash followed by silence. She debated searching for the poor creature, seeing if it needed help, but there was no time. Jyurik had set his plan in motion before the first wisp of smoke came to rest on the streets. He had wound up the pieces like clockwork. They would not wait for a Dynasty fire. They had likely already started their own.

  Kay began a slow uphill climb, a sign that they were nearing Devero’s base. Joah had been silent ever since the horse had passed by, but he spoke in a low voice. “What are we getting into?”

  Kay stopped to catch her breath for a moment before pressing forward, her flame held high. “They’ll have drawn everyone up above the smoke. A lot of the Atoned won’t be at the tower, maybe only a handful. Jyurik will have needed most of them to set the waterfalls in motion. Any loyal to him will probably be clear of the building, but he’ll have left some below in the darkness with the intent of starting a fire. Assuming we can stop that, or at least get past it, there will be no shortage of Acolytes in the upper floors, but no telling how much of a problem they’ll be. Most will be too drunk or drugged out to do anything. The Devero family may be there too, and whatever loyalists and security they have. I don’t know what kind of relationship they have with the Gyudi, but we have to assume they’ll defend them. And that leaves the Gyudi themselves.” Kay recalled the ease with which Sella had taken down Yamar, the look of eagerness on Olive’s face at the prospect of facing a trained Wrang soldier in combat. “That’s it, assuming the tower still stands.”

  “Is that all?” Joah muttered under his breath. “And we didn’t bring Yamar because…?”

  “You saw him on the steps. He was dosed with shroud. He’s a mess.”

  “Hell of a time to start a habit.”

  “He did well. Saved my life. And told me he loved me.” Kay could see an orange glow growing through the smoke ahead of them.

  “You needed him to tell you that?” Joah asked.

  She stopped and turned back to look at him. “What, you knew?” She was met with silence.

  Kay continued forward. The orange glow was strengthening, bleeding through even the black of the smoke. She let the line of fire along the ground collapse and dissipate as she released her spark. Before them, fighting through the smoke, she could see a curved ring of fire, floating high above the city streets. One whose origin was not her. As they drew closer, she saw an entire floor of Devero Tower was already in flames. They flickered out of the windows, hungrily licking, spreading upwards.

  “I knew we were late.” Kay began running.

  Chapter 35. Ring of Fire

  The entryway to Devero Tower was built like the Palace’s, wide stairs leading to an intimidatingly massive lobby just past the open doors. The lobby would have been impressive if it weren’t filled with the black smoke that smothered the entire city. The smoke was thinner inside, perhaps due to the airy composition of the structure. The orange glow of the fire above cast its light on the shifting columns of smoke.

  Devero was shaped something like a gin bottle, a thick core thinning as it extended towards the heights of Celest. The center of the tower was hollow, functioning as an extended skylight or chimney. Empty balconies wrapped both the interior and exterior, there to serve the Gol hunger for positions of elevation.

  As she looked across the lobby, a large hole in its center, Kay realized she was standing on top of the enormous dome where the Gyudi held court. It had sloped upwards towards the center of the ground-level floor where the light of the Fire Eye streamed in. Whatever its original purpose had been, it had served as the staging grounds for a rebellion. She imagined it now, deserted below her, littered in abandoned masks and robes, blood and bodies. The Gyudi had taken the main stage for the Night of Centuries.

  Kay led Joah and Jenna to a winding staircase and began climbing. The fires were on maybe the fifth floor. There was no activity. The smoky hive appeared deserted. She could only imagine the chaos above the flames.

  When they reached the level of the fire, Kay was greeted by fierce flames on the landing. She motioned Joah and Jenna behind her and stepped forward, pushing the fire back. It was less pliable than the smoke. It fought her, but there was enough give to allow them to cross the landing and enter the outer hall, which wrapped around the exterior of the tower. In the middle of the hallway floor, there was a thick, black line of sticky fuel, much like what she’d seen in the Palace library. The fire fed on it. It went on into the distance, then looped back behind them, forming a ring around the entire tower. She guessed the Atoned loyal to Jyurik had waited until everyone else had ascended, then spread the accelerant. Then they’d waited in the dark to strike a match.

  The fire had not yet fully transferred to the structure. It was still clinging to the black line as the heat grew. There may still be time. Kay studied the fiery black line, feeling the heat radiating from it. She drew on her spark and pulled the flames up, separating it from its fuel. Her efforts were met with hiss and crackle, the flame fighting her like a living thing. She tossed it to the side, where it dispersed. Breaking the connection wasn’t easy, but it was enough.

  She scuffed the line with a boot. The fire might return. To do a proper job she’d need her pearl ash. Still, she began walking the black line, tossing flames off it as she went, leaving an angry but subdued smolder in her wake.

  There were other flames around Kay pressing in and out, but they all tied back to the black line. It was the core, the lifeline of the f
ire that would take down Devero Tower. Kay carried forward, Joah and Jenna in her wake. They had nearly completed the circuit when the fire’s defenders attacked.

  Seeing something coming toward her through the smoke and fire, Kay felt the same disorientation she’d felt when first approached by an Atoned with their strange, weaving motion, back in the Headwaters neighborhood a lifetime ago. The mask seemed to float in the air, one eye peeking out, the other a thing of fire. The Atoned disappeared and reappeared in flashes of black and orange, his uniform a sort of camouflage against the backdrop of smoke and flame.

  There was no mistaking the wide knife held before him. Kay drew a line of fire upwards and sent it towards him in a blast. The Atoned pushed through it, no reaction to the attack. Kay swatted the knife away with her baton and followed with a hard strike along his jaw. He went down, but another was moving towards her from behind him. Joah bumped into Kay, locked in his own struggle to her right. He had a knife raised, his other arm pulling Jenna between them.

  Kay watched her attacker closing in, then snapped her fingers. A flame popped just in front of the eyehole of his mask. She could use her spark for distraction even if it wasn’t strong enough to truly harm her foes. As he recoiled, she leapt forward and drove the short end of her baton into his ribs. The Atoned doubled over with a breathless gasp, and she shoved his coiled body into the hungry flames which lingered along the outer wall. She ignored the screams to turn to Joah, who was pulling his knife from the body of his Atoned.

  “Check his neck,” Kay said calmly when no others materialized from the murk. “If we have to kill Marlo, we have to kill Marlo. There are others we’re here for. But only if we have to.”

  Joah looked. Nothing. Kay checked first the unconscious Atoned before her and then, less enthusiastically, shifted her eyes over to the burning one at the wall. His shrieks had silenced, but he still thrashed as the fire ate away at his clothing.

  “The fire is coming,” the Atoned said, pushing the words through his mask. Kay pulled it off his face. He was young, impossibly young. The type Kay should be protecting rather than killing. The kind that shouldn’t be summoning fire and darkness to rain down on innocents.

  She drew the fire off of him and knelt at his side. His body was blistered and smoking. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner.” She pulled the neck of his scorched black clothing down. There was no mark.

  The youth shivered, looking at her with his only remaining eye. The blisters were crawling up over his face. Kay had seen it before, too many times. He wouldn’t last much longer. “Did I serve well?” he asked in a broken voice. “The master told us not to be afraid.”

  Kay’s jaw was clenched tight. How was she supposed to answer that? He’d come seeking guidance and been set on a course where success was mass murder and failure was death. Now just another body to be laid at the feet of Jyurik and the Gyudi Dynasty, gathered and sacrificed for the sake of their egos.

  Kay ignored the question and stood. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 36. Through the Crowd

  Any concerns about resistance between the flames and the Gyudi seemed laughable as Kay led her small group past room after room of passed out Chosen. The party had started early for the Acolytes and Atoned alike and ripped through the upper floors of Devero with the efficiency and hunger of a fire. The smell of crystal shroud was pervasive, its residue everywhere, pipes carelessly tossed among bottles of spent alcohol. The bodies left in its wake breathed and moaned, but none raised a hand to stop them. Kay suspected the flames that had nearly taken the tower would have been beneath their notice. The Chosen had collectively found their own way to blind themselves to where they were, to the place their choices had led them.

  They all would have died right here if the fire had been left unchecked. Forgotten by their masters above. And Kay had no doubt that was where the Gyudi would be. At the highest point of Devero Tower. They would be on the Halo Balcony. The rest of the Chosen had taken themselves out of the Night of Centuries. That felt right to Kay. The field was narrowing.

  As they continued upwards in ever-tightening spirals, a glance over the interior balcony’s edge showed the blackness pooled below them. The stairs were lit by a series of oil lamps which threw out a stable, yellow light, a welcome contrast to the flickering of orange flame on black smoke below the darkness.

  Kay’s baton was drawn. She was tensed, readying herself for shouts of alarm. Joah was next to her with a knife in each hand, Jenna just behind them. The stairs were silent aside from the gentle weeping of a woman in one of the nearby chambers.

  The final set of stairs was thin, almost delicate. It had no railings and the group had to proceed in single file. It was dark, but Kay refrained from summoning a flame to light their way and betray their approach to anyone ahead. Above her, through the opening at the top of the stairs, she could see the orange light of the Fire Eye.

  When she stepped through the opening and out onto the roof of Devero Tower, Gyudi defenses came at her. Two Atoned closed in, and Kay had to move quickly towards them to give Joah the space to fall in beside her. She felt a surge of strength and confidence as the light of the Fire Eye touched her. She threw her baton at the closest attacker and sprinted after it. The distracted Atoned wasn’t ready and she landed a hard punch on his jaw, like the one that had felled Jyurik. The Atoned was knocked back by the force of the blow. The other leaned in for an attack, but left himself open. Joah slid in with a knife, burying it in his chest.

  Kay withheld a withering look for Joah, then pointedly checked the neck of the Atoned she’d rendered unconscious. Joah gave an apologetic mutter and checked the body he’d left behind.

  Kay glanced up. The three Gyudi were on the raised Halo Balcony, high above Kay, looking down on her as they had from their raised thrones. The same positions, Sella in the center, Olive to her left, Daemon on her right. Each was formally cloaked with elaborate headdresses in place. Kay could see nothing beyond their black outline, a complex silhouette against the backdrop of the Fire Eye. Ravens on a branch waiting for their prey. There was a long, silent moment, then Sella gave a disdainful sniff. As one, they turned and walked away, back to the far end of the Halo and temporarily out of sight.

  Kay stood atop a circular space, perhaps twenty paces across. It was smooth and level, a weathered stone. They had come through a door which opened out onto the roof. Kay turned, noting the four sets of thin, curved stairs, stretching out and up, over the blackness below. As they curved, they joined a wide, round track elevated above the roof. The Halo Balcony, where the Gyudi were waiting. Where they’d passed their evening watching for a fire that would never come.

  There was a moan from the other side of the doorway. Kay cautiously stepped around, feeling the press of the rising wind. Three men and a woman were chained together, clustered tightly, arms wrapped around one another. One looked up, an older man in expensive robes, his pleading eyes locking on Kay. “Let us go. I’ll give you whatever you want. Just let us go.”

  Kay guessed she was talking to what remained of the Devero family. “Alliance didn’t work out so well, did it? Keep quiet and you’ll live to see the morning.” She turned away from them and drew Joah and Jenna to her.

  “Jenna, you’ve been very brave to come this far. Now Joah and I are going up there,” Kay indicated the wide track above them, “and I need you to wait right here.”

  The fear was written all over Jenna’s face, and she gripped Kay’s wrist tightly. “Do you have to?”

  “Yes. I don’t know what they’ll do once they accept the idea that the Palace will be standing in the morning. There are too many lives below to leave in their hands. Besides,” she shot a glance at Joah, “they may not have given the direct order, but they set this chain of events in motion.”

  “Ewan should be here,” Joah said, his eyes dark. “Three on three would have been more appropriate.”

  “I know, but he’s not.” Kay could feel rage bubbling up inside of her. Ther
e would be one more thing to do after this. “Jenna, if we aren’t the ones who come down from there alive, I want you to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

  Jenna gave a nod, her face set, only the slightest tremble betraying her fears. Kay turned to the stairs, Joah by her side.

  Chapter 37. The Halo Balcony

  It felt as if Kay floated up the balcony stairs, the hum of the Fire Eye strong in her head, her rage pounding in her heart. The track at the top was circular, only about eight paces across. The opening in the center was slightly wider than the rooftop below. No railings on the interior or exterior edges. Given that the track was wide enough that two could surround one, Joah was right. This would be tricky for two against three.

  The Gyudi were waiting at the side of the track, the end which looked out over the distant, brightly-lit Palace. Everything else was covered in darkness. It was as though all of Celest had vanished, swallowed up by this black ocean. The stage had narrowed, leaving five to resolve the fate of everyone in the tower, maybe everyone in Celest.

  Joah’s steps on the track rang out, clear and loud, next to Kay. They reminded her she wasn’t alone, just as Yamar’s hand on her hood had in the tunnels. She was lucky to have Joah by her side. He could have been a Wrang, though perhaps he was stronger because he wasn’t. The Wrang carried the weight of the Dynasty behind him. Joah had made his mark with no such support. He’d chased leads into the darkest alleys, through the deepest nights, and always come out alive.

  Kay herself felt divided. A part of her was at its height, under the open Fire Eye, her spark singing with power. Another part shrank before the Gyudi Dynasty. She’d been brought to them weak and helpless, a little mouse under the withering gaze of a branchful of ravens, and part of her would always feel that helplessness. She was a child who didn’t belong, sniveling as she held her broken arm and prayed for mercy from the bigger kids.