"This way." The butterfly flitted off down the street—thankfully away from the sound of running feet.
"So now I am the thief he accused me of being," panted Jordan. "He deserves it though, the bastard."
"What's going on?" They entered another alley, this one shadowed by the high walls of buildings to either side.
"There! They went down that alley!"
It was too dark here to see anything. Jordan closed his eyes and looked with his other sight. "This way." He followed Ka to a stable door; inside he could see the outlines of two sleeping horses.
"Ka, speak to the horses. I want them awake and ready to go with us if you can do that."
"I have no power to compel. But I can present you to them as a Wind, if that is your desire."
"Yes!"
Torches appeared at the mouth of the alley. Jordan made these explode as well, and their pursuers retreated in dismay. Jordan proceeded to saddle the sleepy horses in complete darkness, relying on touch and the ghost-light of his mechal vision. The horses were pliant and appeared unsurprised at this intrusion.
Tamsin had craned her neck out the door to watch the alley mouth; as he was cinching the second horse she said, "They're waking the people in the houses. This house too. I think they know what we're doing. Smelled the horses, maybe."
"Well, we're ready. Come on." He led the horses outside.
"But where are we going? What about your plan to visit the desal in the bay?"
"You said there was another one in the middle of the desert," he shot back. "You wanted to go home, Tamsin. Well, that's where we're going to have to go."
He dug his heels into the flank of the horse and it bolted through shouting men, and when he looked back Tamsin was following, crouched low on her horse, wearing a grin that could be terror or satisfaction—and maybe was a bit of both.
§
General Lavin laid his quill down wearily, and peered at the manacled prisoner Hesty had led in. "Why is this of interest?" he asked.
Hesty grimaced. "I hate to bother you with trivial matters. This man is a looter, we caught him skulking in the ruins of one of the outlying villages."
"Yes? So execute him." Lavin turned his attention back to his plans.
"He claims to have valuable information to sell. About the siege."
"Torture it out of him."
"We tried."
Lavin looked up in surprise. The prisoner was a small man, wiry and grey-haired. He stood in an exhausted stoop, trembling slightly. His left arm was broken, and had not been set, and there were burn marks up and down his bare torso, and rope burns around his throat. He glared dully but defiantly at Lavin from his good eye; the other's lid was bruised and swollen, as were his lips.
Lavin stood and walked around him. A large portion of the skin was missing from his back; the flesh there wept openly.
"He completely defied the torturer," Hesty explained. "He insists on speaking only to you. And," he shook his head in disbelief, "he wants to bargain!"
Lavin half-smiled, and came around to look the prisoner in the eye. "And why not? He obviously loves his life, Hesty. But there's no reason to believe he knows anything."
"Hear me out," whispered the prisoner. He hunched, as if expecting a blow, but his gaze remained fixed on Lavin's.
Lavin threw up his hands. "All right. Your torturers are incompetent, or this man has more character than they do." He sat on a camp chair, and gestured for the prisoner to sit opposite. Awkwardly, as if his legs would not bend properly, the prisoner sat, hunching forward so as not touch the back of the chair. Hesty folded his arms and looked on in amusement.
"What is your name?"
"Enneas, lord Lavin."
"You were caught looting, Enneas. We punish that with death, but we're not cruel. Why did you choose to be tortured instead of letting us hang you quickly?"
Enneas breathed heavily, and seemed on the verge of fainting. He put his good arm on his knee to steady himself, and said, "I know something that will win you the siege without much bloodshed. But why should I tell you, if I'm going to die anyway?"
Lavin nearly laughed. The answer was self-evident: they would stop torturing him, that was why. But the torture hadn't worked, and by the look of him, the man wouldn't survive much more of it.
"I can't believe you mean to bargain with us."
Enneas tried to smile; it came across as a grotesque grimace. "What do I have to lose?"
"Your testicles," said Hesty impatiently.
Lavin waved him silent. "I'm sure all that has been explained to Mister Enneas. Some of it done, too, by the looks of things."
"I want to live!" Enneas glared fiercely at Lavin. "Free me, and I'll tell you what I know. Kill me, and things go badly for you in the siege."
"I don't bargain." Lavin stood. "Kill him."
Hesty took Enneas by his broken arm and dragged him screaming to his feet. "Sorry to have bothered you," Hesty grumbled as he pushed the prisoner through the flap of the tent.
Lavin sat brooding after they had left. He was preoccupied with plans for the siege, and it did look like it would be costly. There was an option yet to be tried but, much as he hated to admit it, that might not work. If it didn't, a frontal assault would be his only choice.
Enneas had made a pitiful figure, sitting in his clean tent. He was a ruined man, and there would be many more like him before this was all over. Lavin had no compunction about sentencing a man like him to death; he would rather the money Enneas had taken go to feed wounded veterans, widows or children.
But sometimes he lost sight of why he was here. The siege would be bloody, and dangerous, not only to his men, but to the Queen. And that did not sit well with him.
He stood and left the tent. It was late afternoon, and cool and cloudy, but dry. A pall of smoke hung over the staggered tents of the encampment. Men bustled to and fro, carrying supplies and marching for exercise. Far away, on the outskirts of the camp, a simple scaffold stood. Someone was being hung even as he watched.
Hoping it was not Hesty's prisoner, he picked up his pace, mindful to nod and acknowledge the greetings of his men as he went.
The scaffold disappeared behind some tents as he got closer. He hurried, but just as he was about to leave the edge of camp someone hailed him.
"Yes?" He waited impatiently as his chief mechanist ran over. The man was bowlegged and hirsute, and his helmet perched atop his head like some metallic bird. He bowed awkwardly, and pointed in the direction of the siege engines.
"General, sir! Someone punctured the water barrels last night! The supply's shot—I mean, it's leaked out! There isn't enough left to run the steam cannon."
Lavin hissed. "Sabotage? Is that what you're saying?"
The mechanist backed away. "Yeah. Yeah, sabotage. What are we going to do?"
"What about our own rations?"
The man's eyes widened. "The drinking water?"
Lavin nodded. "Is it safe?"
"Uh... not my department..."
"Find out. We will use it if we have to. Report back to me in an hour—and tell Hesty about this right away. Now excuse me."
He rounded the tent in time to see them lower a body from the scaffold. Two soldiers heaved it up between them and carried it to a low pile of corpses nearby.
The rope had already been put around Enneas' neck. The other end went up over the arm of the scaffold and to the halter of a bored horse. To hang Enneas, all they would have to do was walk the horse a few meters.
The thief's eyes were closed. He seemed to be praying. But he didn't beg, and he stayed on his feet, though he tottered.
Lavin was angry about the sabotage. It would cost him lives if the steam cannon were inoperable. He nearly turned and marched back his tent. Maybe though, just maybe, this man could make up for those potential casualties.
Still, he waited until the horse began to walk, just to see if the thief would break down. The rope tightened around his neck, but he didn't struggle as he wa
s lifted skyward.
"Stop! Cut him down!" Lavin strode over to the scaffold. Surprised soldiers jumped to untie the rope from the horse's harness. Enneas fell to the ground, choking, dirt grinding into his bloody back.
They hauled him to his feet and unwound the rope. He coughed and gasped, and blinked at Lavin with his good eye.
"You have your life," Lavin told him, "if you tell me what you know, and if I judge that it will be of use to me."
Enneas' knees buckled. He managed to croak, "Done!" before he fainted.
24
Through dusty, unventful days the passenger carriage had trundled its way south. Calandria May knew the shape of the seats intimately now; she felt her body had become moulded to conform to them, it certainly wasn't the other way around. The primitive suspension of the vehicle sent every jolt and rattle of the wheels up her spine and into her throbbing head. And the thing was slow, stopping frequently at mail drops or to exchange horses.
Still, it was all they'd been able to afford with the last of their funds. This route would take them unobtrusively into Iapysia, where hopefully they could acquire some faster transportation. The country was in enough chaos that hopefully a couple of stolen horses wouldn't be missed.
"My, you've become a paragon of caution," Axel had said to her when she told him of this plan. "What happened to 'get the hell down and find Armiger at all costs?'"
She'd shrugged. "What's the point? We don't have the weapons necessary to destroy him anymore. All we can do is observe until we can contact a passing ship and call in a strike."
Their last reliable information had Armiger on his way to visit Queen Galas, who was either dead now, or still holed up in her palace, depending on who you talked to. Either way, it seemed unlikely that Armiger would still be going there, because her cause was doomed. They were rattling along in this carriage because the queen was their only lead. But there was no urgency to the journey now.
Axel was mostly recovered now, though you wouldn't know it from the way he slept most of the day away. Without action to sustain him, he folded in on himself and became a dead weight. Calandria didn't have the fight left herself to try to bring him out of his lethargy.
Consequently, when on a completely typical evening of jolting over rutted tracks, her skull computer said without warning Incoming transmission, Calandria May sat up straight and said, "Thank the gods!"
The passengers seated opposite them in the carriage didn't look up; all three of them were nodding drowsily. They would have found it hard to hear Calandria over the noise of the wheels anyway.
She turned to find Axel staring back at her. She was just opening her mouth to ask him to please tell her he'd heard it to, when a different voice spoke in her mind.
"This is Marya Mounce of the research vessel Pan-Hellenia. Can anyone hear me?"
Axel's face split in a wide grin. "A ride!" he said.
The other passenger on their side of the carriage mumbled something, and butted Axel with his shoulder.
The voice continued. "I'm on a reentry trajectory. The Winds are after me. The Diadem Swans went berserk a couple of days ago and they've either captured or driven away all ships in the system. I tried to ride it out but they're on to me now. I'm going to try to land at the coordinates of the last transmission we received from our agent on the surface."
"Agent?" whispered Calandria. "So there really are some researchers down here right now?"
Axel looked uncomfortable. "Well, yes, but maybe not like you think," he said.
It took her a minute to catch on. "You're the agent she's referring to?" Calandria said to him.
"Yeah, yeah. Look, I didn't see any reason why I couldn't make some money on the side, so when those galactic researchers asked whether I could feed them regular observations while I was here, I jumped at it. Why not? I didn't think the Winds would be jumping down our throats quite so enthusiastically."
She had to laugh. "You are full of surprises, you know that?" Usually they were unpleasant, but if this Mounce person was on her way to this part of the continent...
Calandria reached out and rapped on the top of the doorframe. "Driver. You can let us out here, please."
§
An hour later they paused in the center of a darkening field in the very middle of nowhere. The milky way made a broad swath of light across the sky. Diadem was setting, its light glittering darkly off a lake near the horizon. There were no houses visible anywhere; other than the road, the nearest feature to the landscape was a dark row of trees along a nearby escarpment.
"There she is." Calandria pointed to a slowly falling star at the zenith. "We're going to have to break radio silence."
Axel nodded. If Mounce's ship landed back at the Boros manor, it would take them a week to reach it, and by then she would surely have lifted off again. Particularly if the Diadem Swans came down after her.
They watched the little spark overhead grow. Chill autumn wind teased at Axel's long black hair. Neither spoke. Axel wasn't sure what Calandria was feeling, but that dot of light represented escape to him, if they could get aboard it and evade the things that were chasing it.
"We may have to act quickly," Calandria said. "Where would be a good spot?"
"Nowhere's a good spot," he said. "So we might as well flag her down right here. At least it's level and open."
"Here goes," said Calandria. Then her voice spoke in his mind. "This is Calandria May calling the Pan-Hellenia. Can you hear me?"
They waited in tense silence. The brightening star had begun to drift away over the lake, following Diadem.
"Hello! Yes, it's me, Marya. Are you with Axel chan?"
"Yes."
"They're behind me, so I'm coming down at your last location—"
"No! Can you find us from this signal? We're a couple hundred kilometers south of where he last contacted you."
"Oh. I don't know if I can... Yes, it says it can do that. Do you have shelter?"
Axel and Calandria exchanged a glance. He squatted down and began pulling stalks of grass out of the ground. "Shit. Shit, shit shit."
"Why do you need shelter?" asked Calandria. "Are you trying to pick us up, or—"
"Pick you up? I'm trying to stay alive! The Swans are behind me, they're closing in. They've picked off every ship that's tried to get past Diadem. I've stayed ahead of them this far by skimming the top of the atmosphere, but they're all over. Everywhere! I— hang on—"
Axel could see his shadow on the grass. He glanced up, in time to see the star brighten again to brilliant whiteness, and swerve quickly in their direction. Around and above it, a coruscating glow had sprung up, like an aurora.
All over, thought Axel. Great.
"The forest," said Calandria. "Come on!" She began sprinting. He looked up again, then followed.
Low rumbles like thunder began. Instead of fading, they grew. The sound was familiar to Axel, and unmistakable: something was coming in to land. The sound had a ragged edge to it. Years of exposure to spacecraft told him it was a small ship. The big ones sang basso profundo all the way down.
Their shadows sharpened as they ran. Axel began to feel heat on his face. The roar became a steady, deafening thunder. On the shoreline below, the crescent of sand lit amber under a midnight dawn. Axel knew better than to look directly at the spear of light settling towards them, though it seemed as though Mounce was going to bring her ship down right on top of them.
The sky was starting to glow from horizon to horizon. He'd never seen that effect accompany the arrival of a starship.
Axel redoubled his effort, though he had twisted his ankle and it spiked pain up his leg with every step. Calandria was pulling ahead, but he didn't have the breath to spare to tell her to slow down.
Suddenly spokes of light like heat lightning washed across the sky. Their center was the approaching ship.
A blinding flash staggered Axel. Childhood memory took hold: he counted. One, two, three, four— Ca-rack! The concussion knocked him of
f his feet. He came up tasting grass and dirt.
Whatever that flash had been, it had happened less than a kilometer away. He blinked away lozenges of afterglow in time to see the brilliant tongue of fire overhead waver, and cut out.
A dark form fell with majestic slowness into the forest. As it disappeared a white dome of light silhouetted the treetops, and Axel felt the deep crump of impact through his feet.
Calandria was waiting at the edge of the forest. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," he said through gritted teeth. "Let's go." They waded into the underbrush. The darkness would have been total under the trees, except that a fire had started somewhere ahead, and the sky was alive with rainbow swirls. Axel would have found them beautiful if he hadn't been so frightened.
Of course, if there were any witnesses to this within fifty kilometers, they'd all be cowering under their beds by now. No sane person would want to be caught in the open when the swans touched ground.
It was dark enough that Axel couldn't spot branches and twigs fast enough to prevent himself getting thoroughly whipped as they went. Stinging, his feet somehow finding every hidden root and rock, he soon lost sight of Calandria, who as usual moved through the underbrush like a ghost. He could hear his breath rattling in his lungs, and somewhere nearby the crackling of the fire. Above that, though, a kind of trilling hiss was building up. It seemed sourceless, but he knew it must be coming from the sky. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end; so did those on his arms. He might have preferred it if they were doing that from fright, but he knew it must be the effect of a million-volt charge accumulating in the forest.
"Axel!" He hurried in the direction of the voice. Past a wall of snapped tree trunks and smouldering loam, Calandria stood on the lip of the crater Marya Mounce's ship had dug.
The ship was egg-shaped, maybe fifteen meters across. It was half-buried in the earth. Smoke rolled up from its skin, which was blackened and charred. Neither the heat of reentry nor the crash could have cindered the fullerene skin to that degree. "She can't have survived that," Axel said as he staggered to a halt next to Calandria. "What did they do?"
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