‘We know he’ll take the Transitway on the way back?’ she asked, picking at a matted portion of her fur. Kinneas couldn’t help but watch her nails work, her long fingers.
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ he replied quietly.
‘We’d better git goin’ then, righ’?’
Wind tugged at their clothes: the first proper gust of the day.
‘If you say so, Commander in Chief,’ Kinneas said. ‘There are horses in the city for us.’
They walked back without a word, and it was Naja who readied the horses. Kinneas was once more called back to the Hall. The Regent had sent for a package from Goya across the Lual, and Kinneas brought it to him as ordered.
Darkness beckoned, and the Second Chief was in no position to refuse. He entered the hall.
‘Marko.’
‘Yes, Regent.’
Irenia, he couldn’t help thinking, he looks dead already.
‘Marko,’ said Regent Dysan, ‘do you have the box?’
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Give it to me.’
The Regent took it in delicate hands. It was wrapped in brown paper and twine, tied in intricate and delicate patterns over the wrapping, which he now tore away. The box was wooden, with oiled brass hinges and polished surfaces. Inside it something hummed, making the wood vibrate slightly.
Dysan gingerly opened the lid on its hinges. ‘Ah, yes…’
Even though his cataracts, Dysan could see the vivid colours of the monstrous insect. Huge wings, black with a surface like oil on water, unfolded and folded themselves carefully. Six long, clawed legs hooked themselves to the edge of the box, then to the skin of the Regent’s hand. It stayed there, feeling the heat from his thick blood vessels under the skin.
‘Beautiful.’
The hornet hummed to itself, antennae stroking the groves in his ancient hand. With his other, Dysan put the box on his lap and held the creature gently in both cupped palms; it barely fit, since it was over five inches long.
The animal lover that had raised the thing for him said it needed to absorb the smell of the skin of its master for at least ten minutes before it could be commanded. Dysan held it for twice as long, watching it sit there quietly, its slender, lightning-coloured abdomen pulsing in time with its heartbeat. The sting, as long as his little finger, nicked his skin a few times but never broke the surface.
It was too docile to behave aggressively, which was just as well. A bolt-hornet was arguably the most hostile non-vertibrate on the planet. The inside of the wooden box was coated with a type of varnish infused with smoke, which kept the thing sleepy.
Kinneas could hear it humming from where he stood six metres away. He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the noise, but it was too difficult. The sound penetrated his thoughts like a probing lance, never letting up. He longed to be in the mews with the falcons, helping them to preen their feathers.
‘How many hours to indoctrinate it, Marko?’ the Regent asked, drawing Kinneas from his daze.
‘Now that the creature is under your command, two days, sir.’
‘And it will recognise its target just from my words? It won’t sting someone else?’
‘I don’t know how it works, Regent, but I’m assured it does.’
Dysan smiled, and leant down so that the beast’s antennae were stroking his lips, and its hooked legs reached firmly up and fastened to his sleeve.
‘Cybernetic,’ he whispered. ‘Cybernetic.’
~
The boat was shrouded in mist that came from the lake. To anyone who had seen a full-sized ship it was decidedly unimpressive, yet to Rowan it was huge for something that floated on water.
She’d asked Gabel to try to describe how it floated despite its weight. He talked of water tension, buoyancy, the shape of the boat, the pressure beneath and above the surface of the great lake … She took it in and surprised herself by understanding it all, and afterwards smiled and thanked him, her anticipation about sailing apparently dissipated.
Now he put his hands on her shoulders, and she pulled his jacket around her. They looked up at the small vessel and waited to hear from the magus.
The captain, chief bosun and his mate were locals of Goya and had the same strange language that Rowan was not accustomed to. Once the magus and Caeles arrived, the three crewmen introduced themselves and helped the passengers aboard.
Gabel stood by a large sack that held the winter clothes he and the magus had purchased. Caeles walked by, picked it up, and swung it over his shoulder.
‘I could carry that, if you want,’ said the hunter. Caeles just shrugged and took it onboard.
‘It’ll be a while, yet,’ said the captain. He had a large brown beard that smelled of salt, and his right leg had a metal brace around it that hummed when he walked. ‘Jus’ a few minutes, mind. No rush.’
The bosun’s mate showed the magus and Caeles the two cabins, each with a bed and a hammock. Rowan stayed on the deck, hands on the edge, looking down over the side at the murky water. She looked up to see Gabel crouched on the pier with his back to her, washing his hands.
~
‘Excuse me,’ said a voice.
Gabel stood and flicked the water from his fingers. A man in reflective armour stood a metre down the pier. He had the same colour skin as the magus’s, the same stars on his cheeks. He seemed anxious.
‘Come here,’ the man said.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m the Second Chief of the Squad,’ the stranger replied. ‘My name is Marko Kinneas. There’s something you should be aware of.’
‘Yes?’ He looked out from under his hat at the man. Kinneas’ bright eyes flicked from him to the boat; Gabel followed his stare and saw Rowan as she turned away, walking onto the bridge and out of sight.
‘What is it?’ he snapped.
‘The Regent intends to kill your friend Caeles.’
‘What? How?’
‘He—’
Interrupted by a thought, the man turned. Looking down the pier at them was the slender figure of a woman Gabel had never seen, a serious expression on her face.
‘I must go,’ Kinneas said quickly. ‘Warn your friend. He’s in danger.’
He turned and walked briskly toward the shore.
‘What,’ Gabel called, ‘on a boat…?’
But the man was already out of earshot. Gabel stroked the rim of his hat with his fingers, then turned and ascended the ramp, hauling it onboard after him.
~
Marisa de la Naja stood with her boots planted just off the pier, her delicate gloved hands holding her elbows.
‘Whit were ye saying tae them?’ she asked Kinneas.
‘Nothing important, Commander in Chief,’ he said. ‘Just making sure they were all aboard.’
‘Let’s git goin’, then,’ she said.
They had to ride hard to reach the Transitway before the courier. The falcon Kinneas had dispatched had taken two hours to reach Henrique’s camp; it would take Naja and her subordinate twice that on horseback.
They raced together for two hours before stopping, more to rest the horses than themselves. Kinneas let himself down, spinning in the foot harness and touching the snowy ground. He saw his superior gently mirror his movements, and then stand showing him her profile, looking out through the trees.
She turned then, and gave a nod. ‘We cannae stop here for long, ae course.’
Kinneas listened to the sounds of the forest, the occasional whoop of the birds he couldn’t see, the odd rattle of a tree mammal that clawed its way up the bark and rustled the last remaining dry leaves. He could hear the horses snorting quietly, chewing the snow.
‘Marko.’
‘Yes, Ma’am?’
‘Do ye think whit we’re doin’ es righ’?’
‘It’s not my place to question orders.’
‘Ae course no’,’ she said quietly, stolidly examining the trees.
Once again his gaze was drawn to the steady sweep of her hair, the sharp
curve of her jaw. She stood out against the whiteness of the snow, and the silvery bark of the trees behind her.
Why had she asked such a question? Not once had he spoken in disrespect to her, and never had he argued, disobeyed, or even contemplated insubordination. And now … now she was questioning orders.
‘I don’t enjoy killing,’ he said simply, clumsily.
She turned, looked at him, and her eyes softened in the liquid manner he adored.
‘No-one does,’ she said. ‘No-one outside the Caballeros, anyway. Ae course no’. Ah wouldnae have ye with me now ef ah thought ye did.’
He watched her as she looked down at the ground, nudging the snow with her boot. She patted the horse, and he heard her quietly whispering to it. His heart knotted.
‘We should get moving,’ he murmured.
She nodded, her hair shifting over her ermine collar, mouth a thoughtful pout. Her heavy sword swung between her shoulder blades as she hopped back into the saddle and settled herself, and he watched her until she was moving before getting on his horse himself.
It took them a further ninety minutes to get to Transitway TW-409, stopping just short of the sandy clearing where they knew the cave mouth was. They hesitated behind the tree-line.
A horse, which was securely tied by its reins to the metal rung of a rusted pylon, was kneeling on its legs with its eyes closed.
‘The messenger’s yet tae return,’ said Naja. ‘Let’s jus’ wait.’
By the rocky mouth of the Transitway was a sun-heated shelf of rock. Upon it rested a dark-skinned man. He was smoking something wrapped in a bleached leaf, and pale smoke curled up and around him. He puffed quietly, sitting down by the horse and singing a few notes, until the cigarette was just a tiny yellow mark between his lips.
‘No’ much time,’ said the Squad leader, moving silently despite the thick snow and dry leaves. ‘I’m going tae—’
‘Wait,’ Marko said, and his hand touched her shoulder. ‘He’s armed.’
She saw the holster on his belt, pregnant with a large pistol. She looked at Kinneas again, that sparkle of surprise in her eyes. He loved that look, knowing that each time he saw it she thought more of him.
‘Well spotted.’
‘Let’s skirt around,’ he said.
They moved quickly between the bare trees and arrived at a patch of grass by the rock formation. Watching the man from this new, much-closer position, they saw him stand and begin to wander about, walking toward the horse and patting it as it hoofed the ground.
‘You’re fidgety,’ he said quietly.
The animal snorted at him, eyes white and wide. It was certainly unsettled – even Kinneas could see that – and the Sec-Chief certainly didn’t share Naja’s love of horses. Had it sensed them, or was there something else nearby…?
Both the guard and the horse had their backs turned; there would be no better opportunity. The chief and her subordinate ran across the mossy grass toward the man. He didn’t hear them until they were halfway there. The guard whirled around, eyes as wide and panicked as the horse’s had been, surprised at seeing two people tear toward him; not sanguisuga, not the dreaded Caballeros de la Muerte, but a man and a woman, one with a long straight knife and the other with a two-handed sword.
The blades hissed like vipers as they cut the air, then his flesh. Blood splashed onto the ground by his feet and his knees landed in it; he clutched his stomach, and then before he could utter a word, the blades struck again, and he fell flat and still in the dirt.
They dragged his body into the trees, then helped each other pull up grass and moss to cover the stains on the peaty ground.
The horse, Kinneas saw, had been just as surprised as the guard, rearing up once and stamping down again. Then it became preoccupied, and looked out toward the trees in consternation.
They hid by the entrance, finding the rocky alcove where the man had rested. He had been using it as a toilet, but they weren’t concerned with the state of their boots; they could be cleaned, but a botched assassination left more mess.
After a short while, they heard the clang and hiss of the Transitway approaching at high speed through the tunnel. Less than a minute later Henrique Martínez stepped out of the mouth of the rock-face, flustered from his high-speed journey.
The young man stopped by the horse, patted it softly and said, ‘Hey señorita, hey girl, what’s the fuss? What’s the fuss?’
He turned around quickly just as they were a few metres from him. Henrique’s hand shot to something around his neck as he realised who they were, why they had come … But before the attackers could complete their mission, the horse screamed, trampled the ground and broke its tether, tearing away toward the trees. In its place the rainforest erupted; the three people stopped dead, having turned to the mass of dark shapes coming at them through the snow.
The brood of sanguisuga tore up the ground around the clearing, kicking great dusty plumes into the air, and every one of them fell upon the terrified three, like a dark blanket pulled over a trio of lost, trembling children.
~
He couldn’t breathe; his lungs, filled with the living essence of Charos, were stifled and painful. William Teague screamed for peace, but was granted none.
That voice came once more in his head, whispering, torturing: You are dead. You will always be dead, and always will you suffer! The hideous Charos, his guide in this perpetual den of torment, was inside him, inside every atom of his ethereal self.
He didn’t know who he was, what he was; and the pain prevented his recall.
This, the fourth soulform of William Teague, the embodiment of Heresy, was going somewhere different to where his other three selves were being taken, away from the never-ending fortress with its towers of pain, its walls of suffering, and away from the river Achronne and its murky depths; far, far away, deeper into the very core of the place, where the fires burned hotter, the smoke writhed thicker, and the pain was infinitely, infinitely more potent.
‘Where are you taking me?’ he cried.
The voice replied: We are here. Remember your sins.
The smoke disappeared. Even Charos couldn’t linger there. It vanished somewhere else, back to the courtyard perhaps, and as the smoke cleared something tugged at Teague’s form. He looked down. He had skin again, cracked and grey: he was flesh and blood once more, not merely smoke. Or was this merely an illusion? He felt his face with his nail-less fingers: he had no eyes, so how could he see? But he felt a new pain where a deep gash had emptied his stomach, and sheets of rubbery flesh hung out of him. His mouth was filled with the blood that poured from the holes his teeth had once occupied.
The thing tugging him was the wind. He was falling.
A tunnel stretched out below, and all he could see were the gloomy red walls of fiery clay around him. He rushed toward one side as he fell, tearing past a thousand squirming creatures inside the wall, and issued a scream as he collided with it. Skin and muscle tore from him in chunks that spun rapidly upward. Spines in the wall, sharpened to points that could cut molecules, slashed at him as he tumbled, shredding his sides … He bounced away, free falling, and his speed increased.
He drifted toward the other side of the wall of the tunnel, heard snippets of voices made of breezes, and once more he struck the spines, shaped like axes, knives, maces. Unending pain…!
Then suddenly his bones shattered into tiny shard, dicing him from the inside; his face was smashed to a pulp, his ribcage forced out of his back, his knees cracked into bits so small they ceased to exist.
He had landed on one of the rocky precipices that jutted out from the sides of the tunnel. Even thought his body had been pulverised by the impact, he was surprised to find he had the strength to haul himself onto his side and look around.
Creatures clambered all over him, some small and spider-like, some larger than he, in shapes he never imagined or could even retain in his mind. The monsters swarmed, tearing at him, sucking out the chopped bones, tearing h
is tattered flesh, squeezing his organs of their juices.
A large something approached and gave a banshee wail: it was tall and black-skinned, with a long neck and arms and legs coming out everywhere. It opened its many mouths and shrieked, extended one disproportioned limb and knocked him screaming from the ledge. He fell again.
His mind, if it had once been hollow, a tiny portion occupied by his conscious self, was now full and solid with pain. He could neither think nor speak. So much agony-but Teague knew that he had felt nothing yet. He freefell for millions of miles – as just a millionth of a millisecond passed – before his body was suddenly driven once more into something solid.
He blacked out for a second, somehow.
They allowed him that.
~
He woke, stood, unable to think through the curtain of pain and despair, and slumped against something hard. A globe made of stone was developing around him. Its granite strips criss-crossed each other in a diamond latticework. He slithered down the inside of the globe, unable to comprehend his situation.
Something lifted him, some invisible force, and crushed him mid-air. He was gripped in the centre of the globe prison and his eyes were forced open; he saw the latticework begin to move, grind against itself, spin, each strip – a loop in or around the other loops – rotating madly in opposite directions. It all moved around him, grinding. The noise, like a memory of sand between his teeth,) made his skull throb. Objects appeared in the latticework as it moved, and they flashed and suddenly they became spears. The spinning stopped instantly as he was punctured by needles of light from every direction, every pore a spike through it. The infinity of pain multiplied itself.
The prison disappeared.
Darkness again, and when he woke it was like a touch of Heaven, that moment of oblivion. It all returned to him, including the agony. But something had changed in home. The spears had killed something inside his spirit, some inherent light. Shivering uncontrollably, he found himself lying on a huge slab of black marble. It reached out forever, and when he rose, trembling, shuddering, he could see nothing.
He turned.
He screamed the name of the Goddess, Irenia, Irenia! and pleaded; tears of liquefied pain rolled down his cheeks, incinerating his flesh. No-one was there to hear his pleas, no-one except the Thing that was before him.
Half Discovered Wings Page 12
