by Jasmine Walt
With a groan, he realized what he would have to do. He would have to leave the letters here. Of course, if he did that there was the possibility Sheridan would discover and remove them, but he supposed it was a risk he would have to take. Once on land, he would have the authorities here instantly, and Sheridan’s charade would be over.
Distant gunfire jerked Avery from bed—loud, forceful and heavy. The guns of warships.
Battle.
Feeling his skin draw tight across his body, Avery slipped on his clothes and picked his way toward the medical bay. Sailors jostled all around him, frantic and pale. He reached the med bay and ordered it prepped for use.
“Situation,” he said. “How many are attacking?”
Dr. Fallon looked grim. “You haven’t heard? We’ve reached Es’hem.”
Avery blinked. “Es’hem? Then why ... no, don’t tell me ...”
“Yes. The Octunggen arrived first.”
Avery swore. “Finish prepping. I’m going to see what’s happening on deck.”
He pressed through the packed halls, found an environment suit and shrugged it on, side by side with dozens of sailors doing the same, helping each other shove helmets down and zip up seams. Their faces were set, their mouths hard, and they moved with speed and efficiency. With them, Avery emerged onto the deck. The night flung rain down from a cloud-covered sky, and great electric tongues licked at each other, some from above, some from below. The sound of heavy gunfire rolled across the water, but it had to compete with the constant thunder, and there were times when Avery couldn’t tell which was which.
Short of breath, he latched his lifeline into place, then leaned over the gunwale, straining his eyes to make out the shifting forms in the darkness and rain. The convoy’s warships loomed all around him, pitching up and down on the waves. They had formed a perimeter with their starboards facing west. The massive guns pointed into the night, and through the rain and wind and lightning Avery couldn’t tell what they fired at. But then he realized that many of the bright flashes he saw in the distance were not caused by lightning or exploding gas but came instead from enemy warships.
The bright flashes seemed to stretch forever, in both directions.
Dear gods. What had to be over a hundred Octunggen warships spat flame and smoke at the Ghenisan convoy. The deck of one of the ships near Avery exploded, the fire startlingly bright and close. Something else exploded belowdecks. Fire mushroomed out, and flaming sailors leapt overboard to thrash amid fiery pools that glimmered on the water. Firefighting teams poured up from the inner decks, hosing down the flames. Other ships, all up and down the line, were similarly bombarded.
The Octunggen did not fight with normal weapons alone, though. A single shell struck a ship to Avery’s right—and the ship began to dissolve. It wilted in the middle as though its steel had turned to gel. An Octunggen acid-bomb. Avery had never seen one put to use, only heard about them, and the sight made him ill. The ship’s middle melted, turning into a gray glue-like substance, which spread and spread, encountering sailors as it went, all of whom screamed in horror as the substance ate through their suits and gnawed away their flesh and bones. They didn’t even survive long enough to pitch themselves overboard. The middle of the ship simply bowed down—and down—until finally it sank below the water. By that time the acid had spread to both ends, and they collapsed into the sea, as well.
A blue beam of light fell on a ship to port. It disappeared completely, then reappeared an instant later, but when it rematerialized it appeared to be made of glass and all hands aboard with it. When the next wave smashed against it, the whole thing shattered into a million pieces that glittered like a hailstorm in the light of the fires. Shards of glass blew across the Maul’s deck, and Avery hunkered low to avoid them. One chipped his face-plate.
The warships of the convoy fired back at the Octunggen with more conventional weapons, the booms of their guns making Avery’s eardrums vibrate even through the helm. For a moment he just stood there, awed. But then he saw something beyond the enemy fleet and came back to himself with a start.
On the far side of the Octunggen warships blazed an inferno. Avery clearly saw flames silhouetting a city on a hill. He saw domes, towers, and magnificent, graceful arches, all limned by fire.
“Es’hem ...”
The last remnant of the L’ohen Empire save one, an empire which had once encompassed all of Urslin and beyond, the island of Es’hem burned brightly. Avery knew that in its palace a L’ohen emperor still reigned, a direct blood descendent of the old lords. Perhaps he stood on some high terrace right now, watching destruction rage all about him. Paul, it’s good you didn’t have to see this, Avery thought. Hambry spared you that, if nothing else.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, gripping the gunwale so tightly he lost all feeling in his hands, staring at the devastation, but finally he realized the gunfire was growing more infrequent and that the Octunggen ships were diminishing into the distance, as was the funeral pyre of Es’hem. The convoy was, as hard as it was for him to believe, abandoning the island.
He stormed forward, pushed past the sentries outside the Control Room—as was his right as chief surgeon—and passed through the airlock onto the bridge.
Captain Sheridan strode back and forth before bleeping screens and grim-faced officers. Her expression barely flickered as Avery approached. “Doctor,” she said by way of greeting.
“We’re just leaving them! How can you let this happen?”
Her face did not change. “Orders from Admiral Jons. It’s the only way, Doctor. The Octunggen number over a hundred and thirty warships, and us forty. They came to conquer Es’hem. We only came to trade with it.”
“But—”
“That will be all, Doctor. We’re departing, as swiftly as possible. With any luck, the Octs will be so focused on Es’hem that they won’t follow us.”
“But to let them destroy ...”
She averted her eyes. “Yes. It is regrettable.”
She probably loves this. Which other officers had she turned? He glanced around, searching faces. He tasted something bitter on his tongue.
“Our next port of call will be home,” she said.
Part II
SECRETS
5
Lightning stabbed at the crowded, baroque skyline of Hissig, capital of Ghenisa.
Avery stood at the bow of the Maul, staring at the thick spires and squat domes of the metropolis as it crouched like a fat, filthy cat reeling in a ball of yarn. Sickly yellow glows emanated from the tower tips above the fog, illuminating the maze of twisted narrow streets. A cloud of chitterbats swept past the alchemical tower of Gethys, then flew higher, skirling about the peaks of the Parliament Building on its mountain.
Avery frowned. Memories of what had happened here, in this city, had not let him go even far out at sea, and just seeing Hissig made his mouth go dry.
Mari ... Ani ...
Sailors and whalers stood all around him, and they cheered as the convoy entered Illynmarc Harbor, passing between the Bookends, the twin light-houses on either side built by King Sacran IV (before his assassination by mold poison), then veering to port, far to the port, not toward the endless and tangled docks civilians used but to the somber, more orderly Navy docks that extended from the base of Fort Brunt.
The fortress reared grim and black, huge and primeval. It had been built many centuries ago by the Ysstral Empire. The arrogance and skill of the Ysstral lords showed in every graceful line, in every sinister fold of architecture. The towers with their jagged lines reminded Avery of a child’s drawing of pine trees, tall and pointed with downward-facing jags, and yet there was little childlike about them; they were thick, severe and commanding, dripping in moisture from the fog. Thousands, millions of inset gemstones shone from the black stone that composed the fortress, glittering and twinkling. They had always reminded Avery of spiders’ eyes, and the spindly, segmented arches of the flying buttresses had always reminded
him of spider legs.
If being oppressive and cruel wasn’t sufficient reason for breaking away from the Ysstrals, their creepy architecture would have been more than enough. Ghenisa was full of it. Especially Hissig. A stranger might never know Ghenisa had revolted against the Ysstrals four hundred years ago.
The ships of the convoy docked and began to unload. It was a long, wearying process, and Avery occupied himself with moving the injured and various medical equipment.
The mystery woman’s coma held. Avery suspected her fever was the reason she hadn’t come out of it, and he hoped that when he had her in his main office in Fort Brunt, with the full array of his equipment to aid him, he would be able to wake her. Of course, all of his efforts would be for nothing if Sheridan had her dissected. All the more reason why he wished to be assigned to the team tasked with studying her. If what Patient X had told him was true, even in part, he would do anything to help her. He wished he could confide in someone, but he didn’t know whom he could trust. Unless—
When he finally stepped from the docks onto dry land, he felt the urge to sink to the muddy, rocky ground and kiss it. A lieutenant was monitoring the air with a beeping sensor, and he held everyone’s attention. At last he nodded and said, “It’s safe, people. You can take off your helms.”
Avery did just that. He breathed in a deep lung-full of fresh air, relishing the wind that rustled his hair and dried the sweat against his scalp. It’s been too long. In the background, he heard the whirring of the cleansers, the machines that processed the air and made it breathable this close to the sea. The result tasted slightly like grease and metal, but it was heaven. The cleansers ran partly on the hot lard that the whaling fleets provided and partly on other compounds and derivatives of the sea. Further up the docks, the catch from a more successful hunt—two medium-sized whales, one male and one female—sat like deflated mountains as teams of Navy personnel hovered over them, slicing and cutting, stripping the meat from the bone and the priceless lard from the meat. Carts full of quivering fat were being filled, and they would soon be taken to plants that would convert the lard into fuel for the many instruments Ghenisa used to counter Octung’s weapons, as well as the effects of the sea.
Avery noticed large machines, each the size of a bus and covered in a shell of steel, sitting along the shore. They hunched silent and dark, each one over a hundred yards from the other. These were not the air purifiers, he knew, but something new. The Navy had been installing them at the time the Maul had set sail, and now it seemed as if the installation was complete. They arced around the harbor, waiting for some unseen trigger.
As Captain Sheridan gave a speech to her officers and crew, Avery simply enjoyed the sights of land. The fortress occupied most of his field of vision. High up amid its crags and gargoyles, gray crabs scuttled amid the intricate architecture. One bore a pigeon in its claw; the bird hung limp and broken. The crabs vanished into a drainage hole, likely to find their nest. Higher up, a three-foot-long hunter snail slithered up and over a crenellation, on the prowl for food. The great snails would happily eat crab, bird and mouse, and they could grow to immense size. Avery had even heard of drunks falling asleep in alleys only to wake up with a man-sized slug shoving a proboscis at them.
The harbor, docks and sea stretched to the side. The sun lowered over the hazy, noxious horizon to the west, over the clustered towers of Hissig. The stained glass of the Parliament dome glittered of orange and red, webbed by inlaid black. Prime Minister Denaris dwelt in her tower there, handsome but stern, warm but reserved. She had been holding the country together almost through sheer force of will lately, it seemed, and her attitude—tough, unwavering, wry—had earned her many admirers. Avery was one.
At last Sheridan wrapped up her speech, and the officers, crew and whalers broke up, said their farewells and followed their various leaders into the fortress. Avery led the medical staff, patients and equipment through a high archway of layered black, triangular projections, and the halls echoed to the sounds of sailors and personnel, but they still seemed cold and still. They gleamed blackly and were decorated with beautiful oil paintings of frowning heroes and austere landscapes. Anything more cheerful would have looked out of place in this building, and Avery wished, not for the first time, that they would just raze the thing and start from scratch.
He marched directly to the medical wing, which occupied a large portion of the ground floor, and continued overseeing the move. Often he itched for a drink, but just as often he held himself back. He needed to be clear. He needed to think. He had a patient who claimed to be able to stop Octung, but unless he could wake her up she would be dissected—and if he did wake her up, she would be taken prisoner or simply assassinated by an Octunggen spy.
With a sigh, Avery remembered what he had found two nights ago. He’d returned to Hambry’s cabin, just to make sure everything was still in place, so that he could bring the authorities to the evidence as soon as the ship reached shore.
Hambry’s letters, of course, had been gone. Even the shotgun shell had vanished.
“So what the hell?”
They hunched in the back of a stinking cab, jostling through the streets. Avery was almost glad it was wintertime, even though he had to huddle in his thick coat, which had been expensive when he bought it but was now patched and, if looked at in broad daylight, somewhat ragged. The cabbage-and-clove stench of the cab nauseated him, though, and it would have been worse in summer.
“You gonna answer me?”
Avery glanced to his side. Janx, huge and scarred, sat draped in the shadows of the cab, with now and then light from a shop striping his nose-less face. Despite the frigid rain, it was a surprisingly busy night, and Hissigites teemed to the sides of the streets, under overhangs and canopies. Taverns emitted music and light, and couples sat under umbrellas in courtyard cafés. Prayers drifted from small, weathered temples. Some of the temples’ foundations ran deep, merging with the remains of older, stranger buildings below. Other people poured into and out of the several motion picture theaters, one of which bore a sign boasting a color projector.
“All in good time,” Avery assured him.
Janx bunched his jaws. “Godsdamnit, Doc, you better not go mute on me. You told me you’d tell me why the fuck I taught you how to lock-pick once we hit land. Well, shit, it’s been a week and—nothin’.” His voice lowered, became a growl. “I don’t like bein’ put off.”
“I am not ... putting you off.” Avery turned away. The truth was that he hadn’t contacted Janx to tell him about the lock-picking, though that was certainly part of it. There were bigger issues involved. Of course, now Avery wasn’t even sure Janx had come in response to Avery’s summons or for his own reasons. The big man wanted answers, that much was clear. But Janx had bad timing. “I simply have my mind ... somewhere else.”
Janx stared at him, then sat back. His expression softened, or at least suggested softening. “I won’t leave till I know. When the ship’s doctor is spyin’ on the officers, I need to fuckin’ know what’s goin’ on. You some kinda spy or somethin’?” His voice hardened at the end, and he tensed in the shadows. Avery could see the stiffening of his limbs. Janx could rip Avery limb from limb if he wanted.
Avery let out a breath. “No. I am not. If I were, I likely would already know how to pick a lock, wouldn’t I? But ... someone is.”
“Who?”
Wheels spun on asphalt, and rain pattered on the roof. Outside, cars honked, the sound muted by the weather. Droplets prismed the colored lights from a passing tavern.
“Who?” Janx demanded again. Avery was aware of the tension beside him as a mouse is aware of a circling owl, by the prickling of his neck.
Avery kept his gaze forward, not deigning to look at the whaler. “I will tell you ... but, for the love of the Three, hold your questions. Let me do this. We’ll speak when it’s done.”
Janx groaned. “But it’s a fuckin’ lake out there!”
“Nevertheless.”<
br />
The cab rolled forward, and a sullen silence descended over the passengers. From somewhere outside the national anthem blared from a faltering speaker. Banners depicting Prime Minister Denaris, with her cleft chin and cool green eyes, flapped in the breeze. Slogans exclaimed We will prevail! and Freedom will not bow! Other signs mounted on building facades gave instructions in case of bombing and pointed to the nearest bomb shelter.
The cabbie, a dark-haired man who must hail from Nalakith to the northwest, cursed and honked. Avery hadn’t even been aware that Octung had begun invading Nalakith, but he wasn’t surprised. The Octunggen had been quite active while he’d been away, and Hissig (and Ghenisa as a whole) was even more overburdened with refugees than before. Avery saw them huddled under canvas overhangs in alleys, shivering in groups around barrel fires. Grime-smirched children stood close to the flames, eating what was likely charred rat, or possibly fish. Please let it be rat.
He strained his eyes into the dark, searching for certain signs among the refugees under their leaking overhangs, in their grimy alleys. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before he saw hunched backs and black scale-like growths on cheeks and hands. He saw what looked like hands fusing together, or noses disappearing, and more, stranger mutations, bulges on cheekbones, the widening of one leg over the other. We’re failing them. These people had been forced to eat black market seafood, food that had not been processed and so was cheap—and contaminated. Avery knew there was nothing to be done for those who’d eaten it. Neither medicine nor alchemy could help, and the Octunggen technology stolen by spies over the years had not included machines or medicines to heal the infected, if there were such things. No one even knew how Octung had gotten its hands on its strange, otherworldly technologies in the first place.
