The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  The river steps smoothed out until Lizneth found herself sliding down a limestone slope, caught in a wide smooth trickle of water no more than an inch deep. There was no way to stop herself now; like the cotterphage, she was at gravity’s whim. The end of the slope came sooner than she would’ve liked. She would have preferred that it never came, the high waterfall that sent her plunging a dozen fathoms down into a deep green pool. There was a mound of silt behind the waterfall, so she swam over and pulled herself up to rest there, heaving and shivering. The cave had a high ceiling, and the pool was smaller than the lake she’d just seen. She began to notice dark shapes gliding around beneath the water, long and slender.

  In Tanley, Lizneth could’ve made it home blindfolded, using only her whiskers and the haick of her family to guide her. Now she could see and sense everything around her better than usual, but the scents here were as strange and foreign as those in the blind-world. There was one scent she had just recently come to know, however. The things swimming in this pool were young cotterphages.

  CHAPTER 50

  The Crimson Thread

  Bits of memory. The Boiler Yard. Kaylene. Her kiss, the night Merrick had first met her. He’d thought he was in love, and he’d come back from the bathroom a few minutes later to find her groping another man, trying to earn a drink. Captain Neville Robling. I’ll have to sit through another one of his speeches when I wake up in the infirmary. He’ll be there. Never fails. Things will never get better unless I can stop getting in trouble all the time.

  Pieces of someone’s voice. Two voices, maybe more. One scratchy, like Captain Curran’s. The other calm and level, soft and measured.

  “He was a Scarred Comrade once,” said the first voice. “See his hand, where the mark used to be? Looks like he burned it off. Took off his mark but not his uniform.”

  The second voice said, “Look at the fingers. All the nails are gone. Healed over, but not grown back. Weird.”

  Merrick’s eyes rolled forward, and he became aware of the first glimmer of yellow light beyond his eyelids. Not unconscious. He’d been sleeping. Not even sleeping—just in a daze, like the night he met the shepherd. Opening the eye that wasn’t swollen shut, he remembered where he was, and the despair of his true circumstances came rushing back to him. I’m not Scarred anymore. This isn’t the infirmary. It won’t be, ever again. But if they know I’m Scarred—that I was—why haven’t they killed me? Why hasn’t anyone in this whole coffing city just killed me?

  The shape—the figure. Merrick remembered now. The figure had helped him to his feet, carried him in past the scaffolding, past the dry fountain, up the steps, and into the Ministry building. The man had removed his hood and laid Merrick down in something soft, a pile of tattered blankets or shredded newspaper, maybe. The figure had taken off his mask and evaluated Merrick with brown eyes flecked in gold, the color of dark whiskey. Merrick had studied the figure and decided that if the man were going to harm him, he would have done it already.

  The severity of his wounds was coming into focus now, as the adrenaline and the heat died away and yielded to the sensations of pain all over. He had ignited the second he hit the ground back at the old laundromat, he now realized. His gift had been the force that kept him going as he ran and fell and broke his body over the city.

  “I’m Caliber,” the first man said. His mask had left red marks on a slender face, bare and nicked from shaving. Caliber thumbed at the man beside him. “This is Leuk. He dudn’ talk much.”

  Leuk was taller and also clean-shaven, with thin dark hair, a wide jutting chin, and a pronounced cliff of eyebrow. “I talk plenty. You just never listen to a blasted word of it.”

  “You ever quit boo-hooin’ for two seconds, I might,” Caliber shot back.

  Both men wore hooded charcoal-gray dusters, and each had on a patchwork of hard plastic armor underneath. Their kit was that of soldiers, but they were no Scarred men. They’re no proper soldiers by any stretch, Merrick decided. Phantoms is more like it. Shadows masquerading as men. They were in a cavernous room; a library, by the looks of it. Painted ceiling, stacks of empty shelving, dust floating through rays of daylight streaming in through high windows. It was strange to see such grand things intact, undamaged by vandals and storms. Yet there they were, and here he was.

  “Merrick Bouchard.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Merrick Bouchard,” said Caliber. “Those drifters got you pretty bad, didn’t they? I’d have killed you, same as them, only I noticed them pants. Gray camouflage. You’re a Scarred man, huh? A Scarred man in the city south is like a bushcat in a fox’s den.”

  Never thought I’d see the day when being Scarred got me saved instead of killed, Merrick mused. “Don’t I know it. Why did the pants stop you from lumping me in with the drifters?”

  “Because I noticed the mark, too,” Caliber said, pointing. “You removed it. Long time ago, looks like. Your fingernails are gone too.”

  “They tortured me,” Merrick lied.

  “Really. I was thinking you might be a deserter, but now I’m thinking maybe you got runned-off.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “A big one. If you’re still Scarred—not if you used to be.”

  Merrick considered his answer. “I used to be.”

  “Well then. That makes it so you might be useful.”

  “If useful keeps me alive, I guess it couldn’t hurt. What is it you want?”

  Caliber favored Leuk with a half-smile before he answered. “Their weaknesses.”

  “The Scarred’s weaknesses?”

  “Yessum.”

  “Why?”

  “You ain’t makin’ yourself useful by asking questions. We gotta go over this again?”

  “I get it,” Merrick said, spreading his hands. “But I’ll be able to answer your questions better if you let me ask mine first.”

  Leuk leaned back in his swivel chair.

  Caliber propped himself against a bookshelf. “Okay. You ask all the questions you want. Get ‘em all out of your system. If I let you do that, will you shut up and start making yourself useful?”

  Merrick nodded.

  Caliber gave a flourish. “Ask away, my good man.”

  “What is this place?”

  “This is a library. A bad one.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. There are no books.”

  “Books got nothin’ to do with it. You can stack books in the middle of the desert, but that don’t make it a library. It’s the quiet rule that turns a pile of books into a library. No rules anymore, no librarians to shush you. We came here thinking this section of town would be nice and peaceful, but it’s been anything but.”

  “Seems like most people are leaving you alone in here.”

  “Yeah. Most people are smarter than you, I guess.”

  “Oh, believe me, I knew it was a dumb idea to come over here. I was just curious why nobody else was around. This place looked like a good setup from across the bridge. Who are you dways, and why are you here?”

  “Everybody’s got a name, right? It makes you all official-like,” Caliber said, twirling a finger. “We call ourselves the Gray Revenants. You might say we’re the bastard do-gooders of the city south.”

  “Vigilantes, huh?” Merrick said. “Or is it heroes?”

  “Neither. Hard to be a vigilante without laws you can break. And all the real heroes are famous. We got no laws, and nobody knows who we are.”

  The Scarred knew who the Gray Revenants were, but Merrick was reluctant to mention that just yet; it seemed wrong to take the wind out of Caliber’s sails. Like most groups in the city south, Pilot Wax regarded the Gray Revenants as more of a nuisance than an actual threat. He still sent Mobile Ops to track them sometimes, but their tendency to lay low and change hideouts often made that difficult.

  “Not much of an outfit then, are you?” Merrick said. “Just a name and nothing else.”

  “We ain’t got no need for more than that. The name is… sup
—super—superfulous. We don’t need it. You know what I mean. Mostly it’s there so we don’t forget who we are.”

  “What is it you do, then?”

  “You’d call us the defenders of the meek. Like a kill button for tyrants. Anytime we hear about somebody getting too bold for his boots, we end him. We protect innocents from themselves that way. People flock easy to a sweet tongue or a pretty face, and most of the time it just gets ‘em used. We don’t like seeing people used, so we do what we can to stop it.”

  “That’s why you want to know the Scarred’s weak points,” Merrick said.

  “He’s a regular box of brains, this one,” Caliber said. Leuk gave an abrupt laugh. “Power groups come and go here in Belmond like storms over the Tideguine. Old leaders die and new ones take their place, each one with his own code, his own idea of the way things should be. The Scarred Comrades have been around longer than they ought to. Copycats and hopefuls crop up all the time, but none of ‘em have the staying power of that Wax fella. How he’s lived so long without one of his officers puttin’ a bullet through him, I don’t know.”

  “So you want to assassinate Wax.”

  “I’m startin’ to like you, Merrick Bouchard,” Caliber said. “You tell it like it is. What are your personal feelings on Pilot Wax and his little circle jerk of an army?”

  “The army’s fine,” Merrick said, “but Wax is a maniac. I guess he kind of has to be. He’s the type of dway who survives on charisma. He’s captivating, but severe when it’s called for. People don’t question him because he doesn’t question himself. In the city north, they say he was born to run the show, so let him. He does it well enough that nobody puts up a fuss.”

  “You’re giving me the facts, Merrick,” said Caliber, leaning in. “I know all that. I want to know how you feel about him.”

  “He banished me because he was worried I was trying to overthrow him,” Merrick said.

  Caliber regarded Merrick with a curious look. “I can’t honestly imagine you overthrowing anything. Were you, or did he just think you were?”

  Merrick shrugged. “I hadn’t made up my mind. Now I have.”

  “You’re a coffin’ dream come true, you pudgy little bastard,” Caliber said, a wide grin spreading over his face. “You’re exactly what we need. Shoot, where’d you come from? It’s like you dropped outta the coffin’ sky.”

  “You need me, huh?” Merrick propped himself on his elbows and examined his bedding. It was a makeshift mattress, built from tatters of cloth stitched together and stuffed with shredded paper.

  “You’ll give us a hand, won’t you?” Leuk asked.

  “With what? You want to know their weaknesses? The Scarred Comrades have no weaknesses. Commiss—Pilot Wax has spent the last seventeen years perfecting his system, working out the kinks, and training a garrison with enough firepower to blow away every last person in the city south, if he wanted to. Even if you could put together an army, and I mean a real army, trained and armed and equipped, you’d never get past the blockades. There’s a whole division of the Scarred devoted to signals. Wherever you strike, he’ll put a company of men on the ground in minutes. The nomads don’t even attack the city north, and they’ve got higher numbers and better warriors than you ever will.”

  “All we want to do is kill Wax. Coff on the rest of the army,” Caliber said.

  “What do you think is going to happen? Even if you managed to march in there, and you found some way to assassinate him, the whole thing isn’t just gonna collapse. He’s got officers who know what they’re doing. The system works without him having to lift a finger, even though he does, sometimes. And ‘fernal forbid any of you becomes a prisoner of war. Once Wax gets his hands on you, he’ll make you give up every hideout you’ve ever had.”

  “Our dways would never squeal on us.”

  “Then they’re going to live to see quite a few things crossed off their list of attached body parts. My point is, the Scarred Comrades will keep existing without Wax.”

  “They’ll be weaker, though,” said Leuk.

  “They’re already as weak as they’re liable to get. The Commissar almost died this week. There was an attack… some inmates escaped from the prison and wrecked the place. Lots dead. I’m sure they have it under control by now. And there are still thousands of Scarred, even with the casualties. What you want is impossible. The city north is staying where it is. You’d be like a swarm of gnats trying to take down a wind gargant.”

  Leuk shot him a disbelieving look. “The Ministry crumbled all those years ago. It was much bigger and more powerful. Why couldn’t the city north?”

  “You just don’t know the way things are up there. The city north will never fall into anarchy.”

  “I don’t see how the aftermath is relevant,” Caliber said. “Fact is, we both want the same thing—we want Pilot Wax dead. What happens after ain’t important until the time comes. Let’s not make it a reason to disagree.”

  “I disagree with you about way more than that,” Merrick said. “I’m with you on the objective, I just think your expectations are too high.” But ‘fernal knows I need friends right now.

  “You leave our expectations to us. The objective is where you come in. Even if the Scarred have ‘no weaknesses,’ like you say, there’s gotta be something you can tell us that’ll give us an edge.”

  “There’s plenty I could tell you, but I doubt it’ll make the impossible any more possible. For example, I could tell you that Pilot Wax is an absolutist. He doesn’t suffer trespassers on city north soil. If you or any of your friends are caught trying to cross over, which you will be, you’ll be tortured and hanged. Once he’s marked you for death, you can scream all you want. He won’t care. Won’t blink. He’ll sit up there in his office and watch you die without thinking twice about it. If that sounds like the type of dway you want to go up against, go right ahead with your plans.”

  “That sounds like the type of dway who doesn’t deserve to live,” Caliber said, his face stern. “You talk like we ain’t considered the risks. We’ll risk everything for this. All of us will. The Revs do what’s got to be done.”

  Merrick could see no hint of doubt on either man’s face. He knew then that the Revs were the best allies he could’ve found. “I’m with you. I’ll be whatever help I can.”

  Caliber grinned his sanctimonious grin. “That’s good. Why don’t you start by standing up?”

  “We going somewhere?”

  “I want to take you to the roof. Show you around.”

  Merrick stood up on his good leg and leaned against the wall. He could see a diffused reflection of himself in the marble floor. He wanted to know how badly the drifters had beaten him. “Do you have any mirrors around here?”

  “We’ll get you tended to,” Caliber said. “Come on. You got people to meet.”

  Leuk stayed behind while Merrick and Caliber climbed the library’s grand curving staircase. The stairs weren’t as big a hindrance as Merrick had anticipated; his knee was already getting stronger, his blistered fingers recovering from their burns. He could feel the heat fading from his chest, and he knew the immense surge he’d absorbed at the power station was almost exhausted. It had been effortless to ignite with so much power swelling inside him. Now it was a strain just to feel it, and that made it harder to find the warmth and draw it out. Once it was gone, he’d be back where he started, without the will or the experience to ignite again. For a moment, he felt a deep regret over having to part ways with the Decylumites before they could teach him more. I did the right thing, he assured himself. I couldn’t have learned everything I needed to know before they left. I would’ve had to go with them, and that might’ve gotten me killed. I’ll just have to teach myself from now on. It’ll be slow going, but I’ll get there.

  “Stay behind me.” Caliber put on his mask and leaned into the door at the top of the stairs. The hinges didn’t make a sound.

  They emerged beneath the roof dome and had to climb another se
t of steps before they were high enough to see out. Merrick gave a silent whistle when he saw the terrace. What had appeared to be a simple, empty dome on a flat roof was actually a lookout post full of niches where hidden figures watched over the city in every direction. This provided an intricate optical illusion to anyone looking at the roof from the surrounding streets. Men reclined in alcoves tucked into the architecture, each surveying his own sliver of the cityscape. Others lay prone at sighting holes located around the roof’s lip, scanning the ground through the spyglasses on their strange-looking rifles. They all wore the same style of long trencher jackets in dappled gray, making them hard to find even when they stood in plain sight against the stone.

  “What kind of rifles are those?” Merrick asked, after he had taken in the wonder of the living stonework around them.

  “Same as this one,” Caliber said, slinging his own weapon around in front of him. “They ain’t rifles though. These are coilguns, from a hidden stockpile we found on the other side of town. I figure these were experimental, since I ain’t never seen a thing like ‘em before. As much as we coff on its memory, we owe the Ministry our thanks for leavin’ us such neat toys. Every building of theirs we find, even down to the ones as plain-Jane as a library like this one, seems to have some secret compartment or another. We been pulling sweet gear like this out of ratholes and stowaway lockers for years. Ministry must’ve been paranoid as it gets, keeping so many secrets. Guess you could say I’ve become a bit of a history buff on account of finds like these. That’s the real reason we came to this library. To search it.”

  “Found anything good yet?”

  “Still looking. There’s one vault we ain’t been able to open yet. There’s a key hole, looks like a three-sided star fixed up with some nubs in the middle. I’ll crack it, though. You know, the city north might be full of skyscrapers built by fat cats fightin’ over who had the biggest pile of hardware. But the government did its real business here, in the south. Downtown. This is where all the action is. Brass elevators and granite sinks might’ve made you look rich in the old world, but these days, rich is just another word for better armed than the dway who’s after your lunch.”