Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2)

by J. C. Staudt

  Outside, Merrick’s followers were scattering like geese, screaming in terror as they fled in every direction. The mutants are taking their revenge, Raith thought at first. But the shapes emerging from the city’s hazy gloom to brutalize Merrick’s unsuspecting followers were not mutants. They were dark of skin, tattooed with scars, and dressed in white cloth. Nomads.

  Arrows sprouted from backs and calves and buttocks. A crowd stampeded down a side street only to find itself facing a line of waiting nomad warriors. When they turned back, more nomads closed the gap behind them. A brief but decisive slaughter ensued.

  “What are they doing?” Peperil Cribbs wanted to know. “Why are they attacking us?”

  “The nomads hate us all,” said Ernost Bilschkin, eyes darting. “We’ll be lucky to escape with our lives.”

  “Stay quiet and we’ll have nothing to worry about,” said Raith. “I don’t think they know we’re down here.”

  Behind them, Merrick woke screaming.

  Raith hobbled over and tried to hush him.

  “Are you bleeding, Raith?” Theodar asked.

  Raith grunted as he twisted around to look. The wound was worse than he’d thought. Blood was soaking through the white fabric on his lower back. “I’ll be alright,” he said. “It’s Merrick and Derrow we should be worrying about right now.”

  Merrick’s body was healing itself, but the shock hadn’t left him yet. Some of the men gathered around to restrain him while he twitched and writhed in pain. There was a red line through the pupil of his right eye where the knife had gone in. A flap of skin hung from his forehead where the mutant woman had grazed him with another stab; Raith could see the skull bone there above his eyebrow.

  “This may hurt, Merrick, but I hope it’s only for a moment,” Raith said. He lifted the tender flap and smoothed it over the wound.

  Merrick screamed. His eyes widened, and a thin runnel of blood ran from the gash in his pupil. He clamped his eyes shut and managed to get a hand free so he could press the heel of his palm into the socket. The skin at the base of his knuckles was growing back.

  He lay still for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, the gash was closed. Only a hairline sliver remained across the right pupil. He blinked. Inhaled. Sighed.

  Brence and Hayden let him go. Something behind Merrick’s ear glinted in the dim light. Raith reached for it, but Merrick pulled away.

  “Is that the resonarc?” Raith asked.

  “How do you think I’ve been healing so many people without falling asleep for days at a time?” He sat up, looking tired and worn, eyes sunken and shoulders hunched. The knife wounds on his face were closing up, adding a new layer of hideous scars to his previous ones.

  “How long have you been wearing it?”

  Merrick tried to speak. “… I don’t remember.”

  “Isn’t that what your friend Swydiger said about his? That it made him forget?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “You’ve just pushed yourself beyond any limits I’ve seen a blackhand reach before. Perhaps it’s time you got some sleep.”

  Merrick turned his dazed stare toward the window. “What’s going on outside?”

  “Your loyal devotees are getting their asses handed to them,” said Gregar Holdsaard, still leaning against the air conditioning unit beneath the window.

  “By who?”

  “The savages.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “It’s no joke. They hate you, Merrick. A lot of people hate you.”

  “I know I have enemies,” Merrick said. “Anyone in my position would.”

  Gregar looked doubtful. “You’ve got friends, too.” He nodded toward Derrow.

  Merrick lurched to his feet and went to the table where Derrow was sitting, gritting his teeth while Theodar fastened a bandage to his ribs. Derrow’s eyes were distant, his cheeks pale.

  “Hold still,” Merrick said, laying his hands on Derrow’s chest.

  Theodar moved out of the way while Merrick ignited.

  Color returned to Derrow’s cheeks in an instant. Merrick extinguished himself, then pulled away the bandage Theodar had just taped on, revealing a shiny scar.

  “Now let’s get out there and put a stop to this,” Merrick said.

  Raith shook his head.

  “Yes, Raith. Yes. I can hold my own out there now.” Merrick ignited his shield, though the skin on his fingertips hadn’t finished growing back.

  “You’re in no condition for that,” said Raith.

  “My people are getting killed out there. We’re blackhands. Don’t we have the advantage here?”

  “There are four of us,” said Raith. “We cannot hope to take on a hundred armed nomads.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this—from you, of all people. Mr. Heroic can’t get off his ass and help, now? Those people out there are going to run back to whatever shithole they crawled out of once they find out I can’t protect them. What do I keep you around for, anyway?”

  Raith didn’t know how to answer that. He had wanted so badly for Merrick to be the kind of man a healer should be—kind and selfless and wise. But the harder Raith had tried to impress those qualities into him, the more the young man resisted. Perhaps it was time to accept that Merrick would never be a Decylumite. He was a product of the world he’d grown up in; a world where survival was paramount and the unfortunates were left to suffer and die for their weakness. “This is for your protection, Merrick,” he said.

  “What about everyone out there? Who’s going to protect them?”

  “Your plan was to turn those people into an army and attack the city north,” said Brence Maisel. “You think you stood a chance against thousands of Scarred Comrades if a few nomads can do this much damage?”

  “This is an ambush,” Merrick insisted. “That’s not the same thing as a coordinated attack that’s been planned out in advance. I’d be scared too if a bunch of coffing savages jumped out and hacked my friends to pieces.”

  “I don’t reckon the mutants can help, can they?” asked Sombit Quentin in a thin, gruff voice. He hadn’t sounded the same since he’d been injured during their escape from the Scarred prison.

  “It didn’t go well with the mutants,” Merrick said.

  “I guess they’re not going to fight for you either, huh?” said Brence.

  “This gift makes absolutely no sense,” Merrick said, idly watching his fingers as new skin formed over bare bone. “I can raise the dead. I can regrow my own skin. But I can’t even cure an infant of mutantism. How is that helpful?”

  You may have raised the dead, Raith thought, glancing at Jiren, but not to something I’d call life. “Mutantism is neither disease nor injury. That’s the only explanation for why you couldn’t help that child.”

  “My gift has a mind of its own now? Mutantism is not normal. Regular people don’t grow extra limbs or have pieces of their body fall off. If muties have something wrong with them, why can’t I make it right?”

  “I wish I knew,” Raith said. With that wish came the memory of Myriad, who would know what this meant, if there was anyone in the Aionach who did. Where did you go, Myri? Why did you leave us?

  “I just wish something would go right for once,” Merrick said irritably. “I can’t win. My life has been a pile of shit ever since this Infernal-forsaken thing happened to me. Things were finally looking up, and now this.”

  The nomad attack was coming to an end. Bronze-skinned warriors picked through belongings left behind, looting tents and mercy-killing stragglers. Where crowds once filled the streets between high-rises, a warm wind now blew their detritus down empty lanes and guttered their fires.

  “I’m sorry this had to happen,” Raith said.

  “It didn’t have to,” Merrick muttered.

  “We’ll wait in here until the nomads clear out and then figure out our next move.”

  “I know my next move,” said Merrick. “I’ll rally my followers and move forward with the pl
an. If I got there once, I can get there again. Coff on the savages, and the mutants, and the Gray Revenants. They can all suck my dick. I’m going to take the north, with or without them.”

  If that’s your plan, you’d best go on without us, Raith almost said, but thought better of it. He didn’t see how any such goal was achievable without the aid of at least one of the city south’s most powerful groups. He didn’t see this campaign ending in anything but defeat. On top of that, he and the Sons were nowhere closer to achieving their goal of finding a way home. Weeks of travel throughout the city had proven fruitless. The one thing Raith did know, when it came to the future, was that the Decylumites’ time with Merrick Bouchard was drawing to a close.

  CHAPTER 38

  Bolt

  Toler Glaive couldn’t help but feel a certain appreciation for Jallika Weaver. Lokes wanted to leave him in this musty old department store, delirious with pain and unable to stand, but it didn’t look like Weaver was going to let him.

  “What if the rains come back and we get stuck again?” Lokes was saying. “We got too much riding on the next couple days to let some cripple slow us down.”

  “That all he is to you now?” Weaver asked. “Some cripple?”

  “That’s all he ever was. ‘Cept he could walk before. He’s dead weight, Jal. Wish this’d happened weeks ago. Would’ve eased my mind about him getting away. We could’ve strapped him to that old nag and run him here without a peep.”

  “I won’t get away this time,” Toler said.

  Jallika crouched beside him. “Toler. There you are. How are you feeling?”

  “Like shit. How’d you find me? Have you been following me?”

  “Don’t be a dumbass,” said Lokes. “We done the same as you—run to the first building we come to, just to get out of the rain. We was next-door neighbors all night long and didn’t know it ‘til we heard you hollering.”

  “You won’t be our prisoner anymore, if you come with us,” Weaver said. “You’ll be our companion.”

  Lokes spat. “I wouldn’t be this dway’s companion if he had four legs and a tail.”

  “Will,” Weaver pleaded, “we brought the poor dway all this way for nothing. His brother’s dead. He can’t get around on his own, and he’s got no one to help him. He’ll die if we leave him here.”

  Lokes gave Toler an appraising look. “What do you say, Shep? You wanna die?”

  Toler couldn’t bear the thought of taking up with these two again, but the alternative was worse. In the trade caravans, minor injuries and mishaps could be absorbed by the sheer number of resources available. Here there would be no escort branching off from the main group to bring home the wounded. He had no choice but to accept Lokes and Weaver’s help; they were the only help he was going to get. “I want to come with you. You don’t have to take me far. I know a good healer who lives in the city north. Just get me to him and you can go on about your business.”

  “The city north? You must be out of your mind, Shep. Ain’t no way we’re going north. We got as much chance of getting in there as that horse of yours has of getting up and taking you for a ride.”

  Toler frowned. He’d forgotten about Seurag until now. The fall from the balcony had done for the poor old dway. “Seurag was the best horse I’ve ever owned,” he said. “He was with me for a long time.”

  “Boohoo. Don’t reckon I’ll get me a thank-you letter for all the hurtin’ I saved him.”

  “You shot him.”

  “Spent good brass doing it, too.”

  “If I could walk…” Toler said through gritted teeth.

  Lokes howled with laughter. “Aw, Shep, ain’t you a hoot with them broken legs. Bet if I broke your arms too, you’d be a regular laugh riot.”

  “You shut your coffing mouth, you bastard.”

  Lokes laughed all the harder. He doubled over and hollered until he was red in the face. Toler was too hoarse from all the screaming he’d done the night before to raise his voice. The pain in his legs was still so terrible, every word Lokes said sounded like a fly buzzing in a tin can. There was nothing for it; Toler was on the losing end of this exchange. This feeling of helplessness was foreign to him, except when it came to Reylenn. The healer, Merrick Bouchard, had been his only glimmer of hope in the sea of despair surrounding Lenn’s accident. Now it seemed he would never get the chance to find him again.

  “Will,” Jallika shouted, cutting through the laughter. “We’re taking Toler with us, and that’s the end of it. You don’t like it, you can leave me here with him.”

  The deadeye’s tone shifted in a blink. His scowl made Toler think of a rope creaking tight, its strands liable to snap at any moment. The look was gone a second later, replaced by a stiff, humorless deadpan. “You want to stay with him, do you? I getcha.”

  “Will…” Her voice was plaintive. She shifted on her hip, revealing her hesitation. “I want to be with you.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “I’ll walk,” she said. “Toler can ride Meldi. We’ll keep up.”

  “How ‘bout when Fink and his gang come chasing us from behind? What’ll you do then?”

  She turned to Toler. “Look. I want to help you. But if we get caught up in a situation like that—”

  “I’m on my own,” Toler said. “I know. Worth the squeeze, I guess.”

  “See? You heard him, Will. He’s willing to take his chances.”

  “Fair enough, Shep. No hard feelings if I gotta blow your head off so we can pick up the pace. I’d expect you to do me the same kindness if I was a no-good cripple.”

  I’d do you that kindness even if you weren’t, Toler wanted to say. Just like you would’ve done for me already, if it weren’t for Jallika. “Sounds great. When do we leave?”

  “Now.”

  “I say we find Fink and pay him, then head to the old church,” Weaver said.

  “Nuh-uh. We’re skipping town after we find out what this thing’s all about.” Lokes held up the iron star around his neck.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Off some dead dway,” Lokes said.

  “He wasn’t dead before we found him,” Jallika clarified.

  “That’s irreverent.”

  She smiled. “Irrelevant?”

  “Whatever. You know what I meant. Anyhow, this here’s a key. There’s catty-cooms under that church, and this unlocks ‘em.”

  “What’s in these catty-cooms?” Toler asked.

  “Riches beyond count, says the dway I got it from.”

  “So you’re after more hardware, huh? What if you get it? You really going to leave town without paying that scarecrow what you owe him?”

  Lokes chuckled. “Scarecrow. That’s Fink to a tee. ‘Course we ain’t gonna pay him. He don’t expect us to, neither. It’s this little cat and mouse game we like to play.”

  “No one likes it except you, Will.”

  “Sounds like you’re asking for trouble,” said Toler. “And while you’re playing games with your girl, I’m spending more and more time away from mine. I’ll be lucky if her dad doesn’t break all the other bones in my body when I get home.”

  “You sure you still wanna go back?” Lokes asked. “I can make the decision real easy on you.” He fingered the pearlescent grips of his sweeties.

  “Asshole,” Toler muttered. “Of course I want to go back.”

  Lokes snorted. “Say, how’d you get away from them savages, anyway? Might be we could turn you in for a double ransom. Just ‘cause you’re damaged goods now don’t mean they won’t pay again. Might be they’re out looking for their little escapee as we speak.”

  “They don’t want me back,” Toler assured him. “They let me go.”

  “Hah. Yeah, sure. Tell me another one.”

  “I couldn’t believe it myself.”

  Lokes stared at him. “They paid us good hardware for you, then told you to get lost? Them savages is richer’n I thought. Nicer, too.”

  Toler shook his head. “These
cuts and bruises aren’t all from the collapse back there.”

  “Learned you a thing or two, did they?”

  Toler nodded. That he had received the wounds in recompense for trying to murder Lethari Prokin was not something he cared to mention. “Lethari released me on the condition that I deliver a message to Nichel Vantanible. A warning.” Lethari had also made him promise to take care of Savvy, but he dare not utter her name in the company of these bandits. Better they didn’t know she existed.

  “Oh yeah? What kind of warning?”

  “He said our people would keep dying as long as they cross these sands. Savages think they own the whole coffing Inner East. They think it’s theirs by birthright, and we’ve got no business being here.”

  “We don’t.”

  Toler scowled up at him. “Oh, no. You too? I thought you hated the savages as much as I do.”

  “Nah,” said Lokes. “I hate ‘em more. But I know a squatter when I seen one, and last time I looked in a mirror, I was staring myself right in the face.”

  “You’re a bleeding-heart sympathizer,” Toler said. “I can’t believe it. You’re the last dway I’d ever expect to be a nomad-lover.”

  “Now look here, Shep. I don’t love nobody. ‘Cept my old lady, here, of course. I’ll drop a good savage where he stands any day of the week. But even I know they was here long before we was. They got a right to want their land back. That don’t mean I’m giving it to ‘em. You think I’m about to go high-tailing it up Bleakshore way or some shit, just ‘cause they want us out? You got another think coming. I can see their side of things, is all.”

  “They can get boned,” Toler said. “What do they need with all this coffing sand, anyway? What are they going to do if they ever get rid of us? Use it as a giant litter box?”

  “They think the ghosts of their dead grandpas live in that sand,” said Lokes. “But what do I know? Jal’s the sandcipher, she’ll tell you what lives down there.”

  “There are spirits in our world,” Weaver said.

  “How do you know that?” Toler asked.

  “Experiences I’ve had at the Guildhall… and since.”