by Sarah Remy
The dying of the wind did nothing to improve visibility. Mal could not wait any longer. He jumped from his perch and ran a calculating gaze over his walking machines. Anyone else would think the malformed creatures grotesque—Baldebert certainly had, refusing to come near the Automata after that second kindling—but Mal adored them with a fondness usually reserved for his small circle of self-made family.
None of the five were the same. Lane’s creation, even with its long, restless tail and profusion of spikes, was the least strange. Its barbute head was set atop its shoulders in a distinctly manlike semblance and its torso, pelvis, and limbs were all attached as a seamstress might attach a doll’s: loosely but in all the right places. Lane’s Automata reflected Holder’s vision—it was straw man made iron.
The lich machines were a different species. Either because the dead magi recalled the original Automata from life, or because more powerful spirits made for more varied personalities, the final four Automata were far from humanoid. One sported too many arms sprouting from its upper spine, each arm reinforced with a long chain-and-cog flail. Another had chosen to eschew a torso altogether and had instead set its helm atop a bulky pelvis bristling all around with a multitude of round, rotating blades on metal stalks. The third was a mountain of piston and gears, and had chosen for its foot one gigantic cylinder studded over and under with thick spikes. Its waist was narrow, a ladder of crooked cogs, and around its stubby neck it wore a collar of chain tentacles.
They were each at least three times as tall as Mal, except for Sensha’s proud monster, which topped them all by half a man again. She—for Mal thought of her so despite the fact she had not been a living woman for centuries and would not be again—was the most magnificent of them all, with her writhing appendages and her one strong leg, and for the not small matter that she was his first.
Her very existence, that Mal had invoked magnificence from naught but bone magic and detritus, was worth the certain cost. If she could save Wilhaiim, she was worth his sacrifice ten times more.
He conjured wards to keep out distraction, pulled smoke all about to replace the shadows that had disappeared midday along with Rowan, and led the way.
“Now,” he ordered out loud, though he hardly need say the words, for the Automata worked in sync with the agitated beat of his heart. “Let us begin.”
The Automata approached Wilhaiim with single-minded enterprise. They loped, they hopped, they rolled, and they crushed: field, fire, corpses, and soldiers. They threw no shadow in the midday haze, but those with eyes yet to see and sense yet to understand who came within their periphery soon dropped, gibbering, to the ground. They butchered anyone within easy reach so long as they were the enemy, and some who got in the way who were not. Mal could not prevent himself from supping on the ghosts left, stunned, in their wake. He gorged until his wards grew too bright to look upon, energy suffused his eyes and his fingertips, and bliss made him reckless. He saw terror all around, he could not tell flatlander from desert dweller, and he did not much care to think deeply on their differences. The battlefield fractured into further chaos near the Automata. Those that had the fortitude to turn and run did so. Those already shattered by fire and smoke and the terrors of war lay on their faces in the charred crop, foes forgotten.
It was easier, much easier than Mal had foreseen. And it felt very, very good.
Wilhaiim’s northern wall gaped where gray stone had toppled, the battlements above were collapsed. Broken bodies lay all about, buried beneath rubble or fallen in piles around the breach. Angry flies buzzed already around the dead. Mal took the flies, and the mournful dead, and swallowed them all as he advanced through the hole. The Automata followed, crushing rubble further with limb and tentacle.
Mal staggered when his foot hit cobblestone. The press of life inside the city was almost too much. He shaded his eyes against their brilliance; Kingsmen, sand snakes, refugees, the wealthy nobility and the dirtiest squatter’s-row drifters. He steadied himself with a hand against a fallen stone to keep from gorging.
A fly buzzed his ears. He brushed it away. Blinking, he looked about.
An equal number of the living and the dead filled the street. The living who were able fled. The rest Mal consumed. The Automata arranged themselves in the narrow road, waiting. Their bulk broke cobblestones and crushed anything beneath their iron-clad feet.
The fly buzzed around Mal’s head again. Groggy, he slapped at the sound. It was not a fly, after all, but a fat honeybee within the protection of his wards. Impossible. He took its tiny, indomitable spirit. Its corpse fell on his boot. But another replaced it, circling his crown. And another. He stumbled, baffled. Each time he ended one yellow-and-black marauder another appeared. One had the temerity to sting him on the neck, sacrificing its own life before he could snatch it away.
The impossible honeybee were a puzzle and a distraction, so much so that he forgot for a moment where he stood, so much so that he didn’t see Brother Tillion step out of the smoke in front of him, dangerously close to Mal’s spitting wards.
“Necromancer,” the theist said. “You and yours are not welcome here.”
Mal froze. A bee landed on his swatting hand but did not sting. Another orbited his chest. The Sensha Automata, sensing his indecision, twitched a tentacle in Tillion’s direction.
“Nay,” Mal ordered, and she stilled. Tillion leaned on his staff, regarding Mal sourly. Mal could not separate his star from the city’s too-bright constellation.
“This is my home,” Mal said, regarding the theist in kind. The buzzing around his head increased but he dared not glance away from Tillion. He could not fathom how the bees had breached his wards. He could not fathom their presence at all. “I’ve come to keep it safe; I’m the only one who can.”
“So you have,” Tillion said. “But at what price? The enemy retreats before you, aye. And so, too, do the good people of Wilhaiim, and you have barely stepped inside our walls. If you come further there will be mass terror, rioting, further loss of life. Appetite has blinded you, I think.” He held his staff in both hands, turning it into a weapon. “I did warn you. You cannot be allowed to continue.”
Mal laughed. “How bold you are now.” He took one step forward. Tillion retreated a stride before his wards. “Stronger than ever. Hardly the palsied man I’ve come to know. Is it opion?” He let disgust shade his smile. “I did not think so, not at first, but I’ve since discovered the temple has become very free with its curatives.”
“I’ve no need of opion. My god is my only curative. He delivers unto me strength.” Tillion struck at Mal with his staff. The wards sputtered angrily. Tillion blanched but struck again. “You continue to discount him.”
Bitterly amused, Mal extinguished a swarm of stinging bees. “And did he send these to torment me also, as if you, Brother Tillion, were not enough?” He stepped forward until the curve of his wards brushed Tillion’s bare foot. Tillion gasped, jerking away, but held his ground.
“Nay, the priest is not responsible for your stings. Those would be my darlings you’re ending.”
It was Mal’s turn to blanch. Cleena detached herself from the smoke. The sidheog’s lovely mouth was set in a flat line, her dark eyes snapping angrily.
“This human king said we were to keep you from dwelling too long on the hunger in your heart, necromancer. The little stings, the buzzing, they are working, I think.” She showed him pointed teeth and hatred. He extinguished another handful of her bees in retribution. Sensha took a grating hop forward. Tillion groaned but held firm. Cleena shuddered and cursed him roundly.
But Mal had forgotten them both, and even the bees and their stings, as his brain caught up with his ears.
“‘This human king said,’” he repeated, aghast, rocking on his heels.
“Brother.”
It was the thing he did not expect and should have. He knew Renault, loved him, had served him since boyhood. The king was not the sort who would willingly hide away in safety while his k
ingdom struggled, no matter that he’d insisted his vocent do the same. Of course he would be out in war, sword in hand, clad only in the ease of light armor, and Mal’s blue-and-silver brooch on his sleeve to keep him hidden when need be.
Renault was not alone. Baldebert clung to his sleeve, pale and sick in the presence of the Automata, but upright, knuckles white around familiar ivory manacles.
“You great fool,” Mal growled, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes to keep back incandescence. “You could be killed.”
“Do you mean to do so, then?” Renault replied. Despite the ferric soldiers, he sounded very calm. “Are you past the point where you care who lives and who dies? I cannot be sure. You are laying waste to my city, Malachi, as surely as any desert wolf.”
Mal flexed his hands. The remaining bees in his circle fell. Only Tillion’s quick flying staff kept Cleena from clawing at Mal’s wards.
“You told him, did you?” Ignoring the sidhe’s rage, Mal speared Baldebert with his glare. “When did you tell him? When first I asked for your help? Did you betray me from the beginning?”
Baldebert was beyond speaking. Renault shook his head.
“You would not be standing here had I known before your machines began to walk,” he said. “And even then, I could not credit it. This is treason, Malachi. I suspected you came back to me from Roue changed, and I grieved. I did not think I would have to grieve you in truth for sedition.” He drew himself up, and looked down his nose. “Lord Vocent, let go your wards.”
“Nay.” Mal gritted his teeth. “I mean to save this city first.”
“The city is saved, was well on its way before you interfered,” Tillion retorted. “If you’d stayed where you were told, you would have known—word comes that the Rani’s ships have docked. We need only hold out until reinforcements arrive.”
“The wall was—there was a breach—” Mal’s breath came hard and fast. All at once he could not think straight, could not get his bearings. Light seared his skull. Reflexively he reached for Avani. That refuge was closed to him. He groaned. “I watched them push inside. So many.”
“Aye,” replied Renault. “The desert pushed inside. And was neatly encircled by my battlements, by my archers and Brother Orat’s deftly laid spells and sigils. The sand snakes know nothing of walls; they did not expect that within my city would be more treacherous than without. As Brother Tillion says—if you had listened to me and stayed where you were told . . . but I fear you were already well past comprehension. Drop your wards, Mal.”
The stings on his hands and face throbbed. His eyes dazzled and ran. The Automata waited patiently; they would wait forever for his command. If he moved them forward, the city would be his. If he dropped his wards, he would die. He’d planned on the dying, though mayhap not so soon. He hadn’t planned on the terror.
“I understand now,” he told Baldebert. “Why you cannot look upon the Automata without dread.”
Baldebert, still clinging to Renault, clenched his jaw and met Mal’s gaze, though he could not look around at the walking machines. “I nigh pissed myself when they stepped into the city.” He said, “But here I am, nonetheless, facing certain destruction because I know somewhere inside the madness you are the man who saved my sister and her people.” He held up the ivory manacles; they rattled in his shaking fingers. “Let me help.”
Mal laughed. Mirth felt like smoke in his throat. “There is no help for me now, friend. I am a dead man.”
“You were that,” said Brother Tillion, “from the first moment you denied the one god his due.”
Mal shaded his watering eyes to better see his king’s face because he could not separate that individual, beloved star, from the rest. Renault looked back, expectant. Grief furrowed his brow and dampened his beard.
“You have no choice,” Renault said quietly. “Unless you mean to kill me.”
Mal dropped his wards.
They sprang upon him as one, knocking him onto rubble as they sought containment. He bucked beneath them. There were the bravest of Kingsmen on the battlements above and arrows trained Mal’s way in an attempt to shield their king from harm. He would have very much liked to end them, if only he could be sure he would not also swallow those he loved. He would have liked to rid the world of Tillion and his bruising staff. When Cleena sat on his chest and promised to tear out his throat if the Automata so much as twitched, he laughed and wrenched a hand free, grasping her fingers and taking, taking, taking because she’d been so stupid as to set herself apart from the others but that was only another sidhe snare. In Mal’s distraction Baldebert snapped ivory cuffs around his wrists. The world dimmed, vitality snuffed out. Men were only men again; even Cleena, once as difficult to look upon as the sun, was dulled to flesh and bone.
He could no longer feel the Automata. Bereft of his guiding hand, they froze, waiting for a command he couldn’t give.
Bereft, Mal wept and raged for the loss of light, the sundering of his magic. He snarled at Cleena and even at Renault, and that earned him a whack from Tillion’s staff. The Sensha machine uncoiled a fretful feeler and that meant Tillion hit Mal again, harder and then again because Baldebert’s fear was as catching as any spring plague, and after that unconsciousness was preferable to pain.
“. . . east, Your Majesty, into the woods. While some three hundred more are camped within our walls.”
Mal came to himself reluctantly. His head hurt. His eyes were stuck closed. His muscles were cramped from lying too long on a hard surface, and he was cold. He smelled rain in smoke and heard the faraway sound of thunder or cannon. He tried to lift his hands to rub the crust from his lids but encountered resistance. He lay without moving for several more heartbeats before he understood that he was bound.
“And the rest?”
“It’s difficult to be sure how many yet live, Majesty. They won’t come near Wilhaiim for fear of the walking machines. My men report small fires in the night, but there is no way to be certain whether those are camps gathering on the prairie or remnants of the greater inferno. When the sun rises, we will know better. Until then, Roue will stand defense.”
That was Baldebert, no longer made mute by terror, sounding much more like the admiral and self-satisfied pirate prince he was. Mal forced his eyes open, tearing lashes in the process, a small price to pay for clarity. When he moved, metal grated on stone and his heart quailed. He was not sure what he had expected but it was not the indignity of iron shackles hand and foot, nor the absence of clothes but for a scanty wrap around his loins. He’d been stripped of Hennish leather, left to freeze in the oriel behind Renault’s throne. Four somber Kingsmen stood his guard, front and back and either side. Baldebert’s ivory cuffs clung still to his wrists. They chafed less than Renault’s chain.
“Slowly,” Avani cautioned, appearing in his periphery. “You’ve two great lumps on your skull courtesy of Brother Tillion and at least one broken rib that I can tell.”
He inhaled sharply and that hurt his ribs and made the vertigo worse.
“You’re here,” he said.
“I am.” She helped him uncurl from the floor and let him lean against her shoulder. He sat, shivering, and tried to make sense of the tableau in the throne room below.
Renault, standing beside the throne, hands clasped tightly behind his back, hair tussled beneath his crown, new bruises beneath reddened eyes. Orat and Tillion and Baldebert arranged in a row beneath the steps, all three soot blackened and battered. Orat’s robes were torn and spattered with blood; a vicious-looking scratch bisected the bridge of his nose. Tillion’s back was hunched, his weight again on his staff, weary and in obvious pain. His gaze darted about the room, from Renault to Orat to Mal and Avani crouched in the oriel and back again.
Mal shuddered.
“Ai, you’re freezing.” Avani chafed Mal’s bare arms. Her touch inflamed the bee stings on his flesh. The pain cleared some of the muzziness from his head but vertigo made his stomach heave. “They insisted on str
ipping you down. I could not stop them, though I tried.”
“Liam.” Like bubbles in a murky pond rising to the surface, Mal’s anxieties burst behind his eyes. “Is our lad yet living? Did he take any hurt? Russel? What about—”
“Silence!” Renault whirled away from the throne. He snapped two fingers and the Kingsmen raised their spears; iron points kissed Mal’s bare skin. “Keep silent or you will force me to call for gag as well as chains!” His cheeks were livid. A vein above his eye pulsed distress.
“Cut out his tongue,” Tillion suggested, “before he uses it to worm his way back into your graces, Majesty.”
“Be still,” the Masterhealer ordered his priest. “Remember kindness in adversity.”
Baldebert did not trouble to hide his derisive snort. Renault took the steps down from the dais one at a time, boot heels echoing in the chamber. In front of Orat, he stopped, and placed one hand coolly atop the pommel of the sword he wore on his hip.
“The one god and I are even, I think,” he said.
“Aye, Majesty.” Orat had the grace to bow his head. “It was the necromancer’s trespasses all along that so enraged the god and not, after all, Roue’s interference.”
“You made a mistake,” Renault said, “in interpreting your god?”
“Paul made the mistake.” Orat regrouped, drawing his tattered robes close. “One more of many questionable decisions that man made. Mayhap, in his new avarice, our brother stopped listening clearly. Or mayhap the magus clouded his mind. There was dissent between Paul and Malachi from the beginning; we all saw it. Tillion saw it most clear. Would that we had listened to him sooner.”
