The Last City

by Nina D'Aleo

  ‘I believed you,’ he whispered.

  ‘Well, you should have listened to Kane,’ Ev’r said, collecting weapons off his workbench and shoving them into her belt and pockets. They were a poor substitute for her own tools and she felt completely naked without her blade, Morsus Ictus, but it would have to do.

  Eli tried to stand, but she kicked him hard. He cried out and collapsed. She searched through his pockets for the starter flash to his transflyer. Her arms and hands shook from being tied for so long.

  ‘As I said to you, Snack-size, trust is the blindfold of the ignorant,’ she said. ‘By the way, how does it feel to be tied up? Not so great, is it?’ She found the flash and pushed it into her pocket. She shoved him back against the bench, took more rope and bound him to a leg of the table. He struggled and gagged as the noose tightened around his neck. The green diamond pendant chain slipped out from his shirt. Ev’r glanced at it and laughed. ‘So much for that.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ Eli murmured, half passing out.

  ‘Away,’ Ev’r replied. ‘As away as I can get before the storm breaks. Maybe even the Brine.’

  Eli groaned.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll asphyxiate before you die of dehydration. It’s not such a bad way to go,’ she mocked, remembering how the soldiers had stood around her feeling so important, telling her to choose how she wanted die – good or bad. They were fools. There was no such thing as good dying.

  Straightening, she stepped back from the slumped little figure and turned, ready to take off. But before she could take a single step, something hit her hard from the left and knocked her to the ground. She rolled as she landed and leapt to her feet to face her attacker. A Death, the most rare and dangerous of the spectral-breeds, stood before her, cloaked in swirling shadows, colourless skin stretched over a skull face, eyes like black pits. It bared sharply pointed, bloodstained teeth and snarled. The beast in Ev’r growled back, but she controlled it. She hissed a curse at the Death that glanced off the creature. It moaned, but didn’t flee. It stepped towards her. She lunged at Eli, cut the ropes tying him to the bench and pulled him up in front of her as a shield. If the Death charged her, she could throw the imp-breed at it and run while it consumed him. Ev’r backed her way to the stairs with Eli squirming and choking in her arms. He clunked against each step as she dragged him to the trapdoor above. The Death followed closely, gnashing his teeth, but didn’t attack.

  ‘Opening code,’ she growled at Eli, shaking him.

  He whispered the code and she punched it into the holo-screen. The trapdoor opened and she pushed him up through the hole and jumped out. Eli started whimpering about shutting the trapdoor, but she ignored him, leaving it ajar. With Eli slung over her shoulder, she ran to the hangar beside the house. She flashed the transflyer open and felt over the invisible craft for the passenger side door. Finding it, she threw the imp-breed in, then ran around to the pilot side. A group of men were standing on the street in front of the house, smoking cigarettes and drinking cans of beer. They glanced at her as she climbed into the craft. One of them pointed. She gunned the engine and smashed through the hangar roof, lifting the craft up and into the sky – into freedom.

  24

  The Matadori Desert was like death in a way. It took both king and servant and set them even. No riches could appease it, no intelligence could outsmart it, no speed could outrun it. Copernicus had trained himself to withstand all kinds of pain and deprivation, but the burning, insidious nothingness of the desert reduced him to desperation so quickly he felt as weak as a child. The basic need for water threatened to overwhelm all his experience and control, so when Tracy appeared on the horizon, a ramshackle shanty town spewed out across the sand, he couldn’t help but feel a burst of relief.

  Tracy was a poorer version of the towns Copernicus had seen closer to the city gates. The larger villages were ruled by a dominant scullion clan, but Tracy appeared open to anyone who was crazy or desperate enough to live so far from Scorpia. It bulged at the seams with the outcasts of the outcast – the worst criminal outlaws, the most deranged addicts, flocks of the diseased and the lowest of the scullion low. Everyone looked old and used, even the children. They loitered around the tent-houses and poked through the mountains of rubbish that encircled the settlement. People spat and shat and pissed wherever, whenever, and the stink of the place was beyond any word Copernicus knew in any of the languages he spoke.

  The commander shoved his way through the directionless crowds, ignoring the beggars and the self-confessed mystics offering to bless his money. The four of them stayed close, their hoods pulled low over their faces. This far from civilisation they would be in serious danger if anyone recognised them as military. Diega and Shawe lagged, struggling against the ferocious heat, but Silho kept up the same punishing pace with which she’d guided them through the desert, and Copernicus stayed at her side. Despite everything, Copernicus couldn’t help but be impressed by her skill. She’d found their path by reading sand that to Copernicus’ eyes had all appeared exactly the same colour and consistency.

  Looking at Brabel, knowing the truth of her heritage, he realised why she had seemed familiar to him. She had Oren Harvey’s eyes, and evidently her formidable strength as well, but he saw that something was distressing her. Every now and then she grimaced with a pain that she tried to hide and her heat signature pulsed and flared brilliant before she managed to stabilise it. He could see that the struggle to control whatever was affecting her was becoming more and more difficult. He kept his hand close to his weapon. No matter how gifted the girl was, if she suddenly lost her mind in any kind of violent way, he would take her out.

  Shawe coughed and Copernicus’ attention shifted to the gangster. Back at the tower Shawe had spoken some truths, but not the type that set people free – more like the ugly truth that hurts. Copernicus’ truth was that he did have genuine Illusionist skill, which he’d inherited from his mother’s side, but he had never, to this day, wanted it. The second truth was that he and Shawe had been the best of friends until the fight that had made them enemies. Now what they had fought about was meaningless to him, but at the time it – she – had meant everything.

  Copernicus slowed his pace so that Diega caught up. ‘Go find something that flies. We’ll get water. Watch your back,’ he ordered.

  The Fen nodded and separated from the group.

  Copernicus followed Silho to the trade centre of the town, to a vendor selling casks of water obviously stolen from the city. Silho started towards the tent shop, but then halted. She cringed and gripped her stomach. Copernicus stopped beside her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  Silho straightened up with effort and answered breathlessly, as though she had been winded, ‘Nothing . . . it’s just the heat.’

  ‘Brabel,’ Copernicus said, keeping his voice low so that Shawe wouldn’t hear. ‘Do you remember me saying if I saw you trying to hide anything I would kill you? Did you think I was joking?’

  Silho’s eyes flashed fear. ‘I’m not hiding anything.’

  Copernicus studied her face. She had lived in the shadows for so long that lying was completely natural to her. He found it fascinating – and highly aggravating. ‘I can see that you are,’ he said.

  ‘If you can see it then I’m not hiding.’ Her expression took on a defiant edge and Copernicus again saw Oren Harvey glaring back at him. Few people he’d met had the spine to argue with him. Most couldn’t even make eye contact. She didn’t break his stare.

  ‘You have three seconds,’ he told her.

  Silho swallowed and he could see her thinking over the options, or maybe calculating how much she would have to tell him.

  ‘One second, Brabel.’

  ‘I need medicine,’ Silho finally said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘My skills . . . for seeing . . .’

  ‘Those pills – Ethalam and Equinox.’ He remembered from the pub. ‘What happens without them?’
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  ‘I can’t control my skills.’

  ‘Meaning what?’ Copernicus asked. His thoughts automatically brought up images of her father, Englan Chrisholm, and all the children he had murdered.

  Silho flinched as she read his expression. ‘I can’t stop myself from touching the walls, and even if I could, eventually I hear and see things without touching anything. It just happens.’

  ‘How long do you have?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s getting worse. There are so many buildings here.’ She looked around them and Copernicus noticed her pupils were dilating then shrinking rapidly, and her hands trembled. He thought quickly. He had some heavy anaesthetics on him. If her control failed he could give her a shot and knock her out, but then who would guide them the rest of the way to the city? He decided it was better not to give her that as an option.

  ‘You’re just going to have to keep it together,’ he told her. ‘We’re a long way from a chemist.’

  ‘I know,’ she murmured.

  ‘So do what you have to do,’ Copernicus said.

  ‘I will,’ she replied.

  He narrowed his eyes at her sharp tone and she clenched her jaw and looked away. He stepped around her and headed for the water vendor.

  ‘A cask,’ he told the man at the counter, a skinny scullion with a pinched face and constantly darting eyes.

  The scullion stared them out, trying to see their faces beneath the hoods. He sniffed suspiciously and curled his lip. ‘These are not for sale.’

  ‘Then why does your sign say they are?’ Copernicus pointed to the writing scrawled in scullion script on a board hanging at the front of the tent.

  ‘Sign’s wrong,’ the man said and the commander saw one of his hands stray under the counter, most likely to grab a concealed weapon. Christy Shawe shoved in beside Copernicus. The gangster dropped his hood and the man gaped. Even in the lost places of hell people recognised Christy Shawe – and were afraid.

  Shawe rested his fists on the counter with a clunk and said, ‘Two casks.’

  The scullion moved as though he’d been prompted by electricity. He dragged two water containers to the counter and grunted, ‘Five sovereigns.’

  Shawe didn’t move a muscle. He just stared down at the man.

  The scullion’s face twitched and he added rapidly, ‘But for you, no charge.’

  Shawe gave the seller a disgusted look and spat on the ground. He shouldered both casks and headed for the nearest shady alley.

  Cracking open one cask, Shawe began guzzling from it, tipping water all over his sun-scorched face and body. Copernicus opened the other. He offered it to Brabel, who was leaning against the wall opposite to him with her head down. When she didn’t take the water Copernicus called, ‘Brabel!’

  Silho looked up and he saw a helpless, almost pleading look in her eyes. She shook her head once – not a refusal to the water but a silent message: I can’t. Her legs gave way and she hit the dirt, and immediately began clawing at the ground. Her gloved hands sank up to the wrists, as though the solid dirt was mud. Her eyes started shifting left to right so fast her pupils became a blur, and an unintelligible stream of words babbled from her mouth. Copernicus grabbed Silho and tried to lift her up, but her hands were stuck in the ground and getting sucked further and further in with incredible force. Shawe saw the struggle and latched onto her legs. Together they wrenched her free.

  Copernicus rolled her onto her back and Silho lay in a stunned state. The whites of her eyes were blood red and tears flowed down her cheeks.

  He dropped to his knees beside her and shook her. ‘Brabel! Can you hear me?’

  She gave no response. He grabbed her wrist and checked her pulse. It was way too fast.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Shawe demanded, leaning down for a closer look, dripping water and sweat all over them.

  ‘She doesn’t have her medication,’ the commander said.

  ‘So give her some of mine.’ Shawe slid the silver flask of Araki out of his pocket. ‘First some for me,’ he took a noisy swing of the potent alcohol, ‘then some for her.’ He offered Copernicus the flask, but he pushed it away. Silho needed to control her mind, not lose it further. He thought for a moment then asked Shawe in a lowered voice, ‘Have you got your mints?’

  ‘Why? Are you going to kiss her better?’ Shawe mocked. ‘You’ll need more than a few mints to get rid of the stink in your mouth.’

  ‘Have you or not?’ Copernicus ignored the gibe.

  Shawe checked his pockets and drew out a crumpled packet of Barkers Mints; Copernicus had never known him to be without them. The commander took one. He was thinking that if they could make Silho believe she’d taken her medication, it might help her, except that her pills were black. He looked past Shawe to the alley mouth, scanning for Diega.

  ‘What?’ Shawe asked, glancing over his shoulder.

  ‘It needs to be another colour,’ Copernicus said. ‘Diega can morph it.’

  ‘Why don’t you just do your marble trick?’ Shawe said, leaning against the wall. ‘That one where the colour keeps changing.’

  Words stirred in Copernicus’ mind, but he refused to hear them. ‘I can’t,’ he lied.

  ‘Yeah you can,’ Shawe argued. His eyes searched Copernicus’ face, then the gangster gave a slow smile of realisation. ‘You’re scared!’ he bellowed. Scullions passing at the entrance to the alley stopped to stare at them.

  ‘Of what?’ Copernicus demanded.

  ‘Who knows,’ Shawe said. ‘Who cares! Either way, the great United Regiment Commander Copernicus Kane is afraid of performing a little trick.’

  Copernicus felt a strong urge to smash Shawe right in the mouth, but before he could react in any way he sensed the vibration of Diega’s footfalls nearing them. He stood up and whistled as she appeared on the street in front of the alley. When she joined them, she held up a silver coin.

  ‘Speed-drift platform,’ she said. ‘Complete junk, but it will do.’ She saw Silho lying on the ground and just shook her head as if to say I knew it.

  ‘Her pills,’ Copernicus said, giving the Fen a dark look.

  ‘What about them?’ she said, glaring back.

  Suddenly Silho’s body flipped over and she grasped at the ground again. Copernicus managed to catch one of her hands, but the other pushed into the dirt. She began convulsing and gasping as though she was choking. Copernicus struggled to drag her free and Shawe stepped in again to help. This time even when her hand was out of the ground they had to restrain her thrashing body and flailing arms.

  ‘Cuff her!’ Copernicus instructed Diega. The Fen dragged the restraints off her belt and slammed them around Silho’s wrists, fastening them with unnecessary brutality. Copernicus sensed a stirring of heat beside him and turned as the Skilsy Wraith who had helped them escape the witches stepped out of the wall. Both Diega and Shawe drew their electrifiers.

  ‘Don’t move!’ Diega ordered.

  The Wraith ignored her and crouched down beside Silho. Copernicus smelt the spectral-breed’s earthy scent like damp forest foliage. A shimmery, web-like bloodline mark crisscrossed the skin of her reedy arms. She reached clawed hands towards Silho but before she could touch her, Copernicus dragged Silho back, not knowing the Wraith’s intentions. He had never seen a spectral-breed so close before. The twin cities of the spectrals, the Memlirlands and the Skilsy Shadelands, had fallen to an unknown darkness when he was a child. The people had scattered, many fleeing to Scorpia in terrified flocks, but they had always kept to themselves, contact with outside races rare and strange.

  The Wraith leaned in again, unperturbed by the weapons pointed at her face. She whispered some words and laid her hands on Silho’s head. Silho’s convulsions stopped and she slumped, unmoving, in Copernicus’ arms. He passed her back, still cuffed, to Shawe and stood up. The Wraith mirrored his movements.

  He met her enigmatic grey eyes and demanded, ‘Who are you?’

  The Wraith’s stare flicked past him to Silho.


  Copernicus rested his hand on the whip-like binding band on his belt, used to restrain dissipaters. ‘I said – who are you?’ he repeated.

  She returned her gaze to him and whispered with a voice Copernicus would have described as sinister, ‘Raine.’

  ‘Why are you following us?’ Copernicus asked.

  When again the Wraith didn’t reply, he drew the binding band. ‘I really don’t like repeating myself,’ he said.

  The pale Wraith inhaled sharply. Her eyes swivelled left to right, then rolled back. Her body shivered and her head and shoulders collapsed in towards her stomach and out of her back, resettling into the form and features of a horned, red-eyed he-Wraith. Copernicus knew Skilsy Wraiths were born with both genders in one body and separated into two forms later in life, but knowing it and seeing it were two different matters. He took an involuntary step back and heard Shawe curse. The he-Wraith towered over all of them. Raine’s moth-wing cloak barely reached his knees, stretching threadbare across the lean muscles of his shoulders and chest. He spoke with a deep voice unlike Raine’s hiss.

  ‘I am Amateus. We are following you because we share a common enemy and now a common hope.’

  ‘The Skreaf,’ Copernicus said.

  Amateus nodded. ‘They have enslaved many of our people. Raine and I made a vow to stop them.’ The red of his eyes flickered like flames. ‘But up until now all our efforts have been in vain. Skreaf demons are ever-living, immortal but for one weakness, and their weakness is known only by Omarians – a rare people born in another realm, with the firebird-dragon bloodline mark.’ He looked to Silho draped over Shawe’s arms. ‘When her father was framed by the Skreaf and executed, we believed we’d lost the last Omarian and our only hope of defeating the Skreaf, but then we found her . . . she found us.’