Paz had almost forgotten the girl was there. Clive knelt down next to her. “Is that true? Did he hurt you?” Flora shook her head.
“Won’t speak to you, either, eh?” Chang said. “Makes her pretty good company, actually.”
Chang glanced at his pocket watch again; Paz took the opportunity to step out from under the protection of the pergola to examine the cable at the corner of the roof more closely: woven steel, without any kind of dampener around the metal. So it definitely couldn’t conduct electricity safely, nor was it any kind of pipe or tube. Yet the material and design meant it would be strong, strong enough to bear quite a bit of weight, if someone needed to…
She turned back to Chang, who was still holding the pocket watch. “All right, kids. Time’s up. Are we working together or not?”
“Not,” Flora suddenly interjected.
Chang snorted. “Girl’s got a good sense of timing, anyway. Thankfully, it’s not her decision to make.”
“I think she captured our feelings on the subject pretty well,” Clive said.
“Oh, Clive.” Chang pointed his gun at Flora. “I’m disappointed in you. After all this time, you’re still not thinking practically. I just gave you a chance to save yourself. But do you take it? No. It’s more important to get a little dig in. You’re incapable of being reasonable, even when it’s a question of life or—”
That tendency to gloat had always been the Grand Marshal’s biggest weakness; Paz had pulled the other gun from his holster before he’d even clocked her moving.
Chang groaned. “So I shoot the little girl and then you shoot me? That’s how you want this to end?”
Paz didn’t respond, just made a slight adjustment to the angle of the gun, firing a single shot out into the darkness.
“What are you doing?” Chang said, but Paz could see from the subtle tightening in his expression that she’d guessed right.
“You already killed thousands of Wesah,” she said. “You killed the Epistem and the Archbishop. You killed Burns. I won’t let you kill again. Tell me how to stop this.”
“First off, I did not kill Marshal Burns. I just needed to shake him up a little. I can take you to—”
She fired again. This time she managed to nick the cable; it shook but didn’t snap entirely.
“Stop!” Chang cried out.
“How long do we have?”
“Twenty minutes. Maybe less.”
“Oh my God,” Clive said, as understanding dawned. “You’re gonna pull down the whole church.”
“Where will it start?” Paz asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Chang said. “I couldn’t tell you how to stop the damn thing if I wanted to. I didn’t build it myself.”
A third shot. The cable shook again. “Where will it start?” Paz demanded.
“Behind the fucking nave! Daughter’s love, girl, that’s our only way out of here. Are you that eager to die?”
She gestured with the gun toward the cable. “Go on, then.”
Chang clearly didn’t trust the offer, but what choice did he have? He holstered his gun and climbed up onto the parapet. A blinding flash of lightning cracked the sky behind him as he pulled a leather strap from his jacket and attached it to the cable. He reached into his pocket and pulled out three more, throwing them at Paz’s feet.
“I’m not a monster,” he said, a declaration that nonetheless felt like a supplication. “When this is all over, you’ll see that. I’ll make a good leader. People will love me.”
None of them replied, and when Chang realized they weren’t going to, he gave a slight nod, then threaded his hand through the strap and allowed his weight to drop onto the cable. He hurtled off across the square, gold buttons gleaming as he passed through the glare of the floodlights and on into the black.
Clive bent down to pick up the straps that Chang had left them. Paz watched him consider them for a moment—before casually tossing them over the balustrade.
“Twenty minutes, eh?” he said.
Paz smiled grimly. “Twenty minutes.”
As if on cue, one of the woven threads of steel in the cable suddenly snapped, then another, and another, until only one slim silver fiber remained.
Snap.
Paz squinted into the darkness. Maybe Chang had made it safely to the other side. Maybe not. She couldn’t have cared less. Meanwhile, down below, the last of the Sophians had finally entered the church. But even as the Protectorate soldiers were celebrating their victory, a new force could be seen approaching Annunciation Square—bows at the ready and vengeance on their minds.
The war wasn’t over yet.
7. Athène
THE SURVIVING SOPHIANS HAD ESCAPED into Notre Fille, but for some reason, the Protectorate soldiers who’d emerged from the ground like worms after a storm weren’t following them inside. In fact, they’d abandoned the plaza proper and were congregated at the ends of the streets that fed into Annunciation Square, standing silent and expectant in the rain, like a miniature re-creation of Sophia’s siege on the Anchor. From a strategic standpoint, Athène could make little sense of the situation. Clover said there were secret passages in the church that led to various other places in the city. The Sophians would find them eventually, given that their position was readily defensible in the short term. Meanwhile, Zeno still had her planes, which could recommence devastating the city at any moment. So what was Chang thinking?
Athène once again descended from her perch on the roof and returned to where the many Wesah naasyoon had finally joined back together, in a plaza a few blocks from Annunciation Square. Clover and Kita were waiting there too, looking forlorn and damp and out of place. Nephra was idly picking crumbs of pemmican out of a bag.
“Nothing any of you do makes any sense,” Athène said in Clover’s general direction.
“If it doesn’t make sense, we’re missing something,” Clover replied.
“It makes sense to me,” Nephra said. “Chang is trying to starve the Sophians out, just as Zeno tried to do to the Anchor.”
But Athène had already discarded that theory. “This is not a siege. The Protectorate is waiting for something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe he’s just gonna take out the whole church,” the girl called Kita said in English, which Clover then translated for Nephra’s benefit.
“He wouldn’t,” Athène replied in Wesah.
“He would, though,” Clover said. “He’d destroy everything to win this war. That’s the difference between him and Zeno. It’s why she’s losing.” The boy was suddenly animated, futures unspooling in his mind’s eye, as if he’d just drunk a cup of dreamtea. “But if we—that is, you—only while I…” He trailed off, lost in his thoughts. A moment later he looked back up at her, eyes bright with epiphany. “I know what to do.”
“You are just a boy,” Nephra said. “We are not interested in your plans.”
“I wouldn’t mind hearing what he has to say.” All eyes turned to the tent flap. A bent figure, lank gray hair plastered to her robes, shivered with the cold.
“Grandmother!” Athène cried out. She took off the dry blanket some tribeswoman had given her and wrapped it around the otsapah’s shoulders. “You were meant to stay outside the city. It’s not safe here.”
“The times are not safe.”
“But you’re shaking. You need to lie down.”
“Leave me be!” The old woman could still command a room when she needed to—or an Andromède. “Let the boy speak.”
All eyes turned to Clover. “Athène,” he said, then, blushing slightly, corrected himself. “Andromède, I want the Wesah to survive this war. The world needs you. But right now, I don’t like your odds. You have no guns, no planes. And you’ve made enemies of both Chang and Zeno. You won’t win this fight.”
“So what do you suggest?” Athène said. “Should we retreat?”
“No. You could never run far enough.”
�
��But what can we do besides fight or flee?”
“I think I know what the boy is getting at,” Grandmother said. “All these years, we have treated the Descendancy and Sophia as if they existed in a world separate from our own. But there is only one world. When we fight them, we fight ourselves. When we run from them, we run from ourselves.”
“Don’t speak in riddles,” Nephra said. “Tell us what to do.”
Grandmother spread her arms wide. “Help them.”
Athène tried to get her mind around the concept; it was like trying to stop a horse galloping at full tilt. “Help them how?”
The otsapah frowned—halfway between confusion and amusement. “I don’t know. I’m hoping the boy does.”
“I might,” Clover said. “All those soldiers out there, they’re only fighting because they can’t see a way through this war without fighting. But if I could just talk to them, I think I could make them see reason.”
“Even if that’s true, how could you ever hope to talk to thousands and thousands of people all at once?” Athène said.
“There’s a way. I just need a little time.”
“And what if your friend is right, and Notre Fille falls before you’re ready?”
“Then Sophia will be defeated, and Chang will come for you.”
Athène looked to the otsapah, then to Nephra, but their expressions were inscrutable. This was what it meant to be Andromède. The decision was hers to make—and the consequences would be hers to bear.
“You say you need time. How much?”
“Thirty or forty minutes,” Clover said. “But that’s not all I’ll need from you.”
Athène sighed. Somehow she’d always known it would come down to this—terrible risk and terrible sacrifice, blind trust in the gods. “All right, Clover. What would you have me do?”
* * *
The square was as quiet as it had been in hours, nearly silent but for the patter of the inexorable rain. Athène had arranged her warriors along the spokes around Notre Fille, just out of sight of the closest Protectorate soldiers. She stood at the front of one of these divisions, steeling herself to give the order. Clover insisted that the war could only be stopped if both the Descendant and Sophian forces became equally uncertain about its outcome. Right now the Protectorate believed themselves to have the upper hand; the Wesah had to take that belief away from them.
Even more sisters would have to die—so that the tribe had a chance to endure.
Athène didn’t need to speak. She merely raised a hand and brought it down again, a signal understood by every tribeswoman who’d ever been on a hunt. Her warriors streamed past her and were soon joined by the streams from the other roads. The Protectorate soldiers were slow to react; by the time they realized what was happening, the first Wesah were already crashing into their ranks. Athène doubted the soldiers would risk using their firearms. Clover said the rain had probably rendered most of their rifles and pistols unusable—and besides, in a battle such as this one, the soldiers would be just as likely to shoot each other as their enemies. So this was to be a hand-to-hand and blade-to-blade fight; at least it was an honorable way to be annihilated, should things turn out that way.
Athène would’ve liked to be on the front lines with her sisters, but Grandmother had insisted she stay back. “They’ve already lost one Andromède,” she’d said. “If you fall and the tribe survives, there will be conflict over who leads us next. That is the last thing we need.”
Athène’s mother used to complain about the way the Wesah chose its leaders, how the process fueled so much bloodshed and bitterness, and Athène would mock her for her soft heart. She could see now that growing older would be a long and humbling exculpation of all her mother’s sins and failings alongside a perpetually deepening understanding of her own.
Lightning illuminated a distant cloud bank, striking somewhere in the fields outside the city. Athène waited for the rumble of thunder but heard only a dull thump as something huge and dark landed on the cobblestones just beside her. It lay still for a moment—a satiated vulture, a gobbet of night—then abruptly came alive again with something between a moan and a scream. What had seemed only a shapeless mass at first glance now resolved into form and color: maroon-and-gold jacket; silver stubble atop a brown pate; a jag of bloodstained bone like a fresh shoot bursting from the loam. As Athène approached, the man found the presence of mind to draw a gun, but she batted it away like a mosquito. She lifted his chin to get a better look at his face.
Admittedly, faith had never been Athène’s strong suit. Part of that, she now realized, had been sheer childish defiance. Her mother’s certainties had grated on her when she was young, especially as they always seemed to require something of her: a prayer or a sacrifice, a dance or a song. And truthfully, aside from the visions granted by the dreamtea—which really weren’t all that different from the dreams that came with sleep—she couldn’t say she’d ever seen any proof that the gods existed, or that the spirits of her ancestors were watching over her, or that there was more to life than dull, material reality.
It wasn’t until the day she met Gemma that Athène began to doubt her doubt. This spiritual rebirth hadn’t been a result of seeing Gemma’s shaking fits, or of hearing Gemma describe her journey with the dreamtea, or of experiencing any tangible manifestation of the divine. It had been the sheer fact of Gemma—her smile, her touch, her light. There was the unequivocal miracle, of the sort only an infinitely powerful and benevolent god could manifest. Her death was the opposite, an existential balancing of the scales too devastating to be arbitrary.
And here was one last miracle, literally falling from the sky; after this, Athène would never lose faith again.
Chang held her gaze.
“Do it,” he said.
The fingers of her undamaged hand had already closed around the hilt of her glass blade. She drew it slowly, rasping the leather sheath, savoring her enemy’s fear. The blade came free. It caught a bit of ambient gleam from the nearer of the two floodlights, casting a spangle onto Chang’s gritted teeth. She would not kill him; there was no need for that, and no justice in it. She would leave him exactly as he had left the Wesah—hobbled, terrified, despairing. Let him live with his shame; let it eat away at him. And should he ever return, she would meet him in the fullness of his strength and annihilate him. She would shame him all over again.
“You have to the count of one hundred to be out of my sight,” she said in English. For the count itself, she switched back to Wesah, so he couldn’t know exactly how much time he had left.
Chang didn’t hesitate, but immediately began to drag himself up the street. Both of his legs appeared to be broken; they trailed behind him as if made of stone. Still he kept putting one hand in front of the other. Place, pull. Place, pull. He was quiet at first, but soon his grunts became groans, each one coming a little more closely to the last, like the contractions of a mother giving birth, until they joined together into one continuous shriek, his voice tearing and cracking as if his very soul were on fire. She’d stopped counting long before he’d shrunk to a slinking worm in the distance, before his screams could no longer be heard over the sounds of battle. She turned her attention back to the people who mattered—her people—sacrificing themselves so that a boy she scarcely knew might broker a peace she wasn’t even certain she wanted.
She looked to Notre Fille, a hulking silhouette against the pale moonlight, a dead god. Her wounded hand throbbed to the rhythm of her heartbeat. Her sisters cried out. The rain continued to fall.
8. Clive
EXPLOSIVES?” CLIVE SPUTTERED. “WHY WOULD I know anything about explosives?”
“I don’t know,” Paz said. “I was just asking.”
“Do you know anything about explosives?”
“Only the basics.” They were making their way back down from the Archbishop’s chambers as quickly as possible, taking the steps two and three at a time. “I know which chemicals can give you an incendiary rea
ction when they’re mixed and how gunpowder works. But that’s about it.”
“Will that be enough?”
“I doubt it.”
He nearly crashed into her as she stopped suddenly just before the threshold of the seventh-floor stairway. Flora, who’d been keeping pace behind him, slammed into his back so hard it nearly sent all three of them over the edge. There were voices coming from the landing below them—the Sophian army retreating farther up the building.
“We have to get past them,” Paz said. “Is there another stairway?”
“They’re all blocked off, remember?”
“Well, we can’t risk trying to talk our way through. They’re as like to shoot us as not.”
“So what? You wanna jump out a window and just hope we land on a big pile of…” Clive trailed off. It wouldn’t have been possible even a few weeks ago, but now…
“What?” Paz said.
“Follow me,” he said. He used the windows to orient himself, moving east whenever possible, though the peculiar layout of Notre Fille saw them come face-to-face with a number of dead ends before they finally arrived at a nearly lightless corridor and a door bearing a freshly painted sign reading NO ACCESS. It opened onto a hallway that extended for only about a dozen feet before it was completely obstructed by a flap of canvas. The innocents’ dormitory used to be on the other side, before Kittyhawk sheared it off the building entirely. That attack had saved Clive’s life once already; hopefully it would do so again today.
“Are you kidding?” Paz said.
“You have a better idea?”
She sighed. “You know I don’t.”
The canvas was tethered in a half-dozen places. The instant they finished unpicking all the knots, the wind ripped the whole flap up and away from the wall; suddenly they found themselves looking out over Annunciation Square from more than a hundred feet up. Clive forced himself to step to the edge, so he could better see the scaffolding that had been put in place to aid in the reconstruction. It was a rickety layer cake made up of flimsy-looking wooden platforms supported by iron rods at all four corners. These rods ran all the way down to the ground in segments of about fifteen feet, each segment screwed into the next.
Scorched Earth Page 25
