The Road to Hell # Hell's Gate 3

by Weber, David

  Well, they’ll have something else to chatter about after the duke reads Therman’s message, she thought grimly, and tried to suppress a fresh pang of fear—this time for her husband—as she considered how a shakira was likely to respond to being dragged out of his foul, comfortable concealment by a mere commander of fifty.

  I’m not going to think about that, she told herself firmly. Not right now, anyway.

  She pushed the thought from her mind—or as close to from her mind as she could get—and tried to distract herself by watching the scenery flow past the slider window.

  The slider system trundled through Portalis, making its many stops to deliver her with thorough, if not speedy, efficiency to the Central Portalis Station. The ducal town house was only a few stops farther, but this was where the sliders really began to pack in with fellow travelers. There were a lot of them—more than there should’ve been—and heavy bags with broom handles and folded bits of sheeting poking out of them filled the overhead luggage compartments. The conversation around her was filled with none-too-suppressed anger—and fear—and Arylis didn’t care for it a bit. There was also a lot of talk about forming up at the last stop and marching to the Garth Showma House together.

  What especially disturbed her was the percentage of the protesters who were clearly garthan. Their anger was even more searing than that of the Andarans flocking to demand a more rigorous prosecution of the war. The fury over Magister Halathyn’s “murder” was to blame for that, of course, and she wanted to shout out the truth. But she dared not. Even if they believed her, it would be a betrayal of Therman’s charge to get word secretly to the duke…and odds were they wouldn’t believe her. The rage was so profound, the notion that the Sharonians had killed the magister had burned itself so deeply into their minds, that they’d almost certainly turn on anyone who tried to deny the “truth” they knew like rabid animals. Indeed, some of them reminded her of rabid animals—of the very stereotype the shakira had tried for so many decades to sell to the rest of the Union—and their assumption that she was one of them made her toes curl. Of course she looked the part: younger, female, obviously Mythalan and working class (and thus automatically a garthan herself), and out during the middle of the day without an obvious work errand at hand. One or two of them tried to talk to her, but she only nodded politely and returned as noncommittal a reply as possible.

  The crush getting out of the slider was dreadful, and try though she might, she couldn’t break free from the tide of bodies flowing through the streets. By the time she reached Garth Showma House, the group from her slider—and far more people beside—packed the wide avenue from one side to the other. She couldn’t see very clearly; she was too short to see over the sea of heads between her and the townhouse, but the chanting was in full swing and if they’d ever formed up in any sort of order they’d long since fallen out into a rough mob, swirling like a storm-lashed ocean. Fortunately, the high walls around the front of the public-facing building, which looked ornamental, were proving to be a solid defense. But broomsticks intended to hold painted sheets tied between them were now being banged against the wall in tempo to the chanting.

  Arylis pushed her way through, using the cake satchel as a prod to force a place for herself. It didn’t have the sharp corners of a sturdy traveler’s trunk, but the rounded shape worked better in this already hostile mob. The spirit of the crowd was too uneasy, filled with too much sullen anger—and fear, probably—and she really didn’t want to crack the dragon’s egg without family around to back her up in a fight. Even with the chanting and banging, people were too upset and too quiet, and she had a skin-prickling sense of latent violence swirling all too near the surface of their uneasiness.

  A knot of women blocked her way with tightly locked arms. They swayed together with the motion of the crowd’s cheers and sobbed in time.

  Arylis called out her apologies and tried to push between two of them.

  Tear-streaked faces about her own age in shades of brown looked down on her. There were older faces—most more starkly Andaran-pale but some almost as dark as Arylis own skin—among them. An Andaran family with garthan immigrant parents or grandparents, she realized, and from their expressions they were almost certainly here to mourn Magister Halathyn and not to lash out like so much of the rest of the crowd.

  “The guards won’t let us in,” one of them told her sadly.

  “I just need to try,” she replied, although she really wasn’t sure what she’d say to get admittance even if she managed to reach the front of the crowd.

  The words didn’t mean anything particular, but the women loosened their grips on each other just enough to let her through and she plugged gamely on until she was close enough to duck under the stick wielders themselves. One of them nearly hit her—by accident, she thought—but she managed to block the stick with her cake carrier.

  “I’m trying to get in!” she told the man with the stick as he glared at her as if it was her fault he’d almost hit her. She had to shout to make herself heard, and his expression made her go on quickly. “I just want to ask—”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  A woman with a voice amp heard it and the chant changed.

  “We want in! We want in!” it roared, and the crowd surged in response.

  Arylis was suddenly mashed against the wall around the townhouse. A quick turn saved the reader inside the cake carrier, but put the force of the impact on her left hip and shoulder for two surges of the crowd. It knocked the breath out of her, as well, and she staggered for balance, suddenly terrified she might fall and be trampled underfoot. But she managed to keep her footing, somehow, and sucked in a deep breath of relief.

  On the next pulse in the chant, she regained her momentum and spun the cake carrier on its side, with the reader pressed into her belly, while she used the cake as a pillow against the wall, pushing inch by inch closer to the entry.

  A stone handrail to the entry stairs blocked her path almost at the goal, and she gave up on gentleness, using elbows and kicks to push the precious feet straight back into the crowd to get around the side rail and up on the stairs themselves.

  Two javelins and a sword of the Garth Showma Guard stood at the head of those stairs. They were armed with peacekeeper staffs and, judging from their expressions, furious as they glared at the crowd.

  One of the javelins was saying something to the sword, utterly inaudible over the chanting of several hundred angry voices. He got a headshake in response, but the first one gripped his staff as if he was going hit the crowd with it, and Arylis flinched back. She had absolutely no desire to be struck by accident. For that matter, she wasn’t sure that if the javelin hit her it would be by accident. There was no way the guardsmen could differentiate between her as separate from the rest of the crowd, after all.

  The peacekeeper staffs had a rough look to them. They were solid eldritch oak, with rounded sarkolis caps that glowed faintly and ominously, and Arylis wished she could pull back well out of the crowd control weapon’s fifty-foot range. Getting struck with one wouldn’t kill her, but being unconscious and alone in a crowd this angry could be deadly all on its own.

  “Please,” she tried to yell over the roar of the crowd, “I just need to come in!”

  A crash sounded somewhere behind her, and she dared a fearful look over her shoulder into the mass of people. Had more people joined in since she worked her way to the front of the townhouse?

  And then a dragon bellowed suddenly and she found herself in what had abruptly become a great deal of open space. She looked up…and swallowed a squeak of terror as a yellow—young to be ridden—soared over in a slow pass. The crowd roared back at the sky, even the chanting lost in momentary surprise. Some of the protestors recognized the threat inherent in that pass, but at least half the crowd had misinterpreted it as no more than a surprise bit of airshow. After all, for all their fury, they knew it was the Air Force’s job to protect the Union’s citizens, not threaten them with le
thal force!

  The pilot turned the dragon and began a second pass, coming in so low this time that Arylis could feel the air pressure change as the spells pulled in aetheric power to hold the beast aloft.

  She clambered a few steps up and crouched against the rail wall to the side of the stairs her arms still wrapped around the cake carrier. Groups at the edges of the crowd had begun to move away and the center moved back with it. The chanting was gone, replaced by individual yells and shrieks, and she drew in a deep breath of relief. They’d all go home now, she thought, and in a few moments she might even be able to speak loudly enough to be heard over the din and possibly gain admittance at least into the public reception hall.

  She looked back to the guardsmen and saw not calm, but horror sketched across both their faces. They were screaming at the pilot, who certainly couldn’t hear them. She snapped her head back the other way and saw the dragon open its mouth.

  Two shots burned over her head passing a warmth and numbness across the back of her neck. Through a darkening sight Arylis saw the pilot collapse limp in his straps and the dragon’s mouth go slack and snap shut.

  * * *

  “What the hell was that?”

  A noncommittal grunt answered.

  Icy fingers running down the back of Arylis’ neck cut through the thumping in her head. She awoke, still on the steps to Garth Showma House, but with a nearly empty street in front of her. The yellow perched on a nearby building roof and lowed mournfully, its pilot limp in his cockpit.

  More people in GSG uniforms scurried from huddle to huddle in the street giving aid or assistance as needed to those left behind by the crowd.

  She moaned and found one of the guardsmen immediately at her side.

  “Awake now, Missus?”

  She nodded slowly, surprised to find her neck functioned just fine and that the pain in her left arm was only the too tight tangle of the cake carrier’s strap.

  “Why don’t you head on home then? We’re going to help a group down to the slider station nice and slow here in a minute if you feel you can stand?”

  “No.” I need to go see the duke.

  “That’s alright, you can rest a few more minutes, and we’ll get someone to carry you. Maybe there’s someone you could send for?”

  “I need to get in,” Arylis said and was rewarded with a long sigh for her accidental repeat of the chant. “No, not that—” she tried to explain “—I’m trying to see the duke.” She pointed her cake in an effort to explain.

  The man cursed softly. “A cake delivery? In the midst of all that? I’d hate to have your boss, Missus.”

  He didn’t get it right, but the door was opening and another retainer was summoned to help her up and walk her inside. Arylis saved her explanations for further inside the townhouse.

  She found a comfortable chair in the receptions office and settled into it. Office doors were flying open, and staff were rushing about entirely too quickly to catch their attention immediately. She rested, for just a moment.

  “I don’t believe for one moment the Undersecretary for Dragon Affairs personally authorized that disaster!” The voice echoed down the hall.

  “I’m just telling you where the staffer I spoke with said the order came from, Fifty.”

  “That pilot up there isn’t even a commissioned Twenty-Five.”

  “Hope to Graholis he never gets a commission either, Fifty.”

  “Hm. Kid might not even be alive.”

  An inarticulate grumble answered that one.

  “Trooper’s right, Fifty. I don’t want to serve with anyone who’d even think about firing on civilians.”

  “He’s going to say he didn’t mean it. You know he’s going to say he was just faking to scare the crowd, and he’d never have dropped gas on anyone!”

  “Don’t they gas people sometimes in Mythal?”

  “I don’t care what the spell-blasted Mythalans do. We don’t, and that boy up there needs a healer. The dragon probably caught some of the blast, too. See about finding a dragon healer while you’re at it.”

  Arylis let herself slip back into a dozy gray while she waited for the public offices to calm.

  * * *

  Later, hours later, Thankhar Olderhan, the Duke of Garth Showma personally opened the door and bowed to the fifty’s wife as she dropped him a curtsy and prepared to withdraw from his private office. She still seemed more than a little awed that the duke himself had wanted to hear her story, and she’d been more than a little nervous when she entered the warm, wood paneled room with its comfortable chairs, large desk, and the PC which now held a certified copy of her husband’s shocking message. He’d spent over an hour taking her back through every aspect of the extraordinary circumstances which had brought her to Garth Showma House—and damned nearly gotten her killed—and everything she’d said had only made him even more grimly confident that she was absolutely trustworthy.

  “Thank you, Madam Ulthar,” he said as she rose from her curtsy. “It’s my honor to have men like your husband in the Second Andarans, and I genuinely can’t tell you how deeply grateful I am for your own integrity—and courage—in bringing his message to me so quickly. Magister Halathyn would be as proud of you as I am, I’m sure.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace.” The words came out husky and the young woman’s beautiful brown eyes filled with tears. “I only…I mean, it was Therman who did it, really. And—”

  “Your husband, Madam Ulthar, would be the first to tell me what a critical and personal service you’ve done me and my entire house, as well as the entire Union,” he said firmly. “And I’m very much afraid he may have put you at risk by asking you to undertake it. Because of that, you’ll be moving into Garth Showma House—unless you’d be more comfortable at Garth Showma itself?—until we know precisely what’s going on out there.”

  “Oh, Your Grace, I couldn’t! I mean—”

  “My dear, Her Grace has already spoken in this matter,” he told her with a faint smile. “I assure you that I’m not foolish enough to argue with her about it, and I’d recommend you not argue, either. It will be safer for both of us.”

  The young woman was obviously flustered, but as she looked up into his face, she realized he meant it and her protests faded. He took her hand in both of his and gave her another bow—which only flustered her even more deeply, of course—and turned her over to one of the assistant housekeepers. Then he returned to his office, dropped into the comfortable chair behind his desk, and glared up at the ceiling while his mind raced.

  He’d ruthlessly shoved the job of unraveling the chain of incompetence behind that fool trainee pilot onto the desk of Five Thousand Rukkar. The entire thing was a mess. The yellow wasn’t even a proper battle dragon—just a youngling on loan from Mythal Air Expeditionaries for a breeding experiment that probably should never have been approved. MAE was as undisciplined a group as ever claimed commissions, but Mythalan private families paid for the feeding and care for MAE’s fleet of dragons—a relief on the Union of Arcana’s military budget too large for Parliament to decline. The old practice of an airknight paying for his own equipage and fodder was darn useful in that respect, but other Mythalan habits didn’t mesh well with Andaran sensitivities. Among other things, they conducted side line breeding efforts and produced special dragon lines for crowd control, which had to be one of the stupidest godsdamned ideas Thankhar had ever heard of. And what kind of frigging idiot authorized a yellow for “crowd control”?

  He shuddered as he thought about it. He’d never heard of a yellow which produced nonlethal gas, and he doubted like hell that anyone in Mythal was interested in producing one, whatever they might claim. And he had his doubts—serious doubts—about the rider’s claim that he’d never intended to actually fire on the crowd. Hells, he doubted he’d believe it even if the kid repeated it under a dozen truth spells! No, that little prick had been ready to gas the street in front of Garth Showma House, and what kind of miserable bastard used poison gas
on a crowd of bereaved women and children?

  As soon as the healers had that trainee back on his feet, Sathmin would have him at a meeting with the spouse’s club to make a very heartfelt and public apology. Sathmin would make it work, but the real apology should be coming from someone far more senior who’d allowed the almost disaster to launch. Rukkar had better figure out who’d started it, or Thankhar would have to.

  He didn’t care how mild the MAE’s hundred who’d claimed credit for the idea thought the yellow’s gas was. That idiot had also been shocked—or claimed he had, anyway—that the crowd hadn’t instantly dispersed the moment yellow wings flared overhead. He’d clearly never met an Andaran woman. And he equally clearly hadn’t figured out how much of that crowd had been garthans who didn’t give a single solitary damn about any shakira ever born. Once they got out from under the bastards’ thumbs, there was no stopping any garthan. It was one of the things he most liked about them…and what was making it so godsdamned hard to get them to stand back and believe the truth about how Magister Halathyn had actually died.