The Road to Hell # Hell's Gate 3

by Weber, David

  When he caught himself worrying his lower lip with his teeth, he took several deep, slow, calming breaths. He was being paranoid. Chava Busar had behaved with extreme prudence and every outward appearance of unhappy acceptance. Security had been watching him, his sons, his wives and daughters, his supporters, and his high-ranking security officials, every second of every day and night. They’d even been watching the officers of Chava Busar’s so-called “imperial police,” who constituted a private army under the Uromathian emperor’s control.

  A spate of cheering prompted him to glance down at the broad flagstone terrace just below his balcony. This portion of the palace had been built along the slope of a hill which had been terraced with a series of gardens, staircases, and open flagstone pavements where garden parties were held throughout Tajvana’s long social season. The palace’s gaslights had been dimmed for the firework display, but more than enough light spilled across the terrace from open doorways and windows to reveal the identities of the revelers below.

  Various members of his Privy Council chatted with one another and their families, pausing now and again to cheer a particularly spectacular burst of fireworks, and musicians played. The bright sounds of military marches, the patriotic tunes of every nation on Sharona, and celebratory hymns of thanksgiving and joyous praise for the deities which watched over them splashed across the terrace and eddied out into the night, and temple bells tolled solemn jubilation in the distance. All of Tajvana was filled with joy, tonight.

  Zindel spotted First Councilor Taje, head bent in conversation with Darcel Kinlafia. Kinlafia wasn’t a member of his Privy Council, but his new bride was. Alazon Kinlafia had been reinstated as Privy Voice and was radiant tonight. Zindel approved of that match, very much, and a faint smile touched his mouth. From the reports he’d been receiving, Kinlafia had weathered the transition from survey crew Voice to Imperial Parliament MP with great success.

  He’d been selected to several important committees in the House of Talents, including Foreign Relations and Budget, and he was vice-chair of both the War Caucus and the Talent Mobilization Board. That sort of authority was rare for a novice politician, but he owed it only partially to his fame as the sole surviving member of the Chalgyn Consortium crew and the Voice who’d relayed Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr’s last Voice transmission. It turned out—to Kinlafia’s own surprise, Zindel suspected—that he had very good political instincts even without his wife’s guidance, and his fellow MPs had quickly realized he was smart, thoughtful, and well-informed on the critical issues not only of the war but of conditions in the border universes, as well.

  And he was using that stature to keep the House of Talents focused on creating the structures they’d need to recruit and train Sharona’s Talented citizens to assist with the war. Whether at home or at the battlefront, Talents would be essential to Sharona’s war effort, indeed, to Sharona’s survival. Darcel Kinlafia understood that. It was a great relief to have him in the House of Talents, advocating and browbeating and persuading his fellow Talents to do the hard work necessary to prepare Sharona’s Talented citizens for war.

  Servants wended their way through the crowd, carrying trays of beverages and sweets. One of those servants caught his attention. The young woman was familiar to him, but he couldn’t quite place her. A frown touched his mouth as he tried to recall who she was—

  And the Glimpse struck.

  He staggered, nearly collapsing under the shock. Fire! There was fire everywhere. A blazing inferno blowing the room behind him to hell. His whole body was engulfed in flame and there was no time, it was right on top of them…

  “VARENA!”

  His wife jerked around as he began to run.

  “Zindel—?”

  “The girls! Get the girls!”

  His wife blanched and whirled. Armsmen were running toward her. Razial was beside her mother. But he couldn’t see Anbessa.

  “Telfor!”

  Telfor chan Garatz, Chief of Imperial Security, had already scooped Razial out of her chair. He jerked around at Zindel’s shout.

  “Get my family off this balcony! Not through the room!”

  “Yes, Sire!”

  Chan Garatz was already moving…moving so quickly he didn’t notice that the emperor was headed the opposite direction.

  Headed directly into the room he’d ordered his armsmen to avoid.

  “’Bessa!” Zindel chan Calirath thundered, his mind full of fire and blast, his body already screaming protest of the agony he knew was to come. He should have been paralyzed, should have been lost in the crushing power of his Death Glimpse, but his Talent had always been powerful. Now, like his son at Fort Salby, he was in fugue state. He Saw the world about him, Saw the future, Saw the agony, Saw his daughter’s death, Saw his own, Saw the slim possibility that Anbessa might live, and he threaded the needle between those futures—all of them potential; each of them in that moment as real as any other—and raced towards her.

  “Daddy?” she looked up at the sound of his voice, and even in fugue state, his heart spasmed with terror.

  She was standing in front of a tray of chocolates. In the room. Oh, gods…

  “’Bessa! Run!” he shouted. “Get to the balcony! Now!”

  She dropped the candy and ran towards him, but his own armsmen had realized which way he was headed. Two of them hurled themselves at him, desperate to tackle him and drag him bodily to safety, but he was in fugue state. He Saw them coming, knew exactly where they’d be, where their hands would be, and he went through them like smoke, smelling the fire, racing to embrace it. He was at the door, through the door, and Anbessa was six feet from him and running hard when he saw the terrible flash of light. It started at the back of the room. The table of candies exploded. The whole back of the room exploded.

  The blast cracked open the room’s gas lines and the entire enormous salon ignited. The guards who’d tried to stop him vanished into a boiling inferno, flame belched through the room, and Anbessa was still three steps away. The blast front roared over him, and he reached into it, closed his hand around her outstretched fingers. Heat crisped all around them, and Zindel chan Calirath pulled with all his massive, bull-shouldered strength, all the desperate power of a father who would not lose another child. He spun, his baby girl somehow in his arms, and hurled his daughter through the air, threw her violently forward, a living javelin.

  The second explosion blew out the doors.

  And part of the wall. It picked him up, hurled him back toward the balcony like a toy, swept everything off the balcony. It blew out the stone railing and hurled all of them out and down in a blazing ruin of flame.

  * * *

  Andrin gripped the ship’s railing. The Glimpse struck her like a club and she fought to see details. It was like seeing two different events through one set of eyes. She saw the Grand Palace, cracked open, fiercely ablaze. Papa! she screamed in silent horror, watching the flames engulf her father, watching the explosion sweep him off the broken balcony like a shattered doll. But there was fire all around her, as well, fire above her, fire and black water, deep and terrible and her lungs were bursting, but she couldn’t breathe for the flames and terrible black water that was dragging her down while hell blew up around her—

  “Get off the ship!” she croaked.

  “What?” Howan Fai asked, staring at her.

  “Off the ship! A Glimpse—just now—I was in the water. There was fire everywhere, all around, I couldn’t breathe, oh, God—”

  She saw two things simultaneously.

  Men in black, form-fitting clothing. They charged across the deck, converging on her. And a massive explosion behind them. An explosion that sent fire belching into the night from the heart of Tajvana. The Grand Palace had blown open. Fire belched out of it.

  “PAPA!” she screamed.

  Gunfire erupted—

  —and she plunged over the rail. Was shoved over the rail. Finena launched from her wrist. The falcon screamed. Andrin screamed as sh
e fell. As she plunged down the long, long hull. Toward the cold, black water of the sea.

  And then the vicious shock of impact smashed through her.

  The water was hard as stone. She’d turned instinctively to protect her belly and her side struck brutally. The cold shocked her whole body, and then she was under the water, down in the terrible black depths. Her gown was pulling her even deeper and she fought its weight. Ripped at the buttons, the seams. She couldn’t fight free of it. Her lungs were bursting. Panic throbbed through her. Gripped her throat. Stabbed through her, knife-sharp with every pulse of her wildly racing heart.

  Someone had her wrist. She flailed wildly. Hands pulled her from behind. Then the heavy weight of her gown ripped away. She felt suddenly light as goose down and she kicked frantically. Swam madly up—hoped she was swimming up, not deeper into the endless black water. She was suddenly propelled upwards by the strong grip of whoever had torn off her heavy dress. Her lungs were on fire. She couldn’t stand it. Had to gulp now—

  Her head broke water.

  She sucked down air—huge, shuddering lungfuls of it—and Howan Fai was beside her, face lit by the exploding fireworks overhead as they were jostled in the wake of the passing ships. Her yacht was already fifty yards ahead of them and pulling away steadily as the wind in her sails and the current in the straits carried her forward. The first destroyer was even farther away, out in the main channel; she couldn’t even spot the other one in the dark waters, but she could breathe—she could breathe!—and Howan Fai was with her. They hadn’t—

  A sparkle of light erupted on Peregrine’s decks. Gunfire! Those men in black swarmed across the yacht. Fighting Andrin’s armsmen. Fighting Imperial Security. Fighting the Marines her father had stationed aboard. Andrin drew breath to cry out for help—

  Peregrine exploded.

  The whole yacht blew apart. Flaming debris arced high through the air, hurled violently across the water, came flying down in a lethal rain.

  “Breathe!” Howan Fai shouted.

  She gulped air—and her husband dragged her under. He swam frantically down, as frantically as they’d just swum up. The water lit up, bright as daylight, and saltwater burned her barely slitted eyes even as she tried to make out the dark shapes sharing the cold waters.

  A shockwave tumbled them through the water. Something massive slammed down past her, plunging its way toward the bottom, and the water blazed above them.

  Great sheets of flame spread far and wide overhead, and Howan Fai swam hard sideways, towing her frantically toward the darkness. She started to kick that same direction, and for the first time in her life, Andrin was grateful she was large and strong, with more power in her body than grace. She swam with a single-minded determination toward the dark water beyond the flames, and when she reached it, she swam madly up, lungs nearly bursting yet again.

  When her head broke water a second time, she sucked down air in gasping, painful shudders. Oh, Triad, help us, please…She searched wildly, trying to find Howan Fai again. Then he was beside her, gulping down air, as well, treading water at her side. She gripped his hand, gripped hard, trembling and crying as the emotional and physical shocks hit her.

  Beyond them, the sea was an inferno. The fuel gushing from Peregrine’s ruptured hull spilled across the surface of the water, turning the waves into a raging sheet of flame. The yacht was nothing but wreckage. She’d broken in half and the two halves were sinking, still fiercely ablaze. Andrin heard people screaming in the flames, heard the engine-throb of the destroyer closest to them.

  She was opening her mouth to scream for help when Howan Fai covered her lips with his hand and shook his head urgently. He nodded with his head and she saw another boat—one with a haze above it, visible only when it rose on the very crest of a wave and instantly gone again when it slid into a trough. A smaller craft than Peregrine, it sat rocking in the waves less than thirty feet from them.

  It was a pleasure boat, one of the new power cruisers rich men liked to speed in, racing across harbors and bays, kicking up spray behind them in gleeful abandon.

  This boat wasn’t kicking up spray. It sat silent and dark, ominous in the black water. Then she heard the voices. Men’s voices. Low, rapid, speaking in a language she recognized as the Othmaliz dialect of Shurkhali. What they said riveted her entire attention.

  “—no one could’ve lived through that,” an angry voice snarled. “Gods damn it! How could those fools have bungled the job so badly? It was a cinch! Board in the darkness, snatch that cutcha, and dump her over the rail. Aruncas knows the fishes are hungry, and I Masked this job, neat as anything. We should’ve been halfway across the Straits before the bomb blew. But no, they botched it! That was a godsdamned gun battle, raging up there, before it blew apart!”

  Another voice, no less appalled, said, “The Seneschal will be furious. His Eminence wanted that—what was your word, cutcha?—to vanish. Swallowed by the waves and never recovered!”

  “Dead is dead,” the Masker chuckled nastily, “and that frigging explosion won’t leave much in the way of identifiable bodies! But if they can’t trot out every tall fisher girl up and down the Ylani as the missing heiress for the next decade, that’s the Seneschal’s problem, not ours. We did our part. Let’s finish this.”

  A large form blocked Andrin’s view of the boat for a moment and then slid on by.

  “Good enough,” said one of the Bergahldians.

  “Fine,” replied the Masker. “Get us out of here before those fucking destroyers decide to strafe every boat within a thousand yards.”

  “I thought they couldn’t see us,” said a third voice showing a little more fear.

  “They’ll see us just fine if you let a stray bullet hit me. Finish Calling your hungry little friends, and we can get out of here,” said the Masker.

  “I’d really rather we got to shore first.”

  “Do it!” snarled the Bergahldian.

  The boat didn’t race away. That would have attracted too much attention. Instead, it chuffed slowly away under low power while the destroyers raked the flaming wreckage with searchlights, looking for survivors. Andrin realized quite abruptly that she was nearly naked in freezing cold water. She’d begun to shiver while listening to those murderous ghouls and those shivers were rapidly turning into shudders.

  “Swim, Andrin,” Howan Fai said grimly beside her. “It will help keep us warm until we’re close enough for someone to hear us or see us.”

  She nodded. Then she reached across the dark water and touched his face. “You saved my life. Again and again, tonight.” There was more salt in her eyes than the sea could account for. “Oh, Triad! Howan, Daddy and Mama and the girls…” She was crying, fighting desperately for control, but the pain was tearing her in half. “I’m not ready to be empress! Not like this!” she cried.

  Howan Fai hooked one arm around her and churned the water with his legs to hold them both up. The strength of his arms and his ease in the water calmed her even before he started speaking, and Finena, circling in the air above, invisible in the darkness, cried out her fury. Andrin had almost forgotten her falcon.

  “Sister of White Fire,” her husband said in a stern voice, “you’re strong enough to do anything. To endure anything. You’re Talented enough to protect your life and my life and this whole world we love. If not for your Glimpse, we would both be dead. Your warning gave me time to act. To throw you over the rail before those murderers could reach you. If you can save us from a plot this well orchestrated, Andrin, you can do anything you must!”

  His voice was fierce. His eyes, lit by the fires raging across the water, were as hot as the flames that had nearly killed them both, and that fierceness steadied her. She was still shaking, but the hysterics were draining away and what was left was merely the shudders of icy water and reaction.

  “I’m c-cold, Howan,” she chattered. “Let’s s-swim.”

  This time, it was his grin that was fierce.

  “That’s the wo
man I love. Swim with me, Andrin. We have but a little way to go.” He pointed to the closer of the two destroyers, which had left the deep channel in the center of the Straits to search for survivors. She heard shouts as sailors from both ships lowered lifeboats and she saw searchlights sweeping across the flaming ruin of her beautiful yacht. She wouldn’t think, yet, about the people who’d died aboard that yacht. Her servants, her security men, her crew…

  She started to swim.

  It seemed such a short distance, but it was a long, brutal swim in the cold water, with her body shuddering and her teeth chattering. They swam five yards beyond the edge of the burning fuel, having to skirt debris floating in the dark water. Some of that debris had been human and she closed her eyes and kept swimming, trying to blot out the numb horror of what she was seeing.