The Stars Askew
Page 40
The Furies flew through the air, their speed unnatural and frightening. As Kata’s guards broke and ran around her, or pressed themselves down on the barricades, as if they might somehow melt into it and disappear, she stood tall, her head held high. Time seemed to slow, movements delayed, sounds stretched out. The calls and cries of the seditionists beside her seemed to yawn through space. Two of the Furies came at her, racing each other.
On they came, first thirty feet away, then twenty. Bolts were loosed from the scorpions behind the barricades and bolt-throwers held by desperate guards. Time itself seemed to distort. The bolts seemed to fly forward, hover gracefully in midair as if halted by some unseen force, then speed on to their targets. Some flew past the creatures; others disappeared into the darkness surrounding them. One of the Furies skidded across the cobblestones, rolling and twisting in pain, disappearing into the darkness. For a moment Kata thought it might be sucked back to the Other Side. But no, it recomposed itself and sped on.
Now ten feet away, the other Furies flew toward her. Still, she seemed to see every movement, every tiny detail as death came at her. She prepared herself for the creatures to smash into her and rend her with their teeth.
With one giant leap, Dexion brought his hammer down onto one of the creatures’ heads. It crumpled to the ground, and an instant later the two of them were at each other, spinning and lashing out, like wild dogs fighting.
A light gleamed to Kata’s left, like a powerful lamp. Kata realized she had been vaguely aware of it for a while, but now it burst into a glowing brilliance. She looked to the side and saw Maximilian there. A blinding ray burst from the radiance surrounding him, and then another and yet another, until it seemed that a white sun burned. Only the silhouette of Max was visible; the rest of him was a bulb of incandescence. Kata averted her eyes, looked back and away once more.
Ahead of her, the Furies cowered and scrambled away sideways, having forgotten their prey. Like dogs that had been kicked, they scratched and scrambled farther back, their bloodshot eyes fearful, terrified.
Alfadi’s thaumaturgists held their arms to their eyes and crouched, as if expecting a blow.
Only Alfadi faced the brilliance uncowed, but his cold white eyes were filled with a desperate anger and surprise, his ragged face grimacing under the beams of blinding light. The thaumaturgist rushed forward, his hands burning red with thaumaturgical power. He raced up the barricade directly into the globe of light, intent on attacking Max. But as he entered the searing globe, Alfadi’s body seem to shrink, as if it had aged rapidly. His suit emptied itself and fell down. A bundle of rags tumbled from the barricade and onto the ground, nothing more than a ruin.
One by one the Furies screamed, terrible unearthly cries, as they were sucked back into the Other Side like water down a hole.
The enemy thaumaturgists cowered. Some crawled away over the cobblestones, the white light of some new form of enchantment bearing down on them with a terrible weight. Others lay prostrate, clamped down to the ground by the relentless force.
When they saw the thaumaturgists turn and flee, the gladiator troops behind them broke.
Dexion staggered to his feet, his skin torn and blackened, and his voice rang out. “A mage. It is a mage of old!”
* * *
Kata’s troops pursued their enemies down the streets, toward Market Square. Leaving Dexion with a now unconscious Maximilian, she staggered after them. Bodies lay strewn along Via Persine, cut down from behind. The seditionist guards were not inclined to forgive, it seemed.
Around the Opera, corpses lay scattered like rag dolls in a nursery, their arms and legs at unnatural angles. Blood lay in pools beside the bodies, entrails held in place by stiffened hands. Most of the bodies were vigilant guards. Though they had defended the building resolutely, they were no match for the trained force of the gladiator army. Here and there a gladiator lay fallen, a trident or short-sword by his side.
Already a slightly unpleasant odor hovered in the front hall. Here she found seditionist guards rummaging through the bodies for valuables. The Opera’s mobile lights pulsated an intense, angry red and refused to come down from the ceiling.
Kata rushed into the southern wing, looking for Rikard. She could feel the hope inside her, a little spring emerging from the rocks of her heart, even though she knew it was misplaced. The wing resembled a bloody harvested field: nothing remained standing; there were only stray stalks of wheat scattered on the ground. Corpses were strewn in the corridors and jammed up in the corners of rooms.
Kata came to Ejan’s former office. Across the room lay a dark-haired man, facedown. Rikard! She ran to him, noticing as she did the pool of red and black blood that lay beneath him. The spring in her heart dried up. She turned the man over. His middle-aged face had been smashed in, his stomach slashed with a hundred cuts of a sword. It wasn’t Rikard.
Numb with the horror of it all, she continued to an open courtyard. Here some moderate guards were piling the bodies up on a hastily constructed pyre, built from ruined furniture and paper from the printing presses.
“We won’t be able to bury them all.” One of the seditionists looked around despairingly.
“Ejan’s lieutenant Rikard. Have you seen him?” said Kata.
“He’s in one of the rooms off the corridor. We moved him there so he’d be more comfortable.” One of the men threw a broken lamp onto the pyre, which began to burn quickly.
Kata stumbled back, moved from room to room until she found one filled with injured seditionists. Some groaned. Others lay pale-faced and grim. A good-looking bearded man moved from patient to patient, offering water and words of comfort.
Along one wall lay Rikard, one side of his face burned horribly. He held one hand against a deep wound in his stomach. His smile was part grimace.
Kata dropped to her knees beside him.
“They got me,” Rikard said. “Made sure of it.”
Kata looked around for healers or apothecaries, but there were none. “I’ll find someone to help you.”
“Kata, it’s not good. Look at the wound. No one can save me. Stay here with me. I don’t want to die alone.”
It had been a long time since Kata had cried, but now the tears came, and she didn’t try to hold them back.
From across the room, the bearded man smiled gently, nodded with compassion, tended to more of the injured.
“It’s better this way, anyway,” said Rikard. “Look at me. Look at my face.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your face,” said Kata.
“Will you tell my mother? Tell her it was quick, though, won’t you? Tell her I didn’t suffer much.”
Kata got to her feet. She would find that apothecary. But Rikard grasped her arm. He spoke in short breathless gasps. “No. Stay here, Kata. It won’t be not long now. I wanted to thank you. You’ve got a good heart, underneath it all. Remember that history isn’t kind. When great events come, hard decisions must be made. Of course you know that. I’m not sure why I’m saying it. And you alerted me to the dangers of hasty decisions, easy solutions. To the dangers of believing we know those solutions, that we are the ones with the right judgment. Thank you for that. It’s a pity I haven’t been able to make better use of it.”
Kata tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing. Instead she wiped her tears from her eyes.
“All those things I’ll never experience. I thought one day I might have children, you know.”
Kata was shocked. “What?”
“Yes. A long way off, but why not? Life can be about the little things, can’t it? You never saw that in me, did you?
“I associated you too much with Ejan,” said Kata. “And I associated Ejan too much with … I don’t know, things I wanted to believe about him.”
Rikard groaned, and his words came more breathlessly. “That’s it, Kata. It’s coming now. I can see the Other Side, I think. I’m scared. See all those figures, walking soundlessly through the field. They’re all
dead, Kata. They’re all dead. Can you see it? The black stairs, leading up to the long black field. Can you see it, Kata? I can see the Dark Sun. Those black rays are cold. The Dark Sun. It’s magnificent, isn’t it? Terrible and magnificent.”
“I’m here. I’m here.” She kept repeating it again and again as Rikard’s breath came quick and ragged. He began to shudder, as if he were awfully cold. Then the shudders became spasms. His chest thrust forward. He stopped breathing, burst into three ragged breaths, stopped breathing once more, and was dead.
* * *
After Rikard’s death, the bearded man came to her and she sized him up for the first time. His name was Irik, and he was from Varenis. His clothes were ragged and worn, and he had the lean look of a man who had been through hardship. Yet there was a softness about his manner and movement. He touched everything as if he were a gardener, tending to fragile flowers. He placed one hand on her shoulder, gently. “I’ll look after him now. You don’t need to worry. He’s safe now. He’s safe.”
So Kata left them both. Her tears dried as she walked blindly from the Opera. She wanted revenge on those who had killed her friend. She wanted Dumas’s head on a pike.
Others had the same idea. On the balustrade, guards of both factions—moderates and vigilants—were carrying out executions. A line of prisoners kneeled, heads bowed, before a pile of bodies on the cobblestones beneath them. Behind the captives stood seditionist guards, bloodied swords in hand. In the square nearby stood even more guards, encircling the remaining miserable-looking prisoners.
Blades hacked into necks or drove through bodies. The line of captives fell forward, over the balustrade and onto the pile of bodies nearby. Another line shuffled to take their places. They quivered and whimpered as they waited for the final blow.
At the head of a battered group, Ejan emerged from the Quaedian, his bodyguard Oskar covered in another dozen bloody cuts that would one day add to his scars. Seeing the executions, Ejan called out, “No! Stop this immediately.”
The fragile-looking Elise stepped forward from behind the prisoners. Apparently she had been overseeing the killings. How things had changed. Everything had turned upside down: vigilants calling for mercy, moderates organizing a massacre. “They’re traitors. They would have done the same to us.”
“You’re right—they would have,” said Ejan. “But that’s one of the things that separates us from them. There will be trials. They must have a chance to defend themselves. There will be justice, but no executions now.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if we kill them?” said Elise. “Wouldn’t it be easier to cleanse the city of those who will destroy us?”
“They’re no threat to us now,” said Ejan. “Take them to the dungeons in the Arbor Palace.”
Elise and the others grumbled and led away the prisoners, whose shocked faces were softened with relief.
Elsewhere there were more massacres. Kata came too late, finding only bodies piled up, seditionists loitering around or gone to pursue more enemies. At other times the seditionists had already lined up the exhausted enemies and were leading them slowly to the Arbor dungeons. Kata followed the devastation to the great metal structure of Collegium Caelian.
There she found her veteran captain Terris looking up at Caelian’s huge building. In another time, Terris might have been an architect or a teacher. His lack of personal ambition made him a perfect captain. In fact, Terris was one of those seditionists who just wanted it all to be over so he could return to real life.
Seeing her approach, he said, “They’re not answering. They’re deciding what to do, I guess.”
Kata approached the door, looked for some kind of opening above.
A panel slipped open, and a head poked out. “If we give you Dumas, will you allow the rest of us to go free?”
“We should send them all to the dungeons,” said Terris. “They all deserve the Bolt.”
Even Terris wanted a reckoning. Many of the seditionists grumbled their agreement. Others waited to see what Kata had to say.
If she accepted the deal, she would have Dumas. There would be no more bloodshed, here at least. But then the rest of the Collegia hierarchy would escape justice. How could they continue to build a new Caeli-Amur when they had enemies in their midst, saboteurs who could strike at any moment? How could they build a new world, when justice had not been served?
“I don’t think you’re in any position to make demands,” she said.
The man said, “These walls are impregnable. In any case, the Collegium is a network, not an organization. Most of us had no idea about Dumas’s plans. We were as surprised as you.”
What he said may well have been true, but Dumas was still the Collegia’s leader.
Kata agonized before finally saying, “Give us Dumas. The rest of you are free for the moment. But we will require your identities before you may leave. You may yet face recriminations.”
There was a grumble of discord among the seditionists and she sensed Terris’s dissatisfaction as he shifted on his feet nearby.
The doors slid open, just enough to allow Dumas’s heavy figure to be shoved out. Dumas’s bloodhound cheeks seemed even more saggy, the reds of his eyelids clear for all to see. He looked exhausted, broken. Kata felt a flush of power run through her. The man was in her hands, and she could do what she wished with him. The feeling was seductive, overwhelming. She liked it and was disturbed that she did.
Kata strode toward Dumas, who raised his arm to protect himself. But she was already behind him. One hand grasped his forehead, pulling it back, as the other pressed her knife to his neck.
But she couldn’t do it. She tried to think of something fitting to say, something that would make the new relationship clear, make sense of the situation, capture the moment, but words were not enough. Finally all she said was, “To the dungeons.”
She pushed Dumas forward, and he fell to his knees. Two seditionists took him by the arms and led him toward House Arbor.
FORTY-FOUR
Armand would never become used to the feeling of being watched. Through the Director’s windows, the Sortileges’ Towers loomed around their building, like cruel adults encircling a child. The Sortileges had emerged from their researches and looked outward. A cowering consul had come scuttling across to the Director’s office, face pale, voice quavering, to explain that the Sortileges were very unhappy. They were set to intervene themselves, he squeaked, if the situation in Caeli-Amur wasn’t resolved.
From where Armand stood in the center of the office, each of the Department buildings’ ninth-floor windows could be seen clearly. Armand thought he could see Controller Dominik looking down on them from the Department of Benevolence.
Behind his desk, Rainer shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Giselle stood before the sphere and looked at Armand. It was time. The seditionists had contacted them a day before and agreed upon this meeting.
Giselle ran her hands over the ball. A small point of light emerged, grew to engulf the sphere, transcended its boundaries, and a second three-dimensional room was superimposed on the material one.
A group of figures sat before them. At the front sat the Northerner Ejan and the thaumaturgist Max. Lounging beside them, her face steely, was the former spy Kata. News had come that she was now one of the leaders, which was typical of the seditionists: their leader was a murderer and a liar, and a woman to boot. A magnificent minotaur sprawled over two seats at the very rear. What a motley bunch they were, a ragtag group of scum.
“The Caeli-Amur Insurgent Authority,” said Rainer. “We will give you one chance for unconditional surrender. We have everything now: the Prism of Alerion and the book, The Alerium Calix. The legions are mobilizing. Five battle-hardened legions are returning from the west, where they’ve been pacifying barbarians.”
Kata ignored Rainer. “Armand, we know about your plans. You might not have heard, but your allies in Caeli-Amur have been … disarmed.”
“What allies?” said Armand.
“Well, that makes you a bloodthirsty ogre, doesn’t it?” Armand spat back. But he knew this was the world he was in for: the world of Realpolitik, as Rainer called it, the world of cold calculations and maneuvers, of the will to power. There was no room for sentiment.
“What does it matter, now that the legions are mobilizing?” said Rainer. “You don’t stand a chance, so it would be better if you negotiated now. We can bring this little adventure to a peaceful end.”
But Kata seemed intent on pressing her advantage. There was a cruelty to her, apparently. She gestured to the figure hiding in the darkness nearby.
Irik strode into view. The handsome cheekbones, the way he leaned forward slightly as he walked, the calmness, as if no event overwhelmed him—all this was like a dagger in Armand’s gut. The pressure was too much. Armand’s face cracked, like that of glass under too much pressure. “Irik?”
“I’m sorry, Armand,” said Irik.
“You see,” said Kata. “We know all about your plans. You intended to use the tunnels beneath the city as a secret entranceway, didn’t you? While our troops concentrated on the walls, you hoped to storm the city easily. That’s what you told Irik, isn’t it?. But your armies won’t surprise us. Not now.”
Armand stood up and strode toward the ethereal figures until he was almost on top of them. “There is no loyalty in this life. Know this, Kata: you will not be spared. I have visited the Augurers, and I have seen the future. You will end your life, crawling away on the dirt like a dog! Your minotaur will have his horns cut off. Your friends will be strapped on our machines and broken, driven into half-life by our thaumaturgists. They will live in the zone between us and the Other Side, become our perished slaves, dead yet not dead, living endlessly in torment.”