by Nate Crowley
She knew there was another reason he had to come with them, but couldn’t fathom what it was. Mouana hoped for all the world that it wasn’t some flabby notion of friendship masquerading as reason.
Whatever it was, she needed him on board, and she didn’t have time to argue with him.
TOUGH LCK MATE, she typed, her shredded hand shaking with exhaustion.
YR COMING WITH US. SO EJCT OR I WLL FKN CUT YOU OUT.
There was no answer; nothing showed on the screen save the blinking cursor inviting her to send further threats. Mouana waited, dreading some facetious comeback—or worse, rejection of her obvious bullshit; there was no way she would have time to cut his cylinder free if he refused to budge. But there was nothing.
Then, just as she was about to send a second message, the ground shook. It rumbled up through their bodies, deeper and smoother than the rattle of the hearse’s wheels on cobble, then blasted out into the air and shook tiles from the rooftops. Tavuto’s foghorn, blowing its final challenge to a world of monsters.
Mouana felt the blackness gathering again, and gripped at Kaba’s slime-smeared rag of a vest.
“He’s coming with us, Kaba. Wrack has to come with us. Take us to Tavuto, and get him on one of the launches. Then get us to...”
Speech failed Mouana just before vision did, but as she slipped away, her comrade was already relaying frantic instructions to Fingal.
“WELCOME BACK,” SAID Dust, as she wiped her blade in the shadows of the tent. Mouana looked down at her chest in panic but saw no wound—although the cloth came away red from the general’s sabre.
“What do you mean, wel—” started Mouana, but the old warlord was already talking over her.
“You’re finally starting to remember, aren’t you?” said Dust, sliding the blade back into its scabbard. “Took you long enough—and after all the work we put in together, too. It’s a shame you couldn’t have managed when it mattered most... but you’ve not been an entire disappointment to me. Not yet. Now where were we?”
The general stalked to her bedside, elongate and indistinct like a shadow cast by a guttering candle, and fell to a crouch. Despite urging every muscle to move, Mouana could do nothing to get away from the dreadful shape.
“Strange, isn’t it, how these people can sit on all the knowledge left in the world and not notice what it points to, even if it’s right under their noses? Our employers and their enemies both; how many years, how many resources, have they put into children’s slap-fights over the discarded toys of their forebears, with no thought to finding another way of doing things?” She picked up the diagram of the rod again, and cruised back into the darkness.
“How absurd, how sad, that it should be left to a woman of war to innovate for them. But there it is. I have seen what they’re missing, and if they refuse to see the opportunity, then I may have to take it for them.
“These silly rods. Powerful, certainly, but just one way of doing things, and so limited. Not even full tools, just part of something forgotten, looted and looted again between barbarian nations. And the Lipos-Tholons, bless them, had something better all this time.”
Mouana had lost sight of Dust in the depths of the tent, could not make out her shifting form between the shadows of the campaign furniture. When her voice came again, it came as if from everywhere and nowhere all at once, the venomous throb of a tight-circling insect.
“This is why I have taken this ludicrous commission, commander. We are going to end this miserable squabble, take for ourselves what they are too stupid to use, and show them what they’ve been missing. We can do so much more.”
Silence fell in the stifling tent, and what little light there was shrank to a dim halo around her bed. She dared to hope the vision was fading but then the voice came again, close and invasive as jointed legs settling on her ear.
“But you knew this already, didn’t you?” whispered Dust, and the sabre’s tip pressed cold against her side. “This is a memory, and you’ve been here before. Now it’s time to go and do something about it.” Mouana’s face twisted in horror, but the blade was already inside her chest.
“I DON’T KNOW what I’m meant to do,” gasped Mouana, staring up at a smoke-drowned dawn.
“Shhh,” said a figure beside her, and she jolted at the sudden presence, but it was just Fingal. He did not have the sort of face that anyone should feel reassured waking beside, but at that moment his scarred grimace was as comforting as warm milk.
“Few of us ever do,” he murmured, handing her a flask of something strong.
They sat together, propped against a crate, and drank silently in the dawn. The feeling of the morning breeze on Mouana’s face, dulled though it was by her dead skin, did just enough to dispel the nightmare. Even so, she feared there was more lurking in her head than she knew yet; she had only glimpsed it, like a monstrous tail disappearing into murk.
They were sat on the forecastle of a boat, itself perched in the cityscape of Tavuto’s starboard launch racks.
From here they could see the city spread out before them, a dirty white patchwork pricked by a thousand needles of rising smoke. Gunfire rattled in the far distance, and explosions growled in the dark cloud that followed the invaders through the suburbs. But from here it was peaceful, like birdsong and wind-rattled twigs before a gathering storm.
Above them, chains creaked as Tavuto’s monstrous central crane tested their weight. Sailors rushed back and forth with arms full of ammunition and machinery, calling to each other across the deck as they made ready for launch. In the middle of all this, Mouana had no idea how Fingal could find the time to sit and drink with her, but she was glad of it.
“Shouldn’t you be rushing?” she wondered aloud. “Shouldn’t I be rushing?”
“Nah,” muttered Fingal, taking the flask for another sip. “Might as well take a moment while we can—things’ll only get more hectic from here. Besides, Kaba’s got things under control—she’s been good while you’ve been out, you know. Spent her life on the delta boats, after all, so she knows what’s needed.”
Fingal nodded to the rear quarterdeck, where Eunice cuffed a sailor sprawling, ending an argument over a rope. “That one’s no poor enforcer, either. Anyway, there’s not a lot left for either of us to do just now—we’re ready to cast off, once we’ve got one last piece of kit aboard.”
Fingal pointed down at Tavuto’s deck below them, where what seemed to be a funeral procession was taking place.
Glinting orange in the rising sun, a huge casket was being carried down the deck. The armoured tube rode on the shoulders of a hundred or more sailors, dead and living both, chanting a labour-dirge as they hauled the load towards their boat.
It was Wrack. Under that iron skin lay what remained of her friend, trapped in the preserved remnant of a monster’s mind. Wallowing in darkness, preparing to endure whatever came next. Watching his coffin carried across the deck, Mouana felt herself pitching into confusion and worry; it took all her resolve to put all thoughts of friendship out of her head and remember she had done the right thing. Wrack was a potent weapon, he was coming with them, and that was that.
“How much time’ve we lost?” she asked, putting the old steel back in her voice as she gauged the sun’s position in the sky.
“It didn’t take as long as we feared,” replied the rebel, as the pallbearers set Wrack down in a winching cradle. “And besides, from what we’re hearing over the wires, looks like the City’s putting up a spirited defence. They’ve lost the wall, but they’re pulling back into the streets and making your old lot fight for every house. At this rate, it could take them days to force a surrender.”
“Wouldn’t count on that,” said Mouana grimly, remembering the Red Tent at the siege of Mashina-Zavod, the screams as Dust had made good on her chilling ultimatum and lowered the mercy banner.
“Well I suppose you’d have a better idea than me,” said Fingal, breaking the memory. “Either way, we’ll be gone long before it’s over.
Once we’ve got him winched up into our hold, that crane’ll lift us up and put us to sea at the stern. And then the real work starts.”
Fingal gazed out to sea and Mouana followed his eyeline, to where a cluster of ragged warships waited at anchor. All seemed damaged; smoke rose from the wounds in their hulls, and one was listing alarmingly to port. “The mutineers?” she asked.
“Aye,” said Fingal. “Some of ’em. Others left already; figured with the Chancellor dead and the City toppled, the job was done and they were wisest making good speed away. Can’t hold it against them, eh? They’ve done the work they signed on for, and taking on your fight too was a lot more to ask. Plenty’ve stayed to help, mind.”
“They’re coming with us?” asked Mouana.
“If you’ll have ’em, yes. Sorry I couldn’t get you a better navy, but there it is. They’re a bit banged up, but with the pounding those boats took as you came in, it’s amazing anything’s still afloat. Three or four’ll probably still make decent speed, they tell me, and they’re cutting free anything useful from the stricken boats, loading it on the rest along with those who’ve not already fled the City.”
“How many crew?”
“Besides our lot from the Ministry? Looks like we’re still a few hundred strong. Course, more will probably leave—there’s plenty wounded, and some who’ll get second thoughts and try their luck running with the rest of the civilian refugees. But those who’ve still got fight in them want to come with you—there’s sure as hell no point anyone staying here to get cut up when that Dust makes it through the last of the kentigerns.”
Mouana started at her old general’s name, imagining her black figure skittering towards them in a tangle of limbs, but the wall of smoke that heralded her progress was still far away.
“You realise they’ll likely not fare any better with us?” asked Mouana, fixing Fingal with her good eye. “They’d be best off taking what you can and making for Murit or Rhianos, somewhere neutral, somewhere far away.”
“Yeah, I know,” said the scarred man softly, as he passed the flask. “But honestly? I never thought we’d make it this far. I certainly never thought we’d ever step foot in the Ministry. And we wouldn’t have, without what you and Wrack did. And I think we always knew that, if we did manage to storm the place, it would all be over soon anyway. At least this way we get to carry on, and help you try and wreck those last fucking rods.”
Wrack’s casket was suspended in the air now, rotating as the crane bore it towards them, dark against the tranquil immensity of the collapsing city. Already, sailors on their deck were guiding it towards the hastily-widened aperture of their hold.
“What about you, Fingal?” asked Mouana.
“Well, I was wondering if I could join your crew, to be honest,” said the rebel, wincing as he unbuttoned his waistcoat and went to lift his shirt with shaking hands. The shirt was crusted solid with blood; beneath it was a soaked wad of dressings, half-set gore spilling from its edges as the man’s abdomen twitched.
“Gutshot,” he explained. “Took it as we came into the Ministry, but figured with everything so near to finishing as it was, I might as well just neck some speed and forget about it. Surprised it’s not done me in sooner, if I’m honest—I’m pretty chuffed it’s given me long enough to get all this sorted.”
“Your people know?”
“Oh yes—I filled ’em in while you were out, over on the Asinine Bastard,” said Fingal, nodding at the largest of the mutineer ships. “Far as I’m concerned, this ain’t my rebellion any more. And that, mate, is why I’ve been at leisure to sit here and share a drink with you on this fine morning. Now I want to share another drink with you.”
Mouana noticed, for the first time, that Fingal had a cylinder of miasma cradled in his arm.
“It’s not life after death, you know,” warned Mouana. “It’s just death, without the rest.”
“So’s life, if you want to be that way,” murmured Fingal. “Either way, I want to take this stuff and see things through with you. Doesn’t feel fair to die properly until you get your chance too. What do you say?”
“I say you’ve lost your mind,” she answered, as he raised the canister’s nozzle to his lips. “Welcome aboard.”
Mouana leant back against the crate and shut her eye for a time. She felt the boat shudder under her as the chains above took its full weight, heard the crew as they scrambled to make ready for launch. When she opened it again they were in the air, gliding high over the city to where the sea crashed against the ruined docks. Fingal was dead, his head slumped against his chest, his arm round the miasma like a tramp cradling his booze.
She wished sleep could take her, even if it meant another vision of that awful tent. But sleep, like breathing, was a memory—there was going to be no rest until this was over. The boat settled in the water with a soft crash, and the sailors on the deck cheered—Mouana had to go and lead them.
As she began to lever her stiff, bullet-ridden wreck of a body into a position to stand, Fingal turned his head and grinned at her.
“You’re right,” he croaked, before falling into something between a laugh and a coughing fit. “This is horrible.”
“Yes it is,” she agreed absently, and got up to address her crew. As she tried to gather her words and her strength, she was caught by the sight of a hunched shape, crouched on the boat’s stern as it turned to leave the docks behind. A crab, still and silent, with a book clutched in its claws.
Wrack, watching his home city die.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DUST STALKED DOWN the deck of the beached hulk with a monstrous headache, cutting down everything she came across. Although the zombies had a satisfying give to them as they took her blade, they offered little to assuage the aching dullness the drugs had left as they withdrew.
Their blood was brown and sluggish; it oozed rather than arced as she hacked at the aimless bodies. They offered only sparks and snatches of song behind her eyes, compared with the colours and harmonies that blossomed when a fresh life ended.
And they barely fought back. Slamming her fist through a wretch’s chest as it dithered across her path, she let it slither on her arm for a moment, face to face with her. But there was no rage or fear in its face—if anything, it looked relieved. Dust spat in disgust and pitched it thirty feet across the deck, where it landed in a puff of teal.
Even that faded quickly, leaving the world grey again. Her system was nearing baseline, dangerously drained after the rapture of the breach. She had switched half her brain to dormancy during much of the thirty-seven tedious hours it had taken to fight through the city to the Ministry—it had been the dull kind of fighting—but it had only postponed the crash. Sooner or later, she would have to sleep. The thought disgusted her.
Still, she thought, what was coming would surely compensate for it, would offer her a thrill that would only grow with time. The thought of it swelled, coruscating rose and crimson, in her anticipation.
Something yapped and snattered in the periphery of her hearing, ruining the moment for her. She took it for one of the ship’s filthy carrion-birds, and was about to spin and put a shot through it when she recognised it as language.
One of her officers, a snivel-faced man from the pack trailing nervously in her wake, was wheedling for her attention. She considered putting a shot through his leg anyway, but put the thought away—it would only delay things further. Instead, she tried to make out what he was on about.
It was the Principals, he seemed to be saying, though the fear wafting from his face in green-black waves distracted her from his words. They were calling again, asking for conference, for an update on the assets. Their precious little rods.
Dust thought of the Principals, of their turgid emissaries on the screens, forever asking for ‘updates,’ and snarled. The herald of Kanéla in her tank of orange gas, the grey foreman from Lōhē, always wearing a new face. The fools from Ijinna, who brought new and meaningless questions with each conferenc
e, and that elephantine thing from Orcus, which so rarely said anything.
Of course, even that puffy monster would be in uproar if she told them the truth: that she had found the Ministry burned to the ground, had found only the shattered fragments of their rods, cool among the embers of the death-factory.
So she told the man to lie to them, as she had already lied to them once; to say that the assets were secure and being prepared for delivery. It didn’t matter—by the time the dullards became suspicious, it would be too late. She would have her real reward, and the paltry tokens of their commission would mean nothing.
It was so close now. Dust waved the trembling man away to his task, and looked up at the ship’s vast bridge tower, at its name, TAVUTO, painted in unforgiving capitals the size of houses. As she passed through its entrance and began ascending the blood-tacky stairs, the prospect of fresh ecstasy tickled her cortex. Her prize was waiting for her at the top; she fancied she could feel it tickling at the burned edges of her mind already, drawing her up past the drifts of bodies on the staircase.
Her monster, her ancient weapon, summoned just as planned. Captured as she had whiled away the months with the mammoth farce of the siege. Brought to her. It was odd that nobody had been here to present it to her, but no real shame—the fisherman was of no importance next to the catch. She had cast her hook, and here was her leviathan.
Only, as she entered Tavuto’s bridge and saw the sky blazing through the gutted ceiling, she knew she had been betrayed, Her prize had been taken.
Dust stood for a long time, staring up at the sky and wondering how to feel. At first only confusion came, but as the heat built beneath, shreds of other things boiled to the top. Shock melted into disbelief, and then gave way to bitter admiration as she realised she had been outplayed by a game-piece. The taste was unfamiliar, a forgotten blend, but all at once she recognised the old, rare tang of defeat.
