Flare: The Sunless World Book Two

by Rabia Gale

  The oppressive darkness of his thoughts lightened to a dark grey. Swathes of it lifted, like a number of veils, and silver gleamed through.

  Isabella.

  Rafe saw at once that the majority of the krin had gone for her. She was surrounded by a seething mass of them, holding them at bay with the fierce glow of her moon dagger in one hand and the light-extinguishing void of her dark dagger in the other.

  He reached out to her, strengthening their kyra bond with threads of ka, stabilizing it with green. It gave their connection a weirdly luminous quality, like that of fungi glowing in the dark.

  Krin tendrils wrapped around his ankles. Deep coldness sank into his feet, deadening muscles and drilling into bone. It spread up his legs. Rafe beat off the krin with a ka-whip that sparked yellow and bristled with red.

  The krin backed away, but only to regather themselves. Their intent, implacable and heavy with age, pressed itself into Rafe’s mind: Here in the dark, the krin ruled. Sooner or later, the ka would run out. Sooner or later, the humans would tire. Sooner or later, there would be no escape.

  Rafe’s hands dangled. He breathed hard. His ka whip was shredded to a handful of cords. A long way under his feet, a reservoir of ka tugged at his senses, but it was a sludge of toxins. Purifying it would take more time than the krin would give him.

  The darkness was descending once more between him and Isabella. He reached out to her, was relieved to find her mind much as it always had been, cool and smooth on the outside, with no windows, doors, or cracks.

  He knew she would outlast him, but it was cold comfort with both of them trapped underground like this.

  A bubbling panic rose in his middle. Rafe recognized it at once as krin work. Knowing the truth helped, but his traitorous feelings had turned his body against him. His heart beat faster, his hands trembled, his legs had turned to jelly.

  He was not Isabella, who could withdraw rapidly behind impregnable walls. He was not Karzov, who lacked the human emotions of fear and pity and self-preservation to give a krin something to latch on to.

  He was just a man whose armor had chinks, whose defenses had cracks.

  If there are cracks, let’s fill them in with something, he reasoned. He made himself think of the best times of his life. Of lying in agri-caves bright with quartz light, rich with the scent of growing things. Of warm ripe berries and flaky fish roasted over a fire. Of laughing with Coop and Wil in some over-heated tavern during the Hour of the Dead as they played cards and…

  Wil.

  His friend, who had looked at him with a mask of stone for a face, out of eyes that were bleak bottomless pits.

  … of escorting Bryony to New Year festivities and dancing in the streets…

  Bryony. His sister who had hated him all this time and hidden it behind fake smiles and feigned warmth. His sister who had shot him. His sister, who would’ve watched him bleed out his life at the Tors Lumena.

  Rafe’s half-built house of happy memories came tumbling down. There was not one brick in it that the krin could not take and link to an unhappy instance.

  But that was what being human was all about. All the good things and the bad things mixed up in each other.

  Isabella! he called across the bridge to her. How do I defeat them?

  But she was locked up tight—if the krin could not get to her, how could he?

  He had to try.

  Rafe knocked at her doors. Tell me, Isabella!

  And she answered.

  One moment, she was in her spherical shell.

  The next, it opened and there she was: a naked flame, burning silver.

  The krin surged forward, pushing Rafe away in their haste. He floundered among them, caught in a sea of shadows, a place of cobwebs.

  Patricide! they howled. Child killer! Torturer!

  Rafe flinched. The words were hard as stones, thrown with force, laced with venom. The maelstrom of images that accompanied them—a child’s face with open dead eyes and a trickle of blood at the temple, a man with carrion breath crumpled to the floor pleading for release, blobs of flesh and bone that were barely-alive people—had him kneeling in water, retching, his empty stomach threatening to turn itself inside out.

  Isabella stood and took them all in. All those words burned up in the flame of herself, like incense to mostly-forgotten gods.

  She said, Yes and yes and yes.

  I am all these things.

  But you forgot the most important.

  And the silver flames died so Rafe could see Isabella herself, daggers in her hands. Her face was dead-white, her hair spat sparks, her eyes openings to pits of despair.

  I am also your death.

  She attacked.

  Much later, Rafe stood in a pool of water and felt as if a weight had rolled off his shoulders. He saw and heard and sensed with a painful clarity.

  Isabella sheathed her daggers. Come.

  She did not extend her hand to him and he did not offer his own.

  “Will there be any more of them?” he asked, using his voice rather than his thoughts. At a time like this, the normal ways of communication were safer.

  “Not for a long while,” answered Isabella. There was nothing in her tone—not satisfaction nor relief nor pain nor savagery nor blood-lust.

  The child, the man, the people—they all went through Rafe’s mind.

  “Then let’s go,” he said.

  He followed her passage through water with his ears. Occasionally, she’d warn of a step or a turn, but those moments were few and far between.

  How to ask a woman like this, at a time like this, Are you a monster?

  He knew what she would say. I am.

  That was not the whole story. But Isabella would take the mantle of monster rather than justify herself. Exposure was not a risk she would take.

  The sound came so quietly, masked in the splashing of water, that Rafe heard it long before his mind registered there was something new to pay attention to.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “What is it?”

  “That clicking noise.”

  A pause. Then, “I hear nothing.”

  “But—” Rafe stopped. Of course she couldn’t hear it. It was the sound of ka, after all. “An Oakhaven machine has found us.”

  “Do I destroy it?” asked Isabella.

  He listened. “No. It’s conciliatory, helpful. It says… it says, Zacharias sent me.”

  The machine, went it came, was a surprise. The size of a lady’s lapdog, it paddled frantically towards them, round eyes glowing. It yipped like a dog, too, while its excited machine-speech ran through Rafe’s mind in a series of run-on sentences: Zacharias sent me I found you Zacharias sent me you were found by me Zacharias… me of all the machines… me found you Zacharias…

  Its yipping rose to a high-pitched squeal that hurt his ears. The machine swam tight circles around him, bumping his legs with its nose, catching the fabric of his pants with its claws.

  “Rafe,” warned Isabella, “you had better silence the thing before I have to.”

  She’s not joking, he told the machine. Better quiet down.

  He was surprised when the machine actually obeyed. It slowed its paddling to a less splashy pace, woofed twice, and was quiet.

  Good boy. Rafe reached out and patted the machine on its metallic cone-shaped head. It only superficially resembled a dog, but it certainly acted like one. A wriggle of pleasure went through its entire body.

  He felt Isabella’s query through their bond.

  “It’s a canoid,” Rafe explained. “There used to be more of them generations ago, but we lost the knowledge to make and repair them. Roland had the last surviving one, back when I was a boy. But it had a cracked eye, a dented ear, and wheezed. It moved slowly, too, unlike this energetic one here.”

  He patted the canoid again. Its eyes brightened, the intensity warm against Rafe’s face. Doitagaindoitagaindoitagain! it begged.

  “What happened to it?” Isabella aske
d. “The King’s canoid, I mean?”

  “Went into the old ventilation systems one day and never came back,” said Rafe. “It was on its way to do a minor repair, close to the palace, but we supposed the canoid malfunctioned and went somewhere it couldn’t get out of. Roland was rather upset about it.”

  Rafe vaguely remembered the grumbling when Roland had pulled machines and guards alike from their regular duties to search for the canoid. His own father, visiting the city with his sons at the time, had had several choice words for the king’s actions. Pamphleteers had decried the action as yet another instance of the monarch’s unhealthy obsession with the Machine.

  Rafe thought that it was after the canoid’s disappearance that Roland had become the distant, impatient person that Tristan had known most of his life.

  “If they’re smart, these canoids—and this one seems to be—I can see why he’d be upset,” said Isabella, surprising him.

  “I think Roland cared for the canoid beyond what it could do for him,” said Rafe, shrugging.

  “Many human bonds are like that,” Isabella pointed out.

  “Aye.” The canoid nudged him hopefully again, and Rafe ran his fingers along its wet back. “I think I’ll call it… Rex.”

  “After Roland? I didn’t take you for sentimental.”

  “Actually,” Rafe grinned, “My favorite dog at the Oakhaven agri-caves was a rat-catching terrier named Rex. I wanted him for my own—actually any pup—but my father insisted that all our dogs be working dogs.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Isabella.

  Now it was his turn to project surprise at her.

  “Just because there are relationships I myself do not pursue, it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the benefit they bring to others,” she told him, rather loftily, he thought.

  Rafe scooped the canoid into his arms. “Maybe you should have this fellow, then.”

  She recoiled as if he were actually going to dump Rex on her. “No, thank you. Besides, I travel far from Oakhaven. Your canoid isn’t going to deal well with being separated from its Primary.”

  “How drearily practical of you.” Rafe heaved a sigh and contemplated the issue. “Well, I suppose we’d better go see this Zacharias. Can you show us, Rex?”

  YES! With an excited yap, Rex launched itself from Rafe’s arm and into the water. FollowmefollowmeZachariaswaits!

  “Well,” said Isabella above Rex’s splashing and yapping. “At least we’ll always know where it is.”

  They didn’t spend long sloshing through water. Rafe felt the ground incline under his feet soon after, climbing upwards.

  “Stairs,” said Isabella, from just ahead of him.

  Rafe’s toes jabbed into the first step. He lifted his other foot and climbed.

  The stairs rose out of the water. Rex leapt to the top of them, cavorting and shaking water off itself. Its submersion hadn’t negatively affected it at all. Rafe didn’t think that any of Oakhaven’s recent diggers and scoopers would be the same after a swim and was impressed anew by the skill of long-ago engineers.

  Come! Rex yapped loud enough to echo in the cavern. Rafe felt Isabella’s pained reaction through the kyra bond and chuckled out loud.

  Rex led them on through crumbling brick tunnels, many of them partially blocked by rock falls. Once, a pile of rubble blocked the way, leaving only a gap at the top. Rex bounded effortless up it and wiggled its way through. When they didn’t follow, it reappeared and said humbly, Sorrysorrysorry. Toobig! Forgot!

  Rafe knew the canoid was only counterfeiting emotion, but it was hard not to respond warmly towards it.

  We can move some of this, he assured the creature. Stand aside.

  He shaped a scoop out of yellow and green ka and shoveled some debris out of the way. Isabella swarmed to the top of the pile and pushed bigger rocks down. They landed at Rafe’s feet with a thunk.

  “It’s wide enough,” she called down to him.

  He nodded and climbed. Sharp edges poked his hands and grit got under his nails. Pebbles gave way under his boots, twisting his feet in awkward angles.

  Rex followed, emitting an anxious whine and keeping up a stream of helpful mental instruction. Leftfootupthreeinches. Righthandmovediagonally…moremorelessyes!

  As he neared the top, Isabella reached down and grabbed his hands, first one, thenkayas the other. She hauled him up, then let herself down the other side. Rafe followed her rather more ungracefully, he was sure. The cloth of his much-abused pants ripped down the left leg, below the knee.

  He was grateful it wasn’t the seat instead.

  Rex led them into newer and better-maintained tunnels. Rafe caught the whine and clatter of machinery, the click of machine-speak. Once, they came across a small nozzle-nose, about waist-high. It pressed against the wall as Rex pranced by, unconcerned. After Rafe and Isabella passed, it trundled on to whatever duties it needed to perform.

  The presence of all these machines calmly doing their jobs was oddly reassuring to Rafe. No matter the chaos going on in the world above, the machines below were keeping Oakhaven running, providing clean water, sewage services, heat, and gas.

  Rex bounded up another set of stairs and pushed its nose against a steel door with a wheeled handle. Isabella cranked on the wheel and the door hissed as it swung open. Rex gave a quiet yip and slipped through the widening crack. Its feet clicked on the floor, the sounds getting further away as it went.

  Isabella followed first, what she saw flowing back to Rafe a few seconds ahead of where he was.

  A surreal feeling came over him as he went down the low-ceilinged corridor, dimly lit and painted a hideous shade of yellow.

  This was the palace and he was in the basement level. And Rex was scratching at a door Rafe was very familiar with.

  Isabella opened the door, looked inside, and stood aside to let Rafe enter first. It made him feel like he had a bodyguard. That was an odd sensation indeed.

  They were in the Machine Room.

  The first thing Rafe looked for, despite himself, was Roland’s big scoop chair.

  It was gone. Rafe didn’t know whether to feel sad or relieved. But that chair, indented from the king’s body, covered with the dead king’s blood, was far too big a reminder of what had happened in this quiet room.

  Instead, he crossed over to the big glass cylinder in the corner. He placed his hand on its rippled surface. Ka buzzed pleasantly across his palm. He waited till he caught the attention of the Primary, a sterile presence with a citrus tang.

  “Hello, Zacharias,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Rafe

  BACK AGAIN, I SEE, said the Machine, with the dryly amused inflection that Rafe remembered from his one prior interaction with the Oakhaven primary. You’ve changed.

  It was hard to tell whether the Machine considered this a positive or not. It’s been two years, Rafe pointed out. Previously, even the mild ka in this room had brought on his quartz-sickness. Now it washed over him with a pin-pricking that straddled the line between pleasure and pain. His stomach didn’t churn and his soul no longer felt as if it had been dipped in acid.

  The Talari shahkayan’s training had done what it was intended to. All that time he’d spent suspended in a cage over quartz fields or immersed in pools lit by quartz had paid off.

  Yet, is it enough? mused the Machine, as if the matter was merely intellectual. Can you do what the kayan of long ago could not?

  I can only try. It’s not like there’s someone else.

  The Machine’s attention passed from Rafe to Isabella. Ah, so this is the krin slayer! It sounded entertained, as if waiting to see Isabella perform tricks for its amusement. Through the kyra bond, Rafe heard Max make some gibbering sounds of awe.

  “To think that such things existed and I never knew,” whispered Isabella wonderingly. She brushed the glass with light fingers, then dropped her hand. “A krin at the very heart of Oakhaven’s Machine. The Primary, no less.”

  Me? A krin?
The Machine paused, as if trying on the label to see if it fit. Perhaps once. But now, like you, I am half one thing and half another.

  Max interjected, its thoughts vibrating with a groveling urgency. But you are Zacharias, Kayan-Friend, one of the greatest of us all! Old beyond imagining, knowledgeable beyond reckoning, wise beyond…

  Maybe once, the Machine cut in. Maybe once, yes, in my dreams and in my memories. But I have slumbered long within gears and valves, sunk my soul into engines and divided my mind among pipes. Two years ago I was awakened by a familiar touch—the touch of a fledgling kayan. It disturbed me and I roused myself from my half-conscious state to find all the pieces of myself. To bring order and sense to the puzzle of this strange world, which so little resembles the one I knew.

  “We would appreciate any knowledge that you would give,” said Rafe politely. That could take a while, though; Zacharias was obviously the long-winded type. Still, the Primary hadn’t held a conversation with sentient creatures in centuries. It probably needed this outlet.

  “And why you—a krin—are like no krin I’ve encountered before,” interjected Isabella. “I sense none of the krin’s hunger in you.”

  Such passions were stripped from me long ago, when I consented to take on this form, to aid Oakhaven as its Machine and guide it through the darkness that fell after the Scorching. Surely you understand, slayer, since you agreed to a similar process. We are both of us unnatural for our kind.

  Isabella inclined her head in agreement.

  “She’s getting better,” Rafe interjected. “I have high hopes for a full recovery.” He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Don’t give up on yourself.”

  “Ever the optimist,” Isabella murmured.

  But she didn’t twitch his hand away and she sounded touched.

  The Machine watched with that clinical interest Rafe had come to expect from it. The resilience of your kind is fascinating to me. Such a frail yet adaptable species. After the Scorching, I would’ve wagered that you wouldn’t survive the next century. And yet, here you are.