by Rabia Gale
“No one would blame me for it,” Coop spat out through a mouth that felt too full of teeth. His tongue was thick and swollen, his words came out halfway between a rumble and a growl, barely understood.
The sound of his own voice, half-man and half-beast, shook him to stillness.
The other—it was Furin, he realized dully—still pushed against his chest, still clamped down hard on his arm. “… not like this… what would Felicity say?”
“Felicity.” Coop swallowed. She didn’t deserve a murderer for a brother.
He glanced down at the shorter man. Furin was in the prototype for the battle suits Mirados’ rohkayan had been working on for Ironheart’s military. The thick material was grey and rippled as if it had been woven out of shadows. Metal bands encircled Furin’s arms and legs and striped his torso. They glowed softly, shedding a white light in a sphere around them. A hood covered Furin’s head, and his eyes behind goggles contemplated Coop worriedly—and warily.
Coop’s gaze focused behind him, on Wil crouched on the ground, reaching for his boot. “Watch out!” he shouted, pushing past Furin. He grasped Wil’s hand and twisted until the knife dropped nervelessly out of the other’s hand.
Wil fought back, kicking and thrashing. In the misty light, his face was set, dark bruises rising along his cheekbone, his eyes staring blankly. He hardly seemed to see Coop, and it was that, more than Furin’s words, that checked his own strength.
He couldn’t kill him. Not this creature with eyes dead of everything save the grim determination to see his duty through to the end.
A yellow light blazed, searing Coop’s sight. His eyes stung and teared, Wil’s flinching form blurred in front of him. Only Furin stood, facing the two who approached, his goggles tinting black in the glare from the globe that bobbed above them.
“Bo-ring!” said a loud, rough voice. Coop, peeping through his fingers, saw that it was only a boy. He was a large one, with awkward hands and feet too big for him yet, one who still had plenty of growth ahead of him. Coop took in tousled yellowish hair and crazily bright eyes.
“Bo-ring!” said the boy again, throwing pebbles into the air. They spun and looped and whizzed past each other in a dizzying dance. “What’s the point if they’re going to fight each other anyway?”
So this was one of Karzov’s wonder kayan children. Coop got to his feet, calling up the image of a report in his endless pile of paperwork. Fitz was his name, the boy Rafe had called a kinetic mage.
Which meant he liked destroying things. Great.
Furin’s teeth snapped together in an audible click. His gaze swept the area around the boy, looking for his son. Coop felt a twinge of sympathy. How would he feel if his nephew Ellis had been kidnapped by Karzov? Just thinking what that maniac could do to a helpless child made him sick.
Was Fitz one of the Ironheart children kidnapped after the Great Fire? He certainly had the brashness and build for it, though with a name like that he was likely a bastard child of an Oakhaven noble.
“Letting them take each other out would’ve been the optimal solution.” Another boy strolled into view, this one slight as a reed, with dark hair and pale skin. He adjusted the glasses on his nose. “Like I was saying, Fitz, before you so stupidly charged in without thinking again: I almost had the Oakhavenite.” He gestured towards Wil.
“Yeah, yeah, screw you, too, Justus,” said Fitz rudely. He threw a contemptuous darkling glance at Wil, now unsteadily climbing to his feet, favoring his right ankle, his eyes like holes torn in the paper-whiteness of his face. “What could one fainting lily have done?”
“He would’ve killed one of the others or gotten himself killed in the process,” said Justus in a distinctly clenched-teeth kind of way. “Either way, we’d be facing two, not three.”
Fitz laughed and rubble erupted and fountained around him. Stray specks clattered against Furin’s armor and pinged against Coop’s cheek. “As if these guys can stop us,” he said scornfully. “Pathetic, all of them.”
Justus closed his eyes briefly. His lips moved, as if saying a prayer for help. Then he opened them again and said, “Do pay attention. Karzov particularly wants the one in the suit removed.”
“Scared of me, is he?” Furin spoke for the first time. His Blackstonian accent was even more pronounced than usual.
“Don’t be an idiot!” exclaimed Fitz. Justus pushed back his spectacles and observed, “We don’t like Alik being distracted. It makes life hard for us.”
“I will find him,” promised Furin, “and bring him back to himself.”
“Try,” invited Fitz. “You won’t be leaving here, I promise.” His eyes glittered with unholy glee. An excited shiver ran through his body.
Justus rolled his eyes.
Coop balled his fists and bounced on his toes. His entire body was tense, though the rational part of his mind persisted in informing him that unarmed combat against a rock-hurling kayan was stupid at best and suicidal at worst.
“I wish Rafe was here,” he muttered. “Or even that scary slayer woman.” He glanced at Wil. His eyes had become even bleaker at hearing his former friend’s name. “Hey, you. I guess we’ll be fighting together for now.”
Wil nodded, one sharp downward jerk of his head. Without taking his eyes off the kayan children, he handed Coop something soft and rolled-up. Coop took it automatically and snorted.
A bandage.
Quickly, Coop wound it around his middle. “I’m fine,” he said for the benefit of Wil and the kayan. “You, on the other hand, look half-dead. Maybe it would’ve been a kindness to take you out.”
Wil spoke for the first time, still not looking at him. “I wish you had.”
Fitz begged, neck straining, almost standing on tiptoe. “Can I?” he demanded. “Can I start?”
“Go ahead.” Justus sounded bored. His gaze was turned up towards a ceiling that was no longer there. Illusions, emotional manipulation, cold feelings of despair and fear, Rafe had said.
Got it. Watch out for minds being messed with. Coop nodded to himself.
“Awesome.” The very air around Fitz crackled and popped. His hair stood on end. A maelstrom of dirt and stones whirled around him. Pebbles shot out to strike random objects—a boulder here, a felled tree there, a crumpled structure.
“Bang,” said Fitz, with each strike. “Bang, bang, bang!” He held his hand up like a pointed gun and chortled.
This is not going to end well, thought Coop.
Chapter Twenty Five
Isabella
ISABELLA FOUND HERSELF IN a place where there was no up nor down, no left nor right. She was suspended, as if in resin, in something blue and speckled with light. It slipped from her fingers when she tried to grasp it, a dry coolness sliding across her palm.
So this was krin-space.
And she was alive in it.
That fact, more than anything else, surprised her.
I shut down your respiratory system, said the krin inside her, subdued and apologetic. You don’t want to try and breathe here.
It had worked fast at least. Isabella felt its black tentacles all over her body, leaking darkish fluid into her lungs. Her heart still pumped, her blood still flowed red, though flecked with dark spots.
It’s not a perfect seal, went on the krin in the same small voice. You will not be able to survive here indefinitely.
I thank you, then, for your timely intervention. Can you get us out of here?
Negative. If it had a head, the krin would’ve shaken it with emphasis. The tunnels out of here have disappeared.
Blocked? Isabella looked around and saw nothing but sapphire blue, with lighter eddies and darker patches dotted within it.
No, erased. It’s as if they never existed.
Isabella reached out with her kyra. That still worked, though she wondered what kind of sensory inputs she’d receive from this strange world. If you left me right now, would you be able to free yourself?
No, I see no way of boring my way o
ut.
Her kyra probed silver-blue wisps. They felt like lemon juice on a paper cut. A prod at a darker gelatinous mass gave the sensation of chewing rubber.
Those kind of inputs.
If you were on your own here, how long could you survive?
Longer than you, but not long enough. We use these spaces but we were not meant to live here, away from… It stopped as Isabella’s kyra dredged feelers through two dark spheres and came away sticky with tar. The smell of it was in her nose, the feel of it on her fingertips.
Exactly so. Isabella withdrew her kyra from the twin masses.
All right, then, she called out, her words bubbling through the jelly-like medium in pearly globules. Show yourselves. I know you’re here.
The spheres wobbled, became blobs, elongated here, rounded there. They shivered and melted all over, creating features. Craters for eyes, bumps for noses, tendrils for hair.
The kayan twins were in front of her.
They looked just as unprepossessing as before: thin, dirty, unlovely children with dull eyes and greasy hair and smudged faces.
I know why your magic feels so heavy and dirty, Isabella said. You’ve woven krin substance all throughout it.
The children stared solemnly back at her, hanging in krin-space, slowly turning, first one way, then the other. They said nothing, but the krin’s shock sent a frisson through her.
Control yourself, she told it.
Sorry. It sounded pathetic.
Look. We’re in this together for now. We’re partners. So start acting like it. What ridiculous name did I give you? She grimaced. Max. You agree to being called Max?
Yes. It came to self-important alertness. What can I do?
Anything that seems helpful. Or just wait for my lead.
She focused back on the twins. Even with your magic and cloaking yourself in the skins of dead krin, you won’t last forever here, either.
The girl said, Master said to…
The boy finished, …keep you here.
They said together. And we do what Master says.
Isabella put her hand on her dagger. Not Eya, the usual one, but dark Voya. You can try. But it won’t work.
Coop
From beside Coop, Wil moved first.
He lobbed two canisters, one at Fitz, the other at Justus. They flashed silver as they arced above the boys’ heads.
“Yee-haw!” yelled Fitz, sending pebbles flying like bullets towards them, puncturing their sides. There was tortured hiss, then mist erupted out of the canisters. Droplets scattered all over the young kayan.
“What the—?” Fitz jerked his head back.
Justus wiped his wet hair with the back of his hand and examined his glistening skin. His nostrils flared. He threw a disgusted look at Fitz. “You just had to do that, didn’t you? This is magebane.”
Fitz scoffed. “I’m not afraid of it. I was bathed in that stuff. But still…” He kicked the ground in front of him. A wave of dirt leapt up and flung itself over Furin, Coop, and Wil. Only Furin took it head-on, hood over his face. As Coop half-turned, shielding his eyes, he caught the flash of movement: Furin plunging through the dirt.
When Coop straightened again, wiping grit from his mouth, Furin had broken through Fitz’s ring of orbiting rocks. His gauntleted hand reached for the boy.
Fitz jumped back with the reflexes of the very young.
“Uh-oh,” he admonished, wagging his finger. Large rocks smashed into Furin, one on either side, with sickening crunches. Furin staggered but still pressed on.
“Got anything long-range with you?” Coop asked Wil.
Wil lifted up his hand-gun, half-turning. Behind his back, he spread out the fingers of one hand.
Five bullets.
“Only five bullets.” Justus smirked. His eyes glowed an eerie violet. “It’s so easy to read you people.” He indicated all three of them, including Furin persevering through the pummeling while Fitz hopped around, uttering whoops.
Don’t underestimate this one, either, Wil. Coop glanced at the Oakhavenite. Wil’s entire being was focused on the boy. He wouldn’t.
“You can mess with our minds all you want, kid,” Coop called. “But what will you do when we come for you?”
Wil raised his gun and fired, emptying out his chambers in a quick staccato. The bullets flew straight at Justus—and through him.
The air flickered smoky and grey as the Justus figure wavered and collapsed.
There. In a flash, Coop saw the real boy standing behind and the right of his illusion. He sprinted for Justus through the cloud of dissipating illusion.
A woman’s bloodcurdling shriek rent the air. Coop checked himself, looking around.
The woman cried out, “Ver! Ver!”
“Felicity?” Coop was already moving in her direction. The terror in his sister’s voice had bypassed his brain and plugged straight into his muscles, urging them on.
At the same time, Wil said, “Hang on, Bryony! I’m coming!”
What the—? It was Felicity calling my name, not Rafe’s idiotic sister! Then. Scorch it! The brat got us.
“Hold on, you fool!” Coop shouted at Wil. “It’s the kid messing with your mind! Bryony’s not here, and neither is Felicity.”
Wil stared at Coop with such rawness in his eyes, such a mixture of hope and shame and despair, that Coop averted his own gaze, as if from someone who’d been stripped naked for all to see. “Pull yourself together, Wil,” he muttered, and turned back to the kayan, berating himself for falling for such a stupid trick.
He was surrounded by fog.
Vapor and smoke curled all around him, warm and clammy on his skin. Unseen water gushed and dripped and tinkled, the sound multiplied tenfold. Coop took a few faltering steps, arms outstretched for obstacles. “Wil?” he called. “Furin?”
Only the rush and crash of water on rock and tile answered him.
What a fool I must look! he thought bitterly. Standing in open space, reaching out like a blind man while the boy looks on and chortles.
Blind man. An image of Rafe flashed in his mind.
Rafe had not let his blindness slow him down. He’d made up for it in other ways, in sensing ka and whatever mysterious powers Isabella had shared with him.
Think. This kid has limits too. What did Rafe say about him? That feeling of cold despair and creeping dread. Can I sense it now?
His sight was useless to him so Coop closed his eyes. He’d have blocked his ears if he could, but he had to settle for ignoring the noise of the water. Water was a soothing sound, anyway, and the regular rhythm of it made it easier for him to banish it to the background.
He focused on his skin instead, on the way it was chilled even with the steam hot upon it. He realized his mind was supplying the temperature based on what it thought was around his body. In actuality, he felt cold—and the coldness had a direction to it.
Coop turned towards it. Chill blasted his face and burrowed into his cheekbones. He forced himself on. A leaden feeling dragged at him, slowing him down. Despair nibbled at his mind.
Despair? Coop snarled at the emotion. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not desperate.
I’m angry!
Heat bloomed inside him. The depression and terror that clung to him shriveled into ash. His skin warmed, his eyes snapped open.
He was back in the cavern and Justus was two arm lengths in front of him.
With a roar, Coop flung himself at the boy. Justus’ eyes were wide with alarm, his face a sickly green and shining with sweat. He waved his hands frantically. Pale illusions writhed and snaked in front of Coop; he turned his head so they were at his periphery.
Justus snapped his fingers. Coop staggered as burning cold crept up his side. He glanced down and found his abdomen black with clotted blood and writhing with maggots.
This… isn’t… real, he told himself as clutched his side. Grubs squirmed and squished in his hand. Several fell off and showered to the ground with tiny sickening splats.
Coop bared his teeth at Justus and forced himself on. Freezing pain lanced up his side, ripping up muscles in fresh agony. Inside him, tissues tore, arteries ruptured, bones splintered, and joints cracked.
This… is… ridiculous.
If all of that had really happened he’d be dead by now. He’d been a doctor, once, had trained for it. He knew, better than most, the limits of the human body. And his mind was beyond being fooled by this.
Panting, wheezing, he made it all the way to Justus. He looked in the boy’s face and began to laugh.
The laughter broke into bubbles. Coop swayed, fell to his knees. His vision blurred and his fingers were sticky with his own blood.
Scorch it, he thought, light-headed and close to fainting. The wound started bleeding again. It wasn’t all illusion.
Justus stared down at Coop, legs planted apart. The young kayan brought his hands together slowly, straining as if squeezing a huge, invisible mass. Coop could only stare and not move as Justus lifted his hands above his head, like an axe man readying for his final blow.
It never came. Coop caught movement in his periphery. A fraction of a second later, Wil crashed into the boy’s shoulder. Justus made a high-pitched sound, half-gasp, half-shriek, and crumpled.
“You forgot about me,” said Wil, voice diamond-hard. “Don’t think I am so easy to destroy.” On the ground, Justus moaned, clutching his shoulder.
Coop found that the pressure and the pain in his side had eased. He said, breathlessly, to the kid. “Don’t be such a wimp. It’s only dislocated, I bet. Give me a moment, and I’ll fix it for you.”
Justus only closed his eyes at this.
Wil held out his hand to Coop. Coop took it and heaved up to his feet. He looked around.
Furin, body armor battered and unraveling, stood over Fitz. His cracked goggles lay at Furin’s feet, his hood was shredded to tatters, and his hair was plastered with sweat. Blood dribbled down his chin from his split lip.
The boy crouched, his large hands clenching rubble. He lifted his face up to Furin and, to Coop’s shock, a slow smile spread across his face.
