by Rabia Gale
“Let me look at that,” he said sharply.
Isabella took her thumb out of her mouth and inspected it. “It’s only a little cut,” she said. But he was bending over the tangle of wire and quartz. “I mean, of course this contraption here is terribly fascinating.”
“Does it need a kiss to make it all better?” Rafe flashed a grin at her, leaving her momentarily bereft of words. He returned to his examination, fingers hovering over the contraption.
Minute ka threads waggled back at him.
“Aha!”
“What?” Isabella also leaned in, her breath on his cheek. He thought, in a private area far far away from their bond, she had gotten rather comfortable sharing their personal space.
“Your carriage arrives, Lady Rocquespur.” Rafe made a theatrical gesture towards one wall of the room.
Isabella turned to look. The wall had a seam down its middle and from behind it came the most awful groaning and grinding noises.
“I think my ride has seen better days,” she commented dryly as the doors squealed open to reveal a small round capsule with a pole running through it. “Looks like my fairy godmother decorated it, though.”
Wall-to-wall pink carpet covered the floor. The walls were hung in a gilt-embossed paper and the seats upholstered with rose velvet. The space looked dusty, but seemed to have avoided the depredations of vermin and mold.
“The pink brings back memories,” murmured Rafe.
“Bad ones.” Isabella gave an elaborate shudder. She had spent years masquerading as her own distant relative, a middle-aged man with lamentable taste in clothing. Rafe had experienced it firsthand, having borrowed some of said relative’s wardrobe.
Isabella entered the capsule first, a hand upraised in a stay-back gesture. Rafe, having already run a swift ka check on its structure and determined its safety, let her have her way. If thinking she was protecting him made her happy, so be it.
“Just so you know, Grenfeld,” said Isabella airily, peering behind a sofa, “there are things even you can’t sense.” She stabbed with Eya and raised the dagger, point up, with a many-legged creature impaled upon it. The thing’s limbs writhed.
Isabella concentrated. Eya flashed once and the creature disintegrated to ash.
“Useful housekeeping trick,” Rafe commented over the sudden pounding of his heart. That thing had been huge! Bigger than any spider or scorpion he’d ever encountered, and he’d come in close quarters with some large ones in the Talar.
“Didn’t want to get blood on the upholstery.”
“Are we going to upset the other inhabitants of this capsule?” Rafe thought of the concealing plush and velvet with misgiving.
Isabella pounced. Another stab, a flash, and a hiss. She kicked a few seats and slapped some cushions, raising clouds of dust. “All clear,” she reported.
“Thanks. Remind me to hire you next time I have a pest problem.” Rafe entered the capsule and held onto an intricately-molded brass bar that ran around the wall at waist height. He thought it prudent to refrain from sitting down on some irate creature’s home.
“Why? I can’t seem to do anything about my pest problem,” deadpanned Isabella. There was no sting in her words. Rafe accepted the teasing with an incline of his head. He held his hand over the capsule’s nest of wire and crystal, twin to the one they’d just left behind. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” Isabella leaned against the wall next to him. The doors grated shut. Machinery hissed. Eddies of air swirled inside the capsule.
Rafe checked the ka-systems over one more time. Even battered by the intervening centuries, they were still impressive. How had the kayan buried them so deeply?
He had the whole rest of his life to find out.
If he survived the next stage.
“Let’s go.”
The capsule dropped.
Without taking her eyes off the door, Isabella said, “Surprise and speed are our main advantages. We won’t have much, if any, time to assess our situation, but we need to act fast.” She shifted her balance as the capsule hit a rough patch and grated on its way down. The whole chamber vibrated.
Rafe found the gaps in the ka-spell and hastily patched them. He kept a hand on the yellow strands, and added purple to dampen the sound. “I’ll keep the door closed while you take a look into the chamber.”
Isabella nodded. “We have one thing they don’t know about—Max.”
The krin perked up as its name. Yes?
“Rafe will open the doors, to distract their attention. As soon as he does, can you shift us into the room?”
Of course. The krin sounded as if it had recovered, not just its strength, but also its confidence. It was articulate, obviously sentient, not an appetite like the other krin Rafe had encountered.
Who knew you could be such a good influence? he thought at Isabella, only to receive a mock-angry mental poke in return.
A number of ka constructs came into his range. Rafe couldn’t tell what they were at a cursory examination, but he knew what they signified. “We’re almost there,” he warned. He slowed the capsule to a crawl, more focused on masking its presence than on speed. Any halfway decent kayan would see through his rough disguise, but if they were already distracted, this might work.
“Right.” At the edge of his mind, Isabella’s kyra rippled and changed as she threw her senses out several yards from her body—outside the capsule, down the shaft, and into the control room.
No kayan would be able to sense that.
“It’s a big chamber,” Isabella reported. “Multi-leveled. Stairs and railings in all kinds of impossible places. Wires and tubes in bunches from floor to ceiling. Big glass windows and ceilings with a lovely view of scenic Salerus. Karzov and his aide—Gorvich, he’s called—are standing next to some kind of automated armor.”
Rafe frowned at this. “Like the one Furin was wearing? What the rohkayan built?”
“Much bigger. Stands on its own. Part-vehicle, part-armor. There’s a black sphere glistening in its chest…”
“Wait, what?” Rafe zeroed in on the ka-systems inside the armor, built in elegant and deadly lines. It reminded him of the squid they had encountered in the submersible. Renat’s work again.
But the sphere in the center was another thing altogether, the ka bent and looped in ways that only a strong will could impose.
Beleia’s Sphere. Rafe had encountered references to it in shahkayan writings in the Talar. He’d guessed that Aro Gaar had used it in the vessel his shahkayan had built to escape to Selene and the worlds beyond, but it had never turned up in the wreckage. At the time, he’d surmised that vandals or souvenir-seekers had made off with it in the confusion—it had taken the Monarians a while to restore order to their majid.
He was wrong.
So this is where it went. Trust Karzov. His smile was wry. The Blackstonian’s plans stretched, tentacle-like, all across the disc.
“What’s it for?” Isabella asked.
“Its primary function is as a navigational device.”
“Karzov wants to leave this place? Maybe we should let him. He can go lord it over some other world.”
“I understand, but it wouldn’t be fair to whoever’s already there,” Rafe pointed out. “And there’s something funny about the Sphere up close.”
“Funny how?”
“I don’t know.” Rafe shrugged his shoulders. “I’d have to examine it more closely. It’s densely constructed.”
“Let me take out Karzov, and you can have that armor to do whatever you want with. No one will begrudge you that.”
“Mirados will beg to differ.” Rafe allowed himself a chuckle. “What else?”
“The armor’s being powered up by a cable.”
“I see it.” A rainbow-colored current flowed into the armor’s ka-systems. They crackled and gleamed. Pure ka.
“All the way to the right of the chamber is a doorway, leading into a vessel of some sort. I think it’s part of the drilling m
achine that Karzov rode down in, but it seems to have detached itself.”
“An aether ship,” guessed Rafe. “Karzov must’ve used that to fly from the underside of the disc to this chamber.” He thought of everything.
“Taking up an enormous amount of space on the left is your responsibility. Looks like that’s the device that backfired on Renat and his cohorts. Two people next to it. One is a yellow-haired child named Gloriana. I met her briefly in Karzov’s headquarters, before you destroyed it. I think she’s the kayan equivalent of a mechanical genius.”
“Got it.” The ka outlining the device changed constantly, as Gloriana tinkered with it.
“The other,” said Isabella, “is Bryony.” A questioning edge crept into her voice.
Rafe stiffened. Then he exhaled, forcing his suddenly-tensed shoulders to relax. “I got that, too,” he said softly.
“Rafe. If it’s going to be a problem for you to deal with her—”
He cut her off, knowing what she would say. There was no need for her to do the dirty work. “She made her choices, just like I did. The fate of the world rides on my shoulders, right? I won’t dodge my responsibility for her sake.”
He felt Isabella’s hands on his shoulders, her fingers gripping strongly. Her resolution thrummed through him. “You’d better be right about that. Because if I see her getting to you in any way, I’ll cut her throat myself. I won’t let her endanger you again.”
Rafe put his right hand over hers. “It won’t come to that, Isabella.” She smelled just like she always did, clean and warm, with no hint of fussy fragrances. He didn’t know when he had come to like it so much.
He leaned forward, till his forehead touched hers. Her surprise flushed pink through their bond. “Thank you,” he said gravely.
“Let’s live through this first. You can thank me later.” Her voice was low and soft.
They had a job to do. Rafe straightened and squeezed her hand before dropping his own to his side; she let go his shoulders.
“Ready, both of you?” she asked.
Yes, the krin responded.
“Same here.”
“First, drop Rafe off near the device. Then take me to Karzov.”
With a faint thud, the capsule landed. There was a soft chime and the doors began to open.
Shift us. Isabella said.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Rafe
RAFE LANDED BETWEEN THE girl kayan and his sister. He wouldn’t be borrowing any of Isabella’s sight for this operation, since she’d need all of her kyra to face Karzov. His own kyra-sight showed him the kayan device Zacharias had spoken of as a hulking machine that stretched from floor to ceiling. Two figures were near it, one on the floor with her legs stretched out. Ka streamed around her, deftly manipulated into tricky knotted shapes.
Gloriana.
Rafe threw an immobilizing net over the girl, anchoring it to several ka systems around the room. She didn’t even flinch as the ka settled over her, blocking her from her work.
Bryony gasped and whirled towards Rafe, her hand coming up. She aimed something at him and squeezed.
Rafe threw up a shield against the spray. It misted his spell, clung to the ka in droplets, ate through it like acid.
Rafe arced a yellow tendril towards Bryony’s canister. A brief struggle and it fell from her hand, clanked to the floor, and rolled away.
Isabella materialized near Karzov, Voya slashing for his throat.
She’s got him! Rafe thought, just as Karzov, with a speed that Rafe couldn’t believe, arched back out of the way. Isabella pressed in with another blow, but Karzov’s aide got in the way. Isabella tussled briefly with him, and he fell to the floor, clutching his arm
Scorch it.
Bryony made a frustrated sound, half snarl and all rage. She unhooked something from her side. A whip slithered out and smacked his thigh. A line of fire burned his skin.
“Not so good at fighting now, are you, Rafe?” Bryony spat, following up with a series of strikes. Rafe dodged, but the tongue of the whip flicked the skin of his arms, leaving welts.
You can do better than that, Grenfeld.
Focus on your own fight, Marchioness.
Trying to. He’s a tough bastard and I missed my best chance when that blasted aide got in the way. Isabella’s mental tone was tight.
“Dance, then, kayan.” Bryony’s voice was savage and breathless. “Be helpless, for once.” She plied the whip, cutting it through the air too fast for him to construct a spell.
But he didn’t mean to fight her with ka.
The thong wrapped around his wrist. He shook it off, grabbed it in his right hand, and held the whip tight. “Bryony.” He faced her, but he could only make out her shape, rigid with loathing. Her features were a blur, and just as well.
It still hurt when she looked at him with such hate.
Bryony heaved on the handle, panting, refusing to let go.
“Listen to me,” Rafe said, low, focusing all his kyra-sight on her, willing her to understand his resolve. “This is your chance to turn things around, Bryony. Walk away from Karzov’s mad plans and come back home.”
He held his free hand out to her, palm up. Take it, he willed.
Bryony gave a short laugh that ended on a sob. “Come home to what? The horrible Point? Dreary Grenfeld? Insufferable Oakhaven? You think to immure me in a Sister’s habit or the ancestral home, to always be the family disgrace?”
“Don’t let our father’s choices ruin you, Bryony.”
“What do you know about our father? What do you know about anything?” Bryony threw back her hair. “He just had to go and die, didn’t he? Before I could look in his eye and spit in his face!” She flung the whip handle away from her.
Watch out! warned Isabella, but Rafe was already turning on his heel. Gloriana made a tiny gesture and the entire immobilizing net encompassing her fell apart.
She looked up at him, her face a white blur. “That was tricky,” she commented, pleased and surprised. “Took me a few minutes to puzzle it out. You’re better than Justus, even.”
Her mental fingers were all over his spellwork, following the threads back to him—no inside him.
Rafe recoiled. It wasn’t supposed to be possible to reach into another person like that. Kyra, which all people possessed, acted as a barrier. Kayan either attacked from outside, used mental tricks, or implanted devices.
No one had told Gloriana that. Rafe’s moment of shock was critical. He recovered from the check an instant too late.
Her presence was an itch in his throat. He felt her pluck and pull.
“Oh! I see what he was trying to do here! Rohkayan Falkor’s airborne magebane, is it not? I’d recognize his work anywhere.”
Out! Rafe gathered his kyra into hammer and slammed it down on her prying presence.
“Ow!” Gloriana sounded astonished and hurt. She sucked her fingers.
Strong and clean ka poured into the Karzov’s strange armor through insulated tubes that barely allowed any leakage. A mere faint haze of ka surrounded the tubing. Rafe reached for it, putting together a spell that’d condense and twist it into usable strands…
Thousands of tiny shards stabbed his joints in synchronized torture. Agony flared inside him. It drove out all of Rafe’s breath in one gasp. He doubled over, his insides clenching, his muscles cramping.
Rafe! Isabella felt the overflow of his pain.
I’m all right… it was… just a… bad… moment. Dread stroked an icy feather down his spine. Could it be…?
Tentatively, he reached once more for ka nearest him, beginning a basic spell, nudging the canister Bryony had dropped with yellow ka.
Once again he felt the pinpricks, blooming into a constellation of pain, driving him to his knees. Rafe looked into himself, through a red and black haze of hurt, just in time to see the black specks of Falkor’s magebane flash silver as they flicked out thousands of sharp blades.
“Falkor has good ideas, but he can’
t always carry them out,” Gloriana explained. “I just tweaked things a bit, so the ka bots do what they’re supposed to. The more you try to use the magic, the more they’ll hurt you. I suppose,” she added thoughtfully, “if you push it, they’ll kill you.”
She was right. Rafe experimented once more, trying a different spell. The effort had him crouched, head buried in his hands, panting hard.
Isabella’s cold anger was clear through their bond. Karzov’s voice, soft and smug, echoed across it. “Good girl, Gloriana.”
“I know,” she answered with simple pride. Around her, ka activated in curved sheets. They wrapped around Gloriana’s legs like greaves, made of overlapping scales of green and yellow. With an exhalation, the girl heaved herself to her feet and stamped experimentally. “Not perfect, but not bad, either. They’ll do.”
Footsteps rang next to Rafe, with a jangle of spurs. A strand of something touched his cheek. Above him, Bryony said, “Give up, Rafe. You’ve lost.” It wasn’t gloating at all. Rather, she sounded tired, even a bit sympathetic, so much like the Bryony he’d known.
The Bryony who was a mask. Even so, he couldn’t help but soften towards her. Sel help him, he’d adored his brave older sister.
“Isabella,” he managed.
He hadn’t addressed Bryony, but she responded anyhow. “In a fair fight, she’d win. But Karzov doesn’t fight fair. Even the Sisters’ golden girl can’t save you now. She’s lost—she just hasn’t realized it yet.”
Isabella
Isabella muttered expletives in her head as their plan fell apart all around her. Dressed in a fitted grey suit, oddly fluid but stronger than she’d expected, Karzov absorbed all her blows. Eya couldn’t make a scratch, and Voya couldn’t phase through it. He took three hits to every one of his strikes that landed, yet she was the one tiring.
Each of his strikes was strengthened beyond what she expected. She’d blocked his first punch with a kyra-reinforced forearm as she’d gone for his unprotected neck with Eya. The force of it reverberated through her bones, throwing off her aim. Her teeth snapped together every time he landed a blow, and her left arm ached fiercely from when she’d set the krin substance alight. She’d have bruises—if she survived this fight.
