You think this is a challenge? I hear his hacking laughter in my mind. I have studied this art for centuries, girl. What do you have?
Power bears down on me, a heavier weight than before, and I edge backward a step. He’s rotting right, I can feel it. I can draw power from the system, but all I can do with it is force it in his direction and hope. Meanwhile, I can feel him slipping around me, worming his tendrils through the conduits. Even as I barely manage to keep his assault from shredding my mind, he’s at work shutting down the energy I’m siphoning to protect myself. I try to strike back, tendrils of power fencing one another deep in the conduits, but this truly is his domain. He’s adept in a way no one else in the world can match.
No. I bear down, scraping for more power, drawing it out of my own flesh. I can feel heat building again, more and more, but it’s not enough. Rot rot rot. I’ve come this far, people have died, are still dying, and he’s going to rotting win—
Let me help you, Silvoa says, in my ear.
I feel her pressing against me, her spirit against my mind. I lower my defenses, just for an instant, and she slips inside my skin, my skull. Her hands close over mine, and she takes control of the fight, deep in the conduits. Prime’s tendrils pause for a moment, then slash and batter at mine with renewed vigor. But now he’s being driven back, step by step.
Impossible, he snarls.
Only for Isoka alone, Silvoa says.
No. Prime’s form shimmers, as though in a breeze. You’re dead.
Of course I am. You killed me, remember?
I destroyed your soul. I wiped out any remnant of you.
You tried, Silvoa said. But it’s been five years. You may have studied this place, Prime, but I was trapped in it. You don’t know its nooks and crannies like I do. Hiding enough of myself away to recover was the least of it.
I will purge you, he snarls. When I’m finished, there won’t be the smallest scrap of your thoughts left.
You won’t, I think, adding my strength to Silvoa’s. Because this is the end.
I throw my power in Prime’s face, raw and unfocused. At the same time, Silvoa works delicately, out in the nearly infinite complexity of the Harbor system, cutting the strands that support Prime’s energy one by one. He fights back, slashing and parrying, but her mastery of the system is beyond him. Step by step, Prime weakens, and Silvoa and I come more into sync.
I can feel her, inside my mind. Her thoughts, her memories. Kissing Catoria, the younger girl standing on tiptoe, the warmth of her. And the things Prime did to her, first in the flesh and then in the spirit. Every day a more imaginative, more horrible torment, skin flayed and bones broken, and all with the certain knowledge that there could not even be an escape into death—
I’m not sure which of us is screaming, now. Prime’s defending energy falls away, and his ghost-form is engulfed in a torrent of rushing gray power, blasting it apart. The shape glows white for a moment, then dissipates into shimmering motes.
Thank you. I feel the phantom sensation of Silvoa’s lips, pressed against my brow. Then she steps away, out from inside me, and I can see her again, arms crossed and eyebrow raised. I have been waiting a very long time for that.
What he did … I shake my head, gorge rising, as some of the memories come back to me. I think I would have gone mad.
Maybe I did. Silvoa cocks her head. I knew that someday, something would change. Maybe that brought me back. She gestures at the dais. Speaking of which.
I take a shaky step forward, and grab the conduit.
access error; redo from start
access request received; home//caspar
result:
authorized/accepted
three-step authorization recognized
superuser access granted
And I gasp, as a new world opens in my mind.
23
TORI
In my dream, Garo kisses me.
We’re in the back of the closet, in the house in the Second Ward, in the soft nest of old bedrolls that’s my private hideaway. We kiss in the warm, dusty dark, and his fingers run up and down my sides and along the small of my back. I take hold of his hand, his fingers thick and calloused next to mine, and pull it to where my belt knots on the side of my robe. He undoes it, haltingly, and unfolds the cloth. I shiver at the breath of air across my bare skin. Then he’s touching me again, and I arch underneath him with a sigh.
“You used him.”
Isoka’s voice. She appears in the darkness behind Garo, one blade glowing. Its green light reflects from a hundred silk-thin strands, running up from every joint on Garo’s body and winding together into a thick bundle. I know, without looking, that the other end is wrapped around my finger.
“You used him, and when he wasn’t useful anymore, you threw him away,” Isoka says. She slashes the strings with her Melos blade, a fat spark of green energy crackling through them. Garo falls on top of me, a dead weight. “I tried to protect you.”
“I know.” My voice is a whisper.
“I kept you safe.” Isoka gathers Garo’s strings in one hand, wrapping them round and round her fingers. “And this is what you’ve become. Whore. Murderer. Monster.”
“I know.”
In one quick motion, she wraps the puppet strings around my throat and pulls them tight. After a moment, my chest begins to burn. The world is going gray at the edges.
“You deserve this,” Isoka says.
My lips move soundlessly.
I know.
“Tori?”
I sit up, gasping for breath. I’m alone, in one of the barrack rooms at the safe house. Golden light slants in through the narrow window, the sun barely above the horizon. The pounding of my heart reverberates in my ears, as though it were a kettledrum. I’m horny as rot.
Someone’s watching. The curtain in the doorway is pulled aside, just slightly.
“What?” I say.
“It’s starting.” Giniva. “You said to wake you.”
I did. Hasaka hadn’t wanted to. “Give me a moment. I’ll be right out.”
Giniva lets the curtain fall. I draw in a deep breath, hold it, let it out.
It’s true that Isoka wouldn’t have wanted any of this. She protected me, kept me safe, tried to keep me innocent.
But she’s gone. Maybe dead. But maybe lost and needing help. The only one who knows is Kuon Naga, and the only one who can get him to tell is me. I’ll break his mind like an egg, if I have to.
First, though, I have to get to him.
I get up, dress in my sweat-stained clothes, trousers and a tunic and a leather vest. Pulling them on makes me wish for my wardrobe back in the Second Ward, and I wonder if it’s still there, if Ofalo, Ridatha, and the others are all right. I wonder what Ofalo thinks happened to me, and what he would think if he knew the truth.
Giniva is waiting outside. Behind her, the common room is filling up with people. Hasaka stands over the big table, looking down at a recently inked map of the Sixteenth Ward. Men and women in red sashes wait behind him, ready to run messages out into the city.
Pointless. We’re too far away from the front to exercise any kind of control here. Hasaka’s instinctive caution has kept him far from where he can do any good. Hotara, at least, knows better—she’s down in the Sixteenth Ward, at the wall, where her expertise as a street fighter might help.
“Tori!” Hasaka says. He doesn’t look happy to see me.
“Giniva says it’s starting.”
“We’ve got word the Ward Guard are forming up,” he says. “Could be a false alarm.”
I doubt it. This feels right. They’ve had more than enough time to prepare.
“I’m going down there,” I say.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” he says. “You know how important you are to this movement.”
More important than you know. Without my little pushes, there wouldn’t be a rebellion, more than likely. Does that put all of these deaths on my shoulders? At the time, every step had s
eemed so obvious.
“Your plan is in place,” he continues. “We can oversee things from here.”
He’s not wrong, at least as far as he knows. I’m no strategist, just a girl who’s read a couple of books. I’m not likely to be able to contribute more than symbolic leadership. What he doesn’t know, of course, is that my power may be the only hope we have.
“I need to see,” I tell him. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
Hasaka sighs heavily. “Take Jakibsa with you, then.”
I frown, but it makes sense. Jakibsa is one of our only Tartak adepts, and by far the most well-practiced. His powers can protect us from any stray arrows, at the very least. I nod, and Hasaka beckons his lover over from where he was huddled with a pair of messengers. They have a hurried conference, sotto voce, and then Hasaka leans in and kisses the younger man with a fervor he rarely displays in public.
“Bring her back,” Hasaka mutters. “And bring yourself back, too.”
“Of course.” Jakibsa gives me a bright, fake smile, hideous on his burned face. “Shall we?”
Giniva follows us. No one questions if she should go along.
Downstairs, wounded men and women are still laid out on the floor, though no longer packed quite so tight. Volunteers move among them, changing bandages and checking wounds, Grandma’s old assistants alongside fresh recruits. Kosura is among them, moving with slow, painful steps from still-healing wounds, a vivid contrast to her earlier grace. She looks up at me and smiles as I pass, but says nothing. It’s just as well. I don’t know what I would tell her.
Apart from red sashes running back and forth, the streets of the Eleventh Ward are as empty as I’ve ever seen them. The street stalls are empty, the wineshops closed with their shutters down. In every building, windows are covered with curtains or boarded over, and doors are firmly shut. The fighting isn’t close to here, not yet, but no one is taking any chances.
Without having to push through a never-ending sea of humanity, it’s a surprisingly short walk to the gate. Both sides of the military road are firmly in our control now, and a red-sashed young woman missing most of one arm greets us at the entrance to the Sixteenth District.
“Voliel Breta,” she says, saluting me. “Commander Hasaka left me in charge. My squad is ready to go on your command.”
She seems keen. I hope her squad are loyal people, because the odds are high some of them aren’t going to make it back. At least, not if everything goes according to plan.
There are so many things that could go wrong. I try not to think about it.
“You know your orders,” I tell her. “If you haven’t heard from me, and the enemy are getting close to the gate, don’t wait.”
“Understood,” Breta says, with another salute.
Jakibsa, Giniva, and I pass on, into the Sixteenth Ward. It’s empty here, too, though there are fewer locked doors and more abandoned buildings. People have largely fled—we’ve been urging them to get out—contributing to the overcrowding in the Eleventh Ward. Jakibsa and his assistants have been finding them places to live in the upper wards, repurposing elegant townhouses and sprawling mansions to shelter a dozen dockside families.
As we move west, we see more red sashes, in groups with spears and crossbows. Weapons, at least, we have in plenty, having captured most of the Ward Guard’s armory. I flag down one squad and get directions to Hotara, who has made her headquarters on top of a warehouse, facing the broad clear space in front of the wall and about a block from the water’s edge. We climb a ladder in the alley behind it and find Hotara huddled with a cluster of red sashes.
“Are they coming?” I ask her.
She looks at me, irritated at the interruption, but nods. “They’re coming. A couple of thousand of them outside the wall. And…” She nods at the water.
I follow her gaze. A full squadron of Imperial war galleys, six ships in all, are loitering just beyond bow-shot of the wall. Their triangular sails are furled, and their long banks of oars barely move to keep station in the calm water of the bay. Chained to those oars, in the depths of the long, sleek vessels, are some of the sons and brothers of the defenders here today—it is the fleet’s voracious need for fresh arms to power its ships, more than anything else, that drives the draft.
Along the rails of the ships, marines in fishscale armor and broad, flat helmets wait with crossbows at the ready. Behind them, at the fore and aft of each ship, are the siege engines called scorpions, like giant versions of those handheld bows, capable of propelling a bolt the size of a spear.
There are defenders on the shoreline, taking cover behind the crates, coils of rope, and other nautical detritus on the piers. They have their own bows, I know, but few have much experience using them. More red sashes are visible on top of the wall itself, and on the roof of the round tower that anchors it at the waterside. There’s a signaler up there, too, with a red flag in one hand and a white flag in the other. As I watch, he holds both flags over his head, then starts to wave them in a complicated pattern.
“Brave rotting bastard,” Hotara says. “Signalman from the Navy who came to our side.” She turns to a young woman beside her, who’s squinting at the shifting flags. “What’s he saying?”
“Enemy advancing,” the girl says. “Along the whole front.”
“Tell them to fire at will when they get into range,” Hotara says.
The girl raises her own flags and makes a quick signal. The signaler on the wall wags acknowledgment and disappears. For a few long moments, nothing happens.
A dart of flame rises into the air from the other side of the wall. It blooms into a ball of white fire far overhead, easily visible even at midday. It’s too far up to hurt anyone, but that’s not the point. It’s a signal to the fleet. As one, the ships start to move, gliding diagonally closer to the shore. A bolt skips out from the defenders, then another. The first drops in the water well short of the vessels. The second comes closer, raising a splash only yards away.
Then, at a shout from their officers, the marines raise their weapons, and a moment later the Rot itself breaks loose.
The pair of ships in the lead open fire first, disciplined volleys rising at a sharp angle to scythe down like deadly rain all across the waterfront. The soldiers reload, an operation that requires them to ground their bow on the deck and press down with one foot on a stirrup to re-cock the mechanism. In the meantime, the next pair of ships has come into range, and another volley fills the sky.
Red sashes are shooting back, but piecemeal, and most of the archers have never learned to judge arcing fire at long range. A few shots hit the ships, and I see one marine slump forward into the water, but that’s all. The piers and quays of the waterfront are rapidly coming to resemble a porcupine, with quills jutting from every surface. Some defenders are huddled close to their cover, and others are slumped over dead, the difference impossible to tell from here.
One of the scorpions fires, its bolt flashing above the waterfront and into one of the buildings behind it. The huge projectile punches through the wood-and-plaster wall as though it weren’t there, leaving a hole the size of a horse and a cloud of fine dust. Answering fire comes from another window of the building, and a second scorpion replies, ripping out an entire corner of the top floor and spilling bodies to the street below.
On the waterfront, there’s a flare of light. Myrkai fire zips over the waves, concentrated into tight, brilliant beads. The first one hits the water just behind one of the ships, detonating in a colossal spray of steam. The second impacts one of the Navy vessels at the bow, the blast spilling marines into the sea and sending chunks of wood flying.
I can see the mage-blood now, a short woman with wild hair. She’s one of ours, a girl named Enoka from the sanctuary, a few years older than me, excitable and obsessed with boys. Beside her is Sekota, one of the Tartak talents who accompanied us to confront the Immortals. They volunteered to try this gambit, eager to get back at the people who have hurt so many of our friends. N
ow the defenders on the docks are cheering as she conjures yet another missile to hurl, straining to keep the flame coherent enough to do damage at long range.
Even as she lets the bolt loose, every ship turns its attention to her, volleys filling the air. Sekota stands up, hands spread, and walls of blue force materialize around the pair, deflecting the crossbow fire. Enoka yells excitedly and summons another ball of flame, pressing it between her hands as though squeezing over-tough dough.
Then the scorpions fire again. Sekota snatches the first huge bolt out of the air, sends it hurtling into the water. The second takes him in the chest before he can recover, punching him off his feet and pinning him to the dock like a butterfly in a collector’s case. The blue Tartak barrier vanishes in a spray of sparks as he dies, and Enoka barely has time to look up before a cloud of crossbow bolts descends on her. She vanishes underneath them, and a moment later the fireball she was priming goes off, blowing the dock around her into flaming splinters. Out in the bay, the ship she damaged is still underway, the hole in its side smoking but above the waterline.
They volunteered, and I didn’t stop them. It might have worked.
The detonation takes all the fight out of the red sashes along the water, and they abandon their positions, scrambling up to the street. I hear the shouts of their officers, trying to call them back, but I think not even trained soldiers would stay for such an unequal fight. Crossbow bolts continue to scythe down, sending men and women spinning to the dirt. Some keep moving, hobbling or shuffling toward the buildings across the road from the water, but no one is eager to risk the same fate to go and help them.
“Flags on the wall!” the signalwoman beside us announces. “Exchanging fire with enemy archers. Holding so far.”
“It’s not the wall I’m worried about,” Hotara says. “Grego, go make sure your squad is ready.”
Another of her companions, a big man in a long leather coat, gives a wordless nod and leaves the roof by the rear ladder. I glance at Hotara, and she shrugs.
“We can’t form a line between the water and wall without getting the rot shot out of us,” she says. “If they put marines ashore, our only chance is to try a counterattack.”
City of Stone and Silence Page 35
