Siege of Rage and Ruin

by Django Wexler

  “I wanted to apologize to you,” she says. “I have been … thinking, in the time since I spoke with Isoka and Meroe.”

  “You helped feed the people of the city,” I say. “That’s apology enough.”

  “To the people of the city, perhaps, or perhaps not.” She shrugs. “The Blessed One will judge whether I have acted rightly. But I wanted to apologize to you. I…” Her calm demeanor fractures for a moment, and she looks down at her hands. “I have not behaved as I should.”

  “It’s fine, Kosura. After what happened to you—”

  “Please, Tori. It is not fine.” She takes a deep breath. “We were … friends. Before. I don’t know if I ever told you how much I valued that. I did not … have many friends.”

  Kosura was always so perfect, I’d assumed she was popular. But I certainly couldn’t remember her spending time with anyone other than me. I have very little idea of what her life outside the hospital had been like, and it suddenly strikes me that she probably had a reason for not talking about it.

  “After what happened,” she goes on, with only a slight hitch in her voice. “You saved me. And I abandoned you. I was caught up in my revelation, and I thought it was all that mattered. But as Meroe reminded me, it is not enough to know the Blessed One’s teachings. We must also live them. And loyalty to one’s friends and kin is one of his most oft-repeated instructions.”

  My mouth is dry. What am I supposed to say to that? No, wait, you’ve got it backward. I’m the one who screwed everything up. Because it was my fault. Naga’s Immortals had come to the hospital looking for me, because I’d been searching for the truth about Isoka. I’d inflamed the draft riots in the rebellion and drawn the remnants of the mage-blood sanctuary in after me. It was all my fault.

  “I didn’t know how to talk to you,” I say quietly. “Afterward. You should have blamed me for what happened, I was ready for that, but you didn’t. And I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

  “How could I blame you?” She shakes her head. “Grandma lived her life knowing the risks she took, and accepting them. Everyone who worked in the sanctuary did the same. We always lived under the shadow of the Immortals.”

  “That doesn’t mean…” I break off as a slight smile curves her lips. “What?”

  “Look at us,” she says. “Each determined to blame herself and absolve the other. I think we should call a truce.”

  I try a tentative smile in return. “All right, then. Truce.”

  Another pause, but a more comfortable one.

  “Your people,” I say. “Are they ready?”

  “They are gathering, back at the temple. We will be in position by dawn.”

  “And they understand … what might happen? If things go wrong?”

  “They accept the risk,” Kosura says gently. “Though we have refused violence, this is still our city. We will do what we can, while abiding by the Blessed’s law.”

  “But—”

  “After all, the worst that can come to us is death, and reunion with the Blessed One,” she says. “And that comes to us all, sooner or later.”

  * * *

  Kosura and her Returners were the easy part. I could at least explain what I wanted them to do, even if it was difficult for them to understand why. For the volunteers who gather in the square outside the barracks, things are more complicated.

  I’m surprised how many had answered the call. Giniva and her agents had spent half the night crisscrossing the city, explaining and recruiting. I’d worried that too many of the rebels had given up hope. But hope is a fickle thing, quick to vanish and just as quick to flare up again. Hundreds had jumped at the chance to put up a real fight against the Legion.

  Now they stand in front of headquarters, illuminated by Blues with lanterns. Some wear red sashes, but most are civilians. Quite a few are people who hadn’t been able to fight on the walls—old men and women, ex-soldiers missing an arm, a leg, or an eye. A woman with the shaking sickness, and a man born with twisted hands. They can’t hold a spear or load a crossbow, but that isn’t what we need now.

  I step out in front of them. My palms are damp with sweat. Meroe stands beside me, and Giniva.

  “Thank you for coming,” I say. My voice sounds too small, like a little girl’s. “We have a plan to turn back the Legion, but we need your help. It may not work, but it’s the only hope we have.” I take a deep breath. “I’m going to connect your minds, so you can pass thoughts to one another.”

  Dead silence for a moment. Finally, a young Red Sash in the front row steps forward and gestures at the flanking Blues. “Does that mean you’re going to make us like them?”

  “No,” I say. “What I’ve done to them is much more … dramatic. This will only be the lightest touch.” I think … I hope. I haven’t done anything like this before. I hadn’t even known I was doing it with the Blues, until I’d made enough of them that I’d realized what the network could do. “It should be entirely reversible. But it’s going to feel … strange.”

  “And then what?” An old man, bald-pated and leather-skinned, limps forward with a cane. “Will this mind-whatever make us able to fight?” He glances around at the others. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but my sword-swinging days are done.”

  Nervous laughter. I force a smile.

  “You’ll be able to fight,” I tell them. If it works.

  “Then sign me up,” he says. “We’ll show those Ward Guard rotscum, eh?”

  There’s a ragged cheer. I raise a hand for quiet.

  “Anyone who has second thoughts can leave,” I tell them. “The rest, form a line, and we’ll get started.”

  The work, when I actually begin, is numbing, painstaking labor. The old man is first in line, by dint of whacking anyone who tries to get in front of him with his cane, and he lowers his head as though to receive a benediction. I reach out to him with Kindre, and feel a fleeting glimpse of his thoughts—crimson anger at the draft, which had taken his grandsons; cinnamon duty; an undercurrent of citrus fear, well-suppressed. I find the place I need and twist, leaving a narrow thread attached that leads back to me, like the links that connect the Blues to one another. He gives a little jerk, and his eyes widen. I feel his surprise at the press of my thoughts. Giniva escorts him aside, and the next person steps forward.

  It takes hours. I told Isoka I would link as many as I could, but I had no idea how many that would be. Maintaining the connection takes power, but not much—my initial estimate of a few hundred proves to be about right. The more of them I connect, though, the more drained I feel, and not just from using Kindre. Each person comes up to me, and I reach out and get a brief look inside their skull. One after another, until their emotions seem to merge and blur together—a hundred rages, a thousand tiny griefs, a sickly river of fear. There’s been precious little else in our poor city, lately.

  Person by person, the network grows. As I assemble it, I feel the nodes flicker and pulse as they talk to one another, the fascinated volunteers testing their new connections. Thoughts ripple between them, fast as lightning. A whole group breaks out laughing, for no reason any outsider would be able to see.

  Some of them don’t take it as well. One young man sits apart from the others, eyes closed, hands pressed to his skull. An older woman vomits on the cobbles. But none of them asks me to undo the link.

  By the time there’s no one standing in front of me, the world is a blur. I straighten up, carefully. My head feels like it’s made of glass, and one wrong move would send it cascading to the ground in pieces.

  “We don’t have much time,” Giniva says in my ear. I blink and glance upward. The eastern horizon is pink with the approaching dawn. I look to one of the nearby Blues.

  “Is the Legion moving?”

  She goes distant, then says, “Yes. They are assembling outside the west wall.”

  No time to lose, then. I shake my head, trying to clear it, and send a pulse of thought to all my newly connected volunteers. Wait. I’ll expl
ain everything soon.

  Back inside rebel headquarters, Isoka is pacing, dressed in her outlandish crab-shell armor, with Meroe, Jack, and Zarun waiting patiently beside her. She turns on her heel as I come in.

  “Did it work?” she says.

  I give a weary nod. “They’re ready. And the Legion is coming.”

  “Then we’d better get things started.” She halts in front of me, uncertain. “Do I need to … do anything?”

  “Just stay still a moment.” I take a deep breath and look up at my sister. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.” Isoka gives a weak smile. “Just try not to break anything while you’re in there.”

  I return her smile. Then, before my nerve can fail me, I reach out for Isoka’s mind.

  I only need to touch it for a moment, just long enough to make the same tweak I’ve made hundreds of times today already, tying her in to the network. But that moment is long enough that her feelings roll over me. Familiar feelings, like all the rest of them—fear, and anger, and duty. But also love, a sweet scent and warm, indescribable sensation rolled together. For an instant I see myself through her eyes—a girl with her long hair tied up, in rough clothes, utterly different from the polished, perfumed creature she used to know, and yet still indisputably the same person.

  At the same time, she sees me, not the way I present myself to the world but the way I fear I am in the dark of the night. All my sins ooze out of me, like pus from a wound. I see an innocent family reduced to slavering beasts to pull down an Immortal, I see a woman die at my mere command. I see the Sixteenth Ward burn, and I see the fear rolling off the girl, Krea, and all the others like her I’d turned into Blues. I see myself kissing Garo, and wanting more.

  I know that Isoka sees all this, too. But she doesn’t pull away.

  ISOKA

  When it’s over, when the flood of images and guilt has washed over me and passed, I take a deep breath and open my eyes. Tori is standing in front of me, tears running down her cheeks. I smile, and thanks to our new link, I don’t even need to speak.

  I feel the others, at the edge of my mind. As I suspected, the Kindre network is reminiscent of the ones I can navigate with Eddica, the two different strains of sorcery playing alongside one another like music in two harmonious keys. Tori’s Blues always reminded me of Prime and his corpses. Their network was driven by a single, dominating mind; here there are hundreds, flashing back and forth.

  I hesitate, but there’s no point in waiting. Either this is going to work, or it isn’t. And if it isn’t, we’re all going to rot. I touch the piece of conduit, and reach out with Eddica. The connection to Soliton is fading, but it’s still enough, for now, and I feel the ship’s system respond.

  Hagan?

  Yes? Hagan’s mental voice is curious. Isoka, I can feel … something strange.

  It’s all the others, crowding into my mind, fascinated by this new connection. I find myself grinning savagely.

  Open the forward ramp, I tell Hagan. And bring up every angel you can.

  I will, Hagan says. But remember that I can’t command them outside the ship itself. Have you figured out how to control more than one at once?

  Something like that.

  I turn—not physically, but in my mind—to the mass of volunteers, Red Sashes, and citizens of Kahnzoka. I explain things to them. In words, it would have taken forever, with pauses for questions and reservations and debate. Here, through the network Tori has created, it takes no time at all, an idea passing wholesale from my mind to theirs. They understand what I want them to do, and they set to it.

  I can watch, from any one of hundreds of blue crystal eyes. The front ramp of Soliton opens, metal groaning and shrieking, startling the Imperial troops guarding the shore. This time, they don’t flee—not at first. But the end of the ramp is lined with huge, misshapen figures, hundreds of statues by a demented sculptor, a mass of bestial parts and human shapes. Things that skitter on hundreds of infant’s arms, a one-winged owl with a human face and a squid’s tentacles, a praying mantis with a woman’s bare torso, wrapped round and round in her own wild hair. For a moment they just stand there, still and silent. The Imperials look up at them and shudder.

  Then the boldest of the volunteers reaches out, through me, and slips into one of the constructs, guiding it forward. The thing, six-legged and ursine, wobbles, rights itself, and walks down the ramp. A few crossbow bolts hiss out, bouncing uselessly off its stony skin. By the time it reaches the bottom, a half-dozen more constructs are following. The Imperials break and run, militia and Ward Guard alike, refusing to face the mad horror disembarking from the ancient ghost ship.

  For the first time in a century, the angels of Soliton are coming ashore.

  * * *

  At my silent urging, they turn left, streaming through the fire-blackened Sixteenth Ward toward the western wall. Debris is crushed under stone feet, and scorched beams shouldered aside. A thousand misshapen forms leave a trail a hundred yards wide.

  It’s a peculiar sensation, being the fulcrum of it all. Hundreds of minds, linked to me by Tori’s power, and in turn connected by mine to Soliton and its angels. Reaching through me, issuing instructions in my name, paying attention in hundreds of places at once in a way I had never been able to master. When I return my attention to the real world, I still have the sense of vast energies in flux, like standing on a rope bridge in a windstorm.

  “It’s working,” I say out loud. This is for the benefit of Giniva, Meroe, and the others. Tori already knows—she’s connected to the network, like I am, and her eyes are wide with wonder.

  One of the angels has split off from the others, heading north instead of west. Tori’s Blues order the gate opened, and the dog-angel bounds past, galloping through empty streets. Tori is guiding it here, to our physical bodies. It’s the same one Hagan once rode, coming ashore at the Harbor to help me stop Prime. Now it will carry her on our last desperate gamble.

  “Worried Jack raises questions about this plan once again,” Jack says. “Would it better for Isoka to stay with young Tori? Or for Jack and Zarun to go in her stead?”

  “Isoka’s going to be needed at the wall,” Meroe says.

  “And I need to talk to the Emperor myself,” Tori says, eyes moving rapidly under closed eyelids.

  “And I want Zarun with me,” I add.

  “But—” Jack sighs, and toys with the edge of her cloak. “Humble Jack is unaccustomed to this level of trust.”

  “Oh, please,” Zarun says. “You’ve never been humble in your life. And Isoka has always trusted you.”

  “True!” Jack perks up, drawing the cloak around herself. “Very well, then. Decidedly-less-than-humble Jack will keep young Tori safe from any who might do her harm.” She brandishes her spear. “To me, mighty steed!”

  Whether by accident or design, her timing is perfect. The dog-angel gallops into the square, digging in all four legs and slewing to a halt in a spray of dirt. I raise an eyebrow at Jack, then turn to Tori, who opens her eyes.

  “We’ll keep it from getting bloody for as long as we can,” I tell her. “But you have to hurry.”

  “I know.”

  Tori grins at me, and I can feel her determination, balanced over the yawning pit of fear. It makes me want to grab hold of her and never let go.

  TORI

  Oh, rot, rot, rot. What in the Blessed’s name have I gotten myself into?

  I’d ridden with Isoka on the double-humped angel, but it hadn’t unsettled me like this. Maybe the difference was that this time I was on the inside, able to reach out through Isoka’s link to Soliton and see myself approaching the angel in the black-and-white view from its crystal eye. I could feel the absurd power coiled inside its stone frame; a wrong twitch, and I would be obliterated, fragile flesh and bone smeared into the dirt with no more effort than stepping on a grape.

  Jack, of course, is already on board, having swarmed up the dog-angel’s side with no sign of fear. This, I gather, is ho
w she approaches everything. I’m grateful she’s there, though, and grab the hand she extends down to me.

  “There appears to be no saddle,” she says, as I settle in behind her. “So just hang on to Steady Jack, and she will hang on to … something.”

  I wrap my hands around her waist. I don’t feel particularly unsteady on the angel, actually, but I’m going to be distracted. Jack grips the thing’s sculpted mane and leans forward.

  “Ready!” she says.

  I close my eyes, letting the vision from the angel take over, and my thoughts flow through it. It’s a strange feeling, reaching out through Isoka, using her Eddica link to give the angel orders and receiving its responses the same way. It doesn’t feel quite natural, akin to having a conversation via a translator instead of face-to-face, but it’s good enough. The angel mostly knows what to do anyway—how to walk and how to run—it just needs to be pushed in the right direction. Within a few moments, we’re trotting out of the square toward the military highway, awed Red Sashes clearing rapidly out of the way.

  Once we reach that long, straight road, I push the angel into a bounding run. If I’d been watching from the outside, I’m sure I would have been terrified, but the angel’s movements are so regular and certain that it feels solid as a rock beneath me. The wind of our passage slashes at my face, drawing tears from my eyes. I hear Jack whoop with delight as we leap off a slight rise and hang in the air for long moments before returning to earth.

  She looks back at me, frowning, and I pull my attention away from the angel a little. “Something wrong?”

  “Foolish Jack should have thought harder about her positioning,” she says. “With Young Tori in the way, her cape isn’t fluttering as dramatically as it should. However! Together a dashing figure is still cut!”