by R J Theodore
“Carefully please, Soph,” Talis said. “No second chances.”
Onaya let out a cry from the street post where she had landed, and Talis twitched. But as the echo of her call faded, Talis heard what the warning had been for: boot steps. Lots of them. Hitting the ground in time with each other. Not the Tempest, no. These feet belonged to trained Imperial marchers. No doubt armed with rifles, bayonets, and all the authority the Empire could unleash on behalf of their Yu’Nyun friends.
They came from all three sides. The alley behind, the streets at the intersection.
“Away from there!” A captain moved forward as his troops set themselves neatly into rows. “Step away from the device, and drop your weapons!”
Talis clenched her teeth and reset the hammer on her pistol. Let the fingerboard swing around her hand so the weapon hung limp, and then she tossed it to the ground several paces away. She heard the clatter of Dug’s blades, the clink of Tisker’s knives. Sophie had already sheathed her weapons, and as she was pulled back from the device by the marchers, they stripped her axes from their holsters.
“Who tipped you off?” Talis asked the captain.
“Anonymous,” he replied. The thin line of his lips fought to smile with satisfaction, but he regained his discipline.
“I’ll just bet it was,” Talis said. “But we’re here to disarm it.”
The first moment of doubt wavered on the captain’s face. He looked from her to the device, perhaps for the first time aware of the light ticking, which echoed off the stone walls around them.
Talis nearly exhaled with relief. “Yes, disarm. You know what happened to the crown princess? Imagine that spreading on a cloud, pushed around the world, finding its way into everyone’s lungs.”
Hands wavered on their triggers. Had they found someone in Diadem with more sense than ambition?
“The aliens planned this?”
Talis scoffed. “Hardly. But it doesn’t matter anymore. This mess affects everyone.”
A moment of hesitation, then he lowered his weapon, and the troops around them did likewise. He would listen to reason as long as no one got too jumpy.
But there wasn’t time. The watch’s second hand ticked to its set mark with a short, clattering ring.
In the pregnant pause that followed, the Imperial captain’s eyes widened.
Then the air shattered around them. Shrapnel of porcelain, metal, and scraps of wire burst forth in a fiery corona. The residual outline of the device remained for a moment, traced in flames and smoke, before the fireball consumed it. The blast concussed the air, throwing them down to the ground, ducking and flinging their arms over their heads to protect themselves from the propellant and hurtling pieces of scrap.
The rumble lasted for nearly a full minute, though the shower of ceramic and metallic shrapnel settled sooner than that. Talis raised her head to take in the damage along the streets around them.
The captain’s men lay in the street, some moaning, others far beyond help. Some coughed and worked at getting to their knees and feet. Others stood, staring past Talis to the source of the blast. She braced for the worst and turned.
The smoke was already dissipating as the wind whipped through it.
“Get down! Don’t breathe it in!”
The troops were dazed, unfamiliar with her voice, and too slow to react as the cloud moved over them. They gasped in fear, taking in large gulps of the gas, registering her warning too late. They gripped at their throats, eyes wide in terror. Talis scurried to get up and away from them before they could change, but slipped on shards of porcelain and metal and only managed to push herself back against the wall of the building.
“It’s okay.” Sophie was at her side, hand on her shoulder, the other beneath her elbow to help her up.
Sophie’s arms were a mess of bloody scrapes. But in her free hand, she held up a metal object. Some sort of connecting piece. “I got the nozzle off in time. The solution stayed liquid and burned up in the blast.”
Talis dropped her head onto her arm, weakened with relief, and began to laugh. “Hells, girl, you might have said so.”
Sophie helped her up, and Talis started to cough as the remains of the smoke found its way into her nose and throat. It burned like pepper oil and tasted like meat gone bad. She wanted to scrape her tongue and rinse her mouth with some nice gentle whiskey.
“So fire’s an option, it would seem.”
Everyone in the street fought the instinct to breathe while others coughed, hacked, and spat the mordant air.
Tisker scraped his tongue over his upper teeth. “Still wouldn’t mind turning it to water if Amos can manage it.”
Sophie put an urgent hand on Talis’s shoulder. An unhappy thought traveled across the gesture like an electrical shock.
Talis looked at the Imperial captain. “If they sent you here, this can’t be the only bomb.”
The crowd sobered instantly. Even quieted their coughing.
The captain stood straight, almost at attention. “How can we help?”
Talis called to where Onaya circled, above her earlier perch but out of the range of the explosion and following cloud. “Find the others!”
Onaya cawed, then lifted up and soared away, disappearing out of sight beyond the buildings leaning over the street.
The captain organized his own men in waves to search the city by foot.
Talis took a deep breath, suppressed a cough, and looked to her own crew. The guard was more help than she could have hoped for, but the city was so big, and Hankirk knew its streets.
A memory sparked. The table in the Tempest’s warehouse on Subrosa that she’d taken a gander at. At the time, she hadn’t recognized the schematics for what they were. The labyrinthine webwork, the architectural plans. Two years in Lippen should have had her recognizing tunnels when she saw them.
“The sewers. He’s going to use the sewers. Sophie, go with those heading sinistral. Tisker, the other way. Watch for spots under bridges and arches Onaya can’t see. Be careful.”
Talis signaled to Dug and the captain, and then set off in a run, leading them toward the royal tower. Talis knew where Hankirk hoped the old sewer tunnels would lead him.
If there were more than one bomb, there could be fifty. Or hundreds. They’d left Hankirk unsupervised in Subrosa with the full concentration of that stack of syringes.
Talis’s best shot now was to find Hankirk and talk him back from the edge. He had to tell her where the other devices were so they could disarm any they missed. She only hoped he wasn’t beyond reason—at least until she had everything she needed to stop his plan. And then she would put him off her stern and let flotsam break his fall.
At each intersection, she could look see women and men in Imperial uniforms searching the streets. Twice, she heard distant shouts of urgent triumph. She pressed on, not slowing. Each team had been told what valves to disconnect. That was the best she could do for them.
The captain, a career soldier named Wallis, followed closely at her elbow, asking only for the top-level details and answering Dug with respect when he spoke. A man whose duty was before his political drive. Of course, he was still young. Talis hoped this city wouldn’t ruin him. If they got through this day.
Hankirk, though, was a man with big plans. She suspected he’d be at the center of the destruction. And, considering how many times he showed up looking for Talis after he ought to have given up on her, she knew he’d want to visit the empress one last time.
They found the palace gates locked, royal guards stationed at every entrance point. The guards assured Captain Wallis no one had entered all morning. The men on watch eyed Dug while he waited with Talis across the street.
Talis called out. “The sewers. They’ll lead beneath any building he wants.”
The captain looked stricken. “Including the castle.” He waved Ta
lis toward the nearest grate.
They pulled back on the heavy iron cover to reveal a series of rungs descending into darkness. Talis laid the grate down carefully while Dug and the captain climbed down ahead of her. The smell was impressive, but not surprising given the population density.
With her foot halfway to the top rung, she heard the familiar raven’s cry. Onaya landed in front of her, shook herself and settled her feathers into place. “I’m coming with you.”
Talis almost laughed, except the delay was not funny. She heard footsteps below, scraping against the concrete tunnel as Dug and the captain moved aside for her. “What, down there? You keep to the skies. Help everyone find the other devices.”
“Their search pattern is thorough. I will be of better aid to you with beak and talons, going forward.”
Talis sighed, looking down between her feet at the darkness. “You want to slum with us down there? Fine. No more talking, let’s go.”
Stepping off the ladder at the bottom, she felt the grit of a thin coating of mud beneath the soles of her boots.
She heard Onaya’s wings and felt air move across her cheek but could see only the barest highlight along the raven’s feathers.
“Anyone have a match or a torch?” she asked, squinting.
She heard the shuffle of feet as someone moved. Too many someones. Light flared in the tunnel, bouncing off a river of waste to reflect undulating patterns against the curve of brickwork above them.
The match was held high and steady, lighting the face of a Bone stranger whose purple, gray, and steel patterned eyes Talis had sworn she would never forget.
“Hankirk gave you an out. You should have stuck to the path you were given, Captain Talis. Kheri here didn’t have to die. My knife wasn’t fatal, as you know.”
She felt like her limbs had turned to lead. This was the assassin from Lippen. Sent by Hankirk to force her onto Eneil’s ship. To force her into this mess. And Hankirk had known, had used an assassin to force her hand.
He’d been dangerous enough, but now, nearly a dozen armed strangers surrounded them in the tunnel, crowding the space and blocking the way forward. Dug and Captain Wallis slumped on their knees on the floor, heads down. Barely conscious.
Blood dripped from the side of Dug’s head, behind his ear. The sticky liquid looked black in the low, wavering light.
“But you had to try to stop us.” Just as the man’s match dimmed and went out, another of their group cranked an electric torch to life.
The flare of light caught along something metallic and slender in the assassin’s hand. Not a knife. A syringe.
Captain Wallis began to over-tighten all his muscles. An anguished cry ripped from his throat as his body contorted. The man had injected him with the solution.
While Talis was still trying to make sense of the scene, the man stuck the needle into Dug’s neck, and pushed the plunger. He cringed, tilted his head back. His shoulders tightened and rose as though to protect his neck. But it was too late. The new tattoo Kirna had placed at the base of his throat flared bright, outshining the torchlight.
Talis yelled in outrage and, in one motion, pulled her gun from her holster and fired. Her bullet struck the man in the center of his chest. The syringe fell to the ground, and a dozen alien rifles aimed at them by the assassin’s Tempest comrades fired from the darkness, searing the air with light. But Talis was already rolling, straight toward them, bringing her weapon up in one hand and her opposite elbow, taking out two of them in the same motion.
She fired again. And again. Again, until she’d lost count. Always moving, because Dug needed her. When she ran out of bullets, she took up one of the alien rifles. By then there were only two Tempest remaining. Onaya had covered her back, as promised, but Talis would have happily done the work on her own. One of the remaining marks dropped her weapon, hands up to save herself. Talis was having none of it. She pushed the firing pad again. A moment later, the final militia member dropped.
Stillness settled in the tunnel, but Talis’s world splintered around her as though another bomb had gone off. She kneeled beside Dug, lifting his chest off the ground.
The glowing seal rose from his throat, translucent. A rippling flare of green in the dim tunnel, trailing near-white tendrils back to where the tattoo had been inked into his skin with alchemical ingredients, now faded as though the color had been drawn out.
It had done as Kirna promised. At least it appeared to, in comparison to Wallis, who lay on his side, breathing heavily. His eyes were wide and focused on Talis. He curled around his stomach, coughing and choking a gelatinous green puddle onto the ground. Its glow was more yellow, more sickly in comparison to Dug’s. Wallis groaned as though his blood were on fire. He curled tighter. Talis did not have long before his agony turned outward.
Dug did not stir. He looked peaceful.
Glistening black feathers beat at Talis’s head. She brought her arms up instinctively to protect her face. Claws scratched at her skin, talons ripping through her sleeves. And then it was over.
Onaya Bone, fast as a lightning strike, was gone.
But not gone.
By the half-light of fallen torches, Talis saw Dug’s quintessence plummet to the tunnel floor, no longer tethered to him.
But Dug did not howl with the agonized rage. He smiled, white teeth flashing in the near darkness, a smug look in his face that belonged to another. Flaring, magenta eyes opened in his chest, blinked rapidly, and then turned their gaze on her.
Onaya Bone looked back at her from Dug’s features, inches away. Deadly promises sparkled from his stolen eyes.
Talis gripped at her friend’s shoulders as though will alone would be enough to banish Onaya from his body and make room for his soul again.
Shouts sounded behind her. More of Hankirk’s Tempest forces, armed with more of the alien rifles.
In her new form, Onaya leapt to her feet. No one had disarmed Dug earlier, and Onaya unsheathed his curving blades with both hands, moving them in sinister, graceful arcs. The new arrivals lay dead at her feet before they even knew she was on the move.
Someone shouted Dug’s name over and over. A tight, panicked voice straining to be heard as the knives sang through the air, and the Tempest’s ranks fell with grunts and screams.
The soldiers at the back of the new wave recovered from their surprise, attempting to train their rifles on the blade-wielding demon in their midst. Rifles fired, forcing Talis to duck and huddle near the ground as the shots missed Onaya and scattered behind her. Bursts of weapons fire strobed in the narrow space, each pulse revealing more bodies hit the floor. Rifles clattered, falling with them.
Only two of Hankirk’s men remained. They exchanged looks, then raised their hands above their heads. Their rifles swung back on their straps to fall behind their hips. They took slow steps backward, then turned and ran. The electric torch of their fallen comrade cast exaggerated shadows of their pumping legs against the far sloping walls. Onaya Bone lunged after them, leaving Talis screaming hoarsely after her.
She was alone. Dug was gone.
Unless she could catch Onaya Bone and get her, in Dug’s body, back to Meran.
A shuffle of movement sounded in the darkness, and Talis froze mid-sniffle.
Not so alone, after all. Wallis. The noises were weak, that of a body fumbling without grace. She reached for the abandoned torch, shining it toward the source of the sound. Wallis had risen to his knees, but the recognition in his eyes was gone.
In the torchlight, they flashed yellow-green like an animal’s. The muscles of his face strained, his mouth hung open. The lower jaw jutted forward and worked as though he were trying to speak. Or bite.
His back curved, shuddering and arching, as he struggled to push himself up from the floor. His fingers splayed, the knuckles flexed, and his nails scraped against the cement, scratching trails into th
e layer of wet silt over the poured concrete floor. His legs, uncoordinated, didn’t hold him, and he fell sideways back to the ground.
He clawed at his own head with a frustrated growl, and his hair came away under his nails. His ribs expanded with a heaving breath, as a man fighting to control his temper. Then the breaths came faster, more shallow.
Talis shrank back, sliding the evasive puddle of Dug’s quintessence into her cupped hands, trying to get to her feet without letting the green material spill. The movement drew Wallis’s attention, and the tormented look made her take an involuntary step back. He howled, an agonized stream of pain and confusion.
The man hadn’t had Kirna’s protection. There was nothing she could do for him. She had to leave. Leave him, like this. Now.
Talis deposited Dug’s quintessence in a pouch on her belt, where it pooled and settled. She took two of the alien rifles. Pulled a torchlight’s battery free of its previous owner’s belt. Saw a pack of matches on the floor and grabbed those too.
She gave Wallis one last look as he struggled to control his overtightened muscles and rise again.
“I’m sorry.” Then she turned to follow Onaya’s footsteps fading deeper into the tunnel.
Chapter 45
Hot tears ran down Talis’s face. She didn’t pause to wipe at them. She owed Dug those and many more.
The tunnels branched off and away at every intersection, and the footsteps she followed seemed to echo from every direction. She did her best to keep her feet aimed toward the footprint of the tower above. She spared no thoughts for the cramped space, for the weight of the city above her. She spared no time for her own feelings. The anguish, the claustrophobia, the anxiety over what she would find. If she would find anyone in time at all.
Wasn’t likely Onaya would honor her promise to help, now that she had a body. Dug’s body. Talis tugged one of her prayerlocks, hoping Onaya traveled in the same direction as her, whatever her intentions.
