“Fuck,” Linné said. She sounded almost appreciative.
“Watch your mouth,” Revna said. She pulled them sharply around.
“Now? You want to get into this now?”
“You’re breaking my concentration!” She fumbled with the Weave. Something dripped from her chin. Was it blood? She drew her hand out of the glove, felt the wet heat. The Skyhorses were better planes with more experienced pilots; they were—
Linné grabbed her shoulder with an iron grip. “The payload, Revna. We have to drop the payload.”
The whisper of the engine took on stability again. Even the Strekoza was trying to help. Breathe, Revna told herself. She sucked in air and put her hand back into the glove, giving her plane a thankful squeeze as the glimmer of the Weave sharpened again. Linné was right. They had to get rid of the payload.
The outpost was still dark under cover of night. But now they were close enough to see tiny shapes running through the compound, toys that Revna could blot out with one thumb. An antiaircraft gun clunked. If the soldier manning it spotted them, their chances of survival would plummet. But if they retreated, they might lead the Skyhorses back to the base.
“Can you see the Skyhorses?” Her voice sounded miraculously calm to her own ears.
Linné leaned around the back of her chair. “I… yes. One coming in at two o’clock. And the other—” She peered at the side mirrors. “The other’s at our six and gaining.”
“Okay.” Revna took another deep breath. The Strekoza steadied a little under her. She couldn’t afford to panic now. She had to be precise. Her fingers worked at the threads of the Weave, feeling them out. “Okay. Cut power.”
Something flashed on their two. The Weave, as their enemy pilot made a course adjustment. The night fighter sped toward them, a dark shape against a dark sky.
“Revna,” said Linné urgently.
Revna took a light hold of two threads. She nearly had it. Nearly—
“Revna, we’re going to die.”
She pulled. The Strekoza dove toward the ground. The Elda aircraft roared over, far too fast. Flames blazed against the night above. Linné screamed again, a splitting sound that left Revna’s ears ringing.
Revna hauled them level with the ground, leaving them with a few precious moments over the Serpent. “Now,” she shouted.
Linné kept screaming. The triggers on either side clicked, and the bombs fell away.
They rushed back toward the sky, back toward life and cold and freedom. Revna checked the smudged wing mirror. Smoke poured out of the corner of a barn.
They’d missed.
The antiaircraft popped as it began to fire again. “We have to go,” Linné said. “Back to Intelgard. We’ll get the rest of the regiment.”
They couldn’t take on the night fighters alone. Even before she said, “Increase power,” she felt Linné’s spark intensify. Maybe they’d turn into a real team in time to die. She took them away from the base.
“Someone’s on our tail,” Linné said.
“Cut it again.” Revna felt the flow of energy drop away. The Skyhorse behind them clunked as its engine stalled. It roared back to life a moment later, and as the enemy aircraft streaked by, Linné reached out her arm and let loose a blast of spark.
The Skyhorse tore away, igniting as it flew, and streamed toward the ground like a meteor.
“One down, one to go,” Linné said.
Revna thought of Katya, a shadow in the middle of a blaze, burning alive. The air whined as the last Skyhorse sped toward them.
The world before them flared bright. But it wasn’t the bright of fire. It was a dazzling, blinding white, a white that turned the shapes of the world inside out. “Searchlight,” cried Linné.
“Thanks for the warning,” Revna shouted back. She let Linné’s power flow through the throttle, throwing them toward the dark sky at top speed, spinning to port and to starboard. But Strekozy had never been fast, and the searchlight followed them, dazzling them, dancing with them no matter how she fought to get back to the night.
“Can you take it out?” If they could destroy the searchlight, it might make them invisible enough to get away.
“I can take out anything,” Linné replied. “Just give me a clear shot.”
Revna brought them around in a sharp ninety-degree turn. The night striped from dark to light to dark. She pulled them into a dive. The ground rushed toward them, black and bright and black and bright.
They came in over the searchlight, slowing a fraction as they approached. Revna squinted into the hulking shape of the light, hoping against hope that the Skyhorse wouldn’t dare follow them.
Linné’s spark flashed in a fireball, punching through the casing of the searchlight. The world plunged into merciful darkness. Revna prayed that her instincts would take her up, not down.
She waited for the hit. And waited. But it didn’t come. Maybe they’d survive after all. Behind her, Linné sighed and relief filled the plane. “Let’s go—”
The world bucked, lifting Revna up and slamming her back against her seat. Her right prosthetic plunged into open space.
The bottom of the cockpit was gone.
The Strekoza shook as she’d never felt it shake before, fighting to keep its living parts together. Its cage began to release from around Revna’s chest. She was cold suddenly. So cold.
Linné screamed. Again. “Hit! We’ve been hit!”
“I know,” Revna yelled back. Don’t think of stupid Linné. Don’t think of Katya. Don’t think of Elena. Think of the problems, girl.
Problem: The plane spun and the Weave flickered in her sight as the Strekoza lost consciousness.
Problem: Her living plane was dying under them.
Problem: They had no parachutes.
“Revna,” Linné screamed.
Solution. She pulled one hand from its glove. She’d been here before, in a haze of smoke and fire, faced with something falling and a hard death. She hadn’t died then. She didn’t need to die now. She shoved the Strekoza’s cage away from her body and brought her legs up to crouch on the seat. She seized Linné’s free hand. “Hold on.”
Linné twisted, trying to push herself up without letting go. Her mouth formed around a curse, but the wind whipped it away. Revna leaned into her and punched the buckle on Linné’s harness. “When I say, jump. Don’t let go.”
Linné wrestled free of the harness, then grabbed Revna again, squeezing her fingers until the bones ground together. “Revna, we’ll die.”
“No, we won’t.”
“We don’t have chutes!”
“We don’t need them.” Hopefully. Staying in the Strekoza was certain death. Her idea carried only a 90 percent chance.
The Strekoza gasped fury and pain and sorrow. Then Revna felt nothing at all, except the tilt of their bodies in the air. The earth rushed up in a swirl of darkness and fire. “Now!” Revna shouted.
They jumped.
She snatched at the Weave and her fingers wrapped around a handful of threads, pulling them into the air. With a sucking sound, the throttle tube disengaged from Linné’s arm. The Strekoza fell away, and they were hanging.
Linné hugged Revna around the chest, squeezing so hard Revna felt her ribs creak. “Holy shit.” Her breath tickled Revna’s chin.
The threads slipped. Revna caught a few more with her free hand and they swung. “We need to find somewhere to land.” Her arm already burned.
“How?” said Linné.
“Find me a spot.” The threads slipped from her hand, and her shoulder jerked as she let go of Linné to grab with the other. Linné squeezed tighter. Revna reached for a little tangle to secure them.
The world beneath them was dotted with fire. The Elda Skarov howled. Wherever Revna and Linné landed, the canines needed to be upwind. Maybe if the dogs couldn’t smell them, the Elda would think they were dead.
“There.” Linné pointed to a dark patch on the ground, devoid of fire and people and war machines. O
nly 150 meters away, and as good a spot as they could hope for.
Revna pulled toward the open spot. Her shoulder was going to pop out of its socket and her legs dragged on her calves. They slipped off course. She’d practiced using the Weave on others, but only for scant moments at a time. Now her fingers were slick with blood and sweat and fear, and she kept thinking about the roar of the planes, the singeing heat of the fire.
“I can’t believe we’re flying,” Linné said. She gazed down, wide-eyed.
“We fly every night,” Revna pointed out. Her arms trembled.
“This is different. You know what I mean.” Linné tightened her grip and Revna cringed. “Are we going to break our legs?”
“Only if you don’t let me concentrate.” Or if they landed wrong. Or too fast. Revna released a few strands. They fell another meter. Linné stifled a curse. Revna thought of Katya and Elena, lying somewhere on the field with Asya and Nadya. Maybe falling was all their fates.
The sound of the Skyhorse’s engine died away. It obviously thought the fight was over. But noise surrounded them—the crackle of fire, the shouting of men, the yips of the Elda shape-shifters.
“Revn—ow!” Linné seized against her as they fell another few meters. “We’re falling too fast.”
They’d drifted over the corner of a roof. Revna’s finger hooked around a Weave strand. “It’s not as easy as it looks—” Then the last thread slipped from her grasp.
Linné clipped the edge of the roof with her foot. She yelped a curse and grabbed for the corner. Revna’s shoulder popped as Linné’s hand fastened around her wrist and pulled her up tight. Her back slammed into the side of the building, driving the air from her lungs. She heard a brittle snap and gasped. It felt as though someone had driven a knife up through the soles of her feet.
Her hand tore free from Linné’s. She hit the sloping top of a war beetle and tumbled through the air. Then she was rolling, over and over, through a sucking warmth, until finally she came to a stop.
Pain radiated from her chest. The universe closed around her, dark and hot. Fire in her legs, fire in her ribs. She couldn’t see; she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t know whether she was living or dead.
Fire flickered in a patch of sky above. The war beetle loomed over her, one leg raised. Revna threw her arms up to cover her face. But it didn’t move. It was unmanned, and when she touched its flank, she felt its panic, latent and thick, ready to activate at the touch of a driver.
The universe began to expand again. The wetness around her was mud; the darkness was the shadow of the war beetle and the ash that smeared her goggles. Smoke covered the ground. She clapped her hand over her mouth and nose. The world flickered between red-orange flame and shadow. Her legs blazed.
Voices called to one another in Eldar. Revna peered out from under the war beetle.
“Linné?” she whispered. A dread rose in her that had nothing to do with the beetle above. Her navigator was gone.
17
OUR REALM IS THE AIR
Revna pressed herself against the underside of the war beetle. Her eyes stung. Around her the Elda soldiers rushed to put out the fire they’d started in the old barn.
She heard a cry, faint and desperate. Linné. Be quiet, she prayed silently. I’ll come to you. Linné might have broken something. She might be trapped under a beetle or fallen debris. She might be stuck on the roof. Revna leaned into the smoke. Was the cry getting closer?
A shape moved toward her. She shrank under the beetle’s carapace. If it was one of the Elda Skarov, it would nose her out from under the war beetle and tear her to nothing.
The boots came to a stop not a meter from her face. Revna caught a sense of fear, anger, an undercurrent of hard determination. It felt like their cockpit. Just in case, Revna reached for her issued pistol. Then Linné shouted her name loud enough for half the base to hear, and Revna started so hard she cracked her head on the beetle’s undercarriage.
She grabbed Linné by the ankle and pulled. Linné went down with a yell and rolled under the beetle. Sharp nails dug into the skin around Revna’s throat. For a moment Revna locked eyes with a feral beast. Linné held her gun like a club, her mouth twisted in a snarl.
“Don’t—” Revna choked.
Linné’s eyes widened. She snatched her hand away, taking small chunks of Revna’s skin with her. “What did you do that for?” Her voice shook. “I almost killed you.”
Revna touched her stinging neck. “Why were you running around shouting for me? Now they’ll know we’re here.”
“Oh, excuse me for trying to save your ass from this situation, which, I will remind you, you put yourself in.” Mud spattered the right side of Linné’s face, and ash streaked the rest. She wiped at it uselessly.
Giddiness bubbled up. Maybe it was the smoke. “You care.”
“Quiet,” said Linné. She crouched near the hind legs of the beetle and peered out.
“Not until you—”
“Shh.” Revna heard three choking coughs from up ahead. “How do we get out of here?” Linné whispered.
Revna thought of the Strekoza, falling away from them. They weren’t going to walk out of the base—fire surrounded them, and where there wasn’t fire there would be Elda. She clenched her fists. “I need to think.” But really, she needed to keep herself from thinking. About the lancing pain in her legs. About Katya and Asya, about how Elena and Nadya might still be alive if she’d agreed to fly in second position. You’re cursed.
An Elda Skarov barked somewhere in the smoke. “We don’t have time to think,” Linné said. “What are the options? Escape?”
“How do we get home?”
Linné scowled. “Good point. What about this thing?” She tapped the hind leg of the beetle, lip curling. She didn’t seem too enthused about her own suggestion.
“I don’t think it wants to go anywhere,” Revna said.
“Who cares? We can make it go.”
“And then what? Get blasted by Skyhorses on the way to the mountains?”
Linné peered out as footsteps thundered by. “What’s your brilliant suggestion, then?”
Revna put her muddy palm to the undercarriage. Linné would have to drive, and the war beetle would probably throw them both off in its panic before she managed to get in and take control. It would definitely draw unwanted attention. And even if they got it off the base, the Elda could fly after them in their Serpent.
The Skarov barked again. Linné grabbed her hand. “If you don’t have a better idea—”
The Serpent. “I do, actually.” Revna tried to pull her feet under her. But her prosthetic bent against her calf, and she fell on Linné with a strangled cry.
“Shh,” Linné hissed in her ear, juggling to hold on to her gun as she helped Revna right herself.
Revna pulled her hands free and rolled up her left trouser leg. The leather buckle at the top of her calf was torn, and the sock protecting her residual limb had ripped. She tried to ignore the red skin underneath, prying the inner part of the prosthetic away from the sweat-soaked cloth. The pin had snapped. The leg was broken. She lifted it to her chest, stomach heaving.
“How bad?” Linné said. “Can you walk?”
Revna cradled the leg. “I don’t know.”
“Then I’ll have to carry you. Put it back on.”
Revna drew away from her, stung. “Let me try.”
“We don’t have time,” said Linné.
Revna thought of Mrs. Rodoya. Speed over pride. She’d thought she was through with others dictating her mobility. “I can walk.”
“Fine, but—” They heard the crunch of more boots on debris. Linné waved her hand. Her impatience pricked at Revna, as clear as if they were flying together. Get on with it.
Revna reattached her leg with shaking hands. She thought about her father, his features hazy in her mind, fitting her oversized legs to her frame. Holding her hands as she learned to walk on her new feet. Cradling her when the tears spilled forth. H
e’d gone to prison for making her these legs. And now she’d broken one.
She tied the buckle as tight as she could with a scrap of wool from her coat lining. The living metal squeezed, igniting a faint hope. “We can make it to the airfield without you having to carry me.”
Linné looked at her long and hard. “I trust you,” she said finally, rolling the words around in her mouth, sounding uncertain. Then she slid out from under the war beetle.
Revna took her hand again and used her good leg to push herself up. She leaned on the war beetle to test the broken prosthetic. Her leg tried to work with her, living metal straining, but the shift of her weight sent it twisting to the side.
“Revna,” Linné warned her.
“I need to readjust—”
A shape cut through the smoke. Linné pulled her backward, stumbling behind the war beetle, wedging them between the metal and the wooden wall of the farmhouse. Linné pressed the barrel of her gun over Revna’s mouth, a brief warning to be silent.
The shape resolved into a man. Revna’s breath caught. Next to her, Linné moved her gun by degrees, sliding her finger over the trigger as she aimed.
A rough voice shouted from the other side of the barn. The man shouted back and ran past them.
Revna sagged in relief. Then she shoved Linné. “Don’t drag me around.”
“Can you move that thing or not?” Linné said.
“It’s not a thing,” Revna said hotly. She wrapped her left arm around Linné’s shoulders and clung tight. Linné holstered her gun, and they staggered in what Revna hoped was the right direction. The broken pin in her left leg slid around in its socket and her residual limb burned and scraped, but the living metal held together. She could walk. Smoke stung their eyes and noses and bit their throats. Revna tucked her face into Linné’s shoulder. At least the smoke obscured them from the Elda.
Fire dotted the ground, filling the air with the stench of hot metal and burning wood. Revna strangled a cry as her broken prosthetic scraped the raw skin of her calf. They limped along the farmhouse, leaning against it. Elda shouts dimmed and swelled as the fire roared. Linné checked the corner. “You’re going to have to handle any trouble.”
We Rule the Night Page 24