by Reese Hogan
“No. That wasn’t until later. After we found out we needed the research from the scientists who worked there.”
“So you sent him to befriend the boy whose parents he’d murdered?” Klara Yana felt sick. “That’s just…”
“Befriend? We sent him to target the kid. You really don’t understand this whole agent business, do you? But then, you were never expected to. There’s a reason we don’t employ women in these positions, after all.” His hand came up, wrapping around her neck and shoving her farther into the rocky cliff. The gun was still tight under her chin. “That’s what this was about, wasn’t it? Finding your ama? What a sad stupid ending to your pathetic story.”
“You’ll never get back to Mirrix without me,” she said, putting as much force into the words as she could.
Lyanirus barked out a laugh. “I can still use your palm if you’re dead. In fact, I can cut off your hand and carry it around with me. Might be easier than hauling you around. Although… gods, I’d get such better use out of you with a whole body.” His eyes roamed down her dirty Dhavnak uniform. He licked his lips. “It’s liberal bitches like you that are stripping our whole culture of its fertility, by blaspheming against the gods. Maybe Shon Aha would reward me if I dragged one of you back into line.”
Her stomach clenched with nausea and fear. Grab the gun! Do something! Don’t freeze! Not now…
“Feel good about this, Hollanelea,” said Lyanirus, running the gun barrel over her bruised cheek. “If you provide your country with my child, I’ll let it be known to all that Shon Aha himself forgave you. It will be a godsent sign that it’s not too late for Dhavnakir to turn back to the ways of the brotherhood. You would be an example to every man or woman who’s gone astray.”
She drew in a strangled breath, her teeth clenched over a scream. Weapons – none. Anonymity – gone. Blackwood will die if I don’t get back, Klara Yana thought desperately. She’s been captured. She’s counting on me. But she kept flashing back to Lyanirus choking her, kicking her, the knife digging into her finger, her certainty he was going to kill her. She dug her teeth into her lip. If Klara Yana isn’t brave enough to go for that gun, I need to be someone who is.
Her eyes drifted closed. And she put together a new character. A woman. One who did what she had to, no matter the cost. Like Chief Sea Officer Blackwood. Like Dela Savene. Like Ama. A woman who would never be paralyzed by fear, especially in front of a scuzbanger like this.
She opened her eyes. Fear flickered for just a second, but she pushed it aside. Just a character. Like any other mission. She grabbed the barrel of his pistol, shoving it to the side. With her other hand, she punched him in the face, putting all her strength behind it. His grip on the gun loosened just enough for her to tear it from his grasp. He cursed and lunged for her, but she was already scooting away along the face of the cliff. She raised the gun.
But as she twitched her finger to fire, excruciating pain shot from her fingertip to her wrist, and the finger itself failed to respond at all. Vo Hina’s mercy, the injury! She struggled to readjust her grip before he reached her. She’d just transferred the gun to her left hand when Lyanirus’s fist slammed into her skull. The sheer force of the blow drove her against the cliff. Pain exploded through her side and ribs. Frantically, she got the pistol into position again, and squeezed the trigger. The noise of the gunshot left her ears ringing. Hot blood poured over the hand holding the gun. He fell, his weight bearing them both to the ground. Klara Yana fired again, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Another gush of blood spilled over her stomach, and his body sagged over hers. She finally scrambled free, not taking her eyes off him for a second.
Lyanirus was pulling himself up, one hand over his stomach. His features were distorted in rage.
“You’re just like your ama,” he spat. “An utter disgrace to your country and your gods.”
Klara Yana raised the gun, pointing it at his head. “This has nothing to do with our gods, Lyanirus. You brought this on yourself. Not Vo Hina. Not Shon Aha. You.”
Her finger tightened on the trigger. But her eye fell on something behind him the second before she squeezed it. A segmented body, materializing from the cliff’s side. It looked like a long snake, with grotesque, multi-jointed legs spreading from beneath, giving the ground the look of a broken window, riddled with cracks. Her gaze followed the body forward. Long, sinuous curves, and a massive head at the end of it all… tight crimson flesh, huge black pupils, flames wreathing its scalp. Klara Yana froze. There was no denying it. The creature looked like Shon Aha.
Lyanirus, noticing her attention drift, looked over his shoulder. His breath came out in a croak. “It can’t be. Is that…” His gaze shot back to Klara Yana. “What is this place, anyway?”
“Niss-mala-strana!” the creature growled. Its voice, though pitched low, reverberated from the landscape around her. Klara Yana’s gaze flicked between the monster and Lyanirus. It hadn’t asked about the caeg – the arphanium – as she’d expected. Not yet, anyway. Nevertheless, she cast her eyes over the rocky ground for the dropped arphanium pipe, her heart beating faster. If this monster found it before she did… there was no saying. It might go back to Mirrix. It might go on a murderous rampage. And she herself would be trapped here…
The creature snarled again, twice as loudly as before. “Niss-malastrana-shonaha!”
Klara Yana’s gaze darted up. “Shonaha?” she repeated.
In response, a bolt of lightning shot from the murky sky, striking the towering cliff on her left and sending shards of rock flying all around them. The sudden flash left her eyes burning. A crack of thunder rolled through like a wave. The creature’s voice sounded over the crash, forming words in its barely-comprehensible tongue.
“Niss-mala-shonaha!” it roared, gesturing with its flaming head where the strike had hit. “Niss-mala?”
Klara Yana drew a ragged breath. It wasn’t talking about itself, she realized. It was talking about the lightning.
Shonaha was its word for lightning.
It left her reeling. If the name of the Synivistic main god was just a term to these creatures, then who was the monster before her? Actually a Synivistic god? Or something else? Vo Hina, help me. By the gods. Vo Hina…
Another strike of lightning cracked the sky. Somewhere, an explosion sounded, ten times louder than the thunder she’d heard previously. High above, at the top of the cliff, a mounting rumbling echoed over the barren land, like massive rocks grinding together. Klara Yana’s breath came short, her gaze moving faster. She had to find that pipe.
Lyanirus let out a sudden gasp. Klara Yana’s head jerked up. Another creature had appeared in front of him, seemingly without warning. It was the same one she’d spoken with – the one that just might be Vo Hina. The creature was glaring at the leuftkernel with her one green and golden eye. A second later, she looked up, pinning that gaze on Klara Yana.
“Rana-illum-mala-hiri?” she said, her voice crisp.
Lyanirus looked from the creature to Klara Yana, his jaw clenching. “That’s Vo Hina!” he ground out.
“I…” began Klara Yana.
“Your eyes. By the gods! Your betrayal…”
“What are you talking about?” Klara Yana said. She held her gun out, not even sure where to point it anymore. The first creature – the one resembling Shon Aha – had slowly turned its serpentine body to face the other one.
“Vo Hina’s Clannama, that’s what I’m talking about!” Lyanirus spat the words out like a curse.
“What?” Klara Yana said incredulously. “The hypothetical descendants of… of Galene Marduc and Vo Hina? Are you serious?”
“Such a massive betrayal to our country could only have been committed by Vo Hina’s own children,” Lyanirus hissed. “That’s why you lived, isn’t it? You and your ama both? Because Vo Hina came for you? Saved you, when everyone else who ever shrouded ended up dead?”
Klara Yana went cold. Shared blood. That’s what he was saying. It was
hard to believe, but her eyes… they matched that creature’s. Her ama had had them, too – and she, too, had survived an encounter during shrouding. And Blackwood? Would the chief sea officer have ever survived if not for Klara Yana being there? As Blackwood had pointed out, every previous encounter had ended in slaughter. If Lyanirus is right, it could be my presence that saved their lives! But it was small consolation; it had been Klara Yana herself who’d brought in the dekatite and caused the attack in the first place.
Unless Blackwood’s government was wrong about the monsters being drawn to dekatite. It was arphanium they wanted. The black and white gems of the valleys and mountains. Those were the elements that Vo Hina had hoarded, along with humankind’s souls. The goddess would have needed both dekatite and arphanium to trap the gods away from the humans, as Andrew believed. After all these hundreds of thousands of cycles… were the gods still drawn to both substances? Maybe it draws them strongest when they’re together. And Vo Hina herself – drawn to Klara Yana, but barely in time to save her.
Vo Hina’s Clannama. The genes of a god. Or… something else, maybe. Another life form.
Klara Yana was pulled abruptly from her thoughts as the first creature moved, as fast as the lightning it commanded. One spindly leg shot forward and seized the leuftkernel, wrapping its finger-like appendages around his body and squeezing tight. Lyanirus let out an excruciating scream as blood ran in crimson rivers over the jointed limbs. Klara Yana stumbled back with her hands over her mouth, barely holding back a scream of her own.
“Galene!” the other creature snapped. Her wispy hair blew and broke like clouds as she whipped her head around. “Rana-urtezi-falb!”
“I… falb. Yes. Run.” Klara Yana wrenched her gaze away from her commanding officer, searching desperately for the crystal. Lyanirus’s shrieks grew louder, pummeling her skull. Beneath it, she could hear her creature’s – Vo Hina’s – voice, yelling something at the other one. Another strobe of lightning danced just outside her field of vision. As it faded, she finally saw a faint glow in the craggy rocks, nestled deep in a wide crack. She knelt and reached her fingers in, trying to wiggle the chunk of arphanium to the surface. It held fast.
“Hollanelea!” Lyanirus howled. “Help me. Please. Please!”
She couldn’t take it anymore. She brought the pistol up, turned, and emptied the magazine into the bleeding mess that had once been the leuftkernel. After the third shot, his screams ceased abruptly. For a second, the only sounds were the echo of the gunshots and that terrible grinding high overhead. The fire-haired creature’s huge head swung in her direction, big red eyes narrowed. A thick blue-green mist hung opposite him, where Vo Hina had been, but Klara Yana could already see her form coalescing again behind the creature. She was moving through reality unseen. Like shrouding, Klara Yana thought. But it was more ethereal than anything Klara Yana or the submarine did, and it certainly wasn’t through Mirrix.
Then again, Vo Hina didn’t have arphanium.
The fire-headed creature – Shon Aha – seemed to sense Vo Hina’s presence, and started to whip around. But Vo Hina solidified with her arms latched around his upper body. She wrenched him toward the cliff, twisting his body violently, and Klara Yana saw something tear within his sinuous folds. An awful yellowish-black goop streamed down his skin and onto the craggy ground. Shon Aha roared, and the world flashed suddenly and blindingly bright in every direction. Her heart stuttering with fear, Klara Yana turned her attention back to the arphanium, prying with her fingertips to get it loose. Why wouldn’t the cursed shard come out?
Another crack of lightning split the sky, with thunder crashing behind it like an aerial blast. Klara Yana flinched, expecting to be ripped apart any second. A loud cry sounded from above her. She looked up and gasped.
Vo Hina stood over her. The top of her misty head was seared black, and the smell of burning was overpowering. She’d blocked the lightning bolt – surely one that would have taken Klara Yana’s life.
Third time. This was the third time she’d saved her life. Because she came for you. Saved you, when everyone else who ever shrouded ended up dead. Klara Yana gazed up at her and felt her throat tightening with a gamut of emotions. Ten cycles she’d lived without her ama, and she’d known only a scant handful of people since who cared whether she lived or died. And now one of them – her own guardian from another realm, never mind whatever else she was – would be gone too, nearly as fast as she’d found her.
Snatched away. Just like her ama.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Galene,” Vo Hina said, her voice low and deliberate.
“I know. I… I promise I won’t let him have the arphanium. No matter what happens.”
Vo Hina started to answer, but then she darted her head back just in time to see Shon Aha slam into her with a meaty thunk. No trick of evanescence saved her this time. Tendrils of lightning danced across both their bodies, leaving brilliant afterimages flashing across Klara Yana’s sight. Far overhead, at the top of the cliff, a churning mess of red and black sludge tipped over the edge.
Klara Yana turned back to the ground. With one hard jerk, she broke the arphanium. One piece fell back into the crevice, but the other slipped free, barely grasped between two fingers. She stumbled back, curling her fingers inward to press the crystal against her left palm.
She cried out as an appendage whipped out and snagged her wrist. The shrouding realm vanished around her.
Chapter 24
BLACKWOOD’S BATTLE
The Early Sun sank toward the western horizon, as the Main Sun burned a late afternoon heat onto the reinforced metal deck. Kheppra Isle was barely visible to the north, over the Trievanic Sea’s sparkling ripples. A steady trickle of smoke rose from the top of it, leaving a slight haze and an ashy smell in the air.
Blackwood, spent from struggling, slumped against the anti-aircraft gun in the center of the deck. Only a single soldier held her hands behind her back now, though another stood nearby, rifle at the ready. Blackwood glanced at the conning tower where another pair stood, one on a radio, the other peering through a small scope. The atmosphere was tense. She heard the word leuftkernel being tossed around a lot, as well as kommandir. For the moment, she gathered, they were waiting on that autorotor to return and hadn’t expected to be out here without a commanding officer. They knew there were enough explosives beneath their feet to blow up a small island, and wanted to be off the boat.
Another surge of nausea churned Blackwood’s stomach. Again she pictured the black-jacketed officer with his gun pressed into Andrew’s forehead, and again she heard the bang in her head that had never come. She heaved, but she had nothing left in her stomach. The soldier holding her wrists made a noise of disgust, and muttered something to the man on the left. Something about women’s weak stomachs, no doubt.
Blackwood tried to focus. The lightning. If she hit the submarine right now, in the right place, the whole thing could blow, long before reaching Marldox. If it weren’t for Andrew down there somewhere, she’d have done it already. If I’d never joined the navy? If I’d been a better listener? If I’d chosen not to trust him with a fifteen year-old Dhavnak boy, merely because of the rumors of a war? She shook her head violently. She couldn’t change the past, and wouldn’t know where to start if she could. The bottom line was, Andrew was in over his head, and no one else would save him. Not any of these soldiers, not that traitor Holland, and definitely not Cu Zanthus, no matter what Andrew thought.
The access hatch near the conning tower opened, and Cu Zanthus climbed up. Blackwood still wasn’t used to this older, harder-looking version of him, with the dark hair. Not someone she would have called handsome, with his too-large ears and square chin, but it was still easy to see why Andrew had gone for him. It wasn’t just the looks, though; she knew that instinctually. Cu Zanthus had been exactly who he needed. Someone who listened and didn’t judge, and told him what he wanted to hear. A combination of disgust and guilt turned her sto
mach.
One of the soldiers on the conning tower yelled to Cu Zanthus. Something something leuftkernel something something something, ending in a gesture at the hazy sky. Cu Zanthus got his feet on the deck, and leaned down to pull Andrew up behind him. Blackwood started breathing again. Andrew caught sight of her halfway out, but jerked his eyes away quickly. Once fully out of the access hatch, he slunk to the base of the conning tower and huddled against it, eyes fastened on Cu Zanthus. There was a red mark on his cheek she didn’t remember. Blackwood’s jaw clenched, and she slid her eyes back to Cu Zanthus.
He was answering the soldier. No gestures from him, just a commanding tone with an edge of anger. The soldier saluted with that strange combination that crossed both face and chest, using only one fist, then went back to scanning the sky. The soldier beside him got back on the radio and made a vague rounding-up gesture toward the other soldiers on the deck – some ten of them just on the bow, with who knew how many on the other side of the conning tower. They wouldn’t all fit in an autorotor. Some of these had been on the boat already and would leave on inflatables, so the officers at the base wouldn’t suspect anything. The submarine was probably already running on auto-pilot, as they all prepared to disembark. Blackwood hadn’t seen anything to indicate there were Belzenes on board. At this point, she would just have to assume there weren’t.
But where was Holland? Were both he and the leuftkernel missing?
Blackwood watched Cu Zanthus, striding across the deck and barking commands to the soldiers at the rails. Now that she was looking for it, she saw his agitation. He slid into the role of commander easily, despite looking younger than almost anyone there, but his body was too stiff, his words too forced, his face too tight. He hadn’t been expecting to do this alone. The leuftkernel was gone, and it hadn’t been either him or Andrew who had done it. That left only one possibility: Holland had shrouded the leuftkernel away. Double agent then? Or had he just received contradictary orders?