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Blightcross: A Novel

Page 11

by C. A. Lang


  The last time she had seen a pair of brown eyes cut a slash of hatred was the night the army ordered her to murder. The night she had decided that it would be the last time.

  Something wasn’t right.

  “Dannac...”

  “It is clear. Shut up.”

  “No, Dannac, stop.” Vasi was now at their rear. Capra suddenly felt as though her back were naked, that at any moment Vasi could unleash an attack.

  And it would only take one such attack.

  The back of her neck prickled. What could she do? If she were quick enough, she might slit Vasi’s throat...

  There had to be an explanation for it. Vasi just wished there were more time to find one. She was too accustomed to working things out at her leisure, thanks to Sevari’s lenity towards his research staff.

  Alim should be waiting a few steps ahead, and ready to take Capra down with his squad of loaned killers. His gnashing teeth and angry eyes when he had spoken about this operation were far from the Valoii soldiers’ legendary stoicism. What was really the reason behind this? One thing was for sure, Capra was not like the other soldiers back home—even her own people wanted her dead.

  The eyes... Capra’s eyes said it all, or did they?

  The archon twisted in her mind. Forget it. Kill her. Kill them all.

  She bit into her lip until she tasted blood, as if swallowing her own would satiate the archon. Capra wasn’t what she appeared to be. Killing her might not be the right thing to do. Not yet, anyway. And she would never do it if it meant she had to bring that corrupted archon back into existence.

  Nothing else Vasi knew of could turn the dark eyes of a Valoii into a pure blue. And the storm...

  Dannac was right, without even knowing half of what he had said. Couple Capra’s eyes, the fact of the thunderstorm, and that she carried an Ehzeri family’s emblem around her neck...

  But how? How could an Ehzeri grow up to join the Valoii and kill her own people?

  She had to find out, and there was no way Vasi would trust Alim to keep Capra alive long enough to discover why she was showing symptoms of the cloud sickness, why she was in fact suffering from the work-lust, the vihslag, the thundery eyes, unnatural blue...

  Pent-up vihs with nowhere to go, aggravated by thunderstorms. A banal rite of passage among Ehzeri teenagers.

  They were fast approaching the trap. She had to decide in the next ten seconds.

  The dread only deepened—now at her back she felt a kind of tingle, a sense of... doom?

  But this was more than that. She unsheathed her knife, popped the blade. There was a strange light dancing on the walls now, and it came from behind them.

  She went to Dannac’s side, her mouth dry like the cracked earth. “She’s preparing an attack. I have no shielding. I never expected to face another Ehzeri again, damn it.”

  Dannac calmly drew his hand-cannon, this being his only reaction.

  “By the look of it, she has already finished her meditations and is just waiting to strike.”

  Dannac whispered, “Perhaps this will be the instance that finally depletes her family forever and the working will fail.” There was an odd sincerity in his voice, as if he knew this from personal experience. “If you get the chance, rip from her neck the amulet she wears. It will look similar to yours.”

  “What amulet? I saw none.”

  “Anyone who still has power uses the family amulets to channel the common reserves. She no doubt has one under her clothes.”

  The implications of this had barely come apparent to her when behind them Vasi called out, “Duck!”

  Both instinctively dove to the floor, and Capra skidded across smooth concrete. There was a crack and a blue flash, and the sound of men crying out in pain and surprise. She lay there, hands covering the back of her head, breaths rapid and rattling.

  When she stood, knife at the ready, Vasi was ahead of them and gesturing frantically.

  “What’s going on?” Capra twitched with a strange anticipation.

  Dannac joined her. “She released an attack. Obviously her family is well powered.”

  “But what is this about?”

  Vasi waved down the hall. “There is no time. Follow me— the men will only be out for twenty minutes.”

  Men? What men? The men who had screamed, but who were they?

  Unless...

  “You knew... Vasi, you bitch!”

  Lying on either side of the next intersection were soldiers in blue leather. Except Alim, of course, whose uniform brought unpleasant memories and a cold chill racing through her flesh. She stopped for a moment, kneeled at his side, and peered into his open, unresponsive eyes.

  “What did I do to you, Ali?” She bathed his face in torchlight, and now that he was unconscious, saw the man she had known, rather than the bitter, mindless tool of Great Mizkov. “What did they do to you?”

  Dannac’s voice boomed and echoed in the corridor. “Either slit his throat or run.”

  The thought to kill Alim had never occurred to her.

  It was ridiculous. Murder was one thing she could and would run away from.

  She bent down and kissed him on the forehead, then sprinted to catch up with the others.

  They emerged from a hidden entrance in the alley next to the palace, which had been covered with wood scraps and old sheets of canvas. They had run the entire way through the catacombs, fast and hard enough that none could squeeze any words in between panting breaths. Capra had tried to make sense of it all—a traitor who led them away from the trap, and her own unwillingness to kill Alim.

  They leaned on their thighs and caught their breath. Capra’s own breathing reminded her of the mechanical cacophony around them—rattling, laboured.

  “Did you do it?” Dannac finally asked.

  “Of course not. He’s my friend.”

  Dannac chuckled.

  “He is. I think the army did something to him. Alim would never turn into such an obsessive, hateful person.”

  “There is no hope for your generation.” He stretched and gazed at Vasi. “You have some explaining to do.”

  Vasi shook her head. “Alim has reinforcements stationed all around the palace. I suggest we split up.”

  “Why should I trust you?” Capra asked.

  “Because I just saved your life. That man wants nothing more than to see you suffer. He is ready to die for it.”

  The words stabbed Capra like a Valoii phalanx. “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying that you need to hide for the moment. Give up your search for this painting. You will never find it.”

  Dannac stepped between them, shoving his hand-cannon back into his coat. “We can sort that out later. I would not doubt that she speaks the truth about Alim’s reinforcements. We should just agree to meet at Orvis Dunes in... say four days. At noon.” He smiled, and Capra caught the subtle jab at her leisurely pace during most mornings.

  “We aren’t giving up. Not after that...”

  When she peered around Dannac to address Vasi, she was gone.

  “Great.”

  Dannac grabbed her shoulder. “Pick a direction and run.”

  So she did.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Alim brought himself upright in the infirmary bed, and realized that the humiliation hurt more than the surprise attack’s waning hurt. “Sir.”

  Sevari entered with a disappointed look, but turned the expression into a hollow smile. “The surgeons say you will be fine. Now, what happened?”

  It was a question he had asked himself a hundred times. There had been the sound of footsteps in the corridor, then...

  “We almost had them. And suddenly the attack came, through the walls. It was vihs, without a doubt.”

  “Vasi told me the same thing. I guess Capra’s friend is more than just a sour face connected to a jumble of overdeveloped muscle, eh?”

  “You think it was him? I suppose it’s possible.”

  “Well, who else? Capra? She has no s
uch power.”

  Alim rubbed is forehead. “No, she does not. But there could have been another culprit.”

  “I hope you do not mean to incriminate my loyal Vasi. She would never turn on me.”

  Alim swung his legs off the bed, wiggled his toes. “I was going to say that perhaps they hired another.”

  “Witnesses said nothing of a fourth intruder.”

  “Then it must have been Capra’s friend.” He stood and put on his beret. “Any sign of where they went?”

  “None.”

  “Are my men in good health?”

  Sevari nodded.

  “Then I have to get back into the streets. But this time, I’m doing it my way. No uniforms.”

  “As you wish. I will send a note to the Publications Commission. This is a great opportunity for us to legitimize ourselves further.”

  Alim paused. What an odd thing to say. “You need to legitimize yourself?”

  “Well, you don’t admit it in public, but the reality is that in this situation, I do.”

  The more Alim worked with Sevari, the less he liked him. What kind of place was this? Blightcross was a part of Naartland, yet Sevari acted as though he owned the whole damned place. It made no sense—all he was doing was divvying up this slice of desert and feeding it to his friends.

  But the people were free.

  He made to leave, and as he came to the door, Sevari stopped him. “I may require some more of your expertise in dealing with my workers.”

  “I am hardly an expert, Leader.”

  “You are too modest. Now, how do they behave when threatened?”

  Alim briefly recalled the military’s mandatory course in Ehzeri relations. “Depends on who exactly is threatened. In general they keep silent. They hate to acknowledge their own tragedies, yet they are obsessed with them at the same time. Families with power will try to avoid confrontation if possible because they are afraid of squandering it. Depleted people will lash out. They have nothing to lose—in the eyes of their god, they have been forsaken and all they can do to redeem themselves is destroy as many heathens as they can before they die. In modern terms, you could call it simple class tension; one group fearing to lose what they have, another group with nothing and capable of desperate violence.”

  Sevari stepped aside. “Interesting. Are they paranoid?”

  “Not exactly. They are pragmatic people, and incredibly anxious as well. But ever since the war, I am told, they have become distrustful. I guess you can’t blame them, considering how every army on the continent exploited them.”

  “Indeed. Well, I hope to avoid a potential disaster, but if they begin to feel threatened, I believe I will be able to anticipate a bad situation.” Sevari stepped aside. “Thank you, Alim. Good luck out there.”

  She tried to act as though nothing had happened, but in the silence of the museum, Vasi was so distracted that staring at Akhli and the Shadows failed to bring about its strange visions.

  Was Capra the murderer?

  Every fibre of her being wanted to say yes, to be able to transpose her people’s collective angst onto this one rogue Valoii and cleanse them by slaughtering her.

  Or was this the archon’s influence? Where did her justified anger end and her family’s horrible working of hatred begin?

  Damn them, did they really think their troubles could be solved so easily? In times like this, she tried to picture the ceremony. The gathering of family members, the ritual, the sky—it must have lit up like the Day of Creation with all the power it would take to create their own archon. Their own weapon.

  No, she was lucky to suffer this kind of amnesia. It was enough that she felt the archon within, that she had not truly cast off its bloodlust. It was enough that she wanted to rip from Capra’s chest her still-beating heart and expose its charred corruption and blackness.

  But, unlike the Blacksmith’s eternal labour to sustain the earthly plane, it would not be a divine sacrifice. It would be petty murder.

  Focus, damn you. There were more important things. Like this painting. She owed Sevari a solution to the painting’s bound energies, and this would always take precedence over capturing the Valoii. Once she completed it, removed the power, mastered it, the notoriety would eclipse the promise of a cash bonus.

  But the damned thing was so complicated. Every time she shut her eyes to envision the tapestry of vihs living inside the frame, it was even more dark and alien. The few times she mustered enough concentration to follow a single thread, it split into another, and that branched again. The red and black twine continued into infinity. She could not manipulate them—they had no beginning and no end.

  It was a void.

  There was the feeling of utter otherness, of something foreign. She wanted both to turn away from it and ask it for its desire.

  What do you want?

  What do you want from me?

  Why do you not answer?

  There was nothing there, but there had to be...

  She opened her eyes, tried to banish her connection to the working. Breaths came shorter and shorter, panting... a shaky hand pressed to her throat.

  If this void existed, where was her God?

  Darkness, dark like the Golroot river, dark like the thick poison pumped into the refinery.

  Maybe some kind of holy illumination could unravel this conundrum, but it would take time. Any longer in this chamber and she worried that her body would disintegrate and her soul would fall to the ground in a cloud of poisoned sand.

  She hurried back to her own lab, where she began to pick up the hose and tunics and petticoats strewn across the floor. Weeks had passed with her tripping over junk and nearly destroying valuable pieces, and cleaning would help ground her after the encounter with the painting.

  Each item she tossed into a gunnysack. When she took one last look inside, there was a Koratian artifact sitting atop her unmentionables, along with two other random objects. She hardly remembered picking up her clothes—the banal act had failed to distract her from her troubles.

  After returning the misplaced things to their shelves, she headed down to the clock tower’s laundry.

  Past the stained glass angels and into the elevator, its brass gleaming like the day it had first been installed. It was probably polished every night by people she had known back home.

  The machine started its descent, and she clutched the brass handholds. As with every foray into the complex bowels, she closed her eyes during the descent.

  When the rumbling ceased, and the telltale bump signalled that the elevator had arrived, Vasi opened her eyes. She swung the laundry bag over her shoulder and grasped the door handle.

  And, as though she had taken a ride into an underworld of unseen horrors, like in the painting, Vasi’s arm became paralysed and her throat tightened and a sense of dread urged her to run.

  Her hand twitched. It felt as though the void had followed her, as if it were watching her and waiting for her to do something... but what?

  Paranoia. Paranoia and that is all. Paranoia started the war, paranoia decimated our people. Calm yourself.

  A relaxed breath, and she opened the door. It slid soundlessly on its bearings, and all she saw ahead was the harsh blue corridors of the basement, lit by bare gas. She sighed and smiled to herself. How stupid—

  As she moved to take her first step, an arm dropped down from the shaft above. She dropped the bag. Jumped back, once more grasping the railing. “Hello?” It could be a maintenance worker, after all.

  “Hello?”

  She took one step forward. Above, there came the sound of a loaded sack scraping against metal.

  At first, it was a blur of darkness—a disruption, like a large bird flitting across a window. Then came the thud, the sound of a side of beef cut from its hanging. A body, twisted in a cruel pose, jammed against the elevator exit. The eyes showed no pupils or iris. There was a perfect hole between them, and from this a line of dried blood ran down his face. The mouth gaped, cheeks ho
llow like a victim of the consumption.

  Only, it was not the consumption. It could not have been; only days ago, this same middle-aged Ehzeri had knocked on her laboratory door, arms loaded with the reams of paper and jars of ink she had requested from the office. They had chatted about a refinery committee tasked with organizing this year’s Festival of the Divine Furnace. She had politely declined, citing her workload. He had nodded understandingly, and they exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes until she had dismissed him and forgotten his name in the time it took him to reach the elevator.

  Another male, dead the same way as the others. Why? This man had crossed no one.

  She dropped the bag and carefully stepped over the body. The sight of a corpse itself did not faze her. Her hard swallowing, sandy mouth, and wobbly knees came from the fact that someone else would die, and then another, and another, and she could not see any reason for it to stop. It was all too familiar. The archon had started the same way— taking a person here and there, not making too much trouble. Would this killer find the same bloodlust?

  What if it were her? The archon...

  Impossible.

  A hundred different theories offered a simpler, more sensible solution. Worker solidarity was gone. This was not an event, but just part of a process. It happened with the militias back home, it happened everywhere: the degeneration into violence. While when she had arrived at the refinery, all the labourers bonded by way of their universal suffering, hope, conditions, and aspirations. She should have known that could never last forever.

  Was it worth it to stay?

  She hurried through the basement, asking if anyone had seen Rovan. Each time a worker claimed to have not seen him, her heart sank. He could be rotting in a waste pipe...

  When she found him, he could argue all he wanted. They were going home.

  Provided, of course, that her brother still lived.

  Capra, having inherited her father’s tendency to categorize things, had long ago assigned different stages to her current career. These categories, or levels of proficiency and experience, elevated what in vulgar terms was called “thief” to a respectable vocation.

  Though she had only been in the business for about two years, her current self-appointed title was “security consultant.”

 

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