by C. A. Lang
“You don’t like killing, I can tell. You thought it was going to be easy, like what you think Sevari did. But it’s not, is it?”
He said nothing. The war machine turned again, and its cannons launched a volley at one of the giants. All the while, buildings crumbled in the distance, and strange screams erupted from gangs of shadows in the streets.
“Till was boring. I thought he’d like what I did. The other Valoii only cares about himself.” Rovan met her eyes. “Don’t you see how big this is? Nobody is paying attention. They’re all just fighting and worrying about themselves.”
“I see what’s going on. I just want to help you. It’s impressive, sure, but at what cost?”
“You see? You see what I’m doing? It’s big. I’ve done all this.”
She nodded.
The war machine fired again into its opponent, then made its stiff steps towards them. Capra tried not to see it as a living thing, but on the head of the machine, the panels were strangely arranged in a symbolic approximation of a face. Two rectangles for eyes, and a large grate at its mouth that let out puffs of steam every so often.
She gulped. The machine stopped an arm’s length from where they stood.
“Those two don’t care. Till is so boring now, but I kind of like you.” He pointed to the machine. “Get on it.”
“What?”
“You’re coming with me.”
“No.”
He grabbed her arm. Her struggling amounted to nothing. The damned shadows—had they given him physical strength, too?
“You want to find my sister, so we’re going to.”
“Yeah, see what I had in mind was that we’d stop the fighting. You know, so she wouldn’t be in danger.”
He shoved her towards the edge. Only now did the tower’s height hit her, in all its dizzying glory. The vantage point reduced the fight below to groups of tiny insects clashing.
“Close, but my idea is better. We’ll find her, and then she’ll be safe with us. It’ll be great, I think you’ll love it here when I’m finished with it. Both of you.”
Blightcross was bad enough before all this. She didn’t want to think of what it would be like after Rovan’s reformation.
He prodded her. She elbowed him in the stomach. “No way.”
Rovan’s eyes turned black, and he grasped her by the throat. Another voice took over his own. “You will accompany us or die.”
She gulped. “Oh yeah?”
Rovan nodded slowly, teeth bared. Capra boiled inside. She wanted to twist off his head and piss down his neck, and all because she knew that right now, she would lose if she resisted.
Even so, she threw a false punch at him, stopping her fist just a finger shy of his face. They exchanged glares for a few seconds before she jumped onto the ladder attached to the side of the machine. Through her hands came the purring of its engines, and she wondered if it wouldn’t numb her hands and cause her to fall.
There was a clunk beneath her. Rovan was there, pointing towards the top. She started to climb.
“Hurry up! If you’re not into this, I’ll just throw you off.”
She obeyed, heart racing both from the unsteadiness and from her anger at being subject to a teenager’s demands. “Oh, I’m into it all right.”
If it weren’t a given that the shadows would rescue him in mid-air, she would have kicked him off the stupid machine.
Then again, the machine was the advantage in the battle, the mitigating factor. Rovan had handed it to her. All she needed to do was shut off its engines, and the giants might have a chance at destroying the shadows.
Sevari raised a fist at the retreating machine. His patience was being rewarded—all those hours spent ignoring Rovan’s crude remarks and juvenile arrogance, holding back his urge to properly dispense discipline. He had known all along that no amount of help from the shadows could fix the endemic problem of Rovan’s flyaway attention span.
“Alim, perhaps you will listen to reason now.”
“Rovan will return, and I will be given my ultimate orders.”
“Ultimate orders, you say? I can’t imagine what that even means.” He started towards the staircase. “Come on, old friend. I have some orders for you.”
“It is not the order I want.”
He skipped stairs on the way down, and Alim’s heavy steps echoed behind. “Now that the elevators seem to be engaged again, I can reach a signalling station.”
If these shadows thought they had caught the Blightcross Administrative District unawares, they would be delightfully surprised. “Alim, my good man, I know the shadows present the subject with an object of desire. The object of desire. The one that nobody will ever achieve. But I think I can offer you an approximation of what they offered to you.”
The guards ignored them, and Sevari led Alim back to his office. From there, he called his personal elevator. Once its clunk sounded in the walls, he grinned and mentally thanked History for not abandoning him.
“Where are we going?” Alim asked.
“To my bunker.” He fished in his tunic for a small decorative dagger. Once he found it, he pulled the handle apart to reveal a key. He then lifted a nondescript brass plate, set away from the main group of studs, and inserted the key into a secret slot.
“I will not allow you to interfere, Sevari.”
“Even if it means taking command of the most elite fighting force ever to grace this world?”
Alim paused. Yes, conflict with the shadows... contradiction would at least stifle Alim’s will to act. Even if he never agreed to switch sides, Alim would take time to recover from the fact of Sevari, a mere human, offering the same object of desire as the mystical shadows.
“Listen to me, Alim. This fight is an illusion. Remember the legends? They will both fall in the end.”
“There is no Akhli to facilitate this. Without him, there will be a winner, and it will be the shadow men.”
“I am Akhli.”
Alim’s eyes went wide. “Blasphemy!”
Perhaps it was, but one could only fight the transcendent with the transcendent.
“If you are so sure of yourself, why am I still alive, Valoii?”
“The boy still looks up to you. We have strict orders not to harm his friends.”
“And Capra is now his friend, is she?”
Alim winced. Another contradiction.
“So, then, your master has taken up friendship with the woman who took everything you loved?”
There was a bang and a jolt. Sevari clapped, and cranked open the elevator.
He loved his office, his little throne room, but deep down he preferred the stark, grey stone and metal of his bunker. It was his cavern, his haven, and it made him smile that finally, he was using it as intended, rather than walking its silent halls alone, imagining what he might do in a crisis.
“Part of this was already here, you see. I just added to it and made it my own. I suspect the shadows missed it because there are traces of metal from the Hex in its outer framework.” He waved Alim into the bunker’s control room. “You are the first besides myself to see this place. Aside from the crews who built it for me, and, well... the secret died with them.”
He took position at a control panel.
Alim appeared even more confused. “Now what are you doing?”
“Preparing to retake the city. You will have complete command of my special unit, and an assured place as an historically necessary implement. I am signalling the sentry in the bunker underneath the armoury. I want him to prepare for your arrival.”
“My arrival? I did not agree to anything.”
He entered the proper sequence, and stood. “These are not an army of shadow-corrupted oil workers. You will lead them, you will conquer this city for me, and you will cast out whatever influence remains of those damned things, do you hear me?”
Alim grinned—an incongruence that seemed to tear the very fabric of the situation. “I hear you.”
Sevari eyed him w
arily. “Down the hall—the alcove with the red markings around it. There will be a small underground train that will take you to the armoury bunker. There you will meet with my sentinel and take command of my elite unit, of the city’s saviour.”
There was a pause. Sevari watched Alim’s face for signs of scepticism. The moment dragged...
Alim nodded. “Perfect.”
Sevari’s gut twitched. “This is no ordinary unit. They require special equipment, and tactics. Although, I think your people have used quite similar tactics against the Ehzeri. Go now, Alim. Just into the hall, and you’ll find the rail car ready, complete with an honour guard to escort you.”
And Alim went without question. With any luck, the lack of shadows in the bunker would weaken him enough.
Sevari eased back into his chair, punched in a few more quick messages to the sentinel manning the signal station below the armoury. He barely flinched when the two hand-cannon shots crashed in the hall outside. Alim’s scream relieved him a little—taking out such a wildcard in his operation made it safer, and throwing Alim defenceless into a pack of ravenous lunatics would surely cover Sevari in case officials across the ocean began to wonder why their operative was dead. They couldn't possibly question the cause of death after seeing what the shadows had done to the body.
Anyhow, at least that was one minor issue to strike from his list. There were more important things at hand.
Situation critical. Special Regiment required; all citizens must be neutralized to prevent further corruption. Begin the waking cycle immediately.
By now, Dannac had glimpsed enough of the battle from above to know that his three or four kills every few minutes were slowing them down more than anything.
“This isn’t working. We need to retreat and regroup.”
Vasi’s hand still grasped his wrist, sending a strange tingling through his arm. They flattened themselves against a crumbled wall to catch their breath.
“Look—the armoury,” Vasi said. “At the gates... I think there are a few of Sevari’s troops there who haven’t been taken by the shadow men.”
“They have been distracted by the giants...”
“And we’d better regroup around the armoury. The soldiers will provide cover for us.”
They both bellowed the new plan as loudly as they could, then bolted along the main road. Along the way there were groups of people giggling and pointing at smouldering buildings and bodies. Others had not given up the initial phase of wild copulation as most had.
“Have you seen any images of Rovan?”
He hesitated. He had seen much of Capra’s predicament, and about the only thing he could be sure of was that Rovan was not exactly the innocent little brother Vasi had described. “I have. He is alive.”
Lying by omission? Maybe, but Vasi was his sight, and he could not afford to have her distracted by knowing that her brother and Capra were standing atop the machine.
“Is Capra on her way back to us, then?”
He glanced at the blob of movement that, coupled with the commotion he heard, must have been the war-engine stomping towards them. “You could say that.”
“I wish I would not have listened to you. I can feel her connection to me. She has power that she could be using...”
“She does not.”
If by power, Vasi meant luck, then sure.
Now the gates of the armoury were ahead, and the tall metal scaffolding, now empty, was bent and twisted.
“I can see them—sentries around the wall. They are firing at... everyone.”
“Good.”
He could make out the general form of the armoury wall, and he saw a vague flutter of motion. “What—”
“The gates are opening. They are giving us sanctuary.”
The crowd that had followed him rushed past. “I do not feel good about it.”
“Why? They clearly aim to give us shelter in the armoury. It must not be fully taken over by either force...”
They kept running to the gate.
“Everybody back!”
This time a few skidded to a halt and ducked behind rubble. Vasi struggled against him as he forced her behind a chunk of broken masonry.
“Let me go. Why are you doing this? Why are you hiding?”
“Because something is amiss. I will never trust anything that comes out of that armoury. I have too much experience with so-called law to know that it does not suddenly change its character and welcome those in need.”
More intermittent images flashed through his mind, beamed from Capra’s viewpoint. The eye faced a row of factories, leaving his and Vasi’s position at the left margin of the picture. If she would only shift her body a few inches...
It was enough that he could make out a square of men moving towards the open gate.
“Soldiers...”
“Uncorrupted soldiers?”
“I believe so.”
“How?”
Sevari must have had them hidden in reserve. Of course he had—what else could all the gloating he had heard refer to? The people here no longer needed Tamarck’s protection. Sevari was no liar—Blightcross was a force of its own now.
Vasi beamed with excitement. “I see them—they are marching through the gate.”
“How are they armed?”
A pause. “I... I am not sure.”
“Lances? Hand-cannons?”
“No.”
The view from his jewel offered no details, and he tried to make out the men with his own damaged eyes. All he saw was a single mass of grey moving against a slightly different shade of grey.
Finally, she said, “Black suits of armour. They have... masks. There are tubes in the masks, and they hold strange wands.”
“Cannons?”
“No—thinner. On their backs they carry egg-shaped packs.”
Screams erupted from near the gate. He gave Vasi a hard nudge.
“I don’t know what is going on. There are... it’s a mist. A deadly mist.”
“Poison? A gas?”
“I... I think so.”
Why would Sevari order such an attack? He posed the question out loud, but Vasi said nothing. His cannon was useless. The cloud of gas would just envelop them, and there was no fighting a white version of the shadow men.
“Now, we run.”
“What?”
“You heard me. We run and hope that Capra can come up with a way to fix this.”
“We can’t just run. You of all people—”
“Sevari aims to eradicate any living thing in the city in order to take away the shadow men’s ability to fight.”
She gasped. “It’s insane.”
“Yes. But he’s right—if everyone dies before the fight is over. The shadows will have a hard time gaining control without footsoldiers to do their bidding.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
At every chance, Capra stole glances at the war machine’s many panels. She stood with Rovan on the machine’s shoulders, and tried to shuffle towards the head. Each time she sidled over, Rovan would change position and give her a stern look.
Smoke columns reached into the permanent haze-canopy, and the sun glowed a deeper shade of red. Unlike the orderly jets of smoke from the refinery, these plumes slashed the sky at random, and blew into ragged clouds.
Back near the refinery, which now she figured was the shadow men’s stronghold, a strange greyness seemed to sap the colour and life from the area.
“Rovan, what are these things really doing to the city?”
“Making it better. And it’s not the shadows, but my followers. Me and my people are using the shadows to make the city better, not the other way around.”
She let out a frustrated sigh. The way the process of corruption kept changing depending on who she asked reminded her of a popular painting by a famous artist from Prasdim; an illusion that depicted two hands painting each other.
It didn’t matter. She had to stop this damned machine. But with Rovan watching, how could she?
Damn it all, how could she become the hostage of a teenaged boy?
Capra shuffled over some more, and now her back was against one of the panels. She placed her hands behind her back, and tried to jam it open with the knife. It wasn’t as though she needed to be delicate. She just needed to foul the stupid thing.
“Vasi,” Rovan said. “Where are you?” A moment later, he nodded. His lips moved, but Capra couldn’t make out the words.
The machine wheeled and stomped towards the armoury. She worked faster, and after much jiggling, the plate bent open enough for her to reach into the cavity. All the while, she fixed her gaze on Rovan and made small talk.
Rovan still grinned at his handiwork, his chaos. “We’ll pick her up and then maybe you two will lighten up and admit how great this is. You’ll love the new city, really.”
“Really?”
Instead of answering, he squinted and gazed at a ruined section near the armoury. “No,” he said. “What’s going on? They’re killing us. They’re killing them all, the bastards!”
She groped around in the cavity, fingers sliding over round bits of metal and jagged things and braided metal cables. She grabbed anything that might fit between her fingers and pulled, but found nothing delicate enough to snap or dislodge.
She also had to make sure to keep Rovan talking. “Killing what?”
There—something that gave way. A stud. She jammed her finger into it repeatedly. Enough that her fingertip cried out in pain.
“Soldiers. Just like the Valoii.” Rovan pressed his hands to his head.
But she barely heard him, since most of her concentration was in her hand, pressing and pulling and scratching.
“They’re going to kill her.” Rovan flailed his arms towards the armoury.
Like a brood of beetles, a force of hundreds, all in black armour, filled the area within the armoury’s walls and flooded out the gate. They spilled through the streets, and engulfed anyone in their way.
With gas, no less. Gas that was not the crude glass canisters she had tossed into countless Ehzeri camps. Gas that did more than cause minor burns and temporary choking.
There was an explosion, and Capra was dazed for a moment before realizing that it was the machine’s cannons firing at the soldiers.