Ashes of the Sun

by Django Wexler

  Steel met deiat, and the metal melted away in the fury of the power of creation. But Gyre was already dropping the weapon, fading to the side, his small blade coming up to bury itself in the centarch’s belly.

  Blue energy flickered around him, and the weapon stopped, an inch from her shirt, as though it had struck solid steel. For a stunned moment, Gyre was still. The centarch whirled to face him, long red hair swinging behind her, and to his watering eye something in her face looked almost familiar.

  Then, as the haken came around—

  Maya?

  Maya

  The warehouse was everything she’d imagined and more. Enough unsanctioned arcana to hang Raskos, she was certain. For a moment, staring at all of it, she wasn’t sure what to do next.

  Movement along one of the aisles answered that question. Two dark-clad figures, hurriedly stowing something away. Her fight with Guria must have warned Raskos’ people to try to hide whatever they could. Maya found herself grinning as she strode forward. Too late.

  Power flowed through her, pulsing with every beat of her heart. The Thing seemed to pulse in time, blood warm. She’d never done anything like this before. Jaedia had taught her to stay in control, to be precise. Now deiat seemed to be boiling under her skin, straining to be released. One of Raskos’ spies confronted her, and she blew his alchemical tricks away with a wave of flame. When his companion opened fire with a blaster, Maya cut loose with a blast of fire that brought down a wide section of catwalk.

  She wanted to laugh as the man in black scurried away from her. She stalked after him, half expecting the ground around her to blaze with the power of her passing. Maya had always known that deiat was the raw fire of the sun, the power of creation, but she’d never understood it as powerfully as she did now. She felt like the sun itself given human form, smashing aside any human obstacle with a flick of her finger. She felt like a god.

  Raskos’ agent hesitated, then came at her again. Maya incinerated his alchemical bomb and parried his first strike, his steel vaporizing in the heat of deiat. He slashed at her gut with a dagger, but her panoply caught the blow, and she barely felt the wave of cold from the impact. His hood fell back, revealing a youth not much older than her, with brown skin and dark hair. Most of his face was obscured behind a silver mask, intricately carved in abstract patterns, blocking one eye completely.

  Halfmask! It had to be. But Halfmask worked with Yora. So what in plaguefire is he doing in Raskos’ sanctum?

  The power running through her seemed to quench all doubts. Time enough for questions when he was at her mercy. Maya brought her haken around, slamming the butt end into the side of his head. The blow knocked him sprawling to the ground, and the silver mask came free, skittering across the tiles. The man rolled onto his back, edging away, as she once again brought her flaming blade level with his nose.

  Under the mask, his face was dominated by an ugly scar, a vertical slash running from his cheek up past his eyebrow, bisecting his ruined left eye. Maya stared, perversely fascinated. The wound seemed…

  Something moved, in the deepest of her memories, like a monstrous shark stirring in a placid pond. Blood. So much blood, and so many screams—her own throat, torn raw with shrieking—and—

  Recognition was so visceral that Maya nearly dropped her haken. The brilliant blade vanished, and she blinked in the sudden darkness. When she tried to speak, her lips seemed to be fused together.

  “It… you can’t…”

  “Maya.” He pushed himself up on his elbows. Blood trickled down from his hairline. “It’s Maya, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Gyre?” She whispered the name. “You’re… here?”

  For a moment, they were silent. Somewhere in the warehouse, flames crackled.

  “I wondered if I’d see you again,” Gyre said. He sounded weary. “I didn’t imagine this, though.”

  “You’re—” Maya shook her head. “You are Halfmask? The one the dux is so desperate to get his hands on?”

  “And you’re his loyal little attack dog,” Gyre said.

  Maya felt like she’d just startled awake from a doze. All the certainty of moments before drained away. Her free hand went to the Thing and then flinched back, finding the tiny arcana almost too hot to touch.

  “I’m not—” she started, then shook her head again. “What are you doing here?”

  “Here in Deepfire? Or here in Raskos’ treasure horde?”

  “Either!” Maya said. “Why aren’t you back at the farm with Mom and Dad?”

  “At the farm?” Gyre choked out a laugh. “You have no idea, do you? Never thought to check up on us?”

  “Agathia aren’t allowed contact with their families,” Maya said. “I thought after I got my cognomen, I might…”

  Staring at Gyre, at his scar, she felt her memory shifting again.

  “Of course,” Gyre said. “Can’t let our brave defenders of the Order be contaminated with feelings.” He coughed, and spat blood on the tiles. “Mom and Dad are dead.”

  “What…”

  “Mom died less than a year after they took you,” Gyre said. He spoke quickly, as though the words were bubbling up from somewhere dark inside him. “It broke her, what happened. Dad would barely talk to me after that. I left when I was twelve. The next time I came back, he was gone, too. Some illness, the neighbors said.”

  “I’m… sorry.” In truth Maya didn’t know how to feel. Her parents were barely memories, vague blurs of love and affection at the dawn of time. “No one told me.”

  “How could they?” Gyre said. “After the Order kidnapped you, they didn’t exactly leave us an address.”

  “The Order didn’t kidnap me.”

  “You didn’t want to go.”

  “I was five.” Maya’s hand went to the Thing again and found it marginally cooler. “They saved my life.”

  His good eye narrowed. “You don’t remember what happened that day, do you?”

  “I…” Maya swallowed, looking down at him. “I remember that you tried to stop them from taking me.”

  “And do you remember Va’aht Thousandcuts carving out my eye, for the crime of spilling precious Order blood?” His lip twisted in an ugly smile at her hesitation. “I thought not.”

  “Gyre…” Maya took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to say.”

  He climbed, slowly, to his feet. “You don’t need to say anything.”

  The venom in his tone was enough to stoke her anger again. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you became a rebel in order to come and save me?”

  “No,” Gyre said. “I imagined that. I always knew that by the time I got the chance, the Order would have made you into one of them.”

  “You’ve been fighting the Republic—killing innocent people, smuggling dhak—”

  “I haven’t killed anyone innocent,” Gyre said. “Unless you count Auxies, which I don’t. And I’ve smuggled quickheal, and bone-break potion, and—did you know Dad had a shed full of weevil killers on the farm? That’s your dhak. I’m sure the weevils will be grateful for your efforts.”

  “It’s not about the fucking weevils.” She could see the cavern under Litnin, the children in cages waiting to be torn apart by plaguespawn. “The Order keeps people safe.”

  “The Order props up thugs like Raskos in the name of keeping all the power to itself,” Gyre said. “But I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “I—”

  Maya hesitated. There was so much she wanted to explain, but Gyre’s anger was a palpable force, hanging in the air between them like a dark curtain. Before she could think of a way around it, there were shouts from outside, new voices. Maya thought she recognized Tanax’s.

  “Are you going to kill me?” Gyre said.

  “Of course not,” Maya said. “You’re my brother. You—”

  “Then I’m leaving,” Gyre interrupted, “before Raskos does it for you.”

  He bent to retrieve his pack. Maya stepped forward and put her
foot on it, raising her haken again.

  “You know I can’t let you just… steal this,” Maya said. “Please, Gyre. You don’t have to go. I can protect you.”

  “I very much doubt that.” Gyre stared at the pack for a long time, as though trying to figure something out. Then he sighed and turned away. “I assume you don’t have any objections if I take my friend, at least?”

  The voices outside were getting louder. Maya bent and picked up the pack herself, then shook her head.

  “If you have to go, then go.”

  “I doubt I’ll see you again,” he said.

  “Gyre—”

  He let out a breath. “Goodbye, Maya.”

  She watched, mutely, as he rounded a corner toward where the catwalk had fallen. For a moment she considered going after him, igniting her haken and forcing him to his knees. If only he would stay and listen. She was certain she could explain, cut through whatever poison the years had built up inside him.

  Instead, she turned away, letting deiat fade from her body. She felt suddenly, unutterably tired.

  At the entrance to the warehouse, Tanax was just coming through the broken doors, with Beq and Varo close behind him. Beq caught Maya’s eye, frantically, and made a gesture Maya didn’t understand. Maya frowned and stopped, dropping the torn pack.

  “Agathios Tanax,” she said. “I need to report the discovery of a considerable quantity of dhak and unsanctioned arcana, which I believe belongs to—”

  “Agathios Maya,” he grated, and raised his haken. His blade, a shimmering line of folded space, twisted and shivered in front of her eyes. Maya went silent.

  “I am seizing you in the name of the Twilight Order,” Tanax said, his voice cold. “You will have the opportunity to present evidence in your defense.” He took a deep breath. “You stand accused of treason.”

  Chapter 15

  It was good that Kit was so light, because Gyre had to make his exit from the warehouse with her limp body slung over his shoulder, and his legs already felt like rubber beneath him.

  For a moment, head still ringing from Maya’s blow, he’d been unable to find her amid the wreckage of the catwalk, and he wondered if she’d already run for it. Eventually, though, he spotted the blue of her hair, lying motionless on a broken table among scattered arcana. Stomach churning, Gyre bent beside her. To his relief, she was still breathing, though a cut on her scalp was bleeding badly. When a few prods didn’t wake her, he hoisted her up and staggered toward the back of the warehouse. Voices were already audible from the front door.

  Fortunately, Maya’s arrival had attracted all the guards on the premises. Gyre went out a back door and found the rear of the building unattended.

  Traffic was light in the manufactory district at this hour, and he had to walk several blocks before reaching a road busy enough to hope for a cab. A few passed him by, either because they were off for the night or because they didn’t like the look of the scarred man with an unconscious girl on his shoulder. Finally, though, a two-wheeler pulled up. The driver, a big woman with an enormous shock of frizzy teal hair, looked down at them with concern.

  “You all right, friends?” she said. “You been robbed? Need a lift to the guard station?”

  “Not robbed,” Gyre muttered, trying to put a little slur into his words. “Jus’ a good night at the tavern. Little punch-up.” He swayed—no great trick—and gave the driver a sloppy grin. “You should see the other guys.”

  She laughed. “Try not to bleed all over the cushions, all right?”

  He gave her an address about a block from Lynnia’s. It was a risk, going there, but he’d hardly be the first injured person to stagger up to the alchemist’s doorstep at all hours. It’ll be all right. I think. I hope. At this point, he didn’t see another option.

  Once they were in the cab, Gyre gave Kit a more thorough examination, wrapping her head in a makeshift bandage torn from his sleeve. A few other cuts bled shallowly, and the two smallest fingers on her left hand were definitely broken, with bruises blooming all along that arm. She must have landed badly. Still, she hadn’t cracked her skull, so he didn’t think she was in immediate danger. Lynnia can take care of her. Of us.

  He leaned back against the threadbare cushion, heart slamming in his chest. His pupils were still wide with nighteye, and the neutralizer was gone with his pack, so every lamp and lantern seemed like a miniature star. Afterimages of that flaming sword danced across his retina, even when he closed his eye.

  Maya. After twelve years.

  Fuck.

  He hadn’t had a plan, when he’d talked to her. The words had just come tumbling out, the product of a thousand imagined conversations, a hypothetical argument turned horribly real.

  The hard part is that it went about as badly as I expected.

  Something at the back of his mind, the part of him that had never grown up, screamed at him that he should have stayed. Talked to her, made her understand. I wouldn’t have gotten the chance. The notorious rebel Halfmask had a prison cell to look forward to, at best, and more likely quick execution. He doubted that Maya, young as she was, had the authority to change that.

  And maybe she wouldn’t have wanted to. Just because she’d let him go, in the heat of the moment, didn’t mean she would take his side in front of the dux and her fellow centarchs.

  She’s a centarch. The look in her eyes had been all he needed. The superior glare that said he was beneath contempt, even before she’d recognized him. I always knew I would never get her back.

  Kit moaned weakly, but her eyes stayed closed.

  The cab driver let them out, and Gyre shoved a few thalers into her hands, waving aside her offers to help. Gathering Kit in his arms again, he trudged around the corner and made his way to Lynnia’s front door. On the doorstep, he realized he didn’t have his key—he hardly ever came in this way, and it had been at the bottom of his pack—but the lights were still on, and Lynnia opened the door to his knock.

  “Get inside!” she snapped at the sight of the two of them. “Fool boy. What if someone followed you?”

  “Don’t think they did,” Gyre said. “Auxies are busy.”

  “I thought you were caught for sure, or dead.” Lynnia slammed the door and started pulling the curtains, her bad leg dragging behind her. “What happened?”

  “What happened?” Gyre blinked. His head was still pounding, and his scar throbbed. “What do you mean?”

  “At the tunnel, you plaguing moron!”

  Gyre frowned. “Nothing happened at the tunnel. Kit and I got… we missed the rendezvous. I thought Yora would call everything off.”

  “You…” Lynnia stopped, facing the last window, and didn’t look around. “Oh, Chosen defend. You don’t know, do you?”

  Gyre’s throat went tight. “Know what?”

  “The tunnel was an ambush. Yora’s dead, Gyre.” When she turned to face him, her face was tight with fury. “A lot of the others, too. The rest are in the dux’s cells. Sarah’s with them, I hear, but they don’t expect her to survive.”

  “Yora’s…” Gyre swayed. “She…”

  “Where were you?” Lynnia stalked closer. “You didn’t even know? Gyre, what have you done?”

  Gyre staggered back against the door, the room spinning around him. Lynnia was saying something, but he couldn’t parse it. She hurried forward, taking Kit out of his arms, but made no effort to assist Gyre as his legs gave way and he slipped to the floor.

  When he woke, he was in his own bed, and Lynnia was working at his table by the light of a lamp. The nighteye had worn off at last, but his good eye still ached from the abuse, and his scar pulsed with a deep, throbbing pain. He tried to sit up, which set his head spinning again, and he settled back on the pillow with a groan.

  “I’d stay put a little while longer,” Lynnia said without looking up. “You’ve got some quickheal in you, but that’s quite a bump on your skull.”

  “I gathered.” Gyre found a mug of water on the bedside table
, lifted it carefully, and drank. “Is Kit all right?”

  “She will be. She was in worse shape. Splinted the fingers and gave her some bone-break potion. It looks like she fell off a plagued roof.”

  “That’s more or less what happened,” Gyre said. He paused. “Yora’s really…”

  His voice trailed off into silence, which stretched on for what felt like an eternity as Lynnia’s pen scratched over a ledger book. Eventually the old alchemist sighed and turned her chair around.

  “That’s the word on the street, and I don’t see any reason to doubt it,” she said. “Nobody who went to the tunnel with her came back, and some of them are definitely in the dungeons. Raskos proclaimed a great victory over the criminals and smugglers.” Her eyes narrowed, gaze pinning him to the bed. “I also hear that Raskos’ private treasure horde nearly burned down. Some kind of fight there.”

  Gyre swallowed. “What do you want me to say?”

  “You don’t need to say anything.” Lynnia got to her feet, stretching her bad leg with a wince. “Yora was… Did you know I helped her father, in his stupid little war?”

  “She told me that once,” Gyre said.

  “After he died, those of us who were left felt… responsible for her. I helped her as much as I could.”

  “I thought you believed in her cause.”

  “It gets harder to believe in causes when you get old,” Lynnia said. “It’s all I can do to believe in people. I believed in you, Gyre, when you washed up on my doorstep. I introduced you to Yora because I thought you could help each other.” Lynnia sucked in a deep breath. “And you left her to die.”

  “I didn’t—” Gyre struggled until he was sitting up, head pounding. “She wasn’t supposed to—”

  “Save it. Yora always knew you weren’t in it to help anyone but yourself and find your plaguing Tomb, but I didn’t think you’d just cut and run when the time came.”

  “What makes you think I’d have been able to help Yora if I’d been there?” Gyre shot back, pressing one hand against his ruined eye. Pain spiked in his head. “Maybe I’d just be dead with the rest of them.”