Ashes of the Sun

by Django Wexler

  “We have to get out of this!” He had to grab Kit’s arm and pull her closer before she could hear. “Find somewhere to put up the tents!”

  She shook her head. Her eyes were the only part of her visible under layers of cloth.

  “Put them up where?” she said.

  “Somewhere out of the wind.” Gyre looked around desperately for a convenient boulder, but with the darkness and blowing snow, he couldn’t see much farther than the end of his arm.

  “Got a better idea. Just a little farther.”

  “What is?”

  “’S a cave.” Kit had trouble getting her voice out between chattering teeth. “Used it last time. Might even still be some supplies there.”

  “Are you sure you can find it?”

  “Nope!” He couldn’t see her smile, but he could hear it, even through the wind. “Come on!”

  Each step felt like he was passing further into a nightmare, but Gyre plodded along in Kit’s wake. His fingers went from painfully cold to ominously numb, and he wasn’t sure he could move his toes inside his boots. The slush was building up on the floor of the pass, and the rocks became slippery underfoot. Kit stumbled several times, and Gyre caught her, hoping like the plague that his own footing would hold.

  Just when he was starting to think that Kit couldn’t possibly find her own nose in the murk, much less a cave she’d used a year before, she gave a triumphant cry and hurried ahead of him. He followed in her footsteps, boots heavy with wet, clinging snow. She ran up to the rock wall of the pass and, sure enough, there was a gap in it, just wide enough for a person to slide through. Kit shrugged out of her pack, slipped inside, and pulled it after her. Gyre followed suit and found himself in absolute darkness.

  “Hang on.” Kit struggled for a moment, then produced a glowstone, lighting the cave with a faint blue glow. “Here we are. Told you there’d be something!”

  The cave was long and narrow, a crevice stretching a dozen meters into the side of the mountain. At the back of it was a canvas sack, torn apart, and a small pile of twigs and branches.

  “I stayed here a couple of days before I went into the tunnels,” Kit said, teeth still chattering. “Looks like something’s been at my spare clothes, but we can use them as kindling. At least there’s firewood.”

  Fire seemed like an astonishingly good idea. Kit delved into the sack, tearing apart garments that time and animals had reduced to rags, and Gyre arranged some twigs among them. He had to brush off a thick coat of snow to get into his pack and retrieve a firelighter, but the alchemical device threw sparks on the first attempt, and the campfire caught quickly.

  “Clothes off,” Gyre said, as Kit sighed and sagged against the wall.

  She yanked down her scarf and gave him a mischievous grin. “Well, that’s bold of you.”

  “To keep warm,” Gyre said. “If you stay in your wet things—”

  “I know,” Kit said, laughing. She was already undoing the buttons on her outer jacket. “I have been caught in storms before.”

  There followed a few minutes of awkward shuffling, working by the light of the fire and the glowstone. Gyre stripped to his underwear, trying to ignore the glimpses of flame-tinged skin he got from Kit as she did the same. By the time he was finished, she was already sitting, a blanket draped around her shoulders.

  “Come on,” she said, lifting the blanket to pat the space beside her, and incidentally showing him quite a bit of herself in the process. “It’s warmer this way.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. Spreading his damp, snow-crusted gear beside the fire, he slipped under the blanket beside her. She leaned against his shoulder, her skin clammy-cold and damp. Gyre let out a deep breath and tried wiggling his toes, which got him a vicious pins-and-needles feeling. At least they’re still there.

  “Bad luck,” she muttered. “You don’t get many storms this time of year.”

  “You’d know better than I would,” Gyre said. “It hardly ever rains in Deepfire. Something about the draft from the Pit.”

  “That’s convenient.” She shuffled sideways, pressing herself closer against him. “Not a lot of mountains where you grew up?”

  Gyre snorted. “We had a hill twenty meters high that we thought was the tallest spot in the world. I used to climb the tree on top of it and pretend I could see all the way to Skyreach.” Maya hadn’t been able to make the climb, he remembered, and he’d been teasing her with the imaginary wonders he could make out from up there. “Really it was just farms and more farms.”

  “And that was going to be your life?” Kit said. “Mucking out vulpi?”

  “And feeding vulpi, and helping birth vulpi, and milking vulpi, and butchering vulpi—” Gyre shrugged. “Pretty much. It was what my father did.” He blinked as a bead of sweat rolled past his eye, and extricated one hand to scratch at his scar. “Until the Order came for Maya, it was all I wanted.”

  Kit was silent for a moment. Her breathing was soft against his shoulder, and he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

  “What if this works?” she said quietly. “What if Naumoriel gives you what you want? Are you going to try to save your sister?”

  Gyre closed his eye.

  “It’s not like that,” he said. “Maya is… She doesn’t do things by half measures. You should have seen her as a little girl. If she believes in the Order, she’ll fight me to her last breath, brother or not.”

  “Then what’s the point?”

  “It’s bigger than her and me. It’s about… humanity, I guess. All of us.” Gyre sighed. “Maybe it’s silly to think about it that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t spent much time in the Republic, have you?”

  Kit shook her head.

  “The Twilight Order defends the Dawn Republic. That’s how it’s always been. But they defend us like a suit of iron armor. It might stop a knife, but it weighs you down until you can barely move.” He shifted uneasily, and Kit twined her arm through his. The slim curve of her breast pressed against him, and he cleared his throat. “It’s not about kids like Maya. Not just about that, anyway. The Order tells us what sort of arcana we can use, and they keep anything dangerous for themselves.”

  “I know all about that,” Kit said. “I grew up in Grace. Smuggling stuff into the Republic is the main industry.”

  “They say it’s to protect people from dhakim,” Gyre said. “But Lynnia’s not a dhakim, and she gets along fine. My father was the furthest thing from a criminal you’d ever meet, but even he had a shed full of little bits of dhak for when our vulpi got sick or our garden was in trouble.”

  “So you want to bring dhak to the Republic?”

  “Not… exactly.” Gyre hesitated. “As long as the Order is running things, we’re still following the plan the Chosen left for us. While they were around, maybe that was okay; maybe they would have improved everyone’s lives. But now? We’re not going anywhere. In four hundred years since the war, the Republic hasn’t gotten anywhere but smaller and poorer and hungrier. And all anyone can do about it is cling tighter to the Order and hope they can save us.”

  “The Splinter Kingdoms are no better,” Kit said. “At least the ones I’ve visited.”

  “I don’t know the answer,” Gyre said. “But the Order isn’t it. So I’m going to destroy them.”

  “Destroy them?” Kit said after a moment. “Destroy the Twilight Order. The centarchs. The heirs of the Chosen.”

  “The ghouls destroyed the Chosen themselves,” Gyre said. He felt simultaneously unburdened and embarrassed. He’d never said all that aloud, not in those terms, not even to Yora or Lynnia. “The Order is only their shadow. That’s why I thought…”

  “I get it.” Kit looked up at him, grinning in the shadowy light. “You don’t dream small, do you?”

  “What about you?” Gyre said defensively. “What were your dreams, before you found out you were…”

  “Dying?” Kit said brightly. “I just wanted to get rich.
I ran away from Mom because she wanted me to take a job sweeping gutters for a few decithalers, and I looked at the old people who’d spent their lives doing that and I thought, no. I’m going to find something better, and I’m going to have some fun doing it.” She shrugged, pressed tight against him. “That winter I nearly died of a fever because I didn’t have a roof over my head.”

  “Doomseeker,” Gyre said, grinning.

  “Back then, it was just stupidity.”

  She let out a breath, and they fell into a comfortable silence. It was warm under the blankets, and Kit’s skin had lost its clammy feel. It was probably time to pull apart and check on the state of their gear, but Gyre couldn’t bring himself to suggest it.

  “Gyre,” Kit said. “Look. I have a… a rule.”

  “Hmm?”

  “About people on my expeditions. And what we’re allowed to do. I’ve had some problems, you know? But—this is a little different, right? Us.”

  Gyre blinked. His mind felt slow and sleepy. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Kit sighed and paused for a moment. Then she muttered, “Fuck it,” and kissed him. Gently, inquisitively at first, waiting to see if he pulled away. When his mouth opened under hers, she leaned harder against him, bare skin pressed against his.

  “Are you,” Gyre managed between snatched breaths, “teasing me again?”

  Kit growled, low in her throat, and kissed him harder. He felt her hand fumbling beneath the blanket until it found his own, and their fingers intertwined. Then she pulled his hand toward her, spread it flat against her stomach, guided it downward. His fingers slipped under the hem of her underthings, through dampened curls of pubic hair. When they found the wet warmth of her, her breath hitched, and she pressed herself tight against him.

  “Apparently not,” Kit said, and nipped playfully at his ear.

  Morning found them curled around one another in the blankets, huddled close to the last embers of the dead fire. Through the narrow entrance to the cave, Gyre could see a slice of pure blue sky, and a slash of sunlight was gradually creeping across the floor.

  He pulled himself away from Kit, who groaned at the cold air that infiltrated their nest. She rolled over, wrapping the blanket around herself like a cocoon, and lay facedown.

  “Sorry,” Gyre said. He started dressing, his things chilly but dry.

  “Mmf,” Kit said, voice muffled as she spoke directly into the blanket. “Usually I’m the one sneaking away before last night’s bad decision wakes up.”

  “Bad decision?” Gyre said.

  “Well.” Kit raised her head and watched as he tugged on his trousers. “Maybe not entirely a bad decision.”

  “I’m honored,” Gyre said.

  He grabbed some twigs and set about coaxing the fire back to life, while Kit disentangled herself from the blankets. She yawned and stretched, unselfconsciously naked. When she caught him staring, she shot him a grin before shivering and casting about for her clothes.

  Gyre boiled water and made tea, which Kit accepted appreciatively. Armed with the steaming cups, they went to the entrance of the cave and squeezed outside. The temperature had dropped overnight, and the wet, stormy air had been transformed into something crystalline and cold. Icicles hung in sheets from every overhanging rock, and the piles of snow were encased in glittering armor.

  “That’s going to make this an interesting day’s walk,” Gyre said.

  “Fortunately, we don’t have far to go,” Kit said. “Only a couple of hours to the tunnels.”

  At Kit’s suggestion, they lightened their packs by leaving the tents behind, since they’d soon be underground. And if we make it to the Tomb, either we’ll have the ghouls to help us on the way back, or it won’t matter. Gyre cached the surplus supplies at the back of the cave, then took up his reduced burden and followed Kit back out into the pass.

  As he’d predicted, it was tricky going. The footing was treacherous, and every surface was coated in ice, so no handhold was secure. It got worse when the time came to leave the bottom of the pass—a narrow ridge of rock extended off to the left, curving around the flank of the mountain, with a sheer drop on one side and an icy cliff on the other. Gyre, no stranger to heights, felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach when he looked at the prospect.

  “Maybe we ought to tie ourselves together?” he offered, as Kit strode ahead onto the lip of rock.

  “What, so that if you fall you’ll definitely take me down with you?” Kit said, smiling back at him. “No, thanks. Just because I fucked you doesn’t mean I’m ready for a suicide pact.”

  She edged along, one glove trailing against the icy stone, and there was nothing for it but to grit his teeth and follow. They made progress one step at a time, testing the ground ahead for loose stones. Twice massive icicles blocked the way, and they had to pause while Kit hacked at them with her saber until they shattered and tumbled into the abyss.

  “I thought you said it wasn’t far,” Gyre muttered, glancing up at the sun. It was sinking steadily toward the western horizon.

  “It isn’t,” Kit said. “We’re just slow. But nearly there.”

  The tunnel entrance, when they reached it, was hardly recognizable as such. It hadn’t been meant as a way in. At some time in the four hundred years since the war, a big chunk of rock had tumbled away from the mountain, exposing a section of ghoul construction like pulling the skin back from a beehive. From the ledge it just looked like a depression in the stone, and it wasn’t until Gyre edged around that it became clear the space continued much deeper. Where it was exposed to the elements, the surface was rough and weathered, but after a few meters it took on the unnatural smooth texture of ghoul construction.

  “This is it,” Kit said unnecessarily. She pulled a glowstone from her pack and lit it, throwing a long shadow behind her.

  “How did you find this place?”

  “Bits and pieces.” She shrugged. “There’s a bunch of tunnels that ought to lead in this direction, but they’re all blocked, and when I went to look at them the collapses seemed deliberate. As though someone wanted to cut this whole section of the warrens off from the rest. I started asking around about this area, and an old scavenger told me that he’d seen this entrance but never managed to make it up here.”

  “And based on that you made the trip?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I chased a lot less than that a lot farther. You tried looking for the Tomb by collecting rumors in Deepfire. I went out and dug for it.”

  “Point taken,” Gyre said. “So what should we expect?”

  “A whole lot of nothing, at least for a while.” Kit shifted her pack across her shoulders. “It’s a long way down.”

  Several hours later, Gyre was starting to understand what she meant. The tunnels were the same broad, circular spaces that he was used to seeing under Deepfire, but where those were cracked and broken by the impact of the weapon that had made the Pit, these were smooth and featureless. Here and there, faded markings on the walls hinted that they might have served some purpose, but whatever had been here was gone. There weren’t even any of the rotting wrecks or light-patches that scavengers gathered to render into alchemicals.

  As though someone has scraped the place clean, he thought. Gone out of their way to make this set of tunnels as unappealing as possible. “Go home, humans, nothing to see here…” His heart beat a little faster.

  At first, Kit guided them with confidence, stalking through each junction as though she were following a map drawn on the inside of her eyelids. They went down, always down, winding around and around over ramps and sloping corridors, a crisscrossing, zigzagging path into the heart of the mountain. The air grew close and started to get warmer, and Gyre shrugged out of his heaviest layers.

  Eventually, they stopped to rest. Gyre had no idea what time it was outside, but his legs were burning. He drank a carefully measured amount from his canteen—there’d been no running water in the tunnels thus far—and ate from the dri
ed fruit and meat in his pack. There was no question of a fire—down here, there was nothing to burn, except for their own gear.

  Kit shrugged out of her pack and went through her own routine, chewing steadily on the tough rations. She set the glowstone down between them and watched Gyre as he swallowed another spare mouthful of water.

  “I don’t remember the way much past this,” Kit said. She kept her voice down. Loud sounds echoed strangely in the long, circular tunnels. “I’d been out a long time before I found this place, and after a while I got a little… frantic.”

  “I’m amazed you remember this much,” Gyre said.

  She shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “Well. We just need to keep heading down, and we’ll get there eventually, right?”

  “Right!” Kit said brightly. “Or we’ll reach a dead end, or get stuck in a loop, and get lost and eventually die.”

  “Very cheery.”

  “You know me.” She set her canteen down and raised her eyebrows. “Well?”

  “Well what?” Gyre read her smirk and blinked. “Here?”

  She rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled toward him. “You’ve got something else to keep you busy?”

  “There might be plaguespawn,” Gyre muttered.

  “That’s all right,” Kit said. “Adds to the thrill.”

  When they were finished, they both slept for a couple of hours. Gyre found the rest fitful and full of strange, half-mad dreams. If Kit had the same problem, she didn’t say, but the third time he woke up he found her dressed and sitting against the wall, staring into the darkness. Gyre shook a glowstone to life, and their eyes met in the half-light. By unspoken consensus, they rose and continued onward.

  Now Kit’s steps were less sure, and more often than not she seemed to just choose whichever branch tended downward. Before long, the character of the tunnels changed, the simple circular pattern giving way to broader, less regular caverns. It had a less constructed feel, though the floor was still smooth and level, as though they were natural caves that the ghouls had repurposed to their own ends. Gyre guessed some crevices must reach the surface, since some of the chambers were dense with bats, the creatures nesting upside down on the ceiling; the floor was thick with guano and skeletons.