Ashes of the Sun

by Django Wexler

  “You’re sure it’ll work?” he’d asked her.

  “Of course not.” She’d rolled her eyes at him. “I can’t exactly test it, can I? I know that when you press the crystal, the trigger part makes a spark big enough to light a fuse. Other than that, we just have to hope.”

  Now Gyre stared at the thing for a moment, then tucked it into his belt. It’ll work. Sarah knows what she’s doing.

  “Ready?” Kit said, bouncing eagerly on the balls of her feet. The prospect of action seemed to have restored her darkened spirits.

  Gyre picked up the crossbow, slotted a bolt, and cocked it with an effort. “Ready.”

  Kit skipped ahead, pausing at the corner of the hedge. Gyre followed more cautiously, and she straightened up and whispered to him.

  “Four guards. Auxies.”

  Gyre grimaced. That was more than he’d hoped, but it made sense. “Too many to take without someone shouting for help.”

  “Time for the distraction, then.” Kit’s grin was feral. “Do it.”

  Gyre knelt in the dirt and pulled out the trigger. He undid the latch on the grille, flipped it up, and hesitated only briefly before pressing his finger against the first crystal.

  There was a delay of perhaps a second. Then a spectacular boom shattered the quiet of the palace grounds. Even this far away, Gyre felt the blast as a thump in his chest and a shiver running through his shoes. Whatever Lynnia had put into the bomb, it had been a monster. He imagined bits of wagon and toasted fruit blasted high into the air, raining down across the drive and spattering the palace. After a few seconds more, a thick column of black smoke developed, rising lazily into the sky.

  Shouts and screams echoed across the grounds almost immediately. Every guard in the palace, Gyre guessed, was heading to the scene of what could only be some kind of assault on the grounds. Perfect.

  “They’re staying put,” Kit said. “Smart. On three. One. Two.”

  Gyre snatched up his crossbow and stepped out from behind the hedge as Kit mouthed, “Three.” He spotted the four Auxies standing in front of the red-painted double doors, shifting nervously. Their sergeant was an older woman, weather-beaten and tough-looking, and he sighted on her and pulled the trigger as her mouth opened to form a shout. Gyre wasn’t an expert shot, but the range was short. The bolt caught her high in the chest, punching through the cheap steel of her breastplate and knocking her off her feet.

  Kit had a thin blade in each hand and sent one whipping in a fast arc at the Auxie on the right. It sank into his throat, and he dropped his spear and clutched the wound, staggering backward. The man next to him threw himself to the ground, and Kit’s second knife passed just over his head, burying itself in the storehouse door.

  She was already halfway across the distance between them, saber drawn. The Auxie still on his feet gave a hoarse cry, lowering his spear to spit Kit as though she were a charging warbird. She slipped lithely aside, dodging the point, and was on him before he could drop the long weapon and draw his sword. Her saber found his throat, and blood fountained spectacularly.

  The man who’d ducked Kit’s second knife was pushing himself back to his feet when Gyre’s reloaded crossbow twanged again, the bolt catching him in the side. He rolled over, clutching at the wound, until Kit came up behind him and slashed his throat.

  “Nicely done,” she said to Gyre as she bent to finish the badly wounded sergeant. The woman shuddered and stilled. “Didn’t even have to draw your pretty new sword.”

  “I’m hoping to save that until I need it,” Gyre said. Not least, he had to admit to himself, because he wasn’t sure how well he’d be able to fight with Naumoriel’s gift. “The door going to be a problem?”

  Kit glanced at it and scoffed. “Give me… sixteen seconds.” She sheathed her bloodied saber and drew a set of lockpicks from a pouch, bending down to reach under the heavy iron padlock. A moment later, it popped open with a clack, and she grinned back at him. “Well? Did I make it?”

  “Was I actually supposed to keep count?”

  “Of course!” Kit looked offended. “You’ll never improve if you don’t take every opportunity to challenge yourself.” She hauled on the door, which swung outward a bit, then stopped. Kit frowned, then kicked one of the dead Auxies out of the way.

  The inside of the storehouse was a mess. It looked like they’d taken half of what had been carefully arranged in Raskos’ warehouse and simply dumped it in a pile. Precious arcana was mounded in with worthless junk, bits and pieces of the ancient Chosen Empire and the ghouls all jumbled together. Kit gave a heartfelt sigh at the sight of it, and even Gyre felt a twinge. If Yora could have gotten to this, we’d all have been set for life.

  “You find the Analytica; I’ll move the bodies,” Gyre said. “Hurry.”

  Kit nodded and dashed into the mess, shaking a glowstone and filling the building with blue light. Gyre grabbed one of the corpses under the arms and pulled it inside, trying not to cover himself in blood. If anyone wandered by, missing guards might attract attention, but dead ones certainly would, and he figured it was better to get them out of sight. He’d shifted three of them and gone back for the sergeant when movement from the direction of the palace caught his eye.

  “Shit.” Gyre ducked into the shadow of the hedge and hissed into the storehouse. “Kit! Legionaries coming!”

  “Coming here?” Kit called back.

  “Not sure.”

  Gyre watched the pair of white-armored figures moving down the garden path. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry, as they might have been if they’d heard the fight. No way they caught that with everyone shouting from the explosion. Which meant these two weren’t necessarily heading their way…

  Come on, plague it, go somewhere else. His urgent wish went unanswered, and the two Legionaries kept coming. Someone must have ordered them to make sure this part of the gardens is secure.

  “Kit?” Gyre said. “Tell me you found it.”

  “Not yet,” Kit said. “Do you know how much stuff is in here?”

  Ah, fucking plaguefire. The Legionaries were moments from turning the corner. Gyre put his hand on his sword and tried not to think about what happened the last time he took on one of the Republic’s elites. No other options. Naumoriel, I hope all this works…

  He stepped out from behind the hedge, crossbow first, and fired. The bolt hit the leading Legionary in the chest plate, glanced off his unmetal armor, and whined away. It had the effect of staggering him for a moment, which gave Gyre a chance to engage the second soldier alone. He tossed the crossbow away, drew his silvery ghoul-made sword, and forced his mind down the channels Naumoriel had taught him.

  The energy bottle at his side warmed, and the world slowed around him, objects splintering into clouds of shadows. The Legionary came at him, raising her unmetal blade, and a dozen duplicates of the weapon hovered in front of her, possible paths that her attack might take. As she swung, some of the ghosts faded, and one rapidly became solid, thick with momentum. Gyre stepped aside, his movement feeling floaty and weightless, and aimed a cut at her helmet. The blow didn’t penetrate the unmetal, of course, but it snapped her head back and sent her staggering away.

  The other Legionary had his blaster rifle up, bringing it to bear. As Gyre concentrated on the weapon, lines of light lanced out from it, forecasting the path the bolt would take. The Legionary’s finger tightened on the trigger, and Gyre just had time to interpose his sword and hope like the plague.

  Even with his heightened perception, the blaster bolt was too fast to track, a burst of white light with a crack like a thunderclap. He flinched instinctively, but the energy was already dissipating, splashing into nothingness around Gyre’s blade. The energy bottle grew even warmer—Naumoriel had warned him that this defense, similar to the one that protected ghoul constructs, burned power prodigiously. But the Legionary’s shock was obvious. Before he could recover, Gyre snatched an alchemical from the pouch at his side and hurled it in a perfect trajectory that
burst against the soldier’s mask in a shattering concussion. He stumbled drunkenly, tripped, and fell.

  His first opponent came back in, her shield raised, sword probing toward his ribs. Gyre faded to his left, meeting her crosscut with his own blade, and the ghoul weapon shivered and whined as it scraped against the unmetal. The soldier disengaged and slashed high, bringing her shield around to block his counterstroke, but the shadows speeding ahead of her attack let Gyre duck neatly under the blow. He angled his sword up and thrust into her armpit, where the overlapping insectoid armor had a gap, and it sliced easily through the resilk and leather underneath. After a frozen moment of shock, Gyre stepped away, silver blade bloody to half its length, and the Legionary collapsed with a clatter of unmetal.

  Gyre let his concentration slip, and the shadow-world fell away. Pain pounded in his temples and all around his new eye. He glanced down at the energy bottle—a simple metallic cylinder with a thin line of inlaid crystal around its circumference—and saw that its soft glow had dimmed considerably.

  Kit hit him from behind, wrapping both arms around him and nearly lifting him off the ground in her excitement.

  “That was amazing!” She bounced against him, staring down at the fallen Legionaries. “Chosen defend—well, I mean, obviously not—I’ve never seen anyone move like that. You were—and you just—”

  “Kit!” Gyre tore free of her grip. “Did you find it?”

  “Of course I found it!” Kit opened her pack to display the metallic gleam of the Core Analytica.

  “Then, let’s get out of here.”

  He glanced at the two soldiers—the woman lay unmoving, but the other one was feebly struggling to rise. Gyre sheathed his sword and reached for the trigger arcana, only to find Kit pressing against him again, rising to her toes to kiss him with desperate energy. It was a moment before Gyre found the presence to pull away.

  “I thought we weren’t… whatever I thought we were,” he said. “What happened to a moment of weakness?”

  “Fighting makes me horny,” Kit said. “So do explosions. Do it!”

  Doomseeker. Gyre suppressed a sigh and flipped up the metal grille, pressing his finger against the second crystal. Moments later, another bomb went off with a crump and plume of smoke and dust. A section of the garden’s outer wall vanished in the haze.

  “And there’s our exit.” Kit looked in the storehouse, then at the two Legionaries with their armor and blaster rifles, and heaved a sigh of her own. “If only we could carry more of this stuff.”

  “We don’t need the money,” Gyre reminded her as they ran toward the billowing smoke.

  “I know,” she said, giving him a bright grin. “But it’s the principle of the thing.”

  Chapter 22

  It had been the most frustrating two weeks of Maya’s life.

  She’d known, from the moment she explained to Beq that Tanax would be coming with them, that his presence would make things difficult. While Tanax himself had been scrupulously correct in accepting Maya’s authority, Beq stiffened up automatically in his presence. Maya wasn’t able to find any time alone with her during the first day’s walk, and by evening they’d reached Uqaris, a dusty little city that had grown up around the Auxiliary garrison for this section of the border.

  They’d been fortunate in their timing, and a caravan was leaving for Grace the following morning. The caravan master, an expansive, portly woman named Kerchwite with a magnificent thatch of green beard, was happy to accept Maya’s thalers and offer the three of them a place among her party. Maya had expected a string of small wagons, like the one she and Jaedia had traveled in, but Kerchwite’s were six-wheeled monsters pulled by four thickheads apiece, practically rolling houses. When night fell, she and her caravanners erected large, comfortable tents, in which she’d generously offered Maya and her companions a spot. Maya couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse, and so they spent every night among laughing, drinking merchants, listening to stories and bawdy songs and with no privacy whatsoever.

  It would have been less frustrating if there had been anything to do. After all, Maya had reminded herself, they were out here to find Jaedia, not so Maya could sneak in time with her crush. But Kerchwite’s guards and their dogs had the plaguespawn threat well in hand, butchering the small monsters that were drawn to the caravan. They didn’t need her help, and in any event Maya wasn’t sure how much use she could be without revealing herself as a centarch.

  In the evenings, Tanax stayed aloof from the rest of the merchants and guards. Maya tried to fit in—Jaedia had once told her a centarch ought to be able to make herself at home in any company—but the sight of Beq sitting in silence at the edge of the tent drew her away again. When she went to keep Beq company, though, neither of them seemed to have much to say among the shouting and dicing. And so two weeks passed in relative comfort but considerable awkwardness, as the caravan wound its slow way across the plain.

  The land near the border with the Kingdom of Grace—called the Red Kingdom by the locals, after the colors worn by its soldiers—was flat and grassy, watered by small, meandering streams. It was grazing country, speckled with cows and dotted by small homesteads. These buildings were ringed by defensive walls, and the herds they passed were guarded by well-armed riders. Each watchman was another reminder that they were beyond the boundaries of the Republic and the cordon of safety that the Legions’ sweeps and watch posts provided. Out here plaguespawn attacks were as constant and unavoidable as the rain or the wind.

  The city of Grace itself lay on the other side of a range of low hills, jutting up from the flat land like lumpy pillows shoved under a bedsheet. The caravan followed the old Chosen road, a perfectly flat stretch of spongy stone, crumbling at the edges. When it reached the hills, it deigned to divert from its straight-line path to swing through a narrow gap between two large prominences. They took some time to traverse an old cut, where a chunk of one hillside had been sliced back to make room for the road; four hundred years of rain and snow had brought falls of rock encroaching on the path, and they were forced to unhitch the thickheads and use them to clear a fresh spill out of the way. Nevertheless, on the thirteenth day out of Uqaris, they crossed the spine of the hills and found themselves descending a gentle slope, with a good view of the valley beyond.

  Beq, on cresting the ridge, raced to the edge of the road with an excited squeak. She scrambled up a large rock and started clicking the dials on her spectacles. For a moment Maya, hurrying after her, couldn’t quite parse what she was seeing. There was a city, a loose grid of streets and buildings, closed off by a wall on three sides. On the fourth side, an enormous thing stretched out of the ground, a cliff face leaning dangerously outward over the city—

  Then her mind sorted the dirt and trees from the smooth, clean lines of unmetal, and she knew what she was looking at. Even half-buried in the earth, the silhouette of a Chosen skyfortress was unmistakable. There were drawings of them in her copy of the Inheritance, floating amid fleets of lesser skyships like cloud-bound whales. A skyfortress looked like a flattened teardrop or the business end of a spade, rounded at the back and coming to a point at the bow. All the workings and weapons were inside the unmetal hull, leaving the outside a smooth, unbroken curve of brilliant white.

  This skyfortress had driven itself into the ground, bow-first, at about a forty-five-degree angle. Maya could only imagine what it must have been like on the day it fell, because the thing had hit hard enough to punch through the soil and into the valley’s bedrock. Four hundred years later, it remained where it had fallen, jutting out of the earth and trees that had filled in around it. The stern hung in the air, hundreds of meters above the streets of the city.

  Looking closer, Maya could see that the skyfortress’s lines were not entirely intact. In places the unmetal skin had broken, peeling outward like the petals of a flower. She glanced at Beq, who was still staring fixedly at the thing.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Beq said. “There isn’t a skyfo
rtress in the whole Republic that’s so well preserved. The Harmony in Judgment lost its whole stern section, so it’s only the bow that’s in the city square in Carvoria. And of course Faith, Certainty, and Generosity were lost over the sea in the Last Contact. They say Purpose is somewhere on the other side of the Shattered Peaks, but no one knows exactly where.”

  “I… uh… did not know that,” Maya said, glad to see Beq coming out of her funk. “Do you know a lot about this one?”

  She nodded eagerly. “It was called Grace in Execution—they named the city after it. Its last captain was Ghaea-Ven-Tilophani, and she brought the ship down herself. They’d been boarded by ghouls and plaguespawn, and there were barely enough Chosen aboard to keep the ship in the air. This was late in the war. Grace was the last skyfortress, you know, the last of the eight to fall.”

  “What damaged it, where the skin is broken?”

  “Nobody really knows!” Beq sounded excited about this lack of knowledge. “It has to be deiat, obviously, only deiat can damage unmetal, so it was probably one of the mechanisms inside the ship failing. There’s a lot more damage around the bow, where it’s buried. I hear there are even tunnels that lead inside. Grace got its start as a center of arcana selling off pieces of the ship, and Centarch Garinus Bloodbane led an expedition here in 268 to gather up all the most dangerous relics and bring them back to the Forge. Scavengers have stripped the rest by now.” She paused for breath, then pushed her spectacles back and glanced at Maya. “Sorry. I’m talking too much, aren’t I? Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” Maya said gently. She grinned at Beq, then turned back to the view. “I knew there was a wreck here; I just didn’t think it would be so…” She gestured lamely. “Big.”