Wrath of Storms

by Steven McKinnon

  Every single villager sat huddled in the main hall. He listened for their heartbeats, listened to their breathing. Ruder the blacksmith, and his child Zofia; Puri the retired scribe and postmaster; Sven the bookshop owner… Everyone accounted for.

  But there was no trace of the flame nor the liquid igneus Margus had spoken of.

  Your senses betray you, ‘Damien’.

  Damien’s heart raged in his chest. ‘You’re safe. You’re all safe.’

  You should have killed them. Your senses are dulled. Denying yourself has made you weak.

  Snow crunched beneath Damien’s footsteps as the sky turned ink-blue. After dousing the flames in the bookshop, providing medical assistance and ensuring the raiders weren’t lurking nearby, the innkeeper had offered Damien free room and board. Damien declined; now wasn’t the time to let himself back into the clasp of civilisation—the events of the day had illustrated how much there was still to be done—how much he needed to exorcise.

  With a thought, Damien lowered his temperature. Still on a high from the fight, his blood vessels had dilated. If he perspired too much, the sweat in his clothes would freeze in the winter air and rob his body of its warmth—a surefire way of contracting hypothermia. Damien’s abilities had to work with what his body was giving them—not too dissimilar to how ignicite regenerated, or how an ouroboros viper will—

  Damien spun, fists raised.

  A new heartbeat.

  Wind howled and the white wilderness of the Solacewood stared back at him. A red-breasted robin bounced from one tree to another, and a female hare called for its young with a guttural rasp.

  But no new heartbeat.

  Your senses betray you.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Nomad’s Umbrella, they called it.

  Buzz sat up in a narrow alcove set into a wall, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and breathing in the stench of machine oil and spent ignium. What sleep he’d managed had come in fits.

  Sunlight filtered through the train station’s domed, diamond-like glass ceiling in split shafts. Decrepit shops and boutiques lined the edges of the sprawling concourse; he remembered when they were filled with people, but these days, the shops were only good for a semi-decent night’s sleep before the Watch cleared you out.

  When he was a boy, trains fascinated him. All the other kids wanted airships to zip around in, but Buzz? He wanted to roam the lands, see the hills and mountains rush past. Everything was anonymous from the sky, but down on the ground, you got to know it well.

  Gil liked trains, too.

  In an instant, nausea churned in his stomach and screams filled his head. He pressed his palms into his ears and gnashed his teeth. ‘Quiet… Quiet…’

  But Gilbert’s screams didn’t cease. He clenched his eyes shut, but Gilbert was there, in the darkness, as if waiting to pull Buzz into the fire with him. The stench of burning flesh filled his nostrils.

  ‘Go away, go away…’

  ‘Time to go.’

  His eyes shot open—Gilbert stood before him. Blurry, like a mirage—but he was there, right in front of Buzz.

  ‘No…’ Buzz muttered.

  Smoke curled from Gilbert’s flesh as fire wrapped around him. He took a step forward. ‘Time to go,’ he repeated.

  ‘No…’

  Gil reached out to Buzz, flames cracking his skin, eyes placid and still.

  The heat seared Buzz’s flesh. ‘No, no, no…’ He pushed back deeper into the alcove, his sweaty palms sliding on the cold floor.

  But he couldn’t escape.

  Gilbert towered over him and hoisted Buzz to his feet, shaking him by the shoulders.

  ‘—you even listening?’ A bronze uniform resolved from Gilbert’s blurred form—a watchman. ‘I said it’s time to go—can’t stay here.’

  Tension evaporated from Buzz’s muscles—he fell back into a corner wall, sliding to the floor.

  The watchman’s expression softened. ‘Go on, get your breath back.’

  Buzz nodded, dragging air into his lungs. Not real… Not real…

  The watchman—a broad-shouldered man with cotton-white hair—kept glancing behind him, scanning the lines of people forming up before the train platform.

  It’d been a long time since Buzz had seen the station so busy; the concourse was mobbed, travellers pushing and jostling one another, offering to pay twice the fare to get onto the next train.

  ‘Here…’ Buzz croaked. ‘Why’s all them people leaving?’

  ‘You ain’t heard?’ asked the watchman. ‘Wrenwing Gap is choked—too many airships leaving the skyport, so they come here.’

  ‘Because of what the Lightbearers did?’

  ‘Aye—they’ve got all the rich buggers running scared. Can’t imagine running’s enough to fix what they saw—my wife watched Kayn get torched and can’t get a wink of sleep. By Aerulus, Fallon’s lot are still cleaning up the mess! Gods know what Kayn hoped to gain by burning his followers. Reckon we’ll never know.’

  ‘Why would a person do that?’ Buzz didn’t direct the question to the watchman in particular. ‘Why would a person burn himself alive?’

  ‘Only Nyr knows. Anyway, you can’t stay here. By the time I come back, you’d best be gone.’

  Buzz couldn’t remember running from the fire in Old Town Square—all he remembered was Gil, and the inhuman sound he made as the fire clung to him. That, and the smell of burning skin.

  You were a good lad, Gil—and all I ever did was laugh at you.

  Buzz clambered to his feet. His eyes fell on a shiny aeron lying by where he’d slept. He picked it up; its yellowish, nickel-brass plating glinted in the sun’s glare. Could buy two loaves with this. Or apples. Or a water token. Or—

  But Buzz had no appetite. Having fresh, warm bread in his belly or the tang of apple juice on his tongue wasn’t right. They were things Gil would never have again.

  He set the coin on the ground and left the racket of the train station.

  ‘When will it be ready?’

  Fallon’s fingers tracked across the thick dust sheet concealing the scientist’s contraption. It resembled the undulating dunes of the Obsidian Sandlands, the vast desert that expanded west of Dalthea.

  Catryn didn’t look up from the wiring between her fingers. ‘Don’t rush me.’

  The woman liked to work in the light; half a dozen ignium lamps were scattered throughout her workshop, driving away the shadows. Half a dozen work benches with iron vices dominated the large room, and a towering bandsaw with gleaming teeth glowered in the south side, next to an annex closed off with a wrought-iron gate. The metallic tang of used ignium clung to the workshop’s walls, even cutting through Fallon’s aging sinuses—but it couldn’t mask the smell of stale blood.

  The Confessors made good use of this room and its tools.

  The Confessors were the not-very-secret branch of Dalthea’s government—investigators, spies and—more often than not—torturers. One of Fallon’s first acts as leader was to abolish them.

  Catryn’s machine spanned the length of three worktables. Fallon toyed with the idea of lifting the dust sheet, but decided he didn’t want to look upon it unless he had to.

  ‘You’re troubled.’ The glare from the lamps concealed Catryn’s eyes behind her goggles. ‘If you’re gonna talk about it, then talk—I got work to do.’

  Fallon grunted. ‘Hoped we’d left your nun’s robes behind, Sister.’

  Catryn rewired something, and a shower of sparks vomited from the machine. ‘Doctor.’

  Fallon sat on the edge of a table. With his men and women—and the City Watch—traipsing in and out of his quarters at the barracks upstairs, this place was fast becoming his last refuge.

  ‘Three separate bloodlung outbreaks, all miles apart,’ Fallon said. ‘Couldn’t contain ’em—had to shut the whole goddamn district. Not enough meds to go around. Hundreds might die with blackened blood gargling in their throats.’

  Catryn stalked around the worktable, a whine
coming from the servomotors in her leg brace. ‘You manage to stop it spreading?’

  ‘Too early to tell—but I reckon so.’

  The doctor fit a steel panel onto her machine. A golden glow emanated from within. ‘Then it was worth it.’

  ‘Yeah.’ A breeze whistled through a gap in the ceiling above, scraping like a knife on a whetstone right before its wielder planted it in your back. ‘That’s what I tell myself.’

  Catryn lit a crooked cigarette and eased herself onto a wooden chair. The smoke coiled around her, merging with the grey streaks in her hair.

  Fallon stood straight. ‘Smoking’s outlawed.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit.’

  ‘Half the material in this room is flammable.’

  ‘See my previous answer.’

  General Fallon liked Catryn.

  She wiped oil-slick hands over her apron. ‘Y’know, I’d be finished a lot sooner if you gave me a team and decent digs.’

  ‘Fewer people know about this, the better. Tell anyone, I’ll put you in front of a firing squad.’

  ‘If I had the use of One Three Seven, I could—’

  Fallon held a hand up and silenced her. ‘That place is a tomb. It’ll stay buried.’

  Catryn pressed her cigarette into an ash tray and struggled to her feet. ‘As you say.’

  ‘The Harness is smaller than I reckoned.’ The device couldn’t have been any more than twenty feet in length—a fraction of the size of the desert’s Lightning Spires.

  ‘The Spires have been obsolete for decades, General—Thackeray had this inside his secret bunker, but he could just as easily have installed it on a motorcarriage or airship. Portable, concentrated storms—it’ll make the Raincatchers’ lives easier. But then, you got the mountain pipelines running, didn’t you?’

  Fallon didn’t appreciate Catryn’s tone—he preferred to level accusations at people, not absorb them. Anyway, though the pipelines crawling through the western reaches of the Steelpeak Mountains gave access to water from Irros’ Bounty, it wasn’t enough—Fallon needed something more than that, more than the Raincatchers. That the Lightning Harness happened to be a weapon was a bonus.

  ‘You’re doing the kingdom proud, even if no-one knows it,’ he told her.

  The doctor scowled. ‘That makes me warm and fuzzy inside.’

  ‘You need anything else from me?’

  Catryn shook her head.

  ‘Good.’ The general strode towards the exit. ‘Keep me updated.’

  ‘Like I have a choice.’

  ‘The time is ten in the morning on the Thirteenth Day of Lunos. The time is ten in the morning on the Thirteenth Day of Lunos. Citizens are reminded that Dustwynd is off-limits due to a burst pipeline. There is no need to panic. REPEAT: There is no need to panic.’

  The information tower droned at Buzz’s back. He trod across an arched skybridge in Musa’s Harp, the district to the north-east of the city. Hunger gnawed at him every step of the way, but as the dirt and dust squeezed between his toes, it felt like he was barefoot on a sandy beach. He savoured the fresh air, the smells. After weeks of punishing withdrawal symptoms, he appreciated the outdoors more and more. Funny, the stuff you don’t notice when you see it every day.

  The spires crowning the crooked Fayth Collegium building glinted in the sun. One of Dalthea’s more persistent rumours was that it was built the wrong way around, but Buzz knew that was just a ploy to make folk visit it. While you’re laughing at us, come inside and see what sins you hide.

  Followers of the Fayth sang Wintercast carols for the poor, their voices pure as the Songstress’ herself. It reminded Buzz of childhood. Someone else’s childhood, maybe, but still.

  The religious around these parts were usually good for a blanket or a crust of stale bread, but their charity often came with a lecture, so Buzz aimed for the Slingbarrow, where some merchants hawked salted beef.

  ‘Come and see,’ a kid squealed to his pals, brushing past Buzz. ‘They’re saying she’s from Dustwynd!’

  The kids—six in all—scarpered off to a disused boutique. The flaking paint on the sign above the shopfront read Augusta Templeton & Sons’ Tobacconist. Boards blocked its doorway—which was nothing new, so Buzz kept walking.

  An airship rumbled overhead, circling the sky, no doubt waiting for space to clear in the skyport.

  ‘Reckon that’s Tugarin’s Talon, come in from a water run,’ said an old woman, materialising at Buzz’s side. She must have had good ears, because her eyes were sunken and milky white.

  ‘Marvellous thing, them contraptions,’ she continued. ‘Always fancied owning one of ’em.’

  ‘Good thing it’s comin’ up for Wintercast,’ said Buzz.

  The crone’s lips parted at that. ‘Name’s Elsie.’ With shaking, bony fingers, she waved a chipped ceramic cup at Buzz. ‘Couldn’t trouble you for some water?’

  ‘Sorry. Could be doing with some myself.’

  More and more kids congregated outside the tobacconist. Some of them were crying.

  A watchwoman herded the kids away. ‘Back—back! Don’t look at it. Don’t look at it.’

  ‘The hell’s going on?’ Buzz asked.

  ‘Beats me,’ said Elsie.

  Like a man mesmerised by a cheap hypnotist, Buzz hobbled over, a gyre in his belly expanding more with each step.

  Buzz marched past the kids and peered through the empty, glassless window.

  A woman.

  She was old, and wore a simple, white robe stained with brownish blood.

  She hung from the ceiling like a twisted porcelain doll, her straggly grey hair matted and tangled. Red lesions scored her cheeks, and her neck and mouth bore red welts.

  ‘Bloodlung,’ someone said.

  ‘Stay back, please!’ a watchwoman called, panic rising in her voice.

  ‘—thought it was a shop dummy at first…’

  ‘…is it real?’

  ‘…the Lightbearers! They did this!’

  ‘Her face, she looks scared. Sweet Musa…’

  Buzz had seen dead bodies before—living on the streets with strangers, it wasn’t uncommon to fall asleep and then wake up to find the previous night’s acquaintances no longer breathing. But bloodlung? He’d seen that burn through people and hollow them out, piece by piece.

  But right now, that wasn’t the worst of it.

  It was how the woman had been arranged—placed in the shop window, displayed like a grotesque work of art.

  And all those children, gazing up with open mouths as if they were looking at a lit up Wintercast tree.

  Dalthea was changing. A cancer was spreading through her guts and bones—her soul. It killed innocent people—people like Gilbert, and this old woman.

  The Lightbearers hooked you with food and water, but it came at a price—when they whispered in your ear, when it was time to take action. It wasn’t the leaders who ended up dead, so how was what they were preaching different from the Council’s corruption?

  Buzz was tired of being used, of running with the crowd because there was nowhere else for him to go. A man had to be able to make his own choices. Scuzz, the Lightbearers—Buzz was done being in thrall to something else.

  But right is right, and you can only do a thing if you square it with yourself—even it if means siding with the biggest crims in the kingdom.

  Fallon returned to his office looking forward to a ten-minute food break, only to find Waltham and Tristan outside with a report in his hands. Paperwork multiplied like bacteria these days.

  ‘Speak, Arch Vigil.’ Fallon placed a bowl of oatmeal onto his desk and sat down. Neither Waltham nor Constable Tristan could meet his eye.

  ‘General, the Lightbearers have destroyed a water station in Arrowhead, claiming it was poisoned by the government.’

  ‘Arrests?’

  Waltham shook his head. ‘Constable Tristan here was on the scene. The perpetrators set themselves alight.’

  Tristan cleared his throat. ‘My ful
l account is there, sir.’ He squared his shoulders but his fingers twitched.

  Good-looking kid, but not cut out for this.

  According to Tristan’s report, flames had caught onto a young watchwoman’s uniform. The doctors weren’t optimistic about her chances of survival.

  ‘Says here, Tristan, that you engaged three of ’em before they sacrificed themselves.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Waltham puffed his chest out. ‘Boy’s a natural with the shortsword. It’s why he’s by my side.’

  Fallon grunted, the pit in his chest widening with every word of the report.

  ‘The Viator’s intent on running a story on it, sir,’ said Waltham. ‘If it gets out, the people will panic even more.’

  Fallon pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Silencing the press will accomplish nothing except spread more rumour—I ain’t Pyron Thackeray, Waltham. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna control the press. Anyway, it’s better to get the facts out and at least pretend we have some goddamn control.’ Fallon spooned warm, lumpy oatmeal into his mouth, scraping it across the bowl; years on military rations prevented him from appreciating anything but the most basic food.

  How in all hells do we destroy an enemy who ain’t afraid to kill themselves? What are the rules of engagement when you’re up against a cult full of civilians?

  ‘It’s not just the water station,’ said Tristan. ‘After ascribing the blame to us, the Lightbearers distributed their own supply of water—free of charge.’

  ‘We’re stretched thin,’ said Waltham. ‘As more people join the Lightbearers, we’ll only become weaker. You may need to deploy your own troops to prevent things escalating.’

  ‘The last thing people need to see are jackboots outside their front doors,’ said Fallon. ‘I won’t let it come to that.’

  ‘Then may I ask what you do intend?’

  ‘I’ll put my men in Watch colours,’ Fallon answered, rifling through the numerous other reports vying for his attention. ‘Make it look like it’s not the army on the streets. I’ll even put the prettiest on water station duty, give the Viator something nice to put on their front page.’