by Myke Cole
Heloise was shocked to feel herself smile, felt the tears come. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Aye, me, too,” Xilyka said. “Me, too.”
The devils pressed in, the circle of them of them drawing tighter. They’d figured the bar’s range now, stood just a handspan outside it, waiting for Heloise to tire. She could see the tension in their legs, knew they were readying for a final charge.
Eagle screams, loud and urgent, from the back of the pack of devils. Heloise braced herself for their onslaught, lifted the bar to swing again.
And then the circle was breaking apart, the devils turning away from her.
Smoke was rising among them. She could see flickering fire shapes, shaped like men, darting through them, waving their red-and-orange limbs in their faces. Heloise knew only one man who could make fire dance in the shapes of men.
She surged forward, swinging the locking bar again, clouting the devils on their backs now, sending them scattering. A few turned to hiss at her, swatting at the bar, but they were focused on a new threat now, the dancing flame men and the flesh ones Heloise could see now, down the cracked cobblestone street. Giorgi stood at their head, a torch in each hand. Heloise could not make out his face at this distance, but she didn’t need to. He had come.
“Heloise!” Xilyka shouted, but she was already moving, resting the beam against the machine’s knee, taking hold of it again, this time couched under the machine’s arm. She jogged the machine a few paces out, then raced toward the postern door, throwing her weight against the beam as it struck.
The door shuddered. She could hear the cracking of stone inside, see fragments splinter away from the jamb. But it held.
Heloise stepped back, readied herself to try again, saw Xilyka’s eyes widen. She dropped the beam and spun, her shield connecting with the face of a devil just as it reached her. It staggered backward, clustered white eyes going gray, stumbling. Heloise turned her back on it, snatched up the bar again, and charged a second time.
This time the door shuddered and groaned, and with a loud snapping of stone, swung open.
Heloise turned, heaved the locking bar into the devils, then bent to scoop the Nightingale back up again. The old woman blinked as Heloise lifted her. “Are we…”
But Heloise ignored her, stepping through the door and into the passage beyond. Daylight streamed in behind her, revealing the broad passage skirting the throne room to where it opened beside the dark staircase she would need to mount to bring the Nightingale before the Congregation. She took a step into the cool darkness, and froze.
The first thing she saw was the Right Gate, his face gray, eyes sightlessly staring, mouth frozen in an O of shock. One of Sir Steven’s red-tabarded infantry lay across him, his face little more than a red hole the diameter of a devil’s claw.
Heloise’s breath caught. For a moment, the Congregation, the old woman nestled behind her shield, even the possibility that all was already lost vanished, replaced by a single, urgent thought: Father.
She took off running, the hallway rushing past her, Xilyka’s hurrying footfalls behind her nearly drowned by the clanking of the machine’s metal feet. She saw the first devil almost immediately, its purple back filling the corridor, its head bent to keep its long horns clear of the ceiling. Beyond it, she could see its comrades packing the nave, a wash of purple and yellow-white.
It was already too late.
No, she thought fiercely. You haven’t seen any other bodies. Maybe they’re still alive.
“Hold on!” she said to the Nightingale for a third time, then raised her knife-hand and leapt at the devil, slamming it into the monster’s back.
As soon as the knife moved into her field of vision, Heloise realized she’d made a terrible mistake. The blade was still bent from when she had used it to pry off the reliquary lock.
Instead of a sharp point, it was a flat band of iron that struck the devil. The metal protested, sparked, and finally sheared off, her weapon going spinning up, tumbling end-over-end, until it bounced off the wall and went tumbling in the dust.
The devil shrieked, tried to turn, but Heloise used the momentum of her strike to barrel into it, letting the machine’s weight wedge it behind the monster, pinning it against the wall. The devil flailed, threw two elbows hard into the machine’s side, screamed as its bone collided with the metal.
The Nightingale groaned and Heloise looked down to see the old woman pressed flat against the inside of the shield. She was bleeding, though Heloise could not see from where. She’s alive, and you must keep her that way or all this will be for nothing.
She tried to push off, to create enough space to slip past the devil and reach the staircase, but she couldn’t do it without pressing the shield flat to her body, crushing her precious cargo. “Xilyka!”
“I’m coming!” Xilyka’s voice sounded so close that Heloise realized the Hapti girl had charged in just behind her. She caught a flash as Xilyka leapt, springing off the machine’s knee, grasping one of the devil’s arms and vaulting over it, pinning her back to the wall, feet braced on the creature’s chest.
“Xilyka, no!” Heloise shouted as the devil stretched its jaws and whipped its head forward.
But Xilyka was ready and thrust her hands forward, flat knives clutched tightly in her fingers. Heloise watched them plunge into the center of the mass of stalked white eyes. The devil screamed, the piercing cry thankfully directed away from her. It must have deafened Xilyka, but the Hapti girl showed no sign of pain, pulling the knives out and plunging them back into the creature’s eyes again and again with such speed that her hands were a gray blur, arms coated in the fetid black blood up to the elbows. The devil’s bite went wide, and it lurched back, four of its six hands coming up to claw at its wounded face. Xilyka dropped to the floor and plunged into the nave beyond.
Heloise felt the pressure of the creature’s body threatening to press her shield arm flat, and punched out with the shield’s corner, pushing until the engine coughed. At last, the devil rolled aside, flailing blindly down the corridor toward the postern door.
She turned, ran the last two steps to the entrance of the staircase. Xilyka was already up it, leaping over the bannister, stumbling as she touched down on the other side.
Beyond her, Heloise could see the nave, crowded with devils. Three had turned at the screams of their wounded comrade, were gathering their wits for a charge. Heloise ignored them, spared one glance for the Nightingale to ensure the old woman was still clutched against her, and leapt for the bannister.
She knew she’d misjudged the moment the machine’s feet left the stone. She was not outside, and while the ceiling was not low, it still existed. Heloise prayed it was higher than she—a sharp ringing on the machine’s helmet told her it was not. The machine’s shoulders collided with the stone above her next, and she fell hard, striking the stone bannister with enough force to crack it, before flipping over and landing on the staircase beyond. She could see Xilyka scramble out of the way just before she landed. Her head rattled inside the helmet. She could feel her body wrench tight against the control straps. Her bandages slipped free, the heat blisters on her skin bursting. The fire in her skin, the nagging pain, made itself known to her again.
The machine was lying on its chest, the shield pressed flat against it. Sick with horror, Heloise pushed off with the corner to raise it up.
The Nightingale was not there.
Heloise levered the machine onto its knees and saw the old woman. She was stumbling, bleeding badly from her head. Xilyka had slung her arm around her shoulders, was dragging her up the steps.
Toward a barricade, a jumbled mass of severed pipes, lengths of rusted iron railing, and scavenged blocks of stone.
Behind it were people, her people.
She spotted the silver spikes of Sir Steven’s hair, Wolfun’s gray-streaked beard. But she didn’t see …
“Heloise!” Samson shouted, standing up behind the wall of debris. He’d scavenged a pi
ke from some fallen Imperial and pumped it over his head. “Heloise, come on!”
Her heart surged. She forgot her wounds, forgot her fatigue, got the machine to its feet to follow after Xilyka and the Nightingale, who had reached the barricade, were stretching for the hands of the defenders to pull them up.
Something heavy collided with the machine and Heloise was smashed back down onto the stairs. She could hear the devil scrabbling on top of her, could feel it raking at the machine with its claws. She pushed off with the shield corner, the old familiar technique to get back on her feet. She gritted her teeth as she felt the tinker-engine strain, and the machine began to rise.
Another weight was added to the first, then another. The machine was pressed flat again. She could feel the claws now, a flurry of sharp bone swiping at every exposed inch of metal. There must have been at least three of the things atop her. She would never be able to stand now. She looked left and right, trying desperately to see her enemies, to figure out some way to …
“Heloise!” Barnard’s voice. The huge tinker had leapt over the barricade and run to her. She could see him looping his forge hammer up, swinging the heavy iron head with all his strength. She heard a sickening crunch as it collided with something, and suddenly the weight on the machine lightened as the devil he had struck jerked back.
She could feel its flailing arms reach out, scrape across the tinker-engine on the machine’s back. They scrabbled for a moment, found purchase.
Suddenly the weight on the machine’s back trebled, pulling with such force that the machine bent at the waist, lifting up so high that Heloise had a view of the barricade once more, could see her father had leapt it as well, was racing to Barnard’s side.
And then there was a shrieking of metal as the devil’s weight tore it off her back, taking the war-machine’s engine with it.
The machine’s strength died. The frame slumped back down to the staircase, lifeless.
The devil who had ripped the engine from the machine’s back had flopped down the stairs, taking its comrades with it. Heloise could hear them shrieking and hissing as they tried to disentangle themselves.
Sir Steven was hauling the Nightingale onto the barricade’s top. Heloise knew she had to get off the stairs before the devils found their bearings and returned to the attack.
But that meant leaving the machine.
She felt her father’s hand snake inside the frame, push her knife-hand hard, popping it free of the control strap. “Heloise, come on! You have to come out!”
“I can’t,” she tried to say. The words came out as a soft croak.
Xilyka slithered under the machine’s hip, and Heloise felt her fumbling at the chest strap buckle. “Heloise! Help us! There isn’t time!”
Heloise knew they wouldn’t be able to free her unless she helped, but even with the machine dead around her, the panic at leaving it was too great. Her limbs felt heavy, her head stuffed with cotton. Outside the metal frame, death was assured. At least if she stayed she would be safe for a little while longer. “I can’t!” she screamed as Samson reached behind the shield and yanked on her wrist, ripping it free of the control strap. “I can’t I can’t I can’t!”
She whipped her body back and forth, upsetting Xilyka’s fingers on the chest strap, forcing her to withdraw from the buckle.
Xilyka’s sounded sad. “Very well, we will defend you as long as we can.”
“No!” The panic curdled into grief. “You’ll die!”
“Aye,” her father said, “but if I am to lose you, then I have nothing left to live for.” She could hear him step back, retrieve his pike, make ready.
“What are you doing?” Sir Steven shouted to them. “Come on!”
She could hear the devils hissing as they untangled themselves behind her. It wouldn’t be long before they returned. And they would find Xilyka, and her father, and Barnard. And they would kill them all.
She reached down with her arm and unfastened the chest strap, letting the buckle fall open. She was free of all the straps save the ones about her legs, but the panic seized her with a fury beyond anything she’d felt before, and her limbs turned to water. “Please, Father. Just go.”
Samson knelt back down to the machine, reached in, grabbed her arm. “Not without you. Heloise, kick free and come on.”
“Papa,” she whispered. “Papa, I’m frightened.”
“I know, dove, but now is the time to be brave. Now is the time to come out.”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t have to,” Samson said, “only kick free of those straps, and I will do the rest.”
“Heloise.” Xilyka was kneeling beside her father, reaching out to grab her other arm, just above the elbow. “You do not have to be brave. You do not even have to move. Only kick free and trust us.”
Heloise closed her eyes. The world outside the machine was a thing of claws and blades and broken stone. It hung over her, a storm on the verge of breaking, ready to thrust its dagger-lightning into her the moment her head peeked past the metal. It stank of swamps and rang with eagle-screams.
That terror closed in on her, and Heloise knew she wasn’t strong enough to face it.
But Xilyka had said she didn’t have to.
Her father had said all she had to do was kick free of the leg straps. That was easy, wasn’t it? You didn’t have to be brave to kick your legs.
Heloise tried it, felt her leaden feet thump against the metal frame. Had the straps come away? She couldn’t tell. That was fine. She hadn’t been brave, and that was fine too. Here, at the end, she had kicked her legs like the ones she loved most had asked.
And suddenly she was being pulled by her arms, so hard and fast that her shoulders cried out, so that her face and chest scraped against the gap between the chest plate and the machine’s gorget. She snapped her eyes open and even the dim light of the stairwell seemed overpoweringly bright. The touch of the close, musty air was freezing, her father and Xilyka’s grip on her arm rubbing her skin raw. No. It’s too much. I can’t. I can’t. Heloise tried so hard to be good, to be still for them, but she couldn’t, and her body shuddered and thrashed on its own, her jaw locked so tight that her scream turned inward, vibrating in her throat.
But if Heloise had been strong inside the war-machine, outside it she was just a girl of sixteen winters. Samson and Xilyka merely tightened their grip on her and ran, vaulting up over the wreckage of the barricade, dragging Heloise flopping along. Behind her, she could hear metal groaning as the devils pounced on the machine, shrieked in frustration as they found it empty.
And then her feet were under her, and Xilyka and her father were hauling her up step after step, and she was running to keep up with them, to keep from going down on her face again.
Ahead of her was the Nightingale, just cresting the top of the stairs and turning into the gallery, leaning heavily on one of the Red Lords archers. At the sight of the Congregation, she found her feet, hurrying on, already singing in a voice that sounded much younger than the throat it issued from. It was strong and clear, filling the gallery instantly. Heloise imagined she could see the dirty circle of windows brightening. The old Sojourner was nowhere to be seen, but Heloise could see that the Congregation were already awake, shuffling in their chains, blinking with stupid fear.
At the sound of the Nightingale’s voice, they turned, began to drift back into rows, their mouths working.
Below them, Heloise heard shouts, then screams, then a terrible crash, the sound of stone and iron fragments being battered aside. They’re not stopping to fight at the barricade. They’re smashing through it. They’re coming for me.
The Nightingale sank to her knees. The blood flowed freely from the cut on her head, soaking into the fine black fabric over her shoulder. The singing was growing louder, and Heloise realized the Congregation were adding their voices to hers, stumbling at first, but gradually finding a harmony that filled the huge space, echoed down the stairs behind her.
The
devils shrieked a reply, their clawed feet hammering the stone as they came closer.
Not me. They are coming for her. They want to stop the singing. They know.
Which meant it was working. Heloise felt a surge of hope, the panic still upon her, but a smaller thing now, a cold stone in her stomach rather than a storm engulfing her soul. Her arms felt light, and she realized that Samson and Xilyka had released her.
The Hapti girl was pulling her knives from their sheaths at her waist, and Samson was turning to level his pike at the top of the stairs. He planted the butt spike against the smooth stone of the floor, cursed as it failed to find purchase. The long pike was meant to be used outside, braced against soft earth.
The first devil crested the stairs and raced toward the Nightingale. It screamed, but even its piercing cry was drowned by the rising chorus, ringing against the vaulted stone, making the glass shake. They had to stop it, couldn’t let it interrupt the Nightingale before the song was done.
Heloise called to Xilyka, but the girl was already moving, stepping out in front of the creature, throwing her knives at its face. It didn’t break stride, pausing only long enough to backhand her hard enough to launch her into the wall. The Hapti girl struck it with a grunt, slid down to her knees, collapsed on her side. Heloise cried out, but Samson was already moving, changing position just enough to put himself squarely between the monster and the Nightingale.
The devil snapped at his pikehead, mouth unhinging like a snake’s, impossibly wide. Samson leaned into the movement, driving the metal head into the creature’s open mouth.
The monster flailed toward the Nightingale, not even bothering to bite down. Heloise watched the pike shaft begin to bow. Samson slammed one boot against the butt-spike, desperately trying to make it stick fast in the smooth stone. But he simply didn’t weigh enough on his own, and the metal skittered and shifted along the floor, scratching a long line in the black stone. Slowly, her father was pushed back toward the Congregation.
The Nightingale’s song rose higher, and Heloise could see the Congregation standing stock still, chins lifted, voices raised to the ceiling as if the song itself were pulling them up toward the rattling windows, just beginning to show a spiderweb of cracks spreading across their uneven surface.