His legs and hips hugged stone. He sucked air through his teeth as he leaned forward until his eyes barely peeked over the edge of the ramparts and down, down, down the tower to the city directly below.
This used to be a rite of passage. Young operators would come out here the first night they were assigned to the Eye, to look out over the city they had sworn to protect. I did this, once. Hindra, too. He remembered her laughing when he told her how he had done it, too. How funny she found that.
It was difficult to see exactly what was happening. Smoke poured up toward him from the tower below. His lungs hacked, rejecting the haze. Beyond the smoke, bright flames licked the side of the tower—perhaps around the thirty-seventh, maybe the fortieth floor—and chunks of stone were falling, falling, falling the many stories down to the city below. The shot must have been filled with explosives, Terris realized. A simple boulder would never cause fire like this.
“Terris, get down from there, please!”
Terris listened to Hindra this time, and edged backwards.
“Are you two coming?”
Terris and Hindra looked up to see General Marshton had recovered himself. Every hint of his former terror was gone.
“Where—?”
“We’re descending the tower, getting out of here before the whole thing topples.”
We won’t be able to, Terris thought, not if that fire reached the tower’s core. But he and Hindra followed Marshton and his entourage anyway. They stumbled into the stairwell, running into the back of the general as he skidded to a halt.
The other officers and aides had stopped at the platform at the top of the stairs, all of them looking down, faces pale but the horror on them accented by a faint, flickering orange glow.
When Terris moved to the railing, he saw the fire. It was about ten flights down, and slowly licking its way up. Glowing orange-yellow embers burned where the flames were hottest, and blazing timbers and red-hot chunks of masonry toppled down the open spiral staircase at irregular intervals.
Smoke stung his eyes, and the smell of it was strangely chemical, somehow more toxic and irritating to his nose, eyes, and throat than typical woodsmoke.
“We’re trapped!” one of the aides shouted. Someone else cried heavy shaking sobs.
“Oh Goddess, oh Goddess, oh Goddess…”
General Marshton’s commanding presence once again deflated as he stared blankly at the impassable staircase below them. Terris saw Hindra blinking back tears, and took her hand. She looked at him, surprised but grateful, and squeezed his hand in return.
The entire tower shuddered, and Terris’s stomach leapt into his throat. He felt as if he’d dropped a full two or three rods. He felt as if—
He had no time to think about what he felt like next, as the floor gave way beneath him, and he found himself falling, gripping Hindra’s hand and falling, amidst stone and metal and debris and fire and smoke and awful, awful terror.
* * *
The trebuchet had already fired twice by the time Knot reached it. Knot had only confirmed Winter’s presence with the tiellans two days ago, but based on what he’d heard of the Chaos Queen, what he’d seen of Winter in his vision, she had to be behind the war machine.
The first two missiles had both landed in the city, on seemingly inconsequential targets. Why use such a weapon if she couldn’t control it? Why risk innocent lives?
Hadn’t Winter learned her lesson from Navone?
But now he watched the third projectile sail toward the city. A weary hollowness grew within him when it slammed into God’s Eye, three-quarters of the way up the tower, in a burst of fire and debris.
Knot was surprised that the tower still stood. Whether or not it would remain that way for long he could not say, but there was a chance it might not fall. Goddess, how he hoped the tower wouldn’t fall.
Winter was perched halfway up the frame of the big trebuchet. She remained there, gripping the wooden frame, the wind blowing stray strands of hair across her face.
She looks different, Knot thought. She is different.
Winter looked down. Their eyes met, but Winter showed no surprise, no anger, no joy. None of the emotions Knot had suspected. Instead, only sadness.
Knot heard a gasp behind him, followed by a distant rumbling, and turned.
* * *
Cinzia had not led the others very far when she heard a loud crack, followed by a low rumble. She stopped in her tracks, looking up at God’s Eye, towering above her now, high above the other buildings around them.
The sounds were this: another crack, and then a series of them, moving progressively faster, closer together, louder and louder and more jumbled and becoming more and more a single, steady, ominous roar.
The sight was this: God’s Eye, standing tall, a burning, gaping, smoking wound on its side in one moment, and then what appeared to be a cloud of dust and smoke circling upward, all around the very top floors of the tower. That cloud of dust descended, slowly at first, but picking up speed, and as it descended Cinzia realized the entire tower was falling with it. She watched God’s Eye crumble to the ground, and she stood only a few hundred rods away.
Her reaction was this: Cinzia turned and ran. She grabbed Jane’s hand and tugged her sister along with all her might, grabbed Ocrestia’s hand, too. She screamed for everyone to run at the top of her lungs, and thank the Goddess they obeyed her for once, or they obeyed their instincts, because it was all Cinzia could do to keep control of her feet as they sprinted wildly away from the destruction. As they ran and as the tower collapsed behind them, a dark, billowing cloud of dust and debris pursued them, and soon Cinzia and all of the disciples and Prelates were encompassed by the dark. Grit dug into her eyes, Cinzia coughed in the thick haze, but she still ran, pressing on and on until she was free of the cloud, and out in the daylight once more.
A terrible, hacking cough folded her in half. Her dress, once a soft teal, was completely gray, caked in a thick layer of dust and ash. When she could finally stand, she saw the others looked the same, completely gray from head to toe.
“Is everyone all right?” Jane shouted, and the disciples began to respond. Eward helped Elessa up from the ground. He was nothing but a gray man with a small patch of pink on one cheek.
The dust cloud loomed, still thick and musty but slowly, slowly clearing. Above, Cinzia saw blue sky, and nothing, nothing at all, where God’s Eye had once stood.
* * *
On the bow of the Reckoner, Cova stood watching the Triahn skyline. At first she’d found herself quite bored; a large trebuchet hurled missiles at the city, but it seemed to be firing quite slowly, and not hitting any targets worth noting. The third missile, however, had been different.
Cova gasped in shock as a great cloud of fire and smoke erupted from the side of God’s Eye. She’d felt a sick sense of terror, at first, but beneath that a low thrill.
This was what Winter had promised her. This was what she and her fleet had waited for.
She wondered why it felt so much like a defeat.
Cova’s shock turned to horror when the upper levels dissolved in a cloud of smoke, collapsing downward into the levels below them. One floor collapsed into another, and those two into the next, and this continued in an increasingly rapid chain reaction until the entire tower rushed down on itself, like a spring recoiling, but recoiling infinitely, losing all of its energy until it recoiled into nothing at all. A cloud of dust and debris belched forth through the streets of Triah, originating at the tower’s base. The black, billowing monster, waves of dust and smoke and ash and rock and terror building and building upon itself, growing and spurting outward, hunting through the streets, seeking and annihilating everything in its path. Jetting from the collapsing tower like fire from the mouth of a dragon from the Age of Marvels.
She could not help but wonder how many people had been in that tower when it fell, and how many people the collapse crushed on the ground. She could not imagine the casualties.
&
nbsp; And, most of them, she had to imagine, were civilian.
“What have we done?” Cova asked out loud, her voice seeming far too small against the lap of the ocean on the hull, the call of seagulls in the distance, and the low rumbling sound that sent a chill down her spine as it reached them, moments after the tower had actually fallen.
“We did not do this, Your Grace,” Andia said. “The blood shed here—”
“It is as much on our hands as it is anyone’s,” Cova snapped.
But is this not what you wanted? You came here to conquer Khale. Conquering inevitably means casualties, sacrifices made.
“Not like this,” Cova said aloud.
As the smoky haze cleared, Cova saw Triah’s skyline, starkly different for the absence of what had once been the tallest tower the Sfaera had ever seen.
“What are your orders, Your Grace?” Admiral Rakkar asked beside her.
Cova wiped her cheeks, noticing for the first time the tears streaming down them. She cleared her throat, and took a few deep breaths to dispel the heavy pit in her stomach. She wanted to double over and vomit, and not because she was seasick.
They had come all this way. She could bring her forces back to Roden now, without doing what they came here to do. She could not tell her Ruling Council that she had looked victory in the face, and given it up.
The deep breaths did not help.
Ruling Council be damned. She was an Empress, and she would not act unless she was sure it was the best course.
“For now,” Cova said, her breath catching, “we wait.”
* * *
Carrieri’s right palm pressed against the glass of the western window of the Merchant’s Tower. His fingers flexed and strained, as if trying to break their way out.
Dust, smoke, and ash spilled upward into the air, a sickening contrast to the beautiful, bright blue autumn day. Not a cloud in the sky, but plenty on the ground.
“Illaran?” Carrieri asked, his voice hoarse.
When the man did not respond, Carrieri turned to face the Nazaniin.
Illaran stood behind Carrieri and to the right, staring out the window, his face so pale it could have passed for bone.
“Illaran.”
The Nazaniin started, his eyes slowly shifting toward Carrieri.
“Sir…”
“What of the black offensive?”
“I have no contact with them.”
“What was your last report?”
“That they had found the Chaos Queen, and were converging on her position. That was before the trebuchet fired the last round.”
And no contact since. They were dead, almost certainly. Captured in a best-case scenario, but Carrieri had not seen a best-case scenario in far too long.
“The Hood Regiment?” Carrieri asked.
“They are still engaged with the tiellan force,” the man said slowly, “but they say the battle stopped for a full minute, between when the Eye was struck and when it collapsed.”
“Is the trebuchet reloading?” Carrieri asked. Without the black offensive’s eyes, the Hood Regiment offered his best intel on the weapon.
Silence. Carrieri looked back at the psimancer, annoyed, but the man’s eyes were wide.
What now?
“The war machine has been disabled. Or perhaps destroyed, they cannot be certain, but it does not appear the weapon will fire again.”
Carrieri blinked in disbelief. His men murmured excitedly.
“Say that again.”
“The war machine has been disabled,” the psimancer said, more confidently this time.
“By whom?”
“They think it might have been the tiellans themselves,” the psimancer said slowly. “They say the sling and reloading mechanism have been removed, and the arm is about to be detached from the frame. They can see it happening.”
Carrieri turned on his heel and walked quickly to the northern windows. Sure enough, as he looked up at the cliffs, the arm wobbled on the trebuchet’s frame.
He allowed himself one short, wretched sigh of relief.
“And the battle with the tiellans?”
“The regiment has sustained minimal casualties, but has not gained any ground.”
“Order the retreat,” Carrieri said immediately, his mind made up. Enough blood had been shed today. With the Eye down, a larger foe was on the horizon.
“Are you sure, Grand Marshal?”
Carrieri could feel the tensity thick in the air around him. The viscous confusion. His men wanted revenge for what had just happened, Carrieri understood that. But they would not get it now. Not with such a small skirmish, that had accomplished so little. Not when the Chaos Queen herself could turn her attention to the battle, now, and slaughter every last Legionary on that cliff.
“Order the retreat,” Carrieri repeated, calm leaking from him far too rapidly for his liking. “Man our ships, get them battle-ready. Man the…” The thought made him sick. “Man the war machines along the sea wall. Keep an eye on the tiellans on the cliffs, be prepared for any advance on their part, but now that the Eye is gone, the main threat is Roden.”
Carrieri’s throat caught, as the full weight of what he had just witnessed crashed down on him. The people who had been killed. What the entire city must have witnessed. The fear that surely roiled in the heart of every Triahn citizen.
“We fight the battles that need to be fought today,” Carrieri’s voice was firm. “We have a city to defend. After that…”
Carrieri turned to face everyone in the room: his advisors, his aides, his lieutenants, the psimancers. “After that,” he said, “we must… we must…” They must what? Respond? Retaliate? What in Oblivion sort of response did this situation call for?
“Rebuild,” Carrieri finally said.
Because he’d be damned, he’d be damned to Oblivion a thousand times, if he let the tiellans defeat them like this.
* * *
Winter leapt down the last few rods, landing easily on the long grass. As she stood, three tendra snaked out behind her, each carrying a blade. One snaked to the War Goddess’s sling, severing the thick rope from the beam. The other two sought the ropes holding the counterweight, slicing each load-bearing cord. The counterweight fell to the ground with an earth-shattering crash of splintering wood and cracking stone.
But Winter did not care about any of that, because she was already rushing to meet him, as fast as her feet would carry her.
She had seen him the moment she loosed the third shot from the War Goddess. She had sensed him before she saw him, on the lower edges of her vision, standing on the grass looking up at her. There was no explanation, no logic behind her thoughts, only feeling. How was he alive? How was he here? And, in all Oblivion, why now?
But here he was, nevertheless, and Winter could not stop the flood of emotions that bubbled up from her. For the first time since Eranda’s death, she found herself sobbing as she launched herself into his arms.
Knot wrapped his arms around her as she barreled into him, but Winter immediately sensed his caution. And why wouldn’t he be cautious? He had just seen her kill hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. Winter could not pretend the blame lay with anyone else; she did not want to pretend the blame lay with anyone else. She had done what she had done. Reasons and costs aside, Chaos and prophecies and Nine Daemons aside, she had done it.
She also knew Knot couldn’t possibly see things that way, at least not now. And even if she explained everything to him, he might never forgive her.
But that was a conversation for another time, Winter had to remind herself. That time was not now.
Slowly they separated, standing awkwardly at arm’s length.
This time, she was glad he did not kiss her. She remembered wishing he would, when they were together in Navone and Roden, but things were different, now. Goddess, she was different, now.
“I thought you were dead,” Winter said.
Knot cocked his head to the side, and Winter caught a hint
of quizzicality. “Thought the same thing about you. Up until… a while ago.”
A while? Winter wondered what that meant, but dared not ask.
Winter shook her head, still in disbelief that this was real. Still in shock that Knot was standing before her. And, eclipsing those two sentiments, the ever-growing horror.
I thought I was alone, this whole time. I thought he was gone, I…
If she’d known he was alive, she might not have survived. She might have waited for him to rescue her from that cell in Roden, waiting for a man who didn’t even know she was there…
“So… what do we do now?” Winter asked.
Knot closed his eyes, and for a moment Winter wondered whether he would respond at all.
“Don’t know, darlin’,” he said quietly. “But we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
34
“WE HAVE TO GET out of here,” Elessa said, pointing east, toward the Odenite camp. Dark rain clouds—so different from the horrible mass that had come from the Eye, and yet so similar in appearance—continued to roll across the sky, and Cinzia felt the first few drops of rain fall on her skin. The water was cold, even through the layers of dust that caked her. “We have spent far too long in this city already. It’s too dangerous. We cannot risk our lives—we cannot risk your life, Jane.”
Jane had been silent since they had run together from the oncoming dust cloud. That silence continued, as Jane stared intently at the ground.
“Is she all right?” Lucia asked.
Cinzia had her eyes trained on her sister. What would Jane have them do this time? Where would her sister’s visions, or whatever they were, lead them after this?
A film of gray dust still covered all of them, even after vigorous brushing and patting. They stood huddled at the side of the road; people had been running back and forth along the street—away from the collapse of the Eye—generally ignoring their group. Eward and his Prelates stood forming a loose circle around the disciples, but their protection was largely unnecessary. There were much more important things for everyone else to focus on right now.
Chaos Queen--Fear the Stars (Chaos Queen 4) Page 33