The City Darkens (Raud Grima Book 1)

by Martin, Sophia

  “Move,” I whispered to Reister, who obliged me by shuffling to the side. While the shard never left the wound it was digging into Reister’s skin, I pushed Bersi through the door. I peered at Reister, my eyebrows raised. “Follow us, and I will finish you.”

  With a quick movement I crouched and scooped up the gun, dropping the shard to do so. I leveled the pistol at him and backed away, keeping Bersi behind me so he had to navigate the debris for us both. Reister stood in the doorway of my room and watched us go, silent.

  ~~~

  Just after we exited the robots’ lift, in the last of the robots’ hallways, an unimaginable bang rocked the palace. I grabbed Bersi to me as a rumble followed that made my teeth chatter. When it ended, Bersi looked up at me, his face pale, and I squeezed his shoulders. “We must be very brave, dearling,” I said to him. “It’s dangerous outside, and I think it’s getting worse. It’s like a war. Do you remember studying wars in your history lessons?”

  Bersi nodded.

  “It’s going to be frightening, but we must go through the streets if we’re to escape,” I told him. “Do you understand?”

  He nodded again.

  “Alright then, hold my hand as tight as you can.”

  When we reached the street, I saw that I was right: things had gotten worse. What I noticed first was the smoke. It was dusk, but the smoke darkened the air. When night finally fell it would be like walking through a void, except for the light shed by flames. There were more fires, and as we increased the distance between ourselves and the palace, I saw why.

  An aeroplane flew across the sky, and small black things fell from it. When they landed an explosion pulverized a small group of buildings in the distance. We heard the blast, but it was too far to shake us as the previous bombing had. That one had destroyed a corner of the palace, I saw. We were fortunate it was the corner opposite the robots’ quarters, or we would not have survived.

  Rubble from the bombings littered the streets, and navigating through them was harder than before. I remembered the night of the masked ball, and how I been grateful that the special mask I wore didn’t show me the blood and skulls of the courtiers then. Little did I know I would see bones and blood enough to make up for it now. Gunfire ripped through the air. I would have wrapped my body around Bersi’s to protect him if I could. As it was, we needed to move faster.

  “Alright, dearest,” I said in his ear. “I shall carry you on my back.”

  Without a word he grabbed my lowered shoulder and as I swung him up he wrapped his legs tightly around my waist. As soon as he was secure, I began to run.

  Ahead of me lay the wide avenue, ruins of burnt out cars smoking, bodies strewn like autumn leaves, puddles of blood, burning trees in the center divide… My ears picked up the whine of an aeroplane overhead—was it the same one?—coming closer.

  I dodged corpses and debris, racing to leave the palace far behind, for no doubt it would make the most attractive target for the bomber. Sure enough, as the whine turned into an awful drone, a screech preceded another resounding detonation behind me. The ground beneath my feet buckled and whipped, and I landed on my knees as chunks of palace concrete whizzed through the air. Bersi fell from my back and I rolled to cover him.

  Thunder followed the explosion as one side of the palace collapsed.

  I swept Bersi into my arms and ran for the cover of the shell of an automobile. Across the avenue a group of five people—so bloodied and ragged I could not say whether they were courtiers or rebels—ran from an alley down the avenue and disappeared into billowing smoke. The last one pointed up just as he did. Following his gesture, I made out two aeroplanes in the air. A third joined them, but under its wings flashes of fire lit the darkening sky. It was shooting at one of the other two. The one not targeted doubled round and began shooting at the interloper.

  But beyond that battle, in the sky above the Temple, I saw still more silhouettes of planes, and after a breath, the Temple exploded into shards of glass and twisted iron bars. At last my dreams were coming true, but the consequence might be our deaths if I couldn’t reach Kolorma in time. And when we did find Kolorma, what then? How would we escape the city, when no doubt all of the docks on the island and the Torc must be packed with refugees?

  I would have to worry about that later. For now, simply escaping this avenue was all I could handle. I wondered whether it would be safer in the Undergrunnsby. Surely it was far more deserted, although perhaps others had thought of it, and unless a bomb hit at street level, it might withstand the blasts.

  Or we could be trapped in a cave-in, or crushed.

  Above us, the second bomber’s gunfire hit the aeroplane that had attacked the first. Its wings poured black smoke and it began a sharp descent. My eyes widened as it curved and came straight for us.

  Hauling Bersi over one shoulder, I sprinted from our spot by the husk of the car as fast as my legs would go. The aeroplane’s dive caused a rising scream in the air. When it hit the building just behind where we had been, it was like a bomb itself. My feet flew out from under me again. Bersi and I landed hard. Bersi cried out. Rock and mortar rained down everywhere.

  I had to try the Undergrunnsby. We simply could not expect to survive out in the open like this.

  Scooping my poor sobbing Bersi up again, aware that his arm was badly scraped and that his knees were both bleeding, I raced for the nearest side street and began following an old route to the nearest entrance to the underground tunnels. When I came to it, I gave one last look around at the outside. I hoped it was not the last time I would see it.

  As I hesitated at the mouth of the Undergrunnsby, I prayed, “Dear Luka, let my last trick be surviving this disaster. Let me save my son and escape with Kolorma, and I will ever praise your name to anyone who will listen. No longer will people only remember you as the murderer-god who betrayed Baldr, but as the patron-god of Myadar Sölbói, known as Raud Gríma, who lit the spark that ended Helésey!”

  With that, I jogged down the stairs.

  The tunnels were dark. The lights were not functioning. With a growl of frustration, I set Bersi down, cradling his face in my hands. “Stay here, my love,” I said to him, and kissed his forehead. I ran back up to the street and sprinted to the avenue. I found a piece of metal that had probably once been part of the frame of a car, and I removed a coat from a corpse, holding my breath to fight rising nausea. It wasn’t hard to find a fire. I tore strips of the fabric and wrapped the top and the bottom of the bar with them, tying them tightly. I held the bottom and lit the top, and ran back to the stairs.

  Bersi remained where I had left him, the light from my torch illuminating his large, dark blue eyes, full of terror.

  “I’m here,” I said, reaching out my hand. He grasped it, and we ran, although I had to slow to a jog so he could keep up.

  The tunnels to the opera house were very familiar to me, of course, but I had never had to navigate the Undergrunnsby without its electric lights. I hoped I would not become lost. I hoped no one was down here, bent on attacking those who would try to use the shafts to escape the chaos above. In those two hopes, I was gratified.

  However, as we neared the end of our route, a cracking din above signaled another bombing, and the noise only continued to grow in volume after the initial blast. It grew into a crashing thunder, and I knew that behind us, the tunnels were collapsing.

  No time to hesitate—I grabbed Bersi round the waist, holding the torch in my other hand, and bolted for the nearest exit—even as the booming destruction gained on us. I could not hold him like that for long, but I could not drop the torch, or we would be lost. Even as the floor began to shake under our feet, I saw a staircase and dragged Bersi to it. Dropping the burning torch, I hitched him up into my arms and took the stairs two at a time.

  Above, the dark was not absolute, although night had fallen. Even as we cleared the tunnels, the road above them crumbled, annihilating the foundations of buildings on the north side of the street. One after a
nother, the buildings disintegrated, throwing debris out like shrapnel. Between the cave in of the street behind us and the buildings falling around us, we were far from free of the threat of imminent death. I clutched my son and ran.

  Finally we left the catastrophe of the collapse of the Undergrunnsby behind as I turned north and then east, rushing towards the opera house. As the immediate danger subsided, for the first time I took note of the agony of my own body.

  My lungs burned from running and inhaling smoke. My arms ached with fatigue, as did my legs. My eyes felt singed, and my skin, and I was covered in a thick layer of dust. The fabric of my britches down one leg was split open, as was the skin beneath it. Bersi wasn’t much better off, although he had sustained no new wounds since the plane crash. His blood stained his sleeve and pants, and he looked very pale.

  I stopped to catch my breath in the alcove of a building perhaps two blocks from our destination. My heart urged me to move on, but my body would not comply. I set Bersi down and brushed him off as best I could without touching his injuries.

  Bersi was not crying anymore, but he pushed past my hands and wrapped his arms around my waist, burying his face in my abdomen. I stroked his hair and whispered to him.

  “It’s almost over,” I told him. “We’re almost there.”

  As the pain in my body subsided, a feeling of weight increased—I was exhausted, and if I didn’t move now, I might succumb to the exhaustion despite how close we were to the meeting place. Would Kolorma even be there?

  I took Bersi’s hand again, and pushed my legs to walk. Running was too much to ask, unless another danger arose. We would go the rest of the way more slowly, I decided. Besides, it might not be such a bad idea to take care in our approach. I could not imagine why anyone else would want anything to do with the opera house, but one never could tell.

  In fact, the opera house had been hit in a bombing. The closer we came to it, the louder the sound of flames. As we finally turned the last corner, we saw the huge half-orb cracked like an egg, and a monstrous bonfire rising out of it. All around, the colorful stones that had decorated the walls lay in pieces on the concrete. Bersi and I skirted the edge of the surrounding buildings, and I widened my irritated eyes, trying to see in the light of the blaze any figure who waited there.

  Finally we completed the periphery, and I had to accept that no one was waiting for us. The heat from the fire warmed the air even as far away from it as we were. I did not know what else to do, so I found an alcove and settled into it, leaning on our bag of food, taking Bersi onto my lap, and wrapping my arms around him.

  “We must wait,” I whispered into his ear, and he rested his head against my chest.

  Nothing compared to this moment, holding my child in my arms again, feeling his cheek against my chest, listening to his breathing—which I could hear despite the crackling of the flames. My Bersi. My beautiful son.

  ~~~

  “Myadar!”

  I opened my eyes. It was dawn, and the opera house was a smoking ruin. I turned my face; standing to the left of me was Kolorma. Bersi still slept in my arms.

  “You came,” I breathed.

  “Of course I came,” Kolorma said. “How long have you been here? I checked last night, but you hadn’t arrived yet.”

  “I must have just missed you. I don’t think it was very long after nightfall that we got here,” I said.

  “You’re injured!”

  I glanced at my leg. Shifting Bersi’s weight, the wound exploded with pain. I grimaced. “So I am,” I admitted through clenched teeth.

  Bersi stirred and opened his eyes. He blinked up at me and then caught sight of Kolorma. I felt his body stiffen.

  “Bersi, this is my friend,” I said. I watched him scrutinize her warily. “What shall he call you?” I asked her.

  “Kolorma,” she said immediately. “I’m leaving ‘jöfurdis’ behind.”

  “Well, then,” I said with a quick smile for her. I turned to my son. “This is Kolorma. Do you know what she knows how to do, my love?”

  Bersi frowned at me.

  “She knows how to fly aeroplanes.”

  His forehead became even more deeply wrinkled. “Like the ones that made the buildings explode?”

  I weighed my answer. “I suppose so,” I said, deciding it would only confuse him to try to make a distinction.

  He considered this. “Will you show me how?” he asked her.

  Kolorma gazed at him with a serious expression. “I’ve no intention of blowing up buildings, my young friend,” she said to him. “But I would gladly teach you to fly, once we’re very far from here.”

  A blank look passed over Bersi’s face as he thought this through, and then a smile broke over it, brighter than the dawn light. “I should very much like to learn to fly,” he said, glancing at me.

  I smirked and gave him a quick squeeze. “Very well, sweetling, we shall see to flying lessons as soon as possible.” I motioned to Kolorma to help get him up. “But in the meantime, we must escape this wretched city.”

  As we stood I saw that beyond Kolorma, an army truck idled. Dihauti, dressed in coarse laborer’s clothes, was at the wheel. When he saw me, he waved.

  “You’ve fared better than me,” I noted.

  “After the—” Kolorma glanced at Bersi as we headed for the car, our pace slowed by my significant limp. “The end of the konunger threw the army into Lukan chaos.”

  She slipped an arm around my waist, supporting me while I held Bersi’s hand.

  “It wasn’t as difficult as you might expect to steal a truck,” she said. “Although I think our next theft may be quite a bit more complicated.”

  We arrived at the truck and made our way around to the passenger side. Bersi went in first, and Kolorma helped me up next. Dihauti reached across Bersi to offer me a hand, which I clutched in gratitude. Once we were all settled, Dihauti began to drive. Kolorma took my hand in hers and held it in her lap, while looking out the passenger window as if the gesture was the most normal thing in the world. A lump formed in my throat, and I had to cough to clear it when Dihauti began speaking to me.

  “Quite effective, your performance at the Tyrablót,” he said as he guided the truck through the deserted streets. So far, we remained in a neighborhood more or less untouched by the revolution. I took the opportunity to open the bag I still carried and share the cheese and apples.

  “What’s the Tyrablót?” Bersi asked, frowning at me.

  “It was an event the konunger and the high vigja put on,” I said, handing him a piece of cheese, then giving Kolorma an apple.

  Dihauti peered at me over Bersi’s head, his eyebrows raised. I didn’t know what else to say about it, however. Bersi had no need to know my role in that event, either when it came to what the konunger had planned for me, or how things turned out in the end.

  “I’m quite lucky,” Dihauti said, “that you decided to protect Kolorma and not yourself. I’ve been waiting to thank you for that.”

  I squinted, puzzling out his meaning as I chewed a bit of cheese, and then it occurred to me that he and the headsman had both worn black hoods over their faces, and had I decided to try to escape hanging, I might have shot Dihauti as the hangman.

  “You’re welcome,” I replied, and considered asking how Dihauti had come to impersonate an executioner. With Bersi listening I decided it best to save the question for later. Instead, I added, “And I should thank you for constructing a very faulty… structure.” I almost said gallows, but Bersi was looking from Dihauti to me, listening intently. I could see that he was tucking the conversation away to be brought up again later; I was not about to escape having to come up with an explanation for what we avoided saying.

  “That, my dear Jarldis, was only a matter of returning a previous favor,” Dihauti said.

  “No more ‘jarldis’ for me,” I said with a glance at Kolorma, who smirked at me as she ate a bite of apple. “Please just call me Myadar.”

  “But you’ve al
ways been jarldis,” Bersi put in.

  I rubbed his back reassuringly. “Yes, love, but everything is changing, now. We’re leaving this place and starting new lives, and it’s best to leave behind old titles when you do something like that. I shan’t change my name. I shall always be Myadar.” Although perhaps not Myadar Sölbói. I would have to give that some thought.

  Bersi frowned but didn’t protest, instead turning his attention to his cheese.

  “But tell me, Dihauti, what favor were you repaying?” I asked.

  He raised his thick, dark eyebrows in surprise. “You don’t know? Well, I suppose that will do my vanity some good.”

  As she swallowed the last of her apple, Kolorma’s smirk widened to a full smile. “I told you she had no idea.”

  “No idea about what?” I demanded.

  “The night you stormed Grumflein prison to rescue Jarl Madr,” Dihauti said.

  “I hardly stormed it—”

  “Nonsense,” Dihauti said. He turned and gave Bersi a significant look. “It was marvelous.”

  Bersi’s eyes widened and I added the story of my rescue of Madr to the list of things I would have to find a way to talk to him about.

  “Your mother wanted to save someone she didn’t even know who was trapped in Grumflein,” Dihauti said, saving me the trouble. “So she released dozens and dozens of prisoners all at once!”

  Bersi stared at me, his mouth slack.

  “The guards were in complete disarray,” Dihauti continued. “She even broke the locks on a half a dozen cells in the upper prison. I was in one of those cells. I thought she freed me on purpose, but I suppose I was being prideful in such a belief.”

  “Why did you want to free someone you didn’t even know?” Bersi asked me.

  “I was doing it for someone who did know him,” I said, handing Dihauti a piece of cheese. “A very nice man, who was helping me a great deal, and at personal risk. The man I rescued was his friend.”

  “How did you do it?” Bersi asked. “How did you free so many prisoners?”