Quarrah nodded in understanding. She’d handled plenty of crossbows. And she’d have ample time to line up a good shot from atop the low barracks roofs.
“What about me?” Lomaya asked.
“You should go with Quarrah,” Raek said.
“Why me?” Quarrah asked, before realizing that it made Lomaya sound like unwanted goods.
“You’ll need someone to help you identify San Green,” Raek explained.
“And you won’t?” Quarrah asked.
“I’ve seen him twice,” answered Raek. “I spoke with him in Portsend’s lab, and then I saw a very convincing wax replica of his severed head.”
“What?” Lomaya cried in horror.
“Don’t be jealous,” Raek said. “There was one of you, too. Anyway, I’m thinking I’ll recognize him when I see him again.”
“All right.” Quarrah glanced at Lomaya Vans. The girl didn’t look overly stealthy, but Quarrah had a bit of Silence Grit if they needed it.
Raek slung his pack onto his shoulders again. “Give me at least twenty minutes to get into position. Then light it up. If we get separated, don’t wait. I’ll meet you back at Tofar’s Salts.”
Lomaya followed Quarrah closely as they set off in the opposite direction. They took their time, but not just for Raek’s sake. Over the years, Quarrah had learned that rushing a stealth mission was the quickest way to get caught.
They rounded the corner, moving along the back side of the compound wall until Quarrah brought up a hand to stop them. She reached to her belt, pulling out a little mesh bag of Grit.
“I’ve never Drift Jumped before,” Lomaya suddenly whispered in her ear.
Oh, great. How many ways could this go wrong?
“You’ll feel a sensation of weightlessness,” Quarrah whispered back. “Makes some people sick the first few times.”
“Oh, I’ve been in a Drift cloud,” Lomaya replied. “I’ve just never had to jump through one. I understand the basic concept. I’m just wondering how you compensate for wind resistance and aerodynamics.”
Sparks. Lomaya was really overthinking this.
“I just sort of line it up and… jump,” Quarrah replied. That answer was clearly too basic for Lomaya’s scientific mind. “Listen,” she continued, “we only need to make it to the top of the wall. You should be able to see enough from there while I move onto the rooftops to make the shot.”
Quarrah crouched down, Lomaya following suit.
“Hold on to something,” Quarrah whispered. Innocently, Lomaya reached out and grabbed her arm.
That would do.
Quarrah gripped a fistful of grass and pitched her little bag of Drift Grit against the face of the stone wall. It detonated successfully, enveloping her and Lomaya in a cloud of weightlessness.
“We can jump together,” Quarrah said, throwing an arm around the other woman’s shoulder. Lomaya nodded vigorously, visibly anxious. Quarrah counted down from three and they sprang upward.
The Drift cloud was large enough to see them all the way to the top of the wall. Quarrah reached out and gripped the capstone, steadying the two of them until Lomaya could successfully swing her leg over the wall, straddling it like a horse.
Quarrah pointed across the flat roofs of the soldiers’ barracks and waited for Lomaya to acknowledge that she recognized the officers’ quarters. The only movement came from a few tired cultists adjourning to their rooms after a late-night gawking at their Glassmind leaders.
Multiple orbs of Light Grit illuminated the area, easily allowing Quarrah to spot the Glassmind stationed at the back door to the officers’ quarters. She gestured for Lomaya to stay low on the wall. Then she gauged the distance to the nearest roof. There was enough overspill from the Drift cloud that she had no trouble making it.
She landed nimbly on the roof, but one of the clay shingles broke, clattering down the eave and tumbling over the edge. She cursed silently. Weren’t these barracks only three years old? Why were they already in such disrepair?
Quarrah held still until she was sure the sound hadn’t attracted any attention. Then she pulled the crossbow off her back and ratcheted the string into place. Carefully, she took Raek’s bolt of Blast Grit from her side pocket and laid it into the weapon.
This was a long shot for a crossbow with a bolt this heavy. Luckily, she didn’t have to be accurate. Still, she’d have to aim high to compensate for the fall over such a distance.
Kneeling for stability, Quarrah tucked the crossbow’s stock against her shoulder. Sighting down the bolt, she squeezed the trigger, not even seeing where it hit before her eyes squinted shut against a deafening blast of flames and smoke. She dropped to her stomach, dust and fine debris raining over her back.
Screams tore through the night, spreading across the compound like a landslide of terror. Quarrah lifted her face to examine her handiwork. A good portion of the roof had been blown off, and the top floor was all aflame.
The Glassmind guard crouched at the base of the building, both hands over her head. The falling debris sloughed to either side of her, blocked by some sort of unseen shield. Probably Barrier Grit, manipulated in a moment’s notice to create a uniquely shaped shield.
“That’s him!” Lomaya screamed from atop the wall, her voice blending with the chaos. It took Quarrah a moment to see who she was talking about. A young man, accompanied by another Glassmind, had just emerged from the back door, his captor pushing him forward frantically. Before Quarrah could even rise, they had disappeared around the corner of the building.
All right, Raek, she thought. They’re coming your way.
But Quarrah wasn’t going to leave him to face the enemy alone. She dropped the crossbow. No point in lugging that thing around without any bolts. Turning over her shoulder, she shouted instructions to Lomaya.
“Jump down! Circle around the outside of the compound and meet us by the front gate!”
Without waiting to see how she’d respond, Quarrah leapt to her feet and sprinted across the barracks roof. Reaching the edge, she twisted, dropping down and catching the eave to break her fall. She braced her feet against the wall and dropped to the packed dirt.
It wasn’t going to be hard to slip past that backdoor Glassmind—Quarrah would just blend in with the people running in every direction. Maybe there was more merit to this bombastic tactic than she’d ever given credit. It was certainly a far cry from her usual leave-no-trace approach.
As Quarrah sped past, she saw the Glassmind woman reaching her arms toward the burning building, manipulating some kind of Grit cloud in an effort to quell the fire. What type could do that? It looked like Gather Grit, Compounded to such an intensity that it was drawing the flames together to a central point, pulling them away from fresh combustibles and choking them out.
If Quarrah was right—if the Glassminds had Gather Grit, then they probably knew about the other types of liquid Grit, too. Sparks, she and Raek would have no advantage over these beings.
Ahead, she saw San Green and his Glassmind escort entering the open dining pavilion. Beyond, the training yard was a jumble of chaos as hundreds of cultists tried to pour out the front gate with no semblance of order.
Quarrah doubled her speed. San wasn’t shackled or tied. If she could pull him away from the Glassmind, they might be able to slip into the throng and escape without a fight.
She caught up to them on the far side of the pavilion. The Glassmind man had paused, one hand gripping the back of San’s neck as if he were a small child in need of discipline. Quarrah couldn’t tell what the man was doing, holding perfectly still, overlooking the confusion in the yard.
She was close enough now that she regretted not having a gun. Her knife seemed sorely insufficient against the muscled figure ahead. She needed something big and blunt. Some way to shatter her foe’s skull before he knew what had hit him.
Quarrah yanked out another bag of Drift Grit and hurled it ahead of her, the detonation filling the aisle between two long tables. She’
d judged the distance perfectly, the perimeter of the cloud stopping just behind San and the Glassmind, not tipping them off to her presence.
With a grunt, Quarrah hoisted one of the wooden benches onto her shoulder. She ran forward, trying to gain as much momentum as she could before reaching the cloud.
She hurled the long bench into the Drift detonation, watching it sail forward. Her own momentum sent her tumbling into the cloud behind it, but she managed to grab the edge of a grounded table, steadying herself in time to see the bench find its mark.
It struck the Glassmind in the back of the neck, missing his red skull by mere inches. But the unexpected force was enough to send him toppling forward, losing his grip on his prisoner.
“San!” Quarrah shouted, pulling herself along the edge of the table. “Run!”
The young man looked back at her, confused. Frightened. Then he bolted for the yard. Quarrah exited the Drift cloud and hit the ground running just feet behind him.
Just when she thought they might make it, something grabbed her from behind. She swatted at it, but an invisible force had yanked her off her feet, dragging her back toward the pavilion.
Partway there, she collided with San, a tangle of arms and legs as they squirmed against the power drawing them in. Quarrah saw the Glassmind on his knees, just outside the Drift detonation, hands outstretched to manipulate a cloud of his own.
This was Gather Grit without a doubt. And with seemingly little effort, their enemy was gathering them both back to him.
“I have found the intruder,” she heard the Glassmind say. His strange enhanced voice was calm and controlled, not possibly loud enough for anyone but her and San to hear. “I’ll hold them in the dining area.”
He rose to his full height as Quarrah and San rolled to a halt at his feet. Dizzy and disoriented, she pushed herself up onto her elbows just in time to see a figure sprinting through the pavilion toward them.
It was Raekon Dorrel. He was unarmed, but wearing thick leather gloves, gripping a short iron rod in each hand. His fists seemed to be enclosed in a shimmering orb of Grit.
With one fluid motion, he leapt onto the table, boards bowing under his weight. He sprang forward, entering the Drift cloud with an acrobatic twist. Quarrah kicked the Glassmind in the knee as hard as she could, sending him staggering a step back, falling into the detonation just as Raek passed over his unprotected head.
Raek’s Grit-clad fist came down in a thundering blow, shattering the Glassmind’s skull into a hundred shards. The transformed being lurched awkwardly in the weightless cloud, his glowing red eyes going dark. He floated forward, regaining his weight as he left the perimeter, thudding onto his face between Quarrah and San.
Raek’s momentum carried him out the other side of the Drift cloud and he came down hard, cracking one of the tables in half.
“Sparks,” San Green hissed. “Who are you?”
Firelight from the burning building glinted on the shards of red glass that spun lazily in the Drift cloud. Raek pulled himself up with a grunt and stepped over to them, nudging the dead Glassmind with his foot.
“Come on,” Quarrah said, turning toward the panicked crowd. But she couldn’t run. She couldn’t say anything, staring in speechless shock at what was coming over the front gate.
It was another Glassmind.
And he was flying.
His arms were at his sides, columns of Grit detonations flowing from his downturned palms, reaching all the way to the ground. The people below were scattering, the crowd parting down the middle to make a path for the airborne Glassmind. And those who didn’t move quickly enough were thrown aside.
Of course. He was manipulating the push of Compounded Void Grit to lift himself from the ground. And he was flying right toward them.
“This way!” Raek cried, moving around one of the dining tables and heading east. The three of them exited the pavilion with a clear line of sight to the outer wall.
“Tell me you didn’t toss my crossbow,” Raek said.
“It was useless,” Quarrah replied.
“Not to me,” he said. “That crossbow was my friend. Now we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.” He ground to a halt, twenty yards away from the stone wall.
“I need you to get a little keg of Blast Grit out of my pack,” he said.
“Why don’t you get it?” She didn’t see the sense in digging around if he knew right where it was.
Raek held up his gloved, Grit-covered hands. “I might as well have hooves at the moment.”
He turned his back and Quarrah reached into his pack, yanking out the keg he’d used to fill the Grit bolt earlier.
“Throw it at the wall,” Raek instructed her.
“But that’s a storage keg,” San cut in. “It won’t detonate without a Slagstone pin.” His sparsely stubbled face was sweaty, and he looked a bit peaky.
“Ignition Grit, kid,” said Raek. “You know the stuff. There’s a vial of it on my belt.”
Quarrah hurled the keg. It landed a few feet short of the wall, cracking open and spilling its contents as it rolled against the thick stone. She turned back just in time to see San pitch the little vial of liquid Ignition Grit. It struck, creating a flash cloud that ignited the spilled Blast Grit.
The wall exploded, throwing the three of them back with a gush of hot air and a blinding belch of flames. The size of this explosion made the officers’ quarters look like a smoldering cooking fire.
Between the darkness and the smoke, Quarrah couldn’t see how effective it had been. Didn’t really matter anyway. Through the wreckage, the Glassmind was slowly descending.
Quarrah scrambled to Raek’s side, pulling San up along the way. There was blood on the young man’s forehead but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Garifus,” San whispered as the Glassmind’s feet touched down on the blasted soil.
“San, San, San,” the huge man said. He stood in a curtain of dust and smoke, blocking their path to the hole they had surely blasted in the wall. Garifus’s glowing eyes turned to Quarrah, and he tilted his head as though she were a curiosity.
“And your name is Quarrah.” His voice was a hum and a whisper rolled into one. She shivered at the attention.
“You were trapped under a Barrier cloud with a man named Ardor on the night Gloristar killed the king.” Garifus smiled. “Don’t flatter yourself by thinking you made an impression on me. I remember all things. My memory, like the rest of me, is operating at complete perfection.”
“Well, you don’t know me,” Raek grumbled, racing forward and banging his Grit-covered fists together as if priming them for a mighty blow.
Garifus Floc merely stretched out one hand, his fingertips sparking in the darkness. A wall of Barrier Grit streamed from his palm, colliding with Raek so hard, he was thrown backward. The Barrier wall folded downward, becoming a dome that enclosed Quarrah, Raek, and San.
“Oh, you’re going to toy with us?” Raek called, mustering the strength to sit up and spit. The bridge of his nose was cut, and going by the amount of blood streaming down his upper lip, the bone was probably broken. “Let me take you in a fair fight. We’ll see who gets a perfect kill.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Garifus said. “I don’t want to kill anyone. All must have a chance to reach the Homeland. Only then will you be judged.”
“Slag,” Raek moaned. “You’re a blazing lunatic. And I’m getting a whiff of coward coming off your shiny little head.”
Through the thick dust of the broken wall, Quarrah glimpsed movement behind Garifus. She squinted, trying not to make it obvious, since Raek was clearly fighting to keep the Glassmind’s attention.
A significant portion of the wall had crumbled, a U-shaped opening clogged with chunks of stone. Standing on the rubble was Lomaya Vans, Raek’s Roller in her outstretched hand.
She was sighting down the barrel, her elevated position providing the perfect angle for a shot at the back of Garifus’s glass skull.
; “Come on!” Raek goaded the man. Or maybe he was shouting to Lomaya. He reached out and punched his orbed fists against their impenetrable prison dome. “Come on!”
Lomaya’s Roller cracked. In the darkness, Quarrah saw a tongue of flames lick the end of the barrel. The moment the gun sounded, Garifus Floc’s hand shot out behind him, fingertips sparking.
A cone-shaped detonation met the Roller ball and Quarrah actually saw the projectile come to a halt in the air not three feet from Garifus’s head. The lead ball spun, suspended in midair as the Glassmind turned toward his shooter. Then he pushed his hand outward.
The ball returned along the same path it had come, speeding so fast that Quarrah didn’t have a chance of seeing it. But she saw where it hit.
Lomaya’s head snapped backward as the metal took her in the forehead, her body crumpling on the rubble of the blasted wall.
Beside her, San Green let out a scream. Raw. Almost tangible with its grief.
Garifus Floc turned to face them once again, his pale blue-gold face wearing an obvious expression of discontentment. “I am the Homeland,” he said. “And the Homeland’s strength lies in perfection. I hope you believe me when I say that I am as disappointed in her loss as you are.”
San Green was sobbing at Quarrah’s side, big gasping breaths that seemed insufficient to deliver air. He shouted something, but it was too inarticulate to decipher through his grief and anger.
Garifus looked past the trapped trio, his red eyes seeming to lose focus for a moment. His stance was oddly detached, similar to the Glassmind that had been holding San at the edge of the pavilion.
“I must go,” he said, eyes regaining focus. “You have made my followers feel unsafe. Some of them are saying that I was killed in the explosion. I cannot allow this rumor to spread among my scattered believers.”
He lowered his arms, palms earthward as his fingertips sparked again. His feet left the ground as columns of Void Grit propelled him upward.
The Last Lies of Ardor Benn Page 31