Everyone would die. In addition to the Dynasty and all its loyalists, all the Chosen would be killed too if she didn’t somehow stop this madman. Cora, Melanie, Lola, every soul trapped by the Chosen machine would die with its leaders. All to serve the ambitions of this dark fool.
Jyurik stood. “And now, having handed you that piece of exciting news, I simply can’t allow it to be shared and ruin the surprise. So I’m afraid even the important questioning of our Wrang spy will have to wait until after I cut that pretty little throat. Can you wait a few more moments, my—”
He turned to see Yamar was no longer in the chair.
Chapter 28. Red Rain
Both Jyurik and Kay gasped. The fool looked at her and she looked back. He glanced at his scepter, resting at Kay’s feet, then ran towards the table. Kay tossed off her ropes and was just behind him. Jyurik seized the sharp knife he’d stirred the crystal shroud with and raised it, spinning to face her. She grabbed the open jar full of the liquid drug.
There was silence as they stared at each other, both brandishing their weapons. “You’re the expert,” Kay finally said. “What do you think a jarful of crystal shroud will do to you? Will you have time to spill your secrets before it erases your mind?”
He eyed it nervously. “What will my guards do to you?”
“Can you silence me before I blurt out your plan? They can’t all be in on it.” He was hesitant. “Yamar,” she said, trying to keep a pleading hope out of her voice, “where are you?”
“I’m here,” he called softly from the floor near the chair. “But I don’t think I’ll be much good in a fight.”
“Can you stand? Can you get our weapons from the table?” She was watching Jyurik’s eye, darting around the room, scheming on his next move. He could have any number of surprises up his sleeve.
Yamar tried to stand and fell back down. Jyurik made his play, sliding towards the helpless Wrang. If he could get to Yamar and set the knife to his throat, the game would change.
Kay reacted swiftly, throwing an arc of the liquid crystal in his path. Jyurik skidded to a halt, gave her a dark look, then ran for the door. Kay reached Yamar and grabbed him around the collar, pulling him halfway to his feet. “Please, Yamar,” she pleaded. “I need you.”
He stood, hands outstretched. “I can’t see.”
“Here,” Kay transferred the jar of crystal shroud to her other hand and grabbed their belts from the table. She shoved the clattering mass into Yamar’s arms. “Hold this.” Jyurik had made it out the door. The dome was just past it. He must have not confided his plot in the door guards, but in very short order he’d be back with reinforcements he trusted to keep her quiet. Permanently. “Just stay upright a little longer and follow me.”
She pulled Yamar towards the door in the back. It opened out into another set of tunnels like those they’d taken on the journey down here. “Left, straight, or right?” she said, mostly to herself.
The door Jyurik had fled through opened and several Atoned flooded into his chambers, Jyurik on their heels. She threw the crystal shroud at them, driving them back momentarily, then pulled her jar of demonlord pepper off the belt in Yamar’s arms. As the Atoned came across the room, she hurled it upwards to shatter on the ceiling.
Kay had time for one last look at the painting on the wall of her city filled with smoke, then the burning red dust rained down on the room, and she pulled the door shut behind her and Yamar. The shrieks of the Atoned, as the pepper penetrated their masks and bathed their eyes in fire, followed them out into the tunnel.
“You can’t stop this, little mouse!” Jyurik screamed from behind the door.
“Watch me,” she breathed back, then grabbed Yamar’s arm, guiding him down the tunnel. “Hang on, Yamar. Hang on.”
He was lurching forward awkwardly, the drug assaulting his senses, threatening to pull him down into the blackness. “I can’t see.” Kay found the fear in his voice horribly unnerving, this man who had calmly stared down every other terror they’d faced together.
“We need to lose them,” she said. “They’ll be circling around. Keep moving.”
They turned left at the next fork, then right. After a pair of additional turns, they came to a door. The tunnels on the other side were dark. With sounds of pursuit just behind them, Kay led them into the black, pulling the door shut behind her. She lit a spark and led them down the tunnel. She turned them again when they came to a fork. And again. Yamar staggered and dropped his sword. Kay snatched it and kept moving, pushing him along. Another turn.
Yamar fell to the ground. “He’s inside me,” he screamed. “He’s killing me.”
“We can…we can rest here,” Kay said, not seeing any other lights. “They might not hear you. Us. We can…”
“I’m so sorry,” Yamar gasped, pulling her down on top of him. The light went out. “He’s inside of me!”
“It’s okay. It’s okay, Yamar. We’ll find a way.”
But how? There was no blue line to guide them back up. The Chosen hunted them in the tunnels. Jyurik had a plan in place to kill them all. And they were lost.
“I’m so sorry,” Yamar said again, his voice trailing off into exhaustion.
“Just rest, Yamar. You did good. You did as well as anyone could. I’m alive because of you.”
“And the only reason I live is for you.” His strong hands squeezed her painfully tight.
“There’s more. We’ll find a way. There’s got to be a way.”
His head hit the floor as he fell unconscious, slowly releasing his grip on her. Kay rescued her baton and only remaining jar and took a seat next to him. She wiped the hair out of his face in the darkness. Then she sat, nothing to do but hold his trembling body as the drugs coursed through him. She could make a light when they were ready to move. But they had no idea which way to go. They were lost. She sat in silence, waiting for a miracle.
Second Interlude. A Thing for Her
“Hey.”
“…Hey.”
“You’re back again.” Jenna Weiss was standing at an easel, studying a painting in front of her. She looked up with a quiet smile.
Joah answered with a shrug, glancing around her bedroom, halfway in the door. He rubbed at the back of his neck.
“You can come in if you want.”
“I didn’t mean to bother you.” He met her eyes briefly.
“No, it’s okay.” As Joah stepped cautiously into the room, she asked, “You were here last night too?”
Jenna’s question was met by another shrug.
“Joah, right? The guards seem to be treating you a little nicer. It seemed like last night they weren’t so friendly.”
“You’re observant,” he said, a smile creeping to his lips. “The story’s getting around. With Abi’s touch on it.”
“What’s that mean?”
Joah picked his way across the cluttered carpet and sat on the edge of her bed. “Abi is one of Kay’s. And she’s been spinning what happened when Kay met the Gyudi like a top. The Dynasty Guards like the idea of a lowly messenger for the Melor kicking the ass of the Gyudi’s champion. Looks like some of that newfound respect for Kay is trickling down to me. Mind you, not all of the Palace is so friendly…or so susceptible to clever storytelling.”
“It’s not far from the truth,” Jenna said. She was still studying the easel. Now that Joah was in the room, he could see a painting of trees, a vibrant foliage of blues and reds filling the canvas.
“I like it,” he said.
“Do you?” She looked at him with a smile. “Finishing this one was long overdue. I’ve been working on it all day. Have to do something to keep myself sane. My parents seem to be very focused on forgetting everything that happened, and the more time I spend listening to them, the more I feel like the whole thing was some strange dream. Like I imagined it.”
She turned back and looked at Joah. He had stood again and was glancing around the room, his hands in his pockets. “You’re different than the other
s. They take every chance to pepper me with questions. When that Wrang stopped asking me for everything I knew, my parents and sister picked right back up. Asking me how I’m feeling, am I okay, all that. It’s been relentless. And I don’t know what to say.”
“Sometimes that kind of stuff is hard to explain.”
She gave him a shy smile. “Where’s your boss?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t see her since yesterday afternoon. Far as I can tell, no one has.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“Sure. More often I don’t know where she is than I do.” It was quiet for a moment. “She always turns up at one spot or another. Her office most often. Maybe here or to see another client. I found it’s sometimes easier to just stick in one spot and wait rather than traipsing around looking.”
“And that’s what brings you here tonight?”
Joah didn’t answer.
“Is it just you? Working for her?”
“Now it is. We had Abi for a long time, but she got tied down at the Palace. And we had a Farrow named Ewan.” He looked down at his worn boots. “The Chosen got him.”
“I heard about that. Was he looking for me when it happened?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Joah said. “He was a good guy. Not the type to let the bad ones pass without a confrontation. If anyone was going to run into the Chosen, it was him.”
“He was your friend?” Tears were starting in her eyes.
“Yes. He was a good man. He taught me a lot, without ever seeming like he was teaching me.” Joah was looking at the other paintings she had around the room.
“And Kay? What’s she like?”
Joah gave a soft shrug. “Determined. Relentless. A little funny. Confused about why people are so cruel to each other when they don’t have to be. Angry.”
“Do you…have a thing for her?”
He gave her a smile, then it just as quickly vanished. “No, I’m probably a little too in awe to have a thing. She saved me, you know. Years ago. I started following her around afterwards.”
“It feels weird. Like I owe her.”
“You don’t.”
“You didn’t feel that way?”
He looked down, feeling the knives pressed into his sides under his black coat. It had only been a few days ago he’d bloodied them and left bodies in the sun on Sethro Street. He wasn’t sure he could recommend the path he’d taken to another. “I might not be quite as good of a person as you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I…followed Kay out of hope for revenge. I figured it was my best chance to find the man who kidnapped me and Sara. Course that was a lifetime ago. She’s dead, before you ask. So’s he.”
“And Kay led you to him.”
“Yes.” His face was dark, lost in a memory.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to ask so many questions. I’m, well, I don’t know if bored is the right word.” She was flustered. “I appreciate the company.”
“Likewise.”
“I think one of the reasons I ran away was I felt like a piece on display. Controlled, like a puppet. And now I’m back on the shelf after my taste of terrifying, totally misguided fake freedom. Thanks to Kay.”
“Kay didn’t escape. You did.”
“But you should have seen her. Paint all over her face, head full of drugs, broken arm, bleeding, and she stands up straight and interrupts the Gyudi, the people we’d been taught to respect and fear above all else.” She laughed quietly and looked at her canvas. “I kind of need to paint it.”
“I can tell you Kay will not be a fan.”
“She made it look like they were the undignified ones, like they were children playing at adult. Just seeing that, that sheer defiance, and seeing the Gyudi in that light, like they’re this ridiculous farce that isn’t meant to be taken seriously, that may have given me the strength to escape even more than the message.”
“We don’t often see people make it home on their own. Especially not out of something like that.”
“And now she’s back at it, right? Looking for a way back there to find the others? The ones whose names she asked me about?”
“Looking for a way or found it.” He sat down on the bed again.
Jenna carefully set her paints on the easel. Her face had a fierce set as she turned to Joah. “Can we help her?”
Joah gave her a compassionate look as he spoke quietly. “That’s my job. But if there’s anything we need from you, I’ll let you know.”
She nodded, then quickly sat beside him on the bed. “Would you stay a little longer?”
“Of course.”
After a long period of quiet, she reached across the cluttered bed and folded her hand into his.
Chapter 29. Guiding Lights
Kay drifted in and out of consciousness in the featureless black tunnel. Yamar twitched as he lay across her lap. Both rested uneasily. Kay was gathering the strength to begin the escape from the endless underground maze. Yamar was lost in the grip of the crystal shroud, trapped in a cycle of retreating from his consciousness only to recoil from what lurked in the darkness within. As Kay periodically produced a flame to look upon the same tunnel walls, bearing no clues as to where to start an escape, she looked worriedly at the paleness of Yamar’s face. On top of the drug, he was injured from the fight with Sella. The blood from her final blow had dried in his dark hair.
Kay felt the distance from the Fire Eye acutely. She remembered the growing sensation of disconnection, her weakening, during each step of the journey down here. Now it was as if she were buried in a tomb, miles of rock and earth away from the relief of the open sky and her blazing flower, shining over Celest. This wasn’t where she was meant to be.
There was no time to indulge the sensation though. To pick at her scab and feel sorry for herself. Poor Kay, trampled on by the world above and now the one below. Elsewhere, under the ground, Jyurik and the Gyudi were preparing for their night of ascension. The Night of Centuries, as Jyurik had called it.
She was lost. If she couldn’t find her way out of here and the Gyudi’s plan worked, the Dynasty would die. If Jyurik’s plan, winding through and over that of the Gyudi like a snake, worked, then all the Chosen would die as well, their leadership along with the innocents dragged behind them for the ride. Cora. Melanie. Marlo. Lola. On top of that, Jyurik had threatened Jenna, the one Kay had thought was out and safe from this mess. What was to stop him from peeling off a small group of his army, sending them to the Weiss’s manor to wipe that win off the board? Kay had lost her sense of the time, but had no doubt they had little to none left.
She had her baton and one jar filled with pearl ash. She’d sacrificed her demonlord for the red rain that allowed them to escape Jyurik’s chambers. She couldn’t even recall when or where she’d lost her brass knuckles. Yamar had his sword.
Most importantly, they had no blue line to follow. Kay could pick a direction, and she would as soon as she could find the will to stand again, but it would be an act of faith. They would have no idea if they moved towards an exit or back towards the Gyudi court. Or in circles, like a snake eating its own tail.
She summoned a flame. It came easily despite her weakness. She summoned a second, and set it to floating before her in the center of the tunnel. For a lark, she tried a third. It came as easily as the first two, joining them to beat back the darkness.
For a moment, Kay forgot where she was. She forgot the weight of Yamar’s head in her lap. She stared at the three flames, feeling them pull at the spark in her core. They danced before her, happy to be free and burning. She’d never done two before, let alone three. With a twirl of her hand, she set them to rotating in the air before her. Her power was growing. But what to do with it? A lightshow to amuse herself while the city burned? Kay imagined the Fire Creep laughing as she juggled fire. Laughing at her beautiful folly, the story she told herself while she sat alone in the dark about the wish that she had some ability to shape the course of the Night of Centurie
s.
But even if this was folly, it was something new. There was something new. She felt a sentience to the fire she’d never noted before. The flames didn’t like the whirling. She felt their gentle admonishment. They wanted to float in the center of the tunnel, so she stopped her game. They stood before her, three soldiers waiting for instruction from a general lost in the darkness.
There was the slightest tremor, a tug. The flames wanted to separate. She loosed her hold on their position, something she’d never thought to do before. It instantly felt right. One of the flames wandered down the tunnel. The others corrected their spacing. Now one sat just before her, one farther down the tunnel to her right, the third even beyond that.
Kay stared at it a long time, not certain she hadn’t lost her mind down here in the darkness. Then she added a fourth flame to the mix. They again repositioned themselves, creating a line down the tunnel.
Kay took a deep breath, reached deep inside her, and summoned as many of the flames as she could, releasing them one by one, feeding them to the mix before her, her eyes closed in concentration. When she opened them again, she saw a path of guiding lights before her. It led down the tunnel to the right, then turned a corner and vanished into the black. Something like a series of candles, lit to guide the way, only these fed on no wick, no tallow. They came from her. And somehow they knew the way out.
“Yamar,” Kay said, gently shaking his head. “Yamar, we need to move.” It took her long minutes to get him on his feet, but she finally did. She slid her unbroken arm across his hips, and began slowly, painfully, pulling him along in the direction of the guiding lights.
Her mind was reeling from the flames moving before her, appearing and disappearing as she rounded each bend, so she found comfort in something more familiar. She thought to the challenge ahead. Jyurik must have engineered some way to fill the city with smoke. A heavy smoke that rested like a blanket rather than drifting off into the air. She remembered his trick with the scepter, the smoke which pooled at her feet. How would he replicate it at such a scale to impact the whole of Celest?
The Fire Eye Chosen_Sequel to The Fire Eye Refugee Page 20