The City of Lies (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 3)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Don’t you dare shake out of my grip, Yates.”

  He hesitated, looking at her.

  Something passed between them in that moment, and suddenly I felt out of place, as though I should be anywhere but here—

  She released him.

  “Sorry,” said Carson.

  “Right.”

  He cleared his throat. Looking from Heidi to me, he said, voice low, “So what do we do?”

  “I’ll take the lead. And Mira. Right?” She looked over her shoulder at me.

  “Um …”

  “That yellow and red thing on your belt?”

  I looked down at the umbrella hanging alongside my compass. “Oh. The spear.”

  Heidi rolled her eyes. “On the ball as usual, Brand.” Slipping the portable speaker that permanently lived in one of her back pockets, she shook it. Feruiduin’s Cutlass extended to its full length. The blade shone.

  “You polished it,” Carson pointed out.

  “Marachti blood stinks like fish.”

  I stepped past, bringing Decidian’s Spear to bear. Unlike the perfect polish of Heidi’s cutlass, there was still a faint echo of bright blue marachti blood on the spear’s tip. I made a mental note to give it a shine later, not wanting to be outdone by Heidi. Plus, marachti blood—gross.

  “Keep well back,” I warned Carson.

  We stepped inside, Heidi leading the charge and me in a close second. As we pushed the door open, I held my breath against a moment of fear—but the first room had been utterly ransacked, and my worry dissolved.

  “No Vardinn here,” I said.

  “Don’t speak too soon, Mira,” Heidi told me. Still, she must’ve felt it too, because she let the cutlass drop.

  Carson came in and swept the room.

  His face fell. “Looters have been here.”

  “More than one set, I’d wager,” I said, “going by the state of it.”

  This first room must have once been a lounge of sorts. What the furnishings would’ve looked like, I had no clue, and the jagged piles of wood and torn fabric gave nothing away. Had that once been some kind of sofa? Very difficult to say.

  “Get looking for whatever it is you’re after, Carson,” Heidi told him.

  “It won’t be here,” he answered firmly. “I need to find books or something. Records.”

  “You don’t want something to take to Benson for the coup?”

  “Take what?” I asked her, sidestepping and leading our way to the next room. “Benson doesn’t buy just any old thing.”

  “Could’ve fooled me,” Heidi griped.

  The next room was the same. And so were the others leading from it.

  Up the stairs we went, tall steps a struggle for us little, non-cow people. Not easy for gangly Carson, not easy for me, and definitely not easy for Heidi. I had to push her to keep her propelling upward.

  “I thought cows couldn’t even get down the stairs after they’ve gone up,” Heidi wheezed.

  “Shut up and climb,” I grunted back.

  The last few steps came after a ninety-degree twist, and exited to—

  “He had a library,” I observed.

  “Yeah,” Carson said sadly. “Had.”

  The shelves remained intact, or at least most did save a couple that had fallen in or crashed to the floor. But they were almost entirely empty, and the only things remaining on them were not books but handfuls of torn pages.

  Carson breezed to the nearest pile, lifted, and leafed through.

  He sighed, dropping them at his feet. They fell in a short-lived flurry.

  “You’d be fined for that in England,” said Heidi.

  “We’re not in England,” he retorted, sounding a little hollow. Then he heaved another sigh. “Damn it. I thought there might be something here. The Vardinn loved books, you know. Actually, Tarrentius radiates out from a central library. It’s enormous—at least, I’ve read it was. It was the envy of all the worlds that knew of it.” Sadly, Carson finished, “It’s gone now.”

  Heidi’s eyelid twitched. We knew this too.

  “Through there,” I said, pointing at a gap between the shelves where a doorless entryway led.

  We went in, Carson looking particularly morose—until we were finally presented with the most intact room of all: what must’ve been the general’s personal office. It certainly wasn’t in tip-top shape; the desk, bigger than each of us, had been upended, the wood fragmented and coming apart. Papers were scattered madcap about the floor as though whipped up by Heidi’s phantom tornado. What I assumed was a trophy cabinet had been utterly smashed to pieces. Only the rusted remains of something curving—the handle of a cup?—was left, as worthless as everything else in this place.

  A faint smell permeated. Not quite the hot scent of the dust enveloping the city, it reminded me of books. Like the taste of a library when first stepping inside—only it had more or less vanished, and only the ghost of it remained.

  Carson stooped by the desk, riffling through papers.

  Heidi stuck by the door. I shuffled past, toward the rusted thing.

  “What happened to this general anyway?” I asked.

  “Not sure,” said Carson. “The book’s not specific. Possibly he died before the empire fell. Maybe that’s why it fell?” He shrugged. “Dunno.”

  Quiet but for Carson’s shifting.

  I peered at the rusted thing. Utterly worthless. No wonder looters had left it behind. Though, it must’ve been part of something valuable once. I wondered what it had been broken from.

  “They used English sometimes then,” Carson muttered.

  “Huh?”

  “English. Or the olden-day variety, anyway.”

  I glanced backward at Heidi. “No, they didn’t. Did they?”

  Heidi frowned, shook her head. “Don’t think so.”

  Carson bowed over a scrap. “But this …”

  “Let me see that.”

  Heidi joined his side, squatting to peer. He handed it to her, and she touched her fingers to it. Held between them, they read. A frown line formed between Heidi’s eyebrows, getting darker with each word.

  “What is it?” I finally said.

  “A Seeker wrote this,” Heidi said. “From our world. But it was a long time ago.”

  “It’s part of a diary, right?” Carson asked.

  “Probably.” Heidi scrutinized it again, re-reading. “There must still have been records when he was here.”

  “Or she.”

  “He.” Heidi pointed at the lower right corner of the page. “Andrei.” To me: “Looks like whatever Andrei found was fairly clear: the general never found even a whisper of treasure in Ostiagard when the Vardinn had at it.

  “What is interesting, though,” she went on, lifting my sinking stomach, “is that the caretakers had records here too. According to those—via Andrei’s little note, obviously—the general’s descendants were hounded by the Mirrish, who believed that the general did find something no one else did.”

  “Who’re the Mirrish?” Carson asked.

  “Later,” said Heidi offhandedly. To me again, she said, “This is … I mean, it’s not really anything … but it’s kind of something.”

  I pursed my lips, considering. It was something indeed, but only the vaguest ghost of it. And what authority were the caretakers of a house belonging to a general whose descendants had been harassed? The Vardinn’s invasion of Ostiagard, and any secret truths surrounding it, were generations removed at that time. Then this bit of hearsay had been translated by someone from our world. The whole thing was a centuries-long game of Telephone.

  “It’s a start, right?” Carson asked, taking the scrap from Heidi and looking back over it.

  I didn’t answer. Instead, a more pressing question loomed.

  “So what happened to the Seeker for them to abandon their diary—or this scrap of it—like this?”

  Quiet. No answer … but I didn’t picture anything good.

  “Let me see if this Andre
i left anything else,” said Carson. He stowed Andrei’s note in his manbag, then began frittering again.

  I watched for a moment, then retrained my attention on the rusted thing in the remains of the trophy cabinet.

  I frowned. Andrei must’ve come long after Tarrentius was abandoned. But for him to make a record of what he’d learned—surely here, in this very place—and then to lose it here …

  Had the Vardinn remained after all?

  Distractedly, looking for something to fiddle with, I reached for the rusted curve of metal.

  Fingertips touched—

  For a second, it was as if a magnet had been flipped on. I could not release my hold, could not flex or bend my finger even a millimeter—

  Sudden noise filled the room. Garbled, low speech came from nowhere, rumbling low words I didn’t understand—

  I had time to open my mouth, begin to say, “What the—?”

  Then a bleating alarm shrieked, and shrieked, and shrieked.

  5

  Carson jerked to his feet, horrorstruck. “What’s that?”

  “I, uh …” I released the rusted curve of metal, whose strangely glue-like property had ceased. “I might’ve tripped an alarm?”

  “You idiot,” Heidi said. “You damned idiot!”

  “I didn’t mean to! Look at it! I thought it broke off of some trophy or something and was abandoned! It’s rusted to hell!”

  “So why would you want to touch it?”

  Before I could shriek an even more panicked reply, Carson was between us. “Should we run? We should run. Right?”

  “Of course we should run!” Heidi shrieked.

  “Wait,” I said. “Hold up.” I racked my brains desperately for some golden hope I could cling to. It was nigh on impossible against the screeching wailing, coming and going in an aural sine wave. “Maybe the alarm is just, like … localized to this room. Just for the general, you know?”

  Heidi scoffed before I’d even finished talking. “Of course it bloody well isn’t, you fool. The Vardinn are bulls, but they weren’t morons. It is bleating all over Tarrentius right now, or at the very least this quadrant of it, I guarantee.”

  “But—but what if the damage to the city had interrupted a breaker somewhere? This building is still wired up, but did you see the neighborhood? It’s a wreck.”

  Carson said, “We’re wasting time talking about this. Can we just go?” His voice was rising in pitch. Another couple octaves and he’d be indiscernible from the banshee wail around us.

  I almost suggested that I try to turn it off again—almost. I was pretty sure that if I did, Heidi would tackle me, and Carson would disintegrate. Besides, I didn’t know how exactly I’d turned it on, so how in the world was I supposed to switch the thing off again?

  “Right,” I said. “Let’s move. Heidi, cutlass.”

  “Three steps ahead of you,” she sniped, already disappearing back into the library and bringing Feruiduin’s Cutlass to bear.

  Carson followed, and I took the rear, unclipping the umbrella again from where I’d stowed it at my hip. Once I’d taken the stairs without tumbling onto my companions, I’d loose Decidian’s Spear, and not condense it again until we passed back through the gateway home.

  We didn’t even need to get to the streets for Heidi to turn back and say, “Told you.”

  The screaming alarm coming from the street was indisputable.

  Damn it.

  Heidi hit the front door, pushed it open, and stuck her head out. After a right-left-right check, like she was checking for traffic before crossing, she said shortly, “Clear,” and stepped out. Carson followed, doing the exact same check in reverse order (sigh—Americans), and I came last. I didn’t bother to close the door.

  “Back to the wall?” I asked.

  Heidi had already made the decision for us, and marched up the street.

  Carson whined, “But that Vardinn was in there. What if he woke up?”

  “Well, you better be ready to thank Mira for the beautiful painting he’ll do with all of our internal organs, hadn’t you?”

  Carson shot me a terrified look. I grinned my best awkward sorry.

  The siren was different here. Not quite as loud for a start, which was at least one positive thing compared to being trapped in a confined space with it. And it seemed the damage to the city had done something to the still powered security system’s operation. Every ten or so seconds, the alarm would be replaced with a screech of static. Each buzz was inconsistent with the last for how long it moaned, but even the shortest went on much too long.

  “It’s so awful,” Carson groaned.

  “You’d have hated dial-up modems,” Heidi muttered from up front.

  “How old are you?” I asked. “I thought dial-up was phased out in the fifties.”

  “Twenty,” Heidi answered shortly, not amused in the slightest.

  “I’m nineteen,” Carson said—and then there was another whine of static, louder this time as we apparently passed whatever was emitting it. I peered around expecting to see a loudspeaker on the side of a half-intact building. Nothing was obvious.

  Apparently stress brought out some innate ability to find the way for all of us, because I certainly could not have remembered the route back to the wall under any other circumstances. Or maybe I still couldn’t; after all, it was Heidi, with the shortest legs, who was leading the charge. All I had to do was follow, keep my eyes on my feet, and try not to panic—

  Carson stopped. Turning back to me, eyes wide, almost all whites, he said, “Do you feel that?”

  My stomach dropped.

  Why, yes. Yes I did.

  The ground was vibrating beneath us. Like one of the earthquakes Carson had mentioned, rocking this world and leading to the Vardinn Empire’s downfall …

  Or like the rumbling of hooves charging through these decimated streets. Lots and lots of hooves.

  And they were getting louder.

  “Heidi,” I started, voice high—

  “I know,” she called back. “Double-time it!”

  We burst into a run, all of us.

  Around a corner, Carson stumbled—

  Don’t fall, don’t fall!

  Then he righted, long legs almost comical as he caught himself before eating the dirt.

  I could’ve overtaken him. Easily. And six weeks ago, a much more selfish Mira Brand would have done so. But Carson’s safety was right up at the top of the list along with mine, and with him unarmed, I would bracket him from the rear while Heidi provided protection from the front.

  We turned a corner and immediately hit a junction.

  Heidi twisted for the left, tilting like a motorcyclist around a sharp bend.

  Carson pointed ahead. “The wall!”

  From behind us, thundering from the opposite end of the junction, came a cacophony of indignant roars.

  I glanced back, as if I needed to confirm it—

  Vardinn!

  There were dozens of them. Feral-looking things, they surged in our direction as one great mob of fur and horn. Possibly there were females among them, but in that momentary fraction-of-a-second look, I took in nothing but horns.

  And more horns.

  “GET TO THE WALL!” I roared from last place.

  “AND THEN WHAT?” Carson wailed.

  “THE LOCKING MECHANISM SHOULD STILL WORK! WE CAN LOCK THEM BEHIND US!”

  “AND IF OUR FRIEND FROM EARLIER IS STILL THERE?”

  Heidi yelled back, “THEN GET READY TO DODGE!”

  We surged ahead, leaping over blocks of debris rather than going around.

  Behind us—closer, now—one of the Vardinn blared a thunderous noise like a spooked elephant.

  “They’re gaining!” Carson cried.

  “Then work those damned legs!” I shouted back. “And don’t you dare trip, Yates, or I’ll kill you myself!”

  The shattered façade of a building littered the road ahead. Heidi leapt, and landed with all her perfect grace. Carso
n hit the jump awkwardly, and staggered—

  “Carson!” I started—

  But he was up already, his stride interrupted but not broken.

  I hurtled after him—

  The tip of Decidian’s Spear dipped low in my hand, stabbing into a shattered brick.

  It caught there.

  I jerked, momentum sapped to nothing—

  The Vardinn rumbled again, the whole herd in unison.

  I drew the spear back to free it, tilted up, and returned to full pelt, so aware of just how far behind I was—

  Heidi was almost to the door into the chambers cut through the wall. She reached out a hand for it.

  “What if the Vardinn from earlier—?” Carson gasped.

  “No time!” she answered, and was through.

  Carson arrived at the door, pushed inside—paused—

  He turned back, balked. “Mira—”

  “Don’t you dare tell me how close they are, Carson Yates!”

  I took a flying leap over the last block of rubble—then I was pushing him through the door, sprinting—

  Please don’t be in here, I thought of the Vardinn from earlier. Please—

  Halfway through the next chamber, there was a great tearing noise—the door behind us had shattered.

  “They’re inside,” Carson breathed.

  “The doorway will serve as a bottleneck,” I wheezed back.

  Into the third chamber we went, and I prayed that it was—

  Empty.

  But it was a minor win. Yes, that Vardinn had gone, but there was an entire horde right behind us—

  We reached the fourth. Heidi was already at the door on the far side, pushing through with Feruiduin’s Cutlass extended. She took a momentary glance behind at us and said, “Hurry up!” and disappeared through the other side.

  “What about the locking mechanism?” Carson asked.

  “I’ll hit it! You just get to the door.”

  “But—”

  “The door, damn it, Carson!”

  He obeyed, though I thought he wouldn’t. Shooting a fraught look as I forked for the side wall, he looked for a moment like he was struggling with words—

  Then he was through the door, and it was just me.

  Another tearing sound from behind. They were in the adjacent chamber. Which gave me about ten seconds to attempt our single desperate out.