Sired by Stone

by Andrew Post

  An attempt by the Adeshkan fighters to raise the Magic Carpet snapped Gorett and Dreck back into their seats. Dreck dragged his goggles back over his eyes, straps dangling like a dog’s floppy ears, and keyed his mic. “Please stop following us. It’s rude.”

  And immediately from behind: “Missile lock, sir.”

  “Flares!”

  Tiff-tiff-tiff-tiff. Over the cockpit, bright white dots and smoke trails punched the smeary purple-gray sky.

  Every Adeshkan heat-seeking rocket sought the flares instead of the Magic Carpet, veering in different directions. Still, each harmless detonation shook Gorett’s teeth.

  Then, in prompt retaliation, the sizzler. It repeated the show: sailing high and then unleashing its barrage of stinger missiles.

  “One down, sir.”

  “Good.”

  “Last one’s still with us. Taken two—er, three—of ours, sir.”

  After switching channels, Dreck addressed the squadron. “Do what you need to, boys. May the Goddess guide your hands to cut their cords and smash their inner workings beyond repair.”

  From Dreck’s headphones, Gorett could hear the other pilots shouting similar prayers for their captain. Dreck smiled, swerved his focus from one side to the other, the shadows on the clouds around them drawing a vague picture of what was going on behind them.

  One sleek shape darted in and around, banking nimbly. Gorett watched this agile shadow move directly below the Magic Carpet, mere yards beneath his feet.

  “Running a scan on us, sir.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” Dreck wrenched the sticks back, bringing the ship high, and then jammed them forward.

  Gorett watched the ship below—the helmeted Adeshkan pilots visible in their cockpit, looking up at him. They fell away, then leaped near again. The Magic Carpet slammed its underside directly upon the second ship. The brunt of the impact hit its bulbous cockpit, spiderwebbing its glass. The pilots inside flailed as their oxygen bled free. The ship dropped, spinning out a dark smoky corkscrew. A yellow flower soundlessly bloomed on the landscape, flaring the clouds for a moment.

  It’d been a reckless move, but Dreck seemed unable to stop laughing. His men joined in a moment later but with markedly less gusto.

  He wants martyrdom, Mother Worm said. But only on

  his terms.

  Right then Gorett couldn’t really disagree.

  “We’re close enough now. Break formation,” Dreck ordered. “Remember, boys, when we get to Geyser: men, women, children, full purge. Patrol uniform or not: zilch them all. And take out those two ships they apparently have. I need a clean shot for Bessie, and you lot need to be my backers. On my mark.” He cupped the mic with his grease-darkened hand. “Chin up, Pitka. It’s payday.”

  But the pirate captain’s winning smile was snatched away when the Magic Carpet suffered a violent bout of turbulence. Dreck cursed, fighting the sticks to keep level.

  Gorett watched, wide-eyed. An unerringly straight white line went true south.

  “Bloody hell was that? I didn’t give the go-ahead yet,” Dreck shrieked, pointing a grubby finger at the craft that’d overtaken them, the soft crackle of FTL travel coming a beat later, audible even through thick cockpit glass.

  “One of ours,” the communication officer replied unsteadily.

  “Who?” Dreck roared, watching the faint blue-white line dissipate.

  “The Praise to Her, sir.”

  Dreck tugged the microphone back up. “Full on to Geyser.” Spit flying, he screeched, “Unload everything. Drop men on the streets. Shoot anything that moves from above, below, wherever—just kill everyone! Everyone! Everyone! Now! Now!”

  Look ahead, Pitka, Mother Worm suggested warmly.

  Pushing through the clouds ahead of them, Geyser came into view.

  Towering over the island was what could’ve easily been mistaken for an incredibly tall tree by unlearned eyes. Clearer and clearer by the second, it became solid, real to Gorett again as the ship drew closer, closer, slowly.

  A puff of steam set free from the city’s namesake just as he looked upon it. It was as if it were cheering, a trumpeting portending his return with delighted shock. He wished it were so.

  Gorett and Mother Worm thought in harmony: Home.

  Raziel and Moira opened fire. And upon hearing those initial shots coming from the library roof, every waiting guardsman and woman joined them. Geyser erupted into disharmonious bangs and pops. Flam, pressing the stock of the antique rifle to his shoulder, contributed to the bedlam.

  Nigel in his slapdash moon jumper and Karl in the Gareista took after the ship that’d shot past overhead, chasing it down as it shed its impossible speed, became visible—its details accumulating, its pockmarked hull catching up—and banked around. It didn’t fire on anyone below, Flam noticed. He lowered his rifle as it came in low right alongside the library roof, to land in the square, presumably.

  Framed in the porthole was quite possibly the most heartening thing he’d ever seen: Clyde and Nevele’s faces. He immediately got on the radio to order Nigel to stop firing, telling him who it was in that ship.

  As soon as Raziel heard Flam say his brother’s name, with zero hesitation, he turned his rifle from the Odium onslaught and fired. The bullet struck true, dead center toward Clyde’s forehead, but was stopped short by the glass. Immediately, Clyde dodged out of view. Raziel continued to fire at the starship as it tried to land. One engine began smoking.

  Flam charged toward Raziel, ready to swing his own rifle like a club.

  Raziel leveled his rifle at Flam. “You gave your word. No reneging.”

  Flam let the barrel poke his chest. “To fight the Odium,” Flam shouted, pointing at the ships that were nearly at the island’s shores now—and getting closer. “Clyde’s not going to do a damn thing against Geyser. You want to try and kill him afterward, I . . . can’t do much to keep you from that, but if you want to keep the city from falling, concentrate on the real enemy here.”

  Moira cracked another shot at the Odium, placing it expertly. The ship went into a wild spin and collided with the geyser, bounced off, leaving only a minor scuff in the sediment stone, and erupted upon impact with the street.

  Moira paused to drop the scope from her eye, looking at her brother and Flam.

  “Call your pilot off,” Flam ordered her. “We need them to help us fight.”

  As she reached to press a finger behind her ear to do so, Raziel snagged her wrist. “Tell Karl to keep an eye on it, though. We don’t want the little prince sneaking off before we get to have a word.”

  Flam grunted and turned back around, raised his rifle, and took another shot as more ships passed over the city while they rained fire along the town square, crisscrossing trails, demolishing autos and striking down guardsmen. Thankfully, those fleeing had packed into the elevators and gone. Many people had abandoned autos but made it to the island below with their lives. Some, most likely, unwilling to wait for the overloaded ferries, were swimming all the way to the mainland. Good—anything to get them away.

  The ship with Clyde and Nevele in it leveled out and squeaked down upon its landing gear, getting pelted like everything else. The back hatch hissed open, and a few people Flam didn’t recognize charged down, weapons at the ready.

  Over his shoulder, Flam saw Raziel inch back to the door leading down through the library attic, his black eyes zeroed in on the ship’s rear hatch. As soon as Clyde exited, Raziel’s expression became animalistic.

  Flam rushed forward before Raziel could run, crunching roof rocks under his hooves. “You stay right here with me.” He aimed at him.

  Raziel’s hand remained on the doorknob. “What luck. Two birds with one stone, Moira,” Raziel said, glare locked on Flam. “Our brother and the man who cheated us, that useless Bullet Eater you thought would make a good spy. Come, let’s remind him of the penalty for cheating the Pynes.”

  Moira remained where she was, hair dancing as another Odium ship screamed o
verhead.

  “Moira, come,” Raziel said, scolding in singsong. He turned the knob some more . . .

  Flam stepped forward, finger on the trigger. “Don’t.” He looked away for barely a second to glance below.

  As if aware he was being observed, Clyde stopped and looked up at the library roof, probably searching for where he’d last seen Flam.

  Flam shouted down, “Go!”

  Raziel had started down the stairwell. Flam fired, but it hit the door behind him. He charged past a frozen Moira and took the stairs two at a time.

  Raziel was much faster than Flam. He’d already made it to the library’s first floor. Deciding it’d be useless to try and give chase, Flam took aim, the shimmery back of Raziel’s bodysuit in his sights. Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, a shot rang out—from right beside him.

  Raziel, below, stumbled and spun, colliding with a row of study tables. Green glass lamp shades smashed to the floor. Clutching his side, he struggled to his feet, coming up with his handgun, aim wavering on Flam on the balcony above.

  Moira threw herself over the railing, turned midair, landed on the marble floor, and charged forward. Her movements were fluid, precise, quick, as they had been while she’d dodged puddles in the town square. Except now she was using them to kick her brother’s arm. His gun fired harmlessly toward the poetry section. She loosed him a second to pitch him onto his back.

  He fell heavily. Before he could stand or retrieve his sidearm, she rested the barrel of her own upon his ashen forehead.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Raziel spat.

  “You weren’t planning on killing just Clyde. You made a new plan on the way here.” She spoke in a low, even tone—but Flam could hear her anger, tightly coiled inside. “I was there, when you had it.”

  Raziel groaned, clutching the side of his suit. Checking his palm and seeing it bloody, he sneered up at his sister. “Suppose I should take this as a lesson. Never try to work on a plan B in the presence of a mind reader.”

  “That might be advisable, yes.”

  Flam came down the rest of the steps, his aim steady on Raziel.

  Raziel regarded him, then his fallen handgun on the floor nearby, then Moira.

  “I wouldn’t,” Moira said, her own gun still on him.

  “So when it came to your life being at risk, that’s when you decided to have pity on our older brother?” Raziel said, having to pause for breath. Groaning at the pain, he continued. “Some part of you wanted it, the original plan, the three of us in the palace, the Pynes ruling Geyser. As it should be. Otherwise, why go along with Tym and me this long?”

  “Tym didn’t want Clyde dead,” Moira said. “He’s been working up the nerve to ask why we couldn’t just reintroduce ourselves to Clyde, be satisfied that we have a Pyne on the throne at all, that it’s anyone but Pitka Gorett. We’re his family, Raziel—”

  “Did he tell you this?”

  “No. But he certainly thought it. Often.”

  “Clyde doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t know anything of us.” Raziel’s voice free of acidity now, he sounded heartbroken. “We’re nothing to him, forgotten people.”

  “But we never tried,” Moira said. “And hard as I avoided hearing your thoughts, sometimes you think so loud . . .

  and awful.”

  Raziel seemed suddenly afraid. “What did you hear?”

  “You don’t really blame Clyde. You blame Dad. Even if not to take over in Dad’s place but just to be here, with him, not sent off to school, kept around, a presence in the city—even if just a small one, as his children. Involved in any way we could be. In his life. And I already know what you’re going to say. I know he sent us away because he was growing mistrustful, he’d changed, and you didn’t like how he was becoming scared . . . with things getting worse, the Executioner getting out of hand, and how Dad thought he was losing control . . . and the rumors about Prime Minister Gorett’s plan to usurp him . . .” Her voice, already small, ebbed off to a whisper.

  Raziel tried sitting up, winced, and lay back. His voice was just as quiet, just as calm. “When he came back, Clyde never even asked if I wanted to take over, as Father had said I’d have to. He just took it. He was always the favorite. That’s all Dad ever talked about, how much he missed him. When he had us, right there, all along. It was like we were nothing, like attempted replacements that weren’t up to snuff, mistakes and failures. Sent off to Srebrna because he didn’t want us reminding him of his precious son he led us to believe was dead.”

  A rumble passed overhead. Flam instinctually ducked as dust fell from the library ceiling in chalky rivulets. The gunfire and screams outside persisted, the city was at war, but neither Raziel nor Moira seemed to notice.

  Moira leaned in. “I believed you were right for a very long time. That we had to outdo our older brother, beat expectations. When Gorett took the throne and we weren’t allowed to leave school to even attend Dad’s funeral—which I’m sure Gorett had something to do with—I was angry too. And I stayed angry. I wanted to be angry. But it was killing us. Making us into people Dad would’ve been ashamed of. I hurt people for you.”

  “Moira. You really could’ve quit at any time. If you’d just talked to me.”

  “No, I couldn’t have. And you know that. I could see it in you, hear it, that if Tym or I ever dared leave, you’d kill us. You thought Clyde had abandoned us by dying, and then Mom, then Dad. It’s not that you feel cheated out of your destiny. You’re scared of being alone. Even as a boy, you always had to have Tym and me at your side, everywhere you went—and once you discovered your fabrick, you found a way to keep us from—”

  “Please, I . . . Moira, I’d never hurt you. Or Tym. I just think things sometimes. Everyone does. They just pop in. They don’t mean anything. I’d . . . I’d never hurt you.”

  “But you did.”

  “Okay, Moira, okay. Please. You’ve shown me what I need to do.” He reached for her hand, ignoring the gun pressed hard against his forehead. “I was upset. But—but you’ve helped me. I remember how I wanted to lead now, alongside Clyde. Let’s go out there, reintroduce ourselves, fight together. Let’s start over, be a family, do this right.”

  Moira remained quiet.

  Flam, not liking the pregnant pause, thought as loudly as he could, bellowing in his mind: If you can hear me thinking this, Moira, don’t do it.

  If she heard it, she didn’t let on. “You had a family.”

  Raziel’s expression changed. Shoving Moira back, lips curled away from his bloodstained teeth, he threw out his hand toward Flam and Moira.

  Flam felt an insatiable thing feasting on him at once, chasing and clawing deep into his core.

  “She was doing so well before you, Muffie,” Raziel said.

  Moira dropped the gun, crumpling to the floor, clawing at her suit, reflective scales snapping off with each drag of her fingernails. She was digging at her side, the same spot she’d shot Raziel.

  “You can suffer my pain right along with me, the pain you caused all on your own this time,” Raziel said. A red bubble popped on the edges of his teeth as he smiled. Slumped in the heap of a broken study table, he reached one hand, tearing both Moira and Flam apart from the inside, breaths slowing while his red smile grew and grew.

  Moira’s trembling fingers inched for her fallen pistol, weak. With most of his focus on Flam, Raziel didn’t notice. Flam was fine suffering Raziel’s fabrick if it meant he was providing distraction. With a final push, Moira scooted along the floor on her belly, snatched the gun up, and took aim.

  Awestruck, Raziel shifted his open hand, that fire hose of agony, back to her . . .

  A sharp pop spiraled through the statuary and the dusty old volumes of Geyser’s library. Outside, it was still loud; the attack persisted. But in here, sheltered in all the marble and stonework, it was starkly quiet, that breathless time following any violent act. The torturous chewing left Flam instantly, like fanned smoke.

  Usin
g the bookcase to stand, Moira gazed down at her brother on his side, one arm over his face. She lingered, one hand bracing a shelf, her breathing small whimpers, smoking gun shaking in the other hand. She watched, as though her brother would spring back to life.

  Flam reached for her, and when she lifted her arm, he thought she’d take his hand. Instead she triggered her collar, the helmet raising its panels out and up, enveloping her head in wide, flat petals. Only once masked did she face him.

  He didn’t know what to say.

  The only evidence anyone was actually inside the suit was the rubbery wheeze of her oxygen scrubbers. She was unreadable behind the black visor. Flam could see only his own face reflected there.

  She turned away and headed back up the stairs.

  “Moira, wait. You were forced to do all that—by him. If any of you is like Nula at all, then I know you’re a good person. That sense of humor . . . your . . .”

  She didn’t stop, her suit shedding more scales with each step, sprinkling the floor behind her.

  Defeat solidifying in his chest, Flam remained where he was.

  She reached the top, but before moving on toward the attic door, she paused on the balcony. Resting a hand on the varnished railing, she gave him her mask’s profile. “The three months sitting next to you were . . .” She sighed. “I wish I could be her all the time.”

  Flam’s eyes burned. “You can.”

  She turned away.

  “Moira . . .” Flam remained where he was, listening to her footsteps.

  Distantly, as she pushed back out: “Karl, if you’ve found your father, I’ll be on the library roof. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Knee-Deep Pandemonium

  Geyser’s streets were too narrow for flying vehicles. Each time a ship would carefully lower to the cobblestones, Nevele would wait for the pirates to drop out and open fire. She hated the carnage, the ending of life, almost as much as knowing Clyde was in the vicinity, seeing her commit it.