Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2)

by J. C. Staudt

  The horse’s flank hit the deck and the animal went sliding. Toler let go of the reins before they took him along for the ride. He slapped his hands down to slow himself. He heard Seurag pitch over the edge and smack the floor below. Toler was still sliding, watching the balcony wall shoot away from him. His leathers were slick on the hard linoleum, his boots slicker.

  He hit the edge and fought to hang on. His fingers caught the balcony lip for the briefest second. Then his legs swung out beneath him, yanking his hands free, and he was falling.

  The distance to the ground was short, but a short fall at the right angle is all it takes to break a body in motion. In the instant before he hit, Toler thought of Reylenn; of the tumble she had taken out her window as she tried to escape the savages. How that fall had incapacitated her, and left her unable to walk. How it had almost killed her.

  Coffing earthquakes, he cursed to himself.

  He landed. Lightning jolted up his spine. There was another crack, and the rest of the balcony began to come down. He rolled over and scrambled to evade the debris, but something caught him low on the thigh and knocked him to the floor. He covered his head with his hands and curled into a ball, waiting for the end.

  Chunks of concrete and rebar rained down around him, beating him like fists. He was sure the whole balcony would come next, crushing him where he lay. When it crashed down, flinging glass and dust across the tilework, the sound was deafening.

  The landslide ceased. Toler opened his eyes and looked behind him. The balcony was lodged in the floor half a fathom beneath his feet, the surrounding tiles splintered and standing askew. The stone which had knocked him to the floor lay beside him. It wasn’t until he tried to move that pain shot through his legs, quick and sudden.

  He screamed.

  If he had been in pain before, there were no words to describe this.

  Seurag was already screaming, stumbling, rising and falling between hooves and knees as he tried to put weight on his legs. He’s broken more than one of them, Toler knew. Poor old boy… I can’t even put him down. The sound racked him, two tormented beings connected by the sheer force of their pain. This racket will bring every ganger and mutie on the block, he thought, even as he screamed.

  An indeterminate period of dull, hazy consciousness followed. He was going into shock, maybe. His head was so foggy he couldn’t be sure. Lenn and I are going to be a couple of old fogies in wheelchairs before we’re thirty, he thought, with a humor that didn’t make him want to laugh. It had been hard enough trying to decide whether he’d go to Unterberg or Bradsleigh when the rains let up. With no horse and who knew how many broken bones, he wouldn’t be able to do either.

  In his pain, Toler couldn’t help but be reminded of Merrick Bouchard, the Scarred man whose mysterious gift had restored his sight. If I can get to the city north somehow, I can track him down. That didn’t mean Merrick would be willing to help him, of course. Especially after their most recent encounter…

  Toler didn’t notice when the screaming died down so much as he realized it had stopped afterwards. In the quiet of the mall, the jackal man began to haunt his thoughts. Everywhere he turned; everywhere he wasn’t looking, he was sure he would find the man standing there, watching him like a statue. What was that thing?

  South Belmond had never lacked for freaks; that much was certain. The jackal man had probably been some drifter or outcast who’d found a way to tame the animals and get them used to his scent. But that fur… Toler was sure it was only a trick of the light—or of the starwinds. That was what he had to tell himself to deal with the fact that he was stuck here for the night. And what a long, terrible night it was about to be.

  CHAPTER 34

  Discount Sale

  “You gotta be coffin’ kidding me. You were serious about skipping town?” Jallika Weaver was naked, and she didn’t like the way Lokes was looking at her. Her towel was soaked, Meldi was a bundle of nerves, and the rain hadn’t let up all afternoon. The cloud-soaked sky was dark now, and the Longworth’s Outlet they’d taken shelter in was leaking like a sieve.

  “‘Course I was serious. When am I not serious? Still can’t believe that Daxin fella up and died without letting us know.” Lokes was gawking, his eyes crawling over her as if he hadn’t seen her without her clothes on in a long year.

  “How about that star around your neck? Didn’t you want to look into that church before we left Belmond? See what it’s all about?”

  “That was before we ran into Fink.”

  “I told you, he’ll let it slide as long as we show up with the money. He’ll understand on account of the rains.”

  “No he will not. Not no way, not nohow. Hannigan Fink keeps his promises. He got a whole posse full of folk who follow him for that reason alone. Nobody’d be afraid of him if he didn’t.”

  “Fink ain’t no reasonable man, I’ll give you that. But he does know what’s fair. And he don’t want to lose half his gang trying to bag us, neither. Quarterman got you all loaded up, didn’t he? Let’s call Fink’s bluff. We’ll face him together. And if we go down, we gonna bring some bad folk down with us. You and me, like always.”

  Lokes scowled and spat. “Fine. But we gon’ have to wait out this storm one way or the other. I ain’t showin’ up with half my hair missing ‘cause we got antsy.”

  “You’re speaking my language, honey.”

  Just then, there was a rumbling nearby. Weaver stopped to listen. Another earthquake? No, this was smaller. More localized, yet louder than any earthquake. Part of the building was collapsing.

  The rumbling only lasted a few seconds. Then she heard screams. A horse’s pained shrieks, and a man’s alongside them.

  “You hear—”

  “Sh-h-h.”

  They were there, alright. Muffled, yet close. After a moment, the screams died away. Like the rumbling, they had come from deeper inside the building.

  “What do you reckon that was all about?” she asked.

  “Beggars and scamps,” said Lokes, shaking out his leathers. “Whole daggum city’s full of ‘em, squabbling over every last patch of dust and scrap of chow. Ain’t nothin’ to worry yourself over.”

  “What if somebody needs help?”

  “Hope they find it.”

  “Our help, you ninny.”

  Lokes cut his eyes at her. “We ain’t got the occasion to go sticking our necks out for some no-good loafers. Let ‘em fight their own battles, would you? Always prying into other folks’ business…”

  I will use my talents always in the service of maintaining balance in the world, Weaver recited to herself. Wherever she found victims of oppression, it was her responsibility to bring balance. Even if she did break her oath and tell Lokes this was her duty as mandated by the Guild, it wouldn’t make him care. He thought being a Calsaire was about bragging rights; he didn’t know there was more to it than a name and a distinction.

  They unfurled their bedrolls and settled down for the night. When Weaver turned away from Lokes and curled up, he pressed in behind her. His hands were rough and warm against her arms, her sides, her breasts. She nudged them away, but he was adamant. He kept it up until she gave in.

  He had just slipped inside her when there came another cry from further inside the building. She reached back and put a hand on his hip to stop him from stirring the covers. The cry had been brief, desperate.

  Another sound pierced the silence. A yell this time, harsh and loud.

  “This is bugging me,” she said. She pushed him out of her, slipped out from beneath the covers, and began to don her clothing.

  “Hey… where you goin’?”

  “Didn’t you hear that?”

  “Sure I did. I told you not to let it rattle you.”

  “I gotta go see what’s happening over there.”

  “You ain’t gotta do nothing,” Lokes said, climbing to his feet. He was still hard when he came over and snatched the leather jerkin from her hands. “Now quit your frettin’ and get back in
bed.” He tossed the jerkin aside and pulled her close. “I ain’t done with you yet.”

  Weaver reached down between his legs and took hold of him. He tensed up, unsure of her intent. She leaned in and whispered onto his lips as she stroked him. “You don’t want to come along, that’s fine. You wait right here… I’ll be back for this.”

  Lokes stood in open-mouthed silence for a moment, entranced. When she released him, he sighed and said, “Hold your horses. I’ll come with you. I ain’t letting you go out there on your own.”

  There was an awkward bulge in his leathers as he buckled his gun belts and climbed into his saddle. When she gave his crotch a funny glance, he returned a flat stare.

  They set off through the store’s dripping interior, a wasteland of junked merchandise, fallen ceiling tiles, and overturned shopping carts. Lokes slapped his neck and wiped away a drop of water, cursing. Put up a fuss, why don’t you, Weaver wanted to say. I’m having a look, whether you like it or not.

  Shadows moved in the recesses, disappearing behind display stands and shelving units. Lokes cut his eyes at every sound and movement, his fiendsight piercing the darkness. He held the reins in one hand while resting the other on his thigh, ready to draw in a split second if he needed to.

  Longworth’s was attached to the rest of the mall by wide entrances on both floors, but when they reached the second-floor entrance, they found the roll-top gate locked down. From this vantage point, they could see out to the mall’s next intersection, where the floor opened up to the mall’s lower tier. There, between the Victor & Yancey Department Store and the mall’s parking deck exit, they found the collapse they’d heard earlier. One whole side of the second-story floor lay in rubble, the surrounding air still thick with dust.

  Amid the debris lay a man’s body, twisted and half-buried. Weaver didn’t recognize him across the distance at first.

  “Aw, shit. It’s Toler,” Lokes said.

  “Naw it ain’t.”

  “Yeah it is, look at his horse. That’s Seurag.”

  He was right. Weaver did recognize the horse. The rugged old bay was settled down beside the man, legs limp and useless. Toler’s head was resting against the horse’s flank. He was rubbing the animal’s neck, and she could hear him whispering. “We gotta get down there,” she said. “He’s hurt bad.”

  Lokes shook his head. “Oh, no. We had an agreement, you and me. We’re heading back to the Scorpion’s Uncle to pay off Fink, soon as the rains let up. Then we gonna head to that church and ask about this symbol, here. That’s what you said.”

  “Will… it’s Toler, for crying out loud. He’s about crushed to death over there. You just gon’ leave him like that?”

  “Don’t see as we got much choice in the matter. Gate’s locked. ‘Less you want to trek through the rain and circle ‘round to the next entrance. That could take longer than our skin’s liable to hold out. Longer than this building will, that’s for daggum sure.”

  “We ain’t checked the gate downstairs. Might be it’s open. He’s gonna die down there if we don’t do something.”

  “Well shit, I don’t disagree with you. What difference does it make?”

  “Daxin hired us to protect him.”

  “Yeah, and we did. Daxin ain’t around no more. Keeping your word with the living is one thing, Jal. Making promises to the dead… that’s a whole ‘nother soup spoon. It’s spooky, is what it is.”

  Weaver wheeled Meldi around and started back into Longworth’s. “You sit there and get spooked, then. I’m finding me a way downstairs.”

  Lokes groaned and started after her.

  After a bit of searching, they found an interior staircase that brought them down to the first floor. They found the roll-top gate just as locked as the one upstairs, but there was a narrow bend in the wire along one end where they could squeeze through, a space no more than a foot wide.

  It took some convincing to get Lokes to part with the horses. Once he was sated, they tied Meldi and Gish to the gate, then slipped into the darkness of the mall. Above the usual smells of the city, Weaver detected a damp animal odor as they neared the site of the collapse. She first attributed the smell to the rain, then to the horse. It was neither; more like… a dog. Then it was gone, and she abandoned the thought for one more pertinent.

  When he saw them approaching, Toler Glaive began to shake his head and murmur quietly, as if to himself. Perhaps it was all he had strength for, a weak-voiced protest which consisted of only a single repeated word: ‘No.’ He spoke as though he’d found himself victim to some nightmare—a nightmare Weaver became convinced was hers as she and Lokes drew closer.

  Toler’s skin glistened with fever. His deep brown eyes were empty and distant, and when she looked into them she saw only pain and terror. His legs were splayed out beneath him like broken twigs. His old horse lay behind him, neighing and fidgeting with shattered legs of its own. The balcony slanted down from the middle of the two-story wall and ended in a heap of marble, concrete and twisted rebar.

  “He’s a goner,” Lokes decided. “The both of ‘em are. Might as well put a pair of bullets in ‘em and be on our way. It’d be the neighborly thing to do.”

  “Don’t you dare, Will,” she said. “Broken leg might be a good reason to do for a horse, but it ain’t no excuse to be murdering no man.”

  “Done it before,” Lokes said with a shrug. “‘Sides, dang Shep’s caused us more trouble’n he’s worth as-is. We got plenty of ground to cover, you and me, and we ain’t got no extra horsebacks. How you reckon we gonna carry him?”

  “I reckon you gon’ have to walk.”

  “Now you hold on just a minute there, Momma…”

  “I ain’t your Momma. And I got no patience for a man who never thinks about no one but himself.”

  “Oh, is that right?” Lokes’s eyes flared, his whites shining in the dim light. “Well I wish you’d a’ told me sooner so I could’ve given all our food and hardware to them poor hungry zoomers we passed in the streets back yonder. Maybe I should’ve handed my sweeties to them nomads while I was at it. They looked like they could’ve used a couple of six-guns, what with all that sword-swinging and spear-chucking.”

  “Alright, alright, you made your point.”

  Lokes came in close, crowding her vision until all she could see when he spoke were those long yellowed teeth and the black scum creeping in at the roots. “Have I? I doubt it. Otherwise you might think about showing me a little respect every now and then for bein’ the only one around here with enough good sense to keep us afloat… ‘stead of running your mouth about who’s nice and who ain’t. You carry him if you want. I ain’t walking.”

  When Weaver refused to raise a counter argument, Lokes turned and started back toward the roll-top gate. She was learning to choose her battles, and found this reserved silence a passable tactic whenever he was arguing just to argue; to feel like he needed to reassert his control over her. How much longer this particular tactic would remain effective, she couldn’t say. But then, their relationship was about survival. For her, at least. Evolving to endure Willis Lokes and his latest shitstorm of grumpy, violent behavior was a delicate balancing act she was still learning to perform.

  Lokes was halfway to Longworth’s when Weaver started to feel faint. He was muttering to himself and didn’t hear when she called out to him—that, or he was ignoring her. A strange heat came over her, and the scene flashed away before her eyes and was replaced with another, like a picture in an old slide projector.

  Instead of the mall and Lokes and the collapsed balcony and Toler and the old crippled horse, Weaver was staring into a wide white expanse. Not a desert—in fact, there was neither sand nor sky nor cloud across the whole of it—but a great nothing, like the belly of a gigantic formless eggshell, all bright as noonday. As she watched, pieces of the white began to crack and fall away, leaving pitch blackness in their place. But in some of the gaps there appeared fragments of a lush green landscape, and in others the li
fe decayed before her eyes until it was as bleak and hopeless as the wasteland.

  The veil left her as quickly as it had come, and Weaver found herself in the mall again. The world had turned on its end, the floor running vertical beside her face, the marble cold against her cheek. She didn’t remember falling, but when she turned her eyes upward, Lokes was there, cupping her face in his hands. Beyond him, near the escalators on the intact section of the second-floor balcony, stood a shadow.

  “Get up,” Lokes was saying. “Drop the act. You ain’t fooling nobody.” He helped her sit up. When he saw her staring past him, saw the fear in her eyes, his brow knitted together. He froze, studying her. In a single movement, he drew, spun, and fired.

  The gunshot rang through the hollows of the vast interior space, leaving a memory long after the sound and the accompanying wisp of smoke had dissipated. The shadow was gone. Weaver didn’t see it go, just as she hadn’t seen herself fall to the floor. It was there one moment, and gone the next.

  “What in the blue blazes was up there?” Lokes asked. He holstered his revolver, then took Weaver by the shoulders and shook her a little, as if the answer might break loose from her skull and tumble out her mouth.

  Weaver still felt light-headed, and she didn’t answer him at once.

  “What’s got you so worked up? You had me thinking we’d got ourselves sniffed out by some street gang or another.”

  “It was nothing,” she finally said. “Thought I saw something up there.” The shadow may have been a figment brought on by her dizzy spell. But somehow, she knew it wasn’t a figment. She knew they were not alone in this place, though how she’d come by the notion was a mystery even to her.

  “Let’s get Shep and get moving before we draw every unsavory character on the block.”

  “What about the horse?”

  Lokes marched over and shot Seurag in the head. “There. Now we really oughta skedaddle.”