by Alan Baxter
‘I’ve got a pretty good guess,’ Claude growled.
‘We have a more pressing concern,’ Silhouette said, sudden realisation turning her bones to ice. ‘If Rowan went and gave up Alex, that’s why the Guards outside are pulling the hoods off the Austere.’
Claude spun around. ‘Shit! And if he gave up Alex and told of our disguise, then he would have given up this place too.’
Hammering feet sounded in the street outside as if on cue.
‘Time to fight,’ Silhouette said.
‘We’re going to need to regroup,’ Lily said. ‘Do ye remember, on ya way to Oldtown, ye passed through Ward Three? I told ye the place was called Breachan Vine?’
Silhouette racked her brain. ‘There was a church there with a big red door, where we had to turn right?’
‘Aye. Next door to the church is a house with a stall out front for trading cookware. Meet there.’
There was no more time to talk as Autarch Guard fell into the house and charged up the stairs. Lily and Monty grabbed the inert form of Edmund and headed into the back room. ‘Go with them!’ Silhouette barked at Claude, and she barrelled down the stairs to meet the oncoming Guards.
As she moved, she morphed, let her cat claws extend out in front of her and hit the first Guard in the chest. The narrow stairway was an advantage. The man fell back under the ferocity of her assault and several stumbled behind him. They collapsed like skittles with shouts of pain and annoyance.
Silhouette bounded back up the stairs, turned right where her friends had turned left. She heard shouts and clashing behind her and hoped Lily and the others would have a way out and the chance to use it. More Guards must have lain in wait for them on the roofs. The one advantage they had in Obsidian was the relatively low number of Kin. The only way the population of lowen could sustain the appetites of the hierarchy was if the hierarchy were few in number. They ruled with fear, oppression, enforced ignorance. If Silhouette and her friends could get away, perhaps they could avoid Guard patrols enough to regroup. But then what? She didn’t have time to think about it.
The room she ran into had no other doors, only one window. Without pausing to check for safety, she leapt through it. A one-storey drop was nothing to her. Guards were spread out in the street before the house. As Silhouette landed, she bunched her muscles and sprang away from them. One wide-eyed Guard raised something gun-like and there was a loud snap. A hard, black bolt with orange feathers smacked into the wall of the house opposite as Silhouette zigged. A fucking crossbow? she thought. This shithole is truly medieval.
She sprang upwards, wincing in anticipation as another loud crack sent a sharpened bolt at her. She didn’t see where it went, but felt no sudden blossoming pain and could only assume the Guard had missed. She chanced a glimpse behind and saw several Guards running after her. Some morphed into their favoured animal or monster forms, heedless of the open-mouthed stares of the lowen. Others maintained a human shape, levelling crossbows or drawing swords as they ran. From the corner of her eye she caught frantic scuffling on the roof of the house beside the one she had escaped from. She hoped Claude and the others could get away. They had nothing like the strength and advantages she commanded. But she had to survive. She had to save Alex.
Another wicked black bolt shicked into the glassy wall beside her. Her shoulder burned with a sharp line of pain. It must have grazed her on the way past. She jumped onto a low wall, sprang off it onto the side of the next house and used momentum and sheer will to push off that wall back up onto the roof of the first house. She ran without looking back, bounding with all the speed and agility her panther-form could muster, from roof to roof. She kept a vague awareness of her direction, moving obliquely to the direction of the church Lily had mentioned. The shouts of the Guards and the snap and twang of their weapons receded.
Chest heaving with the exertion, Silhouette glanced back, then down. The street below was empty of Guards. She saw bodies scrambling up over the edge of the roofs behind her. She dropped into the street and bolted, ducked left and right. Terrified, shocked lowen staggered out of her way, eyes wide at something they had never seen before, ripples of conversation disappearing in her wake. The presence of something other in Obsidian was far from secret any more. She hoped any who saw her run would be too stunned to make any sense if the Guards asked which way she had gone. Or perhaps they might recognise a shift in the paradigm and cover for her.
Alex sat in a black cell, fury burning rational thought from his mind. He berated himself as an idiot, cursed everything from the moment Patrick Welby had darkened his dressing room door in Sydney. That seemed like more than a lifetime ago. He wished death on Nicholas Haydon and his crew of mystics, who had been so easily manipulated and had led Alex and Silhouette into this ridiculous mess. The thought of Sil wrenched his gut. Was she safe? If he had been caught, had she and Jarrod and the others been caught as well? Killed? And the image of Rowan rose in Alex’s mind and he could not suppress a roar of sheer rage. That fucking rat-faced, useless, cowardly seer. How could he possibly think turning to someone like this Autarch could end in anything but his own misery? As if the Autarch of Obsidian would have any use for a feeble human psychic. Alex beat his fists against the cell door until his knuckles bled. A Guard in the corridor yelled at him to calm down or they would come in and beat him quiet. There was mirth in the Guard’s voice.
Alex bit down on his anger, sat heavily against the back wall of the cell. He drew air deep into his stomach, used his chi gung practice to take back some modicum of control. Ranting and thrashing and hurting himself would get him nowhere. Was everything lost? He had to believe Silhouette and the others still moved freely about Obsidian, and that if he could get out and rejoin them, they still had a chance.
He returned to the door, ran his fingers around the edges, tried to feel the hinges, but they were concealed from the inside. His mind felt wrapped in heavy velvet, the Darak in his chest throbbed as if from a great distance. He had been thrust quickly into a world of magic since meeting Welby, but he had equally quickly come to rely on his new skills and abilities. It was as if blind eyes had been given sight and he could no more ignore that vision than he could forget to breathe. Now his magic had been trapped within him somehow, fettered. His power locked in his body, his body locked in a cell, the frustration threatened to unhinge his mind. He slammed a fist once more against the thick door and sank to the floor.
‘You can’t break out.’ Haydon’s voice from the next cell was weak, broken.
‘No shit,’ Alex growled.
‘I knew I should have ignored you. Now I’ll be in even more trouble.’
Alex laughed. ‘You really think you can be in any more trouble than you are? The only reason you’re still alive is because the Autarch thinks he might still get something from you.’
Haydon moaned plaintively. ‘I have nothing to give him.’
‘And as soon as he realises that, he’ll eat you.’
Silence filled the cells again. Occasional muffled conversation between the Guards drifted in, sometimes a door slammed somewhere nearby. Alex fumed, utterly helpless. Surely the Autarch would come for him at some point. Perhaps that would be the only chance, to fight his way free once he was out of the cell. But beating one Kin, let alone a number of them, without his magic was impossible. Despair washed over him. He certainly had the physical skills and was not scared of facing up to any man. But facing Kin with nothing but skill and human strength was foolish. Suicide. And even if he escaped, what chance did they have without Haydon and his ritual?
‘Tell me more about this other ritual you mentioned,’ Alex said.
Haydon made a noise of dismissal. ‘What does it matter?’
‘Explain it to me.’ Alex was in no mood to pander to the man’s angst.
Haydon sighed loudly. ‘It’s hard to think straight, but I know the knowledge is in there.’
‘You’re under Fey influence, you realise that, right?’
‘I su
spect it to be true.’
Alex snorted. ‘You “suspect” it’s true? Seriously, what else can explain your situation?’
‘But is it really possible?’ Haydon asked.
Alex shook his head, amazed. ‘Look around yourself, you fucking idiot! Is this entire place really possible? The whole thing is built on massive, powerful Fey magic. You said you had a ritual to bring everything back. What does that mean?’
‘It means exactly that. I see it in flashes of vision, hints and suggestions. I can’t really explain it in words. I know the ritual, I can feel the words inside me, just like the magic that brought us here. The tablet we found imbued me with the power.’
Alex thought of ridesprites, of the capricious nature of Fey magic. He thought he better understood what imbued the professor than Haydon himself ever would. ‘What do you see?’ he asked.
Haydon’s voice grew quiet, distant. ‘I see an old town, broken down and deserted, but with a bright, glowing centre. I see it moving forward, trailing shining black … something. I see a wild landscape, like somewhere in the highlands of Scotland perhaps, and I see these things overlapping. Recombining somehow.’
Alex remembered what Parlan had told him, how the village of Averleekan had been taken whole out of the mortal realm when they had tried to remove the Fey anchor stone. What Haydon spoke of sounded like a simple reversal of that magic. Averleekan was no longer a small village, but this huge, sprawling city of black volcanic glass. What effect might that have, being brought into the mortal realm? It seemed to be the only chance Alex and his friends had of getting home, but it meant the anchor stone returning with them, and that was unacceptable. Ideas began to swim around Alex’s mind, possibilities too big to fully grasp.
But it was all academic while he was trapped in a cell and deprived of his magic. His elemental skills, his Darak-enhanced speed and power to fight. His ability to channel magic. He needed to get out and he needed all that stuff back.
20
The Autarch sat with the council, his eyes dark. ‘We need to make a strong example. This cannot be allowed to escalate.’
Katherine laughed, with little humour, her wounds neatly wrapped and bandaged. She wore a new dress, unbloodied, untorn, equally tight and heavy blue velvet. ‘It’s already escalating. Rumour is rife throughout Obsidian.’
‘Rumour is one thing. Fact is another. The truth is ours to determine.’
‘I think this situation is already beyond us,’ Katherine said.
Henri shot her an angry look. ‘So what truth do we make?’ he asked.
The Autarch spread his hands on the table, leaned forward. ‘This Alex Caine is powerful, there’s no doubt about that. I barely managed to get the shackle spell on him even when he was as confused as he was. But now he is shackled, he’s nothing. We call a special blood games, we tell the people to gather and see what happens when something challenges the will of the gods and the hierarchy. Paint this Caine fucker as an invading demon and sling him in the pits.’
‘To what end?’ Katherine’s plummy British accent was superb at conveying disdain. ‘Let’s just kill him and hunt the others.’
The Autarch shook his head. ‘You never were very forward thinking, Katherine. We need to show that we have absolute power, so we quash these rumours by catching the invader, convincing the lowen of the dangers and showing we have power over that danger.’ He raised a hand to cut off another remark from Katherine. ‘Furthermore, if we make a big enough deal about it, his friends will come to try to save him. Then we catch them too.’
‘It’s dangerous,’ Archibald sneered, but his eyes were narrowed in thought. ‘Not an entirely bad idea, but dangerous.’
The Autarch shrugged. ‘True. But this place is a warren of homes and lowen. We know the disguises they’ve been using, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find new ones. The longer they’re out there, the more chance they have to sow dissent. We cannot have an uprising here. Our authority must remain absolute.’
The other council members nodded and murmured, at a loss for an alternative plan. The Autarch turned his attention to a small figure cowering in one corner. ‘Come forward, new friend.’
Rowan stepped from the shadows, scanned the faces of the council. They reminded him of a pride of lions, and he felt like a gazelle. There were half-smiles and hooded eyes all around. He held his hands together tightly before his chest to hide their trembling.
‘So,’ the Autarch said. ‘What do you think of this plan?’
‘Er … Well, I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? You’re our informer. Our man from the inside. You know these people better than any of us. Will it work? Will the others come for Alex?’
Rowan swallowed the burning bile of guilt in his throat. Always so much noise, so many visions, he had never known peace like he knew here. This may not be an honourable thing he did, but it was right for him. He didn’t owe Alex or Silhouette or the others anything. And if he planned to earn a place in this strange, peaceful city, he needed to be useful to this council, or he would simply end up as dinner. ‘It depends,’ he said. ‘Alex is the leader. He sent Jarrod back, so I don’t know where he would be in all this.’
The Autarch flapped one hand. ‘We know. I’ve sent a contingent of Guards to investigate and see whether they can catch him before he goes through. But we’ve probably missed him. I have other plans on that front. I’m waiting to hear back from the Guard about the success or failure of our raids on the house you told me about. Assuming the others are still out there, will they come for Alex?’
Rowan nodded. ‘Silhouette will, I’m certain. They love each other. Claude, I don’t know. He’s a free agent and got tangled up in this by accident. He has no love for Caine. It depends whether he sticks with Silhouette or not.’
The Autarch frowned. ‘We need to hope he does. What about the lowen helping them?’
‘What about them?’
‘How determined are they?’
‘Well, they’re convinced they’re being lied to about Ascension and other aspects of faith and culture. They claim there’s a considerable underground resistance, but I’ve only seen a very small handful of people who seem to be a part of it.’
‘But if that handful see Alex as some kind of saviour, will they try to help him escape the pits?’
Rowan dragged one hand over his dark, curly hair. ‘I don’t know. I think they would be inclined to help Silhouette in anything she suggested and she would definitely come for Alex. I think it’s most likely that she’ll rally whoever in the resistance is around and they’ll help her where they can.’
The Autarch stood. He paced the room. ‘So the only real wildcard here is this Claude fellow who may choose to go off alone. But he’s human, yes?’
Rowan nodded again. ‘Definitely. Jarrod and Silhouette are Kin, Alex and Claude are human. But they’re both quite powerful, especially Alex. He’s something more than human, really.’
The Autarch sneered. ‘Well, he’s shackled now, so I don’t care how powerful he may or may not be normally. What’s to stop this Silhouette leaving if she’s Kin?’
‘She won’t leave him, definitely.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘She said so. He tried to send her with Jarrod and she flat out refused.’
The Autarch pursed his lips. ‘And here we get to something that’s really bothering me. They know about the stone and Alex has sent Silhouette to find it. Why?’
Rowan shook his head, looked at the floor. ‘I really don’t know. I don’t know enough about any of this. There’s some connection between it and Alex’s power, I think.’
‘And how is that any use to him? What does he plan to do if he finds it?’
‘I have no idea.’
The Autarch turned back to address the council. ‘So that’s that then. Agreed?’
Various grumbles ran around the table, but the overall mood was of reluctant consent.
‘Good. Get out to your wards, to y
our Blessed and Priests. Tell them to rally the people. The invading demon has been caught and he will face creatures of divine retribution in the pit at the next bell.’
‘So soon?’ Henri asked.
‘I won’t give them any time to get organised or any more time for this rumour mill to run in my city.’ The Autarch turned to Rowan. ‘Come on, let’s go and give Alex the good news.’
As the council rose and headed one way, Rowan followed the Autarch. ‘Why must I go with you?’ he asked, his voice wavering.
The Autarch didn’t answer, his stride long and determined.
Silhouette prowled into the shadow of the house across the street from Lily’s suggested rendezvous. Her heart hammered, from exertion and panic. Everything had quickly degenerated into fear and she did not like the feeling. That Alex had been caught preyed on her mind. Rowan betraying them was one thing. Alex not being able to get away was quite another. His magic was powerful, his skills manifold. How were they holding him?
She crouched in shadow and watched the rendezvous house. It seemed deserted. No candles burned inside, she saw no movement. The street itself was quiet. A group of lowen gathered in front of a home some fifty metres further along, but otherwise nothing moved. She had to consider that Claude and the others had not made it. With Jarrod gone through the pathway, that left her alone in Obsidian. If Alex had been caught trying to get the other humans out, what chance did she have of breaking Alex free? And Gal had said only one human was left of the original three. If that was true, perhaps even getting Alex and the remaining human was pointless if that human didn’t have the knowledge they needed to escape Obsidian. After her long and varied life, was this really the place where she would meet her end?
Minutes ticked by and Silhouette’s despair deepened. If she was truly alone now, she did not have a plan. Thoughts of the pathway kept swimming into her mind and she hated herself for it. She had promised Alex she would not leave him here and she had meant it, but she did have a way out. The thought of going back dragged at her, a longing hard to ignore. This awful, hard city, everything black, the wan blue light. It was a nightmare made manifest. The weak, pasty lowen everywhere, living lives of squalor and poverty and enforced religious subservience. How could this hierarchy of Kin maintain it? Was it really worth it? Perhaps the power had become a habit and the human farm too good to give away, regardless of how horrible a place it might be. Perhaps it was the ability of the hierarchy here to move freely between Obsidian and home that made all the difference. And it was true that the real nourishment and joy in a Kin’s meal was the human lifeforce more than the condition of the vessel that delivered it. She had to remind herself she had always had more affinity for humans than her Kin brethren. A curse of her first generation blood, or so Joseph had always maintained.