by Jon Hollins
“You will take nothing,” said Afrit. “I am a student of politics, Quirk. Of history. This is not how change happens.”
Quirk didn’t have time for this, but the academic inside couldn’t resist the siren call of barbed debate. “The will of the people?” she said. “That’s not how change happens?”
“This isn’t the will of the people, Quirk.” There was sadness in Afrit’s eyes. “It could be, if you did this right, if you made them see this world clearly. But right now, this is just your will. Right now, you’re just another dictator.”
Quirk just stared at the woman she had thought of as her friend. And she did not understand. What had happened? Was it in the Vale when the dragons had come? Was it below the High Priests’ castle? When had Afrit lost her nerve, her stomach, her sense of pissing urgency?
“Don’t bother meeting me back at Mead Square,” Quirk said, and she pushed Afrit away.
She fought to the front of the crowd, not bothering to look back. She doubted Afrit was following anyway. At the leading edge of the crowd she stretched a pillar of fire up toward the sky.
“This way!” she bellowed, pushing forward. “This way!” She loosed a second pillar of fire.
And praise be to Knole, to Lawl, to Betra, and Klink, and Toil, and Cois, and even Barph. They came. Stumbling, and yelling, bumping into each other, yes, but they came. And as they picked up steam, they found their voices once more. Yelling and howling, they plunged down the streets, toward the Twelfth District.
Quirk, was in fact, finally feeling confident, right up until the moment when they ran into a small army.
They rounded the corner onto the broad thoroughfare that led directly to the steps of the Municipal Hall and saw that fifty yards down, the street was completely blocked by a wall of guards, perhaps thirty across and five men deep.
She skidded to a halt, tried to think quickly. A hundred and fifty men. She had them outnumbered at least three to one. But these guards were heavily armored, holding tall shields in a tight wall, armed with short stabbing spears.
Quirk knew what had to be done. “Knole forgive me and know I do not enjoy this.” She planted her feet, stretched out a palm.
And then the crowd at her back broke around her, plunging toward a sharp, pointy death with drunken howls, and blocked her shot completely.
“Wait!” she yelled, but it was about as effective as telling Balur about the risks of venereal disease.
Then bellows turned to screams.
“Shit!” She fought forward, riding the crest of the crowd’s pressure from behind. Ahead of her she could see people faltering, trying to turn away from the soldiers’ spears. But the rear of the crowd smashed into them, hurled them forward.
She screamed. Because gods piss on it. It should not be this way. And she had tried. Over and over.
Then she turned her scream into fire. She thrust both hands at the guards, leaned all her weight into thrusting a pillar of flame into their ranks. It smashed into the shield at the center of the wall. She watched the wall buckle, the shock wave rippling up and down its length. She roared, poured more of herself into the effort.
The shield wall broke. Her flame ripped through the shield, through the man behind it. It ripped through the men behind him. It hurtled down the thoroughfare, tearing the High Priests’ army in two.
Then the two halves of the shield wall split, spilling out to the left and right, falling away from the wound she had scorched in their heart. She bellowed a rallying cry, pushed forward into that space, lashing out to the left and right with twisting ropes of fire.
But the High Priests’ guards did not break, did not turn screaming. They kept falling away to the sides, opening up the path forward, but continuing to hack and slash at the rioters’ flanks as they pressed into it. And she felt the cresting force that had been pushing her forward waver behind her.
“Forward!” she yelled. “Forward!”
But no one was listening to her. She honestly wasn’t sure if anyone had ever been listening to her.
Fear clawed at her. She didn’t want to call it fear. She wanted to call it frustration, or anger, or even arrogance if she had to, but it wasn’t that. It was fear. Fear that they would lose. Fear that this city would be crippled. Fear that the dragons would win. Fear that she would be responsible for all these pointless, stupid deaths and fear that she would be responsible for all the ones to come in their wake. Fear that her fear made her culpable for this unmitigated disaster.
She had known fear before. Fear had been Hethren’s weapon. He had made fear her master. And then, after that … then fear had been her excuse. Fear had been how she had justified the things she had done in Hethren’s name. Fear had been the shield she had held up when the truth was, she had started to enjoy it.
So Quirk knew fear, and Quirk knew she felt fear now. And she knew that she needed to be careful. That she could not let fear drive her. But in the cut and thrust, and push and shove, there was just not time.
She pivoted, chasing after the guards’ retreating right flank, flinging fireballs at them. And she tried to be tactical, to aim only where she had to, to take only the lives that were absolutely necessary, but gods it was so hard. People were moving, and shouting. The stench of sweat and blood were thick in the air. Fists and bodies hammered at her. She threw another fireball. She watched guards fly into the air, smoke and flames making bright trails.
“Forward!” she shouted, even as she fought at standstill. Everything was a balancing act. Some of Firkin’s followers were hacking and kicking at guards. Others were fighting to get free. Others were just bleeding and dying.
A guard, thrown out of the enemy’s flank, darted toward her, lunging with his spear. He hit a wall of fire, which washed over him, left him screaming. She spun around, trying to assess, trying to think where to strike next. The noise was incredible, a battering wave smashing at her. Screams and the sound of metal against meat.
And then pain. Pain like fire. Pain that made her scream. A vast, ugly violation in her shoulder. Something striking her from behind. She staggered, and there was an ugly ripping feeling.
She fell, spinning as she did so, landing on her back. She stared up, saw the guard above her, preparing to thrust down. And the crowd didn’t care. The crowd kept pushing and stamping and raging. Feet stepped on her hands, her chest.
She screamed again. She could feel the blood pouring out of a ragged hole in her shoulder. He’d stabbed her. The whoreson had actually stabbed her.
The guard above lunged down, aiming the spear straight at her face. Her fucking face.
Quirkelle Bal Tehrin dreamt of fire.
She felt power burn through her, pleasure and pain so close to each other. The thrill of it. The release. As if iron bands were bursting from her soul. And for a moment she was nothing but a conduit, nothing but a faucet through which fire flowed. Self-awareness flickered, threatened to be burned away. She wrestled for self-control. This is weakness, she told herself. This is fear. Let it go. Just let it go.
It was harder than it should be. But then she did, the flame shutting off, leaving her feeling hollowed out and useless. She was panting, lying on her back, sweating. The world was silent, just a faint ringing in her ears, like the echo of a memory.
She blinked, and breathed, trying to bring herself back to the world entirely, away from the sense of aching loss. She couldn’t hear anything. Why couldn’t she hear anything?
She picked herself up. They were gone. All of them were gone. Firkin’s followers. The soldiers. And for a single, heart-stopping moment she was sure it was all her fault. She was sure that she had burned them all. It was always there, that thought. Quiet, ignored, but there, waiting to slip like a stiletto into her mind.
But though the street was full of bodies, only a handful were blackened and twisted. She had not wrought most of the carnage here. Instead, the fact that only a dozen or so of the hundred or more bodies wore the High Priests’ armor told the real story. T
his had not been a victory. This had been a rout. Her army had fallen. So had her cause. So had she.
38
What’s Small, Red, Furry, and Smells of Dried Blood?
Lawl, Lette reflected, clearly had no respect for anyone’s thighs. Eight hours, they had been descending these stairs. Eight hours of step after step without break. She collapsed onto a broad stone platform suspended somewhere in the middle of nowhere and clutched her aching legs.
“Remind me again,” she said, “why we’re struggling to save these cursed gods anyway?”
“Arsehole gods who exist on some distant plane and mostly ignore us,” said Will, “are better than arsehole dragons on Avarra directly interfering with our lives.”
“Couldn’t we just let the dragons kill the gods”—Lette managed to summon the energy to start massaging her throbbing legs—“and then kill the dragons after that?”
“Don’t they somehow become gods when they kill the existing ones?” Will asked. “I mean I thought that was the point of it all.”
Lette didn’t have the energy to shrug. “I honestly don’t know. That part of their plan has seemed stupid to me since day one. It’s just their frightening efficiency at the bit where they conquer all Avarra that has me worried.”
“Well, we can’t kill gods,” said Will, managing to rub his own calves now. “So I think we should kill the dragons now just on the off chance they become them.”
Lette thought about that. Normally she might have enjoyed debating the point. Despite his flaws, Will could be an entertaining conversational sparring partner. She would concede that. And in this light, even bedraggled as he was, he was still a good-looking man. In fact, bedraggled was quite a good look on him. Which was, of course, neither here nor there. Just an observation. Anyway, she didn’t have the energy to argue. So she might as well just enjoy his biceps while he rubbed his legs. There was no harm in that.
What had she been thinking about, again?
“Why have we been stopping?”
The platform they were on marked the junction of three separate staircases. Balur stood at the top of one, looking back at them.
Lette grunted. “For all the obvious bloody reasons. But,” she said, “if you’re feeling so chipper, I’ve seen dead ivy all over this place. Go grab some and let’s make a fire.”
Balur stood, staring at her with distaste, but unable to say no without conceding that he felt tired. “Fine,” he said eventually, and stomped off.
Lette lay on her back. Their entrance into the labyrinth of stairs was invisible now. Only interlacing stairways were visible above them.
“It’s actually kind of beautiful,” she said, looking up at the interlocking architecture, at the towering columns of rock, all of it madly suspended in the air.
“What?” Will had been concentrating on his aching legs.
“All of this.” Lette swept a hand at the world around them. “This, well, let’s face it. It’s obviously a divine creation. People couldn’t have made this. Those pillars are just too tall and too thin. Rock doesn’t work that way. And the light. I shouldn’t be able to see my own hands, but I can see almost a quarter mile up before the shadows obscure things. It’s all divine. But it’s …” She struggled for a word. “It’s sort of magnificent,” she finished. It wasn’t, she thought, a word or even a thought she’d be comfortable sharing with many people other than Will.
Will took a pause from kneading his calf like it was yesterday’s leftover dough and considered the space. “Yes,” he said eventually. “Yes, I suppose it is. But it’s all built in the service of self. Lawl didn’t build this to impress anyone, or to help anyone except himself. He did this to punish Barph, to show his dominance over him. This is buried. It’s not for anyone to see.”
Lette nodded. “Well,” she said, “I didn’t say that Lawl wasn’t an enormous arsehole. Just that he was also capable of beauty.”
Will lay back on the rock next to her. Not too close. He seemed well acquainted with the politics of their personal space. He sighed. “When I look at this,” he said, “I can’t help but feel … disappointed.”
Lette arched an eyebrow even though she knew he couldn’t see it. “You were expecting a more impressive underground labyrinth of impossible staircases?”
Will huffed a small laugh. “No, I … Just imagine if all this had been built in the service of making things better for humanity. For people like you and me. For the elves too. And dwarves, and centaurs, and giants, and Analesians, and everybody. What if someone wanted to rule not because it was a way to increase their personal power and wealth, but because they actually cared. Because they wanted to make things better.”
Lette thought about that. “Well,” she said, “there were preacher men who used to wander through Salera when I was a child and tell saint stories about people like that. About kingdoms where justice reigned. But I never met a saint. And I’ve never seen a kingdom like that. And I’ve been to more than a few places. I don’t know if real people work like that. Taking power usually requires force and compromise. And once someone’s got power … it’s not good for them.”
Silence from Will. She didn’t look over at him for a response.
“I’m thinking about my parents’ farm,” Will started again. “I think they were like the people in your preacher men’s stories. There was only me and the three farmhands, but I think they were genuinely interested in making it the best place it could be for all of us. Maybe it’s just when it gets big, it gets out of hand.”
Lette chewed on that for a while too. “Wasn’t Firkin one of your father’s farmhands?” she said eventually.
“Yes,” said Will. “Before he went drunk and crazy. Or when he was drunk and crazy less often.”
“But he went drunk and crazy, right?” Lette went on. She wasn’t sure she could buy into Will’s paradise, but for once she didn’t just want to kick it out from under him either. “And your father and he quarreled and he left. That’s what you told me back in Kondorra.”
Will grunted his assent.
“So even that small paradise,” she said, “and I’m sure that’s what it was for you, for your parents’ only child … it wasn’t paradise for everybody. Somebody had to leave. Your father had to exercise his power, and he did it in a way that didn’t benefit everybody. It certainly didn’t benefit Firkin.”
She heard Will twisting beside her, could feel the companionableness of the silence fleeing. Gods piss on it.
“I’m not saying this to criticize your father,” she said. “I think he made a fine call. He was looking out for his wife and son. That was the right thing to do. I’m just making a point. There are no perfect systems. Someone always gets fucked.”
Will settled down beside her. “So what should we do then?” he asked. “Just accept it? Just say ‘okay’ to the dragons and accept that it’s our turn in life to be oppressed? There’s got to be a better system. A way where the fewest people possible get screwed over. There’s got to be something … maybe not fair, but more fair.”
He sounded so utterly desperate, so exposed then. And she didn’t know how he did it. She could not. Never. It would be like walking into battle naked. She was simply not that brave.
“Hey,” she said, making her voice intentionally rough to crush the sound of any rogue emotion out of it, “I’m here, fighting with you, aren’t I?”
And she looked over at him. She knew she shouldn’t, but she did. And there he was looking at her, his face all open, and everything on display, all the hope and the hurt writ so very large in his big, deep eyes.
Oh gods, piss on it.
He rolled onto his side to face her. And she was rolling to face him too.
It’s a mistake, said a voice that was entirely correct and about to be completely ignored.
“There,” Balur boomed. “Pissing ivy.” He crashed down onto the platform in a clatter of clanking armor and thundering feet. He threw a bundle of scraggly brown leaves and creepers onto the fl
oor.
Lette rolled onto her back and heaved out a long, frustrated breath. It had been far, far too long since she had had a tumble in the sheets.
“Food, sleep,” she mumbled as she fumbled in her pack for a steel and flint, “and no more pissing talking.”
“I am thinking we are approaching a wall,” said Balur.
It was the next … day? Perhaps. Lette wasn’t sure in the constant twilight of the labyrinth. She had slept. She had walked. She had tried to forget about Will’s big eyes.
The staircase they were on was a broad and unusually ornate thing with low, fluted banisters. It ended as all the staircases did, in shadow. She peered into the gloom. Could she make out slight subtleties in the darkness ahead of them? Perhaps. Some lines and shapes of a minimally lighter gray. But nothing regular enough to be pillars or steps.
“Is it a dead end?” Will asked Lette, peering ahead of them. “Have we come the wrong way?”
“Well,” said Balur, “having been here several times before, I am totally knowing my way through this impossible labyrinth.”
They kept pushing forward. Lette’s eyes strained. Then she realized the problem wasn’t her vision, but her sense of scale. The wall wasn’t hidden in shadow. It was the shadow.
The wall was as impossibly vast as the rest of the whole impossible space. It stretched up like the end of the world itself. The stairs met it and took a sharp right angle, leveling out somewhat into a wide, sloping platform.
As they got closer, Lette sniffed the air.
“Do you smell something?” Will asked.
She shook her head. “No, I just like to sniff at the air curiously for no good reason from time to time. I’m surprised you hadn’t picked up on that.”
Will looked at her. “That’s sarcasm, isn’t it?”
She didn’t bother acknowledging that. He was lucky he had those eyes. She turned to Balur. “Dried blood?” she asked.