by Sparks,Cat
Star closed her eyes and pictured Nene, using the memory of her sister’s face to keep the bloody tide of Quarrel’s memories at bay. She remembered fondly their battered old wagon, painted green and blue. The cloying stink of its bitter herbs and ointments. All the times she’d slacked off, dodged chores, hid out amongst the other travellers, listening to their outlandish stories, dreamt of a better life. One that would leave the Sand Road far behind. She’d thought herself much better than those people. Better than Remy with his ill-thought-out bravado. Better than Yeshie and her amulets of bone and glaze. Better than Anj and Kaja and Griff, gang rivalries and paybacks. A Templar, that was what she was, but one so small and broken she could not perform the tasks required of her. She was a monster. Tainted, useless, and alone. She would die in here and nobody would remember her name.
= Fifty-eight =
Alone at last.
Marianthe paced the length of her Sanctum floor. She had frightened the last of her followers out, threatening them with the kind of violence she hadn’t used in more than a decade. Green patterns rolled and flickered across the fabric of her robes, splashed across the walls and screens, and cascaded through the dusty air like insect swarms.
She yelled at Ana-Maria to shut the consoles down, before remembering that Ana-Maria had fled in terror along with the rest of them. Fallen candles spilled and spluttered wasting the remainder of their light.
Her hands were still shaking. She needed time to think. Time was the one thing she had long taken for granted. Time was all there was out here at the far edge of the world. Beyond the Crysse graves lay desolation, just ruins and lands belonging to the tankers and other castes and creeds of mechakind, to things that had evolved and adapted, changed themselves to live amongst the rubble.
Marianthe stared at the patch of floor where the Templar warrior had burst in, fallen, and convulsed. There was nothing there now but scuffs and dark smears. Dirt or blood or something else. Twice the size of a normal man, she had known him for what he was, in an instant.
After all, he was not the first of his kind to force his way into her temple. She’d fought the last one off a hundred years ago, after telling her people to take up arms and defend their gardens against rogue warrior incursion. Half of them had been slaughtered like dogs, but what had she expected? But this time, this one . . . this one was different. This one had had a kindness in his crazy bloodshot eyes. Not for her—he had not even noticed her, she was sure of that. No eyes for old crone Marianthe, who had once been beautiful—nobody remembered that. Eyes only for the girl, the willow wisp, the scrawny thing with the meshed-up arm who didn’t even know the pain she carried.
She should have killed the both of them for coming between her and her memories. Her man had made real, big as life, her memories fleshed whole. Her handsome soldier, the love of her life. They’d died in the wars together, or so she’d thought.
Or so she’d thought.
That face on the screens—had she seen what she thought she’d seen? It was all too fast, too late, too horrible. The girl was a bomb and she had to be removed. A Templar bomb who wasn’t even trained, who did not even comprehend her own significance. The wrong set of words or mismanaged key commands, and she could bring the whole dish down upon their heads.
She would instruct Pavel to do the deed. A sharp, quick blow to the back of the girl’s head with a shovel. Quick and dirty, but safer for everybody. The girl would never even know what hit her.
Marianthe realised she’d been walking in circles, round and round, broken candles kicked out of the way. Farm dirt scuffed all over the floor. Broken hearts and broken dreams. It was time to pull her thoughts back into perspective. Something was still niggling at the back of her brain, though. The fallen soldier, the Templar warrior half out of his skull, writhing and convulsing on the ground. He looked to be the same age, same vintage as she was—vat growns can always tell a brother or a sister soldier. Lovers and fighters, not sisters and brothers.
Lovers and fighters.
She paused to think. No. It couldn’t be. Too horrible to think about. Her Benjamin had been handsome, handsome and strong. She wanted to say no, to say it couldn’t be true. But the broken thing writhing on the floor, the thing she was almost positive was not her Benjamin, had gotten up and crawled away before she’d had time to ask him any questions.
= Fifty-nine =
Quarrel stared up at the sky. Never had he seen such a sickly hue. Not even long ago, in the heat of battle, with the world lit up by missile strikes, contrails warped and weft across the sky.
His Manthy had been young back then. Love of his life, she was. They had all been so young, driving pods polished so bright you could see your own reflection.
The memory froze in his mind: his own rugged face staring back at him from the past. Square jawed and serious, like some kind of action hero. Jacked up on GoGo, Freeze, and Rocketburn. Pods keyed in to their own biometrics, named for the heroes of revolutions past.
He wiped a smear of sweat out of his eyes. Now what the hell had she called that pod of hers? Charlie . . . Charcoal . . . Cherry cheery something-or-other? It seemed so wrong that the name had been forgotten. It had slipped out of his memory like so many other names and places, relegated to the realm of ghosts.
He stood to attention and saluted her memory. “Yes, Ma’am!”
Ma’am. How long since he’d used that form of address? In Nisn, they were all called Sir, be they men, women, or otherwise. Sir for the humans, Templar for the ones who would be soldiers.
And he would be a soldier one more time, would fight his way through this desert bullshit until he found a way back to her arms. Home is where the heart remains, even when the rest has been forgotten, even the glory days.
Glory days.
Because they had been glory days, he knows that even though his memories of them were locked in fragmentary slivers. The day they liberated the Palace of Adecco. Two years of siege, then they had battered down the walls with sonic fugue. It was the battles he remembered best of all, back when there’d been true names and places. Back when they’d known what they were fighting for and why. When those condemned to give their lives had done so for a reason. Reasons that had seemed reasonable at the time.
Quarrel strode forward, picking up the pace. There’d been something important he was supposed to remember. Something to do with his mesh. He stared at the patch of sand between his feet. Remember . . . why couldn’t he remember?
Voices were screaming in his face, then a blast of pain tore through his shoulder, knocking him flat on his back. Nerves quivering like maggots in spoiled meat.
Unfamiliar sounds make him raise his head. The stink of something rotting. Tear-blurred eyes. He rubs them clear. A blood-streaked sky, the cloy and stench of battle-weary fighters.
The hour: sometime just past dawn. Soldiers hang listlessly in the slowly-building heat, uniforms encrusted with dried blood. All bear wounds and gross disfigurements. They are the lucky ones, the ones still able to stand and fight.
Whatever pride and honour they set out with has long gone. They are defeated and starving, with hunched shoulders and weeping sores. Waiting for the sky to brighten. Waiting to make their last futile strike.
He holds his breath. Afraid to move in case of . . . what, exactly? He turns. Regrets it. Witnesses another mercy killing. The screaming abruptly ceases, the agonised pleadings drowned by noise and confusion on the battle fringe.
A gentle hand falls on his shoulder. Hers. Painfully thin, but whole, her face still beautiful even though it’s flecked with gore and dirt. She points ahead. There are figures approaching across the sand. Not soldiers.
Closer still, their garments striking. Simple, yet of a fine weave. Blue cloth. Clean people with meat on their bones. Not soldiers. Anything but soldiers.
“Who—”
he begins to ask, then stops himself. It doesn’t matter. Only the fighting matters.
An explosion above his head. He finds himself face down in sand, her body thrown across his own. He’s landed badly, jarring his jaw. She hauls him up, shepherds him away from sand that’s no longer safe. He doesn’t argue. Shells are exploding overhead, so loud he fears his eardrums will shatter. They run, clamping their ears against the noise, stumbling forwards, dodging fallen bodies.
Knees graze against the potential sanctuary of rocks. She doesn’t need to tell him. He climbs, following her lead, head racing with questions that will have to wait until they’re safe to be answered. Fatigue laps at his edges. Every muscle aches. Hurts, all bruises, scratched and blistering.
Their destination is a rocky shelf with little to shield it. They stop to rest and he studies her features. He loves her—should he tell her? So little time for talking. She takes him gently in her arms. He clings to her, desperate for comfort. No one has hugged him in a very long time. He stinks of blood and bile and sweat but she doesn’t seem to care. He needs her more than he has ever needed anyone.
They kiss hard, draw each other close.
They are interrupted by a sound so loud, it drowns the thunder of exploding shells. They separate. Stare out across the battlefield. There is thick smoke and confusion. “Which side is ours?” she asks.
“It begins,” he tells her, looking to the place she’s looking, willing himself to see whatever she sees. Hoping to make some sense of it all. Something terribly important is taking place, he’s sure of it.
The bombardment ceases. Have they been defeated? Perhaps there’s no one left to kill? Eerie silence falls across the plain. Not even the screams of the dying linger. A new sound rising, deadly and horrific, churning in the pit of his stomach, setting his bones on edge.
“Incoming,” he screams.
The high-pitched whine invades their heads, their veins, their hearts and lungs. It’s everywhere and it hurts like fire, licking at their skin, curdling their blood.
Tiny silver arrows dart like lightning, cutting furrows through the clouds. The lookout tower explodes in great gouts of flame.
“Run!” he says and he takes off, tearing like the hounds of hell are on his heels. But she’s not with him. She’s on the ground, face down, not moving. Not breathing.
Flies buzzed around Quarrel’s sweaty face. He caught one between his thumb and forefinger. Watched it squirm. Crushed it flat. He wondered how long it had been since he last slept. With eyes wide open, he was still dreaming of all the faces of his platoon. No names. Names were the first things to fade from memory—all of them except for hers.
“Manthy? Manthy, did they kill you? Is that what came to pass?”
He staggered a little further, and looked up to see a rocket shooting overhead. He watched it fall in a sweeping arc, felt the sand shudder beneath his boots when it impacted.
“Expect me to believe that’s real?” he called out.
No answer. Not that he was expecting one. With a clumsy motion, he tugged a bowie knife from his boot.
“How about this one then—real enough for you, maybe?”
Emitting a blood curdling cry, he swung the knife at his own mesh with all the force he could muster. But his action was halted mid air, frozen just above the point of impact.
“Let me go, you bastard!”
Quarrel now belonged to the Lotus Blue. The General would never let him go, not until he’d worked himself to death in its service.
Quarrel shoved the knife back in its sheath. He picked up the pace even though he was exhausted, marching off to join the Templar army, head awash with a tide of jumbled memories. Rockets sailing and exploding overhead.
= Sixty =
When the mud brick walls of her cell began to shake, Star thought it was her own head splitting, thought it was Quarrel’s memories finally taking over for good, tipping her over the edge.
She wrapped her arms around her head and rocked forward and back. Forward and back. She coughed, lungs thick with mud brick dust, shattered bricks tumbling all around her, powdering her face and hair. Moonlight flooded in through a jagged, gaping rent. Nothing was visible through the swirling dust.
Cracks in the wall, growing wider and wider. She stopped moving, not yet comprehending the significance.
“Stand back! Get out of the way!”
It was a male voice, familiar, but it couldn’t be. Not Grieve. Grieve the coward, Grieve the lazy, Grieve the thief who’d abandoned her to the crazy old lady’s wrath.
She crawled away from the tumbling bricks as the crack widened further, the wall convulsed, and another hail of bricks dislodged.
“Get up, Star! Get off the ground!”
Shouting, but she couldn’t be sure which way was up. A figure moving through the dust, hands dragging her to her feet. So she balled her fists and tried to fight him off, still not trusting in the sound of his voice, not trusting that the self-serving thief would have really come back to save her.
The figure grabbed her by both wrists, face obscured in a plume of dust.
“Grieve?”
All around her, ghostly shapes moved through a swirl of dust and moonlight. A large mass, something strong and powerful peering in through the broken wall. Death come to take her, filling her vision, blocking out the night.
She stumbled forward, his arm around her waist, helping her up and over the broken bricks. Up and over, then up again, coughing as someone else clasped both her arms and hauled her up. Grieve pushed from below, then climbed up after her, nimble as a monkey, a coil of rope slung snugly across his torso. There was a blast of chilly evening air and then they were moving, faster than anything, his sinewy arms wrapped tight around her waist.
Her vision cleared as they thundered through the courtyard, knocking over buckets and barrows stacked neatly against the whitewashed wall. Out between the lookout towers, high enough up off the ground to see inside the nearest one, the woman on guard blinking in surprise, a rifle clutched uselessly in her hands. Too surprised to aim and fire, apparently.
The lizard. They were riding on Iago’s lizard, Iago sitting up ahead of her astride the creature’s neck, Tully Grieve jammed up close behind her, breathing in her ear.
“Lizard rammed right through the wall,” he said, still gasping from the exertion. “Impressed? You ought to be.”
The stars were bright as diamond dust, the garden plots prim and regular as dunes. She craned her neck, expecting something—anything—behind them, but there was nothing. No pursuit. Not a single gunshot fired.
“Why aren’t they coming after us?”
Grieve gave her a cheerful squeeze. “Who cares why? They’re sleeping and we’re free—that’s all that matters. Gonna find that Lotus Blue of yours and we’re gonna shut it down—right, Iago?”
She coughed the last of the brick dust from her lungs. “Does that mean you believe me?”
“Always believed you—especially after that Templar monster blew his load. That got me thinking—the old lady too. She knows full well something’s wrong, but what’s she gonna do about it—that’s the problem with most folks, don’t you think? Nobody wants to stick their neck out for the tribe. Nobody wants to be the one. The hero.”
Grieve was babbling nonsense. He was not himself. Neither was she—she didn’t know her own mind anymore, how much of it belonged to Quarrel, how much longer the dregs of her own could hold out against the Blue. It was waiting for her out there—she could feel it.
“I’m dangerous. You have to get away from me.”
Grieve gave her a dismissive snort. “Don’t think you’re getting out of it so easy. You’re all we’ve got if that mad old Templar’s right. And he is right, of course he’s right. Those things always know what they’re doin
g.”
She had no idea what to say to him, how to respond—did he comprehend what she was? He had to know, so why was he trusting her?
The cold bit through the thin weave of her shirt, but being free of the cell more than made up for it.
“There’s blankets,” he added. “Water, too. And food. We’ll rest up when we’ve gained a bit of distance.”
“We can’t stop—she’ll be coming after us.”
“No she won’t.”
The warmth of his skin pressing up against her own felt more comforting than anything she could remember. Comforting too was the sight of Iago, perched ahead on the lizard’s neck, coaxing the creature onwards. Leaning forward, whispering into Iolani’s ear. Slapping her good-naturedly on the side.
Iolani ran with a loping, side-to-side gait that took awhile to get used to. Engaging Iago in conversation proved impossible. When not whispering to the beast, his full attention was on the still and shrouded dunes, alert for trouble on the sand ahead. Eerie and beautiful as the landscape was, it was also filled with danger and uncertainty.
There was no question of which way they had to go. The bruised borealis poisoning the sky glowed with opalescent hues, lighting up the darkness, beckoning them towards it. The thing had changed since she’d seen it last, and it was morphing still, pulsing and heaving like a beating heart lay at its core.
“What did you say to Iago to get him to leave the Temple compound?” Star kept her voice low and her lips close to Grieve’s ear. She was uncomfortable talking about Iago behind his back—literally—but she didn’t want to distract him and there didn’t seem to be another way.