Adrian stirred and shook his head. “My God, it is true,” he said. “We all underestimated you, it seems.”
“Yes. And now I shall flit away, a mosquito too elusive to skin as a wolf or shoot from an elephant’s back like tiger. Adieu, mon cher, and I very much hope we never meet again.”
He sauntered away down the path they had followed; Ellen tracked him with her pistol, and he looked over his shoulder for a moment to blow a kiss from his fingertips as he vanished into the darkness.
Adrian shook his head. “He showed me what he had done. Imposssible to lie at that level…no time!”
They stepped through into what might have been a dungeon once, or a section of long-disused sewer or storm-drain dug in the palmy days before the Revolution.
“Her coffin is within,” he said.
“A coffin? She’s in a coffin?” Ellen said. “Adrienne wouldn’t be caught dead in a coffin. Well, you know what I mean,” she added defensively, as he snorted.
The chamber was long and round, cut from the living rock; water glistened here and there as their flashlights moved across a surface that still bore the scars of the drills. Nobody had ever smoothed them, but a mesh of new-gleaming wire covered the whole interior except for the roof.
“See,” he said, directing the little light upward. “They entered in the body, and left as nightwalkers, closing the door behind them. Arnaud…Dale Shadowblade, they thought…locked it behind them. Then the only way to enter would be through the solid roof.”
“Wouldn’t they be afraid of being buried alive? The bomb…”
“This is solid rock and deep. And they could always dig themselves out from the outside afterwards—one can be in two places at once. My sister likes bombs; let us proceed.”
More than a dozen of the elongated boxes stood on frame bases. They didn’t look all that much like coffins; more like featureless footlockers of the appropriate size. One in the center stood on a higher frame than the others, with the Brézé arms in a golden plaque attached to the upper surface.
“Vanity,” Adrian said. “At a guess, this is an abandoned effort at an extension to the sewer system. Easy enough to expunge it from the records…and arrange accidents for all who knew of it. But the time, the patience for such a plan…”
“Maybe she did something like this anywhere there might be a full Council meeting,” Ellen said.
“My sister likes bombs. Let us oblige her.”
They removed their backpacks. Eric and Adrian had made them up; simple blocks of semtex plastic explosive, with mechanical timers. They placed one on each of the…
Coffins. It’s traditional, so let’s call them coffins.
Then Adrian stood by his sister’s, and laid one hand on the back of Ellen’s neck. “Time to bargain,” he said. “And from a position of strength, for once. Let her be obliged to drop into a bomb-ambush of her own.”
The world seemed to blur. For a moment she could see another place—the theater above, with the last screams of the sacrifices just dying away, and the intoxicating—
It’s intoxicating? Oh, damn, I hate it when I get confused like this!
—scent of the blood filling the air, along with the vinagery smell of Shadowspawn excitement and the aggression crowding bred.
sister…i…have…your…body.
Anger/fury/barely restrained amok rage. Then a weird amusement, and: bargain?
quickly!
A sense of internal movement, of personalities emerging from layer upon layer of defenses. An intimacy of perfect hatred from Adrian and a bone-deep reluctance to engage on this level, layers of complex emotion from Adrienne that made Ellen queasy even at this remove, flashes of memory about Adrian that made her squirm with an effort to un-know.
The knowledge that falsehood had become impossible for an instant.
here…it…is…location…under…your…mentor’s…control…can’t…stop…now. beyond…my…power…my seeing…five…years…ago…date…time…place…you…have…twenty…minutes…
so…do…you…now…
The powerful, malevolent consciousness turned to Ellen for an instant:
and…you…will…die…soon…i have…seen…
The link broke. Adrian’s breath was ragged and his face sheened with sweat; for a moment his throat worked as if he were about to vomit, then he controlled it. They ran from one coffin to the next, setting the timers and hitting the buttons. Then they dashed out the door and Adrian paused only long enough to kick it closed behind them—as much to augment the force of the blast when-if as to fulfill the letter of that literally unspoken agreement. Pounding back up the corridor, and he stopped and linked hands. Her foot hit the stirrup running, and she soared upward and landed…
…just in time to see the flash of the katana, but far too late to do anything. Anything but feel the huge impact as it flashed down between neck and shoulder, and the coldness, and the beginning of darkness. A scream felt through the mind, of rage and grief beyond all bearing, and a huge grabbing sensation on the inside of her head.
No, Adrian. Let me go. Let me die.
“Mother of God,” Eric blurted, when he saw the limp figure over Adrian’s shoulder. “What the fuck—”
“No time, you were right, follow me.”
They dashed through the street and into the building. Eric flung himself at the door in a running leap, feet first. The hoarding over the opening came free in a screech of nails, and he fell down with bruising force. He ignored the impact that wooshed the air out of his lungs, the pain of sharp things gouging through his clothes, have to move move move. Adrian leapt over him, and Peter caromed into him just as he started up again. They went down in a cursing tangle, saw Adrian lay his burden down and dash up the stairs heedless. They followed, without time for thought.
Story after story, push the legs like pistons, suck breath, ignore the body’s protest. The top, nothing but scaffolding and boards around the edges, an empty echoing concrete space lost in shadow and darkness save for one portable light. Harvey looked up from the long container and held up his hand, his craggy face underlit into an iron idol of regret and unmoveable determination.
Deadman switch! Eric knew in a moment of despair, and thought he could see the thumb begin to relax.
“Mogh-urdak-tzee, tzee!” Adrian screamed, his hand shooting out in a claw, a bottomless rage in his voice.
“Ufff!”
Eric grunted as if punched in the stomach. Behind him Peter tripped on the last tread of the stairwell and fell full-length. He knew that it was impossible to move, that the world was frozen in one eternal moment in time. His thought returned to bite itself on the tail, over and over, then broke free as breath returned to him.
And Harvey froze, his thumb holding the contact closed. The edge of the Wreaking had paralyzed Eric Salvador; defenses or no, he didn’t like to imagine what it must be to have it thrown like a lance of burning ice directly into his brain.
Adrian walked over and took the mechanism from the older man’s hand, examined it, made a motion over it and set it down.
“I am sorry,” he said, his voice a rasp but with a gentleness in it. “I did not want it to come to this. I owe you very much, my brother, I owe you my soul. But you are too dangerous…and Ellen was killed.”
“Sorry ’bout that too,” Harvey said. “Real sorry. Never wanted—”
Blood burst from his lips and eyes. He went rigid for a single instant, then fell, limp and dead.
“Jesus,” Eric whispered, clutching at his own chest, feeling the distant echo of a force that tore the veins loose and flooded his chest. “Jesus.”
Peter came up beside him, wheezing. “We’ve—”
“Name of a dog, what is that?” Adrian cried, throwing up a hand as if to shield himself from something in the sky.
An instant later the cloudy night outside became white light, frosted like the inside of a bulb, but bright, harsh, flat. Adrian dropped to his knees and clapped his hands to his head
. Eric waited to die…
Wait a minute, if the bomb had gone off I’d have been dead before I knew it. It’s only fifteen feet away, for fuck’s sake. My brain wouldn’t have had time even to register the light.
“We lost?” Peter said.
The light faded, changed color, slowly died like the world’s biggest parachute flare. Shadow returned, darker than ever. His head snapped to the gaps in the hoardings, and behind them was no light at all, none of the diffuse glow that a city always showed. Adrian laughed, soft and bitter.
“No. We won. We saved this city. We even saved the corporeals at the theater, though I wish we had not. Somehow she concealed another weapon.”
“That’s a high-level airburst, it must have blanketed most of Georgia and chunks of Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Peter said, going to the edge and peering out through a crack in the plywood. “Yup, city’s blacked out. High enough it wouldn’t do much damage otherwise, though. Maybe a statistical uptick in the cancer rate.”
“Your sister had a backup plan,” Eric said.
“Yes,” Adrian said. “I should have expected it. An intermediate range missile, a confederate of hers in control of some Russian commander; she would not chance a ground burst that might strike too hard, but a high-level one, yes. Probably part of Trimback One, ready to go, and somehow she got another shield. It makes no difference. No, it is better than merely stopping the bomb. I felt my great-grandfather die, and Seraphine, and many another, and the souls they had imprisoned. Now the real war begins, and we have the advantage. Harvey would have been happy to see this.”
“Wait a minute,” Eric said, his mind slipping a little from the diamond point of concentration. “You said Ellen died? Then who was that you were—”
“Come,” Adrian said, an infinite weariness in his voice. “We must get to Cheba and the children. The city will be in chaos, and soon Adrienne will strike what she thinks is the killing blow on the world.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Brotherhood safe house, Kars, Turkey
“I don’t want to live without a body!” Ellen said.
Or thought she said; the words came out as a very faint croak, and she wanted to scream with the sheer pain they caused. For a while she was mostly conscious of pain, an infinite number of different kinds. After a while the general weakness and the feeling she was made out of hollow straws and the ache in her head and the savage sore throat gave way to panic at the way her sight was blurred. The sword had hit her in the neck, razor-sharp and driven by skilled, hate-filled strength. Her throat must have been cut almost to the spine, maybe through it, instant massive exsanguination and death within a second. How could it have damaged her eyes and left her alive?
“You have a body, my darling,” Adrian’s voice said. “Just…not the same one. But a body of flesh and bone.”
Wait a minute, that must be true. If I was in Adrian’s memory palace, I’d feel fine. Perfect. I feel like absolute verge-of-death crap. And…disconnected? As if I were wearing something too tight?
Infinitely gentle hands eased a tube into her mouth. “Here, take some water. Sleep.”
When she woke again her first thought was: Oh, shit.
Cheba was sitting beside her bed, watching a telenovela on her tablet. When she saw wakefulness, she turned and called: “Jefe!”
Adrian came in, smiling at her with a constraint in it. She could see better this time, though her eyes felt grainy and dry.
“Oh, Adrian,” she said. “Did you do what I think you did?”
The voice came out; it was a hoarse rasping whisper, as if her vocal cords had been idle for months…which they had, she suspected. She couldn’t move; an attempt to raise her hand merely made her fingers flutter for a little. But she was conscious of her body in a way she never had been before, as if she could feel the cells dividing and dividing again; as if she was riding in a car, and the car was her, and the stalled engine was just beginning to turn over again. The room around her was plain institutional beige, but it glowed with potentiality. She could feel, feel…everything.
“This is weird,” she whispered. “I’m weaker than a kitten, but I feel…I feel as if I could squeeze the world like putty.”
Adrian sat beside the bed and raised her head again. This time there was lukewarm chicken soup in the feeder he put between her lips; she tried to suck (and why did she move her tongue so carefully around her incisors?), and some of it dribbled down the side of her mouth. The rest went into her throat, and it tasted inexpressibly good. She could feel it all the way down, as if it were warming up her very being.
“Let…me see,” she said, the rasp a little less painful.
“Very well,” he said, not trying to argue.
He reached to the bedside table and held up the mirror for her to see. The face looked…
Like a concentration camp survivor, she thought. No, like someone on life support since I…killed her. Well, victor and the spoils. God, this is…Do I want this? But consider the alternative…
And underneath the damage of months in coma, it was a perfectly good face. Not the mostly North European one she’d been born with; smaller-boned, high cheeks and tilted eyes, small delicate nose and lips, raven hair cropped close in a hospital cut and skin the color of ivory just touched with amber.
And eyes black-dark, with tiny yellow flecks swimming in them.
“It’s a good thing I’m so feeble. I can’t freak out, I’m too tired. Later.”
Adrian laid her head back down and took her hand between his; strength seemed to pour from it.
“We won,” he said, leaning close so that she could meet his eyes. “You did. We saved Tbilisi; a million and a half men and women and children live because of you. You deserve this new chance.”
Standing behind him, Cheba said dubiously:
“Is it really her, jefe?”
“Yes. Her persona, her memories and all they made of her. The body…carries it. I didn’t know if it would work, there was not time to do anything but…hurl her, throw her essence, hoping that Arnaud had remembered rightly. But it worked.”
“Well, there’s a massive oversimplification,” Ellen croaked, and closed her eyes, trying to feel around the interior of herself.
It was a jumble. She could remember everything up until the sword hit, even her last thoughts. But she felt not merely ill, but odd. As if she were seeing the sensation of touch, or as if sensations she had no names for were crowding in, demanding attention, or as if she had grown two new arms and ears on her feet. When she opened those slanted, gold-flecked eyes again she motioned towards the door with a glance. The Mexican girl smiled at her, nodded, and slipped out. She closed the door behind her gently.
But it isn’t just that I want some privacy with my husband, Cheba, though I do. I could smell you. Smell your blood.
And Cheba smelled so good.
Click here for more titles by this author
ALSO BY S. M. STIRLING
NOVELS OF THE CHANGE
ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME
AGAINST THE TIDE OF YEARS
ON THE OCEANS OF ETERNITY
DIES THE FIRE
THE PROTECTOR’S WAR
A MEETING AT CORVALLIS
THE SUNRISE LANDS
THE SCOURGE OF GOD
THE SWORD OF THE LADY
THE HIGH KING OF MONTIVAL
THE TEARS OF THE SUN
LORD OF MOUNTAINS
NOVELS OF THE SHADOWSPAWN
A TAINT IN THE BLOOD
THE COUNCIL OF SHADOWS
OTHER NOVELS BY S. M. STIRLING
THE PESHAWAR LANCERS
CONQUISTADOR
-o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
Shadows of Falling Night Page 35