by K. Gorman
The nonchalance with which he said the words turned Ketan’s blood to ice. He tried not to move when the Earth Mage stepped closer to Sophia, peering at the crystal in her light’s beam.
Footsteps thumped up the stairs, hurried and loud. Roger stepped into view, as smooth as a snake, his phone alight in his hand. A tinny-sounding voice came from its speaker, just audible in the quiet.
“Five military vehicles have appeared near the Eden and Mercator entrances,” he said, speaking faster than Ketan had ever heard him. He seemed almost breathless.
“Friendlies?” Sophia asked.
By her tone, he had a feeling she’d guessed the answer.
“No,” Roger said.
His blood froze further. Had Swarzgard already made it through the shields? They’d taken Terremain barely two days ago. Had they already moved through the valley? Had Westray’s military evac failed so utterly that they’d already managed to break the shield?
But, how? Didn’t the Mages operate the shield? And if the shield had fallen, shouldn’t they be worried?
It felt like he was missing something.
By the looks on their faces, they’d had this conversation before. Sophia’s face was a hard, grim mask, her mouth set in a tight line. The mercurial light of the flashlight gave her skin a grayish cast.
“It’s starting, then,” she said. “Aiden?”
“Final phase?” the Fire Mage asked.
“Yes. We need to move.” She gave the crystal a lingering glance, then turned to Gobardon. “How much time do you need to bury it?”
“That depends on how clean you want it.” He, too, turned to the crystal, giving it an almost bemused look. “How much earth do you want me to put on top of this?”
“Three blocks. I don’t care about mess.” Already, she was walking away. Her footsteps sounded crisp and clear on the boards. Purposeful. She paused by the door. “Do you need maps of above, or can I employ my engineers elsewhere?”
When Gobardon shook his head, she and Roger vanished down the stairs.
The room felt so much larger with them gone. Vacuous. Gobardon shifted, and the rustle of his clothes sounded loud in the room. Dust tickled Ketan’s nose.
In the quiet, they heard the crystal grow.
Crick, crick, crick.
A small, jagged finger of crystal had stepped from the room as they’d waited. Its black facets glittered in the light.
Gobardon’s voice cut through the silence. “It’s funny, seeing it like this. Do you remember the feeds? How it took Carthak?”
“I remember,” Aiden said. There was a grim finality in his voice.
The two Mages stared at the black crystal, unmoving. A slim spire rose gradually, growing in the light with a barely perceptible speed. It reminded Ketan of a time-lapse video of a growing plant, or watching a sunset.
“It won’t stop with burial, you know,” Gobardon said.
“She knows,” Aiden said.
A kind of resignation settled over his face. The two words, and the silence that followed them, communicated much more about the situation, and the Water Mage’s character, than Ketan had heard in his entire time underground. Quiet enveloped them, punctuated by the stiff cracks of growing crystal.
Finally, the Fire Mage moved.
“I need a favor,” he said.
If Gobardon heard him, he didn’t acknowledge it. From what Ketan saw, the man didn’t even move, only stared at the crystal with a kind of morbid fascination.
“After you’re finished with here, I need a tunnel to my ship. Your father had agreed to do it, but…” Aiden trailed off, his eyes wandering to the growing crystal.
“I have a price,” Gobardon said. His shoe shifted on the floor, impossibly polished in the dust. The leather gleamed.
Aiden’s eyes narrowed. “Of course you do.”
Gobardon turned to Aiden. The mask remained in place. From his angle, Ketan could see the slight sneer that twisted the man’s lips.
“A small one. You’ll find it well within your and the ship’s capabilities.”
Aiden looked like he’d rather eat shit. His face was stone cold, the tendons in his jaw and neck tight. He had light blue eyes—almost gray, when Ketan had seen them back at the Society’s headquarters—and now, they looked as hard and cold as steel.
“Isken’mya bre?” The foreign words sounded harsh to Ketan’s ears, but he suspected it was more tone of voice than language that made Aiden’s syllables cut the way they did.
“Mies’na,” Gobardon replied. “Iski’lya mab.”
Whatever they had said, it lessened the tension. The hard edge dropped from Aiden’s eyes. The Fire Mage stuck out his hand.
“Shen?”
Gobardon shook it. “Shen.”
And, after that, it was as if the whole exchange hadn’t happened. Aiden turned away, his face dropping into what Ketan suspected was his usual mix of sarcasm and exhaustion.
“Well,” the Fire Mage said cheerfully. “I ought to be going. If they’re attacking Sophia’s hideout, they’ve likely camped out in mine. See you in an hour-ish?”
“One and a half,” Gobardon clarified. His gaze was back on the crystal, eyes calculating. “I don’t want to rush things.”
“One and a half, then.” Aiden turned to Ketan and, with a gesture, swept the two of them toward the exit. “Come on, Fire Boy. Let me show you what a real Fire Mage can do.”
Chapter 42
“I never hid my engine well,” Aiden said. “Given some hindsight, I probably should have.”
The Underground had closed in over their heads, narrowing suddenly from broad, steel-supported street to a tunnel barely wide enough for humans. The Fire Mage led, his shadow jumping on the wall with every move. Echoes of their own footsteps pressed into them from the walls, so soft and whispery that Ketan fought the urge to look over his shoulder and check if they were being followed.
Perhaps he was paranoid. But, living as he did, he had an excuse.
If the street life hadn’t already tripped his instincts, his recent encounters with the black crystal had sent them into overdrive.
And there was nothing but black shadow behind him.
Ahead, Aiden pressed on.
“If I had, maybe Meese wouldn’t have had to burn the sky, you know?”
The Mage’s voice was whimsical. Ketan got the feeling that the comment hadn’t been for him—not directly. He just happened to be there when the Mage gave it voice.
The tunnel swallowed the sentence, smudged the words, and echoed it back in a facsimile of the same tone. Only the last two words were discernible.
You know, you know, you know.
But Ketan didn’t know. He had no idea, in fact. What sources he’d had in Terremain were embarrassingly outdated. Combine that with a year’s absence from the gossip channels, and he might as well have crawled out from under a rock.
An odd phrase, considering how much rock he and the Fire Mage were currently under.
He jogged a step to catch up. The Fire Mage set a quick pace—much faster than Ketan had expected, considering the exhaustion on the man’s face. Even with his longer legs, he found himself lagging behind.
“How come you didn’t?” he asked.
Aiden shrugged, the movement barely visible in the gloom of the alley. He didn’t even bother to turn around. His voice carried easily in the narrow space.
“Convenience, mostly. In the beginning, it had seemed like a good idea to show a nice face to the government. Sophia and Michael had buried themselves, so having an aboveground office had seemed like a good, political move.” Aiden barked out a few laughs. They sounded harsh against the concrete walls, the sound amplified and distorted by the echo. “Fat good that did us, eh?”
He turned around and gave Ketan a crazed, sardonic grin.
But Ketan hadn’t followed. Aiden had lost him somewhere after ‘political.’
“What do you mean?”
Aiden’s grin dropped. “Well, they�
��re attacking, aren’t they?”
He frowned. “Yeah?”
What did that have to do with anything? Swarzgard had always been attacking. That wasn’t exactly news.
The Fire Mage stopped, a puzzled expression crossing his face. Ketan almost ran into him. The hard wall of the tunnel pressed against his shoulder, catching on his jacket.
“The military is attacking us,” Aiden said slowly, carefully enunciating each word as he turned to Ketan. “I’d say that’s a bad thing, wouldn’t you?”
Ketan’s frown deepened. “Yes, but how is that related to your attempts at a good… political face?”
He felt that he was missing something crucial. His mind raced, and his eyes focused on the Fire Mage’s face, looking for cues.
But Aiden’s face mirrored his. “The military is attacking,” he repeated, using the same slow speech he had before. “I’d say the president isn’t very happy with me. And obviously, if she is attacking me, I have failed so utterly in maintaining a nice public face that she could get away with this and use me, and the other Mages, as scapegoats for surrender.”
They’d stopped moving now, and faced one another. The flashlight turned to the floor, the light pooling at their feet. Rough, gritty concrete spread from around their shoes. The backsplash of the lights turned the shadows on Aiden’s face into a severe portrait.
Then, his words clicked.
Ketan sucked in air. He felt his blood stop, his heart stutter.
“The Westran military is attacking?”
Understanding dawned on Aiden’s face, too. “Yes. Westray’s military is attacking.”
Suddenly, the Mages’ conversations made sense. His mind scrambled back, replaying what he’d heard between them.
Aiden started walking again, and the flashlight moved with him. When he spoke, his voice echoed in the dark.
“Yes, that is what is happening. It’ll be Ryarne’s Homeguard we find, attempting to steal my crystal from the shield engine. Doubtless, that’s a condition of surrender. I can’t imagine Swarzgard accepting anything less. The bounty on our heads was probably derived from a similar motive, since we are the main reason they have survived this long against the assaults.”
Shadows soon engulfed Ketan. Once again, he jogged to catch up.
*
Fifteen minutes later, Aiden slowed his pace. Perhaps the exhaustion apparent on his face had caught up with his body.
They passed into other tunnels, some lit, most dark. Once, the path had widened into a discernible city street, complete with crumbling asphalt, traffic lines, and the broken curb of the sidewalk. A gun shop, strangely intact despite its distance from the Core, stood dark and empty at the side of the street, its doors and windows shuttered, a shiny new lock on the front.
Ketan might have been imagining it, but he thought the air was warmer whenever he got close to the Fire Mage. Once, he saw a flit of orange light slip over the man’s knuckle.
His experience with Mage spells was limited—the first one he’d seen had been in the fight earlier. Other than that, his education was composed of rumors, hearsay on public forums, and videos uploaded to the Internet. Nothing concrete.
Now was his chance.
The tunnel twisted and turned, resembling less a mine shaft than a series of broken, disjointed alleys. A juxtaposition of wood, brick, and shingles had replaced the smooth concrete of earlier. Some of the shingles were so worn and paper-thin that their dusty surface had cracked with age.
Here, it was easy to remember that the Underground had been excavated, not built. Whatever alleys they passed through had been constructed long before modern Ryarne had even existed.
They came alongside a house, its windows dusty and opaque. He was surprised to find the glass still intact within the frames, although a few spider web cracks negated the thought. The windowsills, their wood long since splintered, jutted far enough into the alley that he had to swerve. One even had an old flowerpot, complete with a fake, faded daffodil.
Its shadow snaked up on the wall as Aiden passed, the flashlight bobbing with his steps.
The front door opened without a sound. The Fire Mage stepped inside. Antiquated furniture lined the walls. A chandelier draped with cobwebs glittered as they passed underneath. Wood groaned beneath their feet.
When they reached the stairs, Aiden spoke. They were the first words that he’d said since the tunnel.
“There will be soldiers up there,” he said. “Lots of soldiers, if they’re smart.”
Ketan straightened to meet his eyes. “How many?”
“Thirty. Fifty, if they stand on the stairs, too.”
The beginnings of fear stirred in his gut, but he took a breath and forced it back down. Aiden didn’t look like a man who was worried. “What do you plan to do?”
The Fire Mage stopped in the middle of the hallway. A square of wood jutted from the ceiling above him, a black cord trailing down the wall next to them. He ignored it, pressing his palm flat to the wallpaper. He shot Ketan another grin.
“I plan to walk in there, open my engine, and take the crystal.”
“Simple as that?”
“Simple as that,” Aiden answered, and turned to focus on his hand.
Amber light distilled under his skin, pooling against the wall like liquid sunlight. Ketan squinted. A single sigil crested onto the back of his hand.
It sank in. Dimmed.
Aiden pulled his hand away.
The sigil glittered on the wall like a smoldering ember. Its light caught the Fire Mage’s face in a warm, red-orange glow.
Aiden looked to the ceiling. “Ready?”
Ketan frowned. “For what?”
“Three, two, one—” Aiden pressed a finger to the spell. “Boom!”
Power flared. Heat snapped into the air.
The sigil shivered and darted up the wall, disappearing into the ceiling.
From above, there came a series of heavy thumps. Dust shook from the ceiling, catching in the beam of Aiden’s flashlight like motes of light.
The Mage smiled brightly up at the trapdoor. He reached for the cord, and a slick, well-oiled wooden ladder unfolded from the ceiling.
“Time to take my crystal back.”
Chapter 43
Mieshka awoke to a rumble. The whole bed vibrated, shaking like a dryer on spin cycle. She could hear the frame crack against the wall, its metal legs scraping along the floor. She pulled the blanket closer, hearing Robin do the same in the bed across from her.
Then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped.
Her head spun.
An earthquake?
An alarming notion, considering they were underground. Fortunately, her brain caught up with her thoughts.
No, it was not an earthquake. Earthquakes didn’t happen in Ryarne—not unless there was an Earth Mage involved. And Michael was dead.
She pushed herself upright, ignoring the pain from her wounds.
“What the fuck was that?” Robin’s voice cut through the dark, slurred with sleep.
Yawning, Mieshka reached for her phone. The sudden light made her squint as she flipped its screen out.
Three p.m. Not long since Kitty had visited.
“Meese?”
The light reflected in Robin’s groggy eyes. Her friend peered up at her, the blanket a tangled lump.
She shrugged. “I don’t know what it was.”
She almost lay back down, but something felt off. The shaking had stopped, but there was another vibration. It hummed through the air, and when she touched her hand to the wall, she could feel it.
She cocked her head, listening.
“Meese?”
“Shh. Do you hear that?”
Robin stopped. Like Mieshka, she cocked her head, tilting it toward the wall. She closed her eyes.
They listened.
For a while, nothing happened. All she heard was the quiet beat of her heart, the sound of her breath passing through her throat. The room was so sil
ent that, when her knuckle cracked, the sound went off like a gunshot.
Then, it came again. A distinct, far-off staccato beat.
Robin’s eyes snapped open. “Is that—?”
“Guns,” she hissed. Her heart hammered. She stuck a leg over the side of her bed, not caring about the pain. Her foot brushed the edge of her crutch. “Get up. Get ready.”
Something told her that this wasn’t an ordinary gun show. Urgency ushered her off the bed. She bent to pick up the crutch.
Robin fumbled for her backpack. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
But it was bad. She could feel it. Something deep inside of her was urging her to move, urging her to run.
She paused, the rational part of clicking in.
Phoenix, is that you?
It hadn’t talked to her since the ship. She wasn’t even sure it could now. Whatever the transfer had done, they were still sorting out their neural link.
For a moment, she thought she felt her Element flare.
But if the Phoenix had anything to say, it was drowned out by the sudden hammering of boots in the outside hallway.
Jo burst through the door. Sweat coated her face.
“We gotta go.”
*
“What’s happening?”
Mieshka limped alongside Jo, the metal of her crutch clicking with each step. It butted straight up into her shoulder, digging into the bruise left by the last one. When she got a chance, she’d wrap her jacket around to give it some padding. It wasn’t like she needed the warmth, after all.
“Some soldiers got in. Roger’s holding them off, but we gotta go.” She led them down the hallway, her steps smart and purposeful. She’d loaded up, too, adding an extra two gun holsters since Mieshka had last seen her. A familiar-looking assault rifle hung from a strap around her shoulder.
The mercenary turned to Robin. “You up to carrying some stuff?”
Mieshka’s friend stared at the assault rifle. For a second, she saw a bit of the same paralyzing fear she used to get when confronted with guns.
But Robin’s face sobered almost immediately.