“This is wrong,” the older scientist moaned.
I stopped. “Excuse me?”
“This is not right.”
“Do you even know what’s going on?” I asked.
“Scapegoats,” he spat. “You’ve made us scapegoats to human law. We are Atlantean.”
“Are you part of Project Laius?” I asked.
The scientist shut his mouth, surprised.
“You are, aren’t you?” I said. “That’s so awesome.”
I shot him in the head with a sabre blast. He tipped and convulsed for the whole two seconds it took him to die.
The stuff that began with projects like Laius had ended with the mind-fucking of underage kids, who spent the rest of their miserable lives in dog collars as someone else’s property. So I did what I did, and my conscience whistled.
Brand was in mid-shout as I left the room. “What are you going on about?” I asked, starting down the corridor at a light jog.
“What the fuck happened to you!”
“I downloaded the program. You didn’t hear all that? Two of them were awake.”
“Hear what? I couldn’t even feel you through our bond. Julia, what the fucking hell is going on? Why did we lose him?”
A moment of static and Julia said, “I’ve got similar reports from the other mercs in that wing. The rooms must be shielded. Not everyone was dropped by the spell blast. We need to plan your extraction, Lord Sun.”
There were some additional noises on the line. Julia said, “Wait! We’re— Yes. Yes, we’re also getting reports the spell blast is wearing off sooner than we expected. I don’t know if a team has had time to secure the roof. Abort roof exit.”
“No,” I said. “It’s the quickest way out, and I’m ready to leave.”
“I don’t know if it’s secure. Abort roof exit.”
“Well, since you repeated yourself,” I said, banging through the metal fire door that led to a stairway that led to the roof.
“I’m mission coordinator; you’re required to follow my lead. Shall I make this an order?” she demanded.
Brand laughed. “Look, Julia, I’ll handle it from here. He’s my partner. We planned on a roof exit.”
“You serve your partner poorly,” she said in a tight, clipped voice. “If you want him out of the building alive, the safest route—”
“Mind your fucking manners,” Brand said, all humor evaporating. “He’s not one of your mercenaries; he’s a scion of Atlantis. If it was a question about needing safe routes, I’d have him turn the entire side of the mansion to slag and gingerly fucking tiptoe through the puddles of plasma. Get off the goddamn line. Rune, fuck, this is why I hate teamwork.”
I proceeded with my exit as Brand disconnected Julia.
The roof was flat and strewn with gravel. My line of sight was crowded with HVAC units and elevator machine rooms.
The fire-exit door swung shut on a slow spring. I tilted my face into a humid ocean breeze, letting it tangle my bangs. “I’m out,” I said.
“Have a nice flight,” Brand said distractedly.
“Yeah, about that. I was thinking maybe instead, I can just drop down to the lawn and—”
A man stepped around a corner in front of me. He had an assault weapon. Its barrel jerked up. I barely had time to think I should have activated my Shield spell a few minutes ago, when something cracked and the man fell down. A red mist floated where his head had been.
When I could breathe again, I said, “I especially liked it when you didn’t warn me. That part was fun.”
“Fucking ingrate,” Brand said in my ear. “I was lining him up when you walked outside.”
I squinted at a water tower some two thousand feet away. Brand was an excellent marksman. It was one of the reasons we’d lasted as long as we had. That and my magic. Because the cool transmitters, and spell bombs, and the squads of mercenary backup? Those weren’t resources we normally had. A normal job went like this: I went somewhere I shouldn’t, I tried not to get caught, and if I did, Brand shot someone in the head. It was a good day when the corpse had pizza money.
“Any more surprises?” I asked.
“You want warning?”
“That’d be nice,” I said.
“Duck.”
A dragon rose behind the mansion on wings as long as a tour bus. It spat out a stream of nuclear fire and demolished a guard tower. I could feel the heat from half a rooftop away, but hopefully not the radiation. I’d heard Lord Chariot had summoned one of the remaining dragons for the raid, but seeing it was something else.
Just as the dragon glided out of sight, panic—genuine panic—suddenly buzzed through my Companion bond.
Brand said, “Rune. Get out of there. Now!”
I dropped behind a heating duct and reached for my ankle sigil just as Elena—Arcana of the Lovers, head of the godsdamn Heart Throne—swept across my line of sight.
She lifted an arm toward a seamless limestone wall. A dark archway rippled into visibility. She went through.
“Rune,” Brand warned after a few seconds. “Move.”
All I could think was Secret. Bloody. Room. Her House is falling down around her, and she heads here? I couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of things she must have stashed in there.
“Don’t you do it, Rune,” Brand said without having to ask what I was thinking. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“I’m just going to wait. Over there.”
“I’m fucking serious. Get the fuck out of there.”
“Right over there.” I pointed innocently.
“I will shoot you in the ass, the goddamn ass! I will shoot you in the ass, and you’ll be shitting through an inner tube for weeks!”
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
“In! The! Ass!”
I headed for the secret room. Elena had to leave eventually. She was being raided, for gods’ sake. Visions of gemstones the size of goose eggs danced in my head.
I got within arm’s reach of the archway when a spell I hadn’t seen yanked me into oblivion.
When I came to, I was chained in a corner. Heavily stylized panels of amber glowed dully under electric light. Elena stood in front of me.
Lady Lovers was not a striking woman. Her nose was too small, her eyes close together, and she had the faint jut of an overbite. She was also covered, absolutely covered, in sigils. They were shaped as earrings, as a forehead circlet, as necklaces, lip piercings, rings, bracelets, hair clips, and discs strung into a belt. Assuming all of them were charged with spells, I was well and truly fucked.
“Hell,” I whispered.
“Indeed,” Elena murmured. She started to say something else, but the words hitched as she peered closer. She’d recognized me—which meant my disguise spell was gone, along with gods knew what other of my abilities. I tested the manacles with a yank.
Elena said, “Your presence is . . . unexpected. Yet not unfitting, I suppose. Stranger things have passed down the River. Faith, but you are a very pretty thing, Lord Sun. Hasn’t it even been said that you are the most beautiful man of your gener—”
“That’ll be enough of that, thank you,” I said testily. Then, in a burst of sanity, I added, “Ma’am.”
“As you wish. Are you a part of the raid, Lord Sun? This is a raid, I assume?”
“It is. I’m sorry.”
“Tell me. How many of my dear fellow Arcana turned hand against me?”
There was nothing to gain by lying. I sighed. “Twelve, ma’am.”
Her mouth tightened, and she stared at her feet. The average, sanctioned raid usually involved half that number. She gestured at my left arm. The cuff snapped open. She did the same for the right.
I moved away from the wall. Almost immediately, I sensed the presence of my sigils again. It gave me a couple aces up my sleeve if I needed them.
“With all respect, Lady Lovers,” I said carefully, “are you surprised?”
“At what?” she asked. “At being vilified?
At bearing witness to the mortality of my court? I would have expected you to understand how I feel. We are not dissimilar. Our Houses, both raided. Our courts, gone. Our people, scattered and abused and stripped of everything for which they’ve labored.”
I flushed more angrily than I’d have expected. My father’s murder and the fall of my court was not anything like this. Not that I argued the point. It wasn’t worth the effort.
Elena went to a mirror. She pressed a fingertip against the surface. Images rose, blistering her reflection. Her body blocked most of the images, but I saw blood, fallen bodies, a mass of activity.
She wiped the mirror clean with a gesture and said, “To each age, a magic ascends. Death magic ruled the final days of the homeland. Hearth magic ruled the rise of New Atlantis. I had thought, perhaps, the Lovers’ time had come, that the age of heart magic was upon us.” She stopped. Grimaced. “I don’t know why I’m wasting what time remains defending myself to anyone. It’s a useless exercise. Worse, a fundamentally dishonest one. I know things went ill; I should have yielded the court to another couple when my Gerard died. The Heart Throne was ever meant to be ruled by a pair.” She looked at me over her shoulder. “Did you know I had but one consort? My Gerard. Very unusual, yes? He was my talla.” Her soul mate—though, in Atlantean terms, soul mates weren’t always a cozy and romantic concept. Hatred was just as strong as love, in terms of a metaphysical catalyst.
“I didn’t know that,” I said politely.
“He was. But onward to a more pressing matter.” She straightened and faced me.
Red flags snapped open in my head.
She said, “Look upon my face, Rune Sun.”
Power crashed through the room. I bit my tongue and barely acknowledged I’d fallen to my knees, even as my forehead banged down in front of them. My dick swelled, an erection so painful I stuffed my fist in my lap. She had assumed her Atlantean aspect—she’d called on her deepest magic—like opening the door to a furnace the size of an ocean liner.
“Look upon my face,” she repeated. Her voice reverberated, an unnatural echo.
There was no room for resistance. I raised my head and looked.
She had skin that moved with gemstone color, the way fingertips will whiten when pressed against a hard surface. She had translucent hornet wings, a dress made of rose petal, and a scent—a musk—of honey and semen. I tried to laugh, because I wanted to seem brave, but the moan in my throat strangled it. I tried to get up. Fell. Scuttled back against the wall.
“I would beg a favor, pretty Rune. I swear by the River your answer will be your own.” That was an old way of saying she wasn’t going to mind-fuck me for compliance. “I ask that you deliver, and protect, a package of mine to a safe destination. It is nothing that will intrinsically bring you harm, and it breaks no laws. It is a very, very personal request. I speak the truth. I swear by the River. In exchange for your service, I will give you a sigil.”
A sigil. She was offering me a sigil?
My mouth went dry with greed.
She walked over to me. Her magic moved with her, each footfall rimmed in damp grass cuttings. She placed something on the ground. When she drew her triple-jointed fingers away, a sigil, shaped as a ring, remained behind. It was a gold band with an ellipsis of emerald chips across the top.
“It is a good sigil,” she said. “I’ve had it many years. I will give it to you if you accept the task.”
“I don’t . . .” I swallowed. “Nothing illegal?”
“I swear by the River, no.”
I had so few sigils of my own. It represented far, far more than monetary gain.
“I agree,” I whispered.
“The package will be waiting at your home. You’ll want payment in advance, of course. And so I give this sigil freely; your Will is now its Will.”
The bond between me and the ring snapped into place. Just like that, it was mine. I had a seventh sigil.
Elena raised a hand toward the mirror on the wall. Her eyes flashed bright, and I felt the release of a spell. In a breathy voice, she said, “There. It is done. You should leave now, pretty Rune. You owe me a task and I’d not have you caught in the fire.”
“Fire,” I repeated. Reality ran a step ahead of tact. “No way. You did not just set a—a what, a bomb countdown? Did you set a bomb?”
She bent and kissed the word run against my ear.
Across the room, the archway shimmered back into visibility. I leapt and ran. My ears popped as I raced through the archway and nearly twisted my ankle on roof gravel. Brand’s voice swore to life over the earpiece. I drowned out his shouting by yelling the word bomb nine times with no punctuation.
He notified the rest of the raid team. Things happened quickly. People jumped out windows, trampled through doors. Others ran onto the roof and used flight, levitation, unassisted gravity, even a bloody winged horse.
I sent my willpower into my gold ankle chain to release its stored spell. Buoyant magic shivered through my body. I pushed off the roof, and my body didn’t stop moving. Wind broke against me as I spun midair and flew.
The actual art of flying is not a comic-book experience. It is scary and dangerous as fuck all, and clumsy, and intemperate.
You get sunburn during the day and freeze your ass at night. It’s hard to breathe. You can’t see straight—especially if you forget your goggles, as I always do. Gravity pulls strangely at your limbs, turning you into a marionette with snapped strings. Oh, and bugs. You get bugs in your teeth. A bee stung me in the throat once.
But in this case, with a bomb’s timer set, I embraced the spell wholeheartedly. I soared to the water tower, grabbed Brand, and we made a bum’s rush off the property. I set Brand down at his motorcycle a half a mile away. We both stared back at the mansion, waiting for the climactic finish. Nothing happened. After a few minutes, we called it a day.
Brand was mad as hell and kept all his comments clipped when I filled him in on what happened with Elena. Then he got on his motorcycle and left, a dramatic exit as loud as the arc of a chainsaw.
I sighed, got in my beat-up old Saturn, and drove home.
Three streets before my final turn, I heard an almighty CRACK. In the rearview mirror, the horizon turned black and gold.
Brand was still unlatching his rifle case when I pulled into the cul-de-sac where we lived. He opened the lid to make sure the contents hadn’t shifted during his ride. “You’re a fucking dumb-ass,” he said.
“I know.”
“You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“No, seriously, it was a stupid fucking dumb-ass move. You don’t mess with Arcana; they’re all deadly, even the queen of the fucking love faeries. Now you’re stuck doing a favor for her.”
“But I got a sigil out of it,” I said, holding up the emerald ring I’d had zipped in my pocket. “Pretty cool parting gift, yeah?”
“Gift? I have this image in my head of exploding cigars. Or flower boutonnieres that squirt water. Peanut cans with snakes.”
“Big word. Boutonnieres.”
He snapped the rifle case shut and spun the combination lock. I was pretty sure this conversation wasn’t over. The episode with Lady Lovers had rattled him, which wasn’t an easy thing to do.
We headed toward the front door of Half House, our home. As I fished for my keys, Brand said, a little hesitantly, “That woman. The fake seer. She didn’t bother you too much with what she said, right?”
“Nah,” I mumbled.
He watched my face closely. “‘Nah’?”
I gave him a little smile and bumped his shoulder.
“Don’t smile at me,” Brand said. “You’re still a dumb-ass.”
We piled into Half House’s nine-foot-wide living room—which was the sum width of the entire building. I swept a gaze across the coffee table and frowned.
Brand squeezed around me, then pointed to the table. “But . . . ?”
“No cookies,” I said.
“She al
ways bakes cookies when we have a job,” he repeated, as if I was arguing the point.
He went in search of our housekeeper, Queenie, who lived in a tiny cottage in the backyard. Normally she laid out fruit drinks and snacks after a successful job, her small way of celebrating the fact that she was still employed.
I dropped into a puffy chair and wrenched off my boots. They were among the most expensive things I owned: so finely cut to the shape of my foot that I didn’t usually wear socks. I reached for a jar of powder I kept in a nearby wicker basket and sprinkled some to absorb the moisture. Impact and endurance wards, etched into the leather, tingled dully against my fingers.
The back door opened, and Brand came back through the house. He stopped in the doorway and didn’t say anything.
For a horrible second I thought something was wrong, that Queenie was hurt, that our work had finally followed us home. Then Queenie came up behind him. Her plain face swung side to side in a nonstop headshake.
She said, “You took a seventeen-year-old boy?”
I said, “Um. What?”
“For a sigil? You took a seventeen-year-old boy to get a sigil?”
“Funny thing about that package you have to deliver,” Brand said.
My mouth opened. My mouth closed.
“No, no, it gets better. Guess what,” he made air quotes, “the ‘safe destination’ is.”
“Please tell me Elena didn’t send us a seventeen-year-old boy. Please tell me a seventeen-year-old boy is not the package.”
“Oh, she did. And, oh, yes, it is. But, again,” he said, “it gets better. Guess what the destination is?”
There was no sand to stick my head in. So I just closed my eyes as Brand said, “His age of adulthood—his twenty-first fucking birthday.”
Well, shit, I thought.
HALF HOUSE
No one has ever been arrested or convicted for the slaughter of my father and our people. It has become one of New Atlantis’s enduring mysteries.
The assailants had been circumspect, of course. In the absence of a legitimatized raid, the response by the Arcanum—the formal, collective body of all Arcana—would have been implacable. The unplanned destruction of a court lessens all of New Atlantis, when other courts don’t get fat off it.
The Last Sun Page 2