Ninth City Burning

by J. Patrick Black

  I won’t admit to this gob of bullies that I have no idea how an equus works. Instead, I rely on my experience with equulei, reaching out, searching for that place within an object that allows you to take hold of it, like a saddle to seat your soul. It’s there, like always, and when I touch it, I feel the equus come to life. And then the stone beneath my hand lurches, knocking me away.

  I stumble, barely keeping my feet, as ShadowSinger’s face blooms into glowing red. There’s a flash of movement, a fist coming down on me, then I’m in darkness, shaking with the force of a terrible impact.

  When the ringing in my ears finally starts to fade, I hear laughter, and Sensen’s voice, muffled by the dense stone around me. “Oh, sorry. I forgot Shadow’s security settings. Can’t have every idiot who wanders by riding my equus.”

  “Very funny, Sen,” Imway says. “Now let her out. She’s learned her lesson.”

  But I haven’t learned my lesson. I’ve figured out where I am, trapped like a bug beneath ShadowSinger’s cupped hand, and I’m ready to be turned loose. No sooner has the darkness lifted to a view of Sensen’s smirking face than I’ve landed my knuckles on her nose.

  My left cross is a little rusty, but still enough to put her squarely on her rear. Blood comes pouring out of her nostrils a moment later, and she holds up a hand to stem the flow, looking wide-eyed from me to her reddened fingers while comrades crowd in to help her. I’m waiting to see if she’ll get up when Imway steps between us.

  “Walk away, noco,” he says coolly. “We’ll forget about this. Just walk away.”

  “Make me.” He’s too close to get in a good swing, but I hold his eyes, waiting. “I still owe you a broken leg.”

  He watches me a moment longer, impassive behind his silver frames, then heaves a resigned sigh. “Have it your way.”

  His friends have gathered behind him, all of them pleasingly dumbfounded. Sensen is on her feet but shows no interest in coming back for another round; she only watches me, eyes narrowed, as Imway approaches the man beside her. He’s holding a steaming cup, though he seems to have forgotten about it until Imway casually dips one finger inside. When Imway withdraws his hand, the liquid comes with it, pale tea bouncing like a big heavy drop about to fall. Only it doesn’t fall; it rises as though preparing to drip upward, then stalls in midair, a globe of hot tea balanced on a thin liquid pillar. Imway has animated the young fellow’s drink.

  “I’ll make you a bargain,” he says, extending his palm like he’s offering me the dollop of tea. “If you can knock this out of my hand, I’ll let you break any one of my bones you want.” With his free hand, he points to the little stream connecting the floating globe to his palm. “All you have to do is touch this part here. That will break the connection. I’ll be drenched in hot tea, and you’ll get to choose what to break and how to break it. I’ll give you three tries. If you fail, you leave quietly. Deal?”

  “Deal.” He must have some trick planned, some strategy, but I’ll just have to figure it out. And how hard can it be, really, to poke a little glob of weak tea?

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  I lead off with a headlong charge. I may be lacking as a scholar in most areas of study, but in matters destructive, I have made a point of honing my skill. For all the new sorts of artifices I have learned, I retain a penchant for the explosive—I have been practicing one fiery technique in particular, and now seems the just the time to show it off. I make it to within five feet of him, too, gathering up my magic to knock him down like a tin figurine, but just as the first slivers of yellow fire begin to appear, the energy inexplicably fizzles. A sudden rush of air sweeps my legs from under me, and I land on my side, feet kicking over my head.

  Imway hasn’t moved. All he says is “One.”

  All right, so he’s better with magic than I am. No big surprise there. And I don’t know how he snuffed me out like that. But I don’t have to tackle him or smite him with lightning from on high; I just have to pop that floating globe.

  I get up and back away, unsure just how far his reach goes or what his next attack will be, though it seems he’s content to let me move first. I cast about for a better approach than the one I’ve just tried. Around FireChaser’s feet are scattered scraps of metal and stone, probably shaved away during repairs, and these give me an idea. Seizing half a dozen smaller chunks with my magic, I sling them into the air, a long arc with Imway’s smug head as the ultimate destination. Each is somehow batted down before it reaches its mark, sent clattering harmlessly away by the intercession of an unseen force.

  “Shall we call that two?” Imway asks, or starts to, until he sees me coming at him. This time I am able to let loose with my favorite artifice, a golden fist of flame. My blood is up, and as a result the detonation is considerably greater than I had planned. The fire engulfs Imway completely, and I have just enough time to worry that I have taken things too far before the whole inferno dies out at once, as though swallowed up in a deluge. Again, there is no obvious evidence of magic, only Imway, his pose and bored expression unchanged, and another gust of wind to put me on the floor.

  I’ve begun to wonder whether Imway might have some version of Philosopher Ooj’s warding gear until I see a faint ruffle in his neatly combed hair, and I understand: He’s animating the air, turning it into a kind of equulus to keep me away. I’m impressed. Air is exceptionally hard to animate, let alone powerfully enough to fling a healthy, fully grown girl around like a sack of beans. And there must be something else in there, too, some other magic to undo my artifices.

  “You know, this isn’t terribly fair of me,” Imway says. He strolls toward FireChaser and lifts something hanging on the wall. I consider taking a run at him while his back is turned, but he’ll be expecting that. “Here,” he says, tossing me what looks like a thick black belt. “Wear this MSR. Maybe that will even things out a bit.”

  Murmurs and chuckles from the gallery. What Imway called an MSR is the thing I saw that man, Hezaro, use to move around while he worked on HeavensHammer. If nothing else, those tentacles should lengthen my reach—if I can make the thing work, that is.

  I fix the belt around my waist, then grope about for something to animate. It’s there, a sort of presence I can take hold of, and when I do, inky-blue tentacles spring out, lifting me off the ground. The chuckling stops then, and when I discover certain of the tentacles hold magical tools that seem like they’ll serve nicely as weapons—a long, blood-red stinger being of special note—tense silence rises in its place.

  The MSR makes me faster than I can believe, but not fast enough, not by a long shot. As I take my first gliding steps toward him, Imway changes his stance, turning to face me sideways, and the air around him assumes a faint red glow. And then he charges. I whip at him with the MSR’s tentacles, only to see them lopped off by invisible blades, their liquidy shapes splashing like raindrops, my stinger and other weaponry shattering. The next thing I know, the tentacles holding me up have been sliced away, and I am once again on the floor, now borne on a slick of fragrant goo. I slide to a stop just short of Imway’s feet.

  “Three,” he says. Lukewarm tea splashes beside my face. “Good-bye, Cadet Rachel. I trust you can see yourself out.”

  Seeing myself out isn’t necessary. A whole tour of Sixth-Class cadets has watched my duel with Imway to its inglorious conclusion. Imway doesn’t get ten steps from me before Kizabel accosts him, berating the whole gang of equites for misuse of Stabulum equipment and conduct unbecoming of legionaries, and in front of Academy cadets, no less. She makes no allowance for Imway’s rank or authority but lays into him the way a rhetor might some misbehaving cadet. Imway endures the scolding silently, with the sour look of a child about to be sent to bed without supper.

  The Academy cadets, meanwhile, are in full agreement that today has been the best of their little lives. Despite my unappealing smell, I am welcomed as a hero. Not only did I ride an
MSR, I got into a fight with a real eques, and none other than Imway, one of their most revered deities. To their minds, this makes me practically a legionary myself, but I know that isn’t true.

  Imway did have a nasty trick to beat me: being the plain better fighter. I thought I was closing the distance between myself and the Legion—that I was almost there, in fact. I didn’t mind if my skills had about reached their peak, so long I had only a little left to go. Now I know how far away I really am. I may be preeminent among the Dodos, but I am no match for a trained soldier. Perhaps, with Danyee’s help, I can improve myself enough to join my fellow cadets in their slow climb through the Academy, even insinuate myself into some quicker track toward enlistment, but either way it will be years and years before I’m ready for the Legion, if I make it there at all.

  And by then, my sister will be gone.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  KIZABEL

  My imaginary friend thinks I need to get out more.

  “I’m not imaginary!” Lady Jane protests. “I may be insubstantial. I may be ethereal. But I am not imaginary. It isn’t like you’re the only person who can see me. Not that it matters,” she adds, pouting with theatrical prettiness in a black evening dress,1 her preferred attire whenever I am in overalls and drenched in muck. “No one ever visits us anymore. I miss my boys.”

  “They’re not your boys.” I am well up inside the Project, rooting around in the core, and my voice echoes impressively, assuming exaggerated registers whenever I activate my fusing wand. The Project’s central webbing of gwayd canals stretches above me like a dense canopy of interlocking branches. I run my fingers across each canal, glancing now and then at the schematic displayed in a curtain of mirrors hanging at the edge of the Project’s exposed chest cavity. There is a burst of bright blue light each time I sever or fuse a connection, illuminating the delicate veins of the smaller canals, some barely the breadth of a finer-than-average human hair. Production-line legionary equi generally don’t require this kind of precision, but compared to the Project, legionary stock equi are about as sophisticated as comedic flatulence.

  “Well, they’re certainly not your boys,” Lady retorts. The schematics, full of my latest scribbly and more-than-a-little-ad-hoc designs, are pushed aside to reveal Lady’s scowling face. She has acquired one of the cigarettes seen so often in CE movies and smokes it officiously from a long black holder.

  “You’re right about that,” I mutter. She’s referring to Vinneas and Imway, both of whom used to spend the bulk of their free hours here but have become notably scarce since going on active duty for the Legion. Vinneas at least has the excuse of travel-necessary-to-the-continued-viability-of-the-war-effort, but as far as I can tell, all Imway does is hang around the Stabulum playing whist or tarot with the other equites and occasionally interrupting my repair work to insinuate that my time would be better spent polishing his precious FireChaser. I’m willing to admit (privately anyway) that the shop hasn’t been the same the past few weeks, but Lady’s sulkily employed tones of high tragedy and melodrama are beginning to grate. I blame the movies.

  One benefit to being largely ignored by your two best friends, however, is that it gives you more time for your hobbies, and the Project has seen marked improvement as a result. “Would you mind holding those schematics back up? It’s hard to work with your face in the way.”

  “Your face, you mean,” Lady points out, rudely but not inaccurately. The two of us are physically identical, in a dermo-musculoskeletal sense. “And who cares what I do anyway? We imaginary friends are known for our flightiness.”

  “Oh, Lady, no reason to get offended. I only said that because you’re not real. Now move.”

  “Sheesh” is Lady’s take on my attitude. “I was only joking. Maybe if you’d leave the shop once in a while, you wouldn’t be such a great big phenomenal bore. You’ve got yucky bags under your eyes, and you’ve already inverted two gwayd links.” Lady rustles the schematics, pointing out the faulty connections with a hand sheathed in long gloves, then watches through a pair of unnecessary opera glasses while I make the suggested adjustments.

  I give the core a final once-over, devoting special attention to the film of viatically conductive material along the grips and back of the throne, before pulling myself up by the chest cavity’s rim. “You ready to give this a shot?” I ask Lady, rolling up her curtain of mirrors and tucking it beneath my arm.

  She speaks in a muffled voice, for effect. “Does my opinion actually matter?”

  “Not at all. That was a rhetorical question.”

  My work suit is thoroughly spattered in glowing blue gwayd,2 and even though the stain is already fading, I brush at it offhandedly, feeling the distant tingle, like a sleeping limb coming back to life.

  “Then allow me to rhetorically tell you this is a waste of time.” Lady has reappeared on her wall, watching me through the mosaic of variously sized mirrors as though from behind a fence. She puffs dramatically on her cigarette, exhales. “You’ve already reconfigured the core a million different ways. If you’d only swallow your pride and—”

  “Just go see if the testing floor is clear.”

  Lady, huffing with offense, flounces from view. When she returns, her evening wear has been replaced by a wholly gratuitous array of protective equipment, apparently meant to signify some ludicrous amount of impending danger. Safety goggles and other precautions that might be considered sensible had Lady an actual corporeal body to injure mix freely with accessories plainly intended as hyperbole: a helmet from some extinct CE sport, oven mitts, pillows belted to her chest and back. “All clear,” she says, mumbling around her mouth guard. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The blank wall behind me evaporates, revealing the empty expanse of Testing Floor Sixteen. Until recently, all work pertaining to the Project was restricted to my own facilities. I have everything necessary for partial activations, basic durability and performance trials, fabrication of materials.3 But ever since we progressed to full activation, Lady has insisted we move someplace where our tests will not result in her needing to replace her mirrors every other day. Because the Project violates just about every rule the Academy has, not to mention a number of Fabrica regulations pertaining to the treatment of dangerous materials and Stabulum protocols regarding disposal of same, all experimentation must be conducted covertly. The present time is 0239 hours, and TF 16 should be abandoned until 0600 at least.

  Though smaller than most equi active in the Legion, the Project is still large enough that his head would punch through the ceiling of my workshop when standing at his full height. He spends most of his time in a knee-hugging crouch, encased in a nifty contraption of my own design that Lady fondly calls the “egg crate.” The crate is a sturdy cube of reinforced interlocking framework, infused with customized weightlessness artifices that allow me to convey the Project’s multitonne bulk with ease. Once the Project is settled in the center of Testing Floor Sixteen, the egg crate pulls clear to reveal his full, glimmering splendor.

  I will admit that to someone without my overwhelming maternal investment, the Project would cut quite the ghastly figure. When fully arrayed in the armor I’m building to his measurements, a marble-quartz amalgam that finishes to a gallant and heroic white, I have no doubt he will be absolutely magnificent, but naked as he is, the impression is more of a flayed corpse. Stripped-down equi are always mildly unsettling, too thick about the shoulders and limbs to be really human, with the head—undersized, eyeless, mouthless—hinting at alien or potentially demonic lineage. The Legion’s current models are all built with single-alloy thurgo-muscle, though, which at least gives their exposed bodies the clean, machined look of an anatomical model cast in metal. The Project’s muscle, by contrast, is a never-before-seen composite conceived and fabricated entirely by me, which demonstrates unheard-of levels of speed and power in early-stage testing, but also has an unfortunate combination of greasy opalescen
ce and deep gunmetal coloring that, in certain lights, gives it the look of dark meat on poultry.

  Once he’s up and running, the Project will be absolutely worth the absurd amount of time I’ve spent assembling him, the risk of expulsion-slash-incarceration, and the fact that I can no longer eat fried chicken. All my experiments, all my calculations, all my instincts, tell me he’s already stratospherically more advanced than anything the Legion has. But before he can begin trampling notions about the limits of equus design, not to mention what a cadet who’s failed her general exams three times running4 can accomplish, I have to calibrate his interface, matching the movements of the mighty beast to the intentions of the frail human being inside. For that, I have to activate him all at once, so that I can tweak and tinker with his fine motor functions. In this regard, the Project has proven somewhat uncooperative, no doubt due to the delicacy of his groundbreaking design. Fully activating an equus for the first time is like setting the keystone into a newly built arch: All the supporting forces are coming together at this single point, and once that’s stable, you’ve got a nearly unshakable whole, but unless it’s done just right, the whole thing falls apart. In the Project’s case, the pieces that need to be held in suspension—the nebulous structures of artifice that make him a magnificent, animated symphony instead of a creepy hunk of inert material—are singularly and exceptionally precarious. With the exception of his frame,5 every bit of him, down to the tiniest filament of muscle, constitutes a feat of engineering previously thought impossible, all of it woven together with a system of artifices so elegant and complex that likening it to the corresponding blocks in a normal equus would be like comparing a dragonfly to a paper airplane. Needless to say, not an easy puzzle to assemble on the fly. This will be my fifth attempted activation in as many weeks.