“Eminence,” someone shouted, and a rolling pike thumped toward him. He snatched it as a mandible slammed his ribs. A crack and crunch shuddered through his chest as he pitched forward. Fire squeezed his lungs; his own wheezing layered over the clicking bearing down on him. His limbs froze as he recalled crushing agony and an icy cold that dragged him toward death.
Elekia yelled, a wordless battle cry, and his heart surged, pumping a blazing energy to every muscle, stomping down his fear with the need to protect her. He flipped to his feet and swung the pike. It glanced off something hard, but he spun, following the momentum of the swing, bringing it back around with all his strength. The blade scored chitin, the shaft shuddering. A wet, pungent, grassy goop smacked his face as the Kragnashian squealed and crashed. He sprang back, and pain bit through his chest like teeth made of fire. But the creature was down, and he stood for a moment, trying to fill cramped lungs, not bothering to seek anyone’s sight, knowing all he would see was chaos.
A swish and scrape behind him, he spun and dove, shoving his weapon upward. Fire stabbed inside him as the shaft juddered through chitin and squelched into tissue. Pulling it free, he stumbled against the dais.
“Geram.” Elekia’s hand clasped his elbow, her touch electric. He scrambled after her into the depression round the Device. His limbs leaden, his breath gurgled like a drowning man. “Here,” she said, laying her hand across his ribs. They ground like stones against each other, the pain lancing through his chest, but when he inhaled again, his lungs filled more easily.
“That’s all I can manage,” Elekia gasped.
“It’s enough.” He took her sight. Blood slicked the floor, pooling beneath dozens of prone troopers and a few massive, chitin-clad heaps. Leg segments and carapace shards littered the floor; one Kragnashian flopped in a corner, half its legs cut away. Troopers and seamen swarmed through the windows; some had barred the doors to keep any invaders still on the grounds from entering. Soldiers and seamen clustered around the armored warriors, jabbing and hacking, dancing away from slashing mouthparts. Drak fought alone, using his size and strength to drive his pike through their armor.
“We must go,” she said.
He took her arm, and she grasped the knob and shoved it southwest.
Redemption
The windows were shuttered on every guildhouse, the market stalls and cafe tables cleared away from Commissar’s square. Gaslights brightened in the gloaming as the sun sank past the coastal range. Ashel walked amid the army of Oreseekers, miners, and Caleisbahn mercenaries, watching the multitude of heads and shoulders pour into the square. Every hand bore a cudgel or an axe, but the faces bore wildly varied emotions, some fierce and furious, some frightened, some shifting between the two. Few of the rebels were trained soldiers; there’d be no marital discipline to drive them tonight, only will and passion. Ashel hoped it would be enough. His belly tickled as if he were getting ready to go on stage—that energy will help you shine, he’d tell a nervous apprentice. But the dagger sheathed at his side, the heavy wooden shield bound to his right arm, were his instruments tonight. Death, not music. He breathed slowly and deeply, as did Geram, waiting outside the Manor walls. He hoped Geram’s instincts would help him wield the unfamiliar weapons he’d been given, hoped the rebels’ determined rage would carry them through the battle ahead, but the outcome was far from certain, and he was glad Wineyll had slipped down an alley and taken refuge in the Minstrels Guildhouse.
Across the square, ranked fifty deep, the Commissar’s soldiers filled the proscenium. Behind them was a row of short-range catapults, armed and cranked. Strained timbers moaned, a harbinger of the deaths to come. A shiver gripped Ashel’s spine as he recalled the massacre here only a few months ago.
Once in the square proper, he joined the Korngs within a cordon of Caleisbahnin, and they crossed the cobbles under a parley banner. Lamps glared from the gibbet posts, illuminating Alek. Dungeon filth and blood stained his clothes. Bruises and a broken nose disfigured kindly features. Arms bound, a rope already round his neck, his body trembled and swayed, as if exhaustion might pull him into the grip of the noose, sparing the executioner the effort.
Parnden and his guards, along with a foursome of Kragnashians, emerged from the Commissar’s ranks and met them beside the gallows. “Poor Alek has been standing there since noon, waiting for you,” said Parnden. Remaining behind Demsch, he flicked a sneer at the rebels. “It seems you’ve brought my pick of substitutes.”
“No one is taking my place up here,” croaked Alek.
“I’ll give you a choice, Lornk,” Parnden said. “Choose one of your sons to go up there, and the other will be my heir. I’d always intended that for Earnk, though you robbed me of my chance to groom him properly, just as your undeclared bride robbed you—twice, if I’m not mistaken. She kept your firstborn from you and stole your young mistress, so you couldn’t train her up the way you wanted.”
His anger coiling like a serpent, Ashel’s knuckles whitened around the hilt of the dagger. Beside him, Kelmair bared an inch of steel.
“And what would you do with me?” Lornk asked glibly. “Let me retire quietly into your dungeons?”
“I’ve promised you to the Lathan authorities, actually. I believe they still have a place ready for you under the Shrine. So who shall swing at the end of that rope? The friend you urged onto the seditious path that put him in that noose, the son you claimed with a butcher’s cleaver, or the one whose mother you drove insane?”
Lornk studied the Kragnashians flanking the Commissar. An eyebrow raised, he rested hot palms on Ashel’s cheeks. “You were right about the markings.”
Ashel shrugged him off, his breath short bursts around a surging heartbeat. “I won’t do it,” he said. “Not for you.”
Snorting softly, Lornk patted his ear. “You will finish what I started, for her.” He gripped Earnk’s shoulder. “The Seat suits you. I expect you to rule Relm well.” He turned to Parnden. “Tis a far, far better thing I do now, than I have ever done,” he said in the Ancient’s tongue, pushed through the Caleisbahnin, and headed up the gibbet steps.
“What are you doing?” Parnden asked, his jaw slack.
Ashel closed his mouth and blinked at the gaping faces around him.
“I’d rather choke for a few minutes than languish for days under the Shrine,” Lornk said.
Alek spluttered protests. Murmurs swept through the rebels and swelled into a roar. Kelmair tugged Ashel’s arm, urging retreat into the screaming ranks, but his boots were glued to the pavement, his eyes on Lornk cutting the ropes round Alek’s ankles and legs. Alek collapsed, still shouting objections. Lornk handed his weapons to the executioner and offered his wrists for binding.
“He is mad,” Ashel breathed.
“There is no limit to what he’ll do if it achieves his ends,” Earnk said bitterly.
“Even his own death?”
“The only thing he cares about is his legacy.”
Aggrieved loss opened a hole within Ashel. He would have felt nothing but satisfaction to see Lornk carted off to suffer a traitor’s death beneath the Shrine, but to watch him hanged here, before the people he intended to save? He felt robbed, not only of the prospect of seeing justice levied against the sadistic fiend he knew in Olmlablaire’s dungeons but also of the chance to understand the man who had so wholly committed himself to saving humanity.
“It’s up to you both now,” Lornk said as the executioner fitted the rope round his neck and cranked a winch. Clattering echoed, and the rope went taut. Lornk rose up on his toes and shouted, “For Victor—”
Another crank yanked him off his feet, and the Buzzards boiled forward. Demsch yelled orders, and the Commissar’s guards hustled him back toward the palace.
Earnk cried Alek’s name and sprang up the gibbet steps, Caleisbahnin right behind him. They lifted the older man and rushed him away into the swirling horde. A Kragnashian swept to the bottom of the stairs, prevent
ing any attempt to save Lornk, while the other three creatures charged into the mob. Eddies formed as rebels scurried clear of snapping mandibles.
Sword drawn, Kelmair cried Ashel’s name, yanked on his arm as the surging Buzzards crashed into the soldiers. They sheltered beside the gibbet as the square boiled over with butchery. Cudgels smashed skulls, hatchets cleaved flesh and bone. Shrieks spread like a plague. Rue squeezed Ashel’s chest as he recalled the screams of the Dagger as they died around him. Vic’s patrol, all dead because of his selfish, mad desire for vengeance. Catapults whumped, and a limestone block smashed into the rebels and exploded. Pelted by shrapnel, Lornk’s body jerked and twisted. Another catapult fired, raining flaming coals. Fear swamped regret, and he grabbed Kelmair and ducked under the platform.
There, they could hear the former Relmlord slowly choking to death. The noise crept through the smack, splat, and keens of battle, stirring the memory of Vic, vibrating with fury, strangling Lornk in a room clogged with dust. The same impulse he’d felt then, as a mountain fell around them, wedged through his rage and regret as a city tore itself apart. Then, he’d stopped Vic from killing Lornk because he’d wanted the Relmlord to face Lathan justice at the Shrine. Now, Lornk’s death wouldn’t satisfy Lathan justice, it would only strengthen Parnden’s tyranny. Lornk had left the rebellion in Ashel’s hands, but it might be years before he could communicate well enough with the Kragnashians to sway them from an alliance with Parnden. In that time, the Commissar would try to gain control of the copper supply, which meant war between Betheljin and Relm, with Latha caught between them. Who knew how Parnden might use the Kragnashians to terrorize and cow Knownearth into submission? And if Vic returned, Parnden would make her death his top priority. His lungs expelled a long breath. There was only one way out of this.
The Kragnashian guarding the stairs was the friendly one that had been teaching him its language in exchange for songs. “Is the cup full now?” he clapped. “Is this what you wanted?”
“The past slips.”
“We can do nothing about the past! Do you want peace with humanity now? If you do, let me by.”
Eye facets sparkled in the lamplight. Mouthparts clicked softly, and a long proboscis extruded then retracted. Antennae flicking rapidly, the creature shuffled aside.
Shield high against the raining stones, Ashel charged up the stairs. The executioner was gone—fled or dead, he didn’t know. Kelmair released the winch, and Lornk’s weight dropped onto Ashel’s shoulders. Grunting, he lowered the other man to the platform, loosened the noose, and cut his hands free. Lornk lay slack.
“Is he breathing?” Kelmair put her fingers against his lips, her ear to his chest. Rising to her knees, she placed clasped fists over his breastbone and began pumping with stiff arms. “Tilt his head back,” she ordered. “Open his throat.”
“What are you doing?”
“It’s an Ancient practice. If I can get his heart going, it might revive him.”
Ashel tilted Lornk’s head back, holding it while he wrestled with opposing hopes—that Lornk was dead and that he might yet live. There’d been no such hope when he held Sashal’s prone body. That father’s lifeblood had poured out irrevocably. This one’s pulse was feeble at first but grew steadily stronger.
“To the prince, to the prince!” echoed from below, and Samson led a knot of Oreseekers up the steps. Mary, Fred, Mike, and half a dozen others made a wall and roof with their rough shields, providing meager shelter from the raining stones. Lornk’s eyes fluttered open, and he sucked in a long, hoarse breath. Coughing, he turned watering eyes at Ashel. “I knew I could count on your sense of mercy, son.”
Ashel let go, and Lornk’s head smacked the platform. “Now you owe me twice for your life. Can you can convince the Kragnashians to change sides?”
Lornk took another ragged breath and rolled to his knees.
“Wineyll made contact with Victoria, correct?”
“Vic is alive, and she knows what she needs to do.”
“I’ll make sure they know.”
The Kragnashian had entered the fray. Still wheezing, Lornk led them through the brawl toward it. Rebels flocked round them, stabbing and hacking at the soldiers screaming for their blood. A burly guard barreled through the cordon. Ashel rammed his shield into the man’s breast. Samson stabbed him through the eye. The Kragnashian swept toward them, a pack of soldiers swarming after. Rebels and guards clashed; brutal weapons struck bone and flesh, and blood flew like sea spray. The square stank of iron and offal.
Mary fell in a bloody heap, and Major Demsch stepped over her, sword high. Ashel lunged, his shield blocking her swing, the long dagger darting for her ribs.
Panting, she spun out of reach. “I promised to kill you.”
He swung the shield, bashed her shoulder, jabbing with his blade. He felt no anger toward Demsch; he only wanted to live and see Vic again. Demsch ducked and slashed. He didn’t want to kill her; he just wanted her out of this fight and out of his way. Twisting, he rammed the shield at her; it caught her sword arm. She dropped the weapon, and he stomped on it just as she snatched it up. The metal snapped.
“Fucking Trainer smiths; can’t make a decent blade.” She sneered at him. “At least it’ll hurt more when it guts you.”
“I pray you’ll keep missing me.” He feinted with the shield, reversed the grip on his dagger and jabbed, but she dodged and struck with the broken sword and her own dagger, each in a fist. Steel rang, wood thumped and thunked as they parried, twisting, spinning, slipping across blood-slicked cobbles. A whiff of Kragnashian—clean and fresh as the Kiareinoll—curled through the reek of charcoal and guts.
A blow smashed the rear of his knee. It buckled, and he fell. Rolling, he sheltered under the shield.
An oof lured his eyes over the rim. Demsch sailed over him, struck the cobbles, and lay still. Roaring, another soldier rushed forward, sword raised for murder, and the Kragnashian swept in front of Ashel and savaged her. A scream died in a squelch, and an oozing lump slapped the ground.
The Kragnashian clicked.
“It says, ‘Greetings to the Voice,’” Samson panted, pulling Ashel to his feet. The Oreseeker was covered in gore. Mary lay on the ground, but Mike, Fred, and Kelmair still fought amid a thousand other Buzzards, seamen, miners, and dockworkers.
Bloodied mouthparts clicked and burred. “In honor of the First, we too fight for Victory. The world changes. You will come and bear witness.”
“I won’t abandon these people,” Lornk said. Blood dripped from a sword in his hand. “I’ll come when we’ve defeated the Commissar.”
“So be it,” Samson translated. The Kragnashian whistled, and the other Kragnashians turned on the Commissar’s forces, sweeping through them like scythes through grain. Buzzards gathered in a circle around Ashel and Lornk, shields up and weapons pointed outward while the creatures swirled with brutal efficiency through the uniformed soldiers. Rebels followed in their wake, and the tide turned. The Commissar’s forces broke, some fleeing the square, others on their knees, hands raised in surrender.
When it was over, the Kragnashians returned to them. “For what was,” the leader said, swirling its antennae toward Ashel. They tapped across his brow, needle sharp, and he was overwhelmed with a sorrow deep and long, the grief of an entire People, for something precious that had been lost forever. A deep-throated wail rose from him and joined with a howl from Lornk. Their cries harmonized into a truer sound of misery than any song Ashel could have composed.
The Kragnashian backed away, and Ashel bent over, hands on knees, gasping to stave off a torrent of sobs. Lornk staggered away from the other Kragnashian. Head reeling, Ashel stepped over bleeding, broken bodies to reach the other man. From across the square, Earnk and Wineyll picked through the carnage to join them.
Swaying, Lornk rubbed his throat, dark red with blooming bruises. “What did you feel?” he croaked.
“Their despair. You?”
“Their hope.”
Hurrying to him, Wineyll slid her arms around Ashel. His heart jumped into his throat at the pain etched across her face. “She’s still alive.”
“Let’s put this day to rest.” Lornk squared his shoulders. They strode through the gate and surveyed the palace. A steady stream of rebels rushed inside, but a Caleisbahn captain came out.
“The palace is secure.”
“Have you found Parnden?”
“Not yet.”
“Look in the dungeons. He might be hiding there, hoping to escape in a general amnesty. When you find him, keep him locked up. Where are the guards who surrendered?”
The captain gestured at a group corralled within a ring of cudgel-carrying Buzzards.
“Is Major Demsch still alive?” Lornk called as he approached.
“I am.” Parnden’s commander pushed through the captive guards. Blood seeped from a gash in her scalp.
“Do you acknowledge defeat?” Lornk asked.
Her eyes like steel, she nodded. “You have marshaled a successful coup.”
“Will you swear to defend this palace with more vigor and loyalty to me than you did for Parnden?”
She bristled. “When it’s earned, yes.”
He stepped through the ring of Buzzards, drew his sword, and held the hilt to her. “I don’t have time to earn loyalty, so I will buy it with trust. I need you, major, immediately.” He angled his head at the Kragnashians. “I am called away to witness an event of global importance, but I do not wish to lose this day. Will you defend the palace of Commissar Lornk Korng?”
Her mouth grim, she met his gaze evenly. “When your people bribed me, I took the money and turned them in.”
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