The Iron Phoenix

by Rebecca Harwell

  Kill me, she shouted silently to the grim faces of the men who circled her. Kill me now and end this.

  “Fire,” a voice called out, and a rain of bullets closed in on her from all sides.

  Nadya waited for death to take her.

  Her body did not. The automaton flipped backward, dodging the first dozen bullets. She corkscrewed in the air. Several grazed her arms and legs. Nadya cried out, a reflex, but her lips didn’t part. None of the wounds came even close to fatal. She slid down on her knees, bending backward so far the back of her head grazed the wet ground. In an instant, she was up and right next to the first group of guardsmen.

  They were a dozen men, mostly Erevan. The automaton dodged to the right, as four bullets ripped past her. The men stopped, unslung their muskets, and furiously began to reload. Her mouth twitched into a smile, and Nadya wanted to cry. Her body smashed through the sea of red toward the men.

  One dropped his musket altogether. He was young, a new recruit who thought the most he would be facing was an argument in the ration line. The plea on his lips was stopped by a blow that snapped his head back. He crumpled to the ground. The others leveled their muskets at her, bullets forgotten. The bayonets affixed to the long barrels glinted in the sun. One stabbed for her, and her body twisted around, then grabbed the barrel of the gun and shoved it back. The butt went right through the man’s chest and out the other side.

  A sharp pain throbbed in her torso, and her gaze was directed down at the bayonet stuck into her right side. She looked back up to the grim-faced man who held it.

  More guardsmen poured in around her, firing. Several bullets hit Nadya squarely, forcing her to the ground. Inwardly, she cheered despite the pain. Kill me! Kill me, and stop this slaughter.

  Red uniforms and rapiers and bayonets pressed in from all sides. Nadya’s body went stiff went she felt the cold barrel of a pistol against the back of her neck.

  Pull the trigger, she screamed. Pull it!

  The guardsman’s finger crept backward as time slowed. The automaton brought her elbow up, despite the pain in her shoulder, and rammed it into the man’s knee, shattering it. In the same movement, she leapt to her feet, forcing the blades back. Metal snapped under her fingers as she grabbed at swords and bayonets and thrust them back to their owners. More than one man crumpled, his weapon protruding from his chest. She jumped aside as bullets whizzed past the bridge of her nose, and she whirled around, taking down two men with a kick.

  Nadya sobbed without crying. For a moment, she believed it was going to end. How was she capable of this much destruction? Before, a single bullet and five men had nearly brought her down. What had Gedeon done to her abilities?

  “It ends here, Phoenix.”

  Her body turned from the bodies of the slaughtered guardsmen. Six Nomori guardsmen, their rapiers drawn, faced her. Their reflexes could match her own, and their battle experience, judging from the hard looks in their eyes and the scars that crisscrossed their faces, far outweighed hers.

  Nadya allowed herself to hope as she stepped out of the circle of carnage to face them.

  There was no hesitation in their movements. They came at her all at once, their sword points moving in perfect unison.

  The automaton dodged the first swipes, but the swords were there again, one ramming through her injured shoulder, and pulling back out, the blade dyed a deep crimson. The others stung her like angry hornets, none of them landing the fatal blow. When Nadya lunged for them, the men were suddenly gone, ducking and rolling as she had, out of her grasp.

  Her face remained passive, but inwardly Nadya was screaming for them to finish her quickly. She wasn’t an opponent that could be worn down.

  For a long moment, she hoped that the skill of the Nomori swordsmen could overcome her unnatural strength and speed. For a moment, the automaton believed it, too, frowning in frustration at the speed and skill of the men who faced her.

  A rapier shot forward toward her throat. She leapt to the side, grabbing the metal blade and snapping it. Without pause, she hurled the broken sword into the face of the man who dared think he could challenge her. It went clear through him, and he collapsed.

  The tide of the fight turned.

  Nadya’s mind grew cold as she realized the awful truth, watching the Nomori men fight to the death in order to stop her—to stall her even—for as they fought, the final few civilians were running out of the square and down the stairs or toward their opulent manors and locking the doors. She tried to shut her eyes once more, knowing it was futile, but not wanting to see the truth.

  Gedeon hadn’t done anything to her abilities. This was Nadezhda Gabori in peak form, not caring about hurting those she fought. This wasn’t the work of a malevolent nivasi. This was what she had been capable of all along, if she had embraced her power rather than shied away from it.

  It scared her to her core.

  The final body dropped to the ground, its spine eviscerated by the man’s own blade. His eyes were wide and empty, and Nadya realized how quiet the square had become. The rest of the Duke’s Guard had retreated, up to the marble stairs that led to the palace. They watched her with white faces, their muskets gripped in trembling hands.

  Nadya looked away.

  She could move.

  Comprehension made her fall to her knees. Blood soaked into the fabric of her trousers, still warm. The rapier fell from numb hands. Nadya tried to breathe, but the scent of blood was too much.

  Someone was laughing. After an eternity, she managed to raise her head to the roof of the manor. It was Gedeon, his smile plain and blazing in the noon light. He turned and left Nadya standing in the middle of her personal nightmare, a graveyard of people she had murdered.

  Trembling, she rose to her feet and began to run. Buildings and stairs and people blurred past as she ran. She ran until her feet were numb, until her legs screamed with the dozens of injuries they had received. She ran until she thought it would kill her, and then she ran some more.

  Her legs gave out underneath her in a culvert alley in the darkest part of the Nomori tier, not far from the gem mine. The trickle of water that ran down the stone was stained red as she collapsed into it.

  For what seemed like a thousand years and not nearly long enough, Nadya sat there, leaning up against a stone cold wall, and sobbed.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The darkness of night gave way to translucent sunlight, filtered through clouds, marking the dawn of the summer solstice. Under the overpowering smell of blood, Nadya caught the scent of putrid water and salt tears. She did not need to look over the walls to know the sea had not receded, and she did not need the hammering of her heart to know what that meant for Storm’s Quarry, for Kesali.

  She sniffed and wiped her eyes. All night, she had sobbed until there was not a tear left in her. From the early hours of dawn until now, she’d stared at the wall on the other side of the thin culvert, not seeing anything.

  Slowly, she unclenched her hands from her knees. They were covered in dried blood, with bits of bone and sinew stuck under her fingernails. The cloak had dried around her into a hard, caked form that barely resembled the original gray disguise she had bought.

  Nadya stared at her hands.

  The events of yesterday still did not fully register with her. It was simply too terrifying, too horrifying to have actually happened. But it had, and now dozens, perhaps even a hundred, souls now wandered the land, cut off from their lives by her hands.

  These hands.

  She swallowed. She tasted blood, metallic and acrid as it burned its way down her throat.

  Her hands that had held Kesali as they danced, that had tangled with Kesali’s fingers, that had run up and down smooth skin as they kissed and pretended tomorrow would not come.

  Bile surged into her mouth and she threw up. What she might have done to Kesali…how could she had believed herself harmless, safe?

  Nadya creaked to her feet, and with one violent movement, she tore off the cloa
k and let it fall down to the culvert. Her boots were encrusted with blood all the way up to her thighs, but she felt slightly better without the cloak’s suffocating closeness. It reminded her too much of her imprisonment by Gedeon within her own body.

  It had been her fault. Gedeon might have pulled the puppet strings, but Nadya had confronted a powerful nivasi with only half a plan, believing that she was infallible. That she was too strong to lose. The crunch of bones echoed in Nadya’s ears. She winced. It would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life, however long that was.

  A thunderous roar split the quiet air of morning, and the stone underneath her feet quaked. Nadya slammed into the wall of the building in front of her. Shingles and stones rained down on her head. One caught her eyebrow with its sharp edge, cutting into flesh.

  Rallying cries filled the stillness in the aftermath as the sound of hundreds, no thousands, of footsteps descended into the Nomori streets. Screams of men, women, and children echoed through the small alley as Nadya stood there, frozen.

  “The mines!” One voice wailed as a woman ran past the alley’s mouth. “They’ve taken the mines and destroyed the gate.” She shrieked. “Get your filthy hands off me! I would rather die—”

  Nadya acted without thinking. She sprinted out of the culvert, splashing through water, and onto the street.

  If yesterday was her personal nightmare, then this was the terror-filled dream of all of Storm’s Quarry.

  Smoke rose from every crevasse, mingling with the gray clouds above. The bright orange of flames could be seen throughout the Nomori tier and up into the fourth tier. Above them, a wild black mass of a raging mob stormed the gates of the palace, calling for the head of the Stormspeaker. Bodies lay strewn in puddles. Insects buzzed over them, they alone glorifying in this new feast.

  An Erevan man had the Nomori woman by the throat as he tried to rip her vest off. An old musket topped with a rusty bayonet was slung over his right shoulder. His mouth opened wide when Nadya, bloodstained as she was, emerged from the alley.

  She stared at him, and he let the woman go, backing away. The Nomori woman was about the same age as Mirela. She bowed in thanks and turned, probably going to find her family, and with a jolt, Nadya realized that her mother was home and at the mercy of rioters.

  Dodging looters as she sprinted to her house, Nadya knew the truth would finally come out. She needed her mother. She needed Mirela’s guidance and wisdom, but most of all, she needed her mother’s arms to wrap around and tell her that this nightmare would end and everything would be all right. The bloodstains would fade, Kesali would be saved, and their home would not succumb to civil war.

  Her mother wasn’t there.

  Nadya stood in the workshop, staring at the two objects on her mother’s stone workbench. A note, just starting to curl with damp, and her seal of the Protectress. With trembling fingers, she picked up the note.

  It read: Nadya, checked in quickly last night. I’m all right, the Phoenix didn’t hurt me. Stay inside, keep the door shut. Don’t trust anyone. Wait out the storm. Your mother left suddenly for Drina’s. Don’t know why. –Shadar

  She put it back down and grasped the metal band. Her seal, the most prized possession that she or any Nomori had, and the best piece of jewelry for her mother’s gift to read.

  She knows everything.

  Nadya’s grip tightened until the metal bent slightly. She dropped it as if it had turned white hot.

  She knows, and she left.

  A peculiar buzzing filled her chest.

  She is afraid of me.

  It was anger.

  Nadya calmly walked through to the living quarters. She stripped out of her bloodstained clothes, leaving them in a pile. Using the water basin, she scrubbed the dried blood off her skin until it gleamed bronze. She climbed the ladder to her loft, bringing back a clean change of clothes and her gray blanket. She dressed, then tied the blanket around her like a cloak, ripping a hole in it for her eyes.

  The anger only intensified as she worked silently with the sounds of chaos outside echoing through the room. She stopped by her mother’s workbench once more, gingerly picking up her seal and fastening it on her upper arm, underneath cloak and shirt.

  If she could not be the dutiful Nomori daughter for her mother or the steadfast partner that Kesali deserved, then she could be a weapon, the hardened blade that stood between them and the worst the solstice could throw.

  Nadya left her house, probably for the last time, and headed to the palace and to the one who had a hand in unleashing this madness on Storm’s Quarry.

  A mass of rioters, several hundred in number, had broken through the gates and in to the top tier of the city. The few men of the Duke’s Guard left in the top tier boarded up the gates of the palace. They stood before the portal with white faces and sweating hands, clutching muskets and rapiers.

  Nadya was careful to skirt around them after leaping to the top of the city on rooftops and breaking into the palace through a window. She kept to the shadows, quietly padded down the hall and to the sun-emblazoned doors of the throne room. She knew he would be there.

  With a heave, she tore open the locked metal doors to the throne room. They closed behind her, shutting out the sounds of the riots and leaving Nadya alone to face the magistrate. He stood calmly by his little writing desk, flipping through the pages of a record book. In three seconds, she crossed the velvet carpet, still strewn with parcels and bits of this and that from the crowd that had abandoned belongings in the rush to escape two days before. Levka did not look up.

  “You missed a lot of the excitement.” His voice was calm, as if he was speaking to a servant or child, chiding them. “Everyone was shouting, terrified. They dispatched most of the Duke’s Guard into the city to keep order and find the Iron Phoenix. After what happened in the public square yesterday, who could argue? The Stormspeaker and the Duke have been locked up here with a hundred guardsmen stationed throughout the palace. I’m sure you ran into some on your way here.”

  Nadya didn’t say anything.

  “It’s beginning,” he continued, closing the book. “The Stormspeaker was wrong. People went to the ration lines this morning, and there was nothing to give them. This city is about to get torn in two through civil war and panic. Her head will be demanded, and the Duke and his Guard will be powerless to stop it.” He looked up at Nadya. “How is the Iron Phoenix faring now, with the blood of the innocent on her hands?”

  She grabbed him by the throat, knocking the writing table on edge, and thrust him up against the nearest pillar. His feet dangled just above the carpet. Nadya kept her grip loose, so as not to kill him. Yet.

  “How do you think she’s doing?” she hissed. “I want information.”

  Levka’s voice rasped out, “You’re not going to kill me. Why should I tell you anything?”

  Her fingers tightened, and he coughed violently. Bruising started to spread out from her hand, making spiderweb patterns around his neck. “That animal Gedeon and his little puppet act have cured me of much of my squeamishness for hurting people.”

  She wasn’t lying, and Levka must have seen it in her eyes. Instead of being terrified, however, he started to laugh. It sounded like a croak, and Nadya dropped him, stepping back. He straightened and rubbed his neck.

  “I always knew you were a killer,” he rasped, the honey in his voice gone. “Gedeon only revealed it. I have to say, I am glad I pointed him in your direction.” Levka glared down at her. “Your hands have been drenched in blood for two years, and now you’ve finally realized that you can’t walk through life pretending otherwise. You are a murderer, Nadya Gabori.”

  “Two years?” she asked, watching him. Her fists clenched and unclenched at her sides.

  “The Erevan you murdered in a back alley two years ago. I was there. I saw everything.”

  “He attacked me—”

  “And you threw him into a building, breaking his back and killing him.” Levka drew a rattling breath
. “His name was Valiar. He was my brother.”

  Nadya took a step back from the hatred that sparked in Levka’s eyes.

  “I wondered where my brother went every night, so I followed him. I watched him confront you.” Every word came quickly and smoothly to him, as if he had spent two years rehearsing this speech. “Was it disgusting? Of course. But instead of running away or knocking him out, like you were more than capable of, you killed him.”

  “I didn’t mean to. I had no control,” she started to say.

  Levka interrupted her. “I don’t want to hear your excuses, nivasi.” At her flinch, he smiled. “I know what you are. I’ve always known. You see, after I saw a small girl of fifteen kill my older brother with one blow, I started searching for answers. I got access to the city’s histories, and it only took a few innocent questions for that doddering old cleric to tell me everything I needed to know. Everything to eliminate the threat that Nomori bring to my city.”

  Nadya breathed slowly. Why was he telling her all this? What purpose did it serve his scheme, two years in the making? “For someone bent on eradicating the nivasi, you keep strange friends.”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to figure out who was behind the murders. He’s a brute, but he takes suggestion well. His vision for the city was so limited. It did not take much persuasion to bring him around to aid my plans.”

  Flashes of the dark well, the blood spatters, and the screams of the innocent made Nadya look away.

  “He is a tool, nothing more. Nothing like the power of the nivasi to show this city how dangerous the Nomori really are. By this time tomorrow, every Nomori will either be dead or forced out into the sea.”

  “How could you?” Nadya demanded.

  “I am trying to save Storm’s Quarry. That demands certain sacrifices.” He glanced up at the ornate clock above the throne and smiled. “It should be nearly time.”