The Last City

by Nina D'Aleo

  Copernicus took in the words. ‘The Skreaf framed Englan Chrisholm?’

  ‘He was hunting their leader, the High Skreaf, Bellum. He didn’t realise she was also hunting him,’ Amateus said.

  ‘He’s lying,’ Diega hissed.

  ‘He’s telling the truth.’ Copernicus saw it in the Wraith’s eyes and his body-heat.

  ‘If Chrisholm wasn’t crazy then who butchered all those kids?’ Shawe asked and Diega bit her lip.

  ‘Bellum,’ Amateus spat the word out of his mouth like something rotten. ‘She is the worst evil and she is truly powerful.’

  Copernicus’ mind returned to the cell he’d found beneath the Galleria where Chrisholm was imprisoned until his execution. He saw the pictures on the ceiling and the words My God, My God why have you forsaken me? scrawled across them. His memories flicked back even further to the execution itself, to the raised stage where the soldiers had dragged Chrisholm, shouting his innocence. He and Shawe and some of the other guys, teenagers at the time, had hidden under this stage afterwards to avoid the guardians. He remembered looking up and seeing a mark etched in the wood beneath where Chrisholm had died – one triangle within another within a square.

  Copernicus jolted from his memories, a coldness sinking through his body. ‘What are the Skreaf planning?’ he asked Amateus.

  ‘They are trying to raise their master, the Morsmalus. He is the pain-maker, the creator of dark-words, imprisoned long ago in the Envirious Realm by warriors made anonymous through time. He was sealed in by their sacrifice of their own lives.’

  ‘How will they raise him?’ Diega asked.

  ‘There is a prophecy among our people: By the blood that sealed it, shall the hell realm be reopened,’ Amateus said. ‘We believe this to mean they must spill the blood from the line of the original warriors over the seal and couple it with a curse of terrible power. The Skreaf have acquired a machine to help them, but it is missing an essential piece.’

  ‘The key,’ Copernicus said, taking the rings from his pocket and showing the he-Wraith.

  Amateus nodded.

  ‘How do we stop them?’ the commander asked.

  ‘Silho. Only Silho can answer that and only she will be able to do it,’ Amateus told them, ‘but she is untrained and only half-Omarian. She has dulled her senses with chemicals for so long that the extent of her ability is unclear. She must take full control of her own mind if she is to have any hope at all. Raine believes in her strength, but I fear for her life against Bellum. Just the High Witch alone is more powerful than you can imagine and she’s raised a legion of demons to fight with her. Silho will need help. She needs your guidance to focus her skills.’ The he-Wraith looked specifically at Copernicus and the commander understood he was talking about something beyond military training. Illusionist magics centred on mental focus and the alignment of body with mind. Uneasiness twisted inside him and the scars on his hands where he’d cut out his family insignia started to itch. Shawe’s words echoed in his thoughts . . . the great Commander Copernicus Kane is afraid . . . He felt a pang of disgusted self-loathing. He was afraid. Doctor Silvan Kane, his Illusionist father, had been dead for more than twenty year-cycles and he was still terrified of the man.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, his mind continuing to calculate. ‘It’s just on fifteen year-cycles since Chrisholm’s execution, so why has it taken the Skreaf so long to strike after supposedly destroying the last person who might stand against them?’

  ‘The High Skreaf has used this time to raise her army and to formulate her plan to free the Morsmalus,’ Amateus explained. ‘It is not a simple matter, and to the ever-living fifteen year-cycles feels no more than a day.’

  ‘But why the act?’ Copernicus continued to interrogate him. ‘Why would Bellum go to the trouble of framing Chrisholm when she could have just killed him outright?’

  ‘Cruelty. Revenge. We also believe she wanted to use his love for his child to bend him to their will,’ the he-Wraith said.

  ‘Why? What did they want from him?’

  ‘We do not know exactly, but we are searching for answers,’ Amateus said.

  ‘Enough chit-chat!’ Shawe broke in. ‘What about my brother? The ring belongs to him.’

  The he-Wraith blinked his red eyes. ‘If he is alive, they would have taken him with the other slaves to the seal of the Envirious Realm. We do not know where this is.’

  ‘How can I find it then? Where do I start?’ Shawe asked.

  ‘Find the man you know as Jude. He is connected. If the Morsmalus is raised, we will all suffer, we will all die. Our world will be no more.’

  The he-Wraith sucked in a sharp breath and his head and torso collapsed backwards, folding into itself and wrapping back around as Raine. She stepped into the wall and vanished. Diega cursed and Shawe thudded a fist into one hand. Copernicus drank from the cask of water, thinking on the Wraith’s words. Jude is connected – how?

  The sensation of a familiar body-heat pattern moving through the shanty town intercepted his thoughts. It left almost no vibration in its wake and it wasn’t alone.

  Copernicus dropped the water and grabbed Silho out of Shawe’s grasp.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Diega asked.

  ‘Caesar K-Ruz and the Pride are here. They must have heard about Shawe’s men. They’re hunting you,’ he said to Shawe.

  Shawe swore and looked over his shoulder. Copernicus had never known the gangster to run from any fight, but one man against an entire gang wasn’t a fight – it was an execution.

  Carrying Silho in his arms, the commander led the others at a run out of the alley towards the outskirts of town. He sensed the heat signature of K-Ruz and his Pride upping their speed, fanning out into an arrowhead kill formation.

  As soon as they reached the last line of shacks, Copernicus ordered Diega, ‘Launch now!’

  She flicked the coin into the air and morphed it back to the speed-drift platform. She leapt on and used her electrosmith skills to power the dead engine. The others clambered up behind her and they swooped away from Tracy. Copernicus lowered Silho to the platform. At that moment he felt K-Ruz right behind them, then right above them as the gangster sprang from the roof of the last house. He tackled both Copernicus and Shawe off the moving platform. The three of them crashed into the sand and scrambled to their feet. Caesar was swift, but Copernicus had the edge, pulling out his gun before the gangster could strike. Copernicus pressed the weapon into Caesar’s forehead as all the members of the Pride and their feline companions appeared from behind the line of buildings around them. Shawe drew his electrifier and scanned it over the gangsters. Diega swooped back around and zoomed in behind them. As she took aim with her weapon, the Wraith materialised up from the sand onto the platform, where she crouched protectively beside Silho. None of the gangsters moved a muscle. They knew what Copernicus could do.

  ‘This doesn’t involve you, Kane,’ Caesar said. His voice held the mellifluous Crook’d Town accent and was deceptively soft.

  ‘So we should get back on the platform and go on our merry way?’ Copernicus said. Everyone there knew full well the whole team would be gunned down the second he took his aim off Caesar – just for the insult.

  The Pride boss narrowed his golden eyes in a calculating leonine smile. ‘Give yourself up,’ he told Shawe. ‘You know the law.’

  ‘Kiss my arse,’ Shawe responded, arming his electrifier.

  ‘Hold,’ Copernicus cautioned him. ‘You drop him and we’re dead.’

  Shawe glared hatred at K-Ruz, but managed to keep his control.

  ‘Back up to the speed-drift,’ Copernicus instructed Shawe. The commander maintained his aim at Caesar’s head while the two of them inched back to the platform. Diega lowered it for them to step on, then lifted it again once they had reached it.

  The commander raised his voice so all the gangsters could hear. ‘This is a long-range sniper shot. Make a move while we’re still in sight and your boss is dead.’

  ‘I�
�ll remember this,’ Caesar said, his voice low.

  ‘I hope so,’ Copernicus replied. ‘Might save your life in the future.’

  The gangster boss gave a snarling smile, a predatory glint in his eyes.

  Diega revved the engine and sped them away.

  When they had lost sight of the town and the Pride, Shawe cursed and slammed his fist against the metal of the platform so hard that it nearly tipped them.

  ‘As soon as I get back to the city I’m rallying up whoever is left of the boys and we’ll take out that yellow-eyed gadfly!’

  ‘Your call,’ Copernicus replied.

  After a moment, Shawe’s expression sobered. ‘But what about Stacy?’

  ‘What about him?’

  Shawe opened his mouth to speak then snapped it shut. Realisation sparked in his eyes. He was the only one left alive who cared enough to fight the witches for his brother and if he went back to Greenway and faced K-Ruz, he was dead – only the sheer numbers of the Galleys had kept the Pride back all this time. So it was a choice between his brother’s life and his Gangland title and reputation, his land, his people, his whole life up until this point.

  Shawe’s shoulders sank as he decided. King Christy Shawe had fallen. He took the silver flask from his pocket and gulped down the Araki. It was a day of ugly truths.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Diega called back to them.

  Copernicus took Silho’s shoulder and shook her lightly. Her eyelids flickered and opened.

  ‘Brabel, are you with us?’ he asked her.

  She blinked red-raw eyes and leaned weakly against his arm. The skin around the cuffs locking her wrists together in front of her was bruised purple and black. Copernicus loosened the restraints, but left them in place.

  ‘Brabel,’ he prompted her, ‘we have to get back to the city.’

  When she didn’t respond, he leaned in closer to her and said, ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d give up so easily.’

  Her body tensed. After a moment she whispered, ‘Left.’

  ‘Veer left,’ Copernicus instructed Diega.

  ‘Left takes us back out to the desert,’ the Fen replied.

  ‘Diega, left!’ he commanded.

  The Fen soldier gave him a sour look, but followed the direction, steering the speed-drift platform around.

  In the far distance, the dark line of the city appeared on the horizon. Soon they would be back within Scorpia’s shadow, where an enemy of unknown power lay in wait. Copernicus closed his eyes. He didn’t believe in religion, in faith or Paradise, but if he had, he would have prayed.

  25

  Eli staggered across the sand, squinting watering eyes, exhaling fire through stuck lips, his mouth too dry to swallow. Burning wind, like waves of flames, flicked up whips of sand that flayed his baking skin. Blisters had risen on his exposed hands, and the blood from where the rope was cutting into his flesh had dried to a hard crust. Ev’r had flown the Summer Holiday until it ran out of fuel, then she’d taken the noose from his neck and fastened it around his body and wings. Now she dragged him by one end of the rope through the terrible infinity of the Matadori Desert. Ahead, Ev’r paused for a moment. She shielded her eyes and looked out through the heat-rippled air to the yellow-orange desert stretching endlessly around them. Cracks in the parched earth gasped for water, the land eternally punished by two low blue suns, which rose on separate sides of the sky in the morning and slowly moved closer together until, at midday, they merged for one unbearable hour. It was close to this hour now and Eli, soaking in his own sweat and exhausted after trudging the whole long night and half the day without rest, wasn’t sure how much more he could take. The ragged black silhouettes of corpse birds circling in the sky above them was not an encouraging sign.

  ‘Keets!’ he called to her, his voice a mere croak. ‘We need to find shelter. Please. We need water.’

  Ev’r yanked on the rope and forced him forward. Once during the night, he had fallen and she’d just dragged him until he’d managed to scramble up. She showed no mercy, no remorse and no sign of stopping anytime soon. She marched ahead, unaffected by the temperature or by his pleas, her movements almost beast-like. She lumbered. Her shoulders jerked, and she occasionally growled.

  Eli realised now there was something seriously wrong with Keets. What it was he wasn’t sure, but it looked almost as though she was fighting some kind of possession. He wondered, with a sense of growing horror, if she’d let herself be filled with a Skreaf demon. Eli couldn’t stop cursing himself for being so stupid. The commander had said not to trust her for a second. Now he understood why.

  The rope jerked his hands painfully and he stumbled forward, kicking up sand under his boots. His green diamond pendant bounced on his chest. From somewhere behind him, he thought he heard a sound like the swish of fabric. He looked back. An endless sea of yellow nothingness shimmered through waves of heat. As he faced the front, the sound came again. He thought it might just be an imagining, a mirage of sound, but Keets disproved that idea by glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the noise. Her eyes, now more black than dark green, swept across the sand, looking for the Death that stalked them.

  Eli considered the ghostly beast. When it had first appeared to him in Sweepington he had been sure it was a Death, but now, after seeing it in his shelter, he wasn’t so certain. It definitely looked like one, but it didn’t really act like one. It had seemed almost – afraid. Keets obviously hadn’t noticed this. He knew her fear of the Death was the only reason she still kept him with her.

  Eli felt the rope go slack and saw Keets had stopped again. This time she was crouching on the ground. She lifted a handful of sand and let the grains slip back through her fingers.

  ‘Here,’ he heard her murmur.

  ‘Keets,’ Eli approached her.

  Her head whipped around and she spoke in a snarl that wasn’t her own voice. ‘Keep back.’

  He recoiled. She threw the end of the rope at him and it smacked him in the face, then dropped to the sand.

  Ev’r stood, hugged her arms around herself and jumped. Her body dissipated to a grey vapour that was sucked down into the ground. Eli raced to the place where she had vanished, fighting to wrench his hands free from the bindings. There was no sign of her.

  Eli took in his surroundings. He could just make out the Boundary Wall in the far blurry distance. His thoughts turned to the commander and the others lost in the same hostile vastness and he imagined seeing them on the horizon.

  A lunatic howl echoed through the desert silence.

  An answer came from the other side of where Eli stood. Close – too close. Desert freaks were closing in. Eli stumbled in a circle, not knowing what to do. He would never be able to outrun them. He could definitely outfly them, but his wings were bound tightly to his back. He struggled violently with the bindings. ‘Ev’r!’ he yelled. ‘Please come back! Please!’

  Light shimmered off an object just ahead of him and Eli ran towards it. It was a piece of jagged glass lying in the sand. He tried to use the sharp edge of it to saw away the ropes, but it wasn’t working. Then an awful rotting odour permeated the air and, with trepidation, Eli looked up. He was completely surrounded by a band of desert mutants, atrocities caused by interbreeding and leakages of dark magics into the atmosphere. They stared with sunken eyes, drool dribbling from their exposed jaws and teeth. One of them cackled. Eli’s wings buzzed frantically but couldn’t lift him and he couldn’t get a grasp of the electrifier in his weapon belt. All he could do was stumble around, staring at them.

  ‘Keets!’ he cried and the mutants mocked his terror, all calling out their distorted versions of the name and pretending to sob. Being mocked by the monsters who were about to eat him alive was almost more than he could take.

  ‘Back off! I’m not a soldier – I mean – I am a soldier!’ he yelled. They screeched and cackled harder.

  The ground beside Eli quaked and the sand caved in then exploded out as Ev’r burst from the ground
. She was clenching something in one fist and staggering, shuddering, shaking her head like an animal with water in its ears or like someone exhausted fighting to stay awake.

  ‘Keets?’ Eli whispered.

  Her eyes cleared slightly. She drew one of Eli’s blades from her belt and fixed the mutants with her bloodshot stare. No one was laughing now.

  Eli sensed a disturbance in the atmosphere around him. He gasped as the air above their heads ripped open like a sheet. Mist filtered out and solidified into the form of three Skreaf witches. Eli dived to one side, crashing into the sand, as both the Skreaf and Ev’r released dark-curses at each other. A stray curse struck a mutant and set him alight. He ran screaming towards the Skreaf. They cursed again and exploded him. The mutants bellowed and howled as they all charged in. Boots stomped Eli’s back, pressing him into the sand and knocking the breath out of his lungs. He slithered, trying to escape, but clawed hands grabbed at him and flung him over onto his back. A mutant grabbed his neck and tried to bite his face. He fought, kicking and trying to hold them back with his bound hands. Another mutant joined in and held Eli’s legs. He struggled desperately, expecting at any moment to feel the searing pain of a ragged-tooth bite.

  The mutants’ howling ended abruptly. Something behind Eli picked them up and threw them. They crashed into the ground several metres from where Eli lay. They didn’t move again. Eli managed to sit. More mutants rushed in at him, but skidded to a stop and backed away. He couldn’t understand why, until he looked up and saw the Death standing over him, the folds of its shadow cloak coiling around its body and arms. No one dared to come near it. Eli stared at the terrible creature. It appeared to be doing some kind of little dance, two steps towards him, two steps back, three steps forward, four steps back. It wavered in indecision.