Yatrin.
Sinking to one knee, Anna removed her spare pack and fished through its contents. Much like her previous kit, a yuzel had been strapped to the inner lining of the bag. She carefully removed the weapon, filled and primed it, and secured the pack once more.
Then she returned to the bunkroom.
Inside, the shorter fighter was cackling at the tail end of a joke Anna had heard three times before. Everybody was in good spirits, laughing if not smirking, gathered around the stranger like old friends. He’d played his part well.
Anna raised the yuzel and fired.
There was no longer a right foot on the man, only a stringy stump and bits of pulp across the floor. He screamed and fell forward, writhing, as the others leaped up from the bunks and scrambled for their weapons. But upon noticing Anna’s glare, perhaps gleaning her pointed intention from the way she advanced upon her prey, Viczera Company settled and observed the carnage. The Hazani man was batting at the empty air surrounding splintered bones and twitching flesh, grunting through stubby teeth, straining and sweating with a crimson face. Blood continued to leak out around him, smeared by his thrashing hands, his incessant rolling.
“Calm yourself,” Anna said gently, “or you’re going to bleed to death.”
Muttered curses and whimpers emerged.
“Who are you?” Anna asked.
“Don’t kill me,” he huffed. The Hazani lilt in his voice was now pronounced. “They said this wasn’t the front line, you have to understand! They said it was safe here.”
“So you admit allegiance to Volna?”
He nodded with his eyes shut. “We’re not the chosen ranks,” he mumbled.
“Why are you here, then?”
“They told us to watch and report.” Shock was gnawing away at his voice, making him more somber, more relaxed. “And with Golyna coming down . . .”
“What do you mean?”
“The razing,” he managed. “They’re razing it all tonight. Just to end it.”
Anna forced a mask of composure over herself. “How?”
“I don’t know, I swear it.”
“Have you been sending them reinforcements with this line?”
“Yes,” he admitted, gulping for air between groans. “For the final assault, I mean.”
Anna glanced around the room. The others were looking upon the imposter as a living meal, apt to be skinned and carved as soon as he wore out his usefulness. “How would we get into Golyna?”
“Into it?” He carried on under his breath, fussing with the tattered fabric of his pant leg to tie off the wound. His attempt was poor but functional. “The line’s still running to the end. That’s where the staging area is.”
“In Golyna itself?”
“No.” He threw his head back with guttural, wild curses. “Just before the end, in the valley near the Crescent. That’s where they’re staging.”
“We need to get into the city.”
“I don’t know how,” he managed.
“How have your captains kept in contact?”
“The glints,” he whispered. “Most times they’re ferried to us, but sometimes we send them too.”
“Who sends them?” Anna asked.
He gripped his oozing leg and screamed. “I don’t know. Golyna. Breakers, officers, I swear it, I don’t know.”
“You might prove to be an asset after all.”
“I’m nothing,” he said. “Truly, I’m nothing.”
“But you can help us.” Anna motioned for several of the plains fighters to lift the imposter, keeping her distance with the yuzel aimed at all times. In times of war, the enemy’s expectations were a weapon in their own right. “If you cooperate, we’ll let you live. If you decide to stand against us, we’ll make death your escape.” She nodded at Viczera Company’s fighters once they’d lifted the man. “Get him up to the glint-tower. Send a flatspeak message to the breakers, over and over, until they respond: Captured scribes. Use at your discretion.”
* * * *
The kator drifted high above sunlit fields and gulches and cinder-wreathed rubble, smoothly creeping toward oblivion. Affairs across the cars had largely fallen silent, sparking little more than terse updates from Konrad’s officers as they neared the Volna encampments on the eastern side of a forded river. It was only a flash, a momentary streak over rows of tents and dark cloth, but it consumed the entirety of Anna’s view from her chamber.
“It can’t be more than a half hour,” Yatrin remarked, wrapping an arm around her waist as they stared. That was enough, really; he knew her too well to ply a soothsayer’s trade on her mind.
Yet there was a sense of dread, a lingering fear that—much like a nest of spiders—the swarms below might somehow be scurrying overhead and underfoot, consuming the officers that were guarding their captives and manning the glint station at the head of the procession.
“Soon,” Anna said, as though forcing the reality into her own mind. “We’ll be there soon.”
As the minutes bled away and the kator neared the darkness of mountain passes, Anna and Yatrin joined the others in the neighboring pod. A snub-nosed Borzaq officer was carrying out their final briefing, tapping various intersections and hard points on a regional map of Golyna. It seemed that they’d already been assembled for some time; the fighters had tense, certain faces that lent themselves to violent plans. Anna’s only responsibility was to stay hidden while the fighters went about their work, which included securing the terminal, nearby garrisons, and main roads as quickly as possible. From there it would be a matter of luck. A barrage of questions circled the chamber as the kator entered the mountain tunnels, most without answers: How many units would defect to assist with evacuations? How long did they really have? Was there any way to reach the breakers, let alone silence them?
A pair of Borzaq fighters stalked off to extract the last of the captives’ whispers, then there was utter silence. Slowly Anna, like everyone around her, moved to inspect her gear and load any stowed ammunition. Her broken hand was shaking uncontrollably, though it had nothing to do with the injury.
Do not die like an animal. It was not her voice, not Bora’s voice, not the voice of any singular thing or time. Some deep strand of herself had manifested it like an anchor in black seas.
She closed her eyes, settled herself down on folded legs, and listened. Soon she could sense the ripples of the tiny hairs on her forearms, the waves and flashes of warmth and nausea and acceptance deep in her belly, the subtle shifts in her spine as she straightened upright. Each inhale was a waterfall cascading down, and each exhale was a wave receding, dissolving back into the water from whence it came. Then Anna was not in her awareness, but rather in her memories, in her conception of a world that was not herself. Bliss she hadn’t felt in years began to crackle across her scalp, descending in waves of a mother’s love.
When she opened her eyes, she found the chamber’s fighters expectantly staring back at her, seated with their hands resting on padded thighs and knees.
Days in the Nest swelled up in her mind’s eye. Days when she’d clung to being a fighter, to being a commander. Days when she had pushed away what she was—a spark.
“Breathe in,” she said softly, half-expecting the fighters to give in to the panic and bitterness of the inevitable. But to her surprise their chests stirred and their eyes drifted shut, sinking into reverence that had no place in killing. Yatrin’s smile crept into her periphery. “Breathe out.”
* * * *
The pod’s doors slammed open on their hinges. Light stabbed into the chamber, washing over a sea of dented ceramic plates and ruji barrels, etching out the savage thrill in Konrad’s eyes, forcing Anna deeper into the pod’s recesses. There was a thunder of boots and hard, barking voices, most laced with Hazani, as the fighters stormed up and down the platform with the efficiency of a cog chain
. Within minutes it had trickled to staccato shouts and whispers.
Yatrin appeared in the doorway with his ruj leveled against his shoulder. At his feet were three Nahoran engineers with their hands pressed to the backs of their heads. Yatrin waved Anna out from hiding, glancing about to ensure none of their hostages were attempting to flee.
Anna couldn’t fathom how quickly they’d secured the terminal. Borzaq fighters were jogging up the stairwells and along the catwalks that led to the missive posts, disarming—forcibly or otherwise—any attendants they encountered. There was already an enormous pool of captives being herded into one of the nearby sheds, where one of Konrad’s lipless Hazani officers was preparing a belated address. All across the terminal, boots thudded upon sealed doors and locks clattered onto gangways.
“How long until we push into the city?” Anna asked, hurrying to a higher point on a walkway.
Yatrin followed, keeping his ruj trained on the three engineers. “As soon as Konrad’s certain.”
“Of?”
“Our grasp on the missive posts,” he explained. “It would be over before it began.”
Anna raised a hand to shield her eyes from the midday sun. From that vantage point, she was a bird perched above the city’s northwestern quadrant, leaving market lanes and medinas fanned out below her. Whistles and cheers bubbled up from the crowds below; it was peacetime, after all. Her gaze navigated the sprawl of ribbon poles and stucco, the gilded marble rotundas and venerated hilltops, the compounds and beacon towers, all stretching out to the sea. Their targets—the ministers’ towers and the central holdout, respectively—stood within striking distance, but were separated by a league at the least.
There would be no time to catch their breaths.
“Where would the breakers be sheltered?” Anna asked as Yatrin came to her side.
“I can hardly muster a guess,” Yatrin replied. “Are we even certain Gideon returned to the city?”
“A serpent seeks its grass,” Anna said. Not to mention its laurels.
“He may be in the ministers’ towers, or sequestered in the main garrison. In truth, he could be anywhere. This war has everything in flux.”
“Wherever he is,” Anna said, turning toward the group of Borzaq fighters approaching on the main catwalk, “we’ll burn him out.”
* * * *
Post by post, block by block, the silent storm howled through Golyna’s uppermost quadrant. For the first hour Anna oversaw the takeover from the terminal’s upper spires, tracking hazy clumps through a spyglass and scrawling madly on Viczera Company’s district map. Yatrin gazed down with naked eyes, scanning for mirror-glints issued from second-level windows and garrison doorways, transcribing each burst and calling them out to Konrad’s mirrorman in the engineers’ post. There were no shots, no screams, no apparent signs of struggle as the fighters trickled down alleys and under causeways, subduing each hard point in a matter of minutes. Considering the clamor in the streets, which had only grown with throngs of parades and drunken assemblies, the assault had become a near-surgical affair.
“They’ve secured another three units,” Yatrin said at last, letting a rare grin creep across his face. “Now we observe true momentum.”
Anna released her breath and eased the ache she hadn’t acknowledged. There had been no telling how deep the breakers’ deception went, let alone how many units would cooperate when faced with a truth so outrageous. “Any resistance?”
“Rarely.”
“I haven’t seen any urban units,” Anna said darkly. “Where are they?”
“Nobody’s raised an alarm.”
“No,” Anna said. “They should be patrolling.”
“They think it’s the dawn of peace. Chances are they’re guarding their bunks with a flask.”
But something sour squirmed in Anna’s stomach. It was a sensation she’d come to regard as intuition, though it rarely spared her pain.
Anna turned her spyglass on the fortified holdout, surveying the bleary shifting of its flat, towering sides and white stone. Their units, including the reinforcements they’d gained from the quadrant’s garrisons, had already breached its outer perimeter. She watched them jogging in tight columns down the city’s main boulevards, passing cafés and clay-roofed shops with oblivious, wine-drunk patrons. “They’ll get them out, Yatrin. We might do this.” She turned to find the easterner staring at the markets with his lips drawn tight, his eyes dark and fearful. “Yatrin?”
“This won’t be a bloodless fight.”
“What are you talking about?”
He pointed to the mirrorman sending glints incessantly from the far side of the holdout compound. “They’ve been moved. They aren’t in the holdout anymore.”
“That’s impossible,” she said weakly. But it wasn’t—nothing was anymore. “Where are they?”
“Control over the scribes is their priority. Where do you suspect?”
Anna’s focus snapped to the ministers’ towers. “That can’t be true.”
“The word of a mirrorman ought to be steeped in faith.”
“They might be elsewhere, you know. We need to search everywhere before we resort to a direct strike.”
“It’s the same report from across the city: They’re gone.”
“Those aren’t all scribes,” Anna said bitterly. “Those are our people.”
Yatrin studied Anna’s face for a moment, glancing at her lips and eyes as though forecasting her response to something he’d imagined. Then she understood why. “You remember why they wanted your brother.”
“We can’t risk it.”
A fizzling noise broke across the skies at Anna’s back. She turned to find a bright bauble arcing over the peaks, shedding fuel and cinder in a wild red wreath, before plunging into the waves several leagues beyond the harbor. Festival horns blared and crowds hollered with delight. But it was not a tinkerer’s trick, nor a warning.
It was a range test.
“Tell them to make the assault,” Anna said. “If anybody stands in their way, they should defer to their training. This is not the hour to be civil.”
* * * *
She counted fifteen bodies in the halls of the ministers’ towers. Two had been members of Viczera Company, both Hazani and both young, left wide-eyed and dismembered against walls with iron scarring. But the corridors were also crowded by those who’d been wise enough to accept their comrades’ pleas. Yatrin had certainly been right about one thing: Momentum made all the difference during a takeover. Now the upper levels of the ministers’ towers were haunted by ashen-faced Chayam units and pitted-vest Borzaq fighters, all scrambling to heed the barrage of new commands that had been issued by Konrad’s officers.
“Have they sealed it?” a borzaqem asked Konrad. As Anna drew closer she found a crowd gathering around the Council’s gilded doors, including a team of engineers working to uncoil bundles of wiring and sparksalt packets.
“No,” Konrad told the borzaqem. “But we don’t know what’s waiting on the other side.”
She clicked her tongue. “Enter with sufficient force and there won’t be anything waiting.”
Whatever Konrad’s unit had told the fighters, it was working. Most had no question of loyalty—certainly not the ones left alive. But momentum also brought zeal. “We don’t know anything about what’s on the other side,” Anna said to them, nodding at the engineers’ devices. “Keep that well in mind.”
Konrad’s face took on a grim pall. “She’s right. Show some restraint.” Then, as he stepped aside and pulled Anna closer, he said, “You didn’t find them yet?”
“Don’t worry,” Anna said, pressing hot palms to her legs to wick away the sweat. Ga’mir Ashoral, still cloaked in the checkered regalia of a military procession, moved to the door’s edge with a contingent of her own forces. “We haven’t heard anything from any of the units, Konrad
. Silence could mean safety.”
“According to what?”
“The mirrormen,” she explained. “Every unit’s combing the city for them, Konrad. Believe me, we’re trying.”
“Trying,” he scoffed. “Meanwhile, we were busy doing.”
“Stop it.”
“Did you know Volna fancies marching their captives into open land before they tear them apart? It’s easier to let a corpse walk itself than to haul bodies. Harder to find them too.”
“What are you getting at?”
But there was a clawing, painful void in Konrad’s eyes. Staring into them for too long would make escape impossible.
“I’m certain they’re alive,” Anna whispered.
He shook his head. “Once upon a time, panna, I was certain of many things.”
Three percussive blasts snapped up the central hem of the doors, pounding against the frame with a burst of smoke. Borzaq fighters rushed into the haze, screaming orders to one another as well as the faceless masses that awaited them. Soon there was only a thin veil of smoke and dust creeping over the corridor, its inner depths swarming with silhouettes, shifting as ensuing units made their way into the chamber.
Anna stepped into the smog and through the open doors, faintly aware of steps shuffling all around her. She followed the walkway with loyal fighters in tow, unarmed, yet unafraid for the first time in weeks. Once she’d arrived as a savior, a liberator.
Now a conqueror.
The Council was a dim, hulking presence within the amphitheater’s void, its humanoid appendages jerking in spastic sequence like the levers of some horrible machine. But as the smoke thinned and rows of fighters arranged themselves in a crescent formation, leveling their ruji on the monstrosity, the amphitheater’s audience came into sharp focus—hundreds of young girls sat upon the steps with bright violet robes, doe-eyed, bare of a single essence.
Ramyi sat on the innermost ring, marked by a white sash and golden circlet. When she locked eyes with Anna, her composure fell away.
Hush, Anna wanted to whisper in her ear. The end is near, in one guise or another.
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