He skipped sideways. His shaving razor flashed. Cut through…
… nothing.
Rune shimmered in the air, and at the last second her motion changed. It was a movement that nearly defied description, a bending of her body that caused her to cry out in pain. But Scholar's ability to calculate which direction someone would attack was suddenly nullified by Rune's ability to see the future and change her movements to alter events.
She buried her daggers in his chest.
Yanked them out.
Teeth – still running for Siren – abruptly stopped. "Scholar!" Agony rent his scream so that it sounded like he had been the one wounded.
At the same time, Sword turned back to Armor. He was through the flurry of papers. He drove a heavy fist at her. She danced back. Hit his wrist with her wakizashi, a movement that pushed his fist away – but sacrificed her other weapon. The blade snapped off.
She saw Armor's eyes flick to where Scholar was, gasping, struggling to stay on his feet. She looked, too.
And saw her once-friend fall.
His fedora tumbled from his head for the first time. It spun madly across the floor, as though doing a death-dance for its owner.
Sword looked back at Armor and saw the rage in his eyes. "You dare?" he said.
He dropped his head, threw his arms wide, and rushed her.
Sword reacted. Again, it was motion without thought. The thrumming power that always pounded through her when she held a weapon suddenly increased.
She swung her katana.
No, I have no katana. I have only a broken blade, only –
But for a moment she thought… thought there was a katana. Only this one was not of polished steel, but rippling flame. It tore through the air itself, waves of heat rising from its surface. An edge sharper than any made by man, tapering to a point brighter than a star.
She swung the katana, the flaming blade. Realized she was going for a killing stroke. Changed the swing at the last possible second.
Armor bellowed. Clutched his arm. His skin returned to its normal hue as he fell back against a shelf. "How…?" He looked confused. Holding the seared line of flesh that ran from his shoulder to his elbow. "How…?"
Then a new sound came. Sword looked over her shoulder. Saw Teeth burst into the saw blades that gave him his name. He swiped his arm at Rune, who shimmered, then danced away, but screamed, "No!" as she reappeared.
What did she see?
With the next swipe, Teeth slashed through the end of Brother Scieran's whip, releasing Siren.
We're dead. It's over.
But Siren didn't Sing her maddening Song. Instead, she lurched to her feet and stumbled to Scholar, where he lay motionless in the aisle. She threw back her head.
She did not Sing. She screamed.
The shriek rolled over Sword as a thing more weight than sound. It pounded at her, rocked her backward. She heard shouting. Realized it was her. Then there was a loud rushing in her head and everything went quiet. She could hear Siren screaming, but only barely. She touched her ears and her fingers came away bloody.
She saw Brother Scieran and Rune screaming, too. Teeth as well, all of them captured by Siren's Gift, amplified by her agony.
She looked at Armor, and saw that he was the most affected of all. He had blood pouring from ears and nose, and seemed like he was trying to crawl through the stacks of books and scrolls to get away from the sound. His movements were jittery, almost as though he didn't have full control of his muscles.
And still Siren screamed.
The books all around them began to smoke. Then one of the scrolls simply exploded, bursting into flame as it launched skyward.
Soon the air was full of flames, explosions. And it wasn't just the paper items, either. It was the wooden shelves, the metal brackets in the walls. The glo-globes that lit the place burst one after the other in rapid succession.
The walls – the stone walls – began to char.
And still Siren screamed.
Sword felt hands on her arm. Brother Scieran, yanking her to her feet, then pulling Rune as well.
Sword let him haul her up, then tore away.
Not all the papers were ablaze. Not yet.
The scroll – her scroll – wasn't.
She scrambled for it. Launched herself over Armor's writhing form.
The papers on either side of the scroll began to smoke. Then the scroll itself.
She grabbed it. Another hand reached for it at the same time. She wheeled, sure it was Armor, sure she was going to have to fight again –
(And how did I do that? What happened to my sword?)
– but it was only Brother Scieran. He plucked the scroll from her fingers and tucked it in his robe.
They ran.
Sword's hearing started to return when they hit the first landing, though a high-pitched whine sounded just below everything else.
They passed the second floor. And she could hear more screams, more explosions.
Gods, the whole place is burning. The entire Imperial Archive is coming down.
They ran. The front door was unguarded, and the only Archivists they saw were panicked, trying to save themselves or in some cases running with handfuls of documents they apparently thought worth their lives.
No one stopped them.
Sword, Rune, and Brother Scieran ran from the Imperial Archives. Ran, and ran, and ran.
Sword wondered if Armor had made it out alive. If Siren had. Teeth.
And tried to forget the sound Scholar made as he gasped. As he fell.
As he died.
20
Master Sergeant Kha was still reeling from the explosion. What had just happened? There was the man in the garb of the Imperial Guard –
(Not just any Imperial Guard, Kha, that was… Gods, how did it look like him?)
– and then screaming, followed by brightness and a flame that consumed The Dancing Darks so fast it was like a dream.
He was soon busy helping wounded out of the flame-licked corpse of the tavern: both undercover soldiers and the few actual customers who had been unfortunate enough to make it into the tavern this night.
The flames licked higher, and soon the few who, like Kha, were completely mobile, had moved away from the ruins of the tavern. It was too hot to go in anymore. Anyone who remained inside would never leave.
He started helping with the wounded, helping bandage them, giving what comfort he could.
One of them – a fat woman with the same House of Sixes brand but with all her hair burnt off and much of the skin of her face as well – moaned against the wall. Kha didn't know what he could do for her. She wasn't long for the world.
"How could this happen?" she said. "How could this happen?" she whispered it over and over, and finally grew silent and still.
Kha wondered the same thing. He knew – knew – that he couldn't have seen what he thought he saw. Not an Imperial Guard after all –
(And especially not him, Kha, nohow it could have been.)
– no, it was clear from the moment the impostor had mistaken his rank that it was someone posing as the Emperor's elite bodyguard.
But who had done it?
And a better question: how?
If you don't do good and do what's right
then Cursed Ones come in dark of night
To steal your soul and steal your life
and carve you up with a Cursed knife
Like most men in the army – most sane men, he believed the verse was just that: a verse. Just something parents used to get their children to come to bed, to eat their greens, to obey.
But what if… what if it were real? What if there were Cursed Ones.
Impossible.
He was looking to another burn victim, a soldier who didn't even look old enough to be in a tavern, let alone a casualty in this attempt to capture….
Who? Who is it we were to capture? Really?
A hand fell on his shoulder. It was a major, his uniform
peeking out below the tattered remains of a coat he had worn to hide his identity. "How goes it?" asked the major.
"About as well as a cloud in the Netherworlds," snarled Kha.
The major could have rebuked him. He didn't. He just nodded and looked tired. "What happened in there?" he asked. The words were quiet, more to himself than to Kha.
Kha responded anyway. "If you don't do good and do what's right…."
"Then Cursed Ones come in dark of night," the major continued. He looked pensive.
"What did you say?" a third voice came to them.
Kha looked up. A woman stood nearby. Tall, dressed in a black suit from head to toe, a white cloak over her outfit and a white hood over her head. Still, her face was visible, as was a lock of black hair with a shock of startling white that ran through it.
Gods' hearts, she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
She wore the disc of a Blessed One.
The major saluted. "Nothing, Lady. Just chatter."
The woman looked at them. "Round everyone up," she said. "I want everyone who was at the tavern to remain here for questioning. And Major," she said with a glare that turned her beautiful features, not ugly, that would have been impossible, but a stony kind of beautiful, like she was suddenly cut from marble, "if a single person leaves, I'll hold you personally responsible."
"What about the wounded?" Kha said. The major glared. Kha didn't care. He was too far along in his career to care about politics. He cared about getting jobs done; that was the beginning and end of his political aspiration. "Some of these people need to be gotten to a hospital."
"No," said the Blessed One. "Everyone stays." Then, seeming to sense another argument, she said, "But I'll have a Patch sent for. Better that they don't move, anyway." She smiled at Kha, sent a serious you-better-make-sure-what-I-want-happens look at the major, then disappeared.
Kha returned to looking after the wounded. Some had minor bumps and bruises and wanted to go home. He told them to stay put. A few tried to leave. Armed soldiers – presumably rounded up by the major – told them they couldn't a bit more… emphatically. At gunpoint.
Six people died under his hands.
"Where's the cursed Patch?" he said. He was swearing constantly under his breath, and for an insane moment he thought how upset his wife would have been to hear him speak like that. But then, she'd died two years ago, so maybe she was hearing him speak like that. "Sorry, Ang," he whispered. Then went to cursing again as the woman – more a girl, really – under his hands writhed in pain. "Where's the Gods' blood Patch?" he screamed. He didn't want to lose this girl.
He looked at the last person to die under his care. It was a man, Kha thought. He'd been burnt so badly he was barely recognizable as human. But still screaming. Somehow still screaming until the end.
And then not screaming anymore.
Kha looked at the man, laying nearby, still and silent and a testament to how badly everything had gone tonight…
… and the man…
… the burnt man, the destroyed man, the dead man…
… sat up.
Kha gaped.
Not possible. How can he be alive? I thought he was dead. He had to be dead. He was dead.
The burnt man sat, and looked at Kha. Another impossibility since the man's eyes were gone. But still… he was looking. And then the dead man's flame-crisped face – more skull than flesh – seemed to widen to a grin.
A small voice sounded in Kha's ear. "Do you like my poppet?"
He looked over and saw a little girl standing beside him. She looked to be about five or six Turns, dressed in a nightgown and with a red bow in her hair. A doll – one that looked like it had been through a torture no less exquisite than the flames of The Dancing Darks – hung from her right hand.
She wore the disc of a Blessed One.
"What?" Kha felt his eyes bulging. "What are you talking about?"
The girl giggled. She hugged her maimed doll. "So fun."
Another dead man – and Kha knew this one was dead, you couldn't live long when your life's blood had run across the cobbles of the street – sat up. Smiled.
A few people screamed. They must have seen what was happening, because they ran or limped away.
The first ones got all of ten paces before they stopped. No, not stopped…. It looked like they hit something. Like the air itself had grown hard as steel. And when it happened, Kha thought he saw a flash of purple, like a dim burst of lightning in a far-off cloud. The people bounced back, some of them bleeding from the impact with the invisible nothing.
Kha saw the beautiful woman – the Blessed One who had told the major to gather everyone here – standing nearby. Her hand was raised, and that same purple glow shimmered around her fingers.
And Kha knew. Knew even before the first dead man reached out and broke a woman's neck.
There would be no leaving this place. Not for the wounded, not for those unscathed by the fire. They had seen a power they were not meant to see.
What power? What power is so dangerous we must die to cover up?
And the answer came: The power of a Blessed One in the hands of another. The knowledge that there are those who not only would challenge the Empire, but have the power to bring her to her knees.
The Cursed Ones are real. And no one can know.
The thoughts spun madly through his mind as dead bodies rose, killed, and were joined in turn by those they had murdered. A few more people ran, but all slammed into that strange invisible wall surrounding them. Caging them.
"To steal your soul and steal your life…." The words came without his meaning them to. The young woman he had been treating screamed as she was torn from beneath him. Hauled away by the dead hands of the major who had been told to corral everyone in this killing field. The major had his own throat torn open, and his lifesblood had spilled out of the wound, but that didn't stop him from stabbing the girl over and over. Then the young woman, too, sat up.
They both looked at Kha with eyes that had turned strange and gray.
Kha turned to the little girl who stood still nearby.
"Would you like to be one of my poppets?" she said.
Kha lunged at her.
He never made it.
21
"What now?" Rune said. She was piloting the air-car, and was the first to break the pall of silence that had fallen over the small group. No one had spoken for hours, it seemed.
Sword didn't answer her. She barely heard her. All she heard was the gasp. That last quiet sound as Scholar breathed his last. The whisper of his fedora spinning across the floor. The thud as he fell.
She didn't blame Rune. Not much, at least.
But… Scholar. How could he be gone?
At least it wasn't Armor.
She didn't know what she would have done if it had been Armor who fell. Gone mad, probably.
And Devar wasn't there, either. So there were some small blessings.
But "small blessings" sounded like a mockery in her mind.
The sound of his body, falling.
His last breath.
"Why's everyone so down?" demanded Rune. "We faced a crowd of Blessed Ones, and we not only got away with what we came for in the first place, we killed one of 'em. I call that a win."
"Rune." Brother Scieran's voice was soft, but firm. Quiet, said the voice. No more.
Rune fell silent. Sulking.
Brother Scieran sat beside Sword. She didn't look at him.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Why? We won, didn't we?" The words were bitter.
No one wins at a time like this." Brother Scieran sighed. Sword was sitting on a bench below one of the long side windows, and he sank down beside her. "This isn't about winning or losing, and anyone who says it is doesn't understand what we're doing."
Sword cast a meaningful look at Rune. Brother Scieran shook his head. "Don't judge, Sword. You don't know what Rune has been through. She lost her family, just like you. She h
as no memory of them, she grew up on the streets. She has a life of pain, and the only people who were ever good to her are the Cursed Ones. Besides," he said, looking out the window, gazing at the stars overhead, "I don't think she's happy we killed someone."
"She sure seems that way."
"No. She's happy she wasn't the one killed. That's very different." Brother Scieran pulled something out of his robe. The scroll Armor had handed over in the Archives. "This is not a game, and it isn't a situation we can win – when all the choices involve people killing one another, then you're well past the realm of winning."
"Then why bother?" asked Sword.
"Because the alternative is to lose. And though winning may be impossible, losing is, in some circumstances, utterly unthinkable."
He unrolled the scroll. There was a glo-globe sitting in a sconce just a few feet away, and he angled the scroll so it would capture the light better. "These eyes are getting old," he said.
That made Sword think of Scholar's glasses.
His last breath….
She sat quietly. Thankfully, Rune didn't say anything further. Brother Scieran passed the time looking at the scroll.
Finally, he sighed. He still held the scroll, but his grip loosened, as though he would just as well have dropped it to the floor.
"What?" Sword asked nearly against her will. Talking about whatever was in the scroll seemed almost a betrayal. How could she worry about words on a sheet of linen when her friend was dead?
"It's…." Brother Scieran shook his head. "It's nothing."
"What do you mean, 'nothing'?" asked Rune. "We went in there and nearly got killed for 'nothing'?"
"Rune, be quiet!" The last words were delivered in a tone that somehow managed to be a mixture of whisper and roar. Rune went back to sulking.
But Sword nodded. "She's right. What did we do this for?"
Brother Scieran hesitated before responding. "Nothing."
"Please," Sword said, "don't hide it. There's been enough lying, enough –"
"I'm not hiding anything, Sword. I mean, literally nothing."
He extended the scroll. For a long time the figures on it, the words and numbers, were all just a jumbled scrawl that meant little. Then Brother Scieran pointed to an area on the page that was different than the others.
The Sword Chronicles: Child of the Empire Page 27