by Lou Anders
Namid tightened her grip on the oars, prepared to row again—and found herself staring down the barrel of a ruby-studded revolver. British design, new and gleaming.
Shen Cheng closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. Namid had already begun to move, reaching out to knock aside the weapon, but the deafening blast skimmed her left arm and sent the Empress recoiling backward over the edge of the boat. She bobbed to the surface immediately, gasping for air, arms thrashing the water. Not much of a swimmer, either.
Namid did not jump in after the drowning Empress. She took a deep breath, rolling through the pain and rush of blood to her head. Ten years on the mountain. Quiet, peaceful. She would have died an old woman, with no one the wiser. A good meal for the scavengers.
She picked up the British revolver, testing its weight in her hand. “Where are the Juggarnauts?”
Namid was not entirely certain the woman would hear—or care—but that bruised, battered face turned toward her, and a skinny hand managed to latch on to the edge of the boat. Below them, the waters swelled again, as though from the passage of a large body. Namid thought of Shao, and Maude, and the rest of her old crew, and balanced the revolver across her forearm, aiming it at the woman’s head.
“Tell me where they are,” she said again.
Shen Cheng shook her head, though the corner of her gaze lingered on the glittering gold star pinned to Namid’s chest. Despair flickered through her face.
“I know the stories,” she whispered. “You are savage. You will kill me if I tell you.”
“I’ve killed for less,” Namid agreed, and slammed the revolver butt on the woman’s fingers. She howled, flailing. Namid placed the weapon on the floor of the boat and picked up the oars. She started rowing. The Empress, sobbing, tried to follow; but it was like watching a log thrash.
“They tortured me!” she screamed at Namid, her voice choking on seawater. “I had no choice!”
Namid did not stop.
It was an accident, or so her father had always said. A Scottish engineer, an adventurer, who had studied with the skull masters in China before traveling across the Pacific to the imperial colonies—a vast network of villages and cities that had been thriving for almost a century before England sent its first ships of men to hack a new civilization on the frontier of the far eastern continental tip.
By the time her father had arrived in New China, the Pacifica court and its alliance with the western native tribes was well known, but only by accident; the Chinese Empire had done its best to keep its colonies secret. Too many precious resources at stake: not just gold, but rich and verdant farmland, the likes of which did not exist in Asia.
Her father, who had become a favorite of the old Emperor, was allowed frequent access to the crystal skull that powered the Pacifica court, and formed the root strain of its crystalline harvests. Only fifteen skulls had been found throughout the world—four of them were in Chinese possession—though rumor had it that many were yet to be discovered in the jungles of the far south. Expeditions were regularly sent—usually ending in bloody conflicts—but only one had thus far been found, and that by the new Americans themselves, raising their current possession to two—the other having been given to the new colonies when they were still under British rule.
No one knew quite for certain how the skulls worked, only that some Mohammedan king of the Holy Lands had discovered three in the sands of an oasis: blocks of perfect crystal carved in the shape of human skulls, the likes of which no artisan had ever yet been able to duplicate.
Rather than declare the skulls a simple curiosity, the king had devoted himself to hours spent staring into those translucent eyes—one after the other, in patient succession. This, according to legend, went on for several years until, quite abruptly, the king suffered a massive stroke that left him blind and speech-impaired, but functional enough to declare that he had discovered the secrets to the skulls.
An overly ambitious statement. Two hundred years later, engineers were still learning what powers the skulls possessed—though it was widely known that an electrical current flowing through a skull into a special mineral bed was enough to instigate the growth of crystals that could be used to power the armadas, towns, even entire cities. Beyond that particular commonality, however, each skull was different. Some provided visions. Some made others go insane.
And some, as her father had discovered, changed the very essence of a human being.
Namid found the shore far sooner than expected. She dragged the boat onto the beach, but did not bother hiding it. Just stood in rock and sand, staring at the ocean as she stripped off her wet clothes and dressed in dry trousers and a shirt. The rest of her belongings were unwrapped quickly: revolver, two knives, her special bullets, and last, the vials of chemicals her father had prepared during the colonial war, and left to her upon his murder.
She loaded her gun very carefully. Then, with equal care, pinned the gold badge to her shirt, tracing her fingers along the points of the star. Warmth filled her, and then cold, sensations accompanied by memories.
We need you, voices whispered. No one else but you.
We will die if you cannot turn them back. All of us, our freedom, lost. Shut your heart to the blood, shut your ears to the screams. You were born to no other purpose. You are exceptional only in death.
Namid began walking to the rhythm of those old words, spoken in many different ways by many different people, though the message had always been the same. Even her mother’s people, the Cheyenne, had told her future in blood, but that was to be admired, and not feared. She had been touched by some great power, which the First People claimed to be from the stars, and so the stars were in her name, and as an adult, she had worn a star upon her breast in the service and protection of others; first in peace, and then in war.
The terrain was not far different from the estuaries and tangled forests that could be found on the coastlines of New China and the Colonial Americas. She smelled the sea and the spice of firs growing tangled on rocky outcrops. Listened to the booms and thunder of some not-so-distant battle. If the Chinese military realized the Emperor was dead, then they might have already surrendered. She hoped not. She hoped that the fire staining the horizon was the British burning, and had a feeling she would be finding out for herself, soon enough. Shen Cheng had not been a strong rower. She had been sent from someplace near—and someone would be waiting for her to return. She could take a fine guess who.
But not long after Namid abandoned the boat, she heard sounds that did not belong: shouts, the clunk of steel and wood. Familiar noises, which sent her running. She was careful, and kept the revolver in her hand. Felt herself slipping back into the old days, except now she was alone, and the burden was hers. Hers, knowing that it was the others in her crew who had always been the real heroes. So very human, with no power to protect themselves, driven only by courage and grit, and honor.
She missed them.
Shouts grew louder, frantic, cut with hoarse cries. Namid burst onto a rocky beach and found herself facing boys, boys crawling from the sea, boys wearing air-filled ties made of sheep gut. She recognized all those faces, but there were so few, less than a quarter of their former numbers dragging free of the waves.
Namid ran to them. Several cried her name, pointing. The rest let out a ragged cheer, and their smiles—those smiles of relief when they saw her—cut and burned, and twisted her heart. As if now, those smiles said, everything will be all right.
She grabbed the arm of the nearest boy, who was limping heavily across the rocks. Blood ran down his leg. He was pale, blond, just a scrap of a lad, but he was dragging a sealskin pouch behind him in a white-knuckled grip.
“Captain Shao,” she said, running her hand over his face to push his sea-soaked hair out of his eyes.
The boy coughed raggedly into his palm. “Left ’fore him. He gave me ’is papers, he did, f’safekeepin’.”
“Bastards cracked the crystal core,” added another boy, drawing nea
r. “Had to jump before we sank too deep. Cap’n promised he’d follow.”
Namid gritted her teeth, briefly searching the faces around her. No sign of her friend. He was out of her hands. She holstered her weapon and slung her arm around the waist of another child who was close to falling on his knees. Coughs wracked his chest.
“Come on,” she said, and caught the eye of a sturdy red-haired lad who seemed to be doing better than the others. “Go, pass the word. Everyone needs to hurry. Something worse than redcoats might be close.”
His reaction was an infinitesimal flinch, but he gave her a sharp nod and ran down the beach, grabbing the boys who were already out of the water and steering them back to the waves to help the ones still struggling. Namid dragged the child in her arms as far as the brush, and then left him to go back for others. She kept count, as best she could, still searching for their captain.
She saw the red-haired boy again. “Your name.”
“Samuel,” he said breathlessly, still looking over his shoulder at the darkened sea. No one else was there. No one she could see.
“Samuel,” she said, grabbing his chin and forcing him to look at her. “Weapons?”
“No’m,” he replied, blinking hard. “Just fists.”
Namid let go of his face and patted his shoulder. “Good. Find other sensible lads who can lead, and then break yourselves up into small groups. Scatter, but head for the hills. You’ll be able to hide better there.”
“But,” Samuel began, stopping himself almost as quickly, before continuing, “You’re not coming with us?”
Namid hesitated. “I’ll be making sure no one follows.”
“We can fight.”
“You can live.” She unsheathed one of her knives and pressed it into his hand. “The others need you. So do I.”
Samuel swallowed hard, but again gave her that sharp nod, as though it was his way of steeling himself. Namid watched him as he ran toward the others, and then turned away from the ocean, away and away, where her friend was not emerging from the waters. She faced the hills and the scrub, and listened to the distant sounds of airships and gunpowder bombs, imagining the scent of smoke, finally, in the air. Her skin prickled, a focused chill that rode from her scalp down the back of her neck.
Namid pulled out her revolver. Behind her, one of the boys shouted. She turned, glimpsing a hulking figure looming from the shadows at the edge of the beach, moving in perfect silence. He was monstrous, a giant, more than eight feet tall and built like the side of a rock-hewn mountain. His fists were clad in iron, as was his chest, and he held a sword in his hands that could slice any of those boys in half with hardly a touch. Scalps hung from his belt, long black braids looped and tangled, still dripping with blood.
“Run!” she screamed, and dove through them as they scattered, throwing herself toward the giant. He grinned when he saw her and took swipes at the escaping boys, his sword whistling through the air. Namid skidded to a stop and fired her revolver. The bullet hit his bicep, but he laughed at the wound and shook his head.
“Queen of the fookin’ riders,” he bellowed. “Bullets dinnae hurt me, lass.”
Namid holstered her gun and withdrew her knife. Took another running leap, dodging under his sword, feeling a shift in her body as she moved—blood surging, burning, boiling in her veins. Red shadows gathered in her vision, and her heart pounded so hard she could taste her pulse at the back of her throat. Taste that, and more.
She slashed at his thighs, cutting deep, hacking and stabbing every part of him that she could. Taking her time, playing up his amusement. His muscles were grotesquely shaped, distended beneath skin pocked with old burns and scars—a man who had been unnaturally grown over years of deliberate exposure to crystal light. Namid remembered others like him. Monsters, made: rapists and murderers, freed from prisons to be fed to the skull engineers and their experiments. Few usually survived. This one smelled like an outhouse, and his laugh was careless; arrogant and cruel.
Until, quite suddenly, he made a choking sound.
Namid darted away as his knees buckled. He fell face-first onto the sand, but not before she saw his hands clutching his throat, his tongue so swollen it protruded from his mouth. His eyes bulged. Namid could not imagine what he had looked like before the engineers had changed him, nor did she care. She watched the man choke to death. Poisoned by her bullet.
Footsteps behind her. Namid turned, glimpsing a pale face.
And got shot in the chest.
The blast was deafening, and so was the pain. Namid rocked backward onto the sand. She tried to reach for her revolver, but a knife stabbed through her palm. Namid glanced down and saw a hole in her chest the size of her fist. Blood bubbled from her mouth. She vomited blood.
Then stopped moving at all.
Namid drifted. No dreams. Just darkness pricked with moments of desperate sorrow and a terrible aching homesickness for a life lost so long ago it might as well have been something she never had.
Until, finally, she remembered her body—her body, which she did still have—and opened her eyes.
Overhead, stars. Namid twitched her fingers, and then her feet. No restraints. The hole in her chest had healed, though scar tissue remained; one more to add to all the others that covered her body. She knew without looking that her revolver was gone—her hip felt too light. The bullets and the chemical vial had been removed from her pockets, as well. One knife remained sheathed against her thigh.
Her mouth tasted like raw meat. She smelled wood smoke, and listened to a fire crackling. A woman hummed, a low familiar tune that sent Namid back to a time when she remembered how to smile.
She swallowed hard. “Hello, Maude.”
The woman stopped humming. “I knew you would come.”
Namid sat up slowly, drinking in the person who had once been her greatest friend. Analyzing the deep wrinkles, and the sagging flesh around her waist and jaw. Maude had been beautiful, her brown hair sleek and fine, and her eyes bright. But the years had not been kind. Everything had dulled. Golden skin looked like stone. Her hair was gray.
Maude touched her face self-consciously, almost withering beneath Namid’s stare. “You look the same, except for the silver in your hair. But I… I think there were side effects to what was done to me.”
Namid thought of her father, unwittingly exposing his body and seed. Her pregnant mother, who had spent time with him during his experiments. “You made that choice.”
Maude smiled bitterly. “I was jealous. But you knew that, in the end. I was only human, and wanted what you had.”
Namid closed her eyes, heart aching; so much raging inside her, she was afraid to speak. “Did it give you peace? Handing yourself over to the redcoat engineers for their experiments? Were you satisfied after you came back and killed the others?”
“I didn’t—” she began, but Namid surged to her feet, the knife somehow in her hand.
“You led those monsters to us while we slept,” she snarled, and threw the blade at Maude’s face.
The woman caught the knife out of the air and spun away through the sand. She was quick—quicker than Namid remembered—and rammed her hard in the shoulder, sending them both into the fire. The knife slid against Namid’s side, but it was the flames that made her howl, and she rolled sideways as her hair and clothing burned. Maude did not scream, but darted away, smoking, reaching for the revolver that Namid suddenly saw in the sand.
“I heard about your father’s work. But you didn’t have this the last time we met,” she whispered, picking up the weapon, just as Namid put out the flames on her body. “I watched from the ridge while you ripped out the throats of the Juggarnauts who killed your crew. You used your bare hands. You were…”
“Savage,” she hissed, trembling. “I had good reason to be.”
Maude gave her a sad smile. “I dream of it every night. You chase me, and I run. Ten years running from you, when all I ever did before was run with you, toward you, after you.”
But Namid said nothing. Nothing she could say, though the words bottled inside hurt worse than the burns along her back and scalp. Ten years thinking of that night, and nights before that, nights and battles and all of them together, like family. Namid had hated the redcoats, but she had been unprepared to hate a friend—and that was a cut that had never healed right.
On their left, a branch snapped. Maude glanced away, just for a moment. Namid lunged.
No mercy. She slammed her fist into the other woman’s face, and then hit her again, with all her strength. Bone smashed. Maude cried out, trying to bring the revolver back around to fire. Namid grabbed her wrist and broke it with one swift twist. The revolver fell. And just like that, Maude stopped fighting.
“I’m here,” Namid whispered, staring into her eyes, “with my hands at your throat.”
“Finally,” Maude breathed.
When Namid was done—and Maude was truly, irrevocably, dead—she sat down by the fire and found Captain Shao crouched on the other side of the flames. He was nearly naked, soaked; a deep scratch ran down the length of his side. But he was alive. Staring at the poisoned remains that had once been his sister.
“I’m sorry,” she said to him, too weary and heartsick to feel anything but shame at seeing him again; shame, that he should witness her covered in the blood of the only family he had left. Anger simmered in her gut, too—and despair.
“It had to be this way,” he said quietly, also without emotion. “But if she had seen me again…”
He stopped himself, and said nothing more for a very long time. Namid lay down on the sand, holding her revolver close. Just before dying, Maude had told her that no other Juggernauts were close. The rest had remained in Shanghai, working with the British to overrun what remained of the Emperor’s southern seat. The Chinese military still fought, but not for long. They were running out of hope.