by Keri Arthur
I tried to ignore them and crawled under blankets where, despite the turmoil and the belief that I wouldn’t sleep, I did.
The room was wrapped in darkness when I awoke. For several minutes I simply lay there, listening to the howl of the wind outside but hearing no voices within her. The suite itself was silent and I had no sense that anyone was near.
I climbed out of bed and walked into the living area. As I did, the main door opened and Trey entered. He smiled when he saw me, but it held little of its usual vigor, and the redness in his eyes was matched by the weariness that cloaked him.
“You look worn out,” I said as I walked toward him.
“It’s been a rather long twenty-four hours.”
He caught my hand and pulled me into his arms. For a moment, neither of us said anything. We simply enjoyed the comfort of each other’s presence.
“So,” I said eventually, “what decisions have been made?”
“I leave at dawn for Blacklake. The attack is timed for midmorning as that’s the earliest we outpost commanders believe we can get supplies ready and our forces moving.”
“So you’re attacking en masse?”
“No. We’ll cross the river from our various positions and attack the apiary’s known exits on several fronts. Winterborne will send a force into the Adlin homelands to stop any sleuths from answering a call to arms by the Irkallan queen. Hopefully by attacking them on so many fronts we’ll draw their attention away from Drakkon’s Head, and give you the chance to slip in, find and destroy those kids and the queen, and then lay the charges and get out.”
“But what if the queen orders the kids into battle?”
“I doubt she’ll risk their use unless absolutely necessary. Not if she has as many soldiers as Saska claimed.”
Part of me hoped he was right. But the other half—the selfish half that didn’t want to the responsibility of ending the lives of so many children, even if they were indoctrinated into the enemy’s way of life—hoped otherwise.
I pulled away from his embrace and studied him again. “You look as though you’re in desperate need of a hot meal.”
He scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I am. All I’ve had is coffee.”
“Then go clean up and I’ll order us both something. The water here is safe—apparently the Rossi have their own supply.”
“Excellent.”
He dropped a kiss on my lips then headed for the bathroom. Once he’d disappeared behind the partially drawn curtain, I poured two glasses of red and then retrieved the sleeping potion. With that poured into one of the glasses, I called for the maid and ordered our meal.
By the time he’d freshened up, the thick, delicious-smelling stew and freshly baked bread had arrived. I picked up the two glasses of red as he walked toward me, a towel wrapped around his hips and tiredness still riding him. It made me feel a little less guilty about what I was doing.
But only a little.
I smiled and handed him the wine that held the potion, and then lightly clicked my glass against his. “To a successful mission and a safe return.”
“Amen to that.” And he downed the wine in several gulps.
I poured him another, then dished out our meals and sat beside him on the double cloudsak. While it was a comfortable silence, tension nevertheless ran through me—an undercurrent that wasn’t helped by the stirring air and the urgency that was becoming stronger within it.
Trey was struggling to keep his eyes open by the time he’d finished his meal. “This,” he said, with a huge yawn, “is definitely not the way I’d imagined the evening going.”
I chuckled softly and plucked the bowl from his hands before he could drop it. “Me neither, but we have all night and I’d rather you sleep now than tomorrow on the battlefield.” I placed both bowls on the table, then rose and offered him my hands. “Come along, Commander. Time for you to hit the bed.”
He allowed me to pull him up and leaned on me heavily as I helped him across the room. “I don’t know what’s hit me,” he murmured. “I’ve taken part in more than my fair share of war councils over the years, and while I’ve been tired, it’s never been this bad.”
“This sort of thing happens when you get old.” I forced a smile and hoped he didn’t sense the gathering guilt. “Or so I’m told.”
He snorted softly. “You make me sound ancient.”
“When I was a teenager, anything over thirty was ancient.”
I pulled off his towel, then pulled back the sheets and sat him down—although in truth, he all but fell down. I swung his legs onto the mattress and tugged the sheets back over him. His eyes drifted closed, and in seconds he was asleep.
I bent over and brushed a kiss across his lips.
“Goodbye, Trey,” I said softly. “Please don’t think ill of me in the morning. I’m only doing what has to be done.”
I pushed away from him, pushed away my emotions, and strode into the other room. Once dressed, I hunted down his pack and checked the bracelet was still there, then refilled his water flask and placed it and the wrapped cheese and bread into it. I strapped my sword onto the outside of the pack, my knife to my leg, and then swung the pack onto my back. With a deep breath but no backward glance, I strode to the door and opened it.
“Neve,” Ava said, surprise flitting across her face. “I thought the commander said you weren’t to be disturbed?”
I grimaced. “Change of plans, unfortunately. Can you contact Lord Kiro and tell him that I’ll be at the Upper Reaches gates in ten minutes?”
She nodded and did so. “He sounded somewhat surprised,” she said, after a few seconds. “But he’ll be there. Are you sure everything is okay?”
“Yes.” I gave her a quick hug. “If you’re assigned to the Adlin attack party tomorrow, please be careful.”
“Ditto, sister.”
“Always,” I said, and left.
Kiro was already waiting by the gates before I arrived there. His gaze swept me then rose to mine. “I’m gathering you’ve chosen a very separate path to what either Trey or I had planned.”
“Yes.” I stopped in front of him. “According to the wind, there’s a limited window in which I can get into the apiary unnoticed. I need to be there by sunrise if this attack is to have any chance of success.”
“Meaning, I’m gathering, the potion the healer gave to you was given to Trey?”
I nodded. “He’ll wake with dawn.”
“The wind’s advice isn’t to be taken lightly, so it is perhaps for the best,” he said. “But he’ll be far from happy with your actions.”
“I know.” I hesitated. “Tell him I’m sorry.”
He eyed me but didn’t say what most would have—that I could tell him myself when all this was over. Kiro was a realist—as his next words proved. “What do you wish of me?”
“I need explosives, guns, and a speeder.”
He immediately activated the earwig and ordered the supply of all three. Once he’d signed off, he added, “Go to armory five and collect what you need. The speeder is being prepped and will be waiting by the time you’re kitted up.”
“Thanks.”
He gripped my shoulder lightly. “May the wind give you speed and the earth grant you passage back. And thank you, Neve March.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything, simply because there was nothing I could say. We both knew this was more than likely a one-way trip, and wishing it otherwise wouldn’t change a damn thing.
Which didn’t mean I wouldn’t give everything I had to survive, but Kiro wasn’t the only realist standing in this street.
I walked on down the hill. The wind chased my heels, her whisperings filled with the urgent need to be gone. Armory five was situated at the midway point of the inner curtain wall, just to the right of the gates and close to where Hedra had died. A soldier I didn’t recognize waited at the door.
“Nightwatch March?” When I nodded, he added, “Captain July has given orders that you’re to be given as m
uch weaponry and explosives as you need.”
“Excellent.” I swung the pack off my shoulder and followed him inside. “I need a couple of gut busters, ammo, and some form of explosives that are basically set and forget.”
He grunted. “You want a big boom or a little one?”
“Big.” I hesitated. “Although a couple of smaller ones wouldn’t go astray. I also want reasonably stable, as I don’t want to blow myself up before I get to my target.”
“Then the M185 blocks are probably best for the bigger blast. They have the power to blow up a mountain if you put enough of them together, but are quite harmless until you put the detonation timer into it.”
“How long will I have to get out once I do that?”
He hesitated. “The longest timers I have on hand are twenty minutes, but I think there’s—”
“Twenty minutes will do,” I cut in. I couldn’t afford to waste any more time. Not when the wind was beginning to hassle me again. “What about the smaller booms? I think I’ll need something stronger than grenades.”
Given the toughness of the Irkallan’s exoskeleton and the fact grenades were primarily designed to damage via concussion and shrapnel, it was probably safe to presume they wouldn’t actually cause enough damage to stop more than a couple of them. Grenades worked just fine on Adlin, but no text I’d ever read had mentioned their usefulness against the Irkallan.
“I’ve got a dozen or so NP10 balls,” he said. “Team them with the pop cap primers and you’ve basically got a grenade with a more deadly boom.”
“Three or four of those would be perfect.”
He nodded. “And the M185 blocks?”
I frowned. “How big are they? I need to carry them a fair way.”
“They not large. You can probably get six in that pack of yours easy enough.”
I handed him the pack. “Fill her up then.”
He chuckled softly and did so. Once he’d shown me how to insert the detonator and set the timer on the blocks, and how to use the cap primers, I threw the pack on and then clipped the two gut busters and several ammo clips onto my utilities belt. I would have loved more, but I had to be able to move with a decent amount of silence and speed. I signed for everything, thanked the soldier, and then headed out. As Kiro had promised, the speeder had been brought up from the underground level and was waiting in the middle of the outer bailey. Captain July was standing beside it.
“Haven’t been told what your assignment is, March,” he said, his raspy tones filled with the concern I could see in his expression, “but take care. I hate losing good soldiers.”
“Thanks, Cap.”
He nodded and stepped back. I climbed into the speeder, stowed the pack, then claimed the driver seat and hit the start button. As the Captain ordered the gate opened, I closed the door and strapped in.
But as I waited for the huge gates to open, fear stirred anew.
I might be Nightwatch; I might have been trained from a very early age to follow orders and fight, no matter what the odds or the cost, but right now I was also as scared as hell.
But my sister and my mother had left me with no other option; I had to do this alone. I just had to hope that Saska was right, that because we were twins and our DNA was similar, the Irkallan wouldn’t be alarmed if they sensed my presence in their tunnels.
But I also had to hope I could find the strength to do what had to be done when it came to those children.
Anything else beyond that was a bonus, and that included finding the queen and bringing the mountain down on top of the apiary itself. Survival would be a miracle, and something I was realistically not even hoping for.
As the gates opened wide enough for the speeder to pass through, I pressed the accelerator and headed out into the darkness of the Tenterra dustbowl.
12
The flags of dawn were beginning to taint the sky by the time I reached the foot of the Blacksaw Mountains. They loomed above the small craft like some felled, misbegotten giant, and were as dark and as barren as they’d looked from a distance. There didn’t seem to be any easy way for the speeder to get up its craggy side without receiving major damage, so I halted underneath some overhanging boulders and shut it down. The darkness closed in, thick and eerie—the latter sensation not easing as my eyes adjusted to the surrounding ink.
I opened the door, grabbed the pack, and climbed out. The air was crisp, but it was nowhere near as cold here as it had been in Winterborne. No doubt the sheer distance from the sea and the arctic winds that blew off it had something to do with that.
Somewhere high above me was Drakkon’s Head, the main entrance into the Irkallan’s apiary, but I couldn’t see it from where I stood. In fact, there was nothing but rock and a few scrubby, ill-looking plants for as far as the eye could see.
I slung the pack over my shoulders and then said, “What are the chances of getting a lift up there?”
The wind immediately whipped around me and, in very little time, had encased me in a bubble of gossamer air and shunted me up the dark mountainside. About halfway, the scrubby vegetation completely gave up any attempt at survival, and the landscape became little more than a wonderland of rocks of all shapes and sizes.
The speed of my ascent finally eased and, as the gossamer started evaporating, the maw-like entrance into the mountains became visible. It was easy to see why this area had been named Drakkon’s Head—it very much looked like one of those mythical beasts had found its end here, with the tunnel’s entrance its open mouth, complete with jagged, glinting black teeth.
The air dropped me gently onto the ground. Dust stirred around my feet, smelling and looking like ash. The fierce, rocky outcrop that was the drakkon’s head towered above me, its eyes ebony pits that seemed to be aware and watching even though I logically knew they were probably nothing more than smaller caves.
I couldn’t see or hear any life in the immediate area, but the stench coming out of the drakkon’s mouth reminded me of the smell that had radiated from the three children who’d assaulted Blacklake, only a thousand times worse. It made my stomach heave and, for several seconds, I battled the urge to vomit. If I was to have any hope of getting deep into the apiary, I was going to need fresh air.
That we can provide, the wind said, just as we did before. But you should not linger here. A patrol draws close.
I swore softly, drew my knife and one of the gut busters, and walked forward. The wind chased along behind me, stirring the ash and erasing any sign of my presence.
The closer I got to the drakkon’s mouth, the more my fear of it rose. I knew it was ridiculous, knew the drakkon was merely a creation of rock and erosion, but there was a heaviness and anticipation riding the wind’s coattails that made it seem as if the whole mountain was about to come alive and consume me.
Which really wasn’t so far off the mark, given what I was walking into.
I edged along one side of the drakkon’s maw, every sense I had alert for any hint of movement deeper within the cave. The wind was urging me to hurry, warning that the patrol was little more than minutes away, but I couldn’t afford to rush. One misstep might spell the end of everything before it had even started.
As the darkness of the quickly fading night gave way to the deeper ink of the cave, my knife began to give off a soft, blue-white glow. It was a light that picked out a similar luminance within the walls and, after a moment, I realized there were long seams of glimmer stone within the black rock. Perhaps this was where the Adlin had gotten the stone for their beacons.
I shoved the knife away. I couldn’t risk the Irkallan patrol noticing the glinting stone, nor could I risk whatever guards there might be beyond this large antechamber seeing the knife’s soft glow.
I waited for the gleam in the walls to fade and my eyes to once again adjust before moving on. There were two tunnels at the far end of the chamber, one peeling off to the left and one going straight down.
As I hesitated, studying them both, the wind said, left.
I obeyed. The tunnel walls immediately closed in and the air became thick with that stomach-churning stench. The wind stirred in response, brushing away the worst of it, allowing me to move on without the threat of my stomach’s contents decorating my boots.
There wasn’t much to see. The tunnel’s walls were surprisingly smooth but held no beat of life. Not even the memory of it lingered. If this mountain had once contained earth magic, then it had been gone for centuries, if not a millennium.
The Irkallan might not have caused it, but I couldn’t help wondering who or what had—and whether it would eventually spread beyond these mountains.
No, the wind whispered.
How can you be sure? The earth has no voice in this place.
Not here, but there is life elsewhere, and she shares her secrets. Miners lived and worked in these mountains long before the Irkallan arrived. They robbed these mountains of both its minerals and its life, and then moved on to find new lands to mine and destroy.
Which perhaps explained why there was no mention of them in any history books—it had simply happened too long ago.
The deeper I moved into the tunnel, the warmer it became. Sweat trickled down my spine, and I had to keep swapping the gut buster from one hand to the other so I could swipe the moisture from my palms.
The downward incline continued, gradually getting steeper. I had no sense of time or distance in this place. There was nothing to judge such things by—no sound, no light, no life.
Then the wind slapped against me, forcing me to stop. My breath caught in my throat as I listened for whatever danger might lay ahead. After a moment, I heard it—a footstep. One that was little more than a whisper, and spoke of bare feet against rock.
My fingers tensed against the gut buster, even though I knew firing it was the last thing I needed to do in this place.