by Rabia Gale
And now Rafe was out, crouching on the ground. She’d felt but a twinge of the pain he’d experienced. Worry over him bubbled behind her mental walls.
Karzov’s eyes gleamed with an unholy glee as they fought. “I’ve always wanted to spar with you like this. But you never gave me the chance. Nothing I did provoked you. ‘Krin slayers shouldn’t fight each other’.” He pitched his voice high and mocking at the end.
“If I had known how badly you wanted me to kick your behind, I’d have done it.” Strands of Isabella’s hair slid out of her bun and stuck to the back of her neck with sweat. Bastard didn’t even have the decency to act winded.
Karzov’s smile widened. “But now you aren’t much of a match for me, are you?”
The suit he wore enhanced his abilities enormously. As a kyra-ri, she could’ve taken him on before this.
She should’ve.
But, she admitted to herself in a hard, dispassionate way, she had been too afraid.
Karzov unnerved her. He always had. She’d always known he was twisted in ways that couldn’t be seen, and he was all the more dangerous for it. Krin slayer training, with its emphasis on controlling one’s thoughts and emotions, had merely given him more weapons for his arsenal.
So far, she’d only been keeping him distracted, but with Rafe down she had to change plans.
They were running out of time, and Isabella had already sacrificed feeling in a few toes to hold the pain in her arm at bay.
Isabella gave Max a nudge. Move me to the kayan device. Let’s shut down the power to that power suit of his.
I… I can’t. The krin sounded afraid and panicked. They’ve locked me out!
Who?
The other krin.
Isabella sucked in her breath, her glance flicking to Karzov’s knowing face. He unholstered a strangely-shaped gun with a fat, ovoid barrel.
Isabella sprang back. Her foot landed on the edge of a step; she teetered for a heartbeat before regaining her balance.
“Say your good byes, Isabella.” Karzov raised the gun and shot straight at her face, squeezing the trigger twice.
The gun spat out two capsules. They moved slowly through the air, and Isabella knew she’d dodge them easily.
Halfway to her, they winked out.
They’re coming! Max cried out, fluttering agitatedly inside her. The sensation was like bubbles popping.
Isabella caught the railing and vaulted over it.
The capsules reappeared next to where she’d been standing, shaking out into black curtains.
Krin.
The darkness coalesced to obsidian humanoid shapes. They turned eyeless heads in her direction.
Kill. Kill. Kill. The words drilled into Isabella’s head. Cold, implacable, ruthless—the krin’s insatiable twisted appetite to feed on human vice and weakness had been forged into something even more deadly.
Max cowered. They are—
I know. Anger boiled behind Isabella’s walls, threatening to eat away at her barriers. It was one thing to fight krin as enemies, another to take them and twist them into these mindless minions. Knowing that a krin was capable of remorse, of friendship, of moral choice changed everything.
You shouldn’t treat moral creatures this way.
The krin’s bodies turned sleek and serpentine. They lunged at Isabella.
Eya gleamed in her hand. She sliced at the krin, slashing the blackness. Stark white lines appeared in their substance, but then the inky darkness flowed over them as they reknit themselves.
All the while, the incessant drumbeat of their orders boomed in her mind. Kill. Kill. Kill. With it came images, of Rafe gutted and dying, Sable crushed under a stone, her father’s white face with krin-possessed eyes staring out of it, begging, Please. His hand, shaking and bloodied, reaching out to her. Please, Isabella. I want to live.
Her rage, already a rising tide, roared over her walls. She screamed out, “Don’t. You. Dare!”
Her barriers dissolved. Eya and Voya responded, one blazing bright, the other a line of nothing. She fed them with her own kyra, recklessly turning her life-force into their source of energy.
She charged at the krin… through them. Voya caught them in her trap, sucked them in greedily. They lost their shapes, bunching here, elongating there.
Soon, Voya, soon you’ll have enough to eat. Patience.
She’d take Karzov out, too, and his dratted powered armor, still being fueled by ka. Rafe, you’ll have to deal with the dregs, somehow. But with him gone…
Isabella… wait…
No time.
Isabella grabbed Karzov’s arm, hooked her own through his. He stared at her in faint surprise.
Self-sacrifice had not occurred to him. Her smile was bleak and bitter.
She raised Eya.
Blaze. She channeled all her kyra into it, aiming the fierce light at the unraveling krin.
Krin exploded when touched with intense light, even modified ones like these. As white washed her vision, her last thought was satisfaction.
But something caught her. A sudden dam in the flow of her kyra, as Rafe grabbed hold of it and held it back. The feel of her body misting as she shifted into krin-space. Eya’s light died as the modified krin blew up.
Not enough. There wasn’t enough energy to take Karzov out as well.
You idiots, thought Isabella wearily in the blue gloom. Another head-spinning transition and she collapsed to her knees beside Rafe.
Your death is not acceptable to us, Max informed her.
Rafe just put his hand over hers, squeezing tight.
Karzov threw back his head and laughed. Scorch marks covered his fitted grey armor, but he was otherwise unhurt. Gloriana looked composed; Bryony stared with a kind of grudging admiration. Then she twitched a shoulder and tossed her head.
Burn it.
“Is that all you’re capable of, dear Isabella?” Karzov said when the mirth passed. “But I suppose I have outgrown you as an opponent.”
It hurt to talk—even her teeth sparked with pain—but Isabella couldn’t let him have the last word. “Fight me without the armor and those krin, and then we’ll see. I’ll even toss my daggers aside for a one-on-one with you.”
Karzov waved a hand. “Sorry. I’m not much for battles of honor. Plus, I’m rather busy at the moment.”
Beside Isabella, Rafe said through clenched teeth, “What are you after, Karzov? What’s that powered armor for?”
“Oh, this?” Karzov put a proprietary hand on a bronze arm, fingers brushing against the inscribed flowing script. “This is one of Renat’s constructs, as I’m sure you gathered. You know how the kayan were planning to expand to other worlds before they messed up Salerus’ orbit? This exoskeleton was the first they’d designed for exploring them. Quite a beautiful thing, isn’t it?”
Rafe said evenly, “You didn’t need to come all the way down here to power it. You could’ve done that on the disc. The truth, please.”
Karzov shrugged. “Very well, then. The truth is that I’m leaving this universe altogether.”
Rafe’s head spun. It took seconds for the words to sink in and even longer before they made any sort of sense.
“Why would you do that?” he asked finally.
Karzov threw his arms wide. “Look around you, young Grenfeld! Ah… as best you can with your ka-sight, of course. Reflect on the giant arms, on the great gears, on the massive hinges. What does this universe around us show you? Where do we live?”
“A machine,” said Rafe. “It’s one big machine.”
“Precisely!” Karzov beamed fondly at him. “You know, I quite like you! If I had run across you twenty years earlier…”
“Don’t you start that now,” Rafe muttered.
Karzov flapped a dismissive hand. “But where there is a machine, what else must there be, eh?”
“Someone to run it,” suggested Rafe. “No—first someone has to make the machine.”
“Right.” Karzov folded his hands over h
is middle. No avuncular paunch there now to provide that thin veil of geniality he’d always worn. “Where there is a machine, there is a Machinist. A creator, or a god. And that is who I want to meet.”
Karzov as a religious fanatic? No, this was something else entirely. “You want to test yourself against this Machinist.”
Karzov inclined his head. “Of course. I am bored here, you see. I could, of course, take over the disc, but why bother? It is a dreary world just limping along, with scores of wretched, whining people. If I’d wanted to, I could’ve toppled the Protector and taken over Blackstone. Oakhaven is a ripe fruit waiting to fall into my hands. The Talar were well within my grasp. Only Ironheart provided a modicum of challenge. But I’d rather spend my talents on a worthy opponent.”
Crouched at Karzov’s feet, Gorvich went paler than ever. Gloriana, fussing with her greaves, paid no attention. And Bryony only tapped her foot impatiently.
Isabella said flatly, “You’re mad.”
Rafe looked at the orb in the middle of the powered armor. It gleamed with an unhealthy energy—he could feel reality itself beginning to ripple around it.
“Yes, he’s mad,” Rafe agreed. “But he can actually do it. Isabella, show me Voya.”
He felt her frowning puzzlement, but she brought the dagger out and laid it in front of him.
As always, he got a headache trying to figure it out. The ka-spells behind Eya were elegant and complex, but he got them. The ka buried within Voya was a different sort. It slipped away from him when he tried to get a better look at it.
It reminded him of the ka in krin-space.
“Both Beleia’s Sphere and the black dagger are made of the same material,” Gloriana said. “I already know that. Can’t you see anything new, kayan? How do they both work?”
He almost cracked a joyless smile at her demanding eagerness. “Help me defeat Karzov,” he said, “and we’ll work together to find out.”
“Enough, Rafe,” Bryony snapped.
Through Isabella’s sight, he saw that Gloriana’s eyes and mouth had rounded. “Oh,” she breathed. “I could do that, couldn’t I?”
“Ah, but will you, my dear?” Karzov’s smile was sly. On the floor, Gorvich, face tight with pain, leaned against the armor’s legs.
Gloriana considered. Then she shook her head. “No. There are,” she said to Rafe, with all the gravity of a child, “many answers I need to know that only the Machinist has.”
“Bryony?” He turned his sightless eyes in her direction. He knew it was unnerving.
“There’s a better world on the other side.” Bryony’s fingers clenched in her skirt. “I’m sick of this awful one, with all its hate and stupidity and prejudice.”
“You don’t know that,” Rafe said.
She tossed her hair back. “I’m willing to take the risk.”
“You’re willing to destroy our entire world for that?” he pressed. “If you divert all the ka flowing up to our world to rip a hole in our dimension right here, the results will be catastrophic. We’ll lose the supports that hold us up. Salerus is already unstable. It could explode any moment. You’re willing to sacrifice all our people for this.”
Bryony’s lips pulled back from her teeth. “I am.”
Isabella made a sound of exasperated fury. If she wasn’t so exhausted, Rafe had no doubt she’d have leapt up and boxed Bryony’s ears.
“I’m not all noble like you and Rafe are,” Bryony said. “I want a better life—the life I deserve. I will never find that here.”
“Our father’s not there, either,” said Rafe softly. “Leaving here, destroying everything, won’t ever give you relief from the pain of his betrayal.”
“I know.” Bryony’s voice was hoarse, her eyes wide and tired. “But I still want to go.”
Rafe said nothing. His final illusions had crumbled away. The Bryony he’d known was nothing but a shell. There was no substance inside, just a morass of self-pity and rage at the world. She’d nurtured her bitterness at being abandoned until it had grown into a monster.
A monster that had consumed her.
Karzov made a little bow. “As you can see, your moralizing is useless. We have made up our minds. We will not be stopped.”
Rafe
Rafe and Isabella knelt on the floor, their hands bound to their feet behind their backs. It was cramped and uncomfortable, but worse was the helpless feeling of ka-bots in waiting to strike him down should Rafe reach for ka.
He pushed at the bots with his kyra, but he couldn’t manipulate it finely enough to disable the thousands of tiny creatures in his blood. It’d take him days to hunt them all down. Even Isabella couldn’t do it much faster.
Isabella. Her shoulder was against his, a tendril of her hair tickling his cheek. Bryony had taken a vicious delight in yanking her bonds tighter. Isabella responded with such a potent glare, Rafe would not have been surprised if Bryony had collapsed right then and there.
The air between the two women was thick with age-old enmity and unfinished business. Rafe suspected he didn’t know the half of it.
It was not something that Isabella dwelled on. When he reached out to her through the bond, he felt both her tension and her focus. She already sought a way out, a path to win. And inside her, the krin also lurked, waiting for an opportunity.
Surrender was not an option.
Gloriana clanked slowly across the floor. She grimaced as she heaved each leg up the steps to where Renat’s powered armor waited. “Needs fine-tuning,” she muttered.
“All in good time, dear child,” soothed Karzov. “For now, shall we get on with it? Gorvich, do move out of the way. There’s a good chap.” He nudged his aide, face bleached grey, still clutching his broken arm and dislocated shoulder, with his foot.
For a hurt man, Gorvich scooted quickly, ending up huddled against a railing. His eyes were harrowed in his pain-etched face.
That man, spoke Isabella, fears and hates Karzov.
Rafe agreed. And Karzov knew it too, and delighted in the other’s impotent loathing.
He’s Karzov’s weak link, Isabella went on. Notice how he wasn’t consulted about his feelings in the matter of plunging the world into chaos.
He has a family. Max broke in unexpectedly. He hasn’t seen them in months. He keeps them at arm’s length, because he’s afraid what Karzov might do to them. But he’s thinking about them right now, about how they’re all going to die. His wife smells of good cooking and lavender, his daughter of talc powder and toffee. They play the dulcimer.
Astonishment greeted the krin’s observation. Max said, with great and touching dignity, I am krin. I can sense his thoughts and emotions.
He hasn’t summoned up the courage to act on them yet, Isabella pointed out. Right now, he’s hurt and we’re bound. We aren’t exactly winning here. How do we turn him into an ally?
Leave it to me, said Max. Once, we krin inspired, encouraged, and uplifted humans. Giving him the courage to do what he knows is right is my job.
Isabella hesitated, two mutually exclusive impulses warring inside her. It would mean unbinding you, krin.
It would mean trusting me, said Max. Can you?
Rafe said nothing. Isabella knew without words how he felt about this. But the choice was hers to make and hers alone.
What would the krin slayer do?
Isabella took in a deep breath, let it out. Rafe felt something loosen inside her. Fine. Go then, and strengthen Gorvich’s heart.
The krin’s substance changed, became fluid. It poured into Isabella’s legs and soaked into the floor.
Max, Isabella called out. We’re counting on you.
I know. The answer came back in a whisper. I’ll not let you down. I do this not only for humanity, but for the krin, too.
It’s our turn now, Rafe, Isabella said. We must act, before it’s too late.
I know. Tremors rippled through the floor, singing into his bones. With his ka-sight, he could see the great current of ka flowing up th
rough the arm that supported the system of Salerus, Selene, and the disc itself. Its presence was a blaze in his head, vivid rainbow colors burning his sight. Within that river, he caught the presence of the ka he knew: all six colors glowing ruby, citrine, topaz, emerald, sapphire, amethyst. But twined about them were strands of pure white whose purpose he couldn’t begin to guess.
The wicked magebane-and-ka bots in his body kept his examination cursory, but he knew that to immerse himself in that cosmic river would be inviting disaster upon himself.
Not even the ancient kayan would’ve attempted that. Their less wise successor would do well to follow that example.
But the flow was mesmerizing. It called to him, with a song that tickled at the very edge of his hearing.
The flow rushed upwards, defying the natural law that stated that everything that went up must come down. It gushed in a kind of joyful abandon, in one of the ways that made Rafe think that the ka was somehow alive. It should have continued like that, but then it hit the device the kayan had created. The device’s spellwork was solid, ka systems buried deep within a strange inert metal Rafe had no name for, but which reminded him of the metal contraption in Theo’s cell and the ka-collecting boxes on Renat Island. For centuries the spell had endured, built to withstand the current, built to last.
It had been the kayan’s undoing.
For the ka that came out of the device was changed. It had shed the whiteness that twined around it in delicate tendrils. It burned more fiercely, its joy had a wicked blade’s edge. The further it got from the device, the greater its desire to cut and rend and destroy. It surged through Salerus’ arm, shaking the sun, whipping its fire into a fury. It sped to Selene, alternately cracking and chilling the moon’s surface. It shot up to the disc and into the quartz, burning through rock here, pooling in toxic hidden lakes there.
It was ka uncontained, ka corrupted.
The white strands. Rafe focused on the device’s internal mechanism. It would take him days to unravel the complexity of the spell… but he was interested in only one thing.