by Conner, Jack
Avery turned to the doorway, thinking to close it, then thought better of it. Janx was tearing at the cross-piece of his weapon, using his great strength to attempt to bend the iron so that it broke the side-points off.
“Take his knife,” Avery told Denaris, and while the whaler was occupied she plucked it from his sheath; Janx didn’t blink.
“To the body chambers, Gwen,” Avery said, indicating. “You take that one, I’ll take this one. Follow my lead.”
They leapt to the task, and not a moment too soon. The squid broke through the floor and shot its limbs out with blinding speed, using some of them to haul itself up halfway into the chamber, filling it with the creature’s awful reek. It must have been swimming in the sewers for weeks, even months, and was encrusted with foul growths and oozing sores. Avery wondered if the pollution had driven it mad; its eyes were bloodshot and wild. He desperately hoped not. Everything depended on it still retaining some reason.
As he and Denaris jumped toward opposite containers, each coffin-like construct holding a body that had had its skull sawn open, Janx climbed atop a table and continued bending and bashing his trident.
In the distance, the sound of the mob drew nearer, moving more swiftly than before. They’d heard the noise.
A stinking, pinkish limb strained toward Avery, dripping vile fluid, and he poised his knife over a cluster of hoses leading to the body storage container.
“Do it and I kill this body!” Avery shouted, aware of the high pitch of his voice.
The squid paused, just slightly. Then the limb started toward Avery again.
“Gwen!” Avery shouted.
“Then I’ll cut this one!” she said, knife poised over the bunch of wires and hoses leading to the other container in its corner, and the squid turned a huge eye on her. These hoses evidently connected to the body its brain belonged to, as the creature actually drew back the two tentacles it had been sending toward her. Avery’s heart sang.
“Leave!” Avery shouted. “Leave or we make sure you can never return to your body, and you’ll have to stay a squid in the sewers for the rest of your days!”
Avery could almost feel the rage of the squid in its baleful eye and the agitated movements of its limbs. It truly hesitated, weighing its own life against its duty, and in the end it chose the latter. With almost palpable regret, it extended its limbs toward Avery and Denaris.
Its hesitation had given Janx the time he needed. He’d ripped the side prongs off, turning the trident into a harpoon. With a howl he drew the weapon back, coiling his arm, and hurled the harpoon into the creature’s head. It sank deep, transfixing the brain. The squid’s limbs stiffened, and blood or ichor leaked around the wound, then went limp. Taking the weapon with it, the squid sank through the hole it had ripped in the floor and out of sight, its many limbs, now flaccid, trailing behind it.
Avery, Janx and Denaris looked at each other, breathing heavily.
“We did it,” Denaris said. “We—”
The door slammed opened, banging against the dresser Janx and Avery had shoved against it earlier.
“Get away from there,” Avery said.
Denaris had gone to the corner of the room closest to the door, where the coffin had been. She moved away from it now, eyes wide, then teetered on the brink of the chasm the squid had made. She could not get to where Avery and Janx were without going wide around the hole.
“Hurry!” Janx said.
She edged around it, face pale.
With greater force, propelled by several shoulders, the dresser slid clear, and the mob burst through the door, Sheridan at their lead. Instantly she punched Denaris across the jaw, laying her out, and passed her off to two men in uniform to carry as the mob surged around them, fury in the faces of priests and pilgrims alike. They glared across the ruined room to Avery and Janx, who backed away toward the far door. Sheridan had pulled out a gun, but through the shifting forms of the mob she couldn’t get a bead on either of them.
The mob began to edge around the hole.
Hating to leave Denaris but knowing there was no choice, Avery let Janx lead the way from the room, then slammed the hatch behind him. Sheridan screamed something on the other side, and at first her voice was muffled by the metal, but then he made out her words:
“What do you thinking you’re doing, Doctor? If you kill the Collossum, the Starfish will destroy the city!”
* * *
“You know the way out?” Janx shouted over his shoulder as they ran. “I’m turned around.”
“No,” Avery panted, “but I remember a stairwell ...”
“Don’t get treed,” Janx said. “Up is a trap.”
Heeding Janx’s advice, Avery passed the stairs without comment, but when they heard noises coming from ahead, then again after they darted down a side-hall, Avery led the way back to the stairwell and up it, taking two stairs at a time, even as the sound of a hatch crashing open reached them from the direction of the laboratory. Janx didn’t protest.
Almost immediately Avery wondered if he’d made a mistake. It was darker upstairs, and the halls were even more labyrinthine than those below. Worse was the smell ...
“What is that?” Janx said, smacking his lips and spitting. He had no ability to smell, of course, but he seemed to be able to taste the reek.
“I don’t know,” Avery said. It stank like mold, rot, unwashed bodies and filth, mashed together and concentrated into a deadly miasma. Fewer alchemical lamps burned up here, letting the reek of the sewers in, too. And there was some other chemical smell.
The din of their pursuers increased. Janx and Avery picked up speed, rounding a bend and coming into a room full of miserable figures all chained to the wall. These weren’t the sex slaves of below but something altogether different and more awful, or at least so Avery guessed. Each one was infected, and they ranged in age and sex and general raggedness, but every one turned hopeful eyes on the two intruders.
“Please,” one begged, an old man with livid bruises on his cheeks. In a rasping voice, he said, “Please help us.”
“What happened to you?” Avery said.
“Help us ...”
Janx moved to the wall and began tugging at the old man’s chain. This wall proved of sturdier stuff than the one on the first floor, and it gave him trouble. Sweating, he continued to strain at it.
“We’re food to the god,” a woman said from not far away, confirming what Avery had assumed. “When it’s ready, it will take us.” With tears in her eyes, she said, “It took my son yesterday. He ... he was fourteen ...”
“Fuck!” Janx growled. He quit pulling at the chain and moved to another, but this one proved just as stubborn. Whoever had bound these people had been more intent on their task than those who bound the sex slaves. Whoever had done this served a god.
The noise of the mob picked up, and Avery heard distinct clatters on the stairs.
“They’re coming,” he told Janx. “We have to go.”
“No!” said the old man, voice quavering. “Please ... don’t go ...”
“You can’t leave us,” said a young man from the opposite wall. “If you do, it will get us.”
“Don’t leave!” another said, and more picked up the chant: “Don’t leave us! Don’t leave us! DON’T LEAVE US!”
Avery’s heart twisted, and he saw frustration in Janx’s eyes, but there was nothing for it. With noise of their pursuers reaching the top of the stairs, the two turned and fled through a doorway, the chants of the doomed still echoing in their ears—and those of their pursuers. They would bring the mob right to them. Avery slammed every door he passed through, locking several, but he knew that would barely slow them.
“Which way?” Janx said. “Do you see light? A window—”
They stumbled into a figure traveling the other way, and both sides recoiled. It was, to Avery’s surprise, once again the pilgrim they had met earlier, Rigurd.
“Oh! Oh!” Rigurd said. “I didn’t expect to see you h
ere. It seems our destiny to keep bumping into each other.”
“What’re you about?” Janx said.
“I do not have to explain myself to you,” Rigurd said, straightening. “Now, if you will, I meant to inquire as to the noise and fuss. Know you what it pertains?”
Janx grinned cruelly. “There’re fugitives about. Dangerous men.”
“Oh! Oh!”
“They’re lookin’ for the exit. Know you where it is?”
“I—I—” Rigurd swallowed and wiped his forehead. “Well, I believe, that way, yes, there is a terrace, and some stairs, but I don’t see why you—”
Janx clapped Rigurd on the shoulder, letting his hand linger there, fingers digging into the older man’s flesh. “You done us a service, old-timer. I might just let you live.”
“I would measure your next actions carefully, hooligan.” Rigurd’s voice had changed. Become colder. Harder.
“Janx ...” Avery started, but it was too late.
The air shimmered around Rigurd, and suddenly Janx was thrown aside with such force that he smashed against a moldy wall.
“I knew there was something off about you two,” Rigurd said. “Ah, well, live and learn. That’s why I go amongst my visitors anonymously, to learn their true—”
Avery lunged forward with his god-killing knife. Rigurd saw it and dodged, but the blade nicked his arm. Instantly the half-formed amoebic shape about him faded into nothingness. Rigurd’s eyes widened and he clapped a hand over his arm.
“Damn you!”
Avery lunged at him again, but Rigurd was too fast. He instantly vanished through a doorway, and Avery heard the click of the lock. He tried it, but the door was metal and it held fast.
Avery went to Janx and felt his pulse, but he needn’t have bothered; even as he knelt over the big man, Janx’s eyelids fluttered, and the whaler moaned some expletive under his breath.
“Get up,” Avery said.
“Little bastard was the god of the place, eh? Might’ve known. He was a little shit, that was for sure. Got him with the knife?”
“Yes, but I don’t think we can count on that holding him. I barely scratched him. He can’t have received much of the poison, or whatever the lethal agent is, and we don’t have time to hunt him now.”
As Avery helped Janx to his feet, the noise of the mob reached his ears, louder than ever; the priests and pilgrims were smashing through one of the locked doors, very near.
“They’ll be on us soon,” Avery said.
Janx shook his head and stood straighter, disengaging himself. “I’m all right, Doc. Let’s run. If that Collie was right …”
“I doubt he was lying. He was about to kill us.”
“Good. Then—”
Another door crashed open; Avery assumed it to be the penultimate one standing between them and the mob.
“Move!” Janx said, but Avery stayed where he was.
“Move,” Janx repeated, worry in his face.
Avery shook his head, and Janx stared at him as if he were mad.
“They’re going to sacrifice Denaris tonight,” Avery said calmly. “You must return to Muscud and inform Layanna. She can strike Rigurd at City Square, while you lead some of Boss Vassas’s men to provide cover. Get Hildra to convince him. Send Evers after General Hastur. Now’s the time. Get her moving.”
“Not enough time to return to Muscud, Doc. It took us most of a day just to get here.”
More sounds of bashing. The mob had reached the final door.
“That’s why you’ll have to go directly there,” Avery said. “No back ways. I trust Jeffers to lose any pursuit.”
“We’ll come on the other squid, the one that got Evers’s folk.”
“I know, and that’s why it must be you who goes, and I who distracts the mob to give you time to find Jeffers and get clear.”
Janx’s face was rigid. Through clenched teeth, he said, “I can’t just leave you, Doc—”
The final door broke through. Voices filled the hallway.
“Go!” Avery said, slapping Janx on the shoulder. “Run and don’t look back!”
Janx hesitated, then, as the noises grew even closer, turned and ran. Avery waited a moment, then situated himself beside a doorway. He drew his gun, taking deep breaths.
When the mob rounded the bend and came in sight, Avery fired twice at them and fled through the door.
Chapter 9
Avery couldn’t believe he was doing this. This was mad. More than mad—suicidal. In that moment all he could think about was Ani. If I die what will become of her? Sure, she had Mari’s family, but they didn’t know her. They hadn’t raised her. A deep love of his daughter washed over him, and an anguish; if he was caught, he would be killed—torn to shreds by the mob or even fed to Rigurd, an appetizer to the Prime Minister.
Shouts and occasional gunfire shook the ratty, leaning halls behind him, but he didn’t look back, only pausing occasionally as he rounded a bend or a doorway to stick his arm back through and fire in what he hoped was the direction of the mob; more likely he hit plaster and wood. A couple of times he came across occupants of the upstairs rooms, and both times they were sprawled across couches in some sort of deep trance, probably drug-induced. They gave him no trouble.
He darted right, left, left again, then right, becoming more and more lost. But, miraculously, the noises of the mob began to recede behind him. Was he losing them? It seemed too much to hope for. At least he was leading them away from the direction Janx had taken.
And then, so suddenly it shocked him, he shoved through a doorway and found himself on a terrace. It was small and wrought-iron, encrusted by some brown growths. But he was outside. A swarm of bats poured past him, chasing a type of glinting, fishy bug, and joy filled him. He hadn’t realized how claustrophobic he’d been until he was free of the complex interior. He gulped deep breaths and gripped the balustrade tightly, feeling his fingers shake.
Above him and to the right stretched another terrace, jutting out from the roof. This one was larger, and moored to it were a dozen dirigibles. Avery had heard the priest’s announcement but hadn’t really had time to reflect on its meaning. But here it was, the fleet that would take Rigurd and Denaris to City Square, where the Prime Minister, newly infected, would be given to Grand Admiral Haggarty, who would give her immediately back. None of the dirigibles boasted the Lightning Crest of Octung, but all had clearly been Octunggen aircraft, sharp and black, before being seized and retrofitted by the Ghenisan Navy.
Sharp, black ... and roomy.
Hardly daring to believe his own pluck, Avery mounted the balustrade, hauled himself onto the roof and crawled toward the dirigible platform. Beyond it he could see a large hole in the ceiling of the cistern chamber where the fleet had obviously entered from; presumably it was sealed above. What concerned him more were the several soldiers—Navy—who patrolled the platform. There seemed to be about five of them, with more in some of the dirigibles. Others had been below, Avery remembered, bearing witness to the giving of the Sacrament. Sheridan was likely their leader.
Avery held his breath as he approached the terrace, then hunkered against the balustrade as a soldier marched past.
This is it, he thought. I should be committed. He would just have to hope the Drakes did a better job of parenting than he had.
Keeping his head down and himself as invisible as he could, he scuttled along the outside of the terrace, shielded by the balustrade, hanging on only by fingers and toes, until he reached the first dirigible, which had been drawn close to the terrace for boarding. There he remained for some minutes, his arms and legs trembling, not with fatigue but with sheer fright. He couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this.
When no one was looking (he peeked between two rotten boards), he cleared the dirigible’s gunwale and lowered himself next to a large trunk. He lifted the lid, seeing a range of weapons filling the space. He opened another, to the same result, and was about to try a different tack altogether—co
uld he impersonate a soldier?—when the third trunk showed the way: blankets and foodstuffs, not completely filling the space.
Someone shouted.
Avery threw himself into the trunk and pulled the blankets over his head, knowing even as he did what a foolish thing it was. If the shout had been given because he’d been seen, he had only cornered himself. Janx would never have been so stupid.
He waited, breathless, expecting to be discovered and taken prisoner, but instead, again miraculously, rough voices rose, then fell, and footsteps moved away; apparently members of the mob had emerged, consulted with the soldiers about Avery’s whereabouts and, hearing nothing amiss, retreated below.
Slowly, quietly, Avery let a breath out, then drew one in. Could he have possibly pulled this off?
It seemed he waited in the trunk for hours. Perhaps he did. Long enough for his joints to ache and for claustrophobia to dig into him again. Fortunately the trunk was porous, otherwise he would have had to lift the lid every so often and risk exposure. But eventually footsteps returned, a great many of them, and the airship shook as soldiers boarded it, and other sounds confirmed the boarding of the rest of the fleet. Avery assumed Denaris and Rigurd were among the group, but he didn’t dare look.
A captain called out, and Avery could feel the ship unmoor from the terrace and begin to rise.
They were away. Going to the Square.
Mentally, Avery did a checklist, detailing his resources. It didn’t take long. He had his god-killing knife, a couple of bullets in his gun, two fists, two feet, and surprise.
He wasn’t able to see by what mechanism the hole in the ground was concealed, or if it was at all (though his imagination painted them rising up through a hollowed-out building, perhaps a factory; the entrance was surely why Rigurd had chosen the town’s location), but shortly he felt the craft rock with wind and knew they were outside, in the open air. Judging by the creaking and snapping all around, the other ships of the fleet were, as well. Soldiers called to each other, going about the business of sailing through the air, and Avery tried to tune them out, concentrating on various scenarios by which to liberate Denaris without getting them both killed. The best thing to do would be to steal a dirigible and take off with her, giving the others the slip, but he had no idea which ship she was on—or which he was on, for that matter; Rigurd could be right outside, ready to eat him at a moment’s notice—or how to elude a full company of air-mobile soldiers, for that matter. The more he thought about it, the more he realized saving her was impossible, at least alone and airborne. There was always the chance that Janx would deliver his message to Layanna and that some opportunity would present itself on the ground.