He winced as he scrambled through the rubble that choked what once had been Moriandar Street. He hated that his feet must touch the ground; every step brought a nervous grimace. The fuckers were still fighting down there. How could they keep on? His men had taken prisoners—he had interrogated some himself—ragged and malnourished, untreated wounds inflamed and suppurating, most of them sick with the fever and raving. Any second he expected the cobbles to sprout a thicket of clawed hands—for the street to liquefy beneath him and then close over his head like quicksand as those hands drew him down, and down, and down
But as soon as he moved clear of the canopy of antisprite netting, he worried less about the caverns beneath than what might come at him from above. Damned sprites‑
Shit, he hated those little fuckers.
Now and again, treetoppers had slipped out of concealed cavern exits and taken a terrible toll with their yard-long birdlances of needle-pointed steel. The sprite attacks were only occasionally fatal, but this was cold comfort. The damned sprites were naturally Cloaked; you don't even know you're under attack till you feel the lance jam into your eye. Usually your right eye. It was their favorite target.
Toa-M'Jest paused for a moment when he came within sight of the wreckage of Alien Games. This was where Kierendal's Faces had fought their last desperate rearguard action, to cover a retreat into the caverns. For more than an hour, the air around AG had been an inferno of lightning and flame as the Thaumaturgic Corps attacked and elvish mages within answered with power of their own. At the last, the mages had detonated the building itself to seal the cavern entrance below; now, days later, the flattened rubble still smoldered.
The Duke was captured not by memories of the battle, though, but by his wistful recollection of all the happy hours and days he had passed here. Didn't know how good I had it, he thought. Kier, if you're still alive down there, I wish I could tell you how much I miss you. He shook his head and moved on.
Clinging to the past was not a survival trait.
None of his troops here had understood, when he had put his men to the task of constructing this stockade of stone. Some had questioned the utility; their enemies, after all, had been driven underground. From whom did he expect attack on the surface?
He hadn't bothered to explain; as the Patriarch sometimes liked to say, he did not require their understanding, only their obedience.
He certainly wasn't going to tell them that the whole Empire was tumbling down a giant pissoir. He certainly wasn't going to tell them that Toa-Sytell had gone crazy. He certainly wasn't going to tell them that he planned to hunker down here for a few days, then step out once Toa-Sytell collapsed, and end up in charge. It looked now, though, like he'd been a little too optimistic.
He should have cut his losses and bolted days ago.
Wishful thinking, that's what it was. He'd decided he could stay and make things work out because that's what he wanted to happen. He liked being a Duke; he liked being a confidant of the Patriarch, the head of the Eyes of God, wealthy and respected and getting more tail than a man his age has any right to dream of, let alone expect. And he'd really thought he could do some good, too. He had a talent for bringing order out of chaos; he'd shown that during the Second Succession War, when his Knights of Cant had become the capital's unofficial police force. When this shitstorm finally ebbed, he might be the only one left who could put everything back together again.
So he'd hung on, waiting, hoping for a break, while everything slid down the pissoir all around him. He couldn't even count on his own men. There had been fights, with fist and sword; there had been surreptitious knifings in the dark, and even one wild brawl between a pride of Cats and two T-Corps mages that had ended with five Cats and both thaumaturges dead.
Still he had held on. He might be the last sane man in the government. If he ran, who would take care of the Empire?
But the world, he reminded himself as he slipped under the anti-sprite canopy that sheltered the north wall of the stockade, doesn't give trophies for good intentions. He had a motto, one that had kept him alive through many a dangerous time: When the prize is survival, second place is dead last.
These words echoed inside his head as he heard a starchy voice from beyond the wall proclaim loudly that it was in possession of an Imperial Warrant for the arrest of Toa-M'Jest, formerly Duke of Public Order, on charges of treason, conspiracy, and crimes against the Empire. "Shit," he muttered. "Time to go."
No point troubling with either of the other walls; this was obviously a coordinated operation. There was only one direction left.
Down.
Without another word to anyone, he ran.
His instincts told him he might be able to bargain with Kierendal and her subs; those same instincts warned him not to bluster or bluff or argue with these soldiers, and so when they met in the center of the stockade, searching for him, he was long, long gone, down into the caverns his erstwhile gang had ruled: a hare down its warren-run, five steps ahead of the hounds.
3
Night fell on Ankhana.
It was a night without a moon, and rolling clouds smothered the stars. Some scarce unshuttered windows—even scarcer open doors—sparked yellow lamplight here and there across the city, but the only real light as dusk dissolved to full black night was the bloody snarl of flame on the dockside.
In that hellglow, men and women pounced and fled and fought and died; in that hellglow constables pounded heads and backs and occasionally each other. In that hellglow, soldiers marched out through a dying jungle, and pike brigades became bucket brigades.
The river burned along with the buildings, and water was useless: it only spread the oil so much the faster. Soldiers with shovels scratched for dirt and sand to throw on the flames. Soon officers gave over shouting orders and encouragement, and seized shovels and buckets of their own.
Sixteen kilometers upstream from Ankhana, one hundred meters north of the Great Chambaygen's bank, a cube of twilit air shimmered itself into a prismatic spray. The burst of dusk-darkened color resolved itself into twelve men who wore armor of metalized ballistic cloth over semirigid carbon-fiber ceramic leaves backed with Sorbathane. Their helmets were made of identical carbon-fiber ceramic, and each helmet had a full face shield of smoked armorglass inlaid with hair-fine silver wires.
Instantly they marched toward the river, and the cube of air shimmered once more behind them.
The first man to reach the river laid his microfiber pack on the bank, unzipped its plastic sealer, and pulled a clear nylon lanyard. With a hiss, the pack unfolded itself and inflated to become a large boat, into which the balance of the dozen men began stowing their gear in Velcro-lined pouches along the gas cells. Precisely five meters upstream, the leader of the second dozen began to unzip his own pack. A third dozen marched toward a point five meters farther upstream, while a fourth shimmered into existence.
Of all the men on that riverbank that night, four wore different armor. The design of their armor differed only in that the ballistic cloth was not metalized, and the smoked glass of their visors had no lacing of silver wires. The boats were lashed together in groups of three; one of these four men took his place at the stern of the lead boat of each group and held a staff in the water, trailing behind like a rudder. Each of these four men produced a large piece of polished quartz, held it in his other hand, and concentrated.
The boats slipped silently into the gathering darkness.
In the city that was their destination, friars choked and died in the river as they struggled to retrieve the body of a fallen Ambassador.
Below that city, down in the dark, beneath the sheltering stone‑
-A killer chained to a limestone wall stared unseeing, and touched with his mind strands of darkness deeper than the absolute night in which he lay.
—A human who had been a prince of the First Folk lay twisting in mortal fever, hours from death.
—A former duke wandered, lost, in permanent impenetrable black.<
br />
And a man named Habrak—who had been Sergeant of the Guard in the Donjon for twelve years with only a single stain upon his record; who was a man of the first type, for whom the rules never change; who had faced the sudden jungle and the surge of black oil and now the flames that threatened to swallow his city with the same stolid, profound, unimaginative devotion to his duty; who had believed, in his heart, that in his thirty-seven years of military service he had done so much and seen so much more that he was no longer surprised by anything—could only stare with mouth agape when His Radiant Holiness, the Patriarch Toa-Sytell himself, limped down the Courthouse stairs to the basement guardroom.
4
The Patriarch's skin had gone slack and corpse-waxy, and his eyes drowned in pools of bruise; his lips were cracked, seeping blood that trailed down his chin. His robe of office was torn, stained with food and blood and vomit, and embers climbed its hem along a patch of the black oil. He had for escort six nervous, sweating, lip-licking Eyes of God officers who wore full hauberks and chain coifs under steel helms, who walked with bared swords in unsteady hands.
Habrak finally remembered himself and sprang from his desk chair to attention. The Patriarch leaned upon the gate between them as though only those steel bars kept him on his feet.
"Sergeant," the Patriarch croaked. "It's time."
He paused, and glared at Habrak expectantly, waiting for a response. "Come here, man. Don't make me shout. My throat hurts. Didn't you hear me? It's time."
Harbrak swallowed. He moved away from his desk, closer to the gate, stopping a respectful arm's length away. "Time for what, Your Radiance?" he said carefully.
"Time to kill Caine."
"Your Radiance?"
The Patriarch mopped his raddled brow with a shaking hand. "It was the fire, you see? That's how I knew. Foolish. I was so foolish. I thought I could be clever. I thought I could use him, but he has used me. Just like be-fore. The city burns. Burns it burns like before. You remember? You remember before? You remember the city in flames?"
"I do, Radiance," Habrak said grimly.
"Go, then. Handle it yourself." That shaking hand shot forth between the bars of the gate and seized Habrak's shoulder. "You're a good man. I can trust you. I've always known I can trust you."
"Thank you, Radiance."
"What—" The Patriarch's eyes drifted closed, and Habrak thought the man might be about to faint, but even as he lifted a hand to catch his sovereign, those blackened eyes popped open again and fixed him with a glare as sharply inhuman as an eagle's. "What is your name, again?"
"Habrak, Radiance. Sergeant Habrak."
"Habrak, don't try to be lever. Keep it simple. That was my mistake. I thought I was clever enough that I didn't have to keep it simple." "Keep what simple, Radiance?"
"Killing Caine."
"Sir?"
Toa-Sytell gripped Habrak's other shoulder as well, and drew him close to the bars that kept them apart. His breath stank of corruption. "Do it yourself, Habrak Do it. Take your club. Go down into the Shaft. Bash in his skull. Do you understand?"
Habrak stiffened. He had never questioned an order in his life. "Yes, sir."
"And when you're done, feed his body to the grinder."
"Yes, sir."
"Bash him. Bash him good. Grind him up. Bash him, and grind him. You will do that? You will bash him and grind him?"
Habrak saluted. "Yes, sir. But, sir—?"
"Yes?"
"What about Assumption Day, sir?"
"Forget about Assumption Day," the Patriarch muttered acidly. "Everyone else has."
"Yes, sir."
"You're a good man, Habrak. You are about to save the Empire. And his head. Save his head, too. Just like the Empire."
"Sir?"
"We'll need his head. For the pole."
"Yes, sir."
"You will not leave the Donjon without Caine's head. Give him your key," the Patriarch said, indicating one of the Eyes. "The key to this gate."
Habrak dutifully removed it from his large iron ring and handed it through the bars to the Eye of God. The officer clutched it stiffly.
"The next thing to pass through this gateway will be Caine's head, do you understand?" the Patriarch said to the Eye. "No one enters. No one leaves. This gate will not be opened until someone comes up those stairs out of the Donjon and hands Caine's head to you. Do you understand?"
The officer said, "Yes, sir."
"If this gate opens for any other reason, all six of you will have your heads on poles instead. I don't care if Ma'elKoth Himself orders you to open this gate. He may punish you in your next life, but I can kill you in this one."
The officers eyed each other nervously.
He turned back to Habrak. "And do not hope that they will falter, or that some other may open this gate. I have dismissed the guards in the Courthouse above. They could not be trusted. Above you now there are only the Eyes of God. They will be watching."
The Patriarch nodded as though agreeing with some inaudible comment. "I'll be in the chapel."
Then he turned and limped back up the stairs.
Habrak stared after him for a moment, then for a moment longer he looked at the Eyes of God, who looked back at him and at each other, and who seemed decidedly frightened. He picked up his ring of keys in one hand, slung the thong of his iron-bound club around the other, and unlocked the iron-barred door that closed the stairway down to the Donjon.
"Hmp," he muttered under his breath. He'd almost left without a knife. Can't cut somebody's head off with a club, can you? From a drawer of his desk he got a large, single-edged dirk and stuck it behind the belt that girdled his armor.
Then he tromped down the stairs to kill Caine.
5
Jest had been deep in the darkness for a long, long time.
By the time claws had finally reached out of the infinite midnight of the caverns, seized him, and dragged him into this larger darkness, Jest knew exactly who he was and what he would do. He was a survivor. He would survive.
"I'm unarmed. I surrender," he repeated, as he had ever since he had escaped into the caverns a step ahead of the Eyes of God. He'd said it again and again, over and over, endlessly, for what must have been days, his throat dry, his lips cracking, his eyes so long benighted that he had lost the memory of light. "I'm unarmed, and I surrender."
He continued until his silence was invited by a cuff to the back of his head.
This darkness was textured with sound: shufflings and grunts and snorts and sniffles, the occasional metallic rustle of armor or the scrape of a blade on a stone.
His Grace the Honorable Toa-M'Jest, Duke of Public Order, would in similar circumstances have been inclined to bluster: to remind his captors of his importance, and hint at Imperial reprisals for any harm he might suffer. His Majesty the King of Cant would have been inclined to bargain: to invite his captors to set a price for his freedom, to negotiate a deal and then honor it or not, as suited his advantage. But both of those men had been eaten by the darkness.
Here there was only Jest, as his mother had named him: a cruel joke played on her by her body and the world.
"Welcome, Your Grace, to my humble home."
The voice was Kierendal's, though he wasn't sure that voice was the right word. It was curiously toneless, clear and soft, and sounded so near that he should have been able to feel her breath upon his neck. But he could feel only rough claws that dug into his arms and held him upright. He could see only the geometric flicker and amorphic pulse of his eyelights. And this place smelled like the fucking Shaft. "Kier—" he began.
"Hsst! Don't say that name! Don't ever say that name." The voice slid from cold panic to a cynical drawl. "It's bad luck to name the unquiet dead."
"Dead—?"
"Thrice dead. That feya died by her own hand: she drank poison. Then, some days later, she died of grief, at Commons' Beach. Finally, later still, she gave her life to protect her people, fighting the might of the Empire
in the burning ruins of her own home."
"Three times dead and still kicking," Jest said softly, without mockery. "She must be tough."
"Once, perhaps. No more."
"If, ah, that lady is dead, then who am I talking to?"
The darkness replied, "I am that unhappy feya's vengeful corpse." "Huh. I thought your voice sounded a little funny," he ventured, but received no answering chuckle.
"It is not my voice you hear."
"Yeah, all right," he said, thinking, Fuck me, she's as crazy as Toa-Sytell. But he had no other hope. "I want to make you an offer."
"Of course you do."
"I can tell you where the Cats, the Eyes, and the Thaumaturgic Corps are stationed—positions and numbers. I can tell you where our weapons and supplies are. I can map out our patrol routes through the caverns. I personally drew up the plans for the main assault—"
"And what good is this information to me?"
She couldn't be so crazy as that. Could she? "It'll win your war for you," he said patiently.
"There is no war."
"Lady, it sure as fuck looked like a war from our side."
Silence.
More shufflings and shiftings of weight.
Thick, wet drips and drops: perhaps the drool of something large and hungry.
"Your army—those human troops of whom you speak—" the voice finally said, dark and slow and empty, "have other concerns, more pressing than who might range these caverns. Your human city burns, and human ghouls stalk its ruin."
"Listen," Jest said, licking his lips. How much of this was madness? He didn't know how long he'd been down in the dark; Ankhana might as well have been on the far side of the world. Her raving could have truth in it, and he'd never know.
"Listen, the Patriarch's gone crazy. He thinks I'm a goddamn Cainist. I would have maybe stuck it out and fought back, but there's nobody I could really trust. Everybody's gone strange—and I mean strange." He softened his tone, made his voice warmer, more inviting. "You and I, what we had was never about trust. I help you; you help me. Favors given for favors received."
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