We broke apart then, one of her gearwork limbs dragging on the sundial behind her, more sparks trailing in its wake. I had taken another wound, across my other thigh, not deep, but painful and worrying: I was losing too much blood to keep this up for much longer. I drew in a harsh breath, then another, and she attacked again and this time I merely tried to survive.
My blades moved like whipcords, my mind directing them without thought. Parry here, block there, twist and fall back, sidestep—stumble, thrust. It wasn’t enough. I was driven back, heart screaming in my throat, lungs unable to draw full breath, every rattling gasp flecking my lips with blood. Chan Sha crowed, rushed forward—and slipped, and I nearly took her head off with my cutlass, instead shearing through the metallic appendage she managed to throw up just in time. The cutlass was ripped from my hand so I punched her instead, right in her false eye.
“Ouch!”
“Burns, doesn’t it?” she gasped, stumbling backward a dozen paces.
“How?” I shook my hand. It felt like I’d punched a live coal.
“Magic.”
“F-fuck your magic,” I said, my words loud as the storm suddenly ceased save for a soft drizzle and now-distant thunder.
“Speaking of … where’s yours at?” Chan Sha asked, reaching up and adjusting her glowing eye. “Surely you’re better than this? Or did you blow your load killing all of my crew?”
“Saving it all for your pretty face,” I told her.
“Then let’s see it,” Chan Sha growled, dropping into her familiar crouch.
Only half of her limbs were still working, but I’d begun to wonder if I could have taken her with Sin, let alone without. My arms were wooden, barely willing to listen to my exhortations to fight; my good lung was beginning to feel heavy, too, and the rest of me was all pain and fire. I didn’t have much left to give. This was it. The final charge.
I’ll die … but you first.
A clanging sound drew both our eyes. Three of them, anyway. A hook wrapped around a chunk of iron hit the lip of the rooftop and rolled to a stop; a braided hawser line led up into the dark sky. A moment later a broad figure slid down the cable, tricorne tumbling from his head and strawberry-blond locks spilling out to frame a familiar face.
Eld.
“It’s good to see you, Buc,” he said with a grin that sounded genuine, but in the bit of starlight that was beginning to peek out, I could see the lines of strain on his face. “Is that our old pal Chan Sha I spy?”
“Still making bad jokes, I see,” she growled.
“Aye, but none as bad a joke as you are. Revenge? For what?” He snorted, moving forward at an oblique angle so that he got closer to me without seeming to walk much at all. Lightning flashed and I saw a massive balloon up above, air venting from half a dozen holes as the sides sank in on itself. The line Eld had roped in began to quiver and the lump of iron screeched as it was pulled toward the edge. Eld paid it no mind, just kept walking. As he drew closer, I saw the long musket strapped to his back, with a telescope attached to the barrel, and suddenly realized who’d been felling those who would have done for me if he hadn’t done for them first.
“Go kill your Goddess if you want revenge,” he said, sliding the heavy rifle into his arms.
“You sound like her,” Chan Sha said.
“I learned from the best,” he said simply.
“If that were true, then you wouldn’t be about to die, wasting your fool life on a Godsforsaken roof fighting a war that few will know of and none will care about.”
“Some things are worth dying for,” Eld said. He tossed the musket up in the air, caught it by the barrel, and swung around, letting it fly—
“Friends are one of them!”
—straight at Chan Sha.
“Then die, both of you,” Chan Sha said, sweeping her hands in front of her. Her remaining metallic arms crossed, catching the heavy musket and sending it spinning away. The blow clearly damaged the arms, which now hung uselessly. She waved her gang forward. “Kill him! Bring her to me! And someone get me another Spider!”
She disappeared in the horde that surged around her, clamoring for our blood. Eld drew his sword, swept me up in his free arm, and ran, with the remains of the gangs of Servenza hard on our heels. It should have hurt. It did hurt, a little, but the pain was a pinprick, overwhelmed by the warmth that suffused me. I’d been alone for most of my life and then, when I’d thought I was alone no longer and secure in that feeling, I’d had that taken from me as well. Now, against all odds, I wasn’t alone anymore. I had Eld.
“Any ideas?” Eld gasped.
“I thought you had one, since you swept me off my feet.”
“Well, you didn’t look up to running,” he said. “And my ride seems to have sunk,” he added, as the balloon contraption disappeared below the roof of the Lighthouse, heading for the canals below. “But if I keep going in this circle, we’re going to run into the other end of them.”
“There.” I pointed in the growing starlight. “By the edge of the gnomon. There’s a bit of a blind corner there. If we can stop them there, turn them, we can make for the edge of the roof. I have a—”
“Plan,” he finished. “Aye, I know.” He flashed me a grin, his blue eyes warm in the darkness. “You always do, Buc. All right, here we go.”
Setting me down carefully, Eld swung his sword back and forth, adjusting his grip and rolling his shoulders. As the pounding feet came nearer, he casually drew a short, four-barreled pistole from the pocket of his powder-blue jacket. As the frontrunners rounded the now-pitted edge of the sundial, he fired. A man screamed, clutching at his face; the figures on either side of him crumpled completely. Eld rushed forward, sword flashing, and I swapped my cutlass for my slingshot, shoving the blade through my belt.
One. Two. It took everything I had to draw it back, the steel bands reinforcing the wood proving too strong for me unless I threw my full weight backward, stretching and releasing in one motion. It was awkward, but effective. Seven. Eight. Eld stood like a stone against the incoming tide, breaking all upon him. I searched out the few rogue waves that escaped and snuffed them out. Fourteen. Fifteen. My arms screamed. Not my arms. Sin.
“He needs you, Buc!”
I let the slingshot fall and saw Sin was right: the tide was proving too much. Eld was being forced to move back. He fought it, moving no more than a pace at a time, his sword a blur, but he was growing slower with each swing. I dropped the slingshot into my pocket and drew the cutlass, needing both hands to keep it steady.
“I’m coming, Eld!”
He must have heard me, because he danced back a few paces, turned, and then moved so that he could protect my right while the gnomon shielded my left. I lurched into a run and slammed into the burly man who was trying to lay Eld’s face open with a claw hammer. We both screamed, but his was louder as I laid him open from clavicle to bulging stomach. I rebounded and somehow Eld caught me with one hand while wielding his sword in the other. I steadied myself and then set to, both of us going at it hammer and tongs.
Our enemies swarmed around us and in moments we became an island surrounded by howling, screaming masses eager for our heads. Eld and I were back-to-back. He drew a pistole and fired it point-blank into the crowd, the rotating barrel affording him a quick second shot that opened up enough space around us for a momentary respite.
“We have to get to the edge of the roof,” I gasped out.
“Then what?” he asked, drawing another pistole from a pocket in his coat. “I told you, my ride’s sunk.”
“Then, we jump.”
“Free-fall suicide?”
“No, we fly.”
Eld shot me a look to see if I was serious. I was, sort of, but I wasn’t sure if it would work, not with the two of us.
“You have to trust me.”
“Of course I trust you.” His face lit up with a smile. “Always have; always will.”
The tide surged around us again and we fought, backs pressed to
gether, slowly working our way, step-by-step, toward the far edge of the roof, each pace paid for in blood. I found myself facing half a dozen men wearing those fucking chain-mail jackets of the Krakens. Knowing I had no energy left to swing my cutlass, I elbowed Eld.
“Pistoles and switch.”
“Catch!”
Eld tossed a pair of pistoles over his shoulder and I dropped the cutlass, catching the weapons by their barrels. Flipping them, I fired, felt them buck in my fists. Smoke and flame obscured my vision as Eld and I spun in a tight circle, keeping our backs together. When the smoke cleared, the Krakens would find themselves facing a relatively fresh swordsman instead of a tired, ice-picking woman. The barrels hissed as they swung over, gears grinding, turning fresh barrels into place. I fired the one in my left hand and saw a woman sit down hard, her chest bloody, then took off the top of a man’s head; he fell, tripping another man.
The swirling mass of humanity facing us surged forward. Suddenly Eld hurled his sword like a spear, making everyone flinch, and leapt up onto a pile of bodies. He shed his jacket, revealing massive, twin rotating blunderbusses with pistole grips—they were tied around each shoulder so they’d hung beneath his armpits. Eld whipped them up into firing position, their large barrels looking more like cannon-pistoles.
“Who wants to die next?” he roared.
“Shockingly few takers,” I muttered, my voice loud in the silence.
A blunderbuss at this range was a fearsome thing, easily capable of tearing someone limb from limb or crippling a dozen people with each shot. And Eld had eight of them between the two weapons.
Growing up on the streets, death was a constant companion and a cheap one at that, which is why so many joined the gangs and why so many had been willing to die tonight. Still, there’s catching a blade in the chest and then there’s having your arm sawed off by hot lead. One you can wrap your mind around; the other haunts your nightmares. Judging by the silence and lack of motion, those still standing had vivid imaginations.
“Kill the pair!” Chan Sha’s howl filled the silence, drawing every eye to where she once again stood atop the gnomon’s point. Fresh mechanical appendages, these equipped with scimitar blades, rose behind her shoulders.
“I know you have a plan, Buc,” Eld said. In the distance, the bells of the cathedral began to toll.
One.
“This time I have one, too.”
“You do?” I asked, one part of my mind listening to Eld, the other part looking for a way to make it the score of paces we needed to reach the lip of the roof. Chan Sha began screaming threats when none of her forces charged. “Beyond sailing some magical-arse balloon in the middle of a storm to try to stop a gang war the likes of which Servenza has never seen, while taking on a maniacal madwoman, all to save some slip of a girl?”
Eld’s laughter broke my concentration. I looked up and he was right there, his gaze melting into my own. “I’m so sorry, Buc. Sorry I lied, that I let magic and Sin and the rest keep us apart.” He pulled me to him. “If I hadn’t been such a fool, we could have faced the factory, and all of this, together.”
“We’re together now,” I told him, speaking into his chest, breathing him in. Past the gunpowder and blood and sweat, he was there: clean and wholesome.
“Aye. We’re together now.”
“The woman, man, or child what brings me the girl still breathing I’ll name my second!” Chan Sha shouted. The cathedral bells tolled a second time, pealing out across Servenza.
“Eld! We need to go. Now!” I pushed him but he didn’t move.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“W-what?”
“I’m sorry about that, too. I should have told you when I began to feel something more than just friendship, Buc. I—”
A whistling sound filled the air and Eld looked up, above the gang members who were beginning to shout and curse as they worked themselves up for another charge. Lightning flashed, illuminating some sort of winged creature and the bombs it was dropping.
“Part of your plan, Buc?”
“Aye.”
“You’re not using Sin. If you were you wouldn’t need whatever that plan is,” he guessed. “You’re afraid of Sin and the power he offers, ashamed of using it … because of me. Buc, you’re the strongest person in the world. You’re stronger than Sin, stronger than his Goddess. Use that strength. Use him. You’ll need it all. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Eld looked down at me, his eyes filled with tears. “Last time we faced Chan Sha,” he whispered, “you saved my life.” He bent down and kissed me.
I wasn’t prepared for the surge of electricity and warmth his lips sent racing through me, but I didn’t need to be. I kissed him back and tried to pull him closer, but he caught my hands in one of his own. Tears fell down his cheeks as he pulled back. I opened my mouth to ask what he was doing even as he began to move, wrapping me in one arm, leveling one of the blunderbusses in the other. The whistling was growing louder, turning into an angry scream.
“Now it’s my turn.” When he pulled the trigger, the massive gun leapt in his fist and bodies flew through the air, some dead, others fleeing. Eld ran for the edge of the Lighthouse roof, jumping onto the lip of the brick wall.
Then he threw me over the edge.
As I flew I saw Eld, standing on the lip, fire spouting from his fists as gang members leapt toward him from every side, steel and fire filling the air around him as he faced down Chan Sha and the gangs of Servenza. Falling toward them all were the bombs filled with Serpent’s Flame that the Artificer had dropped at the second tolling of the bells. Dropped on my command. Dropped on Chan Sha. And now … dropped on Eld.
“Nooo.”
Wings shot out from the gearwork strapped to my back, triggered by my sudden momentum, and I was flipped violently around as the Artificer’s glider sought to stabilize itself. Something inside me broke and I tasted blood in my mouth. A lot of it. Everything was a blur; the streets rushed up to greet me, the canals reflecting the gunfire and now bright starlight. The wings kept growing and suddenly my plunge turned into a graceful swan dive, and then I began to rise, the gears twisting the wings back and forth, capturing the wind.
Eld. I can save Eld.
I reached for the straps, intending to steer as the Artificer’s notes had indicated, but could make no headway against the powerful thermals I was caught in, no matter how hard I strained to turn the glider. In moments I’d left the Lighthouse behind and Servenza with it, the dark waters of the Crescent shimmering beneath me as I glided out over the bay. Suddenly night turned into day as the Lighthouse exploded behind me in a violent conflagration of bombs and fire and screeching gearwork. I tried to twist my head, to see, and couldn’t, but realized I didn’t need to, as the waters of the Crescent provided a mirror for the destruction that I had wrought.
Have to turn around. Need to save Eld!
“Sin! Give me strength.”
“You said you’d do this on your own,” he whispered in my mind.
“For me, aye, but for Eld? I’ve already sacrificed myself once for him, I’ll do it again.”
“I know you would,” he said quietly. “But he’s gone, Buc.” He hesitated. “Eld died to save you.”
“He’s not dead!” I growled, thrashing around in the straps. “Now turn this fucking hunk of steel around. I command it.”
“If I did that you’d die, too. Either from all the damage you’ve taken or else from the flames, if you were able to reach what’s left back there.”
“Turn around! I have to save him!” I screamed.
I kicked hard, whipping my body back and forth; the glider caught the wind from the wrong direction and suddenly we spiraled. My head slammed into something hard and my vision swam through inky night and blurry stars. Darkness swallowed me.
62
I came to with tears in my eyes and a burning in my lungs. I blinked to clear my vision and realized I was heading straight for a small rocky outcrop
ping in the Crescent. I was about to chastise Sin for healing me—I recognized that burning as his work—but, remembering the blood in my mouth and the strange, heavy feeling in my chest, decided to let it pass. Strangely colored light flickered off the water; the glider’s wings were pulling in slowly, as if by command. Then I saw that it was by command: mine. My hands were on the straps, guiding it.
“Sin, what the fuck? I told you to leave me alone.”
“You blacked out, Buc. I’m just getting us to the meeting point in one piece. Then you can do what you will.”
I screamed when we landed and my wounded left leg cried out from the impact. We toppled over, landing awkwardly because of the wings. Half on my back and half propped up, I could see Servenza, lit up like the Festival of Lights.
“Eld!” Tearing at the straps, I pulled the gearwork apparatus off my back and dragged myself to the edge of the water, staring across the Crescent at the disaster I had caused. The top of the Lighthouse, fully engulfed in flames, broke and toppled over. What looked like sparks from a campfire flew up into the air, but I knew those sparks were massive beams and that if not for storm that had just passed, all of Servenza would go up like a tinderbox.
I love you.
Eld’s words filled my ears, his kiss my lips, and that blissful moment stole my breath away for a moment. When I found it again, I screamed until my voice broke and my body with it, tears making me blind as I was racked with sobs, collapsing onto the gritty ground. I’d lost Eld once, and then, when I’d found him—no, when he found me—I’d lost him again.
Forever.
“I never got to tell him,” I whispered, my voice strangled by grief and pain.
“Tell him what?” Sin whispered gently.
“That I loved him, too. He said it and I was so surprised and then it all happened so fast and I didn’t and now he’s gone and I didn’t—I didn’t say it! I didn’t fucking say it!”
“Buc, he knew! You know he did. He knew you loved him and now you know he loved you.”
The Justice in Revenge Page 43