“You have heard correctly, my lord,” I say. “We destroyed many of Prime’s creatures, but ultimately we were forced to withdraw, and some of my friends were killed.”
“It is ever thus, when we attempt to confront Prime,” Toranaka says to Catoria. “As I have often warned you.”
“I don’t plan to give up,” I say. “Prime is a threat to all of us. We must all work together to defeat him.”
“Indeed.” Toranaka sneers. “And you, who have been here less than a week, have decided you are the one to lead this glorious battle?”
It is our nature. I try to blot out Prime’s voice. “If someone else wants to lead it, I’m happy to let them. So long as we move quickly.”
Toranaka looks dubious, but Catoria leans forward. “What do you propose?”
“My lady…” Toranaka says.
I speak quickly over him. Probably an unforgivable breach of etiquette, but rot it. “Your leader, Silvoa, knew that the key to defeating Prime is to take control of the Harbor’s system and use it against him. I am an Eddica mage-blood, my lady. If you let me use the access point here, I will attempt to reach the one in Prime’s stronghold.” Somehow. “If I succeed, he can be destroyed with no risk to your own people.”
There’s a moment of shocked silence. I glance at Shiara, and her painted lips are tight, her eyes fixed on Catoria. The girl is looking down at me, almost doll-like in her formal attire, her expression unreadable.
Toranaka clears his throat. “Lady Isoka,” he says, and from him it sounds like a slur. “Do you take us for complete fools?”
“Of course not—” I manage to get out, but he’s rising to his feet.
“You only want use of the access point? How reasonable! You will destroy what is, at worst, an ongoing nuisance, and in return you merely want us to grant you total power over the Harbor and all its residents.”
“Prime is more than a nuisance,” I say. “He’s killed my friends.”
“We have not lost anyone to his creatures for more than a year.”
“Because you stay cooped up in here, and don’t dare venture out at night—”
“In any event,” Toranaka grates. “If we grant you what you ask, and you attack, you may anger Prime and disturb our present balance. And if you succeed, what then?”
“If we act soon, Soliton could take anyone who wants to go back home,” I snap.
“Is that your goal?” Toranaka sits back. “We of the Cresos are under sentence of death from the Emperor. This is our home now, and we cannot simply hand it over to an outsider.”
I wonder if I should tell him that the Emperor who sentenced them is himself long dead, along with everyone else alive at the time. It might not matter as far as the sentence is concerned, of course. Emperors come and go, but the bureaucracy remembers.
“Lady Catoria, please.” I bow my head. “Silvoa wanted this, didn’t she?”
From Shiara’s quick intake of breath, I sense this is the wrong thing to say. Catoria’s eyes are hooded.
“Lord Toranaka is right,” she says, after a pregnant pause. “Even if you were to succeed, Lady Isoka, how can we trust you?”
“But—”
She blinks, and for a moment there are tears in her eyes. “This audience is at an end.”
* * *
“I should have warned you,” Shiara says. “Catoria feels … very strongly about Silvoa.”
“So did Gragant,” I say. “That’s what convinced him, in the end.”
“It’s different,” Shiara says, quietly.
We’re in an anteroom, furnished in the same quasi-Imperial style with hangings, cushions, and a low table. Two guardsmen wait outside, so we speak in low voices. Someone has gone to fetch Jack, who will be accompanying us home.
“Different how?” I say.
Meroe, who has been very quiet thus far, says, “They were lovers, weren’t they?”
“I don’t know,” Shiara says. “But Catoria loved Silvoa, for a certainty. When Silvoa went with Gragant to confront Prime, over Catoria’s objections, Catoria felt betrayed.”
“But it was Prime who killed Silvoa,” I say. “Surely Catoria wants him to pay for that?”
“I suspect she is unclear in her mind on the subject,” Shiara says. “Which means she looks to Toranaka for guidance.”
“Rotting great.” My hands clench tight. “So what in the Blessed’s name are we supposed to do now?”
I look at Meroe, my beautiful Meroe, who always has all the answers. Her forehead is creased in deep thought. When she notices us staring, she gives a rueful smile and shakes her head.
My fists clench tighter. Outside, I know, the sun is sliding toward the horizon. How much longer does Tori have?
17
TORI
“So how does it look?” Garo says.
They’re cleaning the bodies out of the road.
Not even bodies, really. Pieces of bodies. Remnants of bodies. Things that used to be people, until they were hit with Myrkai fire, torn apart with Tartak force, cut down with Melos blades, or dissected by fighters with Rhema speed.
No wonder the Immortal captain had been so confident. Any normal mob would have broken under the onslaught of her adepts. Any mob still capable of fear.
I can see the cleaners, through a gap in the window curtain. Some of them are using brooms.
“Ward Guard cavalry has sortied a few times to keep the area around the gates clear,” someone says. “But otherwise they’re staying put. The ward wall is fully manned on the uphill side, and facing the military highway.”
“But not facing the Sixteenth.” Hasaka. His voice is ragged with exhaustion.
“They pulled out of there after midnight,” Giniva says. “Back to the outer wall on one side and the military highway on the other. There have been a few messengers from the Sixteenth. Apparently riots broke out there about the same time they did here, but no one has really taken charge.”
“Textbook tactics,” Hasaka says. “Encircle the infection, wait while it burns itself out, then tighten the noose.”
“Apparently,” Garo says, “we’re more virulent than they expected.”
All the carnage hadn’t helped the Immortals in the end. It might have made things worse. By the time the rioters reached them, the mob’s blood was well up. Black-armored soldiers were torn apart, not by magical force, but with bare hands. Men battered their knuckles bloody against chain veils, turning the faces underneath into pulp. A group of young women, robes spattered crimson, beat a Melos adept with stones until she roasted in her own armor.
I did this. Puppet strings. Monster. I’m sitting here, in a clean robe, when I ought to be sodden with blood.
And for what?
Someone dumps a bucket of water on a bloodstain in the road below. I blink, aware that I’ve missed something. Everyone politely pretends not to notice. None of us have gotten any sleep, and now the sun is climbing up over the wall that encircles the Eleventh Ward like a noose.
“We need to break out,” Garo says. “Get past the walls.”
“Impossible,” Hasaka says. “We’d be slaughtered if we tried an assault.”
“Even if we could get past the cordon,” someone else says, “what would it gain us?” The speaker is an older woman. Hotara, my mind supplies. One of the original leaders of the riots. “They’d still crush us in the end.”
“We need to get out of the city!” A younger man I don’t know. “If we can get through the outer defenses, we might—”
“Don’t be stupid,” Hasaka says. “In open country we’re just a rabble. The Legions would cut us to pieces in a day.”
“Then what?” the boy says, almost pleading. “Hide? Throw ourselves on the Emperor’s mercy? What in the Rot did we do all this for?”
“Our best chance is to negotiate,” Garo says. He sounds so confident. “Get the Emperor to declare a general amnesty, and press him for our demands.”
“Down with the Immortals!” several people
shout. “Down with the draft!”
Garo nods. “But right now we don’t have anything to negotiate with. That’s why we need to break into the upper districts. The government will let the Eleventh and the Sixteenth burn to the ground, just to make an example. If we can take the Fourth, or the Second, then we’ll be threatening the property of people who actually matter. As far as the Emperor is concerned, I mean.”
“That still doesn’t tell us how we’re going to get through the walls,” Hasaka says. “Kahnzoka was designed for exactly this problem. If the Ward Guard use their siege engines on us, they could flatten all of the Eleventh Ward in a few hours.”
“They haven’t yet,” Giniva says. “That means something.”
“It means they’re still hoping to salvage this,” Garo says. “So we have a little time. If we can—”
“Garo,” I say abruptly. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”
Everyone looks at me, and I realize I’ve been silent throughout the meeting. Hasaka clears his throat, nervously.
“Of course,” Garo says. “Hasaka, Hotara, can you put the word around that we’re looking for ideas?”
I stand up, and he takes my hand and leads me to an adjoining room. We’re on the top floor of the former Immortal safe house, which was their barracks. The large common room overlooks the front entrance, and lets onto several smaller chambers, all laid with austere sleeping mats. As the lair of a squad of secret police, it’s depressingly normal.
The cells, apparently, are down in the basement. I haven’t dared to look yet.
“How are you doing?” Garo says, sliding the door closed behind us. “Did you manage to sleep at all?”
I shake my head, mutely. Every time I close my eyes, I see flames.
“You don’t have to stay here,” he says. “We can—”
“I’m staying.” Of course I’m staying. This is my fault.
“All right.” He leans against the wall, smiling. Even with the bags under his eyes, his hair rumpled and spiked with sweat, he looks like a hero. I wonder what would happen if I kissed him now. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I just…” I pause, toying with my braid for a moment. It’s coming undone. “You’re in there making decisions.”
“Someone has to,” Garo says. “Especially now. After last night…” He shakes his head. “Unless we do something, when they finally move in, it’s going to be a bloodbath.”
“So you’re setting yourself as leader? You’re comfortable with that?” I twist my braid around my hand and squeeze. “What if you get it wrong?”
“You think I don’t worry about that?” he says softly. “If you’re asking me whether I have all the answers, Tori, you know I don’t.” He shakes his head. “But nobody else does, either.”
I watch him for a moment. He pushes away from the wall, comes over to me, puts his hand on my shoulder. I want to recoil, or to fold myself against him.
“You’re half the reason they listen to me,” he says. “Everyone knows Grandma trusted you, and Hasaka and the others from the hospital trust you, too. Without you I’d be an outsider.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No. I’m saying I need your help.” Garo takes a deep breath. “You’re right. I don’t know what I’m doing. But I’m not going to abandon people who’ve put their faith in me.”
“I…”
I take a half-step forward, toward him, and he puts his arms around my shoulders and pulls me in. My head presses against his solid chest, and he’s warm.
“I’ll make sure you’re safe,” he whispers. “No matter what. Even if things go … wrong.”
“That’s not the point,” I whisper back.
“I know. It’s still true.”
Eventually I pull away, wiping my eyes and sniffing. He’s staring at me, and I wonder if this is the moment for a kiss, and I feel a strange lightness and a tingle in the soles of my feet. Then I think about the bodies outside, and come crashing back to earth. He turns away.
* * *
Garo goes back to the others, to planning the revolution. I slip downstairs. There are people I need to see.
The first floor of the building is open space, unfurnished and empty. A training hall, maybe, or an interrogation cell. Now it’s been converted into an impromptu sickroom, laid out with those who were wounded in yesterday’s fighting. Several assistants from the hospital arrived during the night and, along with a few volunteers, they’re doing their best. That doesn’t amount to much. No one has gone back to the hospital to see if any supplies survived the raid and the fire, so the caretakers are working with torn linen bandages, bowls of clean water, and little else.
At one end of the hall, a curtain has been raised, cutting off a small section of the room. I walk in that direction, stepping over people crusted black with horrible burns, or whose limbs were twisted by magical force. Men and women, young and old—once unleashed, the Immortals did not discriminate. The wounded moan, plead with the caretakers, beg for water.
It’s almost a relief to push the curtain aside and step into another realm. There are twisted, broken bodies here, too, but they’re mercifully still and quiet, lined up one beside the other and covered with white sheets. Off to one side of the line of corpses, there’s a body laid out by itself, on a spare sleeping mat. It’s surrounded by small offerings—flowers, white lilies for death. White cloths knotted to resemble a burial shroud, another traditional gift for the dead. Food, plain white buns, and a few bottles of liquor.
It’s mostly appropriate. Grandma Tadeka certainly enjoyed a drink, though she never much cared for flowers.
Kosura sits in front of Grandma’s body, resting on her knees, head bowed. Someone has cut her hair with a dagger, leaving a ragged-edged, boyish mess. I’d seen her briefly last night, wrapped in a torn sheet, spattered with blood. She’s cleaned herself up since, but she still doesn’t look like the friend I remember. Her face is mottled with bruises, one eye nearly swollen shut, but her expression is peaceful. Her lips move silently in prayer. I kneel awkwardly beside her.
“I thought she’d be all right,” Kosura says, after a moment. “She survived so much, I thought for sure…”
“So did I,” I say. Grandma’s face is covered by a cloth, dressed in a snow-white funeral kizen, her hands folded neatly. I wonder who did that. “Are you—”
“At least I knew you were all right,” Kosura says.
“How?”
“Because they kept asking about you,” she says. “When they beat me, they asked me where you might go, who your friends were. Every time they did that, I knew they hadn’t gotten to you. I can’t … tell you how much that meant.”
I glance at her, trying to find some hint of sarcasm in her battered features. If it’s there, I can’t see it, and I feel guilty for looking. Kosura is a better person than I could ever be. I want to tell her I’m sorry, but to say that out loud would expose its pathetic inadequacy.
I turn back to Grandma’s body. It seems shrunken in death, too small to contain the force of personality she’d wielded. Just a frail old woman, now broken.
“What would she want us to do?” I say. “She would have hated … all of this. She never wanted us to fight.”
“Maybe.” Kosura closes her good eye again. “Grandma would say you do what you can with what you have. What she had was a hospital and a place for people to hide.” She takes a deep breath. “Maybe we have more than that.”
“Maybe.” Or maybe we’re all going to die. I struggle to my feet, knees twinging. “Is there anything you need?”
“No,” Kosura says. She bows her head, returning to prayer. As I go to leave the curtained morgue, she says, “Thank you, Tori.”
Don’t thank me. The bodies in the road outside are jeering. Monster, monster, monster.
One more visit to make.
* * *
The cells are empty now, but no one has scrubbed away the bloodstains.
The ba
sement under the Immortal safe house is divided into a dozen separate chambers, with a large space at either end. They’re more like cages than cells, with floor-to-ceiling steel bars for walls and no pretense of privacy. The place was overcrowded with prisoners from the hospital when we broke in, a dozen to a cage. They’re free, now, joining the crowds in the streets or lying on mats upstairs. All the cells are empty, except for one.
The Immortal captain is naked, shackled hand and foot to the stone wall. This isn’t for the sake of humiliation, or at least not only for humiliation. She’s a Tartak adept, and Blessed only knows what other Wells she might be hiding. Even chained hand and foot, she’s dangerous, and needs to be watched every moment. Clothes might conceal the telltale aura that means she’s making a move.
Two young women with makeshift spears are on guard duty, one sitting outside the cell, the other well back. The first to watch the captain and make sure she isn’t doing something subtle. The second to sound the alarm if the first gets torn to pieces. Hasaka suggested the arrangement, which makes me wonder what exactly he did in his stint in the Ward Guard.
Both girls stand up at the sight of me, though they don’t bar my path. Garo’s not wrong—people do respect me here, Blessed knows why. I take a breath to steady myself.
“I need to talk to her,” I say. “Alone.”
“It’s dangerous,” the guard says. “If you’re in there with her, we won’t be able to stop her from hurting you.”
“I promise to scream,” I tell her.
The pair look at each other, but neither seems to want to be the one to stop me. They open the cell door and I step inside. The Immortal captain raises her head at the sound of my footsteps.
She’s a tall, handsome woman, probably in her forties, with dark hair cut as short as a man’s and a surprisingly soft face under the sinister chain veil. There are scars on her arms, across her shoulders, the thin raised lines of cuts and the winding, shiny marks of repeated powerburn. Her breasts are heavy and sagging, and her belly bears stretch marks from pregnancy. Adepts breed, of course, for the benefit of the noble bloodlines. I wonder if she knows her children.
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