And the rotting heart of it is, back then, I would have been telling the truth. If I’d had a choice between losing Tori and watching the city burn, I would have helped light the match. Now … well, I don’t know. The bluff isn’t my intentions. The bluff is that I’ve never been able to get one angel to do what I want for very long, much less turn the whole lot of them on the city.
But Naga doesn’t know that, does he?
“Come on,” I tell our people. “We’re leaving.”
It’s hard, turning my back on all those crossbows. But Naga stays silent as we push through the ranks of soldiers outside the palace, and no one pulls the trigger.
12
ISOKA
A ragged cheer rises from the battlements as we come into sight of the ward wall. A few minutes later, we’re passing through the gates, back into the dubious safety of rebel territory. The Imperial forces have stayed behind, out of bowshot of the defenders, hundreds of militia and Ward Guard watching as Red Sashes scream taunts and make cheerfully obscene gestures.
Word has spread down the hill at the speed of rumor, racing ahead of us. My confrontation with Naga happened in front of a thousand soldiers, impossible to keep quiet. If the whole city doesn’t yet know that the vast, strange ship pulling up to Kahnzoka’s docks is commanded by Gelmei Isoka, it soon will. For the Red Sashes, it’s the first bit of good news they’ve had in weeks, and they’re willing to take it. I’d worried that Soliton’s appearance might provoke more fear than jubilation.
We made it. I can still scarcely believe it. Tori is walking beside me, waving at the rebels who recognize her and send up fresh cheers. We didn’t even have to cross blades with anyone.
It won’t last. Which is why we need to move quickly.
“Is the cart ready?” I shout.
The sergeant fights through the press of cheering men and manages a salute. “Ready and waiting!”
“Meroe’s down by the harbor,” I tell Tori. “I need to make sure things are going all right—you can wait here, if—”
“I’m staying with you,” Tori says.
I start to object, then look at her fierce, exhausted face, and stop. My heart gives a weak flop. Blessed knows I never want to let her out of my sight again. So we all pile into the cart, an old, unsprung farmer’s wagon drawn by a pair of scrawny-looking mules. Given that most of the livestock in the city has been eaten by now, I’m surprised the rebels were able to find even this much. The Blues stay behind, except for a driver, and we bounce out of the courtyard and onto the smoother military highway. It runs straight as an arrow from here to the harbor.
Tori is huddled with Giniva, who I assume is filling her in on everything that happened while she was a captive. Jack is distracted trying to charm the mules, but Zarun sits next to me and gives me a questioning look.
“That went … more or less according to plan,” he says.
“For once,” I agree. “I don’t think the bluff will hold Naga for long, though. When I don’t bring the angels ashore and use them to help the rebels, he’ll figure it out.”
“He may have a hard time convincing his soldiers of that,” Zarun says. “I’d say we’ll get a few days’ grace. It’s something.”
A few days. I shake my head. “Then what?”
“That’s up to you, ‘fearless leader.’” This is a joke at Jack’s expense, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “And your sister, I suppose.”
I look at Tori, deep in conversation with Giniva. She looks more like the Tori I used to know, clean and well-dressed, but there’s a hardness in her face I barely recognize.
Or, rather, recognize too well. I see it in the mirror.
“What would you do?” I say softly. “If it were you, and we were in Jyashtan?”
“Bash her over the head and drag her on the ship,” Zarun says cheerfully. “Get out of here and never look back.”
“And leave the rebels?”
“Like you said. They made their bed, they can lie in it.”
I close my eyes. “Tori would never forgive me.”
“‘Never’ is a long time. At least you’d both be alive to find out.”
The next time I look back, Tori has her eyes closed, her head resting on Giniva’s shoulder. I lean closer and lower my voice.
“Is she all right?”
Giniva nods. “Just exhausted, I think.”
“After we get to the waterfront, you can take her back to headquarters to rest.”
I watch Tori, and brood. It has the advantage of keeping me from worrying about Meroe, at least until we get down toward the bottom of the hill and the huge, dark bow of Soliton looms against the sky, its enormous folding ramp gaping open.
I hold my breath for a moment as we pass through the Sixteenth Ward gate. Last time I’d come this way, there’d been an Imperial army camped outside the wall, amid the burned-out wreckage of the district that had been my home. I’d guessed they wouldn’t hang around when the legendary ghost ship sailed up, rail lined with bizarre-looking angels, but it’s a relief to see I was right. There are no Ward Guard or militia in sight, just empty lines of tents and abandoned campfires. At the base of the ramp, several dozen Blues have gathered. Some of the Red Sashes are starting to venture out, staring up at the ship in awe.
More follow as our cart rumbles past, taking courage from my presence. I don’t know if the rumors have gotten this far, or if they simply assume Tori and I have things under control. Either is fine with me—they need to get over their fear of the ship sooner rather than later for this to work.
As we approach, Meroe comes down the ramp, followed by a squad of Blues. They’re all carrying containers of food—not crates and sacks but the familiar-but-alien makeshifts of Soliton, crabshell tied together with sinew. Each is full to overflowing with grain, or fruit, or other products of the Garden.
“The path is clear,” Meroe says to the Blues. “Take everything you can out of the storeroom and pile it out here, please.”
Whether they appreciate the politeness is not clear, but the Blues obey, as I’d ordered them to. They tramp up and disappear into Soliton’s vast, dark interior.
I vault down from the cart before it pulls to a stop and run to Meroe. She grins at me, and I wrap her in my arms and kiss her.
We’re okay. Tori, her, me. I wouldn’t have laid odds on that this morning, and I feel a knot inside me unravel. Thank the Blessed.
“It worked?” she murmurs, forehead pressed against mine.
“It worked. You’re a genius.”
“Well. Half a genius. You helped some.” She gives me another kiss. “Things are coming along here, but we need more hands, and people to transport everything inside the walls. I tried to get some of the Red Sashes to help, but nobody was willing.” She looks up at the towering ship and sighs. “I suppose I can’t blame them.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I tell her.
“How’s Tori?”
I look over my shoulder, but she’s still asleep. “Worn out, but surprisingly good, all things considered.”
“That’s something. I’m so glad you found her.”
“We have to figure out what to do once Naga catches on—”
“Later,” Meroe says firmly. “Let’s get this done.”
This being the second part of the plan. Kosura’s stores helped keep the city from outright starvation, but that’s all. If the defenders are going to get their strength back—and more important, their will to fight—back, they’re going to need more. And Soliton has food in plenty, everything we harvested from the Garden and stashed in its storerooms.
Plus, of course, there’s crabs. I take hold of the conduit. We made it, Hagan. I’m just outside.
I can see that. There are angels lining the rail up on deck, made small by the distance. I wave. I’ve got plenty of meat, if you’re ready.
It’s going to be a matter of finding people to carry it, I tell him. Can you use the angels to bring it into the city?
I tri
ed that. Unfortunately, I can only command the angels indirectly, through the ship’s system. They won’t go ashore. Your authority may work better.
I can use one at a time, at least. I grit my teeth. If I could command all the angels, all our problems would be over. Load one of them up, and I’ll take it from there.
Got it.
Try to pick one that’s … less threatening. Most of the angels look like nightmare agglomerations of human and animal parts, anatomy sketches prepared by a mad artist. I don’t want the rebels to run screaming.
I’ll do my best, Hagan says, with a chuckle.
* * *
Bringing the angel outside goes about as well as you’d expect.
Meroe has put together a steady routine by then, Blues running back and forth hauling the strange foodstuffs from the Garden storerooms to the dock. Jakibsa, arriving from headquarters, has taken charge of things on the Red Sashes’ side, organizing another relay to load up carts, wagons, and wheelbarrows and get the stuff inside the walls. The main difficulty is the shortage of draft animals, so Red Sashes and teams of civilian volunteers are strapping into the harnesses and hauling the food themselves. Hunger, unsurprisingly, is a powerful motivator.
Being back aboard the ship is oddly nostalgic. There’s a smell to the air, the ozone tang of rusted metal, that has become something like home to me. I find myself smiling at the drip of water and the shelves of mushrooms that cling to the walls. In the maze of passages between the ramp and the Garden, I find a large empty space that Hagan and the angels have turned into an abattoir. The constructs have been hunting crabs, tearing the beasts apart into manageable chunks, and stacking them here to drain.
The sight of all that meat, the smell of it, makes my mouth water. It’s been days since I’ve had anything but rice or stale bread. For the rest of the citizens of Kahnzoka, crab may be a bit strange, but I imagine they’ll get over it. I certainly did.
Getting it out of the ship may be more difficult. The angel Hagan has chosen as “non-threatening” is a huge humpback thing, with six legs on one side and eight on the other. It has no visible head, just the pair of humps, so it’s impossible to tell if it’s coming or going. The blue crystal “eye” that all angels bear shines from the center of its stony body.
This one seemed a less aggressive design, Hagan says in my head. His voice is strong again now that I’m aboard. And it is well-shaped for cargo transport.
Again, the touch of dry humor. Hagan has changed, I reflect, in the months since his death.
Other angels, smaller and more agile, are fashioning a kind of harness to the big double-humped one out of rope and scraps of crabshell. The work goes surprisingly quickly, and they start loading it up with meat, until the angel itself is almost invisible under its burden. If the weight bothers the construct, though, there’s no sign of it.
Once I let my mind sink into the streams of Eddica energy and take control of the humped angel, it’s all I can do to get it moving while I walk slowly alongside. We wind our way out, back to the ramp, where a number of the more daring Red Sashes have started helping Meroe and the Blues unload food. Even these brave souls retreat at the sight of the angel; in retrospect, I realize I may have negated Hagan’s choice of a non-threatening shape by covering it in torn scraps of monster crabs.
“It’s all right!” I shout, running ahead of the angel. “It’s a sort of … beast, from the ship. I’ve got it under control.”
Everyone seems dubious about that, but once the angel is on the shore and I bring it to a halt, they’re willing to come forward and start unloading the meat into carts, to be hauled into the city. More people are emerging from the gate as the work goes on, which is good—we need all the hands we can get to move food inside before Naga recovers his nerve.
That takes longer than I might have guessed, or else the militia commanders have to work hard to regain control over their frightened men. Either way, it’s after sundown when scouts report that detachments of Imperial soldiery are closing in along the waterfront from both sides. One angel might be enough to send them running again, but I’ll save that threat for another day. Instead, Hagan closes up Soliton’s ramp, and we retreat back inside the walls, leaving the baffled Imperial troops to pick through the scraps of crabshell and meat left on the docks.
Naga should know better than to try to have any of his men board Soliton. If he doesn’t, well …
Headquarters is mostly deserted, except for the Blues. I’m exhausted, sweaty, and stinking with crab guts, so a bath is clearly in order. I grab one of the Blues first.
“Is my sister awake?” I can only imagine she has a lot of questions.
The Blue’s eyes go distant for a moment. “No,” he says. “She is still asleep in her quarters. Four of us are with her.”
“In that case I am going to get some sleep. But if Tori asks for me, wake me anytime.”
“Understood.”
All in all, I tell myself as I head for my own quarters, not a bad day’s work.
TORI
For a moment after I wake up, I don’t know where I am.
Not at home in the Third Ward, on my comfortably worn sleeping mat with thick blankets. Is that house still standing? Are Ofalo and the rest still there? Not at Grandma’s, with ancient mats and threadbare sheets. Gone, burned and gone. Not in the Pear Wing, swathed in silk, the room around me engraved and gilded like a jewel-box. Was that a dream?
I’m in my own quarters, adjacent to rebel headquarters in the Eighth Ward. Old, expensive furniture, chests and drawers standing empty, looted by fleeing residents or opportunists thereafter. Home, I suppose, though it has never felt like anything more than a temporary expedient. More shocking is when I extend my Kindre senses and no numbing fog blocks me. Quite the opposite—there are four Blues in the room, ordinary-looking men and women whose minds respond to my mental touch with perfect obedience.
Ow. Reaching out with Kindre brings another sensation to the fore, pain running down from my temple, over my face and down my neck. It’s not agonizing but closer to tender, like an injury that’s mostly healed but still makes its presence known.
It must be powerburn, or something close to it. I’ve never pulled enough energy to hurt myself that way before—it’s harder with some Wells than others, I understand—but I know the theory. Apparently the effort of breaking through the Immortal’s Kindre block was more draining than I realized. That explains why I fell asleep after we left, I suppose. Memory is slowly returning.
I sit up, and cautiously look around. The four Blues are in the corners of the room, motionless, but otherwise I’m alone. Careful not to strain myself, I reach out to them with Kindre, asking for information. My request ripples outward, repeated through the network, responses flowing back to me. There are fewer Blues than I remember—given the fighting, there must have been casualties, and I wasn’t here to replace them. I wonder if Giniva has a queue of deserters and traitors waiting for me.
The Blues report that the front lines are quiet, for now. Outside, in the square in front of rebel headquarters, some kind of celebration seems to be in progress. I frown at this. What do we have to celebrate? Other than me being alive, I suppose, but that hardly seems likely to get the civilians excited.
But I am alive. That seems to have taken a moment to sink in. I did it. I got away. I send up a silent prayer that the Emperor managed to get back to his rooms before anyone noticed he was gone. Whatever else he’s responsible for, he helped me, and he didn’t have to.
I get up and dress quickly, shucking off the sweat-stained palace silks and putting on something more practical. When I emerge into the corridor, I can hear shouts from outside, but for the first time in weeks they’re excited instead of threatening. I make my way downstairs, taking one of the Blues for escort, and emerge blinking into the midmorning sun to find something like a carnival underway.
The centerpiece is a row of bonfires, each holding a large iron pot. Half the inns in the ward must have sur
rendered their stewpots, which are bubbling away merrily. People poke through the steam with long wooden spoons to examine the contents. Nearby, others are working to prepare more ingredients, chopping odd-looking vegetables. Beside them, there are stacks of—
Meat? When I’d been captured, practically every animal in the city had already been killed and eaten, and I can’t imagine the situation has improved. And the meat doesn’t look like it came from any animal I recognize. It’s orange and white, with the puffy texture of crab or shrimp, but piled in thick slabs as long as my arm. A woman drops off another load, and I follow her to a third station, which looks like it came from one of my more distressing nightmares.
There’s a … thing, sitting (Standing? Lying?) in the square. It’s twice my height, longer than a cart, with weird multi-jointed legs on each side and no face, just a glimmering blue crystal set into its stony flesh. It has two large humps, with a crude harness strung around them. Hanging from the harness are … pieces.
I spent enough time in Grandma’s hospital to numb any squeamishness I had around blood or torn flesh, and I’ve been in butcher shops where sides of beef or pig carcasses wait for the cleaver. But whatever was dismembered and torn apart to make these bits had long, jointed limbs, covered in a hard exoskeleton, more like a giant insect than a cow or pig. They had either been huge, there had been a rotting lot of them, or both, because the humped thing is absolutely draped with shredded remains. People are happily grabbing them by the handful, cracking the shells with hammers and picking out the fragments, then hauling the meat over to be boiled.
For a moment I wonder if I’m still asleep, and this is all some kind of incredibly elaborate dreamscape, as though I’d woken up and found the entire population of the city cheerfully subsisting on giant spiders. I blink and touch my temples, feeling the beginnings of a headache.
Siege of Rage and Ruin Page 20