by Jack Conner
He said nothing. Fear rose in him, and he felt its cold, icy fingers tracing his spine, despite the warmth of the day and the sweat on his flesh. He turned to regard the confusion of buildings in the direction of the sea, a mixture of old structures and new, and nestled up against them a handful of red pyramids sticking up like ancient thorns coated in blood. The largest one, the one known as the Grand Pyramid, jutted up from the edge of the cliff leading down to the harbor, and from its tip thrust the spiral form of a staircase leading to nowhere. A place of desperate Octunggen, a wrathful Collossum and mysterious Blue Ghosts, whatever they were. At the moment, he couldn’t think of a place he wanted to journey to less.
As if seeing Avery’s hesitation, Janx said, “You still wanna go in without me?"
Avery almost smiled. “Not a bit of it,” he said honestly. He forced himself to swallow. “Nevertheless, we’ll go in the morning, Jess and I, at first light. It’s almost nightfall, and it would probably be a bad idea to approach a besieged, haunted pyramid after dark. Let’s find a motel.”
* * *
“If this plan of ours doesn’t work,” Avery told Sheridan that night, “we may have to enlist Janx to steal something so that we have money to live on.”
Naked, Sheridan smoked a cigar and stared out the sliding glass door onto the balcony, made an ironic noise. “If this plan doesn’t work, eating will be the last of our worries. Prisons have plenty of food.”
He thought of fatty seal meat and winced. “It won’t come to that.”
“Better not.” She turned back to him. He was sprawled out on the bed, sweaty and tired from their loveplay. Her gray eyes ran up and down him. Behind her, lightning flashed, and he wasn’t sure if it jumped up from the sea or down from the clouds. The motel room didn’t offer much of a view, but the ocean could be seen between various buildings. “So,” she said, her voice slow, “are we … back together?”
He still wore his boxers and his socks, both provided by the retainers of the late Hi’il’ichi, as all his clothes had been. He wondered if Layanna still wore the clothes of the dead Town Father’s wife. Was the wife even still alive or had she and her children “offered” themselves up for sacrifice?
“We were never broken up,” he said.
“You were pretty mad at me when …”
She didn’t have to complete the sentence. The thought of Lord Idris, Aunt Oris and their whole family had haunted them since the massacre.
“You were the one that left after that,” he said. “I didn’t force you.”
She inhaled on her cigar, and its tip flamed. The sight of her lips around the dark shaft, pressing down, then opening up, brought heat to Avery’s loins.
“You’re still full of bullshit,” she said.
He let one corner of his mouth curl up. “Do you still find it amusing?”
She sauntered over to the bed, her hips rocking languidly, one way, then the other. The fan beat overhead. Whup-whup. Whup-whup. It just faintly stirred her auburn hair. The dyes that had once stained it blond had been washed out some time ago.
“Segrul and Thraish better hurry,” Sheridan said. “If they wait too long to show up here, the Atomic World will come into being first, however long that will really take.”
Lightning flared again through the windows, and this time Avery could see that it was indeed going down. He wasn’t sure if it was natural lightning or if the sea once more infected the skies.
Sheridan leaned down to kiss him, holding her cigar with one hand. Noises from next door made her pause. A bang issued, then a grunt. She stiffened, tensing for action, but then several more bangs came in succession, along with several grunts … from two sets of lips.
“Looks like Janx came back from the bar,” she said. That’s where they’d left the big man, trading stories in exchange for drinks to gullible locals. Some of them had been female.
“Why shouldn’t he have some fun, too?” Avery said, squeezing one of Sheridan’s muscular hips.
But from the angry, almost desperate pounding and grunting he wondered if that’s what was really going on. Sheridan looked equally as skeptical.
“He still pines for Hildra,” she said, as if this was a weakness.
“Of course he does. Why shouldn’t he? If I died, wouldn’t you pine for me?”
She put the cigar back between her lips. When she looked back to him, the passion had gone out of her eyes.
“Don’t get maudlin,” she said.
“Well?” he pressed.
She threw herself off of him and collapsed to the mattress back-down, staring up at the ceiling. Instantly he was sorry.
“Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m just …”
“Yes?”
He made it a joke. “We were too broke to afford enough drinks, that’s all. I could sure use something to take the edge off.”
She offered him a puff on her cigar, but he waved it away.
“Something drinkable,” he added.
“I can’t help you there. Surely you’ve had enough in your life that you still have some stored away somewhere, in some fat deposit.”
“Like a camel for alcohol? Wouldn’t that be nice?” He laughed and looked to the side to see her sort of smiling. That was good. At least she wasn’t going to sink into one of her moods again.
Lightly, he ran a finger from her shoulder, down to her elbow, to her wrist. She stretched and he could see her start to get back into it, but then came another furious round of banging and groaning from Janx’s room, and she instantly lost it.
He sighed. “Maybe we should just go over the plan again.”
Chapter 4
The last rays of the sun picked out the many colors of the town as the taxi drove them toward the harbor, toward the territory still controlled by Triarch Vomi Thisinc and his allies. The three had had to do some searching to find a cab driver who knew a break in the siege lines; the fellow actually helped sell items to those on the other side, apparently. Above the multi-hued houses before the group rose the slender needle of the Grand Pyramid. Lightning off the ocean flickered behind it, silhouetting it and turning it black, then faded, restoring it to rust. The pyramid perched at the edge of the cliff leading down to the water, which made it seem even taller than it was, huge and imposing and mysterious, surmounted by its strange spiraling staircase to nowhere. The taxi let them out before the edge of the territory controlled by Triarch Nethem, and Avery and Sheridan clambered out.
“Go through those buildings,” the taxi driver told them, pointing. “Nethem patrols this area, but his patrols don’t come around for another hour. You’d better hurry, though. Sometimes they change up their schedule. You should be able to make it through, though. That route will take you to the no-man’s-land between the armies. When you get to the other side, though, you’re on your own.”
“Understood,” Avery said.
“I think you’re crazy,” the man added.
“You’re probably right,” said Sheridan.
“Good luck,” said Janx, who’d come with them but would go no further. “Wish I could go all the way with you.”
Avery smiled ruefully. “I wish you could, too.”
Janx grinned back. As if by mutual consent, they were playing this light, as if this might not really be the last time they would ever see each other. As if Avery and Sheridan might not be going to their deaths.
“I’ll just have to have enough wine and women for the both us,” Janx said.
“Have the wine, anyway,” Sheridan said. “I think Francis has more women than he can handle.”
Janx’s face turned serious. “Doc, there’s somethin’ you need to consider.”
“Yes?”
“Jivini.”
Avery tapped Sheridan’s backpack, where the dried Ral’ist’ti sap resided. "What about her?"
“None of the papers mentioned her tearing outta here, Doc. She’s probably still around. And she might know you’re comin’. Remember, the people in Ri’ithla commu
nicate by birds to other places. They’d been plannin’ on sending a message to Jivini. You and Layanna stopped it, but that don’t mean it took.”
“Yes,” Avery said. “I’ve considered that, too. Those loyal to Jivini will likely find a way to send her word of Layanna’s arrival in time.”
“It could have already been done. Or it could soon. When it does, Doc, you’ll be that bitch’s dinner, and then she’ll go after Layanna.”
“We can’t let that happen,” Sheridan said. “The navies of the Ysstral Empire and Ghenisa are far away, but the people of the Rim are right here.”
“If we need fighters, it’s them that can help us,” Janx agreed, “if Layanna can gather them to ‘er. She can’t do that if she’s in Jivini’s belly. But I want you to stay out of it, too.” He said this with his gaze on Avery, not Sheridan, but she seemed to be generally included in the sentiment; at any rate, Avery thought that counted as progress.
“We’ll step lively,” Avery assured him.
Avery and Sheridan made their farewells, then continued the rest of the way by foot. Threading their way through abandoned buildings, they passed Triarch Nethem’s cordon of military vehicles and, as the driver had predicted, entered the no-man’s-land separating the two sides.
“This looks inviting,” Sheridan said, eyeing the windows all around them. Everything was still, too still, save the wind that snapped in from the sea. Dark clouds crowned the skies in that direction, growing thick, then thicker, lightning lighting up the charcoal masses from within. Nothing moved in the empty quarter other than tufts of paper and trash hurled by the wind, skidding and skipping down the cobbled roads, stained in places by the dung of the ilithins. Once a sheet of wax paper plastered itself against Avery’s legs, then blew on, flapping like the wings of a bat.
“Are these really necessary?” he said, jingling the handcuffs that bound his hands behind his back. They'd bought them in an adult novelty shop.
“You want this to appear convincing, don’t you?”
A sudden gunshot drew them to a halt. The round peppered a cobble before them and ricocheted, whining off a nearby wall. That thing could have killed us, Avery thought. He hoped the shooter had meant to miss.
“Come no further!” cried a voice, and Avery thought it came from the second story window of a building just ahead. The gunshot had probably come from there, as well.
“I’m Octunggen!” Sheridan called, raising her hands to show they were empty. “I bring a prisoner, one of Octung’s most wanted fugitives. He’s handcuffed.”
There came a pause, then a dozen men and women wearing the local military uniform poured out of the building the shot had come from and formed a half-circle about Avery and Sheridan. Their leader, a woman who was strangely heavyset for the petite Eberlins, said, “Who are you?”
“Colonel Jessryl Sheridan of Octunggen Army Intelligence. I have the codes to prove it. Take me to your Octunggen party.”
The local woman said, “Pat them down,” and two of her people ventured forward to search Avery and Sheridan, then stepped back, reporting that no weapons had been found. “Come,” she ordered Sheridan. Half of her people returned to the building while the other half remained to help her usher Avery and Sheridan down several streets, through a barricade of military vehicles interspersed with modern knights astride their ilithins (which were outfitted for war with metal sheaths on their beaks, spurs on their talons and armor across their fluffy white breasts), and finally to the steps of the Grand Pyramid. Word had gone ahead of them, and a group of twenty Octunggen descended the steps leading up into a rectangular entrance set into the smooth slope of the pyramid.
The crispness and sheen of the Octunggen’s black uniforms didn’t surprise Avery, but the lines beneath the soldiers’ eyes did. Those lines told of sleepless nights, meager provisions and purest bleakness. They had come so close to victory over the people of the island only to have that triumph reversed, all their gains taken away, one by one, until finally they were holed up in an ancient ruin teetering on the brink of a plunge into an ocean now going mad.
“Colonel Sheridan,” said an Octunggen man with salt-and-pepper hair and vibrant green eyes, stepping forward. An aide bearing a black, leather-bound book came at his side. “I’m Colonel Jon Hurisvecta. You have the codes?”
“I do,” said Sheridan.
Hurisvecta nodded to the islanders who had escorted them here. “We’ll take them from here.”
The islanders frowned but left, and Avery wondered which side was in charge of the other. The Octunggen had come as advisors, yes. Had they also come as leaders? If so, that must be awkward now, with their power broken and the islanders’ numbers so clearly in their favor.
Sheridan rattled off a series of codes while the Octunggen aide consulted the black book, occasionally conferring with Col. Hurisvecta. As Sheridan spoke, the Octunggen patted the two down again, more thoroughly than the islanders had done. At last Hurisvecta said, “Very well. You are who you say you are, Colonel. And you claim this is the King-Regent of Ghenisa?”
“This is he,” said Sheridan, and shook Avery’s arm, as if to prompt him.
“It’s true. I’m Dr. Francis Avery. Lord Doctor, as some would style it.”
Hurisvecta eyed them both with interest. “I look forward to hearing the story of how you two arrived here. It must be quite a tale.”
“Oh, it is,” said Sheridan said. “Would you like it now or later?”
Hurisvecta sort of smiled. “Later will do. Come, I’ll show you to your quarters. Lady Jivini will be pleased to meet you.”
“Is that the Collossum in residence?” She said this with such deceptive mildness that even Avery was almost fooled.
Hurisvecta confirmed that it was, then led them up the steps. The other soldiers fell in beside them, while one opened the great doors, composed of red stone like the rest of the structure, and into the interior of the Grand Pyramid. Dark stone walls rose to either side of them, holding aloft an arched stone ceiling. A feeling of massive weight and age settled over Avery, and he glanced overhead nervously. If even one of those stones is loose … But that was ridiculous. This structure was thousands of years old, and built to last. Examining the stones, he realized he wouldn’t have been able to slip the thinnest of papers between the slabs, so tightly joined were they.
Arranged to either side of the corridor, alchemical lanterns lit the way, their purple light swelling, then fading, as was the way with such lights, the fluids inside them shifting like the sea. The illumination they cast moved in time, throwing languid shadows, then devouring them. Niches were set into the walls, but the lights couldn’t penetrate their darkness.
The cracks of the soldiers’ boots on the ancient stone sounded like the hammers of doom to Avery’s ears, and he winced at every snap and clack.
Suddenly, the soldiers stopped. Spun. They lifted their weapons and swung them inward, pointing at Sheridan.
“What’s the meaning of this?” she said between clenched teeth.
Hurisvecta stepped forward, and his troops moved aside for him. In the strange light, his eyes looked black, and he towered a full foot over Sheridan.
“You were a fool to come here,” he told her quietly. “You, an arch-traitor to our cause.”
“You … know?” It was one of the only times Avery had ever heard Sheridan lose her cool, and the knowledge sent a spike of ice through his heart. His knees felt weak. He could feel her tensing beside him, ready to try some desperate attempt at saving this situation, and knew that when she did the soldiers would mow them both down.
“You must have guessed that we weren’t in constant contact with the mainland. You guessed wrong. I'm very curious to know what you intended to accomplish once you had been allowed access to the pyramid." Hurisvecta held out a hand to his aide, who deposited a silver key into it. It was the key they had recovered on Sheridan’s person when they’d searched her. The islanders had missed it, but not the Octunggen. Hurisvecta grabbe
d Avery’s right shoulder with one hand, half turned him around, and thrust the key into the lock. A scrape and turn and the handcuffs fell away.
“I … I …” Avery tried to find words but failed. He rubbed his wrists gratefully.
Hurisvecta held the cuffs up for Sheridan’s inspection; they glittered purple in the light. “See how they feel.”
She remained tense for another moment, and Avery feared she would lunge at one of the soldiers and try to obtain a weapon, create confusion, and he knew she was thinking about it, weighing her chances. Then her eyes fell on him, and he could see her realizing that he remained free. Not all was lost.
She held out her hands. Hurisvecta snapped the cuffs on them.
“I came,” she said, as if to answer his question, “in hopes of restoring my good name. I had a misunderstanding with Lord Uthua, but that’s past now. We even fought together recently.”
“Take her away,” Hurisvecta said, and a full dozen soldiers marched her down a side-corridor, presumably to the dungeon, or at least whatever the squatters were using as one. With her went the backpack containing the sap.
Hurisvecta studied Avery with a smile that the doctor couldn't read.
“Am I to be sacrificed to Lady Jivini?” Avery said.
Hurisvecta actually laughed, and when he did the lines around his eyes faded, just a bit. “No, Your Highness. Why would you think such a thing?”
“Well … if you know who I am …”
The laughter vanished. “Of course we know who you are. You’re the savior of Octung.”
Avery tore his gaze away from Sheridan, who was just being marched around a bend and out of sight. She shot him a look over her shoulder, but he could not read her expression. It could have been, Goodbye. Or it could have been, You idiot, get me out of this.
“I … am?” he said.
“You’re the one that’s agreed to help us maintain autonomy after the war is over—or at least its aftermath. I know the real fighting's long since done. But when everything is wrapped up for good and all, you're the only chance Octung has of, well, staying Octung.”