She has used them and now they have her.
They have waited for three centuries, and they are coming through at last, and in her exhausted dream state, they are
strong
, stronger than she ever could be and she means nothing to them. She never has.
She feels her strength waning, feels her mind on the verge of collapse.
This, she thinks, is the end.
But then: a buzzing sound in her ears now.
A humming hive of golden bees. It had been growing quietly, as she lay in her fever dream, creeping up on her.
What is it?
She doesn’t know. She tries to resist it, too, as it crawls up her back, rests itself around her shoulders.
But as the back of her neck grows warm she understands that this is not the darkness, the blackjackals, this is something entirely different.
Whatever this is, it’s
helping
her, giving her weight and substance. Giving her leverage that she can use to hold her own against them. Her shoulders and arms grow warm, too, and strength like hot air pours into her chest and lungs, reaching down into the muscles of her abdomen.
She presses the warmth downward against those sharp feathers and the beaks and the claws and teeth and talons that are clawing at her innards, against their awful tendrils, and the warmth responds.
The humming flows through her, down and out, and all of the featherwolves and the blackjackals go with it until it’s shockingly quiet in her head in a way she can’t remember it ever being.
• • •
Kjat shakes her head to clear it. She opens her eyes. There, in front of her face, is the double-irised goat-eye of a Buhr. She looks around. She’s in the alley, behind the warehouse. Blackwell, she thinks.
“What the hell did you do?” she says. The Buhr blinks and then burps at her, and then takes two of its hands from her shoulders.
CHILD,
it shouts into her mind, making her wince.
THIS WILL HELP YOU, FOR A TIME.
It reaches out and touches her with a furred finger at the base of her throat. She looks down to see a carved, oblong piece of bone there, hanging from a silver chain. She holds it up to look at it. The glyphs are round and fluid, not at all like the sharp ones that cover her skin.
“You don’t have to be so loud,” she says.
OLD CRAFT,
the Buhr shouts.
VERY OLD. FROM THE WASTES. FROM BEFORE THE CITIES.
The Buhr’s thinking leaves behind the taste of blood in her mouth, as though she’s bitten her tongue. Maybe she has.
CHILD, YOU SHOULD FLEE NOW.
She looks around. How long has it been? Minutes maybe. The closer the featherwolves get, the more space and time are beginning to seem fluid, filled with eddies and backwaters. Events seem to lose their proper sequence. Though her hand still burned, the cut across her palm has sealed, covered over with another glyph written into her skin. Zxyis, she thinks automatically, recalling Pokh's teaching. Demon of the river Thoke, near Karandelh.
Shadows flicker at the far end of the alley. Blackwell is nowhere to be seen. She reaches for the knife at her chest, but it’s gone. The three Kerul were gone, too, but that was good—at least she didn’t have to keep her mouth shut around that tramp of a woman anymore, the one hanging all over Blackwell.
Things are exploding off in the distance. Something is burning. All the air smells of smoke.
She needs to see what’s going on to know what to do. She needs to know what’s happened to Blackwell. Kjat lets the Buhr help her up and over to the wall of the warehouse. The thick wood is hot—it might be burning on the inside. She stands and pats its barrel-shaped body awkwardly at the base of its feeding tube.
“Thank you,” she says, touching the amulet. “Thank you for your kindness.”
The Buhr blinks at her, buzzes for a moment—was it embarassed?—and it then scuttles down the alley and is gone.
Kjat moves to the warehouse next door to the burning one, reaches up and finds a handhold. She pulls herself up, finds another hold in-between where the boards come together, and then finds holds for her feet. It’d be easier without boots, but she thinks she’ll probably be needing those. She levers herself up onto the roof, crouching low to stay out of sight.
It’s good that she does. The street is full of Tel Kharan, up and down the street, all in the flaming white armor.
Twenty or more tracers stretch back to the harbor, probably back to their warship. They’re in a complex matrix that someone has sketched out in chalk, and at the peak of it is the Talovian from the warehouse. She’s holding five conduits on her knife, her helm is pushed back, and she licks her eyes with a long pink tongue while she argues with a man, some older mage in elegant Akarii wrappings, with a bright red topknot that is starting to go grey, a silver mesh skullcap, and long sideburns.
The two are shouting at each other fiercely while the rest of the Tel Kharan look on. Kjat can’t make out the words. The older mage gestures toward the docks and makes a sharp chopping motion with his left hand. The marine shakes her head. The older mage steps up and begins pushing other marines physically out of the formation. It’s not easy to do with that heavy armor, but he just needs to get them a little out of position. Matrices of this level are pretty delicate. He does. Conduits start to blow, and the matrix collapses around them.
The Talovian turns and hisses, and then leaps toward the older man with her knife held high. But the older mage turns, darts nimbly out of the way and slaps the Talovian across her thick frog face as she passes him. She rolls as she lands and throws up some warding. He shouts at her and she backs down into a crouch, and he calls up two other Tel Kharan to stand beside him, which they do, with their knives in hand—though even from here Kjat can see they’re not happy about it.
Kjat can’t tell if the Talovian is getting ready to spring again or not.
But apparently the man gets his point across. She slams her knife into its scabbard and turns and stomps away into the night, hot steam shooting from all of the crevices in her armor.
The older man shouts orders at the rest of them. People scurry to respond. Four mages enter the warehouse and carry out a large body, which they lay on the pavement before him.
Its Blackwell’s body, and Kjat doesn’t want to look at it, but she can’t turn away, either.
He’s charred all over, and where there is any fur left it is black and singed.
Her heart lurches, and an emptiness washes over her. Another beautiful Hulgliev, dead at her hands.
Josik had loved and trusted him like a brother, and she’d quickly seen why. The way he spoke to his team, calm and patiently, reminded her of her father—at least what she could remember of him. Though he was gangly and awkward sometimes, he had a good sense of humor, he was selfless in trying to make life better for his team. He’d treated her well, too, even though she’d basically wormed her way into the group without really being asked.
She enjoyed how the blackjackals had churned whenever Blackwell was near.
Their fury put them off balance, distracted them from their relentless focus on her. Being around him gave her more leverage to hold herself together for another day.
But it was more then that, too.
She’s thinking of that ride down from the mountains, was it just last night?
There was a deep sadness that was in Blackwell, underneath all of his careful smiles, and his willingness to make jokes at his own expense—she got a glimpse of what he and his people had been through in their long talk.
And then, he’d fallen asleep curled around her. She wasn’t sleeping then, though she’s sure he thought she was. She lay awake, listening to his deep breathing, enjoying the immense warmth coming off of this good man that she’d been watching for more than a month.
Even there, in the wild, miles away from any civilization, she’d felt safer than she had in many years.
If she was honest with herself, she’d probably been more than a little in love with him before that ride.
After that ride, there was no turning back.
Not that it seemed to matter now.
The older mage crouches over Blackwell’s body, touches his neck, turns his head and studies his face. He nods to himself. Then he stands and gestures. The mages lift Blackwell’s body onto an elaborate palanquin that’s been brought up from the docks.
As they do, Kjat sees something she doesn’t believe.
As they lower his body into the palanquin, Blackwell’s arm moves across his chest, reaching unconsciously at the empty knife sheath there. She sees his burned hand grasping weakly, unsuccessfully for a knife. Then it falls back to his side.
Her breath catches in her throat, and she feels her pulse racing.
Other men lift the palanquin to their shoulders. The Akarii mage climbs into a seat in the front of it, and points them toward the waterfront. They make their way through the crowd of marines, who move aside only reluctantly to let them pass.
The wood of the warehouse roof is starting to steam and pop under her now—it was probably catching fire, too. Kjat suspects that the whole row of warehouses will be on fire soon if someone doesn’t do something about it.
She should leave now, she thinks.
She could blend into the crowd down at the docks and let the Akarii round her up and play dumb, just another waitress or merchant. She could find a place on a ship eventually and work her way back to Tamaranth and find another mage, someone else to help her deal with these things inside her. These things that are her.
But even as she thinks it, she knows she won’t.
She knows she's heading for the docks. Somehow, she’s getting on that warship.
18.
I
t’s actually even easier than she thinks. She doesn’t need to steal a boat—there’s one waiting at the dock for her.
Kjat pulls her coat tighter around her and approaches the steward who stands in the fog beneath a gas light. “Work, missy?” he says, as she gets closer. “Come aboard the flagship of the fleet! Easy work, and it’ll get you out of this dump for free. No offense. That it’s a dump, I mean.” Though when she steps into the circle of light she sees the blood drain from his face, and he takes an involuntary step backwards. He puts a hand to a club that hangs from his belt. He’s young, she sees—probably a few years younger than her. The sideburns and facial hair he’s trying to cultivate in the Akarii fashion are still not quite taking hold yet.
“Shouldn’t you be recruiting up at the Framarc buildings? I think the soldiers put most of the people in there,” she says.
He blushes and looks down at his feet, and he kicks angrily at one of the metal spikes driven into the wood of the dock. “They kicked me out,” he says. “Chief Steward Eeg says we need some more help and that I was to find some, but the sergeant wasn’t hearing any of that and says that anyone she’s rounded up is going to stay rounded. She says I can go out and stand here and make my own luck. Well, I’ve been standing out here for two hours now, and all I’m getting is this fog up under my wraps.”
“I’m here,” Kjat says.
“That you are.” He looks up at her again. The hair on his head is closely shaven, and he wears a brown bowler hat with a single brown pip on the brim that might be his rank or might be some sort of decoration. His wraps are dull brown, stained and worn down around his wrists and forearms, and the flapping overcoat he wears looks threadbare and shiny in places. His Karandelh accent sounds a little archaic.
In the light of the lamp, his eyes are a pale amber flecked through with gold, and when they meet hers she sees his fear again. He’s just a kid, really.
He says “But you’re a little, well…” His eyes linger on the empty scabbard across her chest. He considers for a moment and then decides to let it out. “A little scary, miss. No offense.”
Kjat rubs at a cheek and her hand comes away covered with soot. She looks down at her clothes, which are scorched and blackened and bloody. She reeks of damp ash and seawater, her cut palm pulses with pain, and her cloak is so full of burn holes it looks like a type of spiced cheese made high up in the mountains of the Akarii Reserves.
She laughs. “I guess I am,” she says, trying to lighten her voice so it sounds more girlish. She thinks quickly. “My master’s summer apartment was on fire. One of those fireballs hit the house next door, and he kept making us run back in for more and more of the table silver while it started to burn.” She makes her voice all nasal and whiny and says “‘Get to it girls—that silver’s come all the way from Xu, and I’ll be damned if one little fire is going to ruin it all.’ Last time I came out with a fork in my hand they were gone, the whole family of them, probably sailing out right now. And here I am, stuck in this place.”
The steward boy shakes his head. “No ships are leaving this place for awhile. All ships are going to be boarded and searched. If they’re in the harbor, you might find them,” he says doubtfully.
Kjat makes herself laugh. “A fine mood he’ll be in, too, when you take all his precious Xu silver.”
The boy laughs, too. “Is it really all the way from Xu?”
“Damned if I know. What kind of work do you have?”
“Scullery, laundry, cleaning quarters. Usual stuff. You ever worked around drones?”
Kjat shakes her head, not exactly knowing what he means.
“The quiet’s a little strange. And you think they’re all watching you at first, but they’re not. You get used to it. It’s not bad. Just keep your head down when the birds come downbelow.”
For a minute when he says birds, she thinks he means the featherwolves. How does he know? But then she realized he can’t possibly. She touches the bone at her throat. She’s amazed they’re so quiet now, like there’s a stone wall between them and her. She draws her coat in around her shoulders and shivers anyway. “It’s got to be better than this town. Is there pay?”
The boy laughs again. “You’ll be rich in no time.
No
time, get it?
No
time
at all? But Chief Steward Eeg, she’s a decent sort, not like the upperdeck birds at all. She’ll work you hard, but she won’t be a
skeck
about it,” he says. “If you want to come, we might as well get out there and get you settled. Do you have any things?”