If I’m lucky, I think, they’ll spend hours looking for me in those branches and blossoms.
I’m not lucky.
There’s shouting from behind me, and a blast of energy throws me off the plant and out onto my face in the dirt. I scramble to my feet and take off. There’s a podship in the air, tracking me now from just outside of the wards. The mages on the netting there are working to open a hole in the wards to let it through. Two magesare closing in on foot, behind me, through the trees, and off to the right I hear the hissing and clanking of more Tel Kharan armor.
Someone throws a tracer that sticks, and the conduit opens. Aether crackles down the length of it.
Shouldn’t they at least want to take me alive? I think, disappointed.
I shake my head, spin around and use Semper’s knife to catch the energy coming at me.
But before it can get here, the plants react.
Swiftly, silently, they strike.
They grab first one mage and then another marine in their large blossoms and lift them into the air.
The Akarii’s conduits rupture as they lose their concentration and the aether in them blows backward, crawling across their armor and setting the plant limbs that hold them on fire.
A Talovian croaks and screams. Suddenly I can hear the crunching of metal and bone.
The heat and the fire sends others plants into a rage that makes me flatten my ears back and duck, instinctively, going the color of the ground. A grove of them steps over me and closes in on the other marines, ripping and tearing at them with their branches and thorns.
It doesn’t take long.
When they’re done with the Akarii they swivel their blossoms toward me, pull up their roots from the soil again and lumbered at me, moving much faster than you’d ever expect a plant to move.
I turn to run toward the Residence.
But the podship is there, hovering right before him. It's the same ship that had carried me to the recovered Sister—I recognize the pilot. I nod at her, and she mouths ‘sorry’ at me but then doesn’t meet my eyes.
The netting of the ship is filled up with armored Tel Kharan. They have matrix up and they throw a tracer at me.
I leap and roll beneath the ship, spinning up warding as I go and the tracer slides off.
I run for the entrance to the garden and the podship spins around to give chase. The marine at the head of the matrix throws a huge bolt of aether at me that detonates in the air, and it picks me up and slams me into the ground and knocks the wind out of me.
The marines jump down from the netting, fan out in a semi-circle and close in, their white armor glowing fierce and brilliant.
Their eyes are all on me.
I can tell there’s no negotiating here—regardless of what Nadrune wants with me, these people want me stone cold dead.
They reach out with so many tracers I can’t count them.
But then the huge tidal wave of the Garden plants crests and breaks down onto them. The walking flowers grab the podship like it’s a child’s toy and rip it into pieces. They throw chunks of metal and wood, slivers of glass and the dark wet blood of the pilot and her crew into the air.
The marines start yelling and gesturing and they scramble to turn, and I hear them calling out over the knife for reinforcements. Their matrix cracks back into place, they throw out tracers, and start lighting up the plants with Akarii fire, one by one.
That’s a mistake, though, and a big one.
Beyond them, the whole of the Gardens uproots itself and comes running down the long stretch of land at the marines.
The great flowers and bushes roll in, waving their limbs and stomping at the earth with their roots so that the ground thunders and rolls.
In all my nights of guard duty, I’ve never heard them roar quite this way before. It shakes the ground and vibrates my teeth and I think I see cracks in the marines’ armor already.
35.
I
sprint toward the Residence walls and run roughly parallel to a wide path that meanders through the garden here. The path enters the Residence through a large arch, carved like a Sister’s wide open mouth, and I duck through it.
The power is still on here, and the glowing orbs that hang from the arch illuminate a grand passageway that stretches deep into the Residence, a main artery of traffic that’s now deserted. The floors here are cut from an opalescent stone, rows of majestic columns stretch into the distance, and the walls are hung with tapestries and lined with visual projections depicting great events in the city’s past.
I don’t stop to look. I keep running until I come to the transport system.
I was told once that the Chancellor right after Hadran had installed it, just to help her find her way around the Residence. She had been a Solingi, and wasn’t used to living in something so large. It’s old Flowermech tech, a thick and heavy structure of flowering vines that wrap around the standing columns in a lattice, and from the lattice drop these giant, fragrant blooms on thick tendrils. The blooms are inverted, facing upward, and you can ride in them. The petals are as hard as any wood or metal, and they’re so brilliant in color you know a Kruk had to have been involved in the design somehow; bright reds and greens and blues, some vivid shades of lavender circle a tall central pistil that’s a glossy black and flickering with glyphs showing the different locations you can get to.
It’s still running--power reserves, I guess. I climb into one, grab one of the one of four stamen and select the glyph for the Chancellor’s primary meeting hall for the Akarii family.
The bloom shifts, and above my head I see the tendrils supporting the blossom sprout shoots that wrap around the overhead lattice father down the line. The other tendrils unwind themselves from where they’d been attached, and the blossom swings forward. The tendrils rewrap themselves father down the lattice and the blossom heads down the hall faster than you’d think, kind of like a kid swinging hand over hand on overhead bars.
I jump off and send three more flowers on their way to different ends of the Residence: to the Chancellor’s Suite, to the Great Rooms of the Wind where the Chancellor traditionally meets with his captains, to the Rotunda where the Tel Kharan have probably ousted the City Garrison and settled in.
The noise from the battle in the garden is growing louder as I climb onto a last flower, this one for an observation platform near Rilhey’s Bridge, which runs close to where the Chancellor’s Suite is. I'm guessing Nadrune can't resist setting up shop in the Suite, and I know from guard duty that Rilhey's Bridge has been a favorite spot for assassins. Not that I'm out to kill her. Or am I?
The blossom sways gently through the long halls, moving higher and higher in the Residence at each turn. I pass vaulted rooms that are entirely empty and small rooms that have been hastily abandoned. Some are offices. Some are filled up with books or furniture stretching floor to ceiling. Corridors meet and branch off at awkward angles, but the blossom sails through smoothly without any hesitation. Other blossoms pass me, mostly empty. One of them holds a dazed Tel Kharan marine bleeding from her scalp, who stares at me without recognition.
It swings to a stop on a high landing. I jump out onto the old, arched bridge there that reaches across to a tall tower, one that’s started to lean at an awkward angle.
The stones of the bridge are crumbling in places, and I have to watch my footing carefully.
Just above the peak of the bridge’s arch is a narrow ledge. I leap and catch the edge of it, and haul myself up.
I press myself against the stones there, taking on the color and pattern of them just in case, and I work my way around a corner. While I can’t see into them, there are windows above me that open directly into the Chancellor’s Suite. They’re open as usual in Tamaranth’s heat, even now before dawn. I grab the bottom of one and haul myself up and into the room.
I land, draw Semper’s knife, and take in the room quickly—bright, florescent artwork covers the walls so that there’s no blank space on them. Several long, low Kruk couches are scattered around. It’s a sitting room. There are signs of a fast departure—papers on the floor, a cup half full of tea on a low table by one of the couches, and articles of bright clothing draped over pieces of the furniture.
I realize that I’ve mimicked the color and crazy patterns of the artwork on the wall without thinking about it.
I look down, and shake my head—I didn’t know I could do vermillion.
On the far side of the room there’s an Akarii with his back to me. He’s robed and he’s got a tall orange topknot. He’s bent over, folding a long Kruk tunic. When he finishes it, he places it on a tall pile.
“I thought I’d neaten up some while I was waiting,” Semper says, turning to face me. “You should have seen it when I got here.” His two-color eyes widen as he sees my patterns. There’s a new knife in the sheath across his chest, I notice, and more lines at the corner of his eyes.
“Are you alone?”
“Well, you’re here.” Semper smiles sadly. “Nadrune thought you might just walk up to the front of the Residence and knock, but I had a suspicion you might come in the back way. She had me wait here, in the event you did.”
“How is she?”
“Nadrune? She’s in a rage that the Sisters won’t speak with her. She won’t leave the tower now.”
“I meant Mircada.”
Semper studied my face. “The Kerul woman is fine, my friend. Finer than she led you to believe, I’m afraid.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“Perhaps I’d better let her…”
“Perhaps you better.”
We can both hear the anger in my voice, and if that wasn’t enough, my fur has gone black now. I’ve got that sinking feeling again, and I'm getting a little too used to it. Semper frowns, and picks up another garment to fold. “It was the Kerul woman who offered herself to Nadrune,” he says quietly. “She’s your bait, Blackwell, she knows it, and she’s being well paid for her trouble. You need to know it too.”
I turn and walk to the window. I can see the tall pillar of smoke rising up from the Garden. The Akarii warding traps the smoke inside its dome, and it’s starting to gather above the Residence in dark clouds that are churning and roiling. If you saw my insides now, I’m guessing that’s what they’d look like. My chest is tight, my breathing is rapid and shallow, my fur goes grey.
I’ve been played, and played really well. I feel like that smoke, held down and unable to rise. I feel like I need to burn something.
I can see the long stretch of the Bane and the Lie and the Alabaster Tower, the Fan and all of the warehouses out beyond the warding, and off in the distance I can see the mansions on the cliffs there, dotted like eggs left by some insect. The red Lover’s Moon is sinking. The retrograde moon has passed it. The tide will be peaking again. Soon it’ll be dawn. I’m alone with all of the world laid out at my feet, and there is not a single part of it that I can call my own.
Up above, beyond the wards and the smoke, near the arch of the mech caravan, is that great black bird. I’m guessing it’s some giant vulture or a carrion crow, larger than I’ve ever seen. I’m guessing there will be more of them before the day is over.
Semper waits, saying nothing and folding a dead Kruk’s clothes. I turn back from the window. “So all of it was nothing. All of it was a lie.”
Semper shrugs, not without sympathy. “Who can say, Blackwell. These are hard times. We all have to make difficult choices, and she made one for herself. You have difficult choices too. The Kerul have no hope of ending this war. Nadrune can, and will before long.”
“She can’t hold Tamaranth.”
He shakes his head. “Of course she can. There’s another of her Father’s fleets on the way by now. That walking District might block the harbor for a time, but it can’t hold out long with no support, no resources.”
It’s like I’m wearing dark glasses. Everything looks grey to me, like the color has drained out of the world, and even the Kruk paintings fade. “What do you want me to do, Semper.”
Semper steps up and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Come with me, my friend. Talk to Nadrune. See the Sisters in their home, and maybe they will speak to you this time. Stand beside Nadrune and tell the world she is Dekheret reborn, and encourage them to fall in line.
"Think of how many lives you can save, Blackwell. Think of how you can make a difference for not just your people, but everyone. Isn’t a world without war a worthy enough goal?”
I sigh. “Take me to her,” I say.
Semper nods and touches two fingers to his knife.
36.
T
he podship lands us at the top of the Alabaster Tower. As I step off the ship with Semper in my arms, the five Tel Kharan marines who stand there draw their knives and make as if to advance on us. All of them, I notice, are Stona.
Semper gestures sharply at them, speaks to them in what must be their own language, and when I set him down he pushes past them briskly on legs that only I can see are still shaky from the short flight.
We walk down a curving flight of white stone stairs that opens into an antechamber with high, arched ceilings and long hanging tapestries, carved and painted walls in red and gold and shimmering hues of cerulean blue, the color of a grohver’s bright tongue. Semper strides across the room to a set of imposing double doors and beckons me forward.
He throws the great doors open.
The first things I see are the three great Sisters, all resting atop three stone pedestals under the great domed ceiling.
The high foreheads and identical third eyes, the intricate carvings and the flat, broad lips; they’re lit from all angles with magelight and while they don’t move I get the immediate sense that they are about to, that they’re full of unseen energy, crazy potential motion, vibrating like a toddler made to stand still. In a moment they will break loose, go careening past me out the door, down into the Gardens and the Old City or out across the ocean, skipping across the surface of the waves. If I close my eyes I can see them lit up like some major city at night, and I feel dull, insignificant, like anything I would say now would be so far short of what would interest these artifacts that I might as well not try.