He refused to be led off-track into exploring his personal feelings. “Did they give any indication of what kind of information they had? Weapons development? Troop movements?”
“Nothing whatsoever.”
Rafe muttered a curse under his breath. Darkness and the weight of stone and earth above lay heavily upon him. Once in a while, diluted light filtered in from a high-set grill, or a breath of cold air caressed his cheek. Not often, but enough to hold back the sweating terror, the racing of his heart, the imagined screams of wounded men and tortured metal, and the dull roar of flames in the deeps.
He’d thought he’d left this all behind with his soldiering days.
To distract himself, Rafe said, “We’ll not be able to leave Blackstone through these tunnels. The exits are few and heavily guarded.”
“I know of a safe place within the city.”
They must be under some factory now, ironworks, perhaps, or the great composting facilities, for the air was hotter, full of moisture and the reek of a hundred noxious things. Bars of light—orange, red, yellow—fell like blows from high grilled windows and the steady drone of machinery and the pounding of hammers filled his ears. He saw the woman clearly for the first time, painted in lurid colors, eyes dark as wells, a twist of mockery on her lips. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you behind.”
“If you can get past the machines, that is.” Rafe answered her with a mirthless smile of his own. “Because they’re coming behind us, and from that tunnel to the right.” He jerked his head to indicate the direction.
Her eyes narrowed, her look sharpened to a razor-slash. “You can hear them?”
Like a nail file down my nerves.
Rafe nodded, teeth clenched against the vibrations that scored his bones and sawed at his ears. The machines were communicating with their Primary in that indecipherable language that only he could hear.
This peculiarity of his had made him a great asset in the last war against Blackstone. On the front lines, of course.
“Then we have an advantage.” The woman took a leftward-leading tunnel, and Rafe followed her, fighting down the throbbing ache that accompanied the buzzing. From the quality of the vibrations, they were military machines, fast-moving, maneuverable, probably with nozzles for throwing fire or disseminating gas.
He hurried over to the woman, to tap her shoulder. She slid out of his way before his fingers could connect. “Yes?”
Rafe dropped his hand. “They’re going to herd us into a closed-in area, away from the factories and ventilation shafts. A place they can seal us into. They won’t even need to catch us—they could just use gas. Sleeping or poison, it won’t matter.”
“It will to me,” she said, with a touch of humor. “I can’t escape being dead. What do you suggest, then?”
“We go where they least expect us to. The Protectorate.”
“They will be guarding that.”
“They always do. But Blackstone conscripts workers to run the Primary. The poor sods barely learn how to run it before they break. They’ll be focused more on the death machines after us than those on routine guard duty. And if they do start talking to the guard machines…”
“…you’ll be able to hear the increase in communication,” she finished. “Useful talent of yours, that.”
“Then let’s not wait.” Rafe winced as a new voice joined the cacophony in his bones, a tortured-metal screech. “They just called in some raptors.”
Rafe had lost all sense of time. Even with his good sense of direction, he’d gotten turned around and muddled a long time ago, distracted by the oppression of the tunnels and the distant scream of raptors. Blackstone didn’t have many of those left, but raptors were man-hunters, low and light and very fast, with whip-like appendages and iron mouths full of nasty teeth.
Rafe had scars on his leg from his last encounter with them. He could almost wish he were back on the streets, being hunted by men.
The woman seemed to know where she was going. Either that, or she was very good at projecting confidence. They had left the factories behind. Now the air was cooler, though his feet were uncomfortably warm from the heat rising from the earth. The walls were plush with fungus, pulsing with iridescent colors. An indecent abandon of white moonlings as large around as dinner plates covered one long section. Purple and blue creepgrass bruised colonies of green flatbed. In Oakhaven, the moss men—boys, really—would’ve stripped these off for the dye vats or the food markets. A small fortune’s worth of black diamonddust spread like a tapestry just beyond his fingertips. Rafe’s stomach growled. His fingers met spongy texture, but the woman grabbed his hand away, shaking her head.
Rafe flushed. The outer layer of diamonddust was coated with an oily irritant that could only be removed by a process jealously guarded by the finest cooks. Lots of salt and boiling water also worked, at the risk of losing much of the flavor, but he had neither.
“I had not thought to bring water or food. I’m sorry.” The woman sounded surprised at mere human needs.
Rafe couldn’t help replying with exaggerated nobility, “There is no need. I am quite well, thank you.”
“I’m glad to hear you are not about to fall dead at my feet,” she returned. “We still have a while to go.” There was no inflection in that calm voice. She sounded too much like one of his own kind—an Oakhaven noble—though what one was doing crawling around in the muck of Blackstone, he didn’t know. He started to speak, to ask her name, her reasons for helping him, but the woman stopped and placed a finger against his lips. Her touch was cool, slight. A shiver ran down Rafe’s back.
“Tracks up ahead.” Her whisper tickled his ear.
“I hear something coming.” A train of some sort by the sound of its communication, a contented every-now-and-again clicking. “
Not
on high alert. We must be close to the Protectorate.”
“Going in or coming out?”
“Going in.”
“How lucky for us. Shall we hitch a ride?”
“Where did you say you had a safehouse?”
“I didn’t. But we’re getting closer. See that ledge up there?” She pointed, and Rafe sighed. The ledge was really a bump in the wall, a natural outcropping that no one had thought to smooth out. Certainly not a place for two people to crouch unseen for more than a few minutes.
“I hope they don’t look up,” he muttered. The woman was already climbing. Rafe followed her route as best he could in the dark, feeling for the same handholds. She caught his hand at the top and pulled him up.
There was barely enough room for one, let alone two.
“Not long now.” A rumble on the tracks, the flash of lights. Rafe and the woman hid their faces in their arms as the train squealed by.
It was some kind of cargo train, slowing down as it approached the gates to the palace complex. The woman touched his hand, Rafe nodded, and they jumped, right on to the canvas top of the car sliding underneath them. The canvas held for a moment, then one side gave way. They rolled off the edge and tumbled into the car.
It was full of stuff. Boxes and sacks and loose items rolled about in wild abandon. Rafe felt sure he’d landed on a candlestick.
“What does the Protector want with all this junk?” he whispered, but the woman was already at the side, lifting canvas and peering out. The train slowed to a crawl under overhead lights. Rafe pressed himself against the floor, metal rivets digging into his cheek. A different kind of buzzing filled his ears. Rafe shook his head, but the sound only grew louder and more insistent. The voices of guards talking to the train driver drifted in from outside, but Rafe could not make out what they said over the hum. He crawled to where that noise was—a clock of some kind?—to shut it off before someone heard. He plunged his hand into an open box, and his fingers closed around something fist-sized and egg-shaped. It jolted against his palm, sent a surge through him. Rafe’s teeth clicked shut—hard. He turned the object around in his hands. Its smooth ovoid surface was broken by thumb-shaped depressions. Willing the tooth-paining noise to stop, he pushed his fingers into them.
The buzz became a soft chirp and vanished. Rafe let out a pent-up breath.
The train jerked to a start with a clank of shifting antiques, and the woman slithered over to him. “What were you
doing
?”
“Getting the noise to stop,” he hissed back.
“What noise?” Then, “We had better get off soon. We don’t want to be here when they start offloading the cargo.”
Rafe thrust the ovoid object into his pocket and scrambled after her as she peeled away the canvas, climbed up the side, and dropped down. He followed her, less elegantly, and landed on his knees in a ditch as the train went around a curve.
The woman climbed up and into what looked like a disused maintenance tunnel, narrow and low, its entrance almost invisible in the surrounding rock. Rafe hurried after her.
“Wait!” Rafe heard its soft mental whir a moment before the machine clicked into alertness. Something small and box-shaped launched itself at his knees. He kicked out at it and winced as his toes made impact. The machine—only a spider, thankfully—hit rock, bounced up, came skittering back. Rafe braced himself.
And the woman was in front of him. She sidestepped swiftly, and the spider, locked on her position, swiveled towards her. Its front legs lashed out, but she’d already moved. They danced for a few steps, the spider confused and thrusting blindly, the woman weaving and maneuvering. Finally she stepped in with a series of kicks that smashed the spider into the wall. Then she leaned down and put her fist through what passed for the thing’s head.
Its many legs twitched once, violently, then lay still.
It was over in moments. Rafe had barely taken two steps forward to help her.
“They’ll guess what happened when they find the machine. The Primary is bound to check in eventually,” cautioned Rafe, trying not to gape.
“We can muddy the waters a little.” The woman picked up the spider—broken and dead, it could be tucked under an arm—and ducked out of the tunnel long enough to chuck it out on to the tracks, right at the bend.
“If a train crunches it, they’ll think it got confused and wandered onto the tracks.”
Rafe nodded. Spiders were old mage-made technology. No one these days knew how they worked or how to make them, not even the Shimmer mages. The conscripts running the Primary might not even know of this one’s existence.
He hoped.
“Come on,” called the woman. She flashed a light, briefly.
He followed her further in for a short distance. Mud squelched under his feet. “Where now?”
She pointed the light beam up to where a rusted iron ladder, missing rungs in spots, led up to an iron cover.
“This is it?” Rafe followed the light. “You’re planning to bring us up into Brethren Circle, right in the middle of the Girdlesday crowd and the arms of the stazi?”
“How perspicacious of you. As it happens, you’re right.” The woman climbed up the ladder and knocked a rapid staccato on the cover with the end of her light. Then she pushed up the cover and peered down, face pale in the darkness. “Coming?”
Rafe briefly considered staying right where he was. But the water currently soaking his boots was undrinkable and the fields of fungus were long past. The faint screech of a raptor decided him. Rafe shot up the ladder.
He came through the hole, shielding his head with an arm, in case someone decided to use his skull for furniture-bashing practice. And stared up at a circle of blackened faces, grins like horrible white slashes.
Rafe flung himself out, tackled the nearest body. It went down with an
oof
and a discordant jangle. His fingers caught in scratchy gold cloth and came away in a shower of sequins. He barely registered the anomaly of foes festooned in finery before he was belly-crawling through a forest of feet, swiping at ankles, making for an exit—any exit—out of the human ring.
“Hey, hey!” A hand clamped down on Rafe’s collar and hauled him up till he dangled like a fish on a line. Rafe twisted and tried to jab at the man’s windpipe, but the swift movement was too much for his hollow aching stomach. He hunched over and retched.
“A poor sewerfish you found, Izzy. Half-dead and with no fashion sense. Let me tell you, boy, that muddy yellow does not work for your complexion.”
Rafe lifted bleary eyes to the face of this self-proclaimed fashion expert. A huge man, with slashes of red and blue paint on face and hairy naked chest, parted his lips in a grin—or a grimace. He looked like some kind of demon. A demon wearing tight cloth-of-gold pants covered with spangles.
Look who’s talking
flitted onto Rafe’s tongue. He swallowed the words down with difficulty.
“Leave him be. He’s had a trying time of it, Burgess.” The woman stood out, not only because she was a head taller than all the rest save the giant and Rafe (had he actually been standing instead of being held up by his collar), but in that she was dressed soberly in black shirt and pants and her moon-pale face was naked of all cosmetics. Her silvery hair was pulled back into a severe knot and she examined him out of dark, guarded eyes.
Rafe opened his mouth, intending to demand to know where he was and what was going on. What came out, though, was, “Izzy?”
He had the satisfaction of seeing the woman’s lips thin. She did not look at Burgess, but that not-looking was pointed. The giant wilted.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Izzy. Perhaps you can tell your friend to release me.” They were in a large tent lit by oil lamps and the only exit was blocked by four men, looking grim and warlike in spite of reddened lips, white-coated faces, sequined leotards and cheap silver tights. Rafe added, “And I wouldn’t dream of trying to get past those extremely martial-looking gentlemen at the flap. Especially since they would probably breathe fire over me if I tried.”
Burgess gave a bark of laughter and let Rafe go. Rafe’s feet seemed surprised to find themselves having to work to support him. His treacherous knees buckled and his hips and spine followed suit. His head met the ground. “Ouch.”
Izzy’s face was above him, a faint line between her brows. “He probably hasn’t eaten or slept in days.” Her voice came from a great distance away and her face began to blur.