The Labyrinth of the Dead (9 page)

I am here
, spoke the voice within that Portia thought she
had merged wholly with her own.

Are we two once more?

No. But you have never called for all
of me before now.

Are you ready to fight?

She felt the angel’s soul stretch
against the bindings that tethered them together, testing and pushing. The
sensation subsided and Portia felt its satisfaction.
Yes. Let them come. I
am ready.

When Portia opened her eyes to gaze down at the
creatures below, the demon denizens began to quail before her light.

—6—

PORTIA WOULD hold the bridge.

She had shed the short silk coat and left
the satchel with it on the far side. Nothing in there would afford her any help
in the fight. Dressed in only her corset and wide trousers, she could maneuver
much more easily. The air within the sanctuary was pleasant, neither cold nor
warm, but Portia could feel the chilled breeze that blew in from Salus, pouring
through the rent in the ward along with the foot soldiers of the queen.
Gooseflesh rippled down both arms.

Invigorated by the barking commands of
their captain, the reapers lifted their sickles and advanced several steps
toward her, spoiling the ground beneath their feet as they came. She waited,
breathing deeply, storing up the power building within her. She could see their
eyes gleaming with dark mirth beneath the visors of clumsy metal helmets. The
chin straps were not even fastened. Overconfidence exuded from them as strongly
as the odor of their acetic sweat, but they did not break ranks and engage her.

One of them
finally came forward from the rest of the group, swaggering toward the foot of
the bridge. He leaned one meaty elbow on the railing, sending a creak of
protest through the whole structure. Portia met his stare, glimpsing his
lidless eyes and reptilian mouth in the low light. He was different from the
others, his armor more elaborate and his stance radiating leadership. He
smirked, showing rows of black, needle-like teeth, every other one curved to a
fine hook at the end. These were not killers, Portia realized, they were
collectors—reapers in the true sense of the word. They brought in the harvest
of souls to their queen. And she was their prize tonight.

"It won’t be easy," Portia told them.
"I am not so soft as I might look."

The leader swung a fist, and two of his
fellows came at the bridge, their heavy footfalls shaking the entire thing.
They were crushed together hip to hip, barely able to fit. Portia dropped down,
tucking her wings tightly to her body and making a sweep to their ankles. The
axe blade bit deeply, divorcing one foot cleanly from its owner and eating a
gash through the other three legs. The leftmost reaper howled in pain and
lurched toward its companion, pushing them both off balance. Portia tucked her
chin down and came at them with her shoulders, catching them just below the
knees. She pushed upward with all her strength, opening her wings for more
leverage, and sent both of them over the side of the bridge into the stream
below.

The next attacker was on her before she
could regain her footing. This one came with far less bravado. It approached
with blade raised, knocking into Portia with its bulk before swinging the dark
sickle toward the back of her thighs to incapacitate her. She let herself fall,
spreading her wings wide to cushion the blow, and plunged the point of the
battle axe between the chestplate it wore and the
leather corselet protecting its abdomen. With practiced ease, she brought up
her feet and kicked the reaper over her, using the inertia of its enormous body
to keep it moving. Springing to her feet, she hacked through the leather flap
covering the base of the creature’s skull until purple-brown blood began to fly
and the reaper shuddered violently and went still.

Only one of the reapers was emerging
from the water. Coils of steam rose from its flesh as it staggered toward the
leader still idly leaning on the rail. Without taking his eyes from Portia, the
captain pulled a black kris blade from a thigh
sheath. The knife’s edge looked dangerously sharp, but no light glinted along
its surface. In fact, it seemed to draw in the surrounding light and devour it.
Noticing Portia’s discomfort, the captain smiled and ran his tongue across the
rippled surface of the blade before plunging it into the reaper’s throat. He
commanded the others forward with a guttural order and they came in a swarm.

These troops were cautious, none
wanting to be the first to engage her. They feinted forward and back at the
foot of the bridge, trying to draw her down to them. Portia could see the
radiance of her flesh reflected in their armor and in their eyes. Finally, the
leader barked something at them and swung one reaper up onto the bridge by its
arm. As it stumbled forward, the others pressed in behind. Splinters shivered
loose from the understructure of the bridge as so many of them piled onto it.
She stretched her wings wide, preparing to take to the air should it give way.

Portia swung and blocked with the axe,
chopping through fingers and arms as easily as cutting up carrots with a
kitchen knife. But there were always more, cramming themselves bodily onto the
bridge. Nails shrieked as they tore loose and the structure began to weaken. An
upward arc cleft one face in two, but as the reaper fell, more just climbed
over the body to reach her. And so it went; as Portia dropped one assailant,
two more took its place until she had retreated just past the apex of the span
and over twenty reapers—living, injured, and dead—were crowded onto the
ornamental bridge.

The collapse began as a moan and a
shudder that quickly progressed into a violent shaking, compounded by the crush
of reapers trying to remove themselves before they faced a watery end. Portia
jumped, flapping her wings in a slow, steady beat to gain as much altitude as
possible.

The reapers leaped as well, and they
jumped higher. The barbed hooks dug into her trousers and her skin, catching on
whatever they touched. She could not escape their weight, and they pulled her
down toward them. She swung wildly with the axe, severing fingers, hands, and
arms, but more came. There were always more.

As she fought to stay aloft, she saw the
supports blow out in a shower of splintered wood. The decking fell straight
down before it broke into pieces on the stream’s bed. Jagged shafts of wood
impaled a handful of the reapers, and the water began to scald the rest. Portia
landed heavily atop them all, finding little to soften her fall among the
armored bodies sharp with bone spurs. It stung mightily to tear the hooks from
her flesh, and each time she rested her weight anywhere, more pierced her. She
crawled over the moaning pile toward the leader, watching a safe distance from
the water’s edge. He was alone and still smirking. Her trousers stuck to her
blood-slicked legs and reapers insistently clawed at her, hindering her
progress. The reek of their bubbling, melting flesh gagged her.

The commander strolled to the stream
bank and raised his fist once more.

The reserve came crashing through the
gates: reapers and herders with their dire hounds. The queen had sent an army.

They hit her like a wave, knocking her
back into the pile of dead and dying reapers, impaling her on all sides with
their damned spikes. She cried out and lightning flashed. They did not stop.

Portia called on her last caches of
power, letting white hot light surge through her. Where her renewed blood
touched them, they burned, some turning to cinders in the span of heartbeats.
Others fell back, but most kept reaching for her. Water sloshed over her head
and she sputtered. She was pulled into the air only to be dropped into the
stream once more. Rank steam rose from the hands that held her, dissolving
their flesh down to the bone, but never letting her go. A bubble of pain and
terror burst within her and for a blissful moment, the attackers were blown
back. Portia leaped for the grass, struggling free of the waterlogged bodies that
threatened to drag her down with them.

On her knees, she coughed up water and
blood. The axe was gone and she felt the lack of it keenly. A dark smear of
blood slowly saturated her corset. The power within her was no longer a ranging fire, but a small candle, flickering.

She saw the commander’s boots as he
came to stand before her.

"Brava." His voice was dry and grating.
"We knew you’d be a challenge to catch. I’ll get a fine reward for this."

Portia spat at him and he backhanded
her, driving his own barbed spikes deep into the flesh of her cheeks,
penetrating slightly into her skull. He dragged her to her feet and took hold
of the busk at the center of her corset. When he
yanked his hand loose from her, her teeth rattled and she saw stars.

"Take her. The queen wishes an audience
with her." He released her into the clutches of five herders. They were gloved
and cloaked in leather; neither her blood nor the water could hurt them. Like
the handle of the axe, it felt disconcerting and familiar. "Do you like it?"
The commander petted the cloak of the herder beside him. "It is the finest
angel-flesh imaginable. And the only thing able to protect us from the likes of
you." He glared at the shimmering blood that clotted on her skin. "We usually
take an Aldias vintage; thus far they’ve been the only ones fool enough to come
here. But now we shall see if the rumors are true, if Gyony hide makes superior
impenetrable leather. As soon as the queen has had her way with you, then it
will be our turn. Our leathersmiths are honing their
blades as we speak." He pinched her arm and tugged on the skin. "Do not fret,
little dear, you can endure quite well here without your skin."

Laughing, he turned on his heel and,
leaving his fallen reapers behind him, dragged Portia into the wretched streets
of Salus.

The garden had been trampled and the
wall crushed. The reapers pulled Portia through the wreckage, whistling and
clicking among themselves. The road leading to the sanctuary was familiar,
bordered as it was by bleak gardens filled with skeletal trees that shrank back
from the captain and his sea of troops.

A group of reapers
called out in some kind of code, and the captain replied gruffly, sending them
off into a side street. They flushed the ghost of a young man from the porch of
one of the creaking old houses and took off after him like a pack of hounds.
Portia pulled against her captors, but they held her tightly, whirring in
chastisement.

 The reapers ran down the young man, catching him as
he sought to scale a garden wall. Their barbs sank into him, and as he howled
in pain, they descended. Portia cried out and the ghost looked at her. His eyes
went wide with fearful awe as the reapers lashed him with a heavy cord and bore
him away toward the factories. He kept straining to watch Portia as they took
him away.

The herders fell in close behind their
captain. He whistled sharply and the remaining reapers broke away and slipped
into the black streets of Salus to track more prey. The captain retained only a
few reapers to flank Portia’s guards. The five herders took turns holding her
between two of them, with one fore and one behind and the last one holding the
hounds, but she had no strength left in her to struggle.

A soft echo of footsteps tagged after
them, and as Portia craned her neck to look around, she saw Kanika creeping in
the shadows behind them. The girl wore Portia’s jacket and had the satchel
slung across her narrow shoulders. She followed a few yards behind them, and if
the captain noticed her, he did not seem to care and neither did his reapers.

The swirling mist
that protected the sanctuary got lost behind the city’s jagged skyline and
vanished from view. And with it, Imogen.

—7—

THEY FOLLOWED the winding, wayward streets for an
eternity, turning up boulevards lined with sickly grey plants that never saw
daylight and marching down passages so narrow they could not fit three abreast
and one herder had to reluctantly let go of her. Portia had not imagined the
city was so large, but then she realized that it was not, and that this was
some further tactic to break her. They passed the same grotesque light post
three times. Portia knew it by the graffiti scrawled on it in what looked like
drying blood:
when my Soul is Lost what am I then?

The buildings clustered together like
old women, shadows drawn close as shawls. Portia could feel the eyes of the
spirits around her watching her hungrily.

The herders and the captain led her
into a courtyard. Impressive ruins loomed overhead, blocking out the sky with
its strangely shaped turrets that reached up from the rectangular structure.
The herders spoke amongst themselves in reedy, whistling tones that seemed
perfectly sensible to them, and even to the hounds, but left Portia confused.

Outside the sanctuary, the courtyard
and its surrounding buildings were the most beautiful bits of Salus she had
seen. The paving stones were smooth and large, joined snugly against one
another. The captain strode across them, his black boots ringing on those
sandy-gold cobbles. The herders turned her face toward their leader, needing
only the lightest touches in their repulsive gloves.

The captain dropped to one knee and
stroked a stone. "The finest souls are brought here for Her Majesty’s pleasure.
The demonmancers, the necromancers, the foolish ones who come here
whole. Fractured souls of the restless dead are well and good for the
city, but for the palace she takes only the best." He rose and pointed to an
area not far from them where the paving ended, showing black soil beneath. "Soon,
you will take your place here. After we skin you, of course." He came close,
smiling cruelly with his leathery, thin lips. "I will enjoy walking all over
you. I will make it my special pleasure each and every day."