Blightcross: A Novel (27 page)

When the dust cleared and they stopped rolling, she startled and jumped away from the man. She readied her switchblade and tensed.

Shit. Alim.

She prepared for a fight to the death. “Alim, this is madness. Your people have injured innocents over your stupid orders. Am I really so important?”

Alim brushed dust from his sleeves, but did not make any threatening moves. “Capra, they've gone insane.”

“What?” Was this a trick? A way to bring down her guard?

Without warning, he lunged and tackled her. They rolled into an alley, and she fought hard enough to end up on top. She pressed her knife against his throat. “Don't make me do it, Alim. There are strange things going on. The only way to stop it is to find Helverliss.”

“I don't give a damn about Sevari or Helverliss or anything to do with this horrible place. I am not returning to that tower. Sevari is of no use to me at this point. He was getting on my nerves.” He coughed. “What are you waiting for, then? Hm?”

“What's happened to you, Alim? The service changes us, but not like this. You're not even on the front lines anymore.”

“I—”

A cannon shot pelted the ground, a mere fingernail's width from his head. “My soldiers have been corrupted. They are firing at random. They fired at me, they fired at everyone else...”

“Why? Does it have something to do with those shadows?”

“Shadows?”

“Sevari has unlocked the painting. He released whatever it was that Helverliss had bound to it. It seems as though these shadows might be affecting the people here.”

“The men in black.”

She cocked her head.

“They wanted me to do things. Horrible things. They thought it was a game, but at the same time they were... extremely serious about it. They seduce you. They offer a kind of greatness.” He paused, ground together his teeth. “What have we done?”

Above, there still swam the ribbons of shadow, all weaving and darting, hunting, and diving towards their targets on the ground.

Now, on the rooftops, she saw Sevari's men in blue, standing on the ledges. In unison, they stepped off as one would the last step of a set of stairs, and plummeted to the ground. They fell into a heap, and for a moment Capra sighed and began to collect herself again, if not slightly confused and horrified at the mass suicide.

But that lasted only the few seconds necessary for the soldiers to stand, however wobbly. They began to load their hand-cannons and form firing lines. A dozen men in black stood behind the soldiers.

“What the hell is going on, Alim?” Vasi would know, but where was she? And Dannac?

Of all the people to be stuck with, it had to be Alim. The worst part was that she still felt a hint of comfort at a familiar face, even if the man wanted to kill her.

The phalanx of hand-cannons advanced. Unless this was some convoluted trick, Alim would have to cooperate with her.

She jumped from his chest and extended her hand to him. “Come on, there's no use fighting these people.”

Alim's mouth gaped for a second. The two met eyes, Alim's blazing with a fervour she knew he was consciously tempering. Just when the moment began to slide into an uncomfortable exchange, he gripped Capra's forearm, and she pulled him to his feet.

The soldiers began to bellow crude remarks.
Sheepfuckers! Suck on this! You stupid cunt, get back in the kitchen where you belong!

Alim nodded and the two broke into a mad sprint away from the shadows and their puppets. Fatigue crept into her lungs and muscles, but when they passed a crowd of men playing a round of darts with an elderly man tied to a lamppost as their target, she quickly found the wherewithal to overcome a few stitches in her sides.

“The rules are strict,” someone said. “We will, after this game, divide the group by virtue of their scores. Landing your dart between the eyes will earn you an automatic spot in the new Council of Ten-Thousand!”

Rules? It was chaos.

Another voice: “We will once again establish the rule of law, just as we did with the Fire Giants.”

They rounded a corner near a park decorated with white columns, and they decided to hide among the false ruins. She dropped to her knees and panted, mouth parched and throat burning. “I wish I had paid more attention in our religious classes, Alim. I have no idea what these people are talking about.”

“The shadows,” he said between gasps. “Wanted to organize nature the way they saw fit. It could have been perverse, like this, or it could have been heaven... but the fire giants resisted their taint, and fought back.”

“What a choirboy you are.”

“Understanding the religious differences between us and the Ehzeri is a tactical advantage, Capra. You should have paid attention.”

In this one moment of discussion, this exceptional suspension of their relationship as defector and hunter, Capra felt like she had before she had left the army. Before they had shipped her to the Red Sector to help quash the never-ending rebellion, before she had witnessed what really happened in Red.

“What are you smiling about?”

She erased her out-of-place grin. “Nothing.”

“Well, you obviously found something funny about depravity in the streets and the shadow men ruling the natural world.”

“It was nothing. Just memories. Ghosts.”

He grumbled and peered around the column, into the madness. “What do you know about this? Were you going to stop it?”

“I'm not exactly sure. I was on my way to... well, maybe I shouldn't tell you these things. You are, after all, in bed with Sevari.”

“These things don't acknowledge our allegiances.” He drew a deep breath and gazed at her with blatant malice flashing in his eyes. “We can sort that out afterwards. Neither of us will gain anything with Sevari's madness spreading into the streets through these shadow men.”

“I just have a hard time trusting people with the same tattoo I have.”

“Don't bring up issues of trust, Capra. You are the one who has spent the last three years running from the law of your own people and surviving by leeching off the rich and their petty whims.”

How could he know all of this? She could only blink and wonder which of her secrets he had uncovered.

“Oh yes, Capra. I know a lot about you. They gave me everything I needed to track down the war resisters. I know what you have stolen, what you have sabotaged, and three of the five men you were involved with.”

She felt her cheeks become hot. “Five? You need to go back and do some more investigating, Alim.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

They were copulating in the middle of the road, faces caked with oil and soot, bodies writhing in ripped clothes and smearing puddles of engine grease. Dannac seriously considered putting them out of the misery that seemed to have overtaken them.

“I had no idea this was what they wanted,” Vasi said. “If I had known, I would never have agreed to work on the project.”

The makeshift bandage on her back was bright red and beginning to leak. “Stop and let me change the bandage. It is still bleeding.”

She shrugged away from him. “I will be fine. We need to find Capra.”

“The shot could be laced with poison.”

She shut her eyes and shivered for a moment. “I am not poisoned, and if I were, most poisons are easy to remove.”

They moved on, while everyone they passed either fought or groped or ate dirt and a dozen other inedible things.

Dannac shuddered as he realized that were it not for this depravity, the ambush would have been successful and they would be dead. “I should not have left her behind.”

“We had no choice. You know she can take care of herself.”

A flying boat roared overhead, and in its wake, several black specks fell to the ground.

Passengers.

“You seem to be able to take care of yourself as well.”

She jolted. “What?”

“Any of our fighters could recognize what you are. Sevari must be either truly insane or too stupid to check out the people he hires. I imagine the line of discipline that prevents you from levelling his clock tower is thin.”

She butted against him, apparently not satisfied that none of the deranged people around them cared about her secrets. “It is not the way to fight. If they had given me a bow and shoved me onto the front lines, I would have stayed to defend our people. But the archon they turned me into...”

“Relax. I left them too, remember? I just wonder if you ever stopped to think that a weapon like yourself placed in a place like Blightcross could be more disastrous than anything you ever saw in Mizkov.”

“Don't you think I've thought about that? It haunts me every day. Sevari's work helps to keep me focused and stable.”

Thank the Blacksmith for that.

They dodged a clump of revellers and turned onto a side street. The oddness seemed to be collecting, organizing itself along the main arteries of the city, and Dannac thought it best to avoid any more confrontations with these corrupted people.

If, that is, they still were people. Perhaps he would do them a favour by killing them. The thought persisted in his conscience—was it right to let them fall victim to these shadow men?

He sidestepped a headless corpse. Around the next corner, they drew back at the sight of a dozen black-suited men patrolling the street. Dannac pulled out his hand cannon, heart racing. Their eyes swept the block, at once both vacant and searing. A depraved laughter rattled above on a metal staircase. He coiled into a ready stance, like a flinching reptile. Hanging over the railing, the gibbering idiot above stared with crossed eyes and brandished a cocked crossbow in one hand, and a corn broom in the other. Dannac aimed the cannon between the man's eyes and held his breath.

“Dannac, what are you doing?”

He kept stone-still. “Get behind me. There are shadow men in the street, and a fool with a crossbow in the balcony.”

“Let's just keep going. He's not well. I doubt he can even aim his weapon.”

But the man blew a lock of his hair from his eyes and raised the crossbow. Dannac ground his molars and squeezed the trigger. The shot slammed his arms, and the alley was a thunder-filled canyon. The round shattered the man's face, and sprayed the wall behind with the pulp of his head.

Dannac nodded with satisfaction, reloaded the cannon, and gestured to the street. Vasi could stand there and stare if she wanted. While he might with Capra, he wouldn't try to reason with Vasi.

Finally, she rejoined him, her head kept low. That is, until they passed a group of shadow men, and she let out a quiet, startled noise. Dannac tried to stare them down as they passed, but they did not break their gaze.

When they passed, Dannac could barely admit to himself that he had held his breath and recited prayers in his mind. But the apparitions made no move against them.

A few blocks later, Vasi broke the eerie silence.

“You would have to worry about your friend less if you would just let me tell her the truth.”

“She is not one of us.”

Vasi flinched at a guttural sound coming from one of the alleys. “How do you explain her ability? Her sensitivity to the storms? The family knot around her neck that is identical to mine? We are related, she and I. It is...”

“Crazy. She stole it from the body of one of the hundreds she has killed.”

“I thought that at first, but I cannot believe it now. She is not the type to carry trophies. It could really be a family heirloom, like she said. Only she doesn't appear to know the significance of it.”

He wanted to cover his ears, or her mouth. What Ehzeri could even imply that one of those Valoii monsters was actually one of their own? True, he had accepted Capra out of necessity and in the end had grown to appreciate her friendship and expertise, but he could never forget who she really was. A few symptoms of cloud sickness and the ability to receive
vihs
images in her mind did not replace Valoii blood.

“It is wishful thinking. Sevari has worked you to the bone, and the stress of your worrying about Rovan has taken your ability to reason. Capra cannot be one of us.”

She stopped. “You think I am this delicate little
chuzka
, don't you? Do you have any idea what I can do? The things I have done? I am not imagining things. Capra is Ehzeri.”

“If Capra is Ehzeri, then use your witch-sense to find her so we can stop wandering aimlessly. I do not like delays. I must get to that tower.”

“You seem very interested in this tower. Are you an engineer?”

“No.”

She made a little noise, then kept quiet.

Was having sight worth doing dirty work for Yaz and the Republic?

“There she is.” Vasi skipped towards a plot of short grass decorated with benches and granite columns.

“Are you joking?”

Obviously not—there she was, cowering behind a column. With another man.

Another Valoii.

He grabbed Vasi and guided her behind one of the columns. “Are you insane? That is the Valoii.”

“The soldier Alim? I know. It seems they have reconciled for the time being. It would be foolish not to, given the state of things.”

“You are much too trusting.”

“That is what you think.” She gave him a look of utter defiance and tore free.

“Wait, just do not complicate matters by speaking of your bizarre theories. We have enough to deal with as it is. All right?”

She nodded, and they approached their comrade.

Alim shot to his feet, hand on his sword hilt. Capra stayed behind the column, since she was hardly equipped for a fight.

In hindsight, they should have picked up one of the hand cannons dropped by their attackers. They could not be that hard to figure out, could they?

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Four of them.”

“Four of what?”

“Men in black.”