Blightcross: A Novel (28 page)

“But not humans with axes and cannons?”

“No.”

She stood. “Perhaps they would negotiate. We could gain the upper hand. I'm a good talker, Alim.”

“I know that.”

“So let's see if we can outsmart them.”

He ducked back behind the column. “There is no outsmarting them. There is nothing to negotiate with. They are shadows, Capra.”

“Then how are they walking towards us? How are they driving the city to madness? Alim, they have to be intelligent, they have to be capable of listening and comprehending.”

“I don't pretend to understand them. That's just what they are. Sevari could tell you what their power is—something about the space where something isn't being more powerful than the thing that fills that place. It's all mad, and we'd best get moving.”

The only question was of where they could run. To the south, the main street began to pack with these men in black, all standing beside or behind a depraved worker or mother or child, as if guiding them in some obscene ritual.

To the east, Capra glimpsed the likely source of the sulphur reek she had noticed. Rising above the low buildings were the cargo cranes, and beyond these the Golroot River pushed its sludge towards the ocean. Across the bridge stretched a dead expanse of desert, broken only by a single grey monolith—the prison.

“I say we go towards the docks, at least,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because most of the shadows were concentrated on the refinery and the centre of the city. At least, in the air they were. We get out of the fray, regroup and come up with a better idea.”

They scrambled from column to column, and Capra could not ignore a strange sensation at her back, as if her awareness were pulled partly out of her body and could sense the phantoms pursuing them.

Once they cleared the park, it was as though they had walked into an arena of death-sport. The streets were empty of business and wagons, blades and hammers lay in pools of blood, men swung barbed chains, and legions of the shadows watched dispassionately like bored patricians barely staving off their ennui.

Capra skidded to a stop. “We're surrounded.”

“We might pass through them. They appear occupied. Almost as if there's some plan to play out, and they're filling roles and establishing some new structure. If we don't fit with it, they'll ignore us.”

“You mean kill us?”

Alim shrugged. “It seems even the victims of this death have taken on a role. Look.”

He might have been right, but why would anyone choose to be subservient? A lean, strong man who must have worked in the foundry and lived through his share of fistfights, somehow struck down by a teenager with a hook on a rope and a nasty grin. Even a greying, wrinkled lady found a way to bury the point of her parasol into the throat of a young man in business attire. Why would these people accept their deaths?

Alim drew his sword, and Capra still held her little switchblade.

He whispered, “Walk slowly, don't look at the shadows.”

“Alim, are you crazy?”

“If we run, they will notice us, like cats. They can't see worth a damn, but when something makes sudden moves, they will take notice and pounce.”

It almost made sense. Enough that Capra obeyed and tried to block out the mad raving and gang beatings and copulation. It was as if the city itself were writhing in a fever-dream, legs and arms squirming in the streets, a complete breakdown of language and all of the basic assumptions one took for granted if they were to function in society.

They decided to head for the darkened alleys wherever possible. Capra hated the feeling of walls flanking her. She stepped around human waste and puddles of spilled beer.

The alley residents were slumped against the wall. An inhuman reek hung over them like localized extensions of the smog above the city. Would they attack her? If they did, perhaps it would be a cry for help, a way of ending whatever had come over them.

Wouldn't they be better off dead?

She caught herself in the middle of that thought and cringed. It was not her place to decide.

“What happened to my friends?” she asked, since conversation would help to keep her nerves in check.

“My men were taken by the shadows minutes before you came into the ambush. By then, they didn't care who they killed, it seemed.”

“Is that a yes?”

“They disappeared in the crowd. Maybe they were hit, maybe not.”

That didn't sound very encouraging, but she then remembered that Dannac was armed for the occasion, and that Vasi could hold her own. She might even have healing abilities.

Wouldn't that be handy about now? And why weren't the city's Ehzeri fighting back?

Had Capra possessed those skills, she would jump at the chance to fend off these shadows. Although, it was probably more complicated than simply firing random bolts of thunder at an enemy and destroying them. Who was she kidding—she had no idea what it was like. No Valoii of her generation did, not even the instructors who drilled them on how to recognize this or that type of attack, how to spot a
vihs-
enabled person, how to counter them with certain elements.

How to kill them.

Just a few steps from the alley's end, and the beginning of the docks, Alim jolted to a stop.

“What now?”

He said nothing, readied his sword.

“Shit, are you kidding me?”

She brought her hands up, muscles tense and vibrating. She stepped to Alim's side, and saw the impasse: four soldiers, each with large axes and hand-cannons stuffed in their belts.

“We've received orders to round up any suspicious characters,” one of them said.

Alim said, “I am working under Sevari, you dullards. Let us pass.”

“All men who look like you do are to be interrogated.”

“Men who look like me?”

“There are agents here, Sir.” The soldier advanced, licking his lips and raising his axe. “They told me about the agents. They say that you are one of them. I must interrogate you, Sir.”

“This is ridiculous—”

Capra tapped him with her elbow. “He's been corrupted, Alim.”

“Thought it was worth a try, anyway. You never know.”

“Never know? Look at him. He's a lunatic.”

Four against two—it wasn't so bad. Scientific studies had confirmed that Valoii training could enable the average person to take on three trained Tamarck infantrymen at the low end. It would be over in a matter of seconds, with these bastards at their feet and—

A small axe sliced through the air and grazed her arm, and she reeled. Alim jumped into them, and Capra rushed in, striking with her fists. She landed a blow against one of the soldiers' jaw. He stumbled once, and slashed again with his axe. She whirled and drove her knife into his thigh, twisted, and tossed him to the ground.

She was about to finish him when she caught a flash at the other side of the alley. She planted her boot onto the man's throat and glared at the shadow men approaching from the other side.

“Alim...”

He was busy with two soldiers.

“Alim, they're here...”

He killed one, and knocked the other to the ground before finally acknowledging her.

One of the shadows stood an arm's length before her. She raised her knife. Met the thing's eyes—blue, almost glowing. And mesmerizing...

No, don't fight. Just listen to what he has to say.

Her grip slackened, and she looked upon the shadow man with a calm that chilled her, but there was nothing she could do to fight it.

“I wanted to tell you something, Capra.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to ask you not to tell anyone about what you saw here.”

“Oh?”

The thing nodded. “It is a secret, you see. If you tell anyone about this event, everyone will know. We will be very disappointed in you. Can you hold that secret?”

“You're killing them.” She heard her own voice as childlike, singsong.

“No, Capra. We are helping them. Don't you want to help people? You would never kill an innocent again. If you tell anyone, more will die. This is a secret, and I need you to keep it.”

“Why?”

“Because I know you will.”

“That doesn't even make sense.”

The shadow man took her hand, and from his palm came a cold shock that slithered into her lungs, froze her breath. She tried to snap her hand away, and only gave a pathetic tug.

“Now that you know our secret, you have to help us. You belong now. Isn't that great?”

“I belong?”

“That's right, you can stop running now. You can take part in parades, and we will give you a medal. Come to the tower. We need one like you to fulfil a new role.”

Beneath his words swam some other meaning—a feeling of regret, like her own, a wistful desire for home, for the ability to belong once again, and not in the superficial way she thought she had in the Little Nations.

I did not want to leave. I had to. Why won't they forgive me?

“Yes, you understand now, don't you? We can take you to the tower now, if you like.”

From behind the shadow man came two real men. Over one's arm dangled a set of shackles.

“For your safety, of course,” the shadow man said.

This made sense to her clouded mind, and after a second of hesitation, she pressed the lever on her knife to retract the blade and clipped it to her armband. “For my safety, yes.” She presented her hands, wrists limp.

A warm feeling came over her, as though she were going home, going back to her parents' townhome in Lagaz. They—or someone—would tell her that it was okay, that she did the right thing by leaving and that they were all so sorry they had made her—

Just get it over with. Reach into that satchel, pull the fuse, and toss it into the hut. You don't even have to look inside. Nobody ever does. Just throw it in. They are murderers, remember.

—fight their enemies, made her contribute...

And in an instant, this strange mirror world she had dropped into, where the shadows spoke truth, where she was going to belong again, shattered with the sound of a hand-cannon roaring across the alley. The man with the shackles spurted a fountain of blood from his head and fell, and seconds later, another shot rang through the alley, and there was a meaty thud as the other man's chest shot a plume of blood and bone fragments.

There was the sound of a familiar voice hollering at her, but her ears rang and she reeled, in a daze from her encounter with the shadow man. Sound swirled around her, none of it discernible.

One more crack sounded, and the shadow man vanished.

At the alley's end stood Vasi and Dannac, and in his hand was his new toy, its barrel tonguing the air with a thick wisp of smoke.

“Capra, answer me. Are you okay?”

She stumbled forward, and suddenly the dreamy wash that had overtaken her senses left her entirely, and she once again lived in the stark reality of pitted concrete, shit-stained alleys, and black smoke.

“I think so.” She touched the gash on her arm, smeared blood between her fingers. “What just happened?”

Alim came beside her. “You were almost taken by the shadows.”

“As if things could not get worse,” Dannac said, with a glare towards Alim.

She winced. “Relax, Dannac. I think it's safe to say there are bigger things to worry about than allegiances in a border conflict across the ocean.” She rubbed her eyes. “How did you scare off the shadow, anyway?”

Vasi smirked. “I charged his cannon shot. It seems to disintegrate their manifestations for a while.”

“What is the situation like back there?” Alim asked.

Dannac was still glowering at him. “We were pushed eastward. I would advise against turning back, since they are concentrating around the core of the city.”

“Look, the cranes have stopped moving. The harbour and ships are deserted.”

Capra moved to the crest of the hill leading down into the port area. What specks she saw below moving around the docks were leaving the area, either walking up into the city or hopping into carriages. No noise or smoke came from the cranes, and under many, shipping containers dangled in mid-air.

And, strangest of all was that there were no shadows hovering above the harbour, as there were deeper into the city.

“Why, I wonder?”

“I wouldn't question it right now.” Alim took one last appraising glare at Dannac, and slid his sword back into its sheath. “I say we go down to the harbour.”

“And after that?” Vasi raised her head as she walked past Alim as if he were the mongrel servant of a feudal palace. “We have to find a way back to the refinery.”

“We could take one of the boats,” Dannac said.

Capra thought for a moment. “I don't like putting ourselves in such a vulnerable position.”

“I agree.” Alim gestured to the bridge. “That area is completely deserted.” He traced his finger along the riverbank, back to where the refinery's egg-shaped structures and pipes met the river. “If we go along the other edge, perhaps we could arrive there without meeting any opposition.”

“That is the Hex,” Vasi said.

“I heard about that.” Capra recalled Tey's stories. “We would have to take Fasco's Road, through the slums, and then cross through the desert on the other side. It killed Fasco, so it would probably kill us. And I doubt the prison is going to offer any help to us.”

Alim looked confused. “Fasco?”

Capra relayed what she could remember of the story, and Vasi filled in the missing parts.

“Well,” Alim said, with a stupid grin. “Did it ever occur to you that the reason the shadows are staying away from the dockside slums and the Hex is because of this taint that killed the executioner?”

Both women glanced at each other, and Capra caught the same sheepish grimace on Vasi that she knew she was displaying.

“And if this Fasco character made the trip once a week for three years before dying, maybe one trip through the Hex would not be enough to kill us.”