Blightcross: A Novel (30 page)

A silence came over them, as if the hot wind in their faces had burned away any possibility of conversation. Sure, Jasaf probably felt a little betrayed by Capra's desertion, but it was not uncommon and they had talked about the issue a few times.

When the silence dragged for longer than any decent person could allow, she held her breath and met his eyes.

Red, watery eyes, and his brows were knitted and straining.

“Alim? What is it?”

She backed away, and suddenly felt sick.

He stepped towards her, blinking and with his hands knotted into fists. “You want to know about Jasaf? She's dead.”

Dead
. The word echoed inside her, in the canyon that had torn through what she had assumed to be true. It only widened, it seemed.

“When the Ehzeri fighters arrived with three adepts and the explosions tore through your platoon, you took the opportunity to run.”

She nodded, although what did that have to do with anything?

“You didn't really think of what was going on at the time, did you? Just that there was a confusion, and that you could run without anyone noticing.”

“Alim, what are you getting at?”

He lurched forward and gabbed at her cravat with both hands to pull her close. “You were supposed to watch her. She was a surgeon, for God's sake.”

Her throat welled with an aching sadness, and Alim's grip wasn't helping. She pried his hands off.

“You killed her, Capra.” There was a broken note in his voice, but also a rage in his eyes.

“That's crazy. I wasn't the only one in the whole damned regiment. It was a brutal attack. Command miscalculated, and we should never have gone in without more information.”

“Rationalize it all you want. She was right beside you until you ran away.”

In an instant she saw burned-out flashes of the day she had fled. The explosions, the weight of the crossbow in her hand, the clouds of sand kicked up by the men at the front of the clash, filling her nose and mouth and god damn it she could see nothing, not Jasaf, not anyone else, just a cloud of dust and the reek of burning flesh, the same as when she had inhaled the odour of her own skin burning from a misplaced phosphorous grenade—

“No, it was confusion all round, Alim. You know that. I had lost Jasaf before I even decided to run.” And yet she had never, not once, thought that anything might have happened to her friend.

Was there something missing? Had her memory become corrupted to ease guilt?

She let go of his hands and fell against his chest. “I can't remember. I can't remember what happened. It was fast, and only the day before they had sent us into Red—or what they thought was Red—and made us kill them. All of them.” She looked up at him. “They were old women and boys with broken legs who were useless as fighters to them. And you know what? When I came into the doorway of the stinking hut I was supposed to engage, they were happy to see me.” She let out an ironic laugh. “They said, ‘
Selvaz! Selvaz!
' when I knocked down their door and pulled the fuse from my phos grenade. They wanted me to help them.”

Alim put his hand on her back, almost as if he were reciprocating her gesture. Part of her wanted to believe he wouldn't kill or arrest her once they dealt with the shadows. “It could have been a trap. They have done such things before. You couldn't have known.”

“I did know, Alim. I obeyed the order anyway because I didn't want a stupid reprimand for insubordination. What is it, fifteen lashes per offence?”

He shoved her away, sent her skidding across the sand. “So you abandoned Jasaf just because you couldn't deal with the horrible reality every one of us has to deal with? Do you think you're the only one?”

“I just...”

“The Valoii are on the verge of extinction and you think you have the luxury of moral superiority?”

“It wasn't like that, I—”

He cursed under his breath and clutched her shoulders. A torrent of guilt and grief had dulled her reflexes, and she offered no resistance when he slammed her against a tree. “I should just kill you. Forget the trial, forget the army.”

And what could she say? She couldn't bear his hawk-like face, his pained eyes. Tears began to seep through the dam of her eyelids. She imagined Jasaf alone and confused in the blowing sand, wondering where the damned stupid bitch who was supposed to protect her had gone. Damn it all, not once did she consider...

She swallowed a knot of pain. “There's nothing I can say, Alim. There's nothing anyone can say. I did the wrong thing.” His grip lightened some, but his expression still screamed murder. “I did the wrong thing and I'm sorry, and I don't know how I'm going to live with what happened, now that you've told me.”

Dannac's voice boomed from under a palm tree. “Watch it, soldier boy. Do that once more, and I will saw off your head with my utility blade.”

“Forget it.” He gave her one last shove and stormed away.

But as she slumped down the smooth bark of the tree, bottom sinking into the sand, it was hard to keep any anger towards Alim. It was probably the worst thing that could have happened to a person who had deserted the army to
save
lives, not take them.

She hung her head between her knees for a while, until the flow out of her eyes dried and she could regain a semblance of her composure.

A half hour later, after much contemplation, she joined the rest under the tree, though she made sure to sit as far away from Alim as possible.

“Are you okay?” It was Vasi, and her voice did sound somewhat sincere.

“I'm fine. I just didn't know that my leaving had affected anything. In the army, everyone's just a soldier, we're all the same, we're all citizens... there should have been plenty of others to fill in the blank spot I left.”

“The Blacksmith is tasked by the Divine to work on our behalf, so that we may use his pure power to engage fully with the life planned out for us. There is a structure we cannot see, Capra. You do not leave a blank space to be filled by another. Your actions resonate through the entire frame.”

“It's a nice thought, and I wish I could believe the way you do, Vasi.”

“Who says you cannot?”

Capra said nothing because she hardly understood Valoii faith, let alone the Ehzeri's version.

She caught Dannac with a look of concentration, and his ear turned to the city. She watched his eyes dart, and stood when he shot upright to survey the city looming above the riverbank.

There was a faint noise—engines—that cut in and out with the soughing wind.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Do you not hear it?”

“Engines. The city is always buzzing with engines, Dannac.”

She plucked from her belt pouch a pair of field glasses. Now that Dannac had pointed out the noise as something exceptional, she paused to listen.

It was a roar like that of a flying boat, of many engines in concert. But there were no flying boats around, besides the deserted one at the quays. Through the glasses she scanned the city, where the only strange sight was the shadows overhead.

The rumbling was unchanged, until a roar of clattering rose over the wind. The cacophony vibrated in Capra's chest, and the sheer volume seemed to spark a primal fear in her— despite that the source was far away and probably no threat, the very idea of something so huge made her nervous and sent her heart into a tapdance.

It was like a cannon, only instead of vanishing like explosions did, it wound down. Seconds later, the noise rose back to its peak, and this happened several times.

“Do you see anything?” Alim asked.

Capra went back to the glasses and tried to block out the terrible noise. Was it some industrial accident in Redsands? No—nothing there, from what she could see. A problem at the refinery? No change in the black smoke there, and no flames.

As she passed the glasses along the city once more, she caught a strange glint, high above the armoury. A glow of red sun against metal and rivets. There were eight pipes at the top of this structure, and each pumped smoke into the air, and the louder its engines, the more black it belched.

“It's that contraption at the armoury.” But most of it was hidden under the canvas, and at the moment, it just seemed like another tall building.

“But what is it?” Alim asked. “Sevari said nothing of it.”

“Perhaps it is not his doing.”

Capra lowered the glasses. “Or maybe it is.”

There it was, the pride of Blightcross. The engineering marvel, the most advanced weapon in existence. Sevari barely hid a vengeful smile; it was still too early to show the boy any sign of the shadow men's impending downfall.

As per Rovan's orders, there now stood at either side of the door nude Ehzeri women, handpicked by the boy himself after two hours of parading them in and out of the office. Every so often, one of the human manifestations of the shadows would enter and speak with Rovan, but Sevari could not make out what they were discussing. It was impossible to tell who was directing whom—was the boy really in charge, or was his very placement in power part of some greater plan?

Never mind. He could drive himself insane trying to understand what the shadow beings aimed to do. They were transforming his city, he knew that much, but no more than that. The texts had spoken of the shadow beings and the fire giants as dependent upon each other, as unitary. He could find no reference that pointed to what the shadows would actually do had they achieved dominance over the giants.

No, the important thing now was the golem. Iermo's dream, now made reality. From its many cannons it would dispense the ultimate punishment on these depraved beings.

If he could beat them, they would have to submit to him. Submit their power.

With its cannon shot made from metals mined in the Hex, nothing could withstand this superior weapon. The only hitch would be if the thing's mind were still too far into the experimental stage to drive the machine.

“I hope you enjoyed your work with Section Three,” he said to Rovan. “Did you?”

“Not as much as I enjoy these girls. Section Three was boring, and I didn't like the mess it made.”

“Mess?”

Rovan gestured to one of the girls, who hurried to sit in his lap and stroke his face. “Don't you know what your own researchers are doing, Till?” He laughed and began to grope the girl. “You're ruining my mood. Why don't you have some more pie?”

Sevari withheld any remarks and watched his machine. Sooner or later, the shadows would tell the boy about the weapon, and he hoped that by then it would be of no consequence.

“I think I want a wall around the city. One that goes right to the oilfields. That way the other districts of Naartland can't try to steal our wealth.”

“Is that so?”

“The shadow men love the idea. They're going to get started as soon as they're finished. What did they call it? The Initial Trauma.”

Initial Trauma?

“How come you never thought about putting a wall around the oil? You're not so smart, are you?”

“Evidently not, Rovan. Evidently not.” Sevari gazed at the golem, and his gut swam with anticipation. They must be just getting down to the final dozen engines in the lower quadrant. Soon the canvas would roll away and the golem would take its first steps and fire its first salvos.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Well, I don't feel any different.” Capra made a few more steps down Fasco's Road, waving her hands through the air. If there were some invisible force there, it wasn't one she could feel.

“Neither do I,” Vasi said.

If Vasi couldn't sense it, what could it be? Didn't Ehzeri sense all beyond the physical world?

Dannac pulled from his belt the hand-cannon. “I would worry more about these slums ahead than the air.”

She slapped his arm. “Put that away. They're probably just normal people who haven't benefited from Sevari's refinery.”

Despite what she had just said, she came into a nervous readiness, and wished for a crossbow or sabre. She had seen slums before, along with the desperation, violence, and inhuman struggles inherent in them. Ehzeri camps, Valoii ghettos, it was all the same.

Here, there were crumbling wells and rusted machines fitted with warning placards. As they walked Fasco's Road, a dozen Ehzeri stopped and watched them with suspicious eyes. Many held broken hoes, jagged pipes, and rakes.

It was hard to understand the pride Tey felt about Fasco and his road. This was his legacy. A community of people unified by the mere fact of their peeling skin, of the boils on their faces, of their thinning hair.

Alim shoved her along. “Let's move it. You don't want to end up like that, do you?”

“What do you care?”

“As long as Helverliss and his phantoms are taking this district, I care enough to shove you when you stand around and wait to catch this sickness everyone has.”

“Why don't we get it over with now. Are you going to try to bring me in after this?”

He kept quiet. Just as well—deep down, she preferred to avoid bad news until it was unavoidable.

The bridge lay just ahead, and beyond, the horizon wavered in layers of orange and red, with an occasional strand of industrial smoke intruding into it.

In the distance, the prison brooded amid heat waves, barely visible.

“Maybe we should go to the prison for help after all. It's right in the middle of the Hex, and there isn't a shadow within leagues of it. Could be worth a try.”

Vasi said, “No. This is not a normal prison. There is one warden, and a handful of mechanics to fix it.”

“What kind of prison is not staffed with armed guards?”

“A mechanical prison.”

The three of them gasped. It sounded ludicrous.

“It is... new. I know people who have escaped and survived the trek through the Hex.” She gulped. “But after they reached the city, they did not survive long. There is nothing like this prison, I can guarantee you. Their meals are given by machine, they are disciplined by machine. I barely understand it myself.”