Blightcross: A Novel (42 page)

Anyhow, at least that was one minor issue to strike from his list. There were more important things at hand.

Situation critical. Special Regiment required; all citizens must be neutralized to prevent further corruption. Begin the waking cycle immediately.

By now, Dannac had glimpsed enough of the battle from above to know that his three or four kills every few minutes were slowing them down more than anything.

“This isn't working. We need to retreat and regroup.”

Vasi's hand still grasped his wrist, sending a strange tingling through his arm. They flattened themselves against a crumbled wall to catch their breath.

“Look—the armoury,” Vasi said. “At the gates... I think there are a few of Sevari's troops there who haven't been taken by the shadow men.”

“They have been distracted by the giants...”

“And we'd better regroup around the armoury. The soldiers will provide cover for us.”

They both bellowed the new plan as loudly as they could, then bolted along the main road. Along the way there were groups of people giggling and pointing at smouldering buildings and bodies. Others had not given up the initial phase of wild copulation as most had.

“Have you seen any images of Rovan?”

He hesitated. He had seen much of Capra's predicament, and about the only thing he could be sure of was that Rovan was not exactly the innocent little brother Vasi had described. “I have. He is alive.”

Lying by omission? Maybe, but Vasi was his sight, and he could not afford to have her distracted by knowing that her brother and Capra were standing atop the machine.

“Is Capra on her way back to us, then?”

He glanced at the blob of movement that, coupled with the commotion he heard, must have been the war-engine stomping towards them. “You could say that.”

“I wish I would not have listened to you. I can feel her connection to me. She has power that she could be using...”

“She does not.”

If by power, Vasi meant luck, then sure.

Now the gates of the armoury were ahead, and the tall metal scaffolding, now empty, was bent and twisted.

“I can see them—sentries around the wall. They are firing at... everyone.”

“Good.”

He could make out the general form of the armoury wall, and he saw a vague flutter of motion. “What—”

“The gates are opening. They are giving us sanctuary.”

The crowd that had followed him rushed past. “I do not feel good about it.”

“Why? They clearly aim to give us shelter in the armoury. It must not be fully taken over by either force...”

They kept running to the gate.

“Everybody back!”

This time a few skidded to a halt and ducked behind rubble. Vasi struggled against him as he forced her behind a chunk of broken masonry.

“Let me go. Why are you doing this? Why are you hiding?”

“Because something is amiss. I will never trust anything that comes out of that armoury. I have too much experience with so-called law to know that it does not suddenly change its character and welcome those in need.”

More intermittent images flashed through his mind, beamed from Capra's viewpoint. The eye faced a row of factories, leaving his and Vasi's position at the left margin of the picture. If she would only shift her body a few inches...

It was enough that he could make out a square of men moving towards the open gate.

“Soldiers...”

“Uncorrupted soldiers?”

“I believe so.”

“How?”

Sevari must have had them hidden in reserve. Of course he had—what else could all the gloating he had heard refer to? The people here no longer needed Tamarck's protection. Sevari was no liar—Blightcross was a force of its own now.

Vasi beamed with excitement. “I see them—they are marching through the gate.”

“How are they armed?”

A pause. “I... I am not sure.”

“Lances? Hand-cannons?”

“No.”

The view from his jewel offered no details, and he tried to make out the men with his own damaged eyes. All he saw was a single mass of grey moving against a slightly different shade of grey.

Finally, she said, “Black suits of armour. They have... masks. There are tubes in the masks, and they hold strange wands.”

“Cannons?”

“No—thinner. On their backs they carry egg-shaped packs.”

Screams erupted from near the gate. He gave Vasi a hard nudge.

“I don't know what is going on. There are... it's a mist. A deadly mist.”

“Poison? A gas?”

“I... I think so.”

Why would Sevari order such an attack? He posed the question out loud, but Vasi said nothing. His cannon was useless. The cloud of gas would just envelop them, and there was no fighting a white version of the shadow men.

“Now, we run.”

“What?”

“You heard me. We run and hope that Capra can come up with a way to fix this.”

“We can't just run. You of all people—”

“Sevari aims to eradicate any living thing in the city in order to take away the shadow men's ability to fight.”

She gasped. “It's insane.”

“Yes. But he's right—if everyone dies before the fight is over. The shadows will have a hard time gaining control without footsoldiers to do their bidding.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

At every chance, Capra stole glances at the war machine's many panels. She stood with Rovan on the machine's shoulders, and tried to shuffle towards the head. Each time she sidled over, Rovan would change position and give her a stern look.

Smoke columns reached into the permanent haze-canopy, and the sun glowed a deeper shade of red. Unlike the orderly jets of smoke from the refinery, these plumes slashed the sky at random, and blew into ragged clouds.

Back near the refinery, which now she figured was the shadow men's stronghold, a strange greyness seemed to sap the colour and life from the area.

“Rovan, what are these things really doing to the city?”

“Making it better. And it's not the shadows, but my followers. Me and my people are using the shadows to make the city better, not the other way around.”

She let out a frustrated sigh. The way the process of corruption kept changing depending on who she asked reminded her of a popular painting by a famous artist from Prasdim; an illusion that depicted two hands painting each other.

It didn't matter. She had to stop this damned machine. But with Rovan watching, how could she? Damn it all, how could she become the hostage of a teenaged boy?

Capra shuffled over some more, and now her back was against one of the panels. She placed her hands behind her back, and tried to jam it open with the knife. It wasn't as though she needed to be delicate. She just needed to foul the stupid thing.

“Vasi,” Rovan said. “Where are you?” A moment later, he nodded. His lips moved, but Capra couldn't make out the words.

The machine wheeled and stomped towards the armoury. She worked faster, and after much jiggling, the plate bent open enough for her to reach into the cavity. All the while, she fixed her gaze on Rovan and made small talk.

Rovan still grinned at his handiwork, his chaos. “We'll pick her up and then maybe you two will lighten up and admit how great this is. You'll love the new city, really.”

“Really?”

Instead of answering, he squinted and gazed at a ruined section near the armoury. “No,” he said. “What's going on? They're killing us. They're killing them all, the bastards!”

She groped around in the cavity, fingers sliding over round bits of metal and jagged things and braided metal cables. She grabbed anything that might fit between her fingers and pulled, but found nothing delicate enough to snap or dislodge.

She also had to make sure to keep Rovan talking. “Killing what?”

There—something that gave way. A stud. She jammed her finger into it repeatedly. Enough that her fingertip cried out in pain.

“Soldiers. Just like the Valoii.” Rovan pressed his hands to his head.

But she barely heard him, since most of her concentration was in her hand, pressing and pulling and scratching.

“They're going to kill her.” Rovan flailed his arms towards the armoury.

Like a brood of beetles, a force of hundreds, all in black armour, filled the area within the armoury's walls and flooded out the gate. They spilled through the streets, and engulfed anyone in their way.

With gas, no less. Gas that was not the crude glass canisters she had tossed into countless Ehzeri camps. Gas that did more than cause minor burns and temporary choking.

There was an explosion, and Capra was dazed for a moment before realizing that it was the machine's cannons firing at the soldiers.

She pried open the panel more, and this time stuffed the knife into the cavity. There had to be something important, something the knife could jam or disengage.

“You just going to stand there?”

It took a moment for the words to resonate with her. “Excuse me?”

“Go get my sister. You're the one who wanted to save her, now go get her. Then we can show these sheepfuckers who has the real power.”

Was he kidding? Did he have a head injury? Ordering her around like that, as if that would ever work.

She wanted to slap the kid or at least tell him what a little shit he was, but now wasn't the time, especially since he was, after all, corrupted by evil entities. And if Vasi were down there, as Rovan said, among those clouds of gas...

Without thinking, hurried to the ladder, never thinking that she might need the knife she left inside the cavity. The thing began to take slow steps. It shook like mad but she held on, legs swinging under her.

“Better not think about double crossing me, Valoii. I see everything.”

Everything except his own stupidity. It was hard to take the kid seriously, even now.

At the machine's hip joint, she halted. The machine was still walking, and there was a complex meshing of machinery she wanted to avoid. The engines blared and their vibration crawled deep inside her body. Eyes shut, tight as her grip on the ladder. Guns blazed above, flames dripped in a hell-rain, some of it skittering across the giant's metal plates, leaving scorched trails.

Her head spun. Ten different acrid vapours floated around her. The machine's foot slammed into the ground, and she lost her grip. She began to slide down the ladder. It ended before she realized what had happened—a shock in her legs, a lack of control, rolling around on the ground, burning hands.

A black form hovered in the distance. A shadow. It sailed towards her, and she flattened against the ground. When the shadow passed, she hauled herself to her feet and sprinted through the alleys. She leaped over bodies, dodged retching citizens whose skin appeared to be flaking off.

“Vasi? Dannac?”

Rhythmic thumping. Boots. Jingling weapons as an accompaniment, almost like chimes. She darted behind a derelict carriage. The sound edged closer, beating in time like the gears of the clock tower.

The soldiers looked nothing like any soldier she knew. They wore all black—something she couldn't grasp, given the temperatures of the area. It looked like leather but it wasn't. Their masks looked like hideous bug heads. As they passed, she heard a chilling, hollow wheeze and hiss emit from the men. It was their breathing.

They marched with an unnatural stiffness; a precision even her countrymen couldn't match.

As she scrambled to find Vasi and Dannac, the war machine threw out a grating sound. Its arm jolted still halfway through its own movement. Was it breaking down after only hours of life?

It could be... hopefully it was the knife jabbing into various parts as the thing moved.

But before she could feel optimistic about the little victory, a wave of coughing overcame her. She went to her knees, eyes flooding. Damned poison...

“Capra?”

It was a hoarse voice, familiar. She tried to answer, but only retched. The surrounding chaos bled into a mass of spilled colour, under a curtain of hot tears.

“It's her. Come on, we need to get her some air.”

It was Vasi and Dannac. The scene around her darkened, and she lost all control of her muscles, before all she knew was darkness.

The sound of her friends' voices. Distant rumbling. Her first action: rubbing her arms, rubbing out the crawling itch racing through her flesh.

She sat up. Both comrades were perched on rubble, watching her intently.

Vasi handed her a ripped handkerchief. “Rovan, where is he?”

Capra rubbed the crud from her eyes. “He's on the machine. He's controlling them.”

“What?”

“The shadows chose him as their human... governor. He thought I'd come down, get you, and bring you to him. He wants us all to just relax and enjoy his new city.” She spat in an attempt to rid her mouth of the chemical taste. “Why am I alive, anyway?”

“I purged the poison from you.”

“Just not from my mouth.”

They both displayed an incredulous look. Somehow, it reminded her that she had Dannac's eye, so she detached it from her necklace and gave it to him.

“So you just left my brother with that... abomination?”

“It's actually pretty interesting, Vasi.” Then she remembered that Ehzeri hated machines.

There was a click as Dannac snapped the jewel into his forehead. “The machine is crawling with shadow men now. It had started to fire randomly, but it is back to its old self.”

“You mean... they're fixing it?”

He gave her a blank look.

“I tried to sabotage it. I had thought it was starting to break down, but... damn it. What's going on down here, anyway?”

“I had organized most of the non-aligned people, and we were going to regroup around the armoury. Sevari's troops have wiped out our resistance.”

“What?” But she needed no explanation. Sevari was the kind of man who could see the logic in destroying everything in order to save it. And the part that scared her? It was easy to see how practical the solution was.