Forgotten (34 page)

The chains were bound up in pair of thick winches. It took some work, hoisting the bones below back up. Both legs pulled free when they got the body up to the lip of the chute, and there was more flesh hidden underneath the skirts than Kaie realized. The smell of rot hit them all as the body parts tumbled out. Peren wasn’t the only one to retch over the other side. Kaie was actually leaning over the other edge, sucking in the cleaner air for several seconds, before he was sure he was going to be okay.

Judah waited for him. Kaie wasn’t sure if that was out of respect, or because the giant wanted someone else to test the viability of the plan. It didn’t matter. It just meant he didn’t need to argue with someone else trying to go first.

The instant his hands touched the warm metal, a strange feeling came over him. He closed his eyes for a moment, half convinced he was going to be sick after all. Kaie knew he was still kneeling on the wall, his eyes screwed closed, gripping that weather-worn metal. But he also knew he was moving. His feet pushed off the edge of the wall, and he slid out into space. His legs flailed, and he was falling.

The chain jerked as it reached the end of the length they played out and ripped out of his hands. He expected to go hurtling toward the water. But something tied around his waist kept him still. Surprised, he looked down and was startled to find his shirt tied through the chain and looped around him. The fabric was showing signs of strain, and would rip if he depended on it much longer, but it worked. He didn’t remember tying it. In fact, if he concentrated, he could still feel its weight around his neck and shoulders while he crouched up on the wall. But that didn’t make any sense.

He was grateful. He wrapped his hands around the chain again, taking strain off the shirt and putting it back onto his arms. He shouted for the people up above to start lowering the chain. After a moment, he was moving at a slow and jerky pace.

Then there was a boom.

From his place on the wall he couldn’t see what was happening. He didn’t need to see. It was Mola’s explosion. He was sure of it.

He did see the cloud of dust and ash as it blotted out the sky. He even saw the chunk of stone hurtling into the section of wall where the winch for his chain was attached. He watched, helpless, as the winch tilted forward and then broke free of the wall.

He fell in truth then.

He managed to turn around in the air, under the theory he wanted to see his death coming.

It was a bad theory.

In his last second, he remembered the dragon. Words slipped past his lips before he realized he was speaking.

Maal! Help! Please!

Kaie dropped the chain and stumbled backward, on the top of the wall again. He sucked in several deep breaths of air, regretting it immediately as the last traces of the corpse’s stench hit his lungs. In an instant, he was gaging.

Kaie didn’t like to think about the dragon – or the man inside the dragon. It marked him, and he was sure that all sorts of supernatural attention
was
focused on him now because of it. But what else could it be? It felt real, every bit of it. He looked down at his hands, certain he would see them torn raw from when the chain jerked out of his grip. But they were fine.

Not important!

Still, Kaie wasn’t able to convince himself to tie his shirt to this chain. After half a second of arguing with himself about the stupidity of it, he moved over to the second chain, which was left untouched in the vision.
Or, as much of it as he saw.
It got him some raised eyebrows, but no one said anything. He was the Whore King now. No one was going to question anything he did. Not yet, anyway.

He shoved his shirt through two of the links and then tied it around his waist. Then he pushed himself into the chute. He shot downward and out into space. His legs spun, instinctually looking for purchase. He reached the end of the length of chain and it ripped free of his hands. The shirt held, swinging him back and slamming him into the wall. His head slammed into the stone and he nearly blacked out. Then it was over and he could wrap his throbbing hands around the metal and take the pressure off his fraying shirt.

He shouted and the people above began lowering him. To his right, he saw another man hurtling down on the first chain. He thought the soldier’s name was Roman.

There was a boom.

Kaie closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see the sky turn dark again. And he didn’t want to watch the chunk of stone collide with the winch holding his life a second time.

Someone screamed. It wasn’t until the sound plummeted past that Kaie was sure it wasn’t him. His eyes fluttered open, a surge of relief taking his breath away and making his whole body go slack for a moment. He wasn’t going to fall again.
For the first time.

He didn’t check on Roman. There was no need.

After a long handful of moments the chain began to descend again. Smoke billowed out to surround him. The opening below was spewing it forth as the city burned. On this side of the wall, he was safe from the blaze.

Of course, the smoke was another matter. It grew thick around him, obscuring his vision and coating his nose and throat. He did vomit then. The bile burned like acid as it poured out of him. The chain stopped going down, though it took him some time to realize it.

He couldn’t see the ocean. From above the drop didn’t look so bad, but he remembered his fall.
Or the vision of it.
He remembered the water rushing up to swallow him.

He couldn’t breathe. Every gasp for air left his head feeling lighter and his eyelids heavier. Kaie knew he had a minute – maybe two. Then it didn’t matter how far the water was. Once he lost consciousness he was dead.

He swung his feet out toward the wall. He hoped to push himself free of the smoke just long enough to see the ocean. But it didn’t work the way he planned. Where there should be stone, his legs found nothing but open air.

His mind was sluggish. He tried to will the fog out of his head, but there were other matters demanding more attention.
Breathing, for example.
If his feet weren’t hitting the
wall, that meant there wasn’t a wall for them to hit. That made sense.
Probably.
The chains… There was something about the chains, if he could just
managed
to think of it.

He needed to breathe. One lung-full of fresh air would make everything better.
Everything.
Desperate, clumsy fingers clawed at the knot in his shirt that held him. The chain shook and jumped in his hands. There wasn’t time to figure it out. There wasn’t time to undo the knot, even if the useless stumps at the end of his hands were capable of it. He grabbed the shirt and pulled.

A frantic cry of frustration turned into another round of hacking. Then, he heard the rip.

Kaie fell. His legs smacked into the bottom of the opening in the wall where they dragged the bodies in. He didn’t need to hear the snap to know he broke a bone. The pain was blinding. One of the chains for the ankles smashed into his shoulder. He tried to grab at it, but he couldn’t make his arms move fast enough.

He managed to dig his fingers into the rotting meat hanging from the end of one, and held just long enough to enjoy the sensation of his fingers sinking into what used to be flesh, and something living squirming beneath them, before it slipped from his grasp and he hit something impossibly solid.

Air – the fresh air he needed – was shoved out of him. His whole body was crushed by the impact. He felt himself die, unable to even open his eyes to face it, and then he was sinking down into the icy Abyss.

Except…

The Abyss wasn’t supposed feel cold. It wasn’t supposed to
feel
anything. But Kaie was feeling all sorts of things.
None of them good.

He forced his eyes open. They stung like he was opening them in the middle of a sandstorm. At first there was no difference. The blackness was thicker than any he ever experienced before. He thought he was blind. Then his lungs started working again. He sucked in a mouthful of salty water. Then he understood.

Fighting down the panic that would speed him along to a very real death, Kaie worked to turn his body around. He looked for some sign of the surface. He almost gave up, almost started swimming in any random direction, when he spotted a watery glow.

Lungs burning, he pumped his arms furiously and kicked the one leg that would respond. The glow grew larger. He even felt the warmth seeping through the cold waters and warming him. But it wasn’t fast enough. Fighting the instinct to suck in another mouthful of water was becoming impossible. Kaie knew the darkness at the edges of his vision was more than the ocean depths.

Not like this!

He fought too hard, made too many sacrifices. They weren’t going to steal it from him. Not when he was this close. He wouldn’t let them! Freedom was
right there
…

The air was hot and acrid. It was tainted with the smoke of a burning city and the scent of the late Lady Autumnsong. Kaie sucked it all in eagerly, certain he never smelled anything so wonderful.

Then he puked.
Again.
It was the vilest thing to ever come out of his mouth. He was sure it wasn’t food that spewed out, but bits of his insides. When he was done, Kaie swam. He didn’t know what direction, or how long. Exhaustion made his whole body shake and his consciousness fuzzy. He didn’t think about the splashes he heard behind him and didn’t notice as other bodies slid through the water beside him. He just reached.
One arm, then the other.
Over and over.
Until he was sliding up onto white sand.
He spit up a stomach full of the water he swallowed.

Then he collapsed.

Time passed while he floated in some place between unconsciousness and awareness. Others climbed up onto the beach beside him but no one bothered him. That was all Kaie really cared about. Later, he would worry about other things.
Much later.

His leg didn’t hurt anymore. That was probably a bad sign, but he just didn’t have the energy to be worried about it. He was just grateful for the relief. He wished his shoulder would follow suit and go numb. At that moment, he truly didn’t care if he was ever able to use his arm again. Just so long as it stopped hurting and let him sleep.

He wasn’t sure he cared if he died, so long as it meant he could sleep.

He didn’t dream. But his mind wandered into a place more dream than reality. The dragon was there, the old man. In this place Kaie acknowledged that they were the same. He accepted that the vision of his death was truth, and that the dragon fulfilled one of the promises. Even if only just. He admitted all this to himself without any emotion, and that made it okay.

Then he saw the dragon’s grandson, the red-haired boy who helped him start a war. He felt plenty of emotion then. Anton. He hoped the kid died in the city. He was certain the dragon wouldn’t allow it. The boy tried to do something to his mind.

The image of Anton grew obscured with feathers.
Big, long black ones.
They rained down around him, and he just watched. They cut him, drawing thin
stripes
of blood up and down his chest and arms. He didn’t flinch away. For all that he was sure they would eventually kill him, Kaie found he kind of liked them.

He would happily lie there, watching imagined feathers floating down from the sky and cutting him to ribbons forever. Especially if it meant he didn’t need to move anymore. That part sounded particularly appealing.

But the gods weren’t that kind.

He returned to reality with a lurch at the sound of a second boom. It was loud enough to destroy his ears and leave him with nothing more than a high-pitched ringing. Kaie shoved himself up, spitting curses he couldn’t hear. It only took him a minute to sort out where he was. The damn wall was close enough to spit on, and if he craned his neck and squinted, he could almost make out the guard post. He laughed, realizing the impossible distance he swam wasn’t even a mile. Then his humor faded. Fate wasn’t done screwing him over just yet.

Figuring out the source of the second explosion was no challenging feat. Clearly Mola and the Huduku never expected to destroy their city with a solitary eruption. Every building was made of the same strange stone the wall was, and all Kaie needed to do was look to see that it didn’t burn. They would need to collapse the whole damn city into the
tunnels before there was any chance Urazin would call it lost.
Which meant more explosions.
Possibly – probably – lots more. And he was sitting right next to the wall.
A wall which the Huduku almost certainly meant to collapse.

And just sitting up nearly made him pass out. So there was that.

He looked around for a head of blonde hair, realizing belatedly that, even if all the dye was washed out, the water would make it too dark to recognize that way. Assuming either of them was on the beach. Of the eighty-some he left atop the wall, there were only twenty-some around him now.

Kaie felt a blast of heat on his back. Just a few feet from where he was sitting, a hole opened in the sand and flames shot out. An opening into the passes, one he must have passed during his crazy run, was being consumed by the fire rippling along a path of oil.

A high-pitched scream pierced the ringing in his ears. Even before he saw her running toward him, he knew it was Peren.

Maybe she was sitting closer to the opening than him, or maybe she just walked past at the wrong moment. Whatever the reason, she was close enough to the blaze that the fire leapt after her. She was burning now, lost to the panic and pain as she ran along the beach.

Kaie never decided to climb to his feet. He never thought about grabbing her and dragging her into the ocean. He didn’t even notice her mindlessly fighting him as he pulled her down beneath the waves. Not until her flailing caught his left leg and sent him down again. His whole body wanted to pass out, but he battled back to consciousness. He pulled her into his lap, ignoring her fumbling as he examined every inch of her.

Most of her hair fell apart as he touched it. Nearly two inches of the rest was so burnt he expected it would go soon. But there was no sign the fire reached her head. The back of her shirt was charred, but aside from an angry red patch at the base of her neck, she seemed impossibly undamaged.

Sick with relief, Kaie held her head between his hands and pressed his forehead against hers. His breath came in such ragged gasps a stranger might think it was him that was almost burnt alive. Peren seemed to come back to herself then. Fat tears cut tracks through the soot covering her face. She kissed him. He let her. After a moment, she pulled away and buried her head in his shoulder. The bad one, but he didn’t care. He held her, grateful for every shudder that went through her tiny body, and silently offered the most profound thanks to whatever god was looking out for the girl.

Something was happening on the beach. It took him some time to notice.
Longer to care.
The sun reflecting off the water and the white sand made it difficult to make out anything but dark forms, but there looked to be more than the twenty-some he expected. His hearing wasn’t recovered enough yet to make out words, but he was definitely hearing shouts.

“Peren.”
His lips were right up against her ear, and the movement brushed some burnt hair into his mouth. “I can’t carry you back.”

He wanted to. Gods, he wanted nothing more than to let her cling to him until the last of her sobs were gone and there wasn’t a trace of tremble left in her. If there was even a chance he could manage, Kaie would be on his feet already. There wasn’t, and he knew better than to try.

“Do we have to go back?” She hiccupped softly.

No.
“There’s trouble. We need to find Vaughan.”

That was the magic word. No matter how much the years changed them, Peren would do anything for her brother. He didn’t understand the devotion, but he knew how to use it. He’d used it since the moment the two came back into his life.

She pushed away from him and staggered to her feet, a hand going up to her head in a gesture he recognized. She was trying to push her hair back from her face. Before she could feel the damage, Kaie grabbed the hand and used it to pull himself up, trying not to grimace at the pain.

Peren saw, of course. Those eyes of hers saw damn near everything. Her hair forgotten, she slid herself under his arm and took the weight his leg couldn’t hold. They made their way back to the beach as quickly as he could manage, which was just a bit faster than the tide. Any minute, the foundation under the wall would give, and the enormous slabs would come crashing down.

His squinted count proved to be accurate. There were far more than twenty people. It wasn’t too difficult to sort out what was going on. The Huduku were holding his soldiers at sword point.

There were plenty newcomers to look at, but his eyes only found one.

“Mola.”

Her almond eyes widened as they focused on him.
“Kale.
This girl is a little surprised. She knew he was resourceful, but she never figured he would find a way to leave the greatest city with his life.”

“Disappointed?”

“Oh no.
She is very pleased she gets the chance to finish what she started.” Her dark lips quirked into a nasty smile. “Does Kale want to take his pants off again? He did seem to enjoy that part. Or has he already found some other girl to take Mola’s place?”

He squeezed Peren’s shoulder lightly, warning her to keep quiet. This wasn’t going to end well, but he wasn’t going to let her throw her life away. Not after all this.

Peren shrugged away his arm, and for a second Kaie was sure she was about to throw herself at Mola. But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. That’s not who she was.

“Actually,” Peren said very matter-of-factly, “you are the one who took my place.
If we’re being honest.
And I really do think that’s best. Don’t you?”

Mola’s smile faded. She didn’t throw herself at Peren, either. That surprised Kaie a great deal. That was exactly who she was. “Mola wonders how the blonde girl survived. She knows how much it excites him, being rough. But the blonde girl looks so terribly fragile. Even now, she is trembling. Did he enjoy it at all, Mola wonders, or did he spend all his time trying not to break the blonde girl?”

Kaie was absolutely certain he needed to stop this conversation, but couldn’t fathom how.

Peren tilted her head, her blue eyes considering the other woman with no trace of the fear that should be there. “I suppose, with me, he didn’t feel the need break anyone. You know, in all the times we were together, he never seemed to need a bit of roughness to get excited. I wonder what you were doing wrong.”

She shrugged and Mola growled. He needed to say something.
Anything.

“I’m not the one who did the stabbing, Mola.”

That was not at all what he expected to come out of his mouth, but it worked. Slowly, Mola tore her narrowed eyes away from Peren and locked them on him.

He felt a thrill at having that intensity turned on him again. Kaie knew that should worry him, but he figured he wasn’t going to live long enough for it to be a problem. He doubted she actually intended a repeat of the last time she tried to kill him, and was certain he wasn’t strong enough to respond to the attention even if she was.

“No,” she allowed with a snarl. “But Kale’s people are a disease that spread through the greatest city and would not let go. The greatest city was tainted! It is because of him that everything burns! Mola will see her people purged of the filth of his empire!”

Kaie smirked.
“Because of me?
Wow. I mean, I knew I was something special, but I never imagined I could burn down ‘the greatest city’ just by stepping inside. If I realized it was that easy, I would’ve walked into a whole host of cities before I ever got around to your sweltering monstrosity. Why didn’t anyone tell me before?”

“We all thought you knew, sir!”

He looked over to where the last of his soldiers were clustered, surprised to see Henry smiling back at him. Judah stood beside the one-eared man.

“I mean, the taint alone
reeked
enough to singe the hairs from everyone’s nostrils. We were just trying to be polite about it. It never occurred to anyone that you might just be used to the stench.”

Mola spun on Henry, screaming something unintelligible to the men holding the soldiers. Kaie nodded to the two men he spent the last few months with. Understanding passed between the three of them. Then he leaned in close enough to Peren to taste the burnt hair again.

“Do you remember the plan I told you on the wall?” He whispered.

She didn’t ask a single question.
Just nodded.
Thank the gods for her.

Then everything erupted. Judah surged forward. He knocked aside the men waving their swords at him as if they were nothing more than ragdolls. Henry spun on the next closest Huduku, the two of them falling to the ground in a heap, and the other soldiers quickly followed suit.

Judah’s path took him straight to Mola.

She moved as fast as lightening.

In an instant, there
were a pair
of daggers protruding from the soldier’s chest. He staggered, and Kaie thought he would fall. But Judah simply wrapped his hands around one of the hilts and ripped it out with a roar. The giant locked one arm around Mola, using the other to stab the dagger deep into her belly and jerk it up.

Every bit of Kaie grew terribly still.

The giant tumbled down. Mola managed to shove herself away. She staggered back toward Kaie, but fell before she crossed half the distance.

He watched as her blood spilled out over the white sand.

Someone was screaming. He wished they would stop.

Kaie blinked. He was kneeling beside her, gathering her up into his arms. He sobbed as he held her unresisting frame against his chest.
He pressed his hands to her wound, but the blood pulsed through his fingers with a speed that made his efforts useless.

“Why?
Gods dammit, Ams, why?”
Ams?
Amorette.
Who was that?

The words came out of his mouth, but he didn’t understand them. He was supposed to understand… It was important.

His eyes combed the beach, seeing none of it, watching the dark red puddles from his vision form and grow in the snow at his side, seeking some miracle that would save her. “Vaughan!” he screamed. “Vaughan, help me!”

Time stretched and danced, seeming both unbearably long and impossibly short with each fading pulse of blood spilling through his fingers. When the boy materialized from the ether, he didn’t know if it was an instant or an hour after he called. However long, it was
too
long.