Guardian (10 page)

I touched it to my lips. The water tasted strange. Like it had been stored in a warm poly container for a very long time.

“
We are not without options on Crust.”

I lifted eyebrows at him.
“Crust?”

He grinned, the expression genuine.
“Here, let me show you.”

A keyboard rose in the centre of the room, beside the tube and its sleeping cargo. Lad
’s fingers flew across keys. The window at the top of the sphere widened until the entire top half of the room was transparent. I stood and scrambled away as the wall was replaced by curved, clear poly.

“
Don’t worry,” Lad said, and approached me. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and turned me back towards the wall. “It’s strong.”

We were speeding through a tunnel. Lights flashed past us; everything moved so fast I couldn
’t make out any details.

“
We are leaving Fulcrum behind.”

The lights rushed past, faster and faster. Lad tightened his arm and gladly, I leaned into his strength.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you for looking after me.”

A final burst of light. I blinked, squinted.

“Don’t close your eyes,” Lad said.

And then we were free.

We shot out from the tunnel into a terrible, dark and twisted sky. I stared around us, shocked. No stars, only clouds and their storm-like whirling, their solid rain-sheets, and their darkness. Reaching, clawing into each other. Darkness.

And hanging in all that torn, chaotic night, countless, giant silex Shards like deadly, shining wounds.

I leaned against the clear poly surface. Far below, much further than even
Grandeur
’s eight hundred feet, a city spread out beneath us. At least, it had once been a city. Empty steel frames reached up at us, the skeletal remains of towering buildings pierced the clouds. Smaller dwellings, made indistinct by distance and haze, surrounded them, but I could see hints of colourless cement and shattered windows. Weak, scattered lights wound vague trails through the darkness. The remnants of streetlamps, I thought, judging from their patterns.

Shards loomed out of some of the shattered buildings like they had fallen there. The floating ones were enormous, their bottom spikes nearly touching the tops of the city buildings, their peaks impossible to see. Flares pulsed inside them. In the distance, they looked like stars. Flickering, arching in a delicate pattern, beads in a dark dress.

“Tan.” Lad turned me, gently, to look back the way we had come. “That is Fulcrum.”

I didn
’t know what to think of it. It looked like a building, but was not connected to the earth. Several bright spots—like the tunnel exit—dotted the base. The rest of it was solid, smooth and grey. A windowless apartment block. It sheered up into the sky, mostly hidden by cloud, far larger than I could begin to imagine.

“
That’s the programmer’s building?” Dizziness rocked me. Only Lad held me upright. “We weren’t even connected to the ground?” Days of unspent vertigo gathered in sickness low in my stomach.

“
Yes,” Lad said. “That’s Fulcrum. It is our palace, and our prison. It keeps the programmers safe from the denizens of Crust. Keeps our work safe, the world safe. But it also keeps us working, until we die.”

“
Are we falling?” I gasped out the words.

“
Flying,” he said. “We are all born on Crust, the surface of the world below. In the remnants of ancient, once-great cities. Show promise, show intelligence, and if you are lucky, the Legate will choose you. The life of a programmer is one of hard work and sacrifice. But it is a life. On Crust, there is only death.”

I shuddered, glanced up at him.
“Then why are we—”

“
Because there is also freedom. And I told you, there are options on Crust. In Fulcrum, everyone has their role. Mine was to cross the veil, and die there. Your child’s was to replace the Keeper, and save us all. You have changed those paths, Tan. But freedom does not come without a cost. We will find both, on Crust.”

Countless Shards hung bright in the torn sky. I had come so close to joining them. Maybe Lad was right, maybe I had turned all our paths around, when I had brought his other Half with me through the veil, and restored him. But was it really the right thing to do?

I glanced back at my son. It was. Absolutely.

“
The programmers will follow us, won’t they?” I asked.

Lad nodded.
“It will take them a while to restore life support and screen-com. But as soon as they do, they will alert every floor of the Fulcrum, send out every available pod. And contact the Legate. So yes, Tan. They will follow. They will chase us.”

“
Is there any point—”

“
There are many places to hide on Crust.” Lad held me tighter. “I said they would chase us. I did not say they would catch us.”

As I watched, the city reached up to us from Crust, its dark, tall buildings like the claws of some giant hand.

“We just have to keep you alive, Tan. That’s all we can do.”

Three days of Striker bombardment and Kichlan had never felt so cold in all his life. That was saying a lot. He
’d grown up in Movoc-under-Keeper, and as the saying went, his veins were brittle with frost. But there was nothing like Striker-cold. Just as it sapped the moisture from the air, it drained the confidence from a man’s spirit. If it was not for the treacherous Shielders and their pion-binding skill—and Natasha, of course, with her frightful weapons—Kichlan thought that despair alone would have defeated them days ago. But there was something in her eyes that kept her Mob on their feet and her Shielders working, while they waited. Belief, passion…madness?

“
I didn’t realise revolution involved so much sitting around and dying, slowly, of the cold,” he muttered, through chapped and bleeding lips. “I thought there might be fighting. You know, battle. Moving around. Keeping warm.”

It was Natasha who called this a revolution, not him. She filled the tedious, freezing silences with details. She knew every one of the local and regional veche who, tired of the overbearing national veche, had banded together and eventually reached out to Varsnia
’s most powerful neighbour to help them revolt. The Hon Ji emperor had ever so kindly agreed to aid their cause, sending spies like Natasha, and weapons like the ones she’d dug up. It’d been years in the making. Weapons smuggled in and hidden, veche members paid off or assassinated. The soldiers under Natasha’s command were all defectors, loyal to local members rather than the national military body. Tan’s battle with the puppet men and the subsequent ruin of Movoc-under-Keeper had not been part of the plan—but Natasha was quite willing to use the chaos it had created to her advantage.

It was all for his own good. Natasha had tried to impress that upon him, over and over. The people of Varsnia were suppressed by their national veche, couldn
’t he see that? Just look at what the puppet men did to Tan! Think of the way he and his brother had been treated! The local and regional were different, and so was the Hon Ji. They weren’t warmongers, stirring up tensions by developing weapons like Tanyana’s enhanced suit. They cared more about the common people—even debris collectors, the lowest of the low. Natasha guaranteed it.

Kichlan, however, remained sceptical. He couldn
’t tell whether she believed her own rhetoric, but he’d worked for the veche, before he lost his pion sight and became a debris collector. He knew what they were like. All he saw was a desperate power struggle between levels of government, and a neighbouring imperial power more than happy to weaken Varsnia however it could. No wonder Tan hadn’t agreed to join in. Compared to the puppet men and the Keeper and doors, all of this felt like a terrible waste of time. And life.

And he was stuck in the middle of it.

“You complain too much,” Natasha snapped at him. “You full-blooded Varsnians aren’t even supposed to feel the cold.”

The skin around her lips had dried and cracked so the bottom half of her face looked like the bed of a desiccated creek. Had to be painful. She was constantly dabbing it with an already-bloodstained cloth.

He had no idea how the Mob were coping, or the Shielders, with the cold. The Mob hid behind their heavy helmets, the Shielders behind their dark glass, and they were all too stoic to complain.

“
There’s cold,” he snapped right back. “And then there’s this. This is something entirely different.”

Natasha refused to answer.

He grunted, looked away. Complaining was all he could do to fill the cold, dry silence. He hated the silence, the sitting, the stillness. Because there was nothing else to do but remember. And ache.

Natasha and her Mob had dug up three more weapons before the Strikers had started chasing them. Five of her soldiers had been killed, hit straight on with ice that shattered their bodies. Back through city streets, they
’d regrouped, and retreated, Strikers in the sky, enemy Mob all around. Kichlan had no idea how many of her men had died, and how many weapons were lost, by the time they halted in what had once been a University. Half of the building had sunk below ground, creating a deep labyrinth of dark tunnels.

And here, they had been trapped. Strikers and Mob above them, packed earth below.

“Natasha!” A call came from the barricades. “We have company.”

A fleeting look of triumph flashed across her face, then Natasha scrambled forward.

“Curse you,” Kichlan muttered under his breath, and followed.

Navigating the semi-collapsed room was a pain in the Other
’s hairy behind. The whole structure slopped upward. Windows were now hand and toeholds, doorways niches to nest in, and walls defences to hide behind. And all if it was frozen. Kichlan had been given a hat and several layers of coats, all too big for him, but was forced to wrap cloth around his hand so the skin of his palm did not tear.

“
What is it?” Natasha leaned between two of the Mob behind the front row Shielders. Kichlan positioned himself at what he hoped was a relatively safe spot, hugging the edge of a doorway.

The Mob gestured. Kichlan squinted to look past the hazy barriers. He couldn
’t see the complex pion-bindings the Shielders had stretched across the doorway to hold back the Strikers’ attacks. All he could see was the way it caught the ice into a hard, cracking wall, and the faint threads of steam generated by its heat. A liquid drop of debris slid, every so often, from its surface to pool at the floor. Kichlan ignored it. What was the point in collecting anything now?

A single man approached, navigating his slow and careful way down the icy, sloping corridor. He carried a small pion-powered lamp and held out a veche insignia in the other hand.

“I am here to negotiate,” he called, nearly slipped, and dropped the light to steady himself. He scrambled to collect it. “I will speak to Natasha Illoksy.”

“
Why should we trust anything you have to say?” Natasha called back.

“
I speak with the authority of the local and regional veche, miss. None of us want this fighting to continue.”

A wide smile spread across Natasha
’s face, despite the broken skin around her lips. “Let him in,” she told her Shielders.

“
What?” the Mob beside her sounded just as shocked as Kichlan felt. “What are you doing? How do we know he can be trusted?”

“
I am unarmed,” the man called.

“
Meaningless,” another of the Mob growled. “A well trained assassin would need nothing but pions to kill.”

But Natasha shook her head.
“Haven’t you all learned to trust me yet?” She tapped her Shielders, lightly, twice on the shoulders. Their barrier faded with a crashing of ice, and the veche representative stepped through.

The Mob all drew weapons, silver and loudly humming in the close room. Natasha held up a hand—disk poised between her fingers—and they hesitated.

The veche man was small, thin, and very pale. He was wrapped in many layers of woollen clothing, but even so, his lips were almost blue.

“
You took your time,” Natasha said.

“
The national veche is flexing their muscles, Miss Illoksy. They wanted to freeze you out. It took a lot to convince them a ceasefire was a better use of resources, and in the interest of the nation in this time of crisis.”

“
I see.” Natasha lowered her arm. “Are you ready? Have you got them all?”

“
We have been in position for days, miss. All your Mob are accounted for.”

“
Let’s put an end to this fighting then.”

The veche man nodded. He closed his eyes, lifted his hands, began twitching his gloved fingers and whispering beneath his breath. He was manipulating pions.

The Mob stepped forward. Again, Natasha and her disks held them back.

“
Be still!” she hissed at them.

“
But he is—”

More Mob crowded the doorway behind Kichlan.

“Something is happening—”

“
We’re in the middle of a circle! National veche bastards have—”

“
Enough!” Natasha shouted, and silenced them all, instantly. Kichlan could not help but shudder at the thought of what Natasha could do, just how strong she must be, that so many Mob would so quickly obey her. “I thought you were commanded to obey me? Where has my army of Mob gone, and who are these snivelling brat-children around me?”

Kichlan stepped around the doorframe.
“I don’t know about them,” he said. “But this snivelling debris collector would like to know what is going on.”

Around him, Mob muttered agreement.

Natasha sighed. “Don’t fret, Kichlan dear. You aren’t involved in this circle. Unless, of course, you think you can lift one of those.” She pointed to the rows of the large, dragonhead Hon Ji weapons lining the room. “You see, they are only one half of the weapon.” She turned away from the newly arrived pion-binder, straining and sweating where a moment ago he had been pale and frozen. “Do you really think we’d hide hundreds of new weapons in the middle of Movoc-under-Keeper if just anyone could pick up and use them?”

“
We’re ready, miss,” the pion-binder gasped behind her.

Natasha nodded. She looked up at her Mob, her face expressionless.
“This might feel a little strange, for a moment. Don’t let it rattle you. We are about to make you all more powerful than you could ever have imagined.”

The binder brought his hands together.

As one, the Mob gasped. A strange sound, in such a tight space, from so many large and pion-strengthened soldiers. To Kichlan’s eyes, blind to pions, nothing seemed to be happening. Yet the Mob stood rigid, shuddering. And the local veche man—a traitor, obviously allied to Natasha and the Hon Ji—fought to hold his hands together, cupped and grasping the apparently thin air.

“
What’s happening?” Kichlan whispered through the heavy silence.

Blood dripped from open cracks along Natasha
’s chin as she grinned, but she did not seem to care. She drew a short, silver blade, dusted ice from its handle and tossed it, hand to hand, rubbing warmth back into its gleaming metal. “He is the centre of a great and complex circle.” She nodded to the Mob around her. “They are working inside my men, altering the pion-bindings in their physical reinforcements, so they can wield weapons the likes of which this nation has never seen.”

“
What kind of weapons—”

“
Ah.” Natasha pressed a finger against her abused lips. “You shall see, very soon, Kichlan. You shall see.”

The pion-binder let out a great cry. Around them all, the Mob echoed it. As the centre
’s knees gave way and he fell back, the large, black armoured men were also stumbling, clutching the frozen walls for balance, and struggling to breathe.

“
How will this help, exactly?” Kichlan muttered.

“
Shh.” Natasha bent down to the veche traitor. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders, eased him into a sitting position. “Is it done?” She whispered.

He nodded.
“They are ready.” His voice was so soft, Kichlan could hardly hear him. It almost seemed that his lips did not move.

“
You did well.” Natasha placed the tip of her blade against his neck.

With a contented smile, the traitor closed his eyes.
“Take them down,” he gasped. “And set Varsnia free.”

“
I will.” Natasha drew her blade across his throat.

He died quickly. The pumping of blood and a single shudder, before Natasha laid him down against the frozen stone.

Kichlan stared at her, shocked. “What—
Why
?”

Natasha wiped her blade, spun it between fingers, and sheathed it.
“The old families do not know how deep this conspiracy goes.” She turned to him, her eyes hard. With the blood on her chin and her blue-tipped face, she looked like the Other, not Natasha. A twisted creature of nightmare. “Perhaps, when they find their emissary dead, they will not realise what he was. And the longer they thrash about in ignorance, not realising that most of their local and regional branches are against them, the more chance we have to overthrow them.” She looked down to the body. The pooling blood had slowed in the cold. “He understood his fate, accepted his role, and did it well.” She turned back to her Mob. “Now, let us do him proud.”

Kichlan spun. The Mob were no longer weakened and staggering. They stood, massed in straight and regimented lines, at the doorway and further back into the rooms. But they still did not look any different to him.

“Take up your weapons,” Natasha said.

A single Mob broke away from the group. He collected one of the huge dragonheads from against the wall.

“Remove the cloth.”

Kichlan flinched back from the sight of the weapon fully revealed. It was freakish. The half-maw curled slightly, ending in a round dragon-nose. The eyes were deeply sunken, and surrounded by engraved swirls like creases in black-iron skin. Two fiercely clawed feet jutted out from the bottom of the head, and a long, straight tail, riddled with hollow spikes and broken scales, extended directly opposite the jaw. It looked wrong. A demented version of a child
’s drawing, half-made, and not quite understood.