Last First Snow (33 page)

Ticking gears and winding springs behind her, rush of fabric and curl of leather. Taking their time, playing with her? No, more likely shock, fear, slowing her perception. She set Caleb down. He stared at her. Something swam through the waters behind his eyes. “Run,” she said. “Fast as you can. Run.” He took one step back. No time.

She spun, hands raised.

Two figures filled the hall behind her.

They were tall, thin, and not human save in general outline. Glassy many-lensed orbs perched in the eye sockets of elongated mock-faces like masks for an Ebon Sea tragedy, smooth as buffed and hardened leather. They wore black suits and black ties. They had long fingers and long hands: three fingers on each hand and a thumb, she noticed in one of those fits of sudden clarity that plague the terrified, and those fingers and hands transparently mechanical, no attempt made to disguise their hinged joints. Metal, and bloody.

Purple light flickered through their white shirts, beneath their thin black ties, where their hearts should have been if they were human. Which they weren't. Mad babbling in the back of her brain.

They did not hesitate.

Nor did she.

A little table bearing a purple fern in a green pot stood beside the elevators; she grabbed that pot and threw it into the first golem's face. At, rather—the golem raised one arm to block the pot, which shattered, but Mina had followed close behind, teeth bared, striking the damn thing in its stupid glowing chest with all her weight, and no matter how strong it was, sixty kilos to the center of mass would make it stagger.

Which it did, and growled a grinding of gears. She bounced off the chest and flailed for balance. The golem stumbled into its comrade, who arrested its fall with one arm and pointed one hand down the hall, oh, gods, at Caleb outside 404, Elayne's room, pounding on the door and shouting “Help!” The hand stretched, fingers merged and split, thumb dislocated as metal bones realigned into a two-pronged claw pointed at the boy, a claw acid-etched with Craftwork sigils and glyphs and circles that spiraled through strange dimensions Mina could not name. Sparks and charge danced in that hollow, and she realized they had not used a weapon against her in flight, that they themselves were the weapon.

She launched herself at the golem's arm as it fired.

Caleb turned, and raised one hand, face blank and distant as if he was still asleep, as if he'd slipped back into the coma from which their fall from the skies of Dresediel Lex had barely roused him. His eyes closed as his hand swept up, fast and slow at once.

Lightning lanced from the weapon to Caleb.

And Caleb caught it.

The lightning struck his palm and stuck there, darting between splayed fingers. Mina hit the golem's arm a second later and slammed it against the wall. Caleb's eyes flew open and they burned from within, bright as an alchemist's fire. The crackling arcs ceased to jump between his fingers, absorbed rather into them, bursting through his many wounds, uncontrollably bright, illuminating the gods and kings his father's knife had left on his arms and chest and back and legs. And then out, again, from his hand, no building charge this time but a single line of coherent white, a rod connecting his hand to the golem's chest.

The light died as suddenly as it had burned, leaving only a bar of purple across Mina's vision, and a hole in the golem's chest slightly to the left of its glowing heart.

It stumbled.

Caleb fell.

Mina ran to her son, but the golem recovered quickly, caught her, pulled her back, punched her once in the face and again in the ribs faster than she could raise her hands to block. She fell to one knee beside Caleb, only to stand again and strike the golem in the chest with both hands.

It retreated a step, and cocked its head to one side. More trickling of gears and wheels. Was it laughing? Was that a thing golems did? She'd never thought to ask.

The second golem, too, recovered. Purple light seeped through the hole in its chest, and it moved slowly, right arm limp, but it did move.

Behind her, she heard a click.

The first golem swung. She ducked under its fist, hit the thing in the side, knuckles bouncing off metal ribs beneath the suit—

And the golem came apart.

No shuddering, no intermediate stage: she struck the thing, and it burst away from itself, ten thousand shards of metal, gears and wheels and wires and springs and cams and pistons disconnected, suit shredded by the force of their explosion. But the shards did not fall, nor did they pierce the walls with shrapnel force. They simply hung in space, the golem deconstructed. The second golem, the one Caleb damaged, looked up, and in the realigning of its gears she heard, and this time there was no doubt as with the laughter—she heard it scream.

Then it burst apart as well.

Shadows floated at the core of whirling metal and shredded fabric: snapping sharp-jawed inchoate forms circled by spinning silver bands which might have been light, or else metal thinned translucent. The shadows strained, sprouted tentacles and pincers and long clawed arms, became steel and stone and mirror bright, but could not burst free.

“Please excuse my delay,” a woman said behind her. She recognized Elayne Kevarian's voice before she turned and saw her there, standing outside the open door to her room. The Craftswoman wore a white bathrobe, and her hair was wet. Glyphs glowed on her bare wrists and fingers and brow. She held one hand before her, finger tracing slow circles in the air, in time with the turning silver bands. “I was in the shower.”

“It's okay,” Mina said, dimly, because she had to say something. “Thank you.”

Elayne snapped her fingers twice. The shadows trapped in silver changed once more, to crystal, and shattered. Falling shards sublimated to steam. The metal bits, too, fell, but these did not disappear. They struck carpet with the soft patter of spring rain.

“What is going on here?” Elayne asked, but Mina did not hear her.

Caleb lay at her feet. Blood seeped from his scars, and striped his bathrobe from inside. Mina pressed the robe against him with her hands, but the blood kept coming. Caleb coughed wetly.

“He needs a hospital,” Elayne said, and Caleb hovered over the carpet as if he'd been raised on a stretcher. “I'll call us a cab.”

*   *   *

“Two more Couatl down.”

“Gods' balls.” The King in Red pounded the side of the vision well with his fist, and ground his teeth. “What the hells is happening down there?”

Beneath the water, fires still burned, and Chakal Square convulsed in pain. But the tempo of the convulsions had changed, radiating from the battleground by the fountain to the camps beyond. A light shone amid the tents.

“Hostages secure,” the dreamer said. “Team Seven lifting off. Carrying a few members of Team Three, whose mount just went down.”

“Get out of there,” Chimalli said. “Fast, and fly high.” The vision well flashed once more, and the image zoomed toward the light: their Couatl outlined in green, and the invader, the newcomer, a moving white dot, humaniform and mountainous when he stood still long enough for them to see. “Sir, we're losing Couatl fast. And people. Five down.”

“We can't pull back now.”

“Sir, with all due respect. We didn't plan this mission as a battle. We wanted to get in, cause chaos, get out. We've hit their leaders. We have the hostages. The longer we stay—”

“If we don't kill Temoc, all we've done tonight is worthless.”

“We planned a surgical strike. We didn't expect to fight the God Wars over again. We pull out now, we tell everyone that we did what we went there to do, we rescued some people and some Wardens got hurt doing it. It's a win. The city will see it that way. Whatever Temoc's doing, we haven't put a scratch on him yet. You're throwing good people away.” My people, he didn't say. My people, who did not go into this equipped to fight gods and their anointed. My people, who are dying. “Pull back. Reevaluate.”

“We should press our victory.”

“This isn't a victory anymore. Now it's a draw we can dress up as a win. You're on tilt, sir. Keep going and you'll have a rout on your hands, and not the good kind.”

“Four-six and Four-seven down. Team Four holding altitude.”

“Think it through.” Please.

Kopil growled. The vision well swept closer to the battle, until the dreamers writhed with agony and a single form filled the water: a light-riven silhouette, a weapon dressed up like a man. A Warden ran against him, a squaddie from Fisherman's Vale Chimalli had met in passing twice, what was the man's name? Temoc struck him so fast the dreamer could not capture the speed of it, and he collapsed.

“Sir,” Chimalli said.

Green light glinted off the King in Red's crown. The room was quiet. The others had stopped talking, stopped breathing even.

“Warden down,” a dreamer said.

“Fine.” Kopil's voice was soft and sharp. “Fine. Call them back. Call them all back. Mission complete.”

“All squads,” Chimalli said. “Take flight.”

*   *   *

Temoc did not understand the cheers at first. He was finishing a fistfight on a Couatl's surging back: a Warden swung a club at his face and he took the club away, dislocated the man's arm, punched his neck twice, broke some ribs with a kick, and knocked him off the Couatl. The Couatl's wings surged, taking flight, beautiful pinions flared—even at night the feathers sparkled, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires extruded to airy thinness. He considered breaking the wings, decided against it. These were still the gods' birds, even if perverted by Craftsmen's hands. These were the gods' birds, and he had killed too many today.

The Couatl was ten feet already in the air and climbing, a corkscrew toward the clouds. He stepped off and fell to land in a clearing where tents once stood. Everywhere around him he heard the roar of human voices, and spun, searching for the new threat.

At last he realized there was no threat. His people were shouting for joy.

He looked skyward. Couatl flew north. They bore captives and casualties, but they were leaving.

He had won. They had won.

At what cost?

A sudden touch on his back, getting old, too far gone to hear someone sneaking up behind him in a crowd. He spun, fast, smooth, catch the hand and twist back, follow the arm's line up to throat, grip the trachea between forefinger and thumb—

When his eyes caught up with the rest of him, he realized he was choking Chel. He released her arm and stood back, hands raised between them. “Chel! Gods, I'm sorry.”

“No,” she said, hoarse, “that's fine, I didn't need that throat for anything anyway.”

She was bloody. A bruise covered her cheek. Her shirt was torn and there were sooty handprints on her face. Blood trickled from burst stitches. Blood on her chest, too, though that wasn't hers. He could tell. The smell was wrong.

In one hand she held a crossbow, Warden make, no quarrels left. Her breath came slow and deep. Again the crowd roared, a wave of sound that buoyed her up. Her thin lips broke into a smile.

“We won,” he said.

She nodded. “They're pulling back. The camp's safe for now. Wardens even pulled back from the barricades. Thanks to you.”

“Thanks to us.”

“No,” she said.

“What's wrong?” he said. “How are the rest?”

“I can't,” she started, decided against finishing. Took his arm. “You need to see.”

She led him through the wreckage of the tents, through embers, flame, and smoke, past bodies smashed like kindling. Moans rose from the dying. The camp smelled of salt and sickeningly of pork.

The Major lay amid the burning tents.

Others stood around him, and their presence was a relief: Bill Kemal was there and Kapania, Bill breaking open a crate of bandages as Kapania applied salve. Temoc recognized the red-arm beside the Major, though he did not know the man's name. Each looked up, over, to Temoc in his or her own time. But they did not greet him like they would have two days ago, as a friend and colleague. There was awe in them. They looked at him as if he was more than a man who had abandoned his family. They looked at him as if he was something good, or failing that, something great.

He knelt beside the Major.

The armor was torn in many places. The first would have been enough: a Couatl's claw pierced the sheet metal over his stomach into the belly below. What damage the claw inflicted, the torn metal made worse, its edges grinding into meat. But the Major had fought on: punctures in his breastplate from crossbow damage, more buckling from the blows of superhuman fists. His sword arm lay at an almost-right angle. Behind his visor, his eyes twinkled red in firelight. The armor did not reflect as it had before. Because of the blood.

But still he breathed.

“Temoc.” That not-quite-human voice. “Temoc.”

“Hello,” he said. He did not know the dying man's name, and could not ask it now. “I came back.”

“Thank you.”

Temoc wanted to thank him in turn. Many ways the Major could have said “I told you so,” many tirades he might have delivered against soldiers who deserted their posts in wartime. But such words would have served Temoc more than the Major, and Temoc's needs did not matter now. “You're welcome.”

“The camp?”

“Safe,” he said.

“They'll be back. Stronger. Not just Wardens. The King in Red will come.”

“We'll stop him.”

“You need—” He coughed, wetly, a drowning man's cough. “You need strength.”

“The gods are with us.”

“The gods.” Another cough. “The gods aren't enough. As they are. Sleeping.”

“They helped us fight off the Wardens.”

“You need more. You know I'm right.”

He was. Kneeling, as the battle-rush receded, Temoc felt more tired than he had in years. He might win another battle like this one, but the King in Red would not repeat himself. Not when he learned Temoc had joined the resistance in Dresediel Lex. The Craftsman would crush Chakal Square with his full weight. “That's why we need you. Let me get this armor off. I can heal you. We'll face them together.”