Shadows of Falling Night (50 page)

Authors: S. M. Stirling

BOOK: Shadows of Falling Night

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And Harvey froze, his thumb holding the contact closed. The edge of the Wreaking had paralyzed Eric Salvador; defenses or no, he didn’t like to imagine what it must be to have it thrown like a lance of burning ice directly into his brain.

Adrian walked over and took the mechanism from the older man’s hand, examined it, made a motion over it and set it down.

“I am sorry,” he said, his voice a rasp but with a gentleness in it. “I did not want it to come to this. I owe you very much, my brother, I owe you my soul. But you are too dangerous…and Ellen was killed.”

“Sorry ’bout that too,” Harvey said. “Real sorry. Never wanted—”

Blood burst from his lips and eyes. He went rigid for a single instant, then fell, limp and dead.

“Jesus,” Eric whispered, clutching at his own chest, feeling the distant echo of a force that tore the veins loose and flooded his chest. “
Jesus.
”

Peter came up beside him, wheezing. “We’ve—”

“Name of a dog, what is that?
” Adrian cried, throwing up a hand as if to shield himself from something in the sky.

An instant later the cloudy night outside became white light, frosted
like the inside of a bulb, but bright, harsh, flat. Adrian dropped to his knees and clapped his hands to his head. Eric waited to die…

Wait a minute, if the bomb had gone off I’d have been dead before I knew it. It’s only fifteen feet away, for fuck’s sake. My brain wouldn’t have had time even to register the light.

“We lost?” Peter said.

The light faded, changed color, slowly died like the world’s biggest parachute flare. Shadow returned, darker than ever. His head snapped to the gaps in the hoardings, and behind them was no light at all, none of the diffuse glow that a city always showed. Adrian laughed, soft and bitter.

“No. We won. We saved this city. We even saved the corporeals at the theater, though I wish we had not. Somehow
she
concealed another weapon.”

“That’s a high-level airburst, it must have blanketed most of Georgia and chunks of Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Peter said, going to the edge and peering out through a crack in the plywood. “Yup, city’s blacked out. High enough it wouldn’t do much damage otherwise, though. Maybe a statistical uptick in the cancer rate.”

“Your sister had a backup plan,” Eric said.

“Yes,” Adrian said. “I should have expected it. An intermediate range missile, a confederate of hers in control of some Russian commander; she would not chance a ground burst that might strike too hard, but a high-level one, yes. Probably part of Trimback One, ready to go, and somehow she got another shield. It makes no difference. No, it is
better
than merely stopping the bomb. I felt my great-grandfather die, and Seraphine, and many another, and the souls they had imprisoned. Now the real war begins, and we have the advantage. Harvey would have been happy to see this.”

“Wait a minute,” Eric said, his mind slipping a little from the diamond point of concentration. “You said Ellen died? Then who was that you were—”

“Come,” Adrian said, an infinite weariness in his voice. “We must get to Cheba and the children. The city will be in chaos, and soon Adrienne will strike what she thinks is the killing blow on the world.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Brotherhood safe house, Kars, Turkey

“I
don’t want to live without a body!” Ellen said.

Or thought she said; the words came out as a very faint croak, and she wanted to scream with the sheer pain they caused. For a while she was mostly conscious of pain, an infinite number of different kinds. After a while the general weakness and the feeling she was made out of hollow straws and the ache in her head and the savage sore throat gave way to panic at the way her sight was blurred. The sword had hit her in the
neck
, razor-sharp and driven by skilled, hate-filled strength. Her throat must have been cut almost to the spine, maybe
through
it, instant massive exsanguination and death within a second. How could it have damaged her
eyes
and left her alive?

“You have a body, my darling,” Adrian’s voice said. “Just…not the same one. But a body of flesh and bone.”

Wait a minute, that must be true. If I was in Adrian’s memory palace, I’d feel fine. Perfect. I feel like absolute verge-of-death crap. And…disconnected? As if I were wearing something too tight?

Infinitely gentle hands eased a tube into her mouth. “Here, take some water. Sleep.”

When she woke again her first thought was:
Oh, shit.

Cheba was sitting beside her bed, watching a
telenovela
on her tablet. When she saw wakefulness, she turned and called: “
Jefe!
”

Adrian came in, smiling at her with a constraint in it. She could see better this time, though her eyes felt grainy and dry.

“Oh, Adrian,” she said. “Did you do what I think you did?”

The voice came out; it was a hoarse rasping whisper, as if her vocal cords had been idle for months…which they had, she suspected. She couldn’t move; an attempt to raise her hand merely made her fingers flutter for a little. But she was conscious of her body in a way she never had been before, as if she could feel the cells dividing and dividing again; as if she was riding in a car, and the car was her, and the stalled engine was just beginning to turn over again. The room around her was plain institutional beige, but it
glowed
with potentiality. She could feel, feel…
everything
.

“This is weird,” she whispered. “I’m weaker than a kitten, but I feel…I feel as if I could squeeze the world like
putty
.”

Adrian sat beside the bed and raised her head again. This time there was lukewarm chicken soup in the feeder he put between her lips; she tried to suck (and why did she move her tongue so carefully around her incisors?), and some of it dribbled down the side of her mouth. The rest
went into her throat, and it tasted inexpressibly good. She could feel it all the way down, as if it were warming up her very being.

“Let…me see,” she said, the rasp a little less painful.

“Very well,” he said, not trying to argue.

He reached to the bedside table and held up the mirror for her to see. The face looked…

Like a concentration camp survivor,
she thought.
No, like someone on life support since I…killed her. Well, victor and the spoils. God, this is…Do I want this? But consider the alternative
…

And underneath the damage of months in coma, it was a perfectly good face. Not the mostly North European one she’d been born with; smaller-boned, high cheeks and tilted eyes, small delicate nose and lips, raven hair cropped close in a hospital cut and skin the color of ivory just touched with amber.

And eyes black-dark, with tiny yellow flecks swimming in them.

“It’s a good thing I’m so feeble. I can’t freak out, I’m too tired. Later.”

Adrian laid her head back down and took her hand between his; strength seemed to pour from it.

“We won,” he said, leaning close so that she could meet his eyes. “You did. We saved Tbilisi; a million and a half men and women and children live because of you. You
deserve
this new chance.”

Standing behind him, Cheba said dubiously:

“Is it really her,
jefe
?”

“Yes. Her persona, her memories and all they made of her. The body…carries it. I didn’t know if it would work, there was not
time
to do anything but…hurl her, throw her essence, hoping that Arnaud had remembered rightly. But it worked.”

“Well, there’s a massive oversimplification,” Ellen croaked, and closed her eyes, trying to feel around the interior of herself.

It was a jumble. She could remember everything up until the sword hit, even her last thoughts. But she felt not merely ill, but
odd.
As if she were seeing the sensation of touch, or as if sensations she had no names for were crowding in, demanding attention, or as if she had grown two new arms and ears on her feet. When she opened those slanted, gold-flecked eyes again she motioned towards the door with a glance. The Mexican girl smiled at her, nodded, and slipped out. She closed the door behind her gently.

But it isn’t just that I want some privacy with my husband, Cheba, though I do. I could
smell
you. Smell your blood.

And Cheba smelled so
good
.

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