Shield and Crocus (3 page)

Pulling out a hammer and chisel, First Sentinel took his time, searching for a place to start.

“You’re going to be fine,” he said to the children. “I’m First Sentinel, and this is Blurred Fists. We’re going to get you out now, but I need you to be brave.”

The Ikanollo boy whose cries sounded like Selweh’s nodded. The child sighed, relaxing his trapped arm. The others winced and made small whimpers, but they did their best.

“Good. Just relax, and think of home. We’ll have you back there soon.” whatever home was left to them after the storm.

He worked with care as Blurred Fists tended to their wounds. With luck, the only scars the children would have from the day would be psychological, for all the comfort that was worth.

Small blessings,
Wonlar thought.

Where is that screaming coming from?
Sapphire asked herself, locking on to one sound amidst the din. A little girl’s voice rang through the street. She sounded no more than eight years old, and terrified.

The street was a broken maelstrom. Phantom sounds assaulted Sapphire’s ears, pulling her attention from the real shouts for help or the footfalls of citizens driven mad by the Spark.
Is that even a real voice?
Sapphire wondered.

Scanning the street, Sapphire towered over everyone in sight. She was the only Freithin there, and even among her people, she was one of the largest, more than eight feet tall and still growing. It gave her as clear a view of the street as could be had amidst the chaos.

Sapphire hauled a quivering piece of animate slate off of a Millrej woman and hurled it to an empty expanse of volcanic street. The stone floundered like a fish on the shore.

The street pummeled her senses with impossibility. On her left: buildings that started two stories up without any foundation, stretches of street that ramped up into the sky to become a pile of stinking fish. To her right: new Spark-touched reeling in horror at their transformation. At any moment, she could become one of them, but after more than a dozen Spark-storms, she’d never been affected. First Sentinel was immune due to previous exposure, but Sapphire and the other Shields took their lives into their hands every time they charged into a Spark-storm instead of fleeing from it.

First Sentinel maintained that the greater a person’s emotional and physical fortitude, the less likely they were to be affected by the Spark-storm, but even he admitted it was just a theory.

It’s not something you can fight
, Sapphire admitted, worry crackling down her spine. The Spark-storms came without warning, struck without logic.

The first few times, she’d been terrified. Each time it got a little easier, but whenever she saw someone change, she wondered if she would be next. The fear never went away, but she was a Shield of Audec-Hal, and she had to be greater than her fear. And if not for First Sentinel and the Shields, she’d be in Omez’s cages still, or she’d have been put down when she got too large to control.

Instead, she had friends, a home, and life. Her brother had a family. Her people had their freedom because of the Shields. It was a debt too huge for one woman to repay. But she tried anyway.

Sapphire took wide steps to land between jagged scraps of refuse and the sinkholes in the street, weaving her way through the storm.

The smoky-sweet smell of burning flesh hovered over the sensory mish-mash. A hundred Shields wouldn’t be enough for disaster relief. There were at best six on-site, if all of them answered Blurred Fists’ summons—and Aegis hadn’t make his last check-in. They were too few—and too late for many.

But they aren’t here. It’s just me and the chaos.

She ripped an awning off a ruined storefront and stopped for a moment to lay it over a pile of bodies to give them at least a shred of dignity. Undertaker had become a very profitable profession since the tyrants’ reign began.

Several people thrashed in an alleyway, arms moving between thick leaves and plant stalks.
What is happening in there?

She ran up a storm-made mound in the street, leapt from the peak and landed soft, her bare feet sinking into what had looked like solid ground. She waded through the liquid stone, slogging her way toward the alley.

The narrow alley was shaded by a nest of trees growing out of the roofs and up from the concrete between the buildings. They made a canopy over the gap between the buildings and a jungle in the alley.

Screams for help echoed from within.

Sapphire cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hold on! I’m coming!”

The alley was barely five feet wide, designed for Ikanollo and the smaller races, not the statuesque Freithin. She turned to shuffle sideways, tearing up roots and breaking branches.
Don’t bring the building down on yourself, Rova. Be careful.
wildlife she couldn’t name scrambled and flapped through the sliver of misplaced jungle. She breathed shallowly, trying to weave through the thick stalks and broad leaves.

She found a wounded Pronai clutching his arm beneath a huge fly-trap plant. The man scrambled on his back, trying to push through the thick brush to escape the carnivorous plant. Its spine-bristled mouth gnashed hungrily, stretching toward Sapphire’s hands.

“Stay down,” she said, stepping over the Pronai to bat the mouth aside. When it snapped back at her, she slammed it into the side wall. The crushing vegetation made a satisfying crunch. She reached around to the stem and pulled, tearing it off at the head.
Sounds just like the one serving of vegetables we got back in Omez’s pens. We only had to be healthy enough for labor, not healthy enough to keep our teeth.
The sound was just as rewarding now as it was then.

Sapphire tore off one of the broad leaves and used it to make a tourniquet, then carried the man out of the alley and left him on a stoop. All the while, more pained voices called to her from the alley.

She snapped a sapling in half and ripped it from its cobblestone roots to clear her way. Sunlight from the far street started to break through the dense cover as she cut through the alley. Sapphire picked out two more people from the alley jungle: a young Qava girl who she found huddled in a ball inside the trunk of a tree and an Ikanollo man who was being pecked at by a swarm by brightly-feathered birds that were no larger than his thumb.

After dressing the Ikanollo’s wounds and making sure the others were stable, Sapphire pushed back into the alley, crashing through small trees and knocking another barbed fly-trap from its stem with an uppercut. After working her way through the entire alley, Sapphire leapt out of the brush into the far street. Like the others, it was littered with debris, organic and artificial. The air popped with a dazzling array of colors. But still no girl.

A half-dozen citizens on the street stopped to watch Sapphire. The Spark hadn’t seemed to touch anyone on this side of the street, and no one looked injured. Most of the locals were doubtless huddled inside their homes, hoping that the buildings would shield them.

They’d go back to their routines and live on a street where the cobblestones were purple, the sidewalks a swamp, and their buildings made of chitin. Over the years, many neighborhoods had been abandoned after Spark-storms, but some continued on, residents adapting to their new environs.

It’s amazing what people can get used to in fifty years.

Sapphire pulled a dying ten-foot-long cockroach out of the street, legs still twitching despite a missing head. She shook her head in befuddlement, and then saw a flash of movement at the edge of her vision.

Sapphire narrowed her eyes and followed the motion— a cloaked figure hauling something behind it. She lumbered up to a run as the cloaked figure disappeared behind a lamp and several wrecked motor trikes. The cloak looked familiar, but just as out of place as the cockroach.
Is that a warlock? Here?

Sapphire bounded over the trikes and cut off the cloaked figure. It was a warlock Guard —one of Magister Yema’s bound slaves. The warlock Guard came from all of the city’s races, but they dressed in the same ragged brown robes and hoods. This warlock was far outside his master’s domain—there had to be a reason for his presence.
Something to bring to the group. Maybe First Sentinel will have an idea.

The warlock dragged a child behind him, thick red curls bouncing along as she strained to keep up. Her dress was actually a green shirt that fell below her knees.
It probably belongs to her father, or older brother.
She thought of her own brother, and wished a quick prayer for his safety to the City Mother.

Sapphire drew up to her full height and filled the street with her booming voice. “Let her go!”

Instead, he ran.
Really?,
she wondered, overtaking the warlock after three quick strides. She grabbed his arm, breaking the warlock’s grip on the girl. Sapphire closed her fist and felt the cracking of bones. The warlock cried out in wordless pain.

The girl dropped to the street and then scurried away with a whimper. The warlock produced a wand from his cloak and spat a curse at her. A blast of force from the wand hit her full in the chest. She staggered back a step, but only just. A shot like that would crack an Ikanollo’s ribs, but to her it was no worse than a stiff punch.

Sapphire lifted the warlock over her head with both arms. His fingers danced in arcane patterns, but she interrupted his spell by slamming him into the loose rocks of the street. He raised the wand once again, so she snapped it in half between her fingers.

“None of that,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

Instead, the warlock foamed at the mouth. Damn. The warlock grew hot to the touch, and she kicked him across the street. The warlock’s skin bubbled under the cloak, and she watched as the suicide spell Magister Yema put on each warlock dissolved the man into a boiling puddle.

Sapphire shuddered, looking away. Medai Omez had been a cruel master, but he’d never had that much control over the Freithin.
Praise be to the City Mother.

She scanned over the bodies, looked for movement or scraps of the dress. A moment later, she saw the girl hiding behind a fresh-baked bread cart that had doubtless been made of wood before the storm. The girl’s eyes were covered by wild hair, the kind that took hours of brushing to tame. Sapphire’s hair had been that long once, when she lived in the pens and had made a brush out of loose bits of wire and a broken broom shaft.

Sapphire approached and held out a hand the size of the girl’s head. “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you, honey. You’re safe.” The girl didn’t take much comfort from Sapphire’s approach.
Understandable.
She didn’t see a caring hero, just a huge muscled woman five times her size.
I’d be scared of me, too.
instead of reaching out to take Sapphire’s hand, the girl sobbed.

Kneeling, Sapphire tried to catch the girl’s gaze. “Please, don’t be afraid.” She was unresponsive, curled up into herself, crying.

The Shield took a step back, let the girl be by herself for a moment. Yema’s territory ended miles to the southeast, and the Smiling King had never been known to allow the servants of other tyrants into his territory without some ridiculous and specific price: a perfectly round pebble, the three smallest toes off of a foot, and so on.

The other tyrants were more consistent with their rules. Nevri just charged a toll, as did Medai Omez. COBALT-3 kept her domain under a strict curfew, visitors and residents both. When relations between the oligarchs were better, travel was easier. But tensions were high, the tyrants wary of one another even as rumors of a summit made the rounds.

So why her?
Sapphire wondered. Looking closer at the girl, she saw the furry ears, the hair. At first, she took the girl to be a Spark-touched, fresh-changed.

But no, she was Millrej—a vulpine-kin. All Millrej were born with features of their family’s animal, a cold nose for the canines, fluffy tail for the felines, tiny scales for reptiles, and so on. Only a tiny percentage manifested as Full-bloods, taking on the features of their animal patrons over the course of adolescence. Full-bloods were rare, but they made powerful warriors.

Red Vixen, one of the Shields who’d freed Sapphire from the slave pens, had been a Full-blood vulpine-kin, and she’d been nearly as fast as a Pronai and twice as ferocious. But this child was years from manifesting. Perhaps Yema was planning ahead, kidnapping Millrej children and hoping to bind an army of Full-bloods to his service before they matured.

There were others to be saved, but Sapphire looked at the girl again and saw in her the fear she’d seen in her people all those years ago, when Wonlar and the Shields freed the Freithin from Medai Omez. Fear mixed with desperation, fledgling hope looking for purchase.

She’d stay.

Sapphire used her calmest tone of voice, the one she learned after being freed. She’d once gotten fifty lashes when she halted the working line to help her brother after he’d collapsed due to malnourishment. She still bore the scars from the warden’s blows. “My name is Sapphire. Can you tell me your name?”

The girl’s voice was as light as a ghost. “Fahra.”

Sapphire smiled.
Thank you, City Mother.
“Hello, Fahra. We should get you home. Where do you live?”

Fahra looked around, up and down the transformed street with its speckled colors, transmuted cobblestone street, and Spark-touched. “Not here.”

“What neighborhood, Fahra?” Sapphire asked.

“High Thigh.”

Sapphire nodded, standing. She extended her hand again. “Let’s get you home, all right?”

“They’re dead.” Fahra pointed at the unconscious warlock. “He did it.”

Her heart sank. “Your family?”

She nodded.

“Where do you want to go, Fahra? Is there anyone who can look after you?”
Please let there be someone left, City Mother. Audec-Hal has too many orphans already.

The girl stood and clamped herself around Sapphire’s muscled leg. Fahra’s hands barely touched around the Shield’s thigh. Sapphire chuckled nervously.
Better than being terrified by me.

The Shields’ nearest safehouse was the coffeeshop basement in Viscera city. At least they could feed her well there.

“Fahra, would you like to go with me? We can visit some friends of mine, they’re very nice. And we can have cookies.” another squeeze.
Everyone loved cookies.
The first time Rova had eaten a cookie, she’d nearly died of amazement. After gruel and one handful of rotten vegetables a week, anything would have been heaven, but ever since, the big Shield had a soft spot for sweets.

“It’ll be okay, Fahra. You’re safe with me.”

The girl nuzzled Sapphire’s leg, holding tight. The Shield cradled the girl in one arm as she made her way through the uncanny street and out of the storm.