The Horns of Ruin (10 page)

hey were gathered around a
crater in the ground. The Amonites were fully leashed, lurking unhappily behind
their Alexian master on the far side of the square. There was a yellow tape
barrier around the crash site, lined with a handful of curious passersby,
though more were gathering as the search team became increasingly agitated. It
didn't help when I boomed down the tracks, glory wicking off my boots as I
leapt to the ground in full combat gear. I'm a crowd pleaser.

The investigator in charge, a bald-headed, frail,
middle-aged man in an impeccable Alexian robe, waved me to a stop. Then he put
a hand on my shoulder as I passed him and, eventually, hurried after me as I
closed on the crater. He was sputtering.

"We don't know the full extent of its power, my lady,
and think caution is best."

"Full extent of what's power?' I asked. There were a
number of craters in the ground, all of them from my fight yesterday. Already
yesterday, I mused. How long did the Fratriarch have? "What did you
find?"

"It's ... unclear. An icon, perhaps. It might be
nothing."

"Nothing, huh? That would be in line with the rest of
your findings." I reached the crowd of whiteshirts who had gathered around
the crater and muscled my way through.

It was far from nothing.

The crater was shallow. I didn't remember it from the
fight-at least, I didn't remember doing anything dramatic in this particular
spot. Close to the tracks, but not where I had engaged the two burnpack
soldiers. My line of retreat had been ... over there. This hole could have come
from something the coldmen had done while they tried to get to Barnabas and the
girl. The sides of the crater were charred, and most of the indentation was
filled in with rubble. The cobblestones here had been pulverized but left in
place, like a giant cube of ice crushed in a bowl. The Amonites had been
clearing it out, from the looks of things. And among the shards of stone was an
icon, torn from someone's ceremonial robe.

We all wear icons, the scions of the three Cults of the
Brothers Immortal. My armor is an icon, as are my sword and revolver. Very
practical icons. But I wear others, noetic symbols of the power of Morgan. An
iron fist pendant at my neck, the bound copper wire around my wrist, tattoos on
my chest and legs. There is a holy symmetry to my symbols, brought to arcane
life by the power of Morgan. The Fratriarch jangled with the icons of the holy
Brother.

This was not his symbol, not a symbol of Morgan or of
Alexander or any of the other minor sects dedicated to inchoate powers of
significant events or famous battles. This was a symbol of the Betrayer. Amon,
in his aspect as murderer and assassin. It was a pendant, silver clasping the
gnarled blade of that darkest aspect of our darkest god. No wonder they had the
Amonites so tightly reined.

"Is there any doubt now that the Betrayer was
involved?" the inspector whispered at my side.

I holstered my revolver and looked back nervously toward
the pack of Scholars at the far corner of the square.

"Did any of them touch it?" I asked.

"One of them found it, but swears it did not reach his
skin."

"Contain him. You'll need to keep the rest out of the
general population until you can confirm they were not infected."

"We know the rites of infection, my lady." The
inspector sniffed and waved a hand at some of his fellow whiteshirts. "We
will do our duty."

"Whatever." I bent to the icon and dusted the
debris away from it. It had been embedded in a cobble, like a stone pressed
into hot wax. I removed the penetrated cobble and slid it onto the ground.
"Some force that was."

"Your battle was mighty, my lady."

"I had nothing to do with this," I said.
"Those weren't servants of the Betrayer I was fighting. Not scions, at
least. Evil creatures, perhaps, but there was nothing ... blessed about
them."

"Who, then? The Fratriarch?" the inspector asked.
Doubtless remembering the old man who walked in the parades. Not exactly a
figure embodying power.

"What is it?" Owen asked, running up. He skidded
to a halt and looked over my shoulder at the stone and its infernal decoration.
"Ah. Oh ... huh."

"You are a man of culture and insight, Justicar. What
do you make of it?"

"You did not speak of scions of the Betrayer, though
we all suspected they were the power behind the attack."

"Suspected," I said, nodding. "But
unknown."

"We can lay that to rest, it seems. How did it get
here?"

I craned my neck to look up at the elevated track. The
damaged car had been removed, and the twisted support towers were being
rebuilt. The tracks themselves looked solid enough.

"A fight," I said. "The icon gets ripped off
in the heat of battle."

"When, though? You stated that the Fratriarch was
locked away in a column of steel, and the coldmen could not break him out. Then
you returned and he was gone. They were all gone."

"They didn't break him out." I stood, looking
around at the damage of the square, seeing lines of force and advance in the
arrangement of wreckage. "He fought his way free. There was a body in the
door of the car. I never really thought about how it got there."

"So he might be out there, free?" Owen turned in
a slow circle, gazing around at the buildings on the square as if the
Fratriarch might be looking down at us from some terrace. "We should
organize search parties."

I snorted. "You should? Maybe a day ago, when I first
came to you with this. No, he didn't get away. The living Fratriarch would have
returned to the Strength of Morgan, no matter his condition. He battled, and
was defeated."

"Who could do such a thing?" Owen asked, quietly.

I kicked at the stone-wrapped icon of the Betrayer, then
looked up at the Justicar. "They have a history of it," I said, and
walked off.

Behind me the whiteshirts started making plans to contain
the Amonites, seal away the icon, and continue with the repair of the site. I
walked over to the nervous pack of Amonites. There was an Alexian with them,
his fist white around a jumble of those soul-chains. He was a thin man with a
weak chin, but large, strong hands.

"Which one was it?" I asked.

He volunteered himself, before the whiteshirt could compel
him forward. Another small man, though wide and strong. There was grease under
his nails, and calluses on his hands. His skin was the color of worn leather.
For all his strength, he quivered under his hood.

"You found the icon?"

"Yes, my lady."

"How?"

"I was ... I was repairing the cobbles, my lady. As
ordered. I was clearing out that ditch there, and turned a stone. The icon was
there."

"Did it call to you?"

"No, ma'am. I heard nothing from it. I'm not ...
attuned to such things."

"You are a scion of the Scholar," I said.
"You are attuned to his symbols."

"That aspect of the lord Brother ... of Amon ... such
symbols are forbidden, as they have always been." He shuffled his feet.
"And even if they weren't, I'm not ... gifted, my lady."

"You can't invoke?" I asked, surprised. Rare for
someone to swear to one of the gods without showing some noetic talent. Rarer
still for that someone to swear to Amon.

"No, my lady. I worship with my hands, and my back,
and my mind."

I stood quietly in front of him, looking for some lie in
his broad, sun-scrubbed face. There was fear, but who was to blame for that? I
turned to his keeper and nodded. When I turned around, Owen was two steps
behind me.

"Scaring the witnesses?" he asked.

"Questioning them. I believe that's your job, of
course, but someone has to actually do it."

"It is my job, Eva. Leave it to me."

"If I had, Justicar, where would we be? Kicking our
heels in that lovely station? Drinking coffee, perhaps? Maybe we would have
been able to question this man there, after someone else had found him and
brought him to us."

"Better that than rushing around the city all
night," his voice was steadily rising, "chasing ghosts and digging
through bodies. There are people for these jobs-"

"We are those people, Owen. I am that person. I let
the old man down. I will not sit and wait."

"You're overexcited. It's time we were back at that
station. There is much to report on," he said, and put his hand on my
wrist. Oh, mistakes, mistakes. Such glorious mistakes.

I pulled his hand toward me, until his knuckles brushed my
belly, then flipped my hand over and grasped his elbow. Rotate, hip-check, and
then toss. He hit the ground like a sack of flour, and then I was past him,
turning from his rapidly reddening face and walking briskly to the taped
barricade. The crowd that had been gathering at the yellow tape line was
staring at the furious Justicar and the Paladin who had put him on his ass. Not
every day that you got to see the scions of god fight, not since Amon had been
bound and burned and drowned. So they stood and gaped. I gave them a smile and
a short salute, and let them have their look.

All but one of them. A girl, twisting her face quickly away
from the barricade, slipping shoulder-ways into the press of bodies, squirming
through. She was dirty-faced, skinny-armed, the thick matte mane of her dark
hair pulled back in a messy tail that spilled in curls across her shoulders.
Black robe, black hood pulled back, the sleeves torn away to disguise the
garment's origin. She wore an Amonite's robe. The girl. Cassandra.

She was gone, and now the crowd was staring in horror at
me, at the bully I had pulled and was now pointing at them, at the space where
the girl had stood, my finger tight on the trigger. They began screaming.
Understandable, considering the mad fury in my face. The murder in my eyes.

The Justicar ran up next to me and put a hand on my gun
arm. Without thinking I shrugged my shoulder into his chest, cracking the hilt
of the still-sheathed blade across his teeth, then hooked his flailing arm and
hip-checked him into the crowd, all without thinking. Reaction, and my hunter-mind
was finally smoothing through the shock and anger. I put a heel into Owen's
chest as I jumped over him and into the seething crowd. In pursuit.

I locked down the dozen questions that pushed for space in
my brain. How the girl had escaped her chains. If she knew where the Fratriarch
was, what had happened, if he was still alive. Why she came back to this place.
Locked it down and ran.

The crowd thinned out after the immediate press around the
barricade, but it was still a busy street in a busy city. Vendors and pedigears
and carriages filled the streets, along with a loose river of pedestrians. Most
of them were oblivious to the chase, only a few looking behind them in
confusion as the girl ran past, wondering why she was in such a hurry. I pushed
past them, following the invisible line of the Amonite's path through upset
carts and startled citizens. I was as gentle as a tiger is to grass, as quiet
as lightning before thunder's wake. I still had the bully out, barrel up, ready
to snap forward should a shot present itself. Too many people, though. Too much
interference. The girl stayed ahead, a glimpse of black robe or the bobbing
cascade of ringlet hair the only sign that I had not lost my quarry.

One clear look, the girl rushing into an alleyway between
two illmaintained buildings. I slid to a stop at the entrance. It was clogged
with junk, and absolutely dark. A rapid hissing sound, then a thump. There were
no other sounds of flight, no footsteps, no panicked breathing, no debris being
shoved out of the way by a hurrying girl in the dark. Iron groaned in the
blackness, and something fell from high up, dancing against metal as it
dropped. Silence again.

I slid the bullistic into its holster and drew the blade,
then stepped into the shadows and invoked the Torches of the Fellwater. My eyes
began to glow with a pale, bluish white light that wisped in twisting tendrils
across my cheekbones and into my hair. The bright street behind me washed out
into brilliant light, but the alley resolved into blocky grays and blacks. I
slid forward, sword at guard, looking for any sign of Cassandra.

The alley was cluttered with a carefully constrictive
jungle of trash. The stone walls to either side were lost behind cardboard
boxes and stacked iron pilings, tumbling down on the ground like a child's game
of sticks. I stepped between them carefully, maneuvering between piles of junk,
doing everything I could to keep the sword in a guard position. No sign of the
girl. I looked up and saw that there were platforms above, suspended from a
rough framework of metal tubing that was anchored into the hidden wall, behind
piles of junk. A rope dangled loosely beside the rough structure, still
slithering with recent movement. Quick climber, maybe.

"What is this place?" I asked myself quietly.
This was not just a haphazard collection of trash in the crevices of the city.
This had been built and hidden. Peering up into the alley's heights, I was
momentarily blinded by the strip of early morning sky. I blinked the image
away, startled into dropping the invokation of night sight. Darkness shrouded
me, but in the few seconds before I lost my vision, I thought I saw a form
flitting between platforms, high above.