The Horns of Ruin (12 page)

Stuffed toys. Pots. A stilograph of a girl, standing on the
stairs of an old house in a field somewhere. The girl was just turning toward
the camera, not yet aware that her picture was being taken. She had a hand
against her face, half in the act of brushing a curl of long, blonde hair out
of her eyes. I put the stilo down and looked around.

Children, and old men, and mothers. This was a home hidden
between empty spaces, carved out of junk and refuse and the forgotten things of
the city. Occupied by the desperate remnants of an outlaw church. They could be
escapees, or simply Amonites in the wild, some splinter Cult left over from
before the Betrayal. Who knew? This was more an orphanage than a bandits' den.

But the girl had been here. And where the girl was, there
might be clues to where the Fratriarch was. That was all I had.

I sat cross-legged on the floor and laid the sword across
my knees, then fumbled a vial of oil from my vest and prepared to anoint the
blade. Outside I heard Owen's amplified voice booming down the alleyway.
Looking for me. It would be a while before they got up here.

"Long hunt," I whispered, to myself, to the
Fratriarch, to the girl. "Gonna be a long hunt."

re you going to hit me
again?" Owen asked. He was standing standing in the middle of the wreckage
of the Amonites' hideout, holding the remnants of a child's teddy bear.

"Are you going to touch me again?" I asked.

"Probably not."

"Okay then."

He looked around the room, at the torn walls and scorched
floor, at the two body bags and the trail of blood that led to the escape
hatch. Men were working on the hatch with burn knives, fat sparks cascading
down like a fountain. The Justicar shook his head and threw the ragged doll
into a pile of other toys and assorted personal items that his men were sifting
from the wreckage.

"You make quite a crime scene."

"Takes practice. How else am I supposed to get your
attention?"

He looked at me funny, then shrugged. "Well, I mean,
there has to be a better way. I would send flowers, but I wouldn't want to
receive flowers, so-"

"Stop it."

"Uh ..." he sputtered.

"Stop talking like we're friends, or compatriots, or
whatever the hell is going through your head. I waited for you because there's
a lot of trash to pick up in this place, and I didn't want to do it myself."

He went red, looked to see which of his men were listening,
and then took two quick steps closer to me. He nearly punched me with his
finger, but held back. That wouldn't have been good for either of us.

"Listen. I don't know what the hell's wrong with you
Morgies, but this is serious. Bad things are happening. And every time we try
to help, we get this attitude like you don't need us. But you do. You need
Alexander more than you need Morgan right now. You're never going to find your
Fratriarch without our help. Best you remember that."

"Remember?" I did a casual thing where I pushed
his finger out of my face, pulled him a little off balance, and then brushed my
fingers against his chest just hard enough that he had to take a step back.
"Alexander isn't ever going to let us forget. How he hunted down Amon,
tried him. Put him to the torch. We won't forget."

"Then why-"

"Another thing we won't forget, Owen, is how he
declared amnesty for the Betrayer's scions. Locked them in the Library
Desolate, kept them alive. Used them. They built the weapons that made us
obsolete, Justicar. Those damn chain guns, the valkyn. Whole armies of peasants
with rifles that make the Warrior's Path irrelevant, all courtesy of the
Librarians Desolate. Long as they didn't study the Path of the Betrayer, they
could keep worshipping their dark old god. We remember."

He grimaced. "These are old arguments. I won't have
them with you. And if you're too stubborn to help me find your Fratriarch, then
it's on you. His blood is on you, Eva Forge."

He walked away to supervise or something, but I stayed
where I was. His blood was already on me. It didn't matter what anyone else
did.

Men were going through the junk that had been crammed into
the various nooks and crannies of this place. I went over to watch. It looked
like a dozen households all jammed together. So much mismatched stuff. New
clothes for young children, patched clothes for older children, women's hair
combs, men's razors, cheap pottery, broken tools. Nothing too nice. Some pictures,
laid out in a neat grid by the investigators. None of them looked to be of the
same people. Children and wives and gatherings of friends, some birthdays, some
formal portraits. All of them worn at the edges, wrinkled from being carried in
pockets. Well loved. None of them were of the girl.

There was a yelp behind me, then a heavy thud. The hatch
had broken free, still hanging from one hinge but mostly open. Two Alexians
rushed forward with a third man between them. An Amonite. I found Owen nearby.

"You'd let one of them in here?" I asked. He
shrugged. "What's he going to tell his prison mates? He must know what
this place is."

"Probably. It's not like they don't know they have
brothers in the wild."

"Not what I was told. The priest who met us at the
Desolate claimed there had been no escapes since Alexander took charge of the
prison."

Owen laughed. "Sure, no escapes. Whatever he
says."

I wanted to ask more, but the Amonite was going into
action. He invoked slowly, his long chant rolling through the room. Eventually
he raised heavy arms to the hatch and lifted it, ever so slowly, off the floor.
With the hinge realigned, he was able to pull the thing open and rest the heavy
metal door against the wall. His attendants secured the metal, then took the
man by the arms and pulled him away. The Amonite didn't look around at the
wreckage as he walked, but for all the world he had the posture of a father at
his daughter's funeral.

With the hatch open, the room suddenly stank of lakewater.
Owen's men were already through the door, pointing around with lamps and
talking excitedly. Owen followed them through, then came back.

"This is extensive," he said, his voice eager.
"They've been here for a while, and they planned well. Look at this."
Then he disappeared back through the hatch. Reluctantly, I followed.

The room beyond was small and metal, like the inside of a
ship. There were racks against the near wall, but they were empty. Plenty of
disturbed dust made it clear that something had been stacked here. Supplies,
probably.

There was a spiral staircase leading down. Some of Owen's
people were rushing down it, their voices echoing up from metal depths along
with the smell of the lake. I took out my revolver and followed. Owen laughed
when he saw the bully in my hand. Let him get shot, then. His call.

The staircase went for a while. It became disorienting,
spinning down in darkness and metal, the only light coming from our lamps. I
would rather have invoked my eyes, but they would be no good around those
lamps, and Alexians had no similar trick to help them see in the dark. Hell,
half these men weren't even sworn scions of the Healer, anyway. It felt like we
were spinning forever down into the city.

The end came in another small room, almost identical to the
one up top. The air was cold and the walls leaked rust. There was another hatch
here. When we threw the wheel the bolts undogged easily and the door creaked
open. It hadn't been used much.

"I'll go first," I said. "There might be
traps."

"There could have been traps anywhere on our way
down," Owen said. "Why now?"

"You don't trap the start of the path your people are
going to take. You wait until the way opens up a little, then put something a
bit to the side." I took the nearest man's lamp and snapped it off, then
indicated that the others should do the same. They looked nervous about that.
"If you're in a dark place, it's good to set a trap that's triggered by
light. That way you're sure it'll go off, eventually."

They looked at each other, then at me, then at Justicar Owen.
He shrugged. The lights went out, one by one. When we were wrapped in cold,
dark air, I invoked the Torches of the Fellwater. Everything settled into
shades of gray.

I crept to the hatch and peered through the opening, my
bully held loosely against my thigh. Nothing blew up, so I stepped through,
leaving the hatch open just a crack. The ground under my feet was springy, like
wooden planking. The air smelled of tar and water. Slowly I was able to make
out the space. It was big and round, like a massive pipe that had been capped.
We had come down against one wall. There was a dock, maybe ten feet on each
side, held up by tar-sticky pylons. Everything else was water. There were coils
of rope and an antique seaman's lamp lying on the dock.

Either some kind of depthship had been waiting for them, or
they had breathing machines that let them swim out. I thought about all the
toys upstairs, and the abandoned canes. Children and old men. Probably a ship.

I sighed and started to turn back, but something caught my
eye. It sparkled among the ropes, and it takes a very special thing to sparkle
when there's no light around. Ignoring the bedtime story I had told Owen and
his boys about traps, I went over and picked the thing up. Let's be honest, any
trap made by an Amonite was going to be miles too clever for me to figure out.

Happily, there was no trap. Just a necklace, draped
carefully across the coil of rope. Dangling from my hand, it turned slowly, an
inner light snaking out from its heart. A simple triangle, wood braced with
iron, etched in bronze, suspended from an iron chain. I knew it well. It
belonged to the Fratriarch.

They left it behind. She did. She left it for me to find. I
held it up, letting it shimmer in the unlight of my invoked eyes. How had she
gotten it? Ripped from his throat as he struggled? Dropped from his dead
fingers? Left behind as he fled? Where had it come from, and where did it lead?

"He gave it to me, if you're wondering," she
said. Behind me.

I spun, bully whipping around the small dock, seeing
nothing but black wood and blacker water, not a glimmer of movement. Nothing.

"Where the hell are you?" I spat. Voice down.
Didn't want Owen and his boys to hear me and come storming in. No telling what
she'd do.

"I am here," she said, from everywhere.
"What are you going to do when you catch me?"

"It's what you're going to do, bitch. You're going to
tell me what you did with the Fratriarch. You're going to tell me where he is,
who has him, why. You're going to talk. You're going to wish you had never
gotten away."

"You make it sound so ... appealing." Her voice
was breathy, near and then far, always quiet. "Maybe I won't let you find
me."

"Let? Let! I'll find you, girl. I'll hunt you from
here to Everice, to the halls of the Rethari swine. I'll kill every
Brother-damn one of your ragged friends that get in my way, and every one of
them that doesn't. I'll find you wherever you hide."

"Yes, I suppose you will," she said. There was a
crackle, and her voice changed. Became more real, more local. "And I can't
have that."

A sound came from above, a winch unwinding rapidly. I
cleared the floor with my bully and drew my sword, switching guard directions
as quickly as I could breathe. She dropped into the middle of the dock, some
kind of mechanical pulley in one hand, the trailing edge of a rope in the
other. The rope disappeared a dozen feet above the ground, as though it was
magicked into thin air. A mask hung around her throat, dangling across her
white clavicle like a necklace. A very complicated thing, with speakers and
breathing tubes and wide buckles that had been unclasped. She snapped the rope
and it fell, like a magician's trick.

"I just can't have you chasing them. You're a monster,
Eva Forge. If I can keep you out of their lives, I will. It's all I can
do."