Prologue
Gyre and Maya were playing ghouls and heroes. Gyre had to be the ghoul, of course. Maya would never tolerate being anything less than a hero.
Summer was in full flower, and the sun was alone in a pale blue sky, with only a few wisps of cloud at the horizon. They’d already had the dramatic sword fight, and Gyre had been defeated with appropriate hissing and choking. Now he lay on his back, dead, and Maya had planted one foot on his stomach, hands on her hips in a heroic pose.
“… an’ now I’m queen,” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “An’ there’ll be peace an’ justice an’ all, an’ everyone’s got to do what I say. Stupid Billem Crump an’ his stupid brothers have to help Mom dig the new well, an’ there’s going to be apple pudding every day with dinner. An’ my brother Gyre can have some,” she added generously, “even if he never beat a ghoul all by himself.”
“If we had apple pudding every day, you’d get sick of it,” Gyre said.
“Would not.”
“Would too. And anyway, queens are for barbarians. We have senators and consuls.”
“You shut up. You’re dead.”
She pressed down on Gyre’s stomach, and he let out an oof. At five, Maya was heavier than she looked, plump and broad-shouldered, with their mother’s light brown skin and curly crimson hair. Everyone said Gyre, darker and black-haired, took after their father.
“I’ll be consul, then,” Maya said. “Everyone still has to do what I say forever an’ ever.”
“You only get to be consul for a year,” Gyre said.
“That’s practically forever,” Maya argued. “An’—”
She stopped, and a moment later vanished from his field of vision. Gyre sat up, brushing dirt and dried vulpi dung off his back. All around him, yearling vulpi snuffled over the rocky ground, looking for tender green shoots. Yearlings were Gyre’s favorite age for vulpi, soft-furred and playful, before they grew into bristly, irritable layers and then huge, sedentary terminals. They didn’t take much watching as long as the gate to the pasture was closed, which was why he had time to fool around.
Even so, Gyre had a guilty moment while he made a quick count of the herd. He relaxed when he came up with the requisite thirty-three. He was eight and a half years old and had never lost one of his father’s vulpi, not even the time when the fence had washed out in the rain and six of them had made a break for it.
“Gyre!” Maya shouted. “Gyre, it’s a centarch! He’s riding a warbird!” She was standing at the fence with her feet on the second rail, leaning as far over as she could. “Gyre, you have to come see!”
“It can’t be a centarch.”
Gyre hurried to the fence, absentmindedly grabbing the back of Maya’s dress with one hand in case she leaned too far over. Maya was reckless, and often sick to boot, spending months with fevers and racking coughs. Keeping his sister out of misadventures was as much a part of his daily chores as tending vulpi. But her excitement was infectious, and he found himself leaning forward to get a better view of the cloud of dust coming down the main road. It was moving awfully quickly.
“It was too a centarch!” Maya said breathlessly. “I saw him an’ all. He had white armor an’ a blaster an’ a hackem!”
“Haken,” Gyre corrected. The legendary bladeless sword, weapon of the centarchs of the Twilight Order. “What would a centarch be doing here?”
“Maybe he’s come to arrest Billem Crump for being an ass an’ all. Dad said he was going to go to law with him if he kept picking those apples.”
Gyre pulled his sister back. “Centarchs don’t arrest people for stealing apples.”
“They arrest people who’ve got”—she lowered her voice to a stage whisper—“dhak.” The word, with its connotations of filth, infestation, and immorality, was inappropriate in polite conversation. If Gyre’s mother had heard Maya saying it, she’d have gotten a smack on the ear. “Maybe Billem Crump’s got ghoul dhak in his shed and the centarch is going to drag him away!”
Gyre watched the dust cloud with something less than his sister’s wide-eyed wonder. He still didn’t believe it was a centarch, and if it was, he wasn’t sure how to feel about having one of the Order’s champions on their farm. He’d caught on to the hard expression his father and the other farmers wore when the subject came up. Everyone knew the Order kept the people safe from plaguespawn. But…
Nothing else, just the significant “but.” And Gyre knew, as Maya did not, what was in the locked shed off the south field. Last summer, when a plague of weevils had threatened their potatoes, Gyre’s father had taken him out there by night. They’d both equipped themselves with a double handful of bright green seeds, like hard young peas, from a half-full sack, and spent the evening planting them between the rows of potato plants. By the next afternoon, the field was full of dead weevils. Gyre had swept them up and buried them in the compost pile, proud and guilty with the shared secret.
Was that dhak? Gyre suspected it had been. Dhak was anything from the Elder times, before the war that had destroyed both ghouls and Chosen, unless the Order had approved it as safe, sanctioned arcana. But his father had assured him it was fine and that every farmer in the valley had something like it laid away. A centarch wouldn’t come after him, just for that. Would they?
“We should get back to the house,” he told Maya. Or, he discovered, he told the empty space where Maya had been, since his sister had already jumped down from the fence, wriggled out of his grip, and set off up the path as fast as her short legs would carry her.
Gyre looked at the dust cloud. It was rounding the point of the hill now, going past the turn for the Crump farm and definitely heading their way. He wanted to run after Maya, but there were the vulpi to think of—well behaved or not, he couldn’t just leave them on their own. So he spent a few frantic minutes rounding the animals up, ignoring their affronted blats and whistles at being turned out of the pasture early. Only once they were safely back in their pen, jostling for position at the water trough, did he hurry toward the house.
The path led directly to the kitchen door, which was undoubtedly where Maya had gone. But a smaller side route led around the low, ramshackle farmhouse to the front, and Gyre went this way. He had a notion that if the visitor was anyone important, his father would banish him and his sister to their room before they got a good look. Coming in through the front door, Gyre hoped he would be able to get an idea of what was happening.
There was indeed a warbird standing in the gravel drive, looking incongruous next to their battered farm cart. Gyre had seen one of the creatures before, years ago, when they’d been in town on the day the magistrate’s guard had come through. This one seemed bigger than he remembered, its long, curving neck layered with overlapping plates of pale white armor with the iridescent shimmer of unmetal. More armor covered the warbird’s plump body. Two long, knobbly legs each had four splayed toes and a single enormous backward claw. The head, ridiculously tiny compared to the rest of the animal, was encased in segmented white plates, with its beak covered by a long, curving blade, shrouded in turn with a black velvet cloth.
It was easily twice Gyre’s height. The magistrate’s warbird hadn’t been nearly as big, he decided, and in retrospect its plumage seemed a bit ragged. It certainly hadn’t been armored in unmetal. Whoever the visitor was, he was considerably better equipped than even a county official. Maybe it is a centarch. Gyre gave the warbird a wide berth, creeping around the edge of the drive toward the front door, which stood partially open.
It led to the parlor, which the family used once a year at Midwinter. The rest of the time, the good furniture was covered by dust sheets, and life at the farm centered around the kitchen and the back door. Gyre and Maya’s room was in that part of the house, an addition that leaked when it rained. Looking into the parlor, Gyre had the feeling of being a stranger in his own home, the shrouded shapes of the sofa and end table looming and ominous.
Gyre’s father stood in the doorway that led to the kitchen. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, with dark hair tied at the nape of his neck and skin the color of the soil he spent his time tending. Gyre could tell at once there was something wrong, just from the way his father stood. He was slumped, defeated, his eyes on the floor.
In front of him, in the middle of the parlor, stood the visitor. He was tall and thin, with short hair that gleamed purple-black in the light. He wore an unmetal breastplate and shoulder armor and carried a matching helmet under one arm. On his right hip there was an implement a bit like a capital letter T, or a sword hilt and cross guard with no blade.
It was, without question, a haken. The highest of arcana, able to manipulate the power of creation in the raw. And that made this man a centarch of the Twilight Order, since only they could use the haken. Gyre had never seen one, of course, but he recognized it from a hundred stories. With haken in hand, a centarch was unstoppable, invincible.
Now that he was confronted with one of the legendary warriors in the flesh, Gyre realized he very much wanted the man to be gone. Just go away and leave us alone, he thought. We’re not ghouls, and we haven’t got any dhak except for seeds that kill weevils. What harm can that do to anyone?
“You’re certain?” Gyre’s father said quietly. Neither of the men had noticed Gyre yet, and he pressed himself against the sofa, desperate to hear their conversation.
“Quite certain,” the centarch said. He had a highborn accent. “Believe me, in these matters, the Order does not make mistakes.”
“But…”
Maya screamed, and Gyre’s father started. Gyre’s mother came in through the other door, holding Maya under her arm. The girl was kicking furiously, tears running down her cheeks, and shrieking like an angry cat.
“It’s all right,” Gyre’s father said. “Maya, please. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Yes,” the centarch drawled. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“No!” Maya said. “No, no, no! I don’t want to go!”
“You have to go,” Gyre’s mother said. “You know how you get sick. They can help you.”
Gyre frowned. Bouts of a strange, feverish illness had been a regular feature of Maya’s life for as long as he could remember, especially in the winter. But she’d always recovered, and by summer she was herself again. Though Mom did say this year was the worst she’d ever been. Maya hated doctors, who could never find anything wrong and prescribed bitter medicines that didn’t work.
Did Dad call the Order to help her? Gyre hadn’t heard of the Order doing anything like that, though they had access to arcana medicine far better than any doctor’s. But why would they need to take her away?
He bit his lip, watching as his mother transferred the squirming five-year-old to the centarch. The thin man donned his helmet, which made him look like a white beetle, and took Maya under his arm, lifting her easily.
“No, no, no!” she screamed. “I don’t want to go! Mom, Dad, don’t let him take me!”
She hates doctors, Gyre told himself. She screamed her head off when she cut her hand and Dad took her to get it sewn up.
But something was wrong. The way his father stood, hands clenched into fists. His mother’s eyes, brimming with unshed tears, her hands clasped to her chest. It’s wrong. Why are they letting him take her?
Gyre stepped into the doorway, trembling, as the centarch turned to leave. Maya saw him first and screamed again.
“Gyre! Help, help, please!”
“Let her go,” Gyre said. He wished his voice didn’t sound so small, so like a little boy’s.
“Gyre!” Gyre’s father took a half step forward. His mother turned away, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
“Ah,” the centarch said. “You must be the brother. Gyre, is it?”
Gyre nodded. “Put my sister down.”
“It is commendable, of course, to defend one’s family,” the centarch said. “But I am afraid you have made a mistake. My name is Va’aht, called Va’aht Thousandcuts, a centarch of the Twilight Order.” His free hand brushed across his haken.
“I know what you are,” Gyre said. “Put her down.”
“If you know what I am, you know that the Order helps wherever it can. I am going to help your sister.”
“She doesn’t want to go,” Gyre said.
“I don’t!” Maya wailed. “I’m not sick, I’m not.”
“Children don’t get to make those decisions, I’m sad to say,” Va’aht said. “Now, if you would stand aside?”
Hand trembling, Gyre reached for his belt. He drew his knife, the knife his father had trusted him with the day he found all the vulpi. It was a wickedly sharp single-edged blade almost four inches long. Gyre held it up in front of Va’aht, heart thumping wildly.
“Gyre!” Gyre’s father shouted. “Drop that at once and come here!”
“I see,” Va’aht said gravely. “Single combat, is it? Unfortunately, boy, I’m afraid I don’t have time at the moment. Once you’ve grown a bit taller, perhaps.” The centarch turned. “If there’s—”
Gyre moved while he was looking the other way. Va’aht’s torso was armored, and Gyre’s steel blade wouldn’t even scratch the unmetal. But his legs were protected only by leather riding trousers, and Gyre swung the knife down as hard as he could into the man’s thigh. It sank to the hilt, blood welling around the wound.
Va’aht shouted in pain, and Maya screamed. Gyre’s mother was screaming too. Gyre tried to maintain his grip on the blade, pull it out for another stab, but Va’aht twisted sideways and he lost his hold. The centarch’s knee slammed into Gyre’s stomach, sending him gasping to the floor.
“Gyre!” Gyre heard his father start forward, but Va’aht held up a warning hand. The centarch still had hold of Maya, who was staring down at her brother, too scared even to keep shrieking.
“That,” Va’aht said through clenched teeth, “was unwise.”
“He’s just a boy,” Gyre’s father said. “Please, I’ll answer for it, I’ll—”
“That’s Order blood, boy,” Va’aht said, raising his voice. “The blood of the Chosen. Every drop is worth all the flesh and bone in your body. Consider that, and reflect on my mercy.”
“Mercy, sir,” Gyre’s father said. “Please.”
Gyre heaved himself up onto his elbows.
“Let her go,” he croaked.
Va’aht put his hand on his haken. He didn’t draw the weapon, just touched it, and crooked one finger.
Pain exploded in Gyre’s head, a line of fire from cheek to eyebrow. He was falling backward, hitting the floor shoulder-first, feeling nothing but the searing agony in his face. He mashed his hand against it, and blood squished, torn skin shifting nauseatingly under his fingers. He only realized he was screaming when he had to stop to take a breath.
Va’aht loomed above him, an outline shimmering in a haze of tears.
“You’ll live, with care, though I daresay there’ll be a scar.” The centarch gave a humorless chuckle. “Let it be a lesson to you.”
He limped past, still carrying Maya. She screamed Gyre’s name again, but his thoughts were already fading into a fiery blur of pain. By the time his father reached his side, darkness was closing in around him.
Chapter 1
Twelve Years Later
I was hot, and Maya was watching an empty house.
She sat on a rickety chair, staring out a second-story window through the gap between two stained, threadbare curtains. It gave her a perfect view of the alley below, which contained nothing more obviously interesting than a midden aswarm with flies, and a mangy old dog, huddled miserably in the shrinking shadow of the building to try to keep out of the sun.
There was also the front door of a single-story shack that, as best as Maya and her mentor had been able to determine, was the lair of a monster.
Watching this was Maya’s assignment, which was all well and good, except that she was convinced the monster wasn’t actually home. There had been no movement through the one visible window of the little shack. No movement in the alley, either, aside from the drone of the flies, the panting of the dog, and the heat haze dancing above the baked-mud road.
The city of Bastion seemed designed for misery. It was surrounded by a Chosen relic, a rectangular unmetal wall stretching nearly a kilometer on its long sides and thirty meters high. The human city was jammed inside, like a wasp’s nest daubed between joists in an attic, the taller buildings around the edges leaning against the indestructible unmetal for support. All well and good for defending the city against bandits or plaguespawn, but it made for a tangled rat’s warren of streets, and the wall kept the air fetid and stagnant. The whole place smelled like a cesspool.
Her vantage point was a second-story room in the sort of flophouse that rented by the hour. At the moment, the room was only slightly more interesting than the alley. There was a bed whose stained sheets Maya had flatly refused to touch under any circumstances, a chamber pot, two rickety chairs that had been smashed and repaired so often they were more nail than wood, and a thirteen-year-old boy lying on his back and tossing baked nuts into the air to try to catch them in his mouth, surrounded by the evidence of his repeated failure at this task.
Maya glared at the boy, whose name was Marn. Against all appearances, he was also an agathios, another student of her mentor, Jaedia, and bearer of the same gift Maya wielded: deiat, the power of creation, the Chosen’s desperate legacy to humanity.
I refuse to believe the Chosen had Marn in mind, though. They would have taken one look at him and said, “Well, that’s it. Might as well close up shop and let the plaguespawn eat everyone.”
A nut caromed off Marn’s nose. Sensing her stare, he tipped his head back and looked at her upside down.
“What?” he said.
“You’re supposed to be studying chapter fifteen of the Inheritance,” Maya said.
“And you’re supposed to be watching the street, not paying attention to me,” Marn said, with thirteen-year-old sophistry. “So if you’ve noticed I’m not studying, then by definition—”
“Shut up.” Maya glanced guiltily back at the alley, but nothing had changed. The old dog rolled on his back, panting. “Hollis probably isn’t even there.”
“Jaedia thinks he is. Why else would she go to the Auxies for backup?”
“I don’t know why she bothers with the Auxies in the first place,” Maya grumbled. The local authorities were usually worse than useless. “Whatever’s in there, we can handle it.”
“If I had a haken, I could help,” Marn said, fumbling for another nut.
“If you had a haken, you’d blow your own head off.”
“Would not.”
“Would so.”
That was about the level of discourse she and Marn achieved, most days. Jaedia told her to forgive Marn for being thirteen, but Maya had been thirteen only four years ago and she was reasonably certain she’d never been that stupid. Or stubborn. She turned back to the window with a sigh.
If Hollis is there, he’s staying out of sight. The dhakim known as Hollis Plaguetouch had eluded the Order this long. Maybe he’s already cut and run. In which case…
Maya froze. Shadows moved on the wall of the alley. A moment later, three people came into view, walking single file. Two were large men, in the sleeveless white shirts and canvas trousers of common laborers. One was shaved bald, and the other wore his dark blue hair in a long queue. Between them walked a young woman in a colorful dress, long golden hair unbound. There was something off about the way she moved, but Maya didn’t catch it until she’d walked directly under the window. Oh, plaguefire.
“Marn!”
“Ow!” Marn rolled over. “Plague it, you made me drop that one in my eye!”
“They’re taking someone to the house!”
“Who is?” Marn got up and shuffled over to the window. The two men had reached the end of the street, one of them standing with the girl while the other unlocked the door.
“You think they’re with Hollis?” Marn whispered.
“The men are,” Maya said. “The girl’s a prisoner.”
“How do you know?”
“She’s gagged and her wrists are tied behind her back.”
Marn looked over at her nervously. “So—”
“Shut up and let me think.”
The door in the alley opened, and the trio went inside, one of the men pushing the girl along by the arm. She looks terrified.
Maya’s hand came up, unconsciously, and touched the Thing. It was a bad habit, calling attention to something that was supposed to stay secret, but she’d never been able to break it. The little piece of arcana, like a rounded crystal surrounded by a ring of smaller faceted stones, was embedded in Maya’s flesh just above her breastbone. It had saved her life as a girl, banishing the coughs and fevers that had nearly killed her, and ever since, she found herself tapping it when she was anxious, as though to make sure it was still there.
Jaedia won’t be back for another hour, at least. Her mentor had assigned her to watch for Hollis trying to leave, not people arriving. And she’d made it very clear that Maya wasn’t to do anything more than observe. But she didn’t consider them bringing in a prisoner, did she? Maya didn’t want to think about what might happen to a bound and gagged girl dragged into a nest of dhakim, but the images came all too readily to mind. Oh, fucking plaguefire.
Not much of a choice.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Marn, who’d been watching her expression.
“I’m not being stupid.” Maya checked her panoply belt, threaded under her shirt around her midsection. Her haken was concealed at the small of her back, instead of in its normal place at her hip, but she could still draw it quickly. “Chosen know what they’re going to do to her.”
“Jaedia said to stay here!”
“Jaedia wouldn’t stay here and let some poor girl have her skin torn off,” Maya retorted. “And neither will I.”
“But you’re not a centarch!”
Not yet. Maya gritted her teeth. “I’m still going in. You go and find Jaedia, tell her to get back here as soon as she can.”
“How am I supposed to find her?” Marn said. “All I know is she’s somewhere—”
“Fucking figure it out!” Maya snarled as she turned from the window and ran for the door.
She touched her haken with one hand, and the power of deiat opened inside her. Heat flashed across her body, like sparks landing on her flesh. The sensation passed in an instant, replaced by the steady pressure of waiting energy in her haken. Maya threaded a thin strand into her belt and felt the panoply field activate, throwing a very slight blue haze over her vision. Thus protected, she stepped forward and tried the door latch, her other hand brushing against the Thing for reassurance.
The door clicked open, swinging inward on rusty hinges to reveal the filthy interior of the shack. There was no furniture, just a cold hearth against one wall surrounded by a few pots and pokers. Dirt was smeared across the floorboards, as though muddy livestock had been driven through. A small window in the back wall looked out onto a brick-lined carriage yard, but there were no other doors, and no sign of the dhakim or their prisoner.
They must have a hiding place somewhere. Maya looked over her shoulder. No wonder we couldn’t spot anyone inside.
The door swung closed, and only dim light came in through the curtained windows. Maya opened her hand and tugged another tiny strand of deiat, conjuring a cool flame that danced blue-white across her fingers. In that harsh glow, she paced in a circle, searching for some sign of the residents. There were bootprints in the dirt, but they ran in every direction.
Where in the Chosen’s name did they go? Maya’s jaw clenched as she imagined the two thugs dragging the girl through some secret passage, only meters away. Come on, come on.
Something made the hairs on her arm stand up. She stopped pacing and paused until she felt it again—a chill draft, lovely in the stifling, dead air. Not from the windows, but from the floorboards. Underground. Maya stomped her boot, hard, and the sound was hollow. Got you.
With a terrific crunch of shattering wood, a ropy thing studded with yellowing spikes smashed up through the floorboards, spraying splinters in all directions. It lashed itself around Maya’s ankle, and before she could reach for her haken she was yanked downward. The floorboards gave way under inhuman strength, and she felt the panoply field flare as she fell, blunting her impact a moment later. Generating the shield pulled power from her, which she felt as a sudden chill, her heart abruptly hammering loud and fast in her ears.
She’d hit stone, about three meters down, light spilling from a broken circle of floorboards overhead. The tendril-thing was still gripping her ankle, and Maya snatched her haken from the small of her back. She drew on deiat, channeling it through the Elder device. The haken, shaped like the hilt of a sword, grew a blade, a meter-long bar of liquid fire that lit up the underground space and threw shifting, hard-edged shadows.
Every centarch manifested deiat differently—as lightning, ice, raw force, or subtle energies. For Maya, it had always been fire. Deiat was the fire of creation, the raw power of the universe. When Maya swung her haken at the gripping tentacle, water on the damp rocks spat and flashed into steam, and the fleshy appendage parted with no more resistance than a damp sheet of paper. The end wrapped around her ankle spasmed and went limp, and Maya shot to her feet.
By the haken’s light, she could see the rest of the tendril, and the creature it was attached to. It was a hulking, heavyset thing, the size of a very large dog or a small pony. There was no confusing it with any natural animal, though. Plaguespawn.
It walked on six legs, asymmetrical, one dragging and one extra-jointed. The thing had no skin, its grotesque musculature on full display, red-gray flesh twisting and pulsing as it moved. Bones protruded from its body, apparently at random, sharpened to yellow, hardened points. A skein of tangled guts hung loose beneath its belly, dripping vile fluids.
And yet the worst part was not what was alien about the creature, but what was familiar. Here and there, pieces of other animals were visible, incorporated whole in the fabric of the monster’s flesh. Half a dog’s snout, upside down, made up what passed for its jaw, with a dozen dangling, wriggling protrusions like the tails of rats. One of the legs ended in a five-fingered hand that looked disturbingly human. The tendril that Maya had severed was its tongue, a muscular rope at least four meters long, edged with canine teeth. A dozen eyes of various sizes stared at her from across the thing, all blinking in eerie unison.
Jaedia had once described plaguespawn as the product of a mad taxidermist, given the run of the contents of a butcher shop and a morgue. That was close, but Maya thought that no human mind, however mad, could have matched the awfulness of the real thing. And, despite all its deformities, the thing functioned. When it stepped forward, the play of muscles in its flanks was smooth and powerful. Its long tongue coiled under its half jaw, dripping black blood from the severed tip.
In the shadows behind it, Maya saw more of the creatures. They were smaller but no less horrific, each a unique amalgamation of rats and cats and dogs and whatever other flesh they’d been able to catch. Fangs, claws, and shattered, repurposed bones gleamed razor-sharp.
Maya straightened up, forcing a grin. Bravado was wasted on these monsters, of course, but…
“Well?” she said. “Are you coming or not?”
They came, the small ones first in a wave, with the larger creature lumbering in behind them. Maya gave ground, drawing power through her haken, and drew a half circle in the air with her off hand. A wall of flame blasted up from the stones, cutting in front of the plaguespawn with a crackle and a wash of heat.
Maya didn’t expect that alone to stop them. The first of the creatures came through only moments later, scorched and smoldering. Its claws scrabbled on the wet stone as it leapt for her, sideways jaws dripping slaver. But it was alone, the others being slower to dare the flames, and Maya was able to sidestep smoothly and pivot to cut the thing in half. Her haken blade went through muscle, bone, and sinew like a wire through cheese, and the separate parts of the thing splashed to the stone behind her, twitching spastically.
The next one appeared in a rush, a crest of hair on its back aflame, and Maya separated its head from its body with a sweeping downward cut. Two more emerged together, coming at her from opposite directions. She intercepted the one that looked more dangerous, smashing it to the ground in a smoking ruin, while the other scored against her hip with a pair of raking strikes. Its claws of splintered bone stopped a few centimeters from her skin, the panoply field flickering blue-white, and she felt the bone-numbing cold of a rapid drain of energy. A gesture with her free hand blasted the thing with a bolt of fire that tossed it backward, burning fiercely.
She had barely a flicker of warning as the long tongue of the largest creature lashed out again, this time for her throat. Maya ducked, swiping upward and missing, the tongue vanishing beyond the curtain of fire. She closed her fist, and the flames died, revealing the creature gathering itself for another strike. Maya didn’t give it the chance; she charged through the burning, shattered corpses and dodged when the tongue slashed again. Her haken licked out, a horizontal cut that severed one of the thing’s legs and sliced the hanging ropes of guts, spraying the ground with vile fluids. The plaguespawn staggered, eyes rolling wildly, and Maya delivered another blow to its head, slicing the dog’s muzzle in two. It retreated, wobbling like a drunk, and she sent a wash of fire boiling over it. Eyeballs exploded in the heat, and after a few moments the increasingly blackened plaguespawn collapsed, settling down to burn with an awful stench.
For a moment, nothing moved, and the only sound was the crackle of dying fires. Maya straightened up from her fighting crouch, haken still held in front of her. Her free hand touched the Thing, just for a moment, and she let out a long breath.
“I did it.”
Her heart was hammering in her chest, the adrenaline of the fight rapidly turning to euphoria. Not that she hadn’t fought plaguespawn before, of course. But never without Jaedia looking over my shoulder. She’d been telling her mentor for months now that she could handle things on her own. Maya felt a wide grin spread across her face.
“I fucking did it!”
Someone hit her very hard from behind.
Okay. Maya shook her head, trying to clear the lingering muzziness, and looked around. So where am I?
A single torch burned in a wall bracket, illuminating a circular brick room she guessed had once been a cistern. The open ends of pipes protruded from the walls at irregular intervals, some capped off, others broken and jagged. Maya herself was propped against one wall, her hands tied to a pipe above her head with rough hemp rope. Her ankles were bound as well, and a few brief tugs assured her that whoever had done the binding knew their business.
Her haken was nowhere in sight, though she could sense that it was still nearby. They hadn’t stripped her of her panoply belt, but without a connection to deiat it was just so much silvery fabric.
All in all, it doesn’t look great, does it?
On the other hand, she wasn’t dead. Not being dead always opens up possibilities.
She took a moment to berate herself for letting her excitement get the better of her, but only a moment. Maya tried standing up a little straighter, putting some slack into the rope at her wrists, and was craning her head back to see if this could give her any advantage when a door in the side of the cistern opened.
She knew the man who came in by sight, though they’d never met. Tall, pale-skinned, with a bald dome of a skull. He wore a leather coat with a high fur lining, too hot by far for this time of year, and there was no mistaking that bulbous nose and those bushy eyebrows.
“Hollis Plaguetouch,” she said, settling back down.
“They still call”—he paused for a fraction of a second, then tilted his head and continued in a slightly different intonation—“call me that, do they?”
“I am seizing you on the authority of the Twilight Order,” Maya said. “You stand accused of practicing dhaka. You will have an opportunity to present evidence in your defense.”
Hollis laughed, loud and sudden. Maya set her jaw, waiting stoically until he’d finished.
“You are a bold-bold little thing, aren’t you?” His voice was a rich baritone, but he had a strange nervous tic—not an ordinary stutter, but an odd pause that made him sound like a machine with a broken cog. Hollis stepped closer, bushy eyebrows rising as he studied her. “Shall I untie you and submit, then?”
“That would be a good start,” Maya said. “Though I can’t promise leniency.”
“What a pity-pity.” Hollis raised an eyebrow. “Let me offer a counterproposal. You tell me how the Order found me and how many of you they have looking.”
“And what?” Maya said. “You’ll let me live?”
“No, I’m afraid not-not. But I can promise you won’t be conscious as I tear your body into pieces for spare parts.”
“Tempting.” A drop of sweat rolled down Maya’s forehead.
“You will refuse, of course-course. Such a brave girl.” He rested two fingers on her cheek, and Maya fought the urge to lean away. “Fortunately, your cooperation is not necessary. I can change-change you until you want to tell me. Memory and desire are only matters of the flesh-flesh, after all.”
“That’s a bluff.” Maya swallowed hard. “You may be dhakim, but you’re not a ghoul.”
“Do not presume to tell me what-what I am.” Hollis’ fingers moved in a line down her chin, forcing her head up and tracing the hollow of her throat down to her collarbone. There was no crude lust in his touch, only a cold evaluation, a butcher turning a cut of meat and deciding how to carve the first steak. “You’ll find out soon-soon enough.”
Maya’s heart was slamming against her ribs, so hard she thought it might tear free. He can’t do it. He can’t. She could face the prospect of pain, even death, as inevitable risks of service to the Order. But what Hollis described—being turned into something else, something that was her but not—
Would I remember? Would I still be inside somewhere, the real me, screaming?
Peasants invoked the Chosen as though they were gods, begging them for favor and protection. The Twilight Order knew better. The Chosen, powerful as they had been, were gone, and there were no gods to answer. But at that moment Maya understood the impulse. Help me. Someone. Jaedia, Marn, anyone, just don’t let him do this.
Gyre…
The dhakim stopped, his finger in the center of her chest, resting against the Thing.
“Interesting.” A cold smile spread across his face. “Very inter-interesting.”
There was a long silence. Maya tried to think of something to say, some last defiance to spit in his face, but her throat seemed to have swollen shut.
“I think…” His hand fell to his side, and he stepped back. “I think it is not-not worth risking a disruption. Not now, when we have come so far.” The dhakim shrugged. “I will see you again, never-never fear. And perhaps we will have a more… thorough conversation.” He tilted his head, as though listening to something Maya couldn’t hear. “It appears that our time here is nearly up in any event. Until next time, sha’deia.”
Next time? Maya stared, uncomprehending, as Hollis spread his arms and smiled beatifically.
There was a crunch, like breaking bone. Hollis stood stock-still, but something moved behind his head, hidden in his high collar at first, then scaling the top of the dhakim’s bald skull. It was black, spiderlike, with four spindly legs, muscles exposed like a plaguespawn but bones that looked like dark iron. A long bundle of thin tendrils, their barbed tips dripping blood, rapidly retracted into its underside.
It gathered itself and leapt, reaching the wall of the chamber and hanging from it like an insect. After a moment’s pause, it scuttled upward into an open pipe, feet tink-tinking against the metal as it skittered away. At the same time, Hollis collapsed face-first to the wet stones. There was a large, ugly hole in the back of his neck, flesh peeled away as though something had torn its way out.
What the fuck is going on? None of it made any sense. Why would a plaguespawn hurt its master? Why would it flee? And what Hollis had said—
There was a new sound from outside the room, a whistling howl like a rising gale. Jaedia!
The door slammed open, and one of the thugs she’d seen outside stumbled through. It was the bald one, a short sword in one hand, bleeding heavily from a gash across his thigh. He backed up, lashing out with the weapon. It was intercepted by a line of swirling clouds, condensed into the blade of a haken. When they met, wind screamed a rising note, and the steel sword was sheared into two neat pieces. A moment later, a dozen blades of hardened air swept across the thug, and he exploded in a shower of bones and gore, blood splashing the wall of the cistern.
Jaedia Suddenstorm stepped into the chamber. She was tall and thin, lithe and flexible as a snake, with sparkling blue eyes and short, spiked hair the color of young leaves. The howl of the wind gradually died away as she lowered her haken, taking in the sight of Hollis’ motionless body.
“Maya,” she said, in her lilting southern accent. “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” Maya managed. Though I’m not sure why.
“Good.” Jaedia turned on her heel, eyes blazing. “Because I am going to skin you alive.”
“Honestly,” she said. “How could you be so stupid? I explicitly told you—”
“There was a girl,” Maya said, rubbing her wrists. “Two men brought her in here, bound and gagged. Did you see her?”
“Aye,” Jaedia said. “She’s scared to death, but she’ll be fine.” She held out Maya’s haken, and Maya took it gratefully. “What happened to you?”
“I got caught up fighting those plaguespawn, and one of those men got to me from behind,” Maya said, feeling blood heat her cheeks.
“A centarch of the Order, knocked down by a twopenny thug?” Jaedia glared. “You have to do better, Maya. When you get your cognomen, I’m not going to be here to pull you out of the fire.”
“I know.” Maya took a deep breath and blew it out. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t—”
“I understand.” Unexpectedly, Jaedia stepped forward and wrapped Maya in a hug, something she hadn’t done for years, not since Maya was old enough to be a proper agathios instead of merely a child in her care. Her voice was soft, and for a moment Maya thought there were tears in her eyes. “You have the heart of a proper centarch. I just need to knock a little more sense into your head.”
Maya said nothing and hugged her back. It felt like a long time before Jaedia finally pulled away, scratching her spiky green hair.
“What happened to Hollis?” she said, looking down at the dhakim. “You didn’t look like you were in a position to take him on.”
“I’m not sure,” Maya said. She shuddered at the memory of his exploratory touch, cold and clinical. “He… talked like he recognized me.”
“When he saw your face?”
Maya shook her head and told the story from the beginning. Jaedia’s frown deepened as she went on, then turned puzzled as Maya explained about the plaguespawn that had—attacked the dhakim? Escaped from him?
“I don’t know,” Jaedia said when Maya asked. “Never heard of anything like it, in all honesty. You’re sure it stopped when it found…”
She trailed off, gesturing at Maya’s chest. Maya nodded.
“That’s doubly strange, then.” Jaedia’s lip twisted. “I need to speak to Baselanthus. The old bastard owes me some answers.” She looked again at the corpse, then up at Maya. “And don’t think you’ve heard the last of this, either. Now, come on. Marn is waiting.”
Chapter 2
Deepfire was a city of many fogs, and after three years Gyre was familiar with the peculiarities of each. There was the black fog that issued from the Pit and meant it was time to take in your washing unless you wanted it stained gray. The rare green fog, which crept out of the crevices like a living thing and could kill a child in minutes. The falling fog, which descended in great gray waterfalls from where the cold mountain winds met the rising hot air from the cracked and broken earth, and the rising fog, billowing in tall columns from the sewers and storm drains.
This last was the most common, and it dominated the streets tonight, as it always did after a rain. It hung in tattered curtains, leaving beaded drops of water on the windows, softening the edges of the streetlights and turning their steady glow into a shifting, uncertain thing. To the east, the fog turned pink and then a sullen crimson, reflecting the glow from the Pit.
For the third time, Gyre’s hand came up to scratch at his scar, and for the third time he stopped, frustrated, on encountering the etched metal surface of his mask. Why did I ever start wearing the plagued thing? He knew the answer, of course—there were only so many ways for a one-eyed man to hide his identity—but he’d never meant to build a legend. In the taverns of Deepfire, people whispered about Halfmask.
Idiocy. Even if Yora thought it was useful. He tapped his foot impatiently, until the leathery slap-slap-slap of reptilian footsteps echoed up from the empty street. Finally.
A moment later two shrouded lanterns came around the corner. They hung at the front and rear of a heavily built coach pulled by a pair of ragged-looking thickheads. A driver with a long, spiked prod sat on the box, poking lackadaisically at the lizard-like beasts, while a half dozen men and women in leather vests with knives and cudgels walked alongside, peering through the fog.
Six was more guards than they’d counted on. At least we know the cargo must be worthwhile. Old Rottentooth clearly isn’t taking any chances after last time. Gyre waited a few more seconds, until the thickheads were just below him, fingering the stunner. The alchemical bomb didn’t look like much, just a clay oval the size of his fist. Gyre tossed it over the edge of the roof and jammed his hands over his eye.
The faint sound of breaking pottery was followed immediately by a monstrous crack, as though the carriage had been struck by lightning. The stunner’s flash briefly lit up the street brighter than midday, and Gyre saw the bones of his hands outlined through glowing orange flesh. A moment later, the light faded, and pained screams rose in its wake.
Gyre blinked a few errant spots from his eye and looked down. At least two of the guards were down, one unconscious on the cobbles and another one writhing and clutching her face. More important, the two thickheads were motionless, bellies pressed against the street and forepaws over their eyes. Ponies or loadbirds might have bolted, but a thickhead’s panic response was to hunker down and let predators break their teeth on its pebbly skin. It would be a few minutes before anyone could persuade the beasts to move. Perfect.
A rope waited, coiled and ready, on the edge of the roof. Gyre scooped it up, tossed the coil over the edge, then stepped off himself. The cord hissed through his hand as he gripped tighter to slow his fall, and he felt the building warmth of friction even through the iron-studded leather glove. Before it grew uncomfortably hot, his feet touched the cobbles, and he dropped the rope and drew his knives.
Six guards outside, plus the driver. The driver was the one who’d been knocked out, his skin scorched from the small blast. The closest guard, writhing on the ground, wasn’t a problem. That leaves five. The next nearest, a young man with gray-green hair, had backed against the carriage, waving his cudgel wildly and clutching at one ear. He blinked and tried to say something as Gyre approached, but Gyre’s ears were still ringing from the blast. Not that it matters. The man only had time to gesture briefly with his cudgel before Gyre extended on his right foot into a textbook-perfect lunge and skewered him through the throat. Four.
That left four, as the young man spun away and painted the side of the carriage with spurting blood. The last one on this side was an older woman with stubby red hair and an angry scar across half her face. She tossed her cudgel aside and drew a long knife as Gyre advanced. Gyre dropped into a fighting crouch, feinted at her right leg, and let her parry and riposte. He twisted under the return blow, his forearm slamming into hers and shoving it out of the way, while his off hand came up and punched his short blade once, twice, three times into her stomach under her ribs. Her knife slipped from her fingers, and when he stepped away she stumbled forward and collapsed onto the cobbles.
Three. Gyre heard the scrape and grunt of fighting as he rounded the back of the carriage. On the other side, Yora and Harrow had emerged from their hiding place in the alley to engage the three stunned guards. Yora, long leather coat flapping, held two of them off with her flashing, spinning unmetal spear. Harrow had somehow ended up in a grapple with the third, her leg twisted around his as he pressed a forearm against her neck. They staggered together along the length of the carriage like a pair of drunken lovers.
None of them were looking for Gyre, which made things easy. He stepped in behind the larger of Yora’s two opponents and drove his long blade upward at an angle into the man’s back. As he staggered forward, his companion turned, cudgel swiping desperately to keep this new enemy at bay. Gyre danced out of range, feinted to keep his attention, then turned away as Yora’s spearpoint erupted from the guard’s chest, unmetal edge slashing effortlessly through flesh, bone, and leather. Two and one.
The guard in Harrow’s grip saw her companions go down, and her eyes went very wide. She said something—too low for Gyre to hear, but Harrow paused, relaxing a fraction. In an instant she was twisting, fingers coming up to tear at his face as she fought to draw the knife at her belt. Before she got there, though, Yora’s spear licked out, catching the woman in the eye and pinning her to the side of the wagon, unmetal passing easily through wood and bone.
Done. Gyre straightened up from his fighting crouch. Harrow let go of the shuddering body and stepped away, breathing hard. Yora pulled her spear free, letting the dead guard fall to the cobbles, and bent to pick up Harrow’s two-handed axe from where it had fallen. It was a heavy steel weapon, but her arm didn’t tremble as she handed it back to him.
“There’s a time and a place for mercy, Harrow,” Yora said. “But this isn’t it. Once you’ve decided to kill somebody, make sure you follow through.”
Harrow gave a nod, brushing lank brown hair off his sweaty forehead. He was eighteen, big and broad-shouldered but still with a hint of teenage gawkiness. He was in love with Yora, like half the tunnelborn his age, and Gyre saw the pain in his face at even this mild rebuke. Idiot boy.
“Good evening, my friends.” Ibb stepped around from the front of the carriage. He looked as flamboyant as usual; he wore a long leather tunnel coat, like Yora’s, but decorated with flashing bits of silver embroidery, and he added a broad-brimmed hat with one side rolled up in the Khirkhaz style. A long curved sword rode on one hip, and a blaster pistol in a worn holster sat on the other. “No difficulties so far, I take it?”
“Glad you finally decided to join us.” Yora whipped her spearpoint down, spraying the dripping blood across the cobbles. She was shorter and slighter than her legend indicated, but her frame was corded with muscle, and her orange eyes blazed with enough force to make up for any deficiencies in stature. The frown she directed at Ibb could have spoiled milk, but he absorbed it with the aplomb of long practice.
“I was in the agreed-on position,” Ibb said mildly. “It’s not my fault Halfmask works so quickly.”
“We’re not finished yet,” Gyre said. “Let’s make sure we get what we came for before we start congratulating ourselves.”
“Fair enough.” Ibb hopped up onto the back of the coach and pulled the rear door open, leaning prudently out of the way as he did so. When nothing emerged, he swung back and peered inside. “The chest is here, at least. Thoroughly locked, though.”
“We can take care of that later,” Yora said. “Harrow, get those thickheads moving.”
The boy was already at work with the big lizards, clicking his tongue softly and offering a handful of squirming earthworms. The treat had the desired effect, and first one and then the other clambered back to their feet, snorting and shaking their heads at the residual effect of the stunner. Harrow let them lick the worms up with their long, spiked tongues, while Ibb pushed the unconscious driver off the box and picked up the reins.
Blood was painted across the cobblestones, vivid crimson in the lamplight. Gyre fought the urge to look away from the corpses. They deserved what they got. The woman he’d stabbed in the stomach had managed to crawl several meters before her strength gave out, leaving a slick of gore behind her. They chose to work for the Order and the Republic. They’re a part of the system, just as much as the highest centarch. Once again, Gyre tried to scratch the scar where his eye was missing, and once again the half mask thwarted him. He swore.
The shrill shriek of whistles cut through the night, echoing weirdly in the fog. Gyre turned, hands dropping to his knives.
“Go!” Yora said to Ibb. “Harrow, stay with him. We’ll buy you a few minutes to get clear.”
Harrow clearly wanted to object, but Ibb was already snapping the reins, startling the thickheads into lumbering forward. He grabbed the boy by his shirt and hoisted him onto the box as the coach got up to speed. Yora moved to stand beside Gyre, spinning her spear in a slow circle.
“Was there a way out the other end of that alley?” Gyre said as the tramp of booted feet got closer.
“Someone’s back door,” Yora said, calm and professional.
“Locked?”
“Nothing I couldn’t break through.”
Lights swirled in the mist. “Give them a look at us,” Gyre said, “then head that way?”
Yora gave that a moment’s thought, then nodded. Gyre reached into the pockets of his coat and came up with three small clay spheres.
A squad of Auxiliaries emerged from the mist, twelve men and women with long spears and sword belts, in padded leather jerkins and conical steel caps. Their sergeant, a red-faced man with a bushy blue beard, had a whistle between his lips and was blowing for all he was worth. He pulled up at the sight of Gyre and Yora, and the squad clattered to a halt behind him. Gyre heard someone say, “Halfmask!”
“That’s right,” he muttered. “Here’s your stupid ghost story.”
He tossed the clay bombs, letting them land at the Auxies’ feet. They were crackers, less spectacular than the stunner—too easy to blind himself at this range—and went off with more of a pop than a bang, but the explosion gushed an enormous cloud of choking, acrid smoke. Shouts of alarm and hacking coughs filled the street. Gyre held out a hand, warning Yora back from the expanding miasma. Only when the first soldier burst free of the cloud and fell to her knees, retching, did Gyre turn and run for the alley.
“They’re getting away!” the woman rasped. “To the right!”
Perfect. Any pursuit would focus on them, rather than the stolen wagon and its lumbering team of thickheads. Gyre darted into the alley, Yora close behind him. But another set of footsteps followed, and he turned in time to see someone else turn in after them. His stomach fell.
Legionary.
The Auxiliaries were local militia, indifferently trained and armed with weapons forged by ordinary human smiths. The Legions of the Dawn Republic were another matter entirely. Equipped with Chosen arcana maintained by the centarchs of the Twilight Order, they were the heart of the Republic’s military. They were spread thin—Gyre doubted there were a dozen Legionaries in Deepfire—but it was enough.
The soldier was armored in off-white unmetal from head to heel, an insectoid suit of overlapping plates that slid smoothly over one another at the joints. Gyre guessed it was a woman by her height, but there was no other way to tell, with her face obscured behind a pane of darkened Elder glass. On her left arm she carried a large round shield, and a sword rode on her right hip, one of the Legion-pattern unmetal blades. The snub nose of a blaster rifle poked up over her shoulder.
“Halfmask,” she said, voice distorted by the mask. “I am detaining you by order of Dux Raskos.”
“Get the door open,” Gyre muttered. He saw Yora nod out of the corner of his eye.
The Legionary stepped forward, the streetlamps giving her armor an iridescent shimmer. “Put down your weapons and surrender.”
Gyre drew his knives and charged, and the soldier drew her sword. Checking his momentum at the last moment, Gyre faded back from her slash, drawing her deeper into the alley. Then, with as little warning as possible, he planted his back foot and lunged.
It was a good move, and it would have worked against any ordinary opponent. His right-hand dagger curved in, wide and obvious, and the Legionary brought her shield up to block. His left thrust upward, fast and tight, even as his knife was skittering over the impenetrable unmetal. There was just a hint of cloth visible, where the bottom of her helmet met the articulated breastplate. Maybe—
She moved fast, faster than someone wearing armor had any right to. Her blade met his edge on, and where unmetal clashed against steel the Elder creation won easily. Gyre yanked his hand back and found himself holding the hilt of a dagger with perhaps an inch of blade remaining.
Oh, plaguefire. The Legionary advanced again, and Gyre danced backward. Something squishy burst under his feet, and for a moment he lost his balance. She thrust, and he threw himself sideways to avoid being skewered. His remaining dagger scratched uselessly against her shoulder, and she threw herself behind her shield and slammed it into him, driving him hard against the wall. Stars burst behind his eye as his head cracked the bricks.
“I am detaining you,” she said. “Just hold still, would you?”
Gyre tried to think of a good rejoinder, his mouth coppery with blood, his vision edged with shimmers. He reached into his coat but froze as the Legionary raised her sword to his throat. Then, abruptly, the soldier spun, shield coming up. She wasn’t fast enough, and Yora’s spear slipped under her guard to slam into her breastplate. The Legionary grunted, retreating a step, and brought her sword down behind the spearhead. An ordinary weapon would have been sliced in half, but Yora’s spear was of the same Elder make as the Legionary’s gear, and the sword rebounded with a distinctive crystalline ring.
Yora pressed her attack, spear whirling in her hands. Unmetal weapon or not, she was still unarmored, and she fought to keep the Legionary on the defensive. Her blade scraped against the soldier’s shield and glanced off her armored side, and the Legionary ducked under a swing that would have sent the butt of the spear into her head. But the soldier’s blade licked out, and Yora’s parry caught it too late to turn the weapon entirely. The edge bit into Yora’s thigh, raising a thin line of blood.
By that point, Gyre had caught his breath. More important, he’d gotten his hand into his coat pocket, grabbing his backup stunner. He ran forward, hurling the little sphere in the Legionary’s face. It went off as he collided with Yora, one arm raised so the leather of his cloak covered her eyes.
The bomb exploded with a soft whuff, a wave of pressure, and a light much brighter than the noonday sun. The Legionary staggered backward with a strangled cry. Even facing away with his eyes tightly closed, Gyre still saw an orange flash, and afterimages danced across his vision. He could see well enough to get to his feet, though, and pull Yora up after him. Her eyes were watering fiercely, so he grabbed her hand and ran for the door, which now hung slightly open.
It led to a dusty storeroom, which had another door leading into the entrance hall of a small apartment building. Gyre tumbled a stack of boxes behind him, blocking the way, and he and Yora pounded through, boots clattering on the floorboards. The front door was latched but not barred, and in another moment they were through into a dark, empty street.
Or, in this case, the unused last stall in an otherwise legitimate livery stable. Yora opened the stable door with an iron key and led the way past wooden pens full of the curled-up shapes of sleeping loadbirds. A few interrogative chirrups followed them, but the birds remained calm as she entered the stall at the end of the row, kicked some straw aside, and raised a wooden trapdoor.
“Your leg all right?” Gyre said, indicating the wound Yora had taken from the Legionary’s sword. Yora glanced down as though she’d forgotten about it until that moment. “I’ve got some bandages.”
“It’ll keep,” Yora said. “I want to put some rock between us and Raskos’ people first.”
Gyre nodded. They’d stopped hearing the whistles of Auxie pursuit several blocks back, but that was no guarantee. Not if he’s sending Legionaries after us. That meant they had the dux’s personal attention.
Yora strapped her spear to her back and climbed down the short ladder under the trapdoor. Gyre pulled off his mask—and scratched his scar, a blessed relief—then followed. The ladder let them into a narrow stone passage, smooth walled except where chunks had fallen away to litter the floor with rubble. Yora took a glowstone from her pocket and shook it to life, its pallid blue light painting the walls with leaping, shivering shadows.
It was possible to forget, on the surface, that Deepfire was not a human place. It had streets and buildings, shops and restaurants, like any other city. If you were wealthy enough to live aboveground, only the deep, smoldering fire of the Pit and the white-capped mountains clustered close in every direction kept you from imagining you were somewhere in the central Republic.
For the majority of residents, though, an open-air dwelling was far out of reach. They lived in the tunnels, dividing up the vast, winding galleries with wood-and-cloth partitions, reclaiming human space from something Elder and intimidating. But no one forgot where they were living, not when every too-smooth curve and vast cavern was a reminder.
Before the Plague War, this had been a ghoul city—possibly the ghoul city, their capital, though legends were contradictory—and the endless kilometers of tunnels that honeycombed the mountain had once been their homes and workshops. Not long after the war began, the Chosen had unleashed a terrible weapon, which had smashed the place open like a child taking a shovel to an anthill. No one was quite certain what kind of weapon it had been, but everyone agreed it was still down there, sputtering away at the bottom of the Pit. It was the source of both the warmth that kept the city free of the surrounding glaciers and the occasional miasmic gases that strangled children in their sleep.
The surviving tunnels, in the meantime, had been ruthlessly cleansed by the Chosen and their armies. These battles had left a rich legacy of Elder arcana behind, broken weapons and shattered armor, bits of junk and the occasional marvel. Not long after the end of the war and the final downfall of Chosen and ghouls alike, bold men and women had returned to scavenge for treasure and had raised the beginnings of the modern city in the still-glowing crater.
And then the centarchs decided no one else was allowed to play with their toys.
The small tunnel joined a larger one, which bore a few signs of habitation, bits of trash in the corners and crude messages painted on the walls. This eventually joined another, still larger passage, which became an alley feeding into one of the main thoroughfares. Apart from the smooth stone roof, twenty meters overhead, this could have passed for a street in the poor quarter of any city—a narrow, muddy road down the center, lined by narrow, rickety buildings. Day and night had little meaning down here, and torches and braziers burned nonstop, filling the air with a haze of smoke. There were no carriages in the tunnels, and a sea of bustling humanity pushed and grumbled past one another, mud spattering from their feet.
Poor bastards. It was hard not to pity the tunnelborn, who spent their lives down here, emerging aboveground only long enough to trudge to a job at some manufactory. They were gaunt from bad food and pale from lack of sun, like they were half corpses already.
Yora threaded her way into the crowd, instinctively using hips and elbows to work her way through the press. Gyre stayed in her wake. Even after three years, he couldn’t maneuver through crowds of tunnelborn with the ease of a native like Yora. After a cramped, sweaty interval battling the press, they broke through into a less crowded section.
There was nothing marking out the door to the Crystal Cavern as belonging to a pub. Gyre wasn’t sure if that was even the official name of the place. An alley led to a side tunnel, which dead-ended in an iron-banded door. It opened to Yora’s knock, revealing a tough-looking woman who gave them a once-over, then grunted.
Inside, a long, low-ceilinged cavern was mostly full of a haphazard array of mismatched tables. There was a bar along one wall, made of pieces of old packing crates. The place was mostly empty, apart from a few determined lone drinkers, and Gyre spotted the rest of their crew in their usual spot in the back corner.
“Good to see you in one piece,” Ibb said, tipping his hat graciously. He sat in a rickety chair tilted dangerously far back, his boots propped up on an unused table. “Have any trouble losing our helmeted friends?”
“A little more than usual,” Yora said, pulling another chair over. “They had a Legionary with them.”
Ibb raised his eyebrows. “That’s unusual. Maybe we’re finally getting to Raskos.”
“Are you all right?” Harrow got up from where he was sitting and hurried over. When he noticed Yora’s wound, his eyes widened. “That looks—”
“It’s a scratch,” Yora said, waving a hand. She prodded the wound with her finger and winced. “Sarah will sew it up for me. Right, Sarah?”
“Not really my area of expertise,” Sarah said from the corner. “Nevin’s the one who’s good with needles.”
“Nevin’s a little busy at the moment,” Nevin said.
Harrow pulled up a chair for Yora beside Ibb. A heavy wood-and-iron chest had been hauled onto a table, and Nevin sat in front of it, a pair of lockpicks in his hands, bent in front of a keyhole at one end. Sarah stood behind him, one hand on his shoulder in silent encouragement.
Sarah was their arcanist, a woman in her midtwenties, short and plump with a mass of red-brown curls. She’d been with Yora for years, since before Gyre had arrived in Deepfire, and her cheery optimism sometimes seemed like a deliberate counterpoint to Yora’s dourness. Nevin was a newer addition, a tunnelborn thief whom Sarah had taken up with and convinced Yora would be a useful member of the inner circle. He was a tall, lanky young man with dark green hair and long, spidery fingers, well suited to the kind of work he was doing now.
There were more members of their nebulous organization, spread throughout the tunnels and reaching into Deepfire proper. Probably only Yora knew for sure how many. Certainly among the tunnelborn—the Deepfire natives, born underground and rarely seeing the sun—there was no love lost for the Republic, Dux Raskos Rottentooth, and the Twilight Order that backed them. That resentment kept them alive every time Raskos sent his Auxies into the tunnels, searching for the daughter of Kaidan Hiddenedge and the thief called Halfmask who’d caused so much trouble.
It’s kept us alive so far, anyway. If Raskos was calling in the Legionaries, that might not last. Yora and I need to talk. He glanced at Yora, who was deep in conversation with Ibb. Harrow, catching Gyre’s look, gave him a resentful glare, and Gyre sighed inwardly. The boy’s puppy-dog protectiveness of Yora was starting to get genuinely irritating. He needs to learn that she can take care of herself.
A loud clunk drew his attention back to the chest. Nevin leaned back, brushing his sweaty hair back from his forehead and grinning broadly.
“Told you,” he said. “No problem.”
“You’re brilliant.” Sarah bent down and kissed him, then flipped up the lid of the chest. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
The box was full to the brim with small bundles, wrapped in rough cloth and tied up with twine. Yora and Ibb got up, too, and came over as Sarah rooted around, pulling out a few pieces that clunked when she set them on the tabletop. She peeked inside a few of the other bundles and gave a soft whistle.
“These I’ll have to take a closer look at,” she said, gesturing to her chosen items. “The rest looks like raw alchemicals. Lynnia’s going to have a field day.”
“A field day for which she’ll pay handsomely,” Ibb said, grinning broadly. “You know what that means.” He glanced at Yora, then raised his voice. “A round for the house, courtesy of our favorite alchemist!”
Yora was holding court. Word had gotten around about the score and the free drinks, and a steady stream of tunnelborn made their way to the Crystal Cavern to pay their respects and collect their booze. They bowed to Yora, or bent close to whisper words of support they didn’t dare say aloud, or raised foaming mugs to toast the memory of Hiddenedge and his companions, who’d first roused the tunnelborn against the Republic and ended up dying in a cell for his pains.
“It’s not all that encouraging a story, actually,” Sarah said, coming to sit beside Gyre as yet another toast was proclaimed. “From our point of view, I mean.”
Gyre glanced at her. She and Nevin had been sitting in a corner for some time, pressed close and lips locked, pausing only long enough to down the drinks Ibb kept bringing them. “What happened to your boy?”
“Having a piss, I think. Or losing his dinner.” Sarah gave a cheerful shrug. “You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself.”
“It’s dangerous to be out in public like this, even in the tunnels.” Gyre watched Yora shake a gnarled old man’s hand, nodding as he told her some story. “I’m just not sure it’s worth the risk.”
“It lets the tunnelborn know someone’s fighting for them,” Sarah said. “That’s worth something, I think.”
“To them?”
“And to us, if it means a friendly hand or a sympathetic ear when we need one.” Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Seriously, what’s eating you? You’re not usually the worried one.”
“Just thinking too much,” Gyre muttered.
“I know what’ll fix that,” Sarah said, pushing his mug toward him. Gyre took a drink, to appease her, and changed the subject.
“So did you get a chance to look closer at the loot?”
“Only a little.” Sarah’s eyes lit up. “One piece is a secondary actuator, which looks intact. It might have come off a skyship, but more likely got broken off from—”
She was interrupted by Nevin, returning from the toilet apparently none the worse for wear. Sarah bounced off to meet him, leaving Gyre alone once again with his thoughts.
Enough. Gyre downed the rest of his wine and got to his feet, waving off Ibb’s offer to get him another. He stalked out through the now-crowded pub, emerging into the darker, quieter tunnel outside the door with a deep feeling of relief.
Thinking too much. You can say that again. For a moment he hesitated. He badly wanted to be back in his own bed, but fading adrenaline had left him with aching limbs and a throbbing headache. Maybe I should find a flophouse and head back in the morning.
The door opened behind him, and Gyre turned to find Yora, hands in the pockets of her tunnel coat. She caught his look and raised an eyebrow.
“Tired of playing host?” he said.
“A bit.” Yora had unpinned her hair from the tight bun she kept it in on jobs, and it hung in waves down the back of her coat, gleaming in the faint torchlight like liquid gold. She ran a hand through it and sighed. “Half of them want favors, and the other half just want to tell me how they supported my father all along.”
“Easy to say, after the fact,” Gyre said.
“I know. If half the people who say they were with him now had been willing to stand up…” Yora shook her head, and there was a hint of pain beneath her usual stoic mask. She’d been ten when her father had died, Gyre remembered. Barely older than I was when the Order took Maya.
“Sorry,” Gyre muttered. “Didn’t mean to stick my finger in old wounds.”
She waved it away, then said, “Sarah’s worried about you. So’s Ibb. Usually taking down a bunch of Auxies is what cheers you up.”
Gyre snorted. “Let me guess. They think I should come in and get roaring drunk?”
“They mean well.” Yora stepped closer, leaning one shoulder against the rock wall. “What’s wrong, Gyre?”
Gyre blew out a deep breath. “That Legionary was waiting for us.”
“Raskos can’t know exactly what we were going to hit. I bet he scattered a squad across a few likely targets.”
“Even so. He wants us badly.”
Yora nodded. “We’re hurting him. And the best part is, he can’t go crying to the Order for help. The last thing he needs is for some centarch to start poking around.”
That was true enough. Among the dux’s responsibilities was suppressing the trade in dhak, which in the modern Republic meant anything Elder, ghoul, or Chosen that didn’t come through the Order. Most of Deepfire’s duxes had taken advantage of their position to line their pockets with a little light smuggling, from what Gyre had read, but he suspected none had gone quite as far as Raskos Rottentooth—the man had his own warehouse. So he can’t exactly complain to the Order that his illegal shipments are going missing.
“Right,” Gyre said. “So he’ll do what he can to stop us—Auxies, Legionaries, mercs, whatever it takes.”
“And we’ll keep getting past them,” Yora said. “We managed tonight, didn’t we?”
“Barely.” A week of careful planning and smooth execution had nearly been ruined by a single soldier. “But let’s say we do. Then what?”
“Eventually, Raskos goes down,” Yora said. “He seems strong, but he’s on a narrow base, with the tunnelborn on one side, the Republic nobility on the other, and the Order looming over his shoulder. Keep shaking him, and he’ll lose his footing.”
“And then what?” Gyre growled. “We take the city? The Republic will send a hundred Legionaries through the Gate and take it back. Or a centarch wanders through and blasts us back into our holes without breaking a sweat. We had one Legionary come after us, and that was almost too much. How are we supposed to fight back?”
“This isn’t about taking on the whole Republic,” Yora said, her tone stiffening to anger. “This is about bringing down Rottentooth and getting justice for the tunnelborn. When the city rises and the dux falls, the Senate will negotiate.”
Negotiate. Gyre closed his eye, breathing deep, and said nothing.
“I know,” Yora said, after a moment. “It’s not enough for you. You want to burn the whole thing to the ground.”
Gyre held his silence, and Yora sighed again.
“You’re good, Gyre. There’s no one I’d rather have at my back in a fight, and no one who works harder once we have a target. The tunnelborn are starting to talk about Halfmask the way they talk about my father, and that’s worth something.”
“Not when the centarchs come for us,” Gyre whispered.
“Let’s focus on tomorrow.” Yora’s voice had softened again, and she patted Gyre on the shoulder. “And the next day, and the next. When we win, and Raskos has fallen, if you want to take your share of the loot and keep pushing, I certainly won’t stand in your way.” She smiled—not a false smile, but not genuine either, the practiced expression of a leader who knew how to deploy it to encourage the troops. “Until then, I hope you’ll stay by my side.”
“Of course,” Gyre said. He pushed away from the wall. “Like I told Sarah. Just thinking too much.”
“You should—”
Gyre raised his only eyebrow. “Get roaring drunk?”
“I was going to say ‘get some rest,’” Yora said.
“Probably a better plan,” Gyre muttered. He pulled his coat a little tighter around his shoulders. “Send for me when you’ve got the next target.”
“You know I will,” Yora said. “Good luck, Halfmask.”
“Not yet,” Gyre said, pulling the basement door closed behind him. It led directly into a forgotten tunnel, which made coming and going convenient. “But it was a near thing.”
“Someday you’re going to run out of luck,” Lynnia said. “I’ve been telling Yora that for years. Not that anyone listens to me, mind.”
“Good to see you, too,” Gyre muttered.
The basement was lit by more glowstones, safer than fire around alchemical compounds, which meant everything was tinged blue. By that pallid light, Gyre could make out a large room, with a long, scarred granite worktop along two opposite walls, both covered in a menagerie of glassware, boxes, and iron devices with cranks and toothed wheels that looked like instruments of torture. Lynnia sat on a swiveling chair, working a tiny grindstone with one hand and peering at the results through a loupe. When she looked up, her eye was grossly magnified by the lens, pupil dark and enormous.
Gyre had no idea how old Lynnia Sharptongue really was, only that she’d been a fixture in Deepfire longer than anyone could remember. She didn’t look ancient so much as weathered, her skin wrinkled and spotted, her curly black hair hacked off short. She wore an eclectic collection of tattered dresses, sometimes several at a time, with protective leather gear thrown over the top. Given the tendency of the things she worked with to explode or catch fire, it was a sensible choice.
As far as the Republic’s tax collectors knew, Lynnia was a respectable spinster, drawing a modest income from family wealth invested in a Deepfire merchant combine. This allowed her to keep a well-appointed brick house in the West Central district, comfortably close to the Pit and far from the chill of the tunnels. It had a ground floor and an upper story, both of which went almost entirely unused. Lynnia spent her days in the basement, mixing, grinding, and very carefully burning the strange substances the ghouls had left behind and turning them into all manner of alchemical cleverness.
This was highly illegal, of course, but that didn’t seem to bother Lynnia, any more than the risk of blowing herself up did. At her age, she always said, she welcomed any sort of excitement.
“Everyone’s fine, incidentally,” Gyre said. “Thank you for asking.”
Lynnia waved as though that was of little importance. She flipped her loupe out of the way and peered at Gyre. “And?”
“And what?”
“The new stunner,” she said, barely able to contain her glee. “How did it work?”
“Well enough,” Gyre said. “It got the thickheads hunkered down just like we wanted, and knocked the Auxies sprawling.”
“Did you find a use for the other one?”
“Tossed right in a Legionary’s face,” Gyre said. “It just about slowed her down, but that’s about it.”
“The glass in those helmets shifts in response to light. Cuts out glare. I bet she’ll have a headache, though.”
“Good to know we can mildly inconvenience our enemies, at least.”
“If you want to take down Legionaries, I’m going to need more to work with than glow dust and black drip,” Lynnia said. “A bit of ignition oil, some drive stems—”
Gyre held up a hand. “Take it up with Sarah. She’s going through what we got from the carriage. Right now, I’m about five minutes from falling over.”
“Get yourself upstairs quick, then.” Lynnia spun her chair back to the worktop. “Chosen know I can’t carry you.”
Gyre edged past her, pushing through the narrow lane down the center of the basement not occupied by alchemical glassware or general detritus. He’d reached the narrow stairway at the far end of the room when Lynnia looked up again.
“There was a delivery for you this afternoon,” she said. “One of your mysterious friends. It’s on the front table.”
Gyre paused for a moment, then continued upstairs. The main floor was furnished much more conventionally than the basement workshop and was distressingly neat and tidy. Gyre shuffled over to the second-floor stairs, exhaustion growing in him with every step, and nearly forgot to pick up the envelope waiting for him on the front table. It was cheap paper, bulging and sealed in wax with the stamp of one of his usual couriers. Gyre put it in his coat pocket and went upstairs.
His bedroom was as ordinary as the rest of the house. Gyre made a point of not keeping anything incriminating here that he couldn’t grab in a hurry on his way out, to make sure Lynnia could deny everything if Raskos ever tracked him this far. Even after three years, therefore, the place bore few traces of his personality—just some of his respectable clothes in a dusty wardrobe and a map of the city pinned up over the small desk. Gyre shrugged out of his coat and let it fall, the mask in his pocket hitting the floorboards with a metallic clunk. Then he flopped into bed and closed his eye.
Plaguefire. He rolled over and looked down at his coat. The end of the envelope stuck out of his pocket. It’s probably a lot of nothing, just like last week. And the week before. But there was always a chance…
Sleep first. I can be disappointed in the morning.
He closed his eye again and took a deep breath. A moment later he was sitting up on the edge of the bed, swearing irritably as he broke the wax seal. He pulled out a few folded scraps of paper, along with another, smaller envelope.
Each torn sheet bore a few lines of hurried script, written in several different hands.
Doran Hardskull and his crew returned from the deep tunnels south of southwest. One man lost to plaguespawn. Recovered one antique armored suit, one blaster rifle, assorted trinkets.
Hina of Asclo back from looking for her sister. Found the body, died from a fall, but couldn’t recover. No plaguespawn activities.
Carolinus Redeye brought in a wagonload of debris from the dig at Gaston’s Fork. Some unidentified arcana that may be of interest.
And more, all in that vein. Gyre flipped through one after another, then tossed them aside.
He’d made the decision when he was eight years old. Lying in bed, skin slick with fever sweat, the gash where his left eye had been swollen and leaking pus. His father had cared for him. His mother, he’d learned later, hadn’t been able to look at him without weeping.
Even at eight, he’d understood what had happened and what had to be done. If the Twilight Order could do this—if they could reach into his quiet, peaceful farm, unbidden, and destroy his family’s happiness in an afternoon—then the Order could not be allowed to exist. It was that simple.
Only, of course, it wasn’t. People fought the Order—or the forces of the Republic, which amounted to the same thing—all the time. Bandits, rebels, smugglers, dhakim cultists. None of them amounted to anything, no more than mites on a warbird. How could they? The Auxiliaries were ordinary men, even the Legionaries were only soldiers kitted out in Chosen relics, but the centarchs were something else entirely. They had deiat behind them, the fire of creation, and nothing could stand against that. And the power was inborn—if you didn’t have it, no amount of wishing or training would ever let you wield a haken.
When he was twelve, he’d left home. He’d done what he had to do—been a thief, a bandit, a whore, a spy. Always working his way north, in the mountains, toward Deepfire. He’d come chasing a pair of rumors. The first was that in Deepfire, even after the failure of Kaidan Hiddenedge’s rebellion, there were people who stood up and fought back against the authority of the Republic. The second was that there were wonders still to be found in the tunnels under the Shattered Peaks, ruins so deep that even the Order had never cleaned them out, where the lost power of the ghouls still waited. The only power that had ever been able to stand up to deiat, the power to topple the Order itself.
He’d made the difficult journey through the mountains, and it had nearly killed him. The master of the caravan he’d joined had dumped him on Lynnia’s doorstep in a delirious fever. Once he’d recovered and gotten his bearings, it hadn’t taken long to discover that the first rumor was true enough. Yora’s crew was always in need of steady hands who were willing to take risks and do what was needed, and he’d done well.
As for the second rumor, Gyre had plowed his cut from the jobs they pulled into a network of eyes and ears, keeping track of scavenger gossip and notable comings and goings. In three years, it had brought him plenty of wild speculation, but never anything solid. There were ghoul arcana out there, and Chosen weapons, lying broken and forgotten in the dark—enough to make a few scavengers rich, but nothing that could accomplish what Gyre wanted. Nothing that could challenge the Order.
So he scouted targets for Yora, stole Raskos’ ill-gotten gains, and waited.
With a sigh, he set the pages aside and picked up the second envelope, breaking another thin wax seal. The paper was considerably better quality, and it was written in a clean, educated hand. There were only a few lines.
Halfmask, it began. That made Gyre take a bit more notice. His agents didn’t know his real identity, of course, but most of them didn’t even know they were working for the mysterious rebel. That someone else had figured it out was worrisome. His brow creased as he read on.
I have been following your activity with interest, and I think we can help each other. I’d like to meet, if you have no objection. Come to the Smoking Wreckage tomorrow night and order the Katre ’49. I’ll find you.
That was curious enough that it took him a few moments longer to notice the signature. When he read it, Gyre went very still.
Doomseeker.
