The Horns Of Ruin Part 6

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 a.s.sorted 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l's wrong with you Morgies, but this is serious. Bad things are happening. And every time we try to help, we get this att.i.tude 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 d.a.m.n 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 G.o.d. 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. h.e.l.l, 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 s.p.a.ce. It was big and round, like a ma.s.sive 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 h.e.l.l 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, b.i.t.c.h. 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-d.a.m.n 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."

I lowered the bully at her chest and snarled. She held her hands up in surrender, dropping the rope and the pulley. I motioned to the mask, and she worked it free from her neck and sent it clattering to the ground. No other weapons that I could see.

"You should gag me, if you're worried."

"I'll leave the worrying to you. Owen, you can come out now," I said, pocketing the pendant. The hatch swung open and Owen and his boys exited, sparking up their lamps as they came. The room looked pretty much as it had under the influence of the Fellwater. Gray and cold and wet. Ca.s.sandra squinted at them, and I realized she had been seeing without light. Not something I knew about the Scholars. Now I could see that her right hand was in some sort of glove, metal laced into flesh. I remembered seeing that hand after the wreck, bending all sorts of wrong.

Owen started when he saw the girl, then gave a crisp nod and motioned to his boys. Always the leader. They surrounded her, guns held at her tiny chest. She made no move.

"Where did the rest of them go?" he asked me. "Was there a ship?"

"Beats me. Probably. You think all those kids swam out?"

"Seems unlikely." He turned to Ca.s.sandra, who was staring blankly up to the ceiling. "What do you say, kid. Boat?"

She didn't answer.

I shrugged. "Yeah. So. They have a boat."

"Maybe someone ..." He paused, c.o.c.king his head at a curious angle. "Huh."

"What?" I asked, then a gunshot echoed sharply down from the spiral staircase. Yelling, more shooting, then feet on metal. Owen grabbed me as he ran by. I shot the girl a look and then followed up the stairs.

The staircase was chaos. Lots of people rushing down, a couple of us rushing up. The ones coming down were hurt. Blood on their faces, or their shirts. One guy was dragging a body. The limp's head was bouncing on each metal step, thumping meatily and leaving bits behind. I made a note not to get shot on a staircase, or at least not get shot in such a way that some fool felt compelled to drag me out.

The firefight was on us quick. Heavy bullistic fire came in short bursts, answered by weak revolver shot that was again quickly drowned out by the heavy stuff. The first shots came ricocheting past us shortly after we left the lower room. Not long after that, I heard those staticlaced voices, methodically working their way closer to us. I stopped.

"What are you doing?" Owen asked. "We've got to get up there."

"Up there is coming down here," I said. I cursed myself for never learning many rites of the bullet. The sword had always been a n.o.bler path, but I kept finding myself in places where it just wasn't appropriate. "The rest of your team is dead."

"You don't know that," he said, nervously. Something in his voice ... He hadn't lost men before. That's tough. I looked him in the eye and waited for him to actually see me.

"Justicar. Your team is dead. All that's left are those boys behind us. And all we can do is take care of them."

He looked up the stairs, grimacing and twisting his hands around the short shotgun he had slung out. More shooting, much closer. Hot bullets traced a row of dimples into the wall just above us. He nodded.

Once we were on our way down, it went fast. Those things, with their static voices and cold-piston hearts, must have sensed us. Must have known there were few of us left. The fever of the hunt was on them. I knew the feeling.

"Get your men in the water. Maybe the Amonites swam out, and there's a quick path that we just can't see."

"There are injured. They'll drown."

"Drown or get shot," I said. "Now get 'em in the water."

On the dock, the few remaining Healers were milling around. Alexians aren't cut out for this, I thought. How did we ever let them take charge? Who left them in the big-boy chair? This crowd had done a bangup job of getting the injured all lined up and field triage accomplished, but most of them had dropped their weapons. Those who were still walking around were pretty badly hurt themselves.

Ca.s.sandra knelt by the edge of the water, staring nervously at the door. She had a guard or two, but those boys looked more scared than her, and she looked pretty scared. I pointed at her.

"Don't you try getting away in all the excitement. This bit'll be over soon, and then we have business."

She nodded at me, or at least in my direction. I turned my attention to the defenses, such as they were.

Owen got into an argument with one of the older guys. It was pretty clear that no one was going into the water any time soon. I closed the hatch, but the lock was on the other side. A couple of the Alexians saw what I was doing and tried to help. That's when I saw the other Amonite.

He was sitting cross-legged against the wall, staring at Ca.s.sandra. It was the guy who had opened the hatch for us, Owen's pet Scholar.

"Hey, aren't you on the wrong side of this door?" I yelled. He shrugged, then stood and came over.

"Would you like me to go out there, or would you like me to close that door?"

"Can you close the door, and then maybe drown yourself?"

He sighed, then placed one palm on either side of the pressurized window and began to invoke. All of our frictionlamps guttered, which is unusual for normal, mechanical lights. The air around us seemed to swell and grow heavy, like we were moving through mola.s.ses. His words stretched out in time, long syllables rolling out of his mouth and sticking in the air, their weight and density drawing us in. The room seemed ready to collapse.

Everything snapped, the whole world rushing at the s.p.a.ce between the Amonite's two palms. I lurched forward like a drunk on a ship, and the room lurched with me. We were in sudden vacuum, without sound or breath, the instinctive panic burning through my lungs before I even realized I couldn't breathe. The door crumpled like a child's toy and I felt an instant of betrayal, before I realized that the egglike hatch had flattened out and molded itself with the frame. The whole door was solid metal now, wrinkled and hot. Only the window remained intact, untouched among the violence.

"That will do," the Amonite said, then shot me a dull look and returned to his seat. He went back to staring at the girl. She couldn't bring herself to look at him, at his chains.

"How the h.e.l.l will we get out of here?" one of the badly injured men asked. I shushed him. One problem at a time.

And our first problem came up pretty quick. Through the window I saw pale blue light, and then the wide goggle eyes of the coldmen. I couldn't hear their static voices, but I could feel them, itching through my bones. It felt like I could taste that breath again, centuries dead. I put away the revolver. At least here, on the deck, I had room to swing some blade.

"Everyone stay behind me. If it gets bad, jump in the drink and go under. If they come for you ... swim."

"Swim," Owen said, "and pray to Alexander for deliverance."

"As you like," I said. "But mostly I would swim."

Hammering at the door, now. A slow, patient, heavy stroke that rang the metal like a bell. The whole room echoed from the impact. The water behind us lapped against the dock. I drew my sword and began to invoke, drawing a semicircle on the ground in front of me and feeding it what power I could. What power Morgan could give me.

The door burst like a sh.e.l.l, spitting hot metal across the dock, hissing as it struck the water. The debris arced off the flimsy wall of my shield. I kept my sword crossed over my chest, chanting the ritual of protection as hard as I could. When the explosion settled into nothing more than smoke and cinder I dropped the shield and rushed forward. Owen fired a shot into the roiling smoke from behind me, then cursed as I got in his way. I trusted my steel more than his lead.

They came out of the gaping hole in the wall, the jagged wound of the hatch. The coldmen. Their eyes were luminescent in the smoke and steam. White fog vented out of their faces, frost riming the blades of their greaves. They lurked, like animals stalking into the light of a campfire. Their eyes flashed, and then I was on them, screaming.

They fell stubbornly. I put the blade into chests, shoulders, thighs, drawing harshly back to pull the sharp edge of the sword through their flesh as I retreated. I heard and felt the remaining Alexians firing their weapons into the flanks of the horde of coldmen who spilled out of the door. Hot white lances punched into dead skin, rupturing bone and metal. They kept coming. They always kept coming.

I dove in and out, slashing and giving ground. There wasn't a lot of ground to give. Their wrist blades were sharp, and I had no shield to protect me. The wide blade of my sword got mired in a rib cage; another of them punched metal through my coat, slicing skin. The holy-forged form of my noetic armor crumpled under the a.s.sault like a child's toy. I let go of my sword with my right hand and punched the one in front of me twice, fast, reeling him back, then drew my bully. I started firing as soon as it cleared the holster, putting the first shot into the long bone of his shin, splintering it as the bullet went from knee to heel. My second shot cracked open his hip. I whipped the revolver up, slamming the thick barrel into his chin, cracking it like a wishbone. He fell back, taking his blades with him, out of my skin and my coat.

The sword came free when I put the tip of the revolver I had stolen against the offending rib cage and blasted it away with three quick shots, then holstered the bully and cleared the s.p.a.ce around me, swinging metal into bone. There were so many of them, and we'd been pushed back nearly to the edge of the dock. I was losing sight of the ruined hatch. I lost sight of the girl, too.

"Justicar!" I yelled, looking around for the scion of Alexander. He was off to my side, trying to reload the fat cylinder of his shotgun. "We're going to have to make a move here awfully quick."