Okay, so.
Yes, in theory, honesty is best for relationships. In theory, it would be wiser to stop, think, compare notes with Liette about what we both knew and try to figure out a way forward. And, in theory, from there, we could have worked out a more effective solution.
In theory.
Three things, though.
First of all: How? How do you be honest when honesty is what happens at the end of relationships? How do you find the time between being terrified you’re going to lose her and terrified you’re going to lose everything to explain it? How do you say something that might scare her off when she’s the only one keeping you together?
Second of all: When? When am I supposed to find the time to do that? When is the best time to really sell her on the idea of tearing the deranged entity enmeshed in her sinew out of her with the help of my magic, ever-hungry gun who she’s always hated and who I can no longer keep totally under my control? When do I decide to do that? Before or after we lose another refugee?
Third of all: Fuck you?
Sorry, that wasn’t supposed to be a question.
I meant it as fuck you. As in fuck you, I’ll figure it out and I’ve got bigger problems right now.
“I understand that this is not a trial asked lightly.”
Specifically, I had problems about a thousand people, a thousand gunpikes, and a thousand stunted, propaganda-glutted brains bigger than what I should have been handling.
“Nor would I ask it of you, had I any other choice.” A voice—familiar, thick and heavy as a maul—swept over the huddled refugees, sending them cowering beneath it. “But Imperial aggression, which has already cost you everything, has already taken so much from you, cannot go unanswered. The safety of the Scar, not merely the Revolution but all of its people, rely on me asking this service of you.” A hard mouth curled into a hard frown. “And you making the difficult choice to uphold it.”
I had to hand it to her—for a woman who has tried to kill me multiple times and come closer than most, alongside hurling every insult and curse at me she could possibly think of, I had a certain admiration for Tretta Stern.
Sorry. Tretta Unbreakable.
She got a promotion. Good for her.
The woman stood tall before the refugees, their lowered heads and bent backs arranged in a quivering line, her shoulders back and hands folded authoritatively behind her. Her face, framed by severely short-cropped black hair, was a little more weathered and a little more scarred than I remembered. But no injury was enough to keep the anger from weeping out of her face like sores.
A firm body held itself rigid beneath her elaborate uniform. A thick officer’s saber hung menacingly at her hip. Heavy epaulets atop a heavier coat, brimming with medals—more than a few of them earned in conflicts I’d started, but do I get any thanks?—shuddered as she took in another breath and bellowed.
“Understand that the Great General, in his infinite wisdom, has made this decision. And in his infinite mercy, he has not made it lightly.” She raised a hand. The crowd flinched away. “Nor do I expect it to be followed lightly. But I do expect it to be followed.”
That.
That right there. That was what I admired. That total hard-eyed, stiff-shouldered way she carried herself. That complete confidence of the inevitable she wore when she addressed the refugees. There was a woman who did not agonize, who did not sit up at nights worried what she’d done wrong.
I couldn’t help but envy that.
“The One Hundred Seventh Regiment of the Glorious Revolution of the Fist and Flame will resume its implacable march in two hours,” she said to the crowd. “And when it does, a minimum of four hundred of you will be marching with it.”
Of course, if I had a small army behind me, I’d probably be a badass, too.
In perfect order behind her, the ranks of the Revolutionary soldiers teemed. A thousand blue coats stood rigid at her back, their gunpikes held at attention and their eyes vacantly fixed across the refugees. Plumes of smoke rose from rattling machines behind them—tanks and transports rumbling idly nearby.
Must have been following them for a while, I thought. Keeping the refugees in sight until they stopped here to rest. Scoop them up while they’re too tired to fight back. Then give them food and rest and trust them to realize it’s not so bad.
I clicked my tongue. I had to admit, the Revolution was way better at conscription these days. It used to be that a low sergeant would just bust into a bar and order everyone into the army at gunpoint. It’s nice that they get fed before they’re forced to die in a war not their own.
But pointing something like that out when you’ve caused the war in question felt just a touch too hypocritical.
Not that I could do much beyond petty judgments, at the moment. I squatted in the bushes at the outskirts of the woods, watching the scene unfold. By the time we’d made it out of Ocytus, there were already more soldiers than I could hope to handle on my own.
Fabulous as I’ve made myself out to be, I’m still only incredible, not invincible.
“You can’t do this!”
Or stupid. Like some others.
I would have picked out Meret even if he hadn’t just shrieked an order at a platoon of heavily armed assholes. He came rushing out of the crowd of refugees in his threadbare coat and dirty glasses, holding his hands up in a plaintive plea that he seemed to believe was every bit equal to the many, many, many weapons arrayed against him.
“These people aren’t soldiers! They’re farmers, barrel-makers, drunks!” He shouted himself hoarse, flailed his arms around—made a spectacle of himself to keep eyes off the refugees. Not a bad idea. Fewer eyes on them, fewer ideas about them. “They aren’t made for combat, for riding, for marching, for anything you need them to do.”
“Within the heart of every free citizen lies the power and need to do what is right,” Tretta replied, staring him down through narrowed eyes. “With the power of the Revolution and the Great General fueling them, they shall be—”
“Corpses. Corpses burned, broken, and destroyed,” Meret interrupted—not without consequence, if the rigid tremble of Tretta was to be believed. “They could barely fend off bandits. They won’t last a second against mages.”
“If they can hold a weapon, they can hold a—”
“It doesn’t matter what you think they can do, it just—”
“—I have overseen countless recruits—”
“—you don’t know the first thing about these people, and further—”
I couldn’t make out what they were saying after that. And truth be told, I kind of lost interest. Admiring as I might have been of her, Tretta’s gift for conversation was not something I missed. And Meret’s was only slightly less tedious.
Still, I couldn’t help but murmur to myself.
“Smart.”
“Is it?” At my observation, Liette finally deigned to crouch down beside me. She adjusted her spectacles, squinted. “He seems to be… annoying her? Satisfying as that might be, I hesitate to call it ‘smart’ when used against someone with considerably more firepower.”
“He’s annoying as he ever was, sure, but you don’t see her firing, do you?” Sindra spat into the bushes next to us—she, at least, had been able to get to cover when she saw the Revolutionaries swarming. “He’s challenging her. Stalling her. Drawing out time. If she wants to end him now, she’ll have to kill him.”
“That would seem expedient,” Liette concurred.
“Not for a Revolutionary,” she replied. “She needs these people fighting for her. She’s not going to get that by shooting him.” Sindra paused, considered. “Of course, she’s not not going to shoot him, either. She’s not leaving without the refugees.” She glared at me. “Neither am I, for the record.”
I rolled my eyes. For the record, I only suggested leaving them behind once.
“Yeah, yeah.” I scratched my scar. “Give me a minute. I’m thinking.”
“Of what?” Sindra asked.
“Of a plan to save them, obviously.”
“How much of this plan involves shooting?” Liette asked, pointed.
I thought, hummed, sniffed. “About… eighty percent?”
“So you’re just going to start shooting?” Sindra shook her head. “Any idiot could come up with that.”
“Well, not any idiot has a big fucking gun that shoots magic, do they, Madame Negative Thinking?” I didn’t look at the offense on her face—which, you must believe, was hard for me to avoid doing—my eyes were drawn to the back of the line of Revolutionaries. “I haven’t ruled out shooting, just so we’re all clear. But humor me.” I gestured with my chin. “How much would it take to take out those mean-looking fucks in the back there?”
Both of them followed my gaze. Neither had to look far for said fucks.
The line of soldiers was a disheveled line of blue coats and gunpikes. Three rows of soldiers shifted uncomfortably, sneezed, scratched themselves when they thought no one was looking. But the fourth row…
Fuck, I couldn’t even tell if they were alive.
Each one of them stood tall and rigid. Their bodies were wrapped in thick black leather coats, shining and dotted with metal plates. Their faces were hidden behind heavy black masks, their eyes shrouded behind shaded lenses set inside them. Long tubes ran from their masks down to their chests, where curious apparatuses of machinery were affixed: cold, polished metal arranged in compact, whirring designs.
“No clue,” Sindra muttered. “Never seen those in any unit I served in. Could be new.”
“Fascinating,” Liette whispered, adjusting her glasses. “What are those devices on their uniforms? I’ve never seen any machinery like that. I would dearly love to study one.”
“Maybe for your birthday.” My eyes narrowed. “I’ve never seen weapons like that, either.”
Each one of them carried the same kit: a gunpike in their hands, a heavy combat knife at their belts, an autobow strapped to their backs. Which, by itself, might not be cause for concern. But I’d never seen gunpikes like that—black-hafted and ending in wicked saw blades, accompanied by a small chorus of built-in cannons. Or autobows like that—compact, polished, equipped with pristine firing machinery and a full complement of angry-looking bolts. And I couldn’t see their knives very well, but I bet they had some weird birdshit going on, too.
“All right, fuck.” I rubbed my eyes. “Two shots, then. One to disorient those mean fucks, one to disorient the regular fucks, you and Meret get everyone else out. Easy.”
Sindra met my plan—which I thought was quite good, considering the circumstances—with a sour frown like she always did whenever she didn’t like my ideas and shook her head.
“You’re looking at the wrong soldiers.” She pointed toward the rank and file. “Look at them.”
It took me a moment, but soon enough and sure enough, I saw the same things she did. Soldiers were idly spitting, some muttering among themselves, others looking around warily. Only a handful of them held themselves tall as their weaponry. The vast majority of them…
“Those are conscripts themselves,” Sindra muttered. “New ones, I bet. Mages chew through recruits like birds through seed. They aren’t ready to fight the Imperium. Or a Vagrant.”
I took her meaning. The Cacophony did, too, his pleasure emanating from the sheath in short, excited gasps of steam.
“You have anything that can break them?” she asked.
I didn’t want to answer. “I have one.”
Liette went quiet. The Cacophony seethed. Only one of them dared to say it to me.
“Steel Python?”
I nodded to the whisper meant only for me.
Steel Python.
“Can you spot their sergeant?” I asked as I fished something out of my satchel.
“Huh?” she asked.
“Look at them. Tell me which one of those fuckers the other fuckers like best.”
Sindra furrowed her brow but looked anyway. She eventually picked out a taller, more confident-looking man walking slowly among the ranks. His age and scars were display enough of his rank, and more than a few of the conscripts tried their best to ape his posture and poise.
“Him,” she said. “The one with the mustache. The other ones look to him.”
I nodded. He was toward the end of the row closest to us.
Which was lucky. Or unlucky, depending on how you consider what happened next.
“All right.” I slid the gun from his sheath, loaded a shell, slammed the chamber shut. “In a few minutes, the shit’s going to be served. When it happens, grab Meret and as many people as you can handle and get moving. Liette, get back to the lift and get it ready. When they come chasing me, we’ll disappear and they’ll be left with nothing.”
“Are you sure they’ll chase you?” Sindra asked.
“I am.”
I didn’t answer. Liette did. I glanced over my shoulder at her, saw the concern etched across her face. I knew what she was thinking, I knew how talk like this made her. I knew that I was only ever one trigger pull away from that concern turning to horror on her face.
Would she do that, I wondered, when I told her what A Dead Dog Buried on a Black Hill told me about the gun?
Without another word, she turned and headed back toward the lift to Ocytus.
“All right, then.” Sindra eased back to her legs, knees and prosthetic alike popping. “I’ll head toward that gap in the trees over there. If at least half of them are smarter than your average rodent, we should get a few out.” She glanced toward me. “You going to give a signal?”
I glanced at her. She rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, fuck me for asking, right?” she muttered as she stalked off.
And left me to my business.
I kept low, moving only when Meret or Tretta started shouting, making sure no eyes were wandering as I edged closer to the massed soldiers. The closer I got, the more I could make out of my target—tall, experienced enough to flout the no-facial-hair rule. But not particularly strong-looking. He didn’t need strength. He laid hands on shoulders, muttered encouraging words, cracked the right kind of joke at the right kind of time to keep everyone’s fingers off the trigger as he made his way through the ranks.
I could see why they all liked this fellow.
Made me regret what I was about to do to him.
“Him,” I replied, nodding at the mustached fellow. “We take him out in suitably spectacular fashion, bait the rest, whittle them down as they come.”
Steam slithered into my ears. He’d only heard one of those words. “Spectacular?”
“Spectacular,” I reluctantly muttered in agreement.
His heat grew warm, affectionate. The steam peeling off him slithered around me, a delighted feline coiling around my legs.
“Steel Python,” the Cacophony hissed.
I hated it when he was happy.
Or at least, I should have. But truth be told, even if I didn’t say it at the time, I almost agreed with him. This—sneaking, hunting, planning, fighting—felt good.
This wasn’t thinking. This wasn’t worrying. This wasn’t going down a list of all the people I hurt, had hurt, would hurt. This—the heart beating slow, the blood going cold, every part of me slowing down as it readied itself for the blow…
This felt good.
From the moment I put my hand on the Cacophony to the moment I saw my target drift just a little too close to my hiding spot…
Right up to the moment I grabbed him.
It happened quick. Too quick for anyone but the closest soldiers to notice me leaping out of the bushes and smashing their comrade across the jaw with the Cacophony’s hilt. A stir went up, the situation coming together in flashes: a cry of alarm, a glimpse of teeth and blood on the ground, the confused rattle of gear clattering on gear. Their eyes searched the scene fervently, hands on weapons, and by the time they figured out what was happening…
Well, my arm was already around his throat and my gun was already at his head.
“Easy, now,” I said to the numerous, numerous gunpikes now arrayed against me. I tapped the Cacophony’s grinning barrel against the poor fucker’s temple. “I only just met this fellow. I’d hate for you to rush our introductions.”
Most of them froze. A few of them cursed, impotently. Many, gratifyingly, slunk to the back of the mob surrounding me. But the ones in black—the mean ones—they… didn’t move. They simply turned their heads toward me in unison, black lenses taking me in through masked faces. Ready. Rigid. Attentive.
Movement caught my eye. One of the soldiers attempted to rush forward. I took a step back, whistled.
“Well, shit, you should have told me you were in a hurry.” I drew the hammer back. My hostage froze. The sound of the brass clicking echoed through a suddenly silent clearing. “I can be quick.”
“Attention! Attention!” a voice bellowed as a short, sturdy, very pissed-off frame barreled her way through the crowd. “For fuck’s sake, when I say ‘attention’ that means you…”
Tretta emerged from the throng of soldiers, led by the tip of her drawn sword. Her face was painted red with anger, her wide-eyed scowl sending her conscripts shrinking before her. War and scars had done nothing to temper her fury.
And I had to admit, I felt kind of flattered that I could.
Because as she took in the situation and forced her breath slow, I watched that red-hot fury ebb away into something cold and hateful, sharpened to a razor edge and aimed squarely at my neck.
“Lower your weapons,” she uttered, her voice drained of anything warmer than a snowstorm. “Eyes on the refugees. Ensure none of them leave and no harm comes to them.” As conscripts awkwardly lowered their weapons and shuffled to surround the refugees, Tretta’s eyes remained locked on mine. “Talk to me, Therel. Has she hurt you?”
“I’m fine, Commander.” My hostage—Therel, apparently; nice name—grunted, making a half-hearted pull at my arm locked around his throat. “Don’t worry about me. Take her out. She can’t—”
“I really hate to interrupt dear Therel here,” I announced, “considering I so inconsiderately made him the center of attention.” I pressed the gun to his temple. “But I really must ask you to reconsider this whole ‘she can’t’ line of thinking. I guarantee you I can.” Steam peeled between my fingers. The Cacophony seethed, excited. “And I guarantee you I can make it messy.”
A chorus rose among the conscripts. They’d seen the gun. They’d seen the scars. They were starting to put things together. A ripple ran through the crowd, an unsteadying that made men and women glance around nervously and shuffle their feet under them.
A warning glare from Tretta—and that big fucking sword of hers—stiffened their resolve for a moment. But I’d already seen it.
And I made sure she knew I did.
“Running down refugees, Madame Stern?” I chuckled. “Pardon, Madame Commander Unbreakable. You’d have thought your new promotion would give you better troops.” I glanced at the mean-looking fuckers—had they moved? Were they going to move? “Or has the mighty Revolution faded so much that it needs to round up children and grandmothers to fight its wars for it?”
“You dare—” Therel had a habit of saying things I interrupted a lot, I noticed.
“Kitten.” I pressed the gun against him warningly. “Mommy is trying to have a conversation.”
“I had soldiers,” Tretta replied, visibly biting back anger. “Good ones. I lost many of them in Borrus. I lost more of them at Six Walls. I lost the rest to Vagrants, bandits, and every other monster on this dark earth after your war.”
“I’m one woman, Commander,” I replied. “It takes armies to start a war.”
“Armies or one sufficiently motivated monster.” A pause, a narrowing of the eyes. “What business does a Vagrant have with a pack of refugees, anyway?”
I swallowed hard.
Fuck me, when did she start thinking things out? This used to be so easy—I said some charmingly obnoxious stuff, she’d take the bait, I’d figure a way out. That was our thing. That was what made us work.
“Not a damn bit of it, I’m afraid,” I replied. “But a pack of Revolutionaries dogging my heels? That, I take issue with. I figured I’d come attend one of your little propaganda parties and see what all the fuss was about.”
She stared at me, considering. I really didn’t care for that. “Dogging your heels? Are you being pursued”—she paused—“Madame Cacophony?”
Fuck me. This wasn’t good.
Something was different. She wasn’t taking the bait. She wasn’t getting angry. She was waiting, studying me.
And the mean-looking fuckers… they were studying her.
“Our intelligence reports that the Imperium’s Hellions were after you,” she said. “Is it true they even brought Bad Neighbor out of retirement for it?”
“I wasn’t aware you were keeping apprised,” I muttered, more irritable than I wanted to sound. “If you’d wanted to keep in touch, you could have visited.”
“You have many visitors these days, it seems.”
“I can handle the Imperium.”
Her eyebrows quirked. Her face hardened. “Then you don’t know.”
I furrowed my brow, asked without thinking. “Know what?”
She shook her head. “I’ll not make life easier for any enemy of the Revolution, let alone one that’s caused as much strife as you have. You and these refugees aren’t ready for the storm of shit bearing down on you, Cacophony.” Something earnest and dire appeared on her face. “It isn’t like the other times, Sal. The people after you are going to come down on you like a hammer and everyone near you will be crushed.”
She extended a hand.
Not a sword. Not a threat. A hand.
“Surrender. Spare these people, this land, what’s going to come as a result of your actions.”
Just like that. No drama. No threat. Not even a fucking glare. She looked at me too earnestly, too honestly, too… sincere. There wasn’t enough hatred in her eyes, not enough anger to make me write it off. This asshole, this absolute fucker of a woman, was acting like she was doing me a favor.
Had it really come to that? Had I finally carved so much blood and war out of this land that she couldn’t bring herself to look at me as a foe anymore? When she looked at me—when any of them looked at me—did they see anything besides a monster?
Funny thing about people, though.
You can call yourself a beast, a murderer, and every kind of bad name you can think of. You can stay up late cursing your choices and fall asleep wishing for better ones. You can go every breath of every day hating yourself, thinking you’re a monster…
… but the minute someone else does it…
“The thought had occurred to me,” I said, and I didn’t lie.
It was more tempting than I’d like, the thought of putting down my weapon, letting someone else handle it. Had I left it there, I’d probably not have caused so much trouble for myself. But my jaw wouldn’t clench, my teeth wouldn’t shut. The words came from me. And they came cold, angry, and sharp.
“But then what?” I muttered. “You cut my head off, stick it on a pike somewhere, and go back to the war. And time would pass and you’d collect more and more heads and lose more and more heads. You’d come up with a new monster to blame and a new reason why killing it didn’t fix everything.”
I could only barely hear the words coming out of my mouth. I didn’t know where they came from. I didn’t know when my arm tightened around Therel’s windpipe or when my finger had inched a little tighter around the Cacophony’s trigger.
Maybe the stress and the running and the wounds had gotten to me. Maybe Tretta’s words cut deeper than I thought and I was bleeding anger.
“Just the same as I’ve been doing.”
Or maybe I just didn’t have the strength to keep up the lie.
“These refugees are nothing to me,” I said, and again, I didn’t lie. “Just the cost of war.” I narrowed my eyes, clenched my jaw. “My war. My gun. My sword. My fire. And I’m not done with it yet.”
I tightened my arm around Therel. The soldiers stirred, looking alive with alarm. The black-clad ones flinched, stilling only at a glance from Tretta. I didn’t care. I didn’t fucking care.
I was out of words.
“And though we both agree it’s my war, I don’t fucking recall inviting you. Or the Imperium. Or any other fucker that wants to kill me.”
What escaped my mouth wasn’t words. It was the exhaustion. It was the blood. It was the nightmares and the scars and the cold mornings I woke up shaking with the fear that I was never going to fucking solve this.
“And you can tell them and all the other shit coming my way,” I shouted, loud enough to be heard by conscript, comrade, and commander alike, “what you saw here. And when you do, I encourage both you and them to take a good, long think…”
I shoved Therel away from me.
“And all of you can decide together…”
I aimed the Cacophony at him. A scream went up. I didn’t hear it.
“How bad you motherfuckers really want this.”
I pulled the trigger.
The scream was taken up. Over and over, across soldier and refugee alike. They collapsed at the sound of brass clicking, covered their heads. I had the barest moment to see Therel’s eyes—to see the image of everything he’d fought for in this fucking war coming at him down a brass barrel. I saw them widen, saw his mouth fall, as the waste of his life flashed before his eyes.
I didn’t like the expression.
Reminded me too much of someone.
Silver spat from the Cacophony’s maw. Streaked across the sky in a painful blur. It struck Therel square in the chest, knocked him to his ass. He gasped, retching for breath for a moment as he rolled around, flailing for purchase and for air, before finding his feet.
He stood back up. He touched the wound where the shell had struck and took in a deep breath.
“Therel?” Tretta asked, her arm held aloft, holding any action at bay. “Are you… all right?”
He certainly looked it.
But that’s what makes Steel Python so nasty.
Everyone who gets it looks all right.
“I don’t…” Therel shook his head, took in a deep, gurgling breath. “I don’t feel right, Commander.”
At first.
“Something’s in…” His breath became ragged, sour, desperately ill. “Something’s inside of—”
Then it gets messy.
“Therel? Therel?”
Tretta’s words went unheard. Therel wasn’t listening. He was scratching at his cheek madly, skin coming off under the fingernails. A red and glistening mass bubbled beneath his fingers. It swelled. It trembled.
And burst.
A gray metal spike poked out of his cheek, no bigger than a large sewing needle, red and glistening with his own life.
“I feel it,” Therel gasped, staring at his own blood-covered hands. Another boil bubbled across his palm. “I feel it. It’s cold, Commander. It’s… so…”
“What did she do to you, Therel? Talk to me!”
He started to answer. It became a scream as another spike, bigger this time, punched its way out of his palm. Blood burst out of his hand, pattered thick and fat on the earth. Another wail tore out of him, another spike bursting out his shoulder blade.
“Commander! TRETTA!” the soldier screamed, poking at the protuberances and wincing. “Am I… am I going to…”
He was.
And he did.
A bursting sound, like a wet sack popping. Strips of pale, papery human flew through the air like confetti. Sky and trees painted morbid colors with the spray of bile and humors. A hundred glistening spikes, brimming and polished and trembling as they solidified.
A silhouette stretched long across the ground. A silhouette of a dozen spikes and a mess that had once been a man—his glistening parts strung from tip to tip, his firmer parts adorning long metal shafts like decoration. A silhouette of red glistening metals and sinews, sundered and fluttering in a stale breeze.
Every eye was on Therel.
The gore that had once been Therel.
They saw him. Every refugee. Every soldier. And Tretta. And I.
And him, warm in my hand, exhaling with delighted steam.
A moment of stunned silence. A dying wind. A breath, collectively held in half a thousand chests. A single, satiated hiss of steam.
“Beautiful.”
And then.
The screaming.
“THAT’S THE FUCKING GUN!”
“I TOLD YOU THE REVOLUTION COULDN’T PROTECT US!”
“Therel? THEREL!”
A chorus of fear and pain went up, each voice clamoring to be the one to have their terror heard before the others. Yet, through the ruckus of motion and sound, it was only two words, shouted in haste, that anyone bothered listening to.
“Fuck this!”
I didn’t know the woman who shouted it, the thin-looking country girl in a conscript’s coat too big for her. I didn’t even get a good look at her as she turned around. But when she hurled her gunpike to the ground and tore off running into the bush, well…
She might have been my favorite person.
“Resolute! Resolute, stop where you are!”
Tretta shouted. Resolute, if that was actually her name, didn’t listen. Neither did the others that threw their weapons down and took off running. Or the refugees, who saw their chance for an escape. And there was a moment of tension as the conscripts fled into the woods. And then, there was only one voice.
“RUN!”
Screaming. Pushing. Fleeing. Conscripts cursed and fought against the others to escape, even as their commanders hauled them bodily to the ground, trying to keep them from retreat. Refugees tore off into the woods, the lucky ones following Meret as he waved them furiously toward an escape route—the unlucky ones…
… well, fuck, I did for them what I could.
Or so I told myself.
Through the panicked carnage, Tretta had the presence of mind to catch one last glimpse of me as I started stepping into the woods. I tipped my gun, shot her a wink.
“Anyway, think it over.”
I disappeared into the foliage, took off running back toward the lift. I tried to put the sounds of carnage behind me, tried to ignore the glimpses of people rushing past as deserters and travelers alike tried to vanish into the woods.
Did what you could. You did what you could. They have a fighting shot now. You did what you could.
I tried to tell myself that. And a lot of other things. Because I tried like fucking hell to put the thought of what I’d just done—the image of Therel flensed and flayed and dangling like human bunting across Steel Python’s tines—out of my head.
I tried.
I failed.
I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t keep it out of my fucking head. I couldn’t keep the last sight of his face, the last thing he said, the faces of everyone who saw him from flooding my mind.
I’d known the fucker for five minutes.
And I put him down like a sick bird.
This is what they meant when they heard my name. This is what they meant when they heard about the Valley. It wasn’t legend or spectacle or story they’d remember. It was how Sal the Cacophony, one woman with one gun, was more horrible than the entire fucking Revolution.
Is this what Liette, I wondered, is trying to fix?
I stopped running. My breath was loud, the sound of the panic less so. I leaned over, breathing hard, struggling to catch my wind. A scent reached my nose—a scent of smiling embers and laughing ash and steam coiling like the innuendo at the end of a sentence.
I looked down to the weapon in my hand. His brass trembled, burned excitedly. He shook in my hands.
He enjoyed that.
He was enjoying this.
And how much fucking more would he enjoy it, I wondered—though I tried so fucking hard not to—if he ate just a little more, got just a little stronger?
What would that look like?
I tried not to think about it.
I failed, again.
“Company.”
My ears pricked up at his hiss. In the foliage behind me, I could hear the metallic clink of machinery activating. I heard whirring metal, caught a glimpse of sparks through the dense underbrush.
The metal turned into a shriek as a whirling saw blade at the end of a thick haft punched through the wall of leaves. Two more joined in. Black metal flashed as the saw blades chewed through the brush, spitting out branches and debris. The saw blades lowered, their wails diminishing to machine growls, as the woods fell clear.
I stared at the sudden opening.
Forty mirrored lenses set in dark mechanical masks stared back at me.
“Ah, right,” I said. “You guys.”
That was rude, I know, but I didn’t know any better name for them. What was I supposed to say? You mean-looking motherfuckers? Ask them for an introduction?
But they gave me one.
Twenty of them, in fact.
And after their saw-blade-spear-thingies all whirred into one shrieking symphony, mean-looking motherfuckers was fairly appropriate.
Not that I was going to stick around to tell them.
I took off at a sprint again. They followed. I darted through underbrush, over logs, tried to make the trail harder. Failed. Their saws tore through the bushes like butter, crushed branches underfoot as they came charging after me.
I tried to put distance between us, counted that they wouldn’t be as quick in that heavy gear. But no sooner did I start pulling ahead than I heard the whirr of autobow motors. Bolts punched through the sky, whistling past as their crossbows launched machine-powered missiles at me.
I slid behind a tree. A heavy bolt punched through, stuck in the trunk, my own wide-eyed shock reflected in its black metal head.
Couldn’t bring them to Liette. Had to shake them.
My hand went into my satchel, searched for a shell. I didn’t need to kill them, just to slow them down.
“Sunflare,” I muttered to myself as I slammed it into the chamber.
“I hate Sunflare,” the Cacophony whined, dejected.
“So will they.”
I whirled out from behind the tree. They were close enough now I could see the light reflected off their lenses. I held my gun up, pulled the trigger back, aimed as much as I dared.
Sunflare flew. Exploded. I looked away. The bright gasp of light incinerated the woods, devouring shadows and shape and color in a great burst of white-hot brightness that swallowed the carnage.
I turned away, shut my eyes, waited for it to clear. I could slip out while they were blinded, I told myself.
I didn’t lie. That was a good idea.
But when I opened my eyes again, they weren’t fucking blinded. They weren’t even fucking slowing down.
No breath to curse. No thought for anything but running. My mind went blank, smothered by the fears running through it and the sound of boots closing in behind me. Had to get another shell. Had to keep them off me.
I found one, fished it out, slammed it into the gun’s cylinder. I whirled, pulled the trigger.
Hoarfrost shrieked, bursting in a spray of freezing mist. A cloud of white and blue swept outward, banishing the sun and sky beneath it. I clenched my jaw as the cold swept over me, freezing my sweat to my skin.
Fuck me. I thought I’d been a good range away, too. Had I been closer than I thought? Or was the gun just that strong now?
The mist dissipated, chased away by the weary sigh that came out of my lungs. The mean-looking motherfuckers, whoever they had been, all stood rigid in place. Their black coats glistened like obsidian beneath the thick sheet of rime coating them, their bodies and weapons frozen mid-swing by the thick ice.
“Fuck me,” I gasped, taking a moment to breathe. “Fuck me, you’re persistent.” When I had finally caught my breath enough to stand upright, I glanced at my frozen foes. “Who the fuck pays you guys enough to do this, anyway?”
I dared to inch closer to one, squinted. Their masks were hideous—inhuman lenses seated above a macabre apparatus of tubing and cylinders that formed some manner of mouth. Their armor was thick, featureless black, bereft of detail aside from the mechanical shit strapped to their chest, the fur trim of their coats, and…
“There we are.” I squinted at the Revolutionary badge pinned to their chest, read out the dull iron letters as best I could. “Twenty-Second Mechanized Infantry Battalion? Are there any names that don’t sound incredibly overwrought in the Revolution?”
I actually was lying that time. Mechanized Infantry Battalion sounded way, way better than mean-looking motherfuckers. But whatever, if I hadn’t been running for my life, I’d probably have come up with something more exciting.
“Apologies. I don’t mean to shit on your name.” I grinned, raised a hand to rap my knuckles against the ice. “Seems you’ve got other problems at the moment, so I’ll be on my—”
I rapped.
The ice cracked. A jagged white scar split across the rime. I staggered backward, eyes wide as the cracks spread. I glanced across the frigid field—they were all starting to thaw, squirming in their ice as tiny coils of steam peeled off their shoulders and the mechanical apparatus on their chest…
It glowed bright red. Heat poured out of its metal, flowed into their coats, bade the ice to shatter and melt.
“Shit,” I muttered.
An arm broke free.
“Shit.”
Then a leg.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
And, assuming by the cracking sounds that followed, the rest of them started breaking out, as well. Not like I was going to check, though, what with me running and screaming like an idiot.
“Liette!” I screamed as I tore through the underbrush. “Liette!” I burst into a clearing. “Where’s the fucking lift, Liette?”
I found her at the center of it. The disguise of earth and grass that had concealed the lift’s entrance was sliding away at an alarmingly slow pace. Liette glowered concernedly at me as I came forward, gasping for air.
“It’s coming. What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Make it come faster, I’ll explain later.”
“For one, I cannot, as I am not in control of the lift beyond simply summoning it. For two, as I could clearly explain that, we obviously have time for you to—”
“My bullets don’t work on them, woman!” I spat, wide-eyed as I tried to find the breath and the words at the same time. “The ones in black with the masks. They’ve got these… and these…” I futilely gestured around my face and chest. “Some kind of hot… heat… melty-ice thingies. Hoarfrost barely slowed them down.”
“Hot… heat…” Her eyes narrowed, then snapped open. “Personal temperature regulation? The Revolution has that?”
“Yes, sure. Make the lift come.”
“Well, did you get one?”
I stared at her, vacant-eyed.
“I’d like to take a look at it, is all—”
“THE FUCKING LIFT, LIETTE!”
“Oh, right,” she shouted back. “I’m the unreasonable one here. Clearly.”
She produced her quills and inks and knelt down, beginning to work. I didn’t know what spellwrighting needed to be done to make this shitty machine move and I didn’t care. I kept my gun up, loaded with whatever the fuck I hoped could stop them, and aimed at the direction the noise was coming from.
The sound of saw blades grew louder, joined by the shrieking rattle of metal.
“Almost,” Liette muttered as her quill scrabbled across the lift’s hatch. “I swear, they make this so unnecessarily…”
She trailed off into her own mutter. The machinery of the lift whirred steadily behind me. In the woods, the sounds of saw blades were joined by boots thundering.
“Liette,” I muttered.
“Just another moment.”
The machine whirred faster. Did it whirr faster or was I just imagining that? I clenched the gun tight, felt him grow hot in my hand. Black shapes blossomed through the foliage. I could see their lenses fixed on me.
“Let them come,” the Cacophony whispered to me. “I’m sure we can handle them. We’ll make a game out of it.”
“Later, later,” I snarled. “Liette, are you fucking—”
“As a matter of fact”—she tapped her quill in punctuative definition—“I am.”
The machinery of the lift sped to life. The hatch shuddered as it smashed into the earth with the force of its opening. The lift shot up with such vigor that it nearly flew off its machinery. Bolts and other important-looking bits of metal launched into the air. Liette adjusted her glasses, hummed.
“Oh, I see now. Too much speed will compromise the machinery.” She chuckled. “Honestly, why didn’t I think of that before? It’s a simple law of—”
“Later.” I took her by the shoulder, shoved us both into the lift. “Later.”
“No, but I should mention, when I say ‘compromised,’ I mean—”
A motor whirred. A crossbow bolt shrieked past us, split a narrow tree in twain.
“FOR FUCK’S SAKE, LIETTE!”
She hastily finished scribbling something on the metal. The lift whirred back to angry life, stirred beneath my feet. For a brief moment, I could feel a surge of relief, an intense lightness that coursed through me.
Then again, that might have been the floor dropping out.
Liette screamed, clung to me. I very valiantly and dignifiedly cried out, clung to the lift, steadying us both. The hatch overhead began to shudder and stir, struggling to close itself just a touch too slowly for my liking.
I slammed another shell into the Cacophony, fired upward. Shockgrasp sped up the lift’s shaft, erupted into a dozen arms of twitching electric light. They seized the metal of the hatch, pulled it shut with a shuddering slam and a shower of metal shards.
All right, I told myself. That was one problem solved, at least. Now all that was left was the—
The lift slammed into the floor, ejecting us out of its cage like so much offal. I pulled Liette into me, tumbled with her across the floor of the platform we had called the tram from. I felt bruises blossom across my skin, scrapes carve themselves into me alongside my scars, pain and exhaustion sweep over me.
But I felt her against me. Whole. Warm. Safe.
Decent trade. Not the best I’d had, but still.
“Are we…” Liette looked up from having buried her face in my chest. “Alive?”
“You are,” I groaned. “I’ll get back to you on me.”
She pushed herself to her feet, hurried to the apparatus at the edge of the platform. The summony-spellwrighty-thingy, I don’t fucking know. She pulled her quills free, began to go about her work.
“I can summon the tram presently,” she said. “Are they following?”
I got to my feet, as well—push was slightly too ambitious a mode of movement, so I settled for kind of limping toward the shaft. I glanced up, saw only darkness. Shockgrasp had done its job—the force of it slamming the hatch shut had mangled the metal irreparably.
They wouldn’t be getting through that without an explosion.
Which, I recalled at that moment, was something the Revolution had frequent and easy access to.
So, you know.
That was fun.
The shaft rocked with a sudden jolt. Spears of angry daylight came sweeping down the shaft as red-hot eruptions punched holes through the hatch’s damaged metal. I saw the Twenty-Seconds swarming at the top of the shaft, affixing some manner of hook and wire to it and rappelling down like spiders, black carapaces glistening.
“I assume that explosion was not good for us,” Liette observed without looking up.
“Most of them aren’t,” I replied, backing away from the shaft.
“I’ll hurry, then.”
“That’d be nice of you.”
Light and sound came rattling up the tunnel. The tram was close enough to hear, damn near close enough to taste. Yet, as I heard boots landing on ground, I knew it wasn’t anywhere near close enough.
No room here to use the gun. I slid him back into his sheath, ignored the dejected hiss of vapor he let out. My sword came to my hand with reluctance, my body aching and muscles screaming at the thought of fighting.
And it wasn’t like I was thrilled, either.
But I was much less thrilled with the idea of being eviscerated by a whirling saw-bladed murderspear, so here we fucking were.
A Twenty-Second came leaping out of the darkness. Their polearm’s engine roared angrily, the twisting blades lashing out, seeking to catch me at the waist. I parried the blow, felt the saws damn near tear the sword out of my hand.
The soldier slid back on their grip, lashed out more and more, put distance between us even as they drove me to the edge of the platform. A single scratch from that thing would tear me apart, but they didn’t try to go for a killing blow.
Why bother, I thought, when they could just stall me and wait for the rest of their little friends to show up?
Another pair of lenses flashed in the dark, another polearm whirred to angry life, another soldier came lashing out. I struck back what blows I could, aiming for the haft of their weapons, hoping to knock them off balance—I couldn’t think of anything fucking else.
“Liette!” I shouted as a third soldier landed in the shaft.
“Here! Here! GET THE FUCK ON!”
The tram came screeching to a halt, narrowly pausing long enough for me to turn and follow her as she went leaping into one of the cars before it wailed back to life and sped off.
“It’s faster,” I growled as I tried to keep my footing. “Did you do something to it?”
“No, asshole, it’s just going faster because I asked it nicely,” she growled back as she warily got to her feet and clung to the seating for purchase. “I’m just that much of a fucking gem of a person.”
“And I love you for it,” I sighed, clawing my own way back to my feet. “I can’t imagine Ocytus will, though.”
“Ocytus won’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know. The sigils I wrote to summon it were… hasty. I have only a vague idea where this tram is going or whether we’re going to— LOOK THE FUCK OUT!”
I whirled, twisted, saw my blurred reflection in the whirling saw blades as they punched through the air two inches from my torso. The soldier’s lenses flashed as they tried to pull their weapon back for another strike.
I couldn’t let that happen. It’d be stupid to let them get the distance. And it’d be more stupid to break off and let them think.
So, I did what I always did when I was caught between a stupid idea and a more stupid idea.
I did an insane idea, instead.
I clamped my arm down on the shaft of the weapon. I felt my clothes rustle with the wind of the saw blades’ motion as I pulled the soldier closer toward me, their weapon trapped under my armpit. They jerked forward, their masked face bobbing toward me.
And the feeling of the hilt of my sword smashing against their face, of the shock running down my arm, of watching their lens fragment and fly past me in shattered, twinkling glass?
Well, not every memory can be special. But this one was.
I struck. I struck again. I struck until shards of metal and glass were embedded in my forearm and my grip was slippery with blood. The fire that had kept me going all this time pooled in one arm, kept pumping my hilt against their face until their knee caught me in the belly.
I staggered backward. The fucker wasn’t down. The fucker was, in fact, still quite the opposite of down, while my arms felt like they were about to fall off. I wasn’t going to outlast them. I wasn’t even going to be able to beat them down. The longer this went, the poorer it would go for me.
The soldier clawed at their face, struggling to pick shards of glass from it. Soundlessly, they settled for simply pulling their helmet free and hurling it to the ground. A woman, face bright red from the shards embedded in her cheek, pulled free of the helmet with a gasp. She threw it aside, turned to face me.
“Ah,” she said, “I see.”
That’s all I heard out of her. She didn’t curse or scream. Her face, savaged as it was, was pristine—free of pain and fear, even as her blood wept freely. She held that serene expressionless look.
Even as I jammed the saw blades through her chest.
Red and white flew in fragments. The apparatus attached to her chest was shredded, cast apart. The many layers of a human were peeled back in gory rending, flying out the windows of the tram and painting the tunnel in swiftly vanishing red streaks.
My arms shook with the force of the weapon’s motorized blade, went bloodless and numb. My breath left, my vision was bathed in red and black. I pushed. And I pushed. And I pushed until there was the sound of sputtering and whirring and the saw blades jammed upon something hard and unyielding. The polearm went silent. Still.
I released the shaft. I heard a body fall. I wiped sweat and blood from my face.
She lay there, the soldier. She lay there, a red mess from the neck down, body opened like an envelope in an overeager lover’s hands. She lay there. Dead. Motionless.
Still looking at me.
And smiling softly.
“I will look forward to our next meeting, Cacophony,” she said. In a voice that I felt in my scars that I knew.
From its rapidly bleeding-out vessel, Wisest smiled at me.
“Consider what we talked about.”
Her head slumped.
Her eyes rolled back.
And the faintest wisps of light trickled out of her lips to vanish into the darkness as the tram sped deeper into the earth and carried us far, far away.