The rays had been circling and circling the island while the battle raged. The movement had drawn them, but the drones had made them keep their distance, uncertain of these noisy new monsters that had come to share their sky. Now the drones were gone, and in their place was something that the rays recognized as prey: frantic shapes struggling in the water. The boldest of them swooped toward the place where the survivors from the sunken train had surfaced. The rest followed, hooting and shrieking. The stragglers, sensing that there would be no one left in the waves for them, soared on toward the island.
The magnetic field, which had always kept them away before, was gone, collapsed during the fighting.
The first of them caught Raven. The second swerved after it, trying to snatch him. The third dived at Zen, but by that time Carlota had realized what was happening. A blast from her rifle tore through it, and another Motorik brought down the two that were squabbling over Raven.
And then the rays were everywhere, and the Motorik were shooting at them while Nova went running across the island, down onto the white beach where Raven had fallen. “Leave him!” yelled Zen, but she wouldn’t, and he couldn’t blame her—Raven had made her, after all. He went after her, jumping down the island’s side onto the beach. Bleached crab shells crunched and splintered under his boots like delicate tea sets. A dying ray thrashed in the surf. Blood had sprayed in cartoonish scarlet splats over the shore. Zen couldn’t tell how much of it came from the ray and how much from Raven, who lay twisted in a hollow of the beach, his white face whiter than ever. He looked as surprised as Nova had when that harpoon went through her on the Spindlebridge, but the stuff coming out of the hole in him was not blue but red.
“Do you have any idea how much these things cost?” he asked as Nova and Zen reached him. He plucked at his ruined shirt. It seemed a strange time to be worrying about shirts. It was only later that Zen would realize he had been talking about bodies.
Farther down the beach, another voice yelled, “Help!”
There in the reddening waves, some soggy survivor of the wartrain was fighting his way through the surf.
Zen couldn’t ignore him. Not even when he saw that it was Malik. There were only two sides at that moment, rays and people. “Get Raven under cover!” he shouted at Nova, and scrambled along the shore. A wave threw Malik down among the shifting shells, but Zen grabbed his arm and hauled him upright. A ray’s tail had slashed his scalp, but beneath all the blood Zen did not think the wound was bad. He started telling him how you could trick the rays by staying still, but Malik was too shocked to listen, and shuddering too much to stay still anyway.
“We have to get into shelter!” Zen shouted, over the surf’s boom.
Malik looked behind him. Rays still trailed their screams over the waves, but he could see no one else swimming, only a few patches of burning oil. He had been the only one to reach the shore. Out beyond the breakers, something that might have been an antler broke the surface for a moment, but when he looked again, it was gone.
The rays were concentrating on the island’s summit, diving at the muzzle-flash from the guns, and at the thrashing wings and tails of their wounded comrades. They snatched Motorik into the air, dropped them disgustedly into the sea when they worked out they were not edible, and circled back for more.
Zen helped the castaway back up the island’s side, and caught up with Nova, who was dragging Raven. The Damask Rose was too far away, so they struggled through the shadows of diving rays toward the Worm. Carlota was already there. The other Motorik were all gone: snatched by the rays, or damaged so badly that they had shut down.
Nova and Zen dragged Raven inside, blood on the threshold like a red carpet. Malik followed them in, then Carlota. As she scrambled through the opening, something wet and frantic blotted out the light behind her. Zen shouted a warning, thinking it was a ray, but it was a human figure, or human-ish. The interface of Anais Six squeezed itself inside, and the opening closed behind it with a sigh, shutting out the angry hooting of the rays.
They sat down in the soft dark on what seemed to be stairs, made of what seemed to be bone or cartilage, trying to grow used to the strange wet whooshing noises, the purring hums, the dim glow from the walls and ceiling of the Worm. Zen stared at the interface, fascinated by the impossible blue slenderness of it, while it examined the gashes the rays had left on its arms and hands. One of its antlers had snapped off short; the broken part snagged like driftwood in its sodden hair. It trembled steadily. It had lived in many bodies, but most of them had spent their time at concerts and cocktail parties; it had never really known fear, or pain, or danger.
Zen kept looking at it. It was the sort of thing you couldn’t take your eyes off. He kept thinking, It’s a Guardian, an actual Guardian, and almost laughing, because he could hear Myka in his head, saying in that worlds-weary voice of hers, “The Guardians aren’t interested in the likes of us.” But they are, he thought, they are now. I’ve done something that’s woken one up, made it download itself for the first time in years, and now it’s sitting here next to me, Myka—what do you think of that?
And then the Guardian seemed to feel his gaze, and looked up at him, and there was something in those golden eyes that made him remember that it wasn’t always a good thing to wake the interest of a Guardian.
Malik was saying, over and over, that there must have been other survivors, and Zen looked at Nova, and Nova gave her head a little shake, and Carlota put her hand on Malik’s shoulder and said, “They’re all dead.”
Malik shrugged the hand away. He looked past her to where Raven lay, a broken scarecrow at the center of a satiny red pool that spread and dribbled down the stairs. He seemed to be wondering what to do. He took out his gun and pointed it at Raven, as he had pointed so many guns, so many times before. But Raven was way past shooting. He looked pathetic, lying there, not like a former god at all. His eyes were unfocused, his face slack, but when Nova leaned over him he managed a faint smile.
“The new gate…” he said.
The interface stood up, huge under the low roof. It turned to Raven with a look too strange and ancient for Zen to read, but which seemed a lot like sorrow. It said, “There will be no new gate, Raven.”
“Anais,” said Raven. “Are you going to let Malik kill me again? It’s getting to be a bad habit with him. It won’t do you any good, you know. In a short while this gate will be active, and all the lies of the Guardians will be exposed.”
Who would talk to a Guardian like that? So light and mocking, as if it were his equal. Only Raven. Perhaps that was what had first drawn Anais Six to him, Zen thought, on the banks of the Amber River, where the songflowers bloomed. It moved closer and looked down on him. Tears filled its eyes, making it blink in surprise.
“Railforce will be here soon,” said Malik. “Experts, Scientists. They’ll dismantle everything you’ve built, Raven.”
Raven’s smile faded. He looked at Zen. “So whose side are you on, Zen Starling?” he whispered. “Are you with Malik? Railforce? The Guardians? I thought you were a thief, like me.”
“I’m not on any side,” said Zen. “Just my own.”
“Doesn’t work that way,” said Raven. Blood in his mouth; a cough clawing its way painfully out of him. “Comes a point, Zen, when you have to decide.”
Zen shook his head. He made himself remember all the bad things Raven had done to him, in case he started crying too. “You know I’ll choose the winning side. That’s what people like me do. I’ll choose the winning side, if I have to choose. That’s them, not you.”
“Is it?” Raven looked right at him, into his eyes. “The new gate is a beginning, not an end,” he promised.
“It’s the end for you, Raven,” said the interface, quite gently.
Malik didn’t need to use his gun. He just stood watching. They all stood watching. After half a minute more Raven was dead.
“I always wondered how it would feel when it was over,” said Malik eventually. “Turns out it doesn’t feel like anything much.”
“It isn’t over,” said the interface. “This thing he has made must be destroyed.” It squatted down beside Raven’s body on its too-long legs. It laid its long blue hand for one moment against his dead face, then started searching his clothes. Zen watched it. He felt in his pocket. He closed his fingers around the Pyxis. He was thinking of Lady Rishi Noon, who had spirited the sphere away from the Guardians all those years ago, and Raven, who had kept it hidden in plain sight for so long. They had stolen the secret of making K-gates from the Guardians themselves. It was like fire stolen from Heaven, and now it was nestling in Zen’s pocket.
Whose side are you on, Zen Starling? I thought you were a thief…
“The Marapur sphere is not here,” said the interface, abandoning its search of Raven’s body.
“Raven must have dropped it on the beach,” said Nova.
“I do not believe you, Motorik.” The interface stood upright again. Its golden eyes flared down at Nova for a moment, then past her, looking for Zen. “Where is the boy?” it asked.