CHAPTER 13I’m woken by Piskel barreling into me and pulling my eyelids open to make sure I’m fully awake. He’s squeaking and so brilliant that I bat him out of my face in protest, covering my eyes from the blue spots that swirl behind my eyelids.
I sit up on my pallet, wiping the cobwebs of nightmares from my eyes. I have no idea how I could sleep at a time like this, but I’m sure I’m still feeling the effects from Ximu’s poison. My entire body aches, but I’m comforted by the sight of my workshop rather than the horror of the caverns under the Museum.
“Piskel, you melonhead, what in the Seven Hells is wrong with you?”
I understand all too quickly when he begins marching back and forth in the air.
“The army is on the move, then.”
He blows himself up like one of those dried puffer fish I used to see in the market and makes hurrying gestures.
“Meet them at the airship, eh?”
He deflates and nods.
I stand up and start gathering things into a pile, looking for my satchel, but it’s out of restless habit rather than focused intention.
“What about my people? What will be done?” I am thinking of all of them in the cavern, wrapped in scarlet silk, poisoned and ill. It makes me sick to think that I didn’t save them, that I left them to their fates because I was too concerned about my own.
But what can I do now? If I stay, I will certainly be captured, and I obviously am not very good at rescue missions on my own. If I go, perhaps there will be another opportunity. Perhaps. I grit my teeth.
Then I hear the weeping.
I follow the sound into the parlor. Truffler is there by the hearth, weeping over cold ashes. It occurs to me that if I stay, these two may not live to regret it.
“Old man,” I say against the pain in my heart, “you’d better save your tears for when the water runs out.” Though I, too, could weep thinking about my uncle Gen. I pray he did not choose his fate. I pray that Ximu has somehow enthralled him and that I can break him free. I cannot bear, no matter what I’ve said, to think of him as a willing traitor.
Truffler turns then and rushes to me, hugging me hard around the leg. Piskel floats down to pat him on his hairy head.
“Worried,” Truffler sniffs.
“Well, that makes three of us. And now we really have to get out of here.”
He nods and holds up the satchel I was looking for. “Already started packing.”
We grin at each other then, and to the sounds of shouts outside, we tear around the house picking up whatever we can find that seems of use.
I gather up my pile of tools. Piskel comes to me mournfully clasping his little knit blanket and muttering about how he supposes he’ll have to leave the basket behind.
I take the blanket and put it in the satchel. Piskel drifts around looking at other things he’s collected and eyeing me every now and then to see if I’ve taken the hint.
“Look, whatever we can carry, we’ll take. Hao ma?”
He turns practically plaid with pleasure and starts picking up everything he can carry in his tiny arms. Bits of shell, thimbles, curls of ribbons—who knew sylphs were such awful pack rats?
I sigh and turn to my workbench. So many things I was working on—all now pointless. I take the few tools I think might be of most use and are lightest. I spy the golden egg, the gift bearing the strange message that was given to Olivia, and scoop that up. And of course I pack the dartpipe and darts. There’s no way to be fully prepared—I can’t imagine what lies in wait in Scientia.
I run upstairs to see if there’s anything in Bayne’s or Vespa’s rooms. But in Vespa’s room I’m immediately confounded by the stockings hanging everywhere, the drawers over the warped dressing screen, the scattered books.
Manticore save us, but she’s a messy girl!
I pick up the closest book I see lying by her cot—something about dreams—and shove it in the bag.
Bayne’s room is austere and gentlemanly. Everything is neatly put away, which surprises me, considering how pampered he must have been by servants in his former life. I don’t see anything I can take. Hanging from one of the doors of the battered wardrobe is his family sword, snapped in half by the Raven Guard. He’d found it in the rubble and hung it here, I guess, as a reminder of what he’d lost.
I hurry down to the library. All these books they’d collected and I’d started translating about to be lost. That burns me more than anything. I half wish we’d left them where we’d found them or made some other safe Archive elsewhere. Bayne planned to do that against such a time as this, but that time has come sooner than any of us imagined.
I swipe a few instruments that are lying about—a retrofitted tattler, some old null-goggles—and that’s all I can manage. Truffler lumbers in from the kitchen bringing what’s left of the cheese, bread, and sausage I’d gotten last at market.
Piskel whimpers a bit about there being no cake.
“Let’s hope there’s some where we’re going, my friend.”
I unlock the door to absolute chaos. “Stay close,” I say to both of them. Truffler looks back into the house where we’ve lived. He wasn’t keen on living here, but he did so. Now I feel I should give him the choice to go back to the Forest if he wants.
I kneel quickly before him. “Look, old man, if you don’t want to go with us, you don’t have to.” Piskel has obviously done better than one could expect, being parted from his home in the high grasslands, but Truffler? I don’t know.
He shakes his head. “Let you go before. Not going to again.”
“All right, then. Follow as best you can. I won’t leave you behind.”
The black tide rises over the edge of the City, reminding me of nothing so much as the Creeping Waste. To think we thought ourselves so very free, only to have gotten trapped in an even bigger mire!
I have heard that there is little to no magic in the Old World. I’m beginning to think it would be an excellent place to live.
The news spreads through the streets like fire. I witness some of the first lootings as the madness spreads. My heart burns in my chest. In so many seconds a year’s worth of careful work is undone by fear.
I never want to be driven by fear like this again.
The way back to the airship is not the straight line I hoped. I can hear rallying cries coming from the way I planned to go. Some valiant fools have chosen to stand and fight the xiren, and though their attempts are largely in vain, still I can see the line shifting through smoke and fire. Great sections of the new City have burst into flame.
A terrified cart horse that’s torn free of most of its harness careens down the road.
“Now’s our chance,” I say. I run out, heedless of thrashing hooves, and grab what remains of the bridle. I lift Truffler up and then swing up behind him. I honestly haven’t ridden more than a pony or donkey in my time and never faster than a trot, but interesting times make for interesting adventures, so Nainai once said.
Maddened by fear, the horse is easily motivated to keep going. The only problem is keeping him going in the direction I want him to go. I lean low over Truffler, gripping the horse’s heaving sides with my knees. Piskel holds on to me, and I’d swear he’s almost chirping with joy. Melonhead.
I get the horse pointed in the right direction, and he runs through fire and smoke, bullets sometimes whizzing past us. I see my first xiren just as a clear space opens to the airship. A great dome of clear air shimmers around the airship. Vespa and Bayne are shielding it as best they can.
The xiren’s golden facial markings gleam in the roiling smoke. I see them right before I see the long-handled sword that slices my horse’s legs out from under me. I’m only just able to clasp Truffler to me and roll across the pavement away from the foe. Weak and dizzy, I stumble up, trying to see him again through the smoke before he cuts us both in half.
I fumble for my dartpipe but come up with a sausage. I cannot believe I am going to die with a sausage in my hand against the most ancient enemy of my people when the way to my escape is only a few yards away.
He advances on me, scarlet fangs erupting. And then his torso is crashing to the ground, and his legs are following it in a spurt of black blood.
Bayne steps through the smoke, holding the magical blade I’ve seen him summon up before when times demanded it.
“I was beginning to wonder if you were coming,” he says. He looks down at the sausage. “Most impressive weapon I’ve seen in quite a while.”
“I thought Architects followed the Great Law?” I say.
“We bend the Law when it suits our purpose. And that wasn’t fully an Elemental anyway, correct?”
He’s right about that. At least part of the xiren is human, albeit a very small part.
We grin at each other, and then he nods toward the ship. “Come on. We can’t hold this much longer. They say the main force is only a few streets over. We’ll soon be engulfed.”
I stuff the sausage back in the bag and take Truffler’s hand. We follow Bayne down the alley toward the only hope we have left.