In my dream, Garo kisses me.
We’re in the back of the closet, in the house in the Second Ward, in the soft nest of old bedrolls that’s my private hideaway. We kiss in the warm, dusty dark, and his fingers run up and down my sides and along the small of my back. I take hold of his hand, his fingers thick and calloused next to mine, and pull it to where my belt knots on the side of my robe. He undoes it, haltingly, and unfolds the cloth. I shiver at the breath of air across my bare skin. Then he’s touching me again, and I arch underneath him with a sigh.
“You used him.”
Isoka’s voice. She appears in the darkness behind Garo, one blade glowing. Its green light reflects from a hundred silk-thin strands, running up from every joint on Garo’s body and winding together into a thick bundle. I know, without looking, that the other end is wrapped around my finger.
“You used him, and when he wasn’t useful anymore, you threw him away,” Isoka says. She slashes the strings with her Melos blade, a fat spark of green energy crackling through them. Garo falls on top of me, a dead weight. “I tried to protect you.”
“I know.” My voice is a whisper.
“I kept you safe.” Isoka gathers Garo’s strings in one hand, wrapping them round and round her fingers. “And this is what you’ve become. Whore. Murderer. Monster.”
“I know.”
In one quick motion, she wraps the puppet strings around my throat and pulls them tight. After a moment, my chest begins to burn. The world is going gray at the edges.
“You deserve this,” Isoka says.
My lips move soundlessly.
I know.
“Tori?”
I sit up, gasping for breath. I’m alone, in one of the barrack rooms at the safe house. Golden light slants in through the narrow window, the sun barely above the horizon. The pounding of my heart reverberates in my ears, as though it were a kettledrum. I’m horny as rot.
Someone’s watching. The curtain in the doorway is pulled aside, just slightly.
“What?” I say.
“It’s starting.” Giniva. “You said to wake you.”
I did. Hasaka hadn’t wanted to. “Give me a moment. I’ll be right out.”
Giniva lets the curtain fall. I draw in a deep breath, hold it, let it out.
It’s true that Isoka wouldn’t have wanted any of this. She protected me, kept me safe, tried to keep me innocent.
But she’s gone. Maybe dead. But maybe lost and needing help. The only one who knows is Kuon Naga, and the only one who can get him to tell is me. I’ll break his mind like an egg, if I have to.
First, though, I have to get to him.
I get up, dress in my sweat-stained clothes, trousers and a tunic and a leather vest. Pulling them on makes me wish for my wardrobe back in the Second Ward, and I wonder if it’s still there, if Ofalo, Ridatha, and the others are all right. I wonder what Ofalo thinks happened to me, and what he would think if he knew the truth.
Giniva is waiting outside. Behind her, the common room is filling up with people. Hasaka stands over the big table, looking down at a recently inked map of the Sixteenth Ward. Men and women in red sashes wait behind him, ready to run messages out into the city.
Pointless. We’re too far away from the front to exercise any kind of control here. Hasaka’s instinctive caution has kept him far from where he can do any good. Hotara, at least, knows better—she’s down in the Sixteenth Ward, at the wall, where her expertise as a street fighter might help.
“Tori!” Hasaka says. He doesn’t look happy to see me.
“Giniva says it’s starting.”
“We’ve got word the Ward Guard are forming up,” he says. “Could be a false alarm.”
I doubt it. This feels right. They’ve had more than enough time to prepare.
“I’m going down there,” I say.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” he says. “You know how important you are to this movement.”
More important than you know. Without my little pushes, there wouldn’t be a rebellion, more than likely. Does that put all of these deaths on my shoulders? At the time, every step had seemed so obvious.
“Your plan is in place,” he continues. “We can oversee things from here.”
He’s not wrong, at least as far as he knows. I’m no strategist, just a girl who’s read a couple of books. I’m not likely to be able to contribute more than symbolic leadership. What he doesn’t know, of course, is that my power may be the only hope we have.
“I need to see,” I tell him. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
Hasaka sighs heavily. “Take Jakibsa with you, then.”
I frown, but it makes sense. Jakibsa is one of our only Tartak adepts, and by far the most well-practiced. His powers can protect us from any stray arrows, at the very least. I nod, and Hasaka beckons his lover over from where he was huddled with a pair of messengers. They have a hurried conference, sotto voce, and then Hasaka leans in and kisses the younger man with a fervor he rarely displays in public.
“Bring her back,” Hasaka mutters. “And bring yourself back, too.”
“Of course.” Jakibsa gives me a bright, fake smile, hideous on his burned face. “Shall we?”
Giniva follows us. No one questions if she should go along.
Downstairs, wounded men and women are still laid out on the floor, though no longer packed quite so tight. Volunteers move among them, changing bandages and checking wounds, Grandma’s old assistants alongside fresh recruits. Kosura is among them, moving with slow, painful steps from still-healing wounds, a vivid contrast to her earlier grace. She looks up at me and smiles as I pass, but says nothing. It’s just as well. I don’t know what I would tell her.
Apart from red sashes running back and forth, the streets of the Eleventh Ward are as empty as I’ve ever seen them. The street stalls are empty, the wineshops closed with their shutters down. In every building, windows are covered with curtains or boarded over, and doors are firmly shut. The fighting isn’t close to here, not yet, but no one is taking any chances.
Without having to push through a never-ending sea of humanity, it’s a surprisingly short walk to the gate. Both sides of the military road are firmly in our control now, and a red-sashed young woman missing most of one arm greets us at the entrance to the Sixteenth District.
“Voliel Breta,” she says, saluting me. “Commander Hasaka left me in charge. My squad is ready to go on your command.”
She seems keen. I hope her squad are loyal people, because the odds are high some of them aren’t going to make it back. At least, not if everything goes according to plan.
There are so many things that could go wrong. I try not to think about it.
“You know your orders,” I tell her. “If you haven’t heard from me, and the enemy are getting close to the gate, don’t wait.”
“Understood,” Breta says, with another salute.
Jakibsa, Giniva, and I pass on, into the Sixteenth Ward. It’s empty here, too, though there are fewer locked doors and more abandoned buildings. People have largely fled—we’ve been urging them to get out—contributing to the overcrowding in the Eleventh Ward. Jakibsa and his assistants have been finding them places to live in the upper wards, repurposing elegant townhouses and sprawling mansions to shelter a dozen dockside families.
As we move west, we see more red sashes, in groups with spears and crossbows. Weapons, at least, we have in plenty, having captured most of the Ward Guard’s armory. I flag down one squad and get directions to Hotara, who has made her headquarters on top of a warehouse, facing the broad clear space in front of the wall and about a block from the water’s edge. We climb a ladder in the alley behind it and find Hotara huddled with a cluster of red sashes.
“Are they coming?” I ask her.
She looks at me, irritated at the interruption, but nods. “They’re coming. A couple of thousand of them outside the wall. And…” She nods at the water.
I follow her gaze. A full squadron of Imperial war galleys, six ships in all, are loitering just beyond bow-shot of the wall. Their triangular sails are furled, and their long banks of oars barely move to keep station in the calm water of the bay. Chained to those oars, in the depths of the long, sleek vessels, are some of the sons and brothers of the defenders here today—it is the fleet’s voracious need for fresh arms to power its ships, more than anything else, that drives the draft.
Along the rails of the ships, marines in fishscale armor and broad, flat helmets wait with crossbows at the ready. Behind them, at the fore and aft of each ship, are the siege engines called scorpions, like giant versions of those handheld bows, capable of propelling a bolt the size of a spear.
There are defenders on the shoreline, taking cover behind the crates, coils of rope, and other nautical detritus on the piers. They have their own bows, I know, but few have much experience using them. More red sashes are visible on top of the wall itself, and on the roof of the round tower that anchors it at the waterside. There’s a signaler up there, too, with a red flag in one hand and a white flag in the other. As I watch, he holds both flags over his head, then starts to wave them in a complicated pattern.
“Brave rotting bastard,” Hotara says. “Signalman from the Navy who came to our side.” She turns to a young woman beside her, who’s squinting at the shifting flags. “What’s he saying?”
“Enemy advancing,” the girl says. “Along the whole front.”
“Tell them to fire at will when they get into range,” Hotara says.
The girl raises her own flags and makes a quick signal. The signaler on the wall wags acknowledgment and disappears. For a few long moments, nothing happens.
A dart of flame rises into the air from the other side of the wall. It blooms into a ball of white fire far overhead, easily visible even at midday. It’s too far up to hurt anyone, but that’s not the point. It’s a signal to the fleet. As one, the ships start to move, gliding diagonally closer to the shore. A bolt skips out from the defenders, then another. The first drops in the water well short of the vessels. The second comes closer, raising a splash only yards away.
Then, at a shout from their officers, the marines raise their weapons, and a moment later the Rot itself breaks loose.
The pair of ships in the lead open fire first, disciplined volleys rising at a sharp angle to scythe down like deadly rain all across the waterfront. The soldiers reload, an operation that requires them to ground their bow on the deck and press down with one foot on a stirrup to re-cock the mechanism. In the meantime, the next pair of ships has come into range, and another volley fills the sky.
Red sashes are shooting back, but piecemeal, and most of the archers have never learned to judge arcing fire at long range. A few shots hit the ships, and I see one marine slump forward into the water, but that’s all. The piers and quays of the waterfront are rapidly coming to resemble a porcupine, with quills jutting from every surface. Some defenders are huddled close to their cover, and others are slumped over dead, the difference impossible to tell from here.
One of the scorpions fires, its bolt flashing above the waterfront and into one of the buildings behind it. The huge projectile punches through the wood-and-plaster wall as though it weren’t there, leaving a hole the size of a horse and a cloud of fine dust. Answering fire comes from another window of the building, and a second scorpion replies, ripping out an entire corner of the top floor and spilling bodies to the street below.
On the waterfront, there’s a flare of light. Myrkai fire zips over the waves, concentrated into tight, brilliant beads. The first one hits the water just behind one of the ships, detonating in a colossal spray of steam. The second impacts one of the Navy vessels at the bow, the blast spilling marines into the sea and sending chunks of wood flying.
I can see the mage-blood now, a short woman with wild hair. She’s one of ours, a girl named Enoka from the sanctuary, a few years older than me, excitable and obsessed with boys. Beside her is Sekota, one of the Tartak talents who accompanied us to confront the Immortals. They volunteered to try this gambit, eager to get back at the people who have hurt so many of our friends. Now the defenders on the docks are cheering as she conjures yet another missile to hurl, straining to keep the flame coherent enough to do damage at long range.
Even as she lets the bolt loose, every ship turns its attention to her, volleys filling the air. Sekota stands up, hands spread, and walls of blue force materialize around the pair, deflecting the crossbow fire. Enoka yells excitedly and summons another ball of flame, pressing it between her hands as though squeezing over-tough dough.
Then the scorpions fire again. Sekota snatches the first huge bolt out of the air, sends it hurtling into the water. The second takes him in the chest before he can recover, punching him off his feet and pinning him to the dock like a butterfly in a collector’s case. The blue Tartak barrier vanishes in a spray of sparks as he dies, and Enoka barely has time to look up before a cloud of crossbow bolts descends on her. She vanishes underneath them, and a moment later the fireball she was priming goes off, blowing the dock around her into flaming splinters. Out in the bay, the ship she damaged is still underway, the hole in its side smoking but above the waterline.
They volunteered, and I didn’t stop them. It might have worked.
The detonation takes all the fight out of the red sashes along the water, and they abandon their positions, scrambling up to the street. I hear the shouts of their officers, trying to call them back, but I think not even trained soldiers would stay for such an unequal fight. Crossbow bolts continue to scythe down, sending men and women spinning to the dirt. Some keep moving, hobbling or shuffling toward the buildings across the road from the water, but no one is eager to risk the same fate to go and help them.
“Flags on the wall!” the signalwoman beside us announces. “Exchanging fire with enemy archers. Holding so far.”
“It’s not the wall I’m worried about,” Hotara says. “Grego, go make sure your squad is ready.”
Another of her companions, a big man in a long leather coat, gives a wordless nod and leaves the roof by the rear ladder. I glance at Hotara, and she shrugs.
“We can’t form a line between the water and wall without getting the rot shot out of us,” she says. “If they put marines ashore, our only chance is to try a counterattack.”
It quickly becomes clear this is exactly what’s in store. Defending fire from the waterfront slackens, as any flicker of movement in the harborside buildings draw a devastating response from the scorpions. A pair of the galleys pull up at a long quay, strewn with bodies and studded with bolts, and at least fifty marines disembark, leaving their ungainly crossbows behind and rushing forward with swords drawn. A few fall to rebel archers, but not enough—they’re armored and moving fast, and most of the red sashes on the wall are focused on the Ward Guard infantry outside.
“Go, Grego!” Hotara shouts. “Push them back to the water!”
A hoarse war cry erupts from around the sides of our building, and rebels start pouring out of the alleyway. My guess is that these are the best fighters Hotara has, handpicked men and women, those experienced with violence. They wear mismatched leather armor and carry a variety of weapons—swords, spears, even clubs and knives. There’s not much room for tactical niceties on either side. The mass of marines, rushing toward the wall and the gate they hope to capture, turns to meet Grego’s squad in a confused mêlée in the strip of clear ground, and the mud is soon churned red with gore.
Here, at least, I can accomplish something. Opening my Kindre senses is a shock, but one I’m prepared for—fear and pain slide over me, a wave of foul-smelling scratches against my skin, but I let them pass and focus. I find the minds of the marines, their training and discipline making them easy to pick out from the wilder rebels. They’re confident, and I take that away from them, replacing an easy assurance of superiority with a spreading fear.
For a few moments, discipline holds. Then they break, one man throwing away his sword and sprinting back to the boats, the others following in an unstoppable tide. They’re scrambling onto the waiting galleys, heedless of the shouts of the officers on deck. Grego’s men go after them, wild with their unexpected victory, stabbing and hacking down their opponents before they can escape.
Hotara turns to one of her assistants. “Go and tell Grego to get back here as fast as he can. They’ll start shooting once their own people are clear.”
The boy nods and runs off, and Hotara glances at me with a dour smile.
“If that’s the best they can do, we may—”
Fire blooms on the wall, directly above the gate. As it fades into a plume of dark smoke, I can see figures in black dropping down onto the battlements, shimmering with multi-colored light.
The Immortals have arrived.
You can’t fly with Tartak. Everyone knows that, though I don’t pretend to understand why. You can slow a fall—if you’re quick enough—but you can’t lift yourself.
You can, however, lift someone else. The Immortals landing on the wall must have been hurled high into the air by comrades outside, their descent slowed at the last moment by spreading waves of pale blue force. They alight with well-practiced grace, as though stepping down from a carriage, tearing into the surprised defenders with swords and blasts of flame. Crossbow bolts from farther along the wall rain down on them, but more waves of force stop the missiles dead in the air.
I reach for them, desperately, ready to crush their minds as thoroughly as I destroyed their captain in the safe house basement. But, as at the sanctuary, my mental grip slides away, deflected by an invisible bubble. They have their own Kindre users, strong enough to protect themselves from my fumbling efforts.
Which means we are all absolutely rotted. Because the red sashes are no match for these practiced executioners, and they die in droves, bodies piling up at the black-armored soldiers’ feet or pinwheeling off the wall in sprays of blood. A man glowing golden with Rhema speed carves a crimson path through men and women who don’t even have time to raise their weapons, moving on to his next victim before the first has even fallen. Myrkai fire streams along the battlements like a living thing, reaching outward to claim fresh victims.
At the center of the slaughter, directly over the gate, three dark shapes in chain veils stand motionless for a moment. Then, as I watch, one of the trio raises an arm to point directly at me. At the same time, I feel Kindre power, tendrils of it reaching out to me. I bat them away, terrified. One of the trio speaks to the others, and then all three jump from the wall into the open space, blue energy glowing around them to slow their fall.
Grego’s squad, fresh off their victory, is retreating toward us on Hotara’s orders. A few of their stragglers spot the Immortals and halt, uncertain about these new opponents. The leader of the three—a woman, I can see now, blank-faced and anonymous in her armor—steps forward, and bright green blades ignite on each of her arms with a snap-hiss audible even at this distance.
And all of a sudden, I’m back in my dreams. Isoka stares at me, her blades ignited.
Murderer. Whore. Monster, she says. Monster, monster, monster.
Jakibsa, until now a silent presence at my shoulder, steps forward. “We have to stop them. Giniva—”
“No.” My throat feels thick. “We run.”
Everyone looks at me, even as the fighters below are screaming and dying.
“The battle…” Hotara begins.
“The battle is over,” I say. “We lost. We knew we probably would. Everyone who can, get back to the Eleventh Ward gate.”
She stares at me for a moment, then nods decisively. “Signal the retreat!”
Everyone on the rooftop is suddenly moving at once, a mad stampede for the ladders at the back of the building. The girl with the signal flags stays in place, though, raising them over her head in a frantic motion intended for the soldiers on the walls. It makes her an instant target, and a moment later the flags fall from her fingers and she’s slumping forward, riddled by a half-dozen crossbow bolts.
I glance at Jakibsa, and he offers his ruined hands to me and Giniva. We step off the roof, his power gathering around us to slow our fall, bypassing the pileup at the ladders. At the base of the building, an alley leads back into the tangled warren of the Sixteenth Ward’s streets. It’s crowded by Grego and his men, taking shelter from enemy fire and blocking the way until Hotara and the others descend.
“There!” The shout comes from the alley entrance. “That’s her!”
My blood goes cold, and my heart pounds in my chest. I’d hoped they were pointing out the rebel commanders, but—
They felt me use my power. They were waiting for it. Naga wants me in a cage. The Immortal captain’s limp features twist in my memory. “Insurance. Hostage.”
The black-armored woman stalks forward, blades humming. It’s not Isoka, it can’t be her, that makes no sense, but I still feel like my nightmare has escaped into the real world. Whoever this woman is—it can’t be—she’s a Melos adept, and Grego’s men fare no better against her than alley thugs ever did against my sister. Her blades rise and fall, carving a path of bloody ruin with casual efficiency, ignoring the terrified return blows. Swords and spears stop an inch from her body, rebounding from crackling, sparking energy. Blue bands of power emanate from one of her companions, following carefully in her wake, batting aside any attempt to surround her. The third Immortal stays close, not visibly assisting, but when I reach out with my mind that same bubble keeps me away.
Melos, Tartak, and Kindre. Three soldiers, split off from the assault on the wall to find a specific target. Me.
I feel my own fear welling up, black bile at the back of my throat, and I try to force it down. Hotara has reached the bottom of the ladder, and she stands open-mouthed, watching Grego’s men go down against the Melos adept. I have to shout in her ear to get her attention.
“Run!”
“What?” She turns to me, blinks.
“Run!”
We start running, what was supposed to be an orderly retreat turning into a rout. I stick close to Jakibsa and Giniva, with Hotara and Grego himself following close behind, along with a few red sashes. The group running alongside us splits as the alley divides, then splits again, individual fighters breaking off to try for safety on their own. The Sixteenth Ward seems horribly empty around us, even the semblance of life now gone.
Our small group pulls up short where the alley empties into a larger street. My chest feels like it’s on fire, and Grego is panting hard. Hotara sinks against the wall with a sigh.
“Lost them,” she says. “Okay. If we turn left and try for—”
But I’m looking behind us, Kindre senses open, and I can still feel the tendrils reaching out for me.
“They’re coming.” I sound like a scared little girl. “They’re following me. The rest of you—”
Blue bands of force shimmer into existence around two of the red sashes at the back of the group, yanking them off their feet and into the nearest wall with bone-cracking force. The three Immortals come around the corner, practically strolling, barely twenty yards away. More Tartak force lashes out at us, but this time Jakibsa responds, and a shifting mêlée of blue light plays out between us in a shimmer of sparks. He grunts, hands raised, and shifts back half a step.
The Melos adept ignites her blades and charges. The closest rebel draws her sword, but takes a sizzling energy blade to the gut before she can swing it. Grego goes at the Immortal with a roar, swinging a heavy club two-handed. It bounces off her shoulder in a coruscating shower of green sparks, and she brings both blades up in a scissorlike motion that separates his head from his body and sends it spinning across the alley.
“Go!” Hotara says, drawing her sword. “Run!”
I’m past arguing. I grab Giniva and Jakibsa and drag them after me, Jakibsa stumbling, still keeping up his fight with the Immortal Tartak adept. I can’t help but look over my shoulder, though, and I watch as Hotara and the Melos adept exchange a few blows. The Immortal deigns to parry, her energy blade carving notches in Hotara’s sword, until the steel finally loses the unequal contest and snaps in two. Hotara stares at the broken weapon for a moment, which is a moment too long. The adept spears her through the chest, the spitting tip of the energy weapon emerging between Hotara’s shoulders.
Hotara mouths something, blood trickling over her lips. Then she slumps against the other woman, hands convulsively clutching at the Immortal’s chain veil. She drags the Melos adept’s helmet free as she slumps to the ground, and I look on the face of my pursuer, the creature from my nightmares.
It’s not Isoka. Of course it isn’t. This is an older woman, her hair dead white and cut short, one cheek dark with a bubbling scar from a close encounter with Myrkai fire. She doesn’t bother to retrieve her helmet and veil, only waves to her fellows to come after us, as we duck around the corner of an alley and out of sight.
It’s not my private demons we’re running from. It’s Kuon Naga and his minions. I knew that, of course I knew it, but—
Focus, Tori!
We’re sprinting down a maze of tiny alleys, the complicated labyrinth that makes up most of the Sixteenth Ward. Somewhere ahead—too far ahead—is the gate leading to the Eleventh Ward, where allies are waiting. But the Kindre user behind us can track me—I can feel him—and they’re steadily gaining. Jakibsa may be a match for their Tartak adept, but we can’t stop their Melos user, and I’m less than useless, a stitch in my side already cutting like a dagger at every step.
For a moment I consider telling the others to go on without me. I have a knife. I can shove it into my breast before Naga’s henchmen catch us. Better to die than whatever he has in store, surely—but I know, even as I think this, that I won’t be able to do it. I don’t want to die, however twisted I’ve become, however much Isoka would hate this new Tori who kills and kisses and twists people’s minds.
If you don’t want to die, then focus. Do what you can with what you have. What do you have?
Jakibsa, Giniva. Not enough. Myself, for whatever I can do. Not rotting enough.
We skid around a corner, just as the Immortals come into view behind us. Jakibsa wards off another blue wave of force before we get out of sight. They’re getting closer.
Monster, Isoka calls me in my dreams. Monster, monster, monster.
What would a monster do? What would a monster use?
Whatever she had to.
I open my Kindre senses.
“Over there!” I gasp, as we turn another corner. It leads into a long, narrow alley, with single-story buildings on both sides, flimsy clapboard things with gray, decaying plaster walls. I point to a door, closed and barred. “Jakibsa, open it!”
He doesn’t have the breath to question. A battering ram of blue force hits the wood, splintering it inward. I skid to a halt in front of it.
“I have a plan,” I manage, straining for breath. “Can stop them. Need you. Buy time. Sixty seconds. Please.”
They can’t know I’m not simply abandoning them. But they look at one another, and nod agreement. I turn and dash into the house, taking shelter just inside the doorway. There’s a single room, empty except for a firepit and kettle, with a single window blocked by a rag curtain. I put my eye to the window, and wait.
I’m gambling that their Kindre user can’t track me that precisely. I certainly can’t track him beyond the dead zone he projects. I keep blocking his questing tendrils, hoping I’m not giving myself away.
Outside, the three Immortals come to a halt in the alley, Jakibsa and Giniva facing them from the opposite end, where it splits in a T-junction. No words are exchanged—at this point, there’s not much to say. Giniva raises her hand and sends a bolt of fire at the scarred woman, who dodges adroitly, letting the missile impact with a roar on a building behind her. Their Tartak adept reaches out, and Jakibsa blocks him. Soon those two are grappling with twists of blue force, Jakibsa giving ground, retreating around the corner and out of reach. The Tartak adept follows, while the scarred woman charges Giniva, who fires more blasts of flame before fleeing.
The Kindre user stays behind, as I’d hoped, alone in the alley.
But still—a full-grown, well-trained soldier in armor, with a sword at his belt, alert and ready. And me, a fourteen-year-old girl with a knife, already winded. Useless. Unless—
Monster, monster, monster.
I turn to the single doorway leading deeper into the house.
Most of the people of the Sixteenth Ward have evacuated. Those who haven’t—we told them to leave, we told them, why wouldn’t they listen—put their own lives at risk. I sensed four minds here, and I find them in the storeroom. A man and a woman. Two children, a boy and a girl, maybe twins, close to my age. A family. The man has a small knife, and he stands in front of the other three. His face twists as I pull the curtain aside. He expected looters, or Ward Guard soldiers. Not me.
A monster—
“W—what do you want?” he says, uncertain.
I swallow hard.
“I need your help,” I tell him. And I reach out for their minds.
The contents are no surprise. Fear, pride, despair. I crush it all underfoot, careless in my hurry, a giant trampling through a city of ants. I draw new emotions from the depths of their subconscious. Rage. Hatred. And I give it a focus, a figure in black armor and a chain veil, just outside.
A monster uses what she has to.
The girl is the quickest, bursting through the doorway, features twisted beyond recognition with an unnatural fury. The Immortal sees her coming, deflects her clumsy rush with a backhand cuff that sends her sprawling to the dirt. He draws his sword in time to cut her brother down with a diagonal slash that opens his chest in a wash of blood. But the girl is throwing herself at the Immortal’s legs, and the mortally wounded boy staggers forward another step and wraps himself around the soldier with a snarl. The parents, close behind, are next, father and mother each grabbing an arm and dragging the Immortal to the ground.
I follow, knife in hand. I can feel the man reaching out with Kindre, but I shut him down. He may be better trained, but I’m stronger, and for a few moments that is all that matters. The mother is on her knees, attacking the soldier’s arm with her teeth, and the father shoves his son’s corpse aside to get a better grip. I kneel and pull the Immortal’s helmet and veil away, revealing a boyish face with a peach-fuzz beard and wide, scared eyes. My knife goes into his throat, under his jaw, and blood bubbles up. His body jerks for a moment, then stills. His frenzied attackers don’t notice that the object of their ire is dead, mother and father and daughter tearing at the corpse with teeth and fingernails.
I look up. At the other end of the alley, two figures in black are watching me, the scarred woman and her Tartak-wielding companion. I stare back, defiant, ready to reach for their minds if they come close enough.
They don’t. The scarred woman gives me a nod, like an acknowledgement to a worthy foe you might see in some historical drama. Then the two of them take off running, down another alley and out of sight.
I reach for the minds of the poor family, smothering the rage I granted them as quickly as I summoned it. It leaves their minds blank, featureless slates, their bodies sitting placidly beside the mutilated corpse. I don’t know if they’ll recover eventually, but I suspect not. Given what comes next, it hardly matters.
Jakibsa jogs back into sight from one alley, Giniva from the other. I walk to meet them, wearily, suddenly feeling a tremendous weight on my shoulders.
“What happened?” Jakibsa says. “Tori, are you all right? Who are those—”
“She’d almost caught me,” Giniva mutters. “And then she just stopped.”
“I’ll explain later.” I won’t. “Come on, we’re not safe yet.”
But we make it back to the Eleventh Ward gate, the latest in a stream of stragglers fleeing the disaster on the waterfront. Voliel Breta is waiting for us. She reports Ward Guard troops sweeping through the Sixteenth, defenders dead or in full flight, no resistance left.
When the stream slows to a trickle, I give the order. We close the gate, retreating across the military highway to the Eleventh Ward wall. Giniva sends up a flare, like the one that had triggered the naval assault, a burst of Myrkai fire in the sky visible across half the city.
I know what happens next, because I gave the instructions before the battle began. In basements and back rooms across the Sixteenth Ward, men and women see the signal. They strike matches or use small Myrkai talents. A hundred fuses are lit.
They were each supposed to find themselves a hiding place. Some of them might survive.
A hundred fuses reach a hundred barrels. We didn’t have time to arrange any complicated pyrotechnics. There are just piles of things that the harborside has always had in quantity. Kindling—splintered boards and shredded ropes.
And whale oil.
We use a lot of oil in Kahnzoka. It lights lanterns and fires boilers, especially in the upper wards. And it all comes in by ship, transported by traders from the iceling lands, where strange, blond foreigners hunt the great sea-beasts and render them down. At any given time, there are thousands of tons of the stuff on the docks and in the warehouses. It’s kept in wax-sealed barrels, fairly safe from accident. But if one were to knock a hole in a few, and let the viscous content puddle on the floor …
From the wall, the flames look like blooming flowers.
The buildings where we’d stashed the oil catch immediately. I made sure there was a cache in the Black Flower, and I smile a little at the thought of Thul’s pleasure palace going up in smoke. The oil burns fast and hot, and the still-sealed barrels soon start to explode, spraying wood and burning oil across the roofs of neighboring structures.
The lower wards of Kahnzoka are built of dry wood, plaster, and straw. Getting them to burn is no trouble at all. Great sheets of fire are racing across the Sixteenth Ward within minutes, turning it into a set of shrinking islands in a rising crimson sea. The blaze spreads along the docks, leaping to the furled sails of the ships, spreading from pier to quay. The smoke soon blocks our view of everything except for the sullen, leaping glow of the flames.
It all burns. The streets where I grew up, where I watched Isoka suffer to try and feed us, keep us safe. The alleys where she was beaten, the doorsteps where she begged. The basement where we nearly froze to death for want of a few scraps of wood, now burning brighter than a furnace.
The family whose minds I destroyed are burning, now. See? I want to tell them. It wouldn’t have mattered. You would have died anyway.
I know that doesn’t mean anything.
And, of course, the Ward Guard are burning. Thousands of them, trapped in the labyrinth of alleys, unable to outrace the leaping flames and get to the sea or the gates. I can’t hear the screams above the roar of the fire, but I can imagine them.
Around me, people are cheering. Jakibsa is gone, hurrying back to Hasaka’s side. Giniva remains, her face impassive.
“What happens now?” she says.
“Now?” I let out a breath. “Now the Emperor calls in the Invincible Legions to destroy us.”
“And what are you going to do?”
Find Kuon Naga. Find Isoka. Or …
“What I can,” I say, “with what I have.”