28.

EMERÍANN

 

Speeding back into the city, the scene is eerily familiar. It looks like the three bombings from Lachlan and his people have energized the citizens again. People fighting in the streets. Platoons of fatigued soldiers – Ragjarøn grey this time instead of Tathadann brown – swarming in to subdue crowds, dragging away those who resist. Part of me wonders if this is all Eitan’s future holds, if people here are only happy when they’re rioting and at war. If peace would actually be the worst thing for the city.

But I think just as quickly that the citizens deserve to have that choice. To not be pawns in Brighid’s game.

I ditch the truck on the side of the street. I’m never going to use it again, and it’s easier to navigate Amergin on foot. I keep my head low as I pass along the sidewalks, littered with trash and debris beneath a dull, grey sky. It’s a stark contrast to the open fields and muddy skies of the power system site, where you could pretend that the air was fresh and clean instead of heavy with the cloying scent of rotting garbage.

At the openly advertised lagonael den on the corner, I turn right, a few blocks down from the bar where Lachlan practically lives. Though I hadn’t expected him to be able to help with the bombings, I’m all but dead if he doesn’t come through now. Once Ragjarøn hears about Brighid, they will search every alleyway and avenue of the city until they find me. And what’s left of the rebels are already salivating at the thought of my head on a pike. The only people who don’t want to kill me are ordinary citizens, but they also wouldn’t kill someone to protect me.

Which leaves me one choice: run.

When I get to the bar, I glance around the street, checking for soldiers or insurgents. All I see is degenerates, Brigus, Amergi, and lagons. So, pretty much the usual. I open the door and duck inside.

The bar looks the same as last time. I nod to the bartender, who pours a small drink and slides it to me.

“For good luck,” he says.

I snatch it and drink it down.

He nods at the man sitting at the bar.

“You’re Emeríann?” the man says.

“I am. You’re with Lachlan?” He says he is. “I thought he was supposed to be here.”

“It’s busy out there. He got caught up.” The man throws back the rest of his drink then nods toward a back door. “Ready?”

I hook my thumb behind me, toward the street. “Aren’t we going that way?”

“Only if you want someone to see you. Which means they track my car. Which leads them right to my colleagues. Which gets half the smugglers in Eitan marked for death.” He holds out his hands. “I’d suggest the alley where no eyes are prying.”

My skin tingles. Something feels off about this. It could be that gasoline bourbon the bartender brews. It could be the whole vibe this neighborhood gives off. It could be that I’m about to smuggle myself into a foreign country thousands of miles away in a vain attempt to find my love who has no idea I’m coming and who might not still be alive. Or it could be that this man wants to kill me.

But given how many people out on the street are actively hunting me, I don’t know that I have a choice.

I nod to the man, follow him out the back.

And as the door closes, I hear the bartender say Hořte v pekel. My skin prickles.

The insurgent who planned the ambush. The one who blew off the back of his head in front of me. That’s who the bartender looks like. Now that I hear him say it, I realize they could be brothers.

I’m about to say something when a man steps from the side of the alley with a metal pipe in his hand.

Oh shit.

I scan the alley quickly, looking for anything I can use against them. Then the man shoves me from behind just as the other rears back his pipe, ready to split my head open. I drop to the alley floor when he swings, the pipe whishing so hard and close to my head I can hear it pass through the air. But it misses me, and instead plants inside the face of the man who shoved me.

He falls down like someone pulled the plug, his forehead clipping the back of my leg.

The other man, shocked at missing, stands idle for a second. I come up on my knees, feeling the searing pain from the woman’s kick, the electric burn of Brighid wrenching my arms back, and punch as hard as I can. It’s not my best, but it connects square in the man’s crotch. He doubles over, sucking in wind, and the pipe clatters to the ground.

I snatch the pipe and use it to push myself to my feet. The man is still writhing on the concrete, his face smeared with offal.

I swing the pipe three times and his writhing stops. My pipe gets wedged against the underside of his skull, inside the collapsed pieces of bone, and when I yank it out there’s a sucking sound that almost makes me puke. The blood that pours from his head mixes with the runoff that makes the concrete slick and slimy. I wipe his rotten blood from my face but only feel it smear.

There’s no place to go. If I go inside, the bartender will kill me. If the insurgents catch me, they will kill me. If Ragjarøn catches me, they will kill me. I have to run. And run and run and run.

I take off out of the alleyway, knee exploding with every step, pipe still in hand because I have no idea who will cross my path, whose head I will have to cave in to save my own skin.

And as I turn the next corner, someone grabs me. I scream No! and ready myself to spin and swing when I hear Lachlan’s voice.

“What happened?”

He’s here. Only him. Only Lachlan.

“The bartender. He tried to have me killed.”

“What.” His voice drops a full octave.

“That insurgent I told you about, that was his brother. They said they were with you, that they were supposed to take me out.” I swallow hard, blink away the image of the man’s head. “Lachlan, I just caved in a man’s skull with a piece of pipe.”

“I guess it’s Thursday, then. Which means I’m about to go kill the shit out of that other cocksucker.” He starts to turn back toward the bar but I grab his arm and yank him.

“I need to go. You need to get me the hell out of this city. Please,” I say. “You can take care of him later. But I need to leave. Now.”

He shakes away whatever he was thinking, squeezes my hands. “Right, right, of course.” He hurries over to the car idling in the middle of the street and opens the trunk. “Climb in, sweetheart. Your chariot’s arrived.”

“In the middle of the street?” I gesture all around us. “What if someone sees?”

“You think anyone here gives two shits what anyone else does?” He nods inside the trunk. “I’ve got two bottles of water and some jerky in there. Made it special, just for you.”

Before I climb in, I wrap my arms around him, squeezing hard, then lock myself in the trunk.

 

An hour later, with the rapid turns long behind us, the road seemingly straight and smooth, I open the trunk a little. Fresh air rushes in through the crack and it’s like being born again. I nudge it a little wider, enough that I can see the outside and try to get a bead on where we are. It’s all fields, with the mountains still looming in the background. We could be anywhere or we could be nowhere. But as I bite off a hunk of jerky, I see something far in the distance. Twisting black threads rising from the mountains. It’s not the other side of the mountains, though: it’s Eitan, burning again. Burning as it always has. And maybe, burning as it always will.

Then a dark shape rushes past me, startling me enough to swallow the chunk of jerky. I pound my chest as I try to work it down. As the tears dry, I can see that the shape was a foerge, one of the birds of prey out here, carrying some small rodent in its claws. The name makes me think of Forgall, my fallen friend.

The foerge glides to the top of a skeletal tree, flapping its wings to hover above a bunch of sticks. Small black blobs jut out of the sticks, babies pecking at the rodent in their mother’s claws. The mother finally drops the food down, then flaps away to find more.

I lower the trunk, settling back into the darkness, but a small stream of light still bleeds through.