Coleel sucked in a breath. It was time to earn his keep, and he obviously knew it. “As I’ve told Ms. Layanna and Dr. Avery, my stores of the nectar in the city have all been sold and consumed.”
“But …” said Avery, leading. When Coleel didn’t volunteer anything further, he added, “You said you could get more …”
“No. I said you could get more.”
Avery frowned. He was beginning to have a bad feeling about this. “What exactly do you mean, Losg?” He spoke slowly, as if afraid of the answer.
Coleel eyed the maps piled on Vursk’s desk. Rising, he rifled through them, selected one and unrolled it. The others looked at each other and, slowly, moved in, hesitant and watchful. Like Avery, they all seemed afraid of what the merchant was about to reveal. Avery could hear movement in the halls, and singing from somewhere downstairs, but it all seemed very distant to him, very remote, as if he and the others were on a different world, a sphere of silence and dread.
Coleel wasted no time in dropping the bomb. His large finger stabbed a point on the map. It was a region of the Crothegra Jungle on the other side of the Soinis Mountains from Ezzez. “That’s the Gomingdon,” he said. “A strange and spooky area of the Crothegra. Lots of weird shit there, and many source elements for alchemical compounds. The ghost flower is one of them. Different merchants have different deals with the villages on the periphery of the Gomingdon, and the villagers gather the source elements in various ways. I have deals with three of the villages. The closest is Sevu, here. If I give you a contract with my seal on it, and I never go anywhere without it, they’ll agree to work with you.”
They stared at him. A long, slow beat passed, during which Avery could only hear the thudding of his heart. Gone were the footsteps outside and the singing below. There was only the thumpthump, thumpthump in his chest.
Typically, Hildra was the first to speak: “You want us to go into the Atomic Jungle?”
“It’s where the flower grows,” Coleel said. “The only way to get more of the nectar is to journey to the villages that extract the substance for me and get them to harvest more for you.”
“A village,” Janx said, and rubbed his jaw. His eyes looked far away. “In the Crothegra …”
“I knew it,” Hildra said. “I just fucking knew it. Well, fuck me, I’m not going in there. Fuck that all to fucking shit.”
Layanna bent closer to study the map. “And you say the flower only grows in this one region, the Gomingdon?”
Coleel nodded. With the coming of day, his tattoos had faded, and he looked like an ordinary man, if rumpled and tired. “The locals won’t go into the Gomingdon but only live on its periphery—they have to if they want the contracts. There are many superstitions about the place.”
Hildra slapped her forehead. “Not only do you want us to go into the Atomic Fucking Jungle, you want us to go to a haunted part of it? Oh, man. Oh, man, this is so fucking fucked. You can all suck my balls.”
Avery felt a bead of sweat burn his eyes. The world spun about him, and, feeling suddenly unsteady, he took a seat.
“You all right, Doc?” Janx said.
Shakily, Avery nodded. He could find nothing to say. This was a complication he hadn’t prepared for, and all of a sudden the task seemed too much for him.
“Shit,” said Vursk, as if something had just occurred to him.
“What is it?” said Hildra. She had stuck a cigarette between her lips and had been about to light it, but now she paused. “Something worse?”
“The roads going into the mountains from this side are completely overgrown and impassable.”
Hildra grinned. “Great! So we can’t go. Oh, well, too bad. I guess we’ll just find a flight home. Well, maybe further inland would be good. Somewhere the Starfish won’t get to for awhile. Maybe Deslik? I hear Crysbundda is nice this time of year.”
“Actually, there is a way through, in theory …”
“Yes?” said Layanna.
Vursk hesitated. “There’s a cable car on the eastern edge of the city. It takes tourists and hikers up into the mountains. It would take you to Goyan, a small town on Mount Veesla. The road going through Goyan and down through the mountains on the other side is still accessible. You could reach Sevu by it, or near enough. It’s not exactly a roadside town, according to this map. I couldn’t send any of my men here with you, but I could dispatch men from Prelo to meet you in Goyan. The fighting’s all but over in Prelu now.”
“But?” Avery said.
The general’s voice was flat. “The part of town the cable car operates out of is still firmly in the grip of Octung.”
Avery studied the others. They all looked as crestfallen as he felt.
It doesn’t have to end here, he thought, for an idea occurred to him. There is a way. But it means we WILL have to go into the Atomic Jungle. It was the last place he wanted to go. Gods knew what waited out there. Something was responsible for the wealth of alchemical source ingredients in the area they would be going toward, and Avery doubted it was a teddy bear. Something unnatural was out there, waiting to be discovered, and they would be going right to it. I might never see Ani again.
Slowly, he looked up. There’s nothing for it. He pulled in a breath and braced himself. “What if … ?”
“Yes?” Vursk said.
Avery wiped his glasses. His fingers shook only a little. “First, let me ask—the glabren Octung controls—are any of them in the eastern quarter?”
“Quite a few. The Octunggen use them as soldiers against us. Why? You don’t … oh …”
Avery nodded. “That’s right. We have the man that controls them in our power. If we can have the glabren turn on the Octunggen from behind the lines and disrupt their organization, your people could hit them in the confusion. It would be a great opportunity for you to deliver a devastating blow, and it would, hopefully, allow us to reach the cable car.”
“But wouldn’t that get a bunch of glabren killed?” Hildra said. “I can’t believe you’d think of something that cold, bones. Been spending too much time with her.” She indicated Layanna.
Janx rubbed a large hand across his face. “He’s right, doll. They’re bein’ used as fodder against the rebs. Why not turn the tables and use them as fodder against the Octs instead? At least this way they stand a chance of bein’ freed.” He speared Vursk with a look. “And you do plan to free ‘em, right, once this is over? You’ll make that bastard release them?”
Vursk seemed to honestly consider the question. He was obviously tempted to retain control of the glabren, but there was honesty in his voice when he said, “You have my word. When this is over, they’ll be free, however many of them survive to get there.”
Things moved swiftly after that. While Avery and the others rested, Vursk made arrangements, first hauling Virine into his office for a long discussion, at the end of which Virine, in ill humor, was returned to his cell. Avery wondered what would happen to the criminal at the end of all this and decided it couldn’t be anything good. Remembering the glabren slave auction and the poor people Virine had used as furniture and sex slaves, Avery couldn’t think that that was in any way unjust.
Vursk put the operation into effect the next day. He gathered his men, Avery and the others, and set out for the eastern quarter. Coleel remained behind. He was where he wanted to be and would go no further with the band, so Avery and Layanna thanked him and made their goodbyes. As they approached the eastern quarter, Avery found himself sweating and nervous. Battle. He would never get used to it. As things transpired, though, he needn’t have worried. Vursk consulted with Virine, who activated his glabren on the rebels’ behalf. When the smoke and gunfire grew thick enough among the enemy ranks, Vursk’s forces attacked, and Avery’s group was kept well away from the action.
The rebels pushed the Octunggen-controlled forces into retreat, taking back over ten square blocks of the city and securing the cable car station. Its mechanisms were inspected, deemed safe, and Avery’s group bustled into the car, intent on making their escape from the city before the occupiers could launch a counterstrike.
“I’ll have my men meet you in Goyan,” Vursk promised. “They’ll take you to Sevu.”
“Thank you for everything,” Avery said.
“Good luck with the fighting,” Janx said. “Give the Octs hell.”
Vursk pulled the lever himself that activated the car, and it swung upwards on its thick cable, bound for the mountains that loomed over that side of Ezzez. As Avery watched the strange city of alchemy recede below him, he said a prayer to any god that might be listening for the rebels’ success and for a restoration of peace and order to Ezzez.
“It’s an amazing place, isn’t it?”
This came, surprisingly, from Layanna. She stood next to him, their fingers almost touching.
“Yes.” A lump had formed in his throat. “It is. What’s more, I think we might finally have left a city in better shape than we found it.”
He tried not to think about the journey ahead. Into the Atomic Jungle. It was like a scenario out of his worst nightmares. He made himself think of other things as the cable car rose higher. Clouds swirled around them, and jungle-covered mountains reared ahead. The ride took half a day, but ultimately they reached the small tourist town of Goyan, perched on a scenic jut of the mountain and filled with various touristy inns, not that there were many tourists these days. The town seemed depressed because of this, but at least it had largely been untouched by the fighting, though the locals seemed wary of outsiders, especially foreigners, and they kept their distance.
Avery’s group waited five hours for the promised soldiers to arrive and were beginning to think they wouldn’t show up when the armed convoy finally rolled into town, commanded by a Lieutenant Haq Mailos. Mailos, a taciturn young man with a white scar down the side of his face, had evidently seen a great deal of action in Prelu and was none too pleased to be babysitting foreign civilians. Still, he treated them well enough, and after his troops had eaten and his vehicles had been refueled, he loaded the band into a jeep and had the convoy set out on their mission, bound for Sevu.
They journeyed for several days, passing down from the mountains and then into the dreaded Atomic Jungle itself. Avery and the others watched the awful, alien surroundings with wide eyes, not eased by the superstitious and fearful reactions of the soldiers. They too hated and feared this place. The people of the convoy, Avery and the others included, slept in local villages when they could or the roadside when they couldn’t, and each day they drew deeper and deeper into the jungle, which grew ever more strange about them. Avery’s dreams terrified him, and he woke up sweating every night only to find himself still in a nightmare.
On the fifth day they saw Sevu on the horizon.
