Through the glass shield, Cadrianna saw Finnus push a button on a panel, and a doorway started to roll open along a track. The elfir leapt through the hatch and Valeria released the glider from its cabling. Cadrianna’s stomach dropped as the airglider flew through the portal and banked sharply to the portside. Finnus tumbled, which caused Cadrianna to laugh. It was freeing, to be able to laugh like a normal person should. Free of the shadows. Free of the hatred within.
The bikrome flew the airship up the side of Gargantua, other gliders swooping in and out of sight. Lights bloomed from cockpits, searching for something. Buildings moved underneath them, far below in the darkness that was Drenth at this hour of nightturn. Smoke curled out of the fortress from every weapon orifice, from all the opened glider bays. The great floating behemoth listed close to the tops of the highest buildings of Drenth, nearly brushing them.
Gargantua was badly damaged, a shock. Emre’s rebels had done the unthinkable, they weakened the Fallen.
“She’s heading southeast,” Cadrianna commented.
“To the mines,” Finnus said. “Where we will head once we find our loverboy. Don’t suppose we’ll have to share… ah, nevermind. We can negotiate later.”
The airglider rose past the flying fortress’ immense walls, down through the gardens. Hundreds of soldiers trampled over the ground. The glass of the highest spire atop Gargantua was shattered. Smoke billowed out of the broken windows in fonts. The bright crystalline light spun on its moorings, bathing the room in sparkling blackish beams. Rubble lay everywhere. Cadrianna saw the gaudy throne of obsidian had cracked and was broken. She hated that thing; it reminded her of her sold soul.
Scanning the room, she didn’t see Lu Har, nor Solanine. Or Cinder for that matter. No bodies whatsoever. Perhaps they were buried under the debris? “Where’s the Fallen?”
“Forget the Fallen, where’s Emre?” Finnus leaned out the hatch, and bullets climbed toward their airglider from below, pelting off the hull. “I see no firedrake.”
“Keep an eye, Finnus,” she said as she surveyed the nightturn sky, looking for any stars hidden by the bulk of the daemon firedrake. But she didn’t see anything. I don’t like this, Strix. Where is the Fallen?
“DEAD I HOPE.”
That would be too easy. Besides, we have a dance still to tangle. You, me, and his flesh.
“I see him.” Finnus pointed.
A person was climbing through the starburst pattern of metal. A suit, black against the night sky, dusty as if he’d been buried and had clawed his way free.
Valeria swerved the glider closer and Finnus tossed a rope out of the hatch. Emre caught it. There was still no sign of Lu Har nor Solanine. Emre took an extra-long look toward two silver-looking tanks that had shattered during the explosion, but then swung away from the building. Valeria pulled on the steering mechanism, the airglider rising fast to get away.
Cadrianna went to the hatch and helped Finnus pull Emre into the airglider. His face was bruised, nicked by cuts, and awash in grit. He was panting from the exertion of the climb.
But he was smiling as Finnus clapped him on the back.
Cadrianna fell into Emre’s embrace.
XLVIII
Ashe
“WHADAYA THINK THAT gold chain will fetch?” Quick Fingers’ rodent-shaped aura was a wicked crimson.
Red Tulio craned his neck. “Betcha shit all. Most likely a fraud.”
“I saw it up close when she was with the boss back in the ‘Sseum.” The beady-eyed shrewkin was so close she could smell the shit-stink of his wretched breath. “’Peared real to me.”
“Zenith’s cock, you been eating actual shit these days?” Ashe said as her nostrils tingled.
“Take it from her.”
“Sorry to disappoint, boys, the thing doesn’t come off.”
Red Tulio unfolded his robust arms and popped his knuckles one by one. His aura began to match the shock of red upon his scalp. And his reputation. “Cut it off then.”
Quick Fingers smiled that rat-bastardly smile of his. He raised his maimed hand again, the one with the missing pinky. “That would be some circle, eh? Comes around for us all, little girl.”
Ashe paled while she tried to think of a solid comeback. “I just got my fir—” The shrewkin thug grabbed Ashe by the neck with his hairy digits, constricting her air. Red Tulio laughed over his underbite.
“It won’t hurt,” the shrewkin said. “Much. Slice and over with.”
Ashe tried to draw upon her aetheurgy, but the low level of mist didn’t even budge, just lazily willowed in undefined patterns. If she had any breath to spare, she’d be cursing it something fierce.
Quick Fingers’ dagger came closer. Ashe wriggled and tried to break her binds but also the restraint on her neck. Neither broke. Panic settled in instead. She wished she had the mist with her for a change, instead of it dancing about like hapless fae in drunken frolics. Her sight filled with stars. Blackening and going blurry. Again…
A grunt, then a thud like a sack of aerovern skulls being dropped upon the floor. Something happening in the haze behind Quick Fingers. A sickening sound. A muted gasp.
The rodent turned slowly, too slowly in the fading light. Shaded honey in his frightened aura. “Wh—”
Blood whipped across her face. The fuzzy hand released her neck and a figure in shadows neared.
“Brynn Benld?” came the gravelly voice of a drakken. “You hurt… well, much?”
“Who?”
“Humir, you best wake up.”
The drakken shook Ashe by the shoulders until her teeth rattled. The stars in her vision rollicked like cavorting whirligigs before finally fading, bringing outlines into focus. Huge but not quite seven feet tall. Long, angled snout, rounded protrusions over a set of purplish eyes, almost horn-like but not. A light blue set of exoscales around a mouth full of sharp, pointy teeth. A woolen vest with no sleeves, muscular limbs ending in curved claws, a longknife with serrated edge dripping Quick Fingers’ blood.
“Who are you?”
