Gouging lines into the wood with her longknife, Ruane radiated a heated violence that would rival the unbearable radiation of aethecite suffered by men. “Honor means nothing to the Fallen. Only conquest and the ore in the sand.”
“The Gutter King guaranteed us the fight, Ru. It’s out there in the streets singing Justice’s hymns. The Arbiter will answer, reaping His holy creed.”
“I don’t trust anyone, Lojen.” Her frown returned, teeth protruding over her bottom jaw.
Lojen shook his head knowing Ruane would never change unless their honor was restored.
Another bomb blasted frighteningly close to their building and the entire structure shook. Lojen tottered on his feet, a clawed talon went toward the windowsill to hold him upright. Ruane fell to her side, grumbling drakken curses toward the rebellion and the Gutter King.
She hefted her longknife, scorching ire. “Let’s go.”
Ruane nearly pulled the metal door off its hinges as she bounded into the hallway beyond. The cracked walls chipped further as another blast rocked the complex, a blunt attack that was too close for his liking. Lojen shouldered into the wall as the apartment shivered. Though she could handle herself better than any drakken he knew, Lojen instinctively reached for his sister, a brotherly need to protect her that would never dissipate. She was down on one knee, her long talons scraping the floor.
“Piss off,” she snarled, “I’m fine.” She tore away from his reach.
Lojen rolled his shoulders and sighed. He hoped once they found the horns, she might reclaim the innocence lost from her hatchhood. But he didn’t know if hope was his ally or enemy these days.
The dilapidated hallway was bleak with fulgurating lights that dangled from the ceiling, squeaking on their mounts with each blast, chains swinging savagely. Trapezoid rays of urine-yellow left onerous shadows where the cracked grey walls met scuffed wooden floors. The rooms were filled with residents, mostly miners and their families. Or fiends drugged up on pipeweed.
A handful of frightened people were arguing in the stairways as the drakken siblings raced downward, yelling at loved ones to hurry up or at their neighbors for being in the way while they fled the drab halls in fear the bombs might strike their homes. One pipeweed-fiend roared to keep the noise down for he had a splitting headache.
Many floors later, they huddled before the fire exit, a nine-foot-tall steel door with a barred window. Lojen peered out into the streets.
“What do you see?”
“I see the patience Father tried to instill into you still hasn’t manifested after all these years.”
She barked a laugh.
A giant blast across the street exploded in an inferno of gunpowder and smoke. Lojen reeled from the door as the concussion hit, the after-quake from the discharge knocked them from their feet, and they clattered into a heap atop each other with grunts and hisses.
“Pissing fools,” Ruane spat as she shoved him off. “The Gutter King said we wouldn’t be in the blast zone here.”
“This is the Hymn of War, Ru, not fun and child games.”
“Yet the Fallen’s bitch aims to throw a party this week’s end on Gargantua to celebrate the conquest of Drenth. Sounds like fun and child games to me.”
“This is our only chance to take Father’s horns from her.”
“You think I don’t know that! It was my plan to contact the Gutter King and the rebellion. You’d still be sulking in Krylen if not for me.” She looked out the window. “The Gutter King promised us help, not kill us in the process.”
He ground his teeth because he knew she was correct.
They had spent the last seventeen years up in the northern reaches of Kanja, in the free city of Krylen. The snowy tundra was no place for a cold-blooded drakken, but it was the only place they could pledge themselves to after their banishment from the Isle of Merj for their father’s murder and failure to protect his wards. Lojen could have forsaken his claim to the horns like his mother had wanted and taken a mate from a brood with a stronger claim, but that wasn’t the life Lojen had ever desired. A mate was the furthest thing Lojen needed or wanted. No, his father’s horns were all that mattered. Honor was all that mattered. The free city cared not a lick about lost honor, only saw a pair of strong arms capable of breaking the ice with claws for big game fishing in the VVinter Expanse.
Honor was everything to Lojen, and he needed those horns. He had to trust in the rebellion and the scion of the Regents Benld.
Ruane yanked open the door, “The rebels are waiting for us, once they stop bombing their city for ‘fun and child games.’” Then she was out into the streets.
Lojen threw up his talons but followed her out.
The pandemonium grew feverish. Blast after blast rocked the roadway, erupting in ten-second intervals. Huge chunks of brick littered the avenue, craters formed within the broken pavement. Aethecite-powered vehicles lay overturned, some of the larger mining trucks were torn apart. Gaping holes smiled from the abandoned buildings, shattered glass from usable rooms crunching underfoot. People covered in dust and blood.
They took off, joining the surge fleeing into the inner sectors of Drenth, away from the rebellion’s bombs. Hundreds, maybe thousands, flocked the road like a gaggle of geese pouring out of Stanktown, pushing and shoving, elbowing and jostling. Babies screamed as parents held them tight with fear. Children wailed, parents hushed and swore, yelled and screamed like a tidal wave of flesh ready to crest. Sweat and fright permeated the air.
Imperium automatons—the feared Predator class, on their metal chassis and elongated gear-rotated limbs—stalked the streets as they policed the citizens. Plumes of aethecite-generated smoke spurted from the combustion furnaces in the steel bodies. Flashing orbs on head-like domes scoured the masses. Soldiers of the Imperium and their weaponry penned the fleeing group by forcing them to run faster as Ignis gunshots hummed in the background of the tenor of bombs.
Throw in a pair of drakken vagabonds and the tension balanced on the tip of a knife’s edge.
Gargantua hovered overhead like a watchful parent scrutinizing a rowdy child.
The blasts in Stanktown urged the crowd forward in sprints. Lojen grabbed Ruane’s wrist to keep from getting separated, even though they stood head and shoulders above the tallest of Drenth’s citizens. Surprisingly, she didn’t resist. He’d seen a number of people lose their balance; their bodies flattened to a pulp by the trampling mass.
As the throng veered down a four-lane road that circled empty vehicles, Lojen angled toward the edge of the press, eventually breaking free. He leaned against a lamppost, breathing hard. Ruane bent at the waist. Before long, they were the only living souls left on the road as the crowd fled, leaving them in eerie silence as the bombs died away.
“By the Arbiter’s bloody axe,” Ruane cursed in Justice’s name, the patron god of wardkeepers and the drakken of Merj. “Too many humir for my liking.”
Glancing up at the street name printed along the lamppost, Lojen dug a hand-drawn map from his vest pocket. “I think we’ve come too far east.” He studied the map. “The Gutter King told us the safehouse is in Marketside.”
“Then what the void are we waiting for?”
Ruane trotted west without waiting for him.
VI
Cadrianna
