“Blood in the air,” Wick said, his whiskers twitched as he seemed to detect answers Emre’s humirish senses couldn’t. The lapin set about sniffing further.
Emre exchanged a concerned glance with Finn while Val went to a knee near the main exit of the stair, a wheellock pistol ready.
Nodding to the lapin, Wick bounded down the hall on all fours. His heavily muscled back legs lifted his lithe body, while his furred paws made nary a sound on the aged floorboards. Gnarly shadows broken by flickering overhead lights, left the hall bathed in black. Wick, a darkened ghost in the low light, paused at the far end of the hall beside the door where other rebels were supposed to be waiting for them. The lapin sniffed, then pushed the portal open, and entered cautiously, a pair of dueling knives in his paws.
Long agonizing heartbeats later, a low whistle came. Emre’s tension eased, the tenuous hold on his aetheurgy held in check. Even without burning, his blood pumped frenetically. Still it, Benld. You knew this could happen.
As he made his way down the hall, Wick stepped back outside, his whiskers florid in distress. Closer, and with the door open, Emre could smell the pungent aroma of blood. It clung to the walls like perfume, clawing an escape from the room beyond.
Inside had been a bloodied shootout.
A handful of bodies were strewn across the room. Some were his friends, three were of the Imperium. Wheellocks gripped in dead hands, others littering the floor as if thrown in the dying fight. Bullet holes pocked the drywall in clustered rents. Isolated furniture was overturned or broken to pieces by body and bullet alike. Crimson painted the walls and floor in violent streaks. A rickety ceiling fan rotated with creaky blades, a single bulb of light, the others shattered in the gunfire, broken shards on the ground a reddish prism.
“Bugger me,” Finn muttered as he saw the carnage, his mouth and nose in the crook of his elbow.
Still it, Benld. Emre motioned toward the bikrome, “Val?”
Val drew down the mining goggles and holstered her pistol as she padded into the room with her eyes closed. Somehow, the bikromi seer eased around the pools of blood coalescing under the corpses, moving like a leaf on the wind, her boots barely touching the floorboards. Her arms raised as she skirted the bodies, taking in all around her. Bikromi did not use Shard Form, nor could they. This was her gift. Vision Form.
The multitude of gold and silver bracelets upon her wrists glimmered as she stopped beside one of the dead rebels. She bent close, her waist contorted in an unnatural angle, lost in the trance of the bikromi seers under Vision Form. The man’s face was streaked with blood, still wet from the look of it.
Val gently wiped away a speckle of blood from the rebel’s lips and leaned in to brush hers to his, mere hair-lengths apart.
“Bugger me twice.” Finn winced as Emre elbowed him in the short ribs.
The bikrome’s body stiffened, her sterling hair fell about her face in plaits. The air surrounding her rippled like the twang of a harp string. Body rigid, her head snapped back, a silent scream erupted from her open mouth as her breath became visible like that of a frosty morn on Kanja’s tundra. Her bracelets burned like raw aethecite thrown into the forge.
She rose, then. Arms wide, inches above the floor and the body. Hoarfrost snowed from her pale, exposed flesh. Silver hair static. Slowly, her entire body rotated toward them, her head lowered, eyes level. One black eye, dark as pitch. The other entirely white, pearlescent. Onyx bound to the past of what was, alabaster attuned to the future yet to be. Both glowed in the faint light of the overhead bulb. Vision Form.
“Bugger me thrice. I hate this part.”
Nothing happened for minutes, the bi-colored woman hung in the air above the corpse in a trance. Snowflakes dripped from her boots.
Then, “TRAP,” a singsong, ethereal voice broke the silence, coming from Val’s mouth. Not hers, but Bliss Herself, the Virtuous One. The goddess of energy and order. Of purity. Val’s lips moved not, the words continuing, “IMPERIUM TRAP. SPIES ON ALL SIDES. SCOURGES. TEVUN IN DANGER. MOTHER OF LIES. SHE COMES. SHE COMES. LEARN THE TRUTH. LEARN THE TRUTH. SHE COMES. BEWARE. BEWARE.”
A convulsion of body, the frost evaporated on her arms, hair drooping. Val fell, flaccid atop the corpse. It was moments before the woman breathed again, sucking in deep. Quietly, she pulled up the tinted goggles, her prophetic eyes hidden once more. “Well?”
Val never recalled what happened whenever she called upon her Vision Form. Bliss had overtaken her completely.
“A trap,” Emre filled in the gap.
“No bloody void it was a trap,” Finn raved as if he was on fire. “Even I could’ve told you that! Summoning Bliss like that. My word…” If only you knew the truth, Finn, you’d try and stop her. But we can’t. We all must do as necessary.
“We have to get out of here, Em,” Wick said, sliding between them. “You heard the Ideal Daughter. They knew we were coming here, the scourges. Nobody wants to dance with a scourge. Who knows what else Keph told them. Tevun. The others in Marketside. There are bloodied boot prints leading back down the hall, that means someone survived this onslaught. You were right, Em, there’s a spy in our midst.”
Emre was silent as he puzzled through Bliss’ words. ‘Tevun in danger’ was easy enough to understand, for this was their plan. Tevun would see it through to the end. ‘She comes.’ Zenith, let it be so. “We’re all in danger,” Emre said quietly. Have been since the moment the Fallen tore apart Drenth. Steel, had to be steel today. Sacrifice. Endure the pain, that’s what he needed to do. “Remember our oath, Wick.”
“This is different. They’ve never hit us this hard before. Never known where we’d be.” He pointed a paw toward the seer. “Spies. Imperium spies. That’s what the Ideal Daughter said. Kephren hadn’t been told this part of the plan. There’s no way Solanine would’ve gotten it from him. The Pentax are not happy.”
Emre paid for this knowledge in blood. It was going to be bloody, and it could very well end with his own
IX
Ashe
“YOU’VE NEVER HEARD of Neenah LeFleur?”
Ashe’s mood perked up as she limped into The Colosseum and saw the smuggler. The exasperation in Neenah’s tone was mildly amusing, for the woman was so voidbent on everyone knowing her good name. Come void or high water.
Ever since she had stowed away on Marrow’s Lover, Ashe had retained a soft spot for the vain mist pirate. Those few days spent with Neenah and her crew were some of Ashe’s best in her short eighteen years. Neenah LeFleur was a regular at The Colosseum and always asked after Ashe whenever she was in the City of Sands. Neenah would then regale the entire bar of her daring pursuits all over the Mistlands. Most of it was probably embellishment, but for Ashe, they were a welcome remembrance of a few days of pure freedom.
“Never had the pleasure.” The man sitting opposite Neenah had a head too big for his narrow shoulders, almost like a hay-stuffed doll. Wide-set eyes, black as coal, and a nose too huge for his face. Not exactly one to set fires inside the hearts, let alone the privies, of whores.
“She’s daring. And debonair, too. Her name’s legendary.” Neenah gave Ashe a wink and a smile of pearl and golden teeth as she shambled by before the captain’s focus returned to the flabby face of the man. “I’m truly baffled you’ve never heard of her.”
“Sounds like a working girl to me, with that name.” Fat bastard that he was, the man grinned at Neenah as he spoke. Multiple chins flowered over a tight collar as if they were attempting to escape.
Wrong choice of words, Ashe thought as she moved toward the bar, slowing to hear Neenah’s response.
“Neenah LeFleur isn’t just some rogue, she’s folklore at this point.” Neenah’s jaw ground some, lips pursed. “Everyone in the Mistlands is in awe of her pursuits. Really sticks her figurative prick into the cleft of the Imperium if you take my meaning. The Fallen wants her head.”
“Bloody smugglers don’t deserve my remembrance.” Liquor dribbled down the hills of the man’s fleshy neck as he slurped from a pewter mug. “They all deserve the noose. And what do I care what the Fallen wants with this scum? That man cares little for what happens here in Drenth outside of aethecite.”
