Lojen about near shed his exoscales as he jumped. Only after his heart retreated down his throat did he realize it was his sister and not the missing scourge. “I told you to stay back.”
“Everybody’s dead, brother,” she said, pointing her longknife toward the corpses. “It doesn’t take an augur to pronounce it.”
“One of these days, you’re going to listen when I say, Ru.”
“Today’s not that day, brother.” And instead of waiting for him to take the lead, she bounded ahead.
Lojen stared at the ceiling as if toward Zenith’s heavens. Are You testing me to see if I’m worthy? If so, You have won.
The dead bodies were rebels and they lay at the foot of the only door he’d seen in the entire tunnel. Rusted metal and ovular, a single slit with a closed hatch. A valve-like handle, rivets coated in grease.
Voices came from the other side.
Pressing his earhole to the metal portal, he tried to decipher the discussion. He jerked back when a deep, guttural string of words rose above the rest. Familiar. A laugh that sounded like a cross between a lion’s growl and the hiss of a serpent.
“It can’t be,” he whispered in shock.
“Who?”
The conversation continued, men, these. The voice he remembered lost in the cacophony, blending into the rest. Imagination running amok.
Ruane nudged him. “Lojen?”
Standing like a statue, his mind warred with his heart. He should have shoved open the door and discover the truth, but he didn’t know if he could handle it. His heart raced; his mind slowly starting to agree. The voice on the other side was who his core, no, his soul told him.
Gripping his longknife, Lojen shook the doubt away and grabbed the valve, opening the door with a squeal.
He didn’t know what to expect from the safehouse, but it looked like something he could envision an army of rebels using for a brief period before moving to another secure location.
Along one wall was a map of the city, stretching from one end of the room to the other. Each street was meticulously rendered, overlaying the sewer and water lines. Districts were marked by different colors. Colored pushpins thrust into architectural drawings signified where bombs had been planted. Circles hastily drawn around the aethecite factories. A series of radio communicators were piled upon tables with operators at each. Opposite was row-upon-row of wheellock rifles and pistols. Reagents and aethecite pellets for bomb-making. Crates holding parch vials. Hand-cranked cannons with barrels that spun in rapid force. Racks held firedrake scale.
There were at least twenty rebels within the room, most of them on the radios. But none were the owner of the voice, all were humir. All were Drenth-born. They looked up as he barged into their haven.
Lojen’s heart sank.
“Lojen Tevunson?” one man asked as he separated himself from the group.
It was the man from the courtyard, the one who’d escaped in the airglider as the bombs exploded all around Drenth. The Gutter King. Emre Benld.
His bearing was proud, regal even. Though he was of middle humir years, with slight grey at the temples and in his stubble, the man presented as a leader. His emerald-pupiled, brown eyes were hard yet sympathetic. His dusky face lined from the trials over the last seventeen years. A thin scar wrapped his neck, as if his throat had once been cut.
“And you must be Ruane Tevunsdotyr,” the man said as his sister edged into the rebel den. “I’m Emre.”
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
Emre Benld, heir to the throne of Drenth, grinned. “I aim to disappoint.” The smaller man spread out his arms and hugged both, though it was like a child hugging a giant. Humir were curious like that. Then, the man’s pocketwatch trilled. He pulled back from the hug. “Shoot up, all.”
The Gutter King lifted a vial of parch to his lips and swallowed its contents. His face became strained for a moment. As one, the entirety of the rebel cabal loaded vials into their wrist injectors and shot the quicksilver of aethecite into their veins. Each shivered as the fire raced into their bodies.
“Did you enjoy the show?” Emre asked. “Solanine and Lu Har didn’t know what hit them. Tevun said they’d run.” The scion of Drenth appraised him. “You look like him, you know. Color’s a bit greyer, more bluish tint around your snout. But the eyes, they’re certainly his. He always told me you took after him.”
“But he has his mother’s heart.”
Four people stood in the doorway behind the Gutter King. One was lapin, half the size of the others, thickened legs and furry faced. The elfirish female, with her silver hair and eerie pale skin that glittered, was of Kanja, a bikrome most likely due to the goggles hiding her eyes. The tall one, all shoulders and legs, appeared to be a Kalderim-born elfir with similar features to the bikrome.
But it was the fourth, the one who’d spoken, who rattled Lojen’s heart.
A drakken, and a mighty big male at that. He had exoscales that teetered back-and-forth between muted grey and blue in no discernable pattern. His eyes were the color of sunset pink and rows of tiny spikes poked around his sockets toward where the stumps of horns should be. His elongated tail lay flat like a lazy snake soaking in Zenith’s warmth.
“Father?”
Tevun—wardkeeper to the Regents Benld, companion of the Last Godsking Canlon Carr, and thought dead for seventeen years—smiled, his pointed teeth protruding from his snout. “My hatchlings.”
Ruane shouldered past in a dead sprint, dropping her longknife and leapt into their father’s waiting arms. Drakken did not cry as men did, but her emotion was palpable, as was his own. She burrowed into their father’s shoulder as if a young hatchling, her tail flapping in pure joy. Lojen couldn’t help but smile as he went to his father. Tevun pulled him into a hug, the three of them joined tightly. A feeling he couldn’t have missed more. Lojen couldn’t believe it. After all these year, his father was still alive. Here in the flesh.
Thank you, Justice.
But an insignificant sound caused him to tense reflexively.
“Wait! No!” Emre shouted.
And then Tevun was shoving Lojen backward, tossing a surprised Ruane aside just as Aere-infused gunfire erupted within the safehouse. Lojen crashed into the racks with the weaponry, guns and armor raining down on him.
Bullets ripped through his father’s exoscales, red splatter dousing the surprised rebels behind. The elfirish rebel crumpled to the ground with a wet gurgle. The bikrome and the lapin dove out of the way, same as Emre Benld. The men and women at the radios sought safety. Seconds later, the gunfire stopped, the killer out of bullets from the multi-barrel wheellocks held in both hands. Tevun sank to his knees before falling to his side, Ruane there moments later, screaming to Justice in hateful rage and sorrow.
Lojen thrust the pile of weaponry away and surged to his feet, head swinging toward the entrance, finding a single humir in the doorway, smoke climbing from the multi-barrels of their wheellock guns like cigarillos.
The scourge from earlier.
