Ascendance (18 page)

Had she been reading his mind?

‘– there’s a whole world to save first. Starting with this city.’

Of course she had. He walked away from the kid, muttering an apology. Karen marched over to the SWAT team, which was crouched at a row of broken windows, taking cover while watching the chaos in the street.

‘Do you have a cell phone I can borrow, Officer . . . Pombier?’

She read off the squad leader’s name tag.

‘The hell was that?’ Pombier asked, looking up as though he might see through the ceiling. ‘They told me you guys took care of everything.’

‘That was something else,’ Karen said. ‘Can I borrow your phone? It’s important. See if I can stop that from happening again.’

More flaming wreckage crashed down in the street. Pombier was a heavily built, slab-shouldered man. He wore a black baseball cap instead of the bucket helmets of his comrades. Dave thought the big cat on the logo might have been some sort of unit badge, until he realised the cat was chewing a baseball bat. Pombier was a fan of the Detroit Tigers.

‘Damn. Okay.’

He keyed a pin into an older-looking phone in a hardened case before handing it over.

‘Get under cover!’ one of his men yelled into the street.

‘Thank you,’ Karen said, ignoring the mayhem outside.

As best Dave could tell, she hadn’t pushed Pombier. She hit a few buttons on her phone, brought up a number, smiled, and keyed it into the sergeant’s cell.

‘NSA doesn’t have all the cool tricks,’ she said, as they waited.

‘What do you mean?’ Dave asked, still recovering from his encounter with the boy.

Karen spoke to whoever picked up at the other end of the call.

‘Captain Heath. Yes. It’s Colonel Varatchevsky. We need a time and a place to rendezvous. And you need to get Trinder off our asses. I mean it. He just blew up some very expensive real estate because we were standing in it.’

Dave couldn’t hear what Heath said in reply, but Karen didn’t take the news well. She didn’t speak for nearly a minute, instead listening and occasionally saying ‘yes’ or simply nodding her head.

‘Fine,’ she said at last. ‘Twenty-three hundred hours. The Armoury on Lexington. I can explain then.’

She handed the phone back to Pombier.

‘Thank you, Sergeant.’

‘He didn’t want to speak to me?’ Dave asked.

‘He didn’t need to speak to you. He’s going to unplug Trinder, or try anyway. And we’re going to meet up at the National Guard Armoury on Lexington Avenue. Until then we have work to do. Your friend Compt’n just released a sex tape.’

‘What?’

‘Yes. He’s fucking with everyone.’

18

A
s was so often the case, Lord Guyuk ur Grymm was not entirely sure of what the Threshrend spoke. From the tenor of his delivery he thought the empath was speaking purely to fill up the silence in his head, lest the voices of those souls he had consumed echo too loudly inside his skull. The lord commander was learning to indulge his pro-consul in such moments, grunting occasionally as though he attended more closely to the Threshrend’s endless prattle than was actually the case.

‘I mean, if we had some fucking YouTube down here we could like have our own channel and shit. We could be fucking coining it, man . . .’

The stomping of hardened feet and the scraping of claws on the stone tiles of the palace forecourt made it easier to ignore Compt’n ur Threshrend’s babbling. Should he return to discussing the stratagems and tactics of the war in some useful manner, Guyuk would return to paying him heed. For the age they spent traversing the long march to the palace, the Superiorae babbled incessantly about the calfling Farr’l, and her role in his plan, and how important that role was, and how he simply couldn’t have her eaten by any old daemon, and how he hoped everyone understood that, especially the two Lieutenants Grymm assigned to escort her Above. Lord Guyuk had thought him addled with hunger, but now simply thought him addled. Naturally, he had not told the Superiorae of the experiments now underway in the Consilium, where other Threshrend, veteran empaths, consumed the thinkings of scores of captives, but Guyuk had reason to hope the masters’ investigations might prove fruitful. He was not entirely sure Compt’n ur Threshrend was not losing his minds.

For the moment, however, Guyuk was content to march at the head of the lieutenants’ detail, the Threshrend scurrying along beside him, hurrying to keep up. The dark red skies of the Demesne ur Horde were streaked with far-off Drakon smoke and low drifts of volcanic plume. The dense, black tendrils obscured the uppermost towers of the palace. The great court was largely empty, save for a few war bands of Grymm who drilled at close quarters, and a Dread Company of Gnarrl constructing scaffolds for the ritual abasement of
dar ienamic
captured in the Above. Not Men, of course. Such human prisoners as the Grymm had taken in Manhatt’n and Om’haa were in the pits awaiting interrogation.

The great iron racks and triangles where Gnarrl hammered and strained to fashion the traditional installations of torture would soon host captives from the Sectum Gargui and Qwm, taken for trophies at the chaotic edge of battle.

Once, Lord Guyuk would have fumed at the impudence of the rival sects, daring to tread upon ground the Horde had claimed, even if by right of traditional fief. The human cities of Manhatt’n and Om’haa might well lie within lands claimed by other sects once upon an eon, but those lands now belonged to She of the Horde by right of occupation. No Djinn or Kravakh or Qwm immediately stood forward to defend them when the Horde first entered. Hence they were now the property of the Horde, no matter how furiously the other sects and clans might contest the claim.

As the outer wall of the palace loomed over them, Guyuk wondered whether it was judicious to have the Threshrend along for this audience. She of the Horde had already encountered him, of course, but in a lesser form, when She questioned the mere thresh after it first returned from the Above. But so much had changed since then, most particularly to the little daemon. Simple thresh had matured, and been elevated not just into Threshrend, but into Daemonum Superiorae. That would not normally be of concern. Quite the opposite. But as the lord commander knew well, the course of Compt’n ur Threshrend’s maturation had not run true. There could be no doubting the intelligence and utility of the souls it had taken up, or most of them anyway, even if they were mere cattle. Guyuk had come to understand the foolishness and hazard of that particular form of bigoted blindness.

No. As he crossed the bridge over the burning moat, and took the salute of the Praetorian Grymm at the palace gates, Lord Guyuk ur Grymm worried not that the empath would have nothing to contribute to this meeting, but that he might have altogether too much.

*

Threshy wasn’t a fucking idiot. Those assholes G had running his regiments might have thought so, but they were dancing to Threshy’s funky disco tunes now, weren’t they? Nine Talon of Grymm were already in New York, hitting points of critical failure while the city fell apart around them. Hundreds of cohorts, and even augmented Talon, from all three Regiments Select stood ready to jump into another forty-three cities around the world, fourteen of them in North America. The Diwan dar Sliveen had her bad-ass ninjas in place too. They were all just waiting for the word. His word. And he was just waiting on word of Polly. Pretty Polly.

He hoped those Grymm assholes hadn’t got hungry and decided to take a bite out of her. He knew, in his head, they wouldn’t dare. It probably wouldn’t even occur to the unimaginative pricks. They had their orders and to a Grymm, orders were better than a barrel of fried chicken.

But still. Threshy couldn’t stop thinking about her and how she was getting on. Her story would be on the air by now. It’d be on the net. It’d be viral. Like the fucking super flu. Polly would be Captain fucking Trips.

When would he get to see her again? He really needed to see her again. Even though he knew it was wrong. He was a monster. And she was just monster food.

He tried to put it out of his minds as they passed under the enormous portcullis. It helped that he almost shat himself as ranks of Praetorian Grymm saluted with a crash of iron-shod spears on cobble stones, and mailed fists into breastplates. Sparks flew from the ground contact, creating a small storm of thunder and lightning which lit up the long and gloomy tunnel. Perhaps Guyuk was right. Might have been better to chill back at the cave while
el jefe
handled this one. Threshy knew he was the motherfucking King Kong of Nobel Laureates among these intellectual pygmies. He’d eaten the finest brains to prove it. But because of that he also knew he’d been cursed by the very act of raising himself from dumbass thresh to ass-kicking Threshrendum.

Fuck that doughnut-eating moron. Why’d he have to eat Trevor Candly’s brains first?

Ha, because the Scolari ass-fucked you.

‘You said something of the Scolari, Superiorae?’ Guyuk rumbled a few steps ahead of him.

Had he?

Fuck, sometimes he didn’t know when he was thinking aloud. And that was the problem.

‘Nope. Not me, boss.’

What was going to happen when the Low Queen cracked open Threshy’s little ol’ egghead and drank up all the noggy goodness? She did that. He remembered it from his last encounter as mere thresh. And that hadn’t even been a pop-in to the palace. He’d only been admitted to an audience chamber and She of the Horde hadn’t even revealed Herself in Her full Majesty.

Well, it was hard to say, really.

Like, for reals. His head hurt bad when he tried to think about it.

The queen wasn’t like some super bug in the old Alien movies or nothing. She was more like . . .

Pain flared inside his skull as he tried to recall the details of their last meeting.

Nope, won’t be doing that again.

‘G-Man. Is this trip really necessary? You don’t think we could’ve Skyped in or something? You know? While we were totally kickin’ up on the frontline for the glory of the Horde and shit?’

‘She of the Horde has summoned us to audience, Superiorae.’

What? And that’s it?

They passed out of the tunnel and into the first of the inner courts. Polished Drakon-stone, the colour of heart’s blood, stretched away into the distance, at least double bowshot length. Another wall rose up ahead of them, topped with crenellated battlements and towers spaced at regular intervals to command the approach across the inner court. The gulf between the outer defences and the palace proper was not entirely devoid of features. Here and there Threshy saw that the plain of Drakon-stone was interrupted by jagged eruptions of rock, as though broken fangs had bitten through the surface of the world. The inky black, razor-edged rock formations were festooned with debris of some sort, rags and . . .

Bones, he realised. The bones of
dar ienamic
. Staked out under the sky where they might be picked clean by winged carrion eaters.

He couldn’t help it. He imagined himself on those rocks.

‘G-Man, I think you should do the talking.’

*

‘An excellent suggestion, Superiorae,’ the lord commander grunted. ‘Abase your thoughts before the Low Queen. She will take from you what she will, and ask of me what she must.’

‘Awesome,’ said Compt’n ur Threshrend. ‘Engaging total abasement mode now.’

For once, the empath daemon was as good as his word. He did not speak again as they crossed the Nemesis Plain. The stomping cadence of the Lieutenants Grymm seemed even louder as it rolled away from them across the Drakon-stone. The bones on the
càrn dar ienamicum
were
nearly white, Guyuk saw. It had been some time since the hungry stones had been fed, but they would have their fill soon enough. He would see to it, and Her Majesty would be pleased.

The entrance to the second curtain wall was not as grand a portal as the first. The tunnel was narrower and ran a crooked course through the heavy fortifications, switching back on itself a number of times, narrowing to vicious choke points at random intervals, opening up into unexpected killing pens at others. No Praetorian Grymm lined the walls in this passage, but they were present, watching the procession from above where they might rain fire and death upon any who attempted ingress without permission. Even Guyuk himself would die in here if She ordered it, or if he was simply foolish and forgetful enough to seek admission without first being summoned to audience.

Emerging into the second court, the lieutenants took a minute to rearrange themselves in good order before resuming their escort. The architecture of grand statements gave way to the practical and unspectacular, at least in this part of the palace. Carved Drakon-stone yielded to simple cobbles and pavers. The eye swept not over great vistas, but was hemmed in on all sides by barracks, armouries, stables, pot houses, training squares, blacksmiths, foundries, forges and cell blocks. Praetorian Grymm hacked at each other with heavy ironwood training swords, not even coming to attention as the lord commander of their Clan strode past. They were the Palace Praetorian, sworn only to She. Hammers rang on hot metal in the smith shops, the heat of the dangerous furnaces leaking out of the wide doors and windows. A wagon rolled past, piled high with meat for the kitchens. Human cuts, Guyuk saw, but already slaughtered and so marked for the barracks, not the tables of the court. Her Majesty and the Royal House would dine only on the finest and freshest of produce.

Guyuk and Compt’n ur Threshrend wound through the maze of the second court, the empath daemon almost running alongside the lord commander to stay in touch. The Threshrend lived under Guyuk’s protection in regimental quarters, but here, were he to be separated from the escort, he could find himself cut down. There was no call for Threshrendum to be about the inner courts.

The small procession drew up in front of another gate, the lieutenants crashing to attention when challenged by the Praetorian Watch Captain. Mailed fists pounded at armoured chests, raising an uproar that reminded Guyuk of the guns used by men to such ill effect.

‘Who seeks admittance?’ roared the captain, flanked on either side by two Praetorian Sergeants, their blades already drawn.

The senior Lieutenant Grymm stood forward.

‘The lord commander seeks admittance to audience. He comes in company with his Pro-Consul adeptus, Compt’n ur Threshrend, Superiorae dar Threshrendum ur Grymm.’

The Captain of the Guard glowered at the empath daemon as though offended by the very idea such a creature might seek admittance. His nostril slits flared and a low growl rumbled from his throat, but there was no question of denying their admission.

‘You vouch for this unworthy creature, my Lord?’ the captain snarled.

‘Of course,’ Guyuk said. Form was so tiresome, and yet it was everywhere. It was everything to the warrior clans.

‘You are relieved,’ the captain told Guyuk’s senior lieutenant. The officer did not demur in any way, saluting again, and standing down. The entire detachment stood down with a rattle of armour and weaponry.

‘Come,’ the captain ordered. Two sergeants banged spear shafts together, then drew them apart, and pushed open the heavy iron doors leading to the Sanctum Royal.