Beasts of the Walking City (32 page)

“To go to war?”

“We’re are already at war.

“Sorry,” I say. “I must be confused. I thought we were sitting in a mansion up on a hill and talking.”

Ercan looks at me, opens his mouth to say something, and then closes it again. 

It’s strange to see him in his richly embroidered shirt, the finely tailored Kerul suit, the ceremonial sheath and jeweled knife at his chest. I sort of miss the dirty bowler hat. “Point taken," he says.

“Do we need them? Need the rest of Kerul? What’s stopping us from talking to the Chancellor, the city councilors on our own? You’ve clearly got money, Ercan. What’s stopping you from hiring your own army?”

Ercan thinks about this before he answers. “There’s money and then there’s money, Blackwell. One of my own garrisons from up river is coming in to reinforce the city’s troops, but that won’t be much. I’ve made some overtures to some of the bigger mercenary companies, but frankly they’ve laughed at what I’ve got to spend. I think Nadrune has tied them all up already, anyway, paying them just to stay out of it. I could talk to the Chancellor directly, of course. He knows of me. Though the Kerul Family Chair won’t be happy about that.”

“It sounds like they’re already not very happy.”

“True. But I’d like to have something to offer the Chancellor, something more than just good wishes.”

“You could offer him me.”

He studies me, thinking. “You could actually be a big help, you know. We could make the same kind of broadcasts that Nadrune is distributing, and get you talking directly to the people in the city. I know you’re not a political kind of creature, and I know one Family doesn’t look all that different from another from the outside. But there’s more at stake here than just one Family’s future.”

“That would help?” I was thinking of something a little more direct. Marshaling a garrison of grohvers. Blasting a phalanx of marines. Actually using that podship that I just risked my life for. I have no idea what a lowerspace emitter does, but I’d really like to find out.

“Sure. Right now they’re seeing the Akarii as this solid wall of power rolling over them. You’ll show some cracks in their armor.”

I think about it. “I can do that, if it’ll help. And, I have some people who may be able to help us out, too.”

“Mercenaries?”

“They think of themselves as protection.” 

I’m thinking of Capone, of course. I lay it out for him, and explain what I’m thinking.

I’ve been considering this since being accosted by those two wannabe gangsters on Nadrune’s observation deck. 

“The Al Capone who is locked up has no future, Ercan, and he knows it. I’ve told him—that’s one of the reasons he keeps working with me. I pull him out, bring him back here, we soak him in the aether to clear up the syphilis, and we bring as many of his men along as we can. We bring even more weapons, and train our people to use them. I’m guessing the Tel Kharan haven’t faced Earth weapons before. I'm guessing warding’s not much good against gunfire.”

“Protection,” Ercan considers. “That might create some problems later, if they stick around.”

“It might. Like any big group of mercenaries would. We can worry about that if there is a later.”

Ercan nods. “All right. You’re really walking around in Earth’s past? Doesn’t that change things? Aren’t you going to devastate their future or something?”

I shake my head. “I can take them back to the same place, the same time, and they won’t be able to talk about what they see with anyone that wasn’t involved. The timeline is pretty resilient, and they’re pretty locked in. If they die here, their timeline will already have an explanation. I’ve read books on Capone—once he’s released from prison, he’s never the same man again. He goes rapidly down hill until he dies, insane, in some place called Mhiahmi. 

"That could mean we’ve already brought him over here, or someone else has, and that he was replaced by someone else to live out the rest of the Earth timeline.”

“That happens?”

“Yeah, the Buhr do it now on Earth, for a price. I see them scuttling up and down the corpse roads a lot. Here, too. Celebrities that die suddenly? Or that disappear in an explosion? A ship lost at sea? A podship crash? If they’re wealthy, and can pay, they might get a visit from the Buhr just in time. They might be on some beach now on some world we’ve never heard of.” 

There’s more to this, but I’ll explain later.

Ercan shakes his head. “How much? For Capone's protection?”

I name a price that covers what I think Al will ask for. “We’ll get credit for saving his life, of course.  But we'll need to pay him off for the podship, too. Or at least I will. He was funding me.”

Ercan blinks, whistles, and then considers it. 

“It’ll hurt, but can do that, I think," he says. "But I’ll need you with Kerul, Blackwell. Not with Nadrune. I’ll need you talking about that on the knife, a lot, and I'll probably need you on the ground too when we get your men in. And I’ll need that podship, at least while the Akarii are still sitting out there in the lagoon.”

I nod. “You’re not going to put a collar on me?”

“No collars. When the invasion is over, you do what you want.”

I’m in. We shake hands, I keep my claws retracted. 

I feel pretty good about this, actually. Much better than Nadrune’s ‘bargain.’ 

“About Te’loria. Fehris thinks we need to get back into Nadrune’s city, and get the podship near the Sister again?”

“Fehris thinks a lot of things, you know. If Nadrune is smart, she’s already installing the Sister in the Alabaster Tower, next to the others."

I nod.  "She’s trying to get it to speak to her. Will it?”

“Damned if I know. I was going to ask you. I hope not. Look, if you and Fehris want to go hunting Te’loria when all this is over, more power to you.”

“Mircada is still on Nadrune’s city,” I say, trying to keep a neutral tone.

Ercan frowns. “There are things you need to know about Mircada, Blackwell. I’m concerned, but not just because she’s still onboard.”

“You’re not worried she’s been discovered by the Akarii?” I am.

He won’t meet my eyes. “She’s been ‘discovered’ for a long time," he says. She works with me, and we go way back, but she’s been very close with some of their elite for years now. It’s how we got on the Retriever ship to start with, how we found out about the podship.”

I frown. “So what are you saying, exactly?”

“Just that there’s a lot of Akarii money there, Blackwell. Far more than I’ve got. And Mircada has a taste for really expensive things. Look, she’s brilliant operationally, and that’s why I’ve needed her. And she’s a friend, of course. We went to the College together, even had a brief thing once. Just once,” he says, as my hair starts to darken, “and a long time ago, ok? But sometimes I’ve given her some information, information about Kerul that no one would generally know. Some of it was true, and some of it wasn’t, and there’s no way someone else could have known it. And then I’ve seen that information come back to me through other channels. She gives me information too, no question about that, so on balance I've been ok with that.. I guess what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t worry about her. She can take care of herself. And I’m telling you to be careful. Don’t get too…attached.”

I frown and shake my head. “I think I’d have noticed if she was working for the Akarii.” I’m trying to ignore the sinking feeling that’s back to growing in my stomach.

“Would you? Were you with her all the time? Did you see everyone she met with?”

“No,” I say, reluctantly. “But I can’t believe…”

There's shouting coming from the hallway. I feel the blast of aether before I see it. Before I can think, I’m already crouched in between Ercan and the open door with Semper’s knife in my hand and all my fur standing on end. “Get down,” I say as, from the direction of the garden room, come the sounds of an explosion, and hot air covers us in dust.

29: Kjatyrhna

I
n the garden, Kjat is working hard to appear casual when inside she is anything but. The featherwolves are with her now. She’s not sure she remembers how she pulled herself back together from what happened in the underdecks. She remembers stumbling into a shop, a calming voice that must have been Ercan’s? But they are churning under her skin and in her head and it is all she can do to keep them from bursting out of her gut and spilling out onto the cobblestones here with her intestines in their teeth. Blackjackals bark and howl in her ears so loudly that she struggles to hear anything else. She can’t speak or she knows she’ll howl with them the way she did on the city-ship. She wants to rend and tear into things, to feel the warm blood. She wants to leap into the air and fly, to swoop down on the Old City below in a dark fury and lay waste to the ornate towers, set fire to apartments and shops and mansions, to city guard and Akarii alike.

And behind the creatures? There's something else. Something fierce and brilliant that wants to come through.

She shakes her head. Part of her knows she is changing, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it. But more of her now wants the change, wants to relax into it, no to
revel
in it.

Blackwell makes it both better and worse. Better, because there is just something about being around him that makes her stronger. Part of it is how she knows she feels about him, even after finding him with that Kerul woman. Part of it is because both the blackjackals and the featherwolves fear and hate him, and that gives her leverage. Worse, because being near him sets them into a fury that she’s not sure she can control.

But then why should she even try, she tells herself. Why not let go?

Because she must, a smaller, weaker part of her protests. Because she is still Kjatyrhna and not what she is becoming.

But there is no beauty to who I was, she thinks. She killed then, too, only she did it poorly and then regretted it. The time on the grasslands, when she drove that red spear though the chest of that old Hulgliev.

Blackwell will discover that, sooner or later.

Blackwell is nothing.

Blackwell will discover it and will send her away.

He won’t find out. How could he?

He will. And then he will leave her. Blackwell is all she has left. He can be her savior. He can be her redemption. By saving him she can atone for that senseless death.

Blackwell is standing in her way of becoming truly great. 

She is leaning on that red spear again, gazing into the Hulgliev’s fierce eyes and watching the life drain out of them, over and over, watching the creature’s face and body go pale and limp while the cheers and ecstatic screams from all of the people around her fade into nothing.

She should have resisted. She should have snuck away somehow, like she did later that year. 

But she hadn’t.

She hadn’t, and what was awful about that was how she held back. She could have laid waste to all those disciples, all their flock. The red of their capes could have become the red of their blood, and the grasslands could have been bathed in it. She could have called on the blackjackals and they would have answered her.

She wasn’t ready.

She’s ready now. 

A featherwolf spins, and she can feel the skin across her gut ripple. She can feel it palpitating in her chest and crawling along the length of her limbs just beneath her skin, warm and full of a dark strength that belongs all to her, now.

Is she fooling herself to think she can master them?

She is their master. They do only what she wishes, just the way they did in the city-ship.

She is restless, eager to put it to use, and with the Akarii so close now it would be easy. Tamaranth doesn’t have any allure for her, the way she knows it does for Blackwell. It’s just another city, as dirty and as filled up with people as the rest of them were, and this one was soaked with the damp air of the mangrove swamps.

Let it burn. 

Let it be cleansed, like all of the filth of this world, until it was clean and pristine once again. 

It could happen now, this very moment: she and Blackwell could take that podship back into the air, and together they could lay waste to the lines of Tel Kharan that marched through the city.

Not Blackwell. She doesn’t need him. Why would she? She is stronger. She can take on ten patrols of Tel Kharan herself. More, even. She is her own army.

She grips her small hands into fists and then releases them, exhaling with some of the Bakarh relaxation mantras in her mind. She is Kjatyrhna Silstra. She is a mage. She cares for Blackwell.

She is so much more than that now.

She kicks aimlessly at loose stones strewn among the plants. The palpitations grow worse. Her vision blurs at the outside edges. She goes back into the garden room where fat Fehris sits monitoring the knife. He looks at her, nervously, and then looks away as usual, not meeting her eyes. She sighs, clenches her fists again. She studies his pale, uncalloused hands and the smooth fur of his face, the rich embroidery of the Kerul clothes he wears and shakes her head. 

Has he ever been hungry? Has he ever had to do real work? Her lip curls. The blackjackals twist. 

She sits down on the dusty chair across the table from him, leans her head on one hand and stares at him until he reluctantly looks up at her.

When he does, his eyes go wide. 

He’s seeing her now. At last. 

“What?” he says.

“So I get it that you can’t stand me,” Kjat says, angrily. “What is it, exactly? That I’m just a familyless mage? That I’m broke and wear the same clothes every day? That I’m a strong woman? I thought you Kerul were supposed to be so egalitarian, but all I get from you are those looks.” 

She’s not sure where the words are coming from. But they feel right.

“What looks?”

“That one.”

Fehris puts down the knife and stands up, brushing his hands down the front of his robe. He sneezes twice, quite violently. “You really don’t want to have this conversation.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation?” Kjat parrots, cynically. “This is a conversation? I know, I know. I suppose you’re just too much of a high and mighty Kerul sage to talk down to someone who actually has to do some real work for a living.”