Beasts of the Walking City (35 page)

Bakron studies her. From the frank, appraising look in his eyes, she can tell what he’s thinking. He didn’t take a great deal of insight—everything is written right there on his face for her to read.

“So you’ll bring him right to Nadrune’s side, and then you’ll be richly rewarded,” he says.

“Something like that.”

“How richly?”

Mircada studies Bakron, then. She doubles the amount Nadrune has promised, adds a little more, and tells him.

He blinks. Then he takes another gulp of the wine. It was very good wine, brought up from deep in the cellar at the Chancellor’s Residence, some of the Chancellor’s private stores. 

Mircada doubts that Bakron is appreciating it just then, though.

“Half again as much.”

“For what, exactly?” 

“All I’m asking is to be there.”

“Be there?” Mircada frowns.

“When that Beast shows up, I want to know about it. That’s all. Nadrune doesn’t need to know.”

It’s a little more than a small fortune. She’ll change her name and retire somewhere in the southern continent, she thinks. She’ll pay a someone to help her deal with herself.

Mircada’s family has been dirt poor for decades, despite being one of the older Kerul lines. Such a sum could buy them a mansion up next to Ercan’s. It could have paid off all of her father’s massive gambling debts and kept her mother in the latest fashions for years, if she was still speaking to her family. 

If they were even alive, something she didn’t spend much time wondering about.

“What makes you think I won’t talk to Nadrune about this little conversation?”

Bakron smiles knowingly. It’s incredibly irritating. “You seem like a practical girl to me. I’m guessing you’re a little more enterprising than that.”

It bothers her that his assessment is accurate. “I will not have him hurt.”

“Your precious Meast.” He frowns and looked away. “Do you think I, too, am a monster?”

“I do.”

Bakron grins. “On Jhestet’s Tits, then, I will make it a fair fight. That is the best I will offer you.”

She figures the odds of Bakron and Blackwell. As aggressive as Bakron is, and as skilled a mage, she didn’t think the marine would be able to stand against Blackwell. 

Not from what she’d hear about in that warehouse.

She knows she’s justifying it to herself. It really doesn’t matter whether Blackwell could take Bakron or not, her betrayal is the same. Bad enough she was using Ercan—she had been doing that since Nadrune’s people had approached her a year ago. Worse that she’s gone to Nadrune with the plan for Blackwell, but that was just trading one family for another—after all, hadn’t Ercan's idea been that she’d use herself to bring Blackwell to Kerul in the first place? 

She’s just looking for the highest bidder, and that’s been Nadrune up until now. 

But selling him to Bakron now is another thing entirely. Nadrune would use Blackwell for her own ends, much the way Ercan might have, though Ercan would be a lot nicer about it.

But Bakron will try and kill him.

Yes, she admits, since she’s being completely honest with herself. Yes, she does care about Blackwell. More than a little. 

It was not just the physical side of things. It was the way he looked at her with those large liquid eyes, the way he held her carefully to him. The quick, easy way he laughed with her when they were alone. The simple, uncomplicated sincerity of him underneath all of that fur. 

When was the last time she had seen that in a human?

She closed her eyes, finishes her wine. Then she agrees to Bakron’s price.

Her mother would have been proud.

Bakron makes his own pass at her at the door, of course. He draws her in with one metal arm, mashes his blunt face against hers, and sticks his tongue in her mouth. All of the hard angles of the armor press painfully against her and his tongue is the size of a cow’s. 

She pushes away, and smacks him across the face.

Hard, but not too hard.

He just grins infuriatingly back at her.

32: Blackwell

B
efore I know it, I’m somehow already in the podship, trying to figure out the controls. I’m cursing and saying something about rescue and my idea is to take the podship and fly it right into the side of the Chancellor’s Residence, where Nadrune is holed up with Mircada. If I hit it hard enough, I’m thinking, maybe the whole crumbling thing will fall over and, hero that I am, I can jump in and pull her out of the rubble.

Like I’ve said, I’m not the best at planning these things.

Fortunately Ercan is smarter than I am. He talks me down. “We need to coordinate this, Blackwell. Do you miss Nadrune’s collar that much?”

“They will kill her if I don’t show, Ercan. You didn’t see the look on Nadrune’s face. I’ve got to go now.”

Ercan frowns. “Mircada can take care of herself for a few more hours. You’re doing exactly what Nadrune wants you to do right now. Don’t you think Nadrune has thought this through? Don’t you think they’re ready for you? We need to come at this a better way.”

“Let me guess. You want to go and talk with the rest of Kerul about what this better way is for a few more days.”

Ercan shakes his head. “We stick to plan. We get your Earth people. We get with Councilor Ghat and see what she’s planning. We coordinate an approach that puts Nadrune where we want her, and then we go and get Mircada.”

“But they’ll …”

He cuts me off. “Mircada is the only leverage Nadrune has on you right now. She’s using her because she wants you very badly, apparently. She’ll wait a few days before doing anything drastic.”

He’s right, of course. 

At least I think he’s right. 

I take a deep breath. “When can we start?”

“As soon as you get out of that pilot’s seat.”

“Who’s flying?”

Ercan calls over one of the Kruks, the same one who was working communications for him before—I recognize the bright greens and yellows painted across his flanks.

I raise an eyebrow. “A Kruk pilot?”

“I’ve seen the way you fly. How much worse can he be?”

I shrug. He’s got a point. We load up Capone, and we’re in the air in twenty minutes.

It’s night. The Builder’s moon and the Dancer’s moon drift slowly across the sky. We’re trying to stay out of sight, so we surf low over one of the Residential sections, where Festivaal parties are going on. Typical Tamaranth: people are out on rooftops in full costume, dancing and drinking and watching the not-so-distant pyrotechnics. I hear snatches of music playing, get glimpses of elaborate Festivaal masks and bowler hats. People raise up glasses and cheer as we float past them, and I know they have no idea who we are. 

Then we’re over the Fan, the bunches of warehouses and commercial areas between the Residential areas and the Old City. Ghat’s district is on the far side of the city, and we have to cross both the Fan and the Old City to get there. Apartment buildings, offices, warehouses—most of these are deserted since they’re likely next on Nadrune’s list. All the canals are flooding too, since the sea wall was blown, and many of the buildings are partially submerging. Some people are on rooftops here, too, though they're looking a lot less festive.

Capone is strapped into the seat next to me. He’s not saying too much, and I’m sure it’s all a lot to take in. He keeps eyeing the brightly-painted Kruk next to him, who’s acting as his nurse. The smaller Kruk, painted in blues and reds, fluffs her mane and eyes him back. I imagine she’s wondering if he needs an undertongue treatment to match the aether-bath she gave him awhile back.

Then we’re skimming over the Commons, which is a big flat lake right now from the flooding. A few Kruk bateaux pole their way across the rising water while humans and Talovians are moving from building to building, salvaging or looting shops—it’s hard to say which, but I can guess. A small spiked whale surfaces below us in the Stellar Downs. I can’t see it from here, but water must be pouring down into the Warrens, most of which is underground. I don’t want to think about how bad that must be. Where would everyone go?

It looks like the Tel Kharan have largely retreated from the streets as they’d begun to fill with water. But the Council Chambers and the vast Chancellor’s Residence are wrapped in bright Akarii warding, and wards shimmer around the gardens and the Alabaster Tower too.

I see another podship lift up into the air, over by the Alabaster Tower. 

“Over there,” I say, and point. “Do you think they see us?”

No one answers, because it quickly becomes clear that it’s coming at us now. Coming pretty fast.

The Kruk pilot thrums his undertongue and laughs.

I gulp. “Hang on,” I shout, as the pilot grins wide and flips a switch. He leans over and punches something, an old iPod that’s stuck onto the console, and music blasts into the cockpit, an Earth band called the Sex Pistols. 

Then the pilot fluffs up his mane and rockets us up into the sky, leaving my stomach behind.

I look at Ercan.
Really
, I want to say.
A Kruk pilot
. 

He shrugs, as if to say
well, here we go
.

“This is going to get rough,” I shout, leaning over to Capone. He nods and grips the edge of his seat with white knuckles.

A blast of tracer fire speeds past us from the Tel Kharan ship and another bursts below us, rocking the podship. The Kruk pilot bellows, cranks the music higher and lets loose green gas from the sacs under its arms. His hands fly across the controls. 

We plunge back down at the city, level out, spin through a gap between some taller buildings and then swing about and drop into the street. The Tel Kharan ship passes over us, going too fast to stop. Capone leans over and vomits onto the floor, and then Kruk lift us into the air again in the Tel Kharan’s wake.

The Tel Kharan ship flies at us again, and the Kruk whips us around to face it. He throws more power to the engines and charges at the other podship, despite Ercan’s shouts to do exactly the opposite. Both the Kruks are howling now from all of their heads and the nurse Kruk is pumping her fist in the air to the music, and Ercan, Capone and I are coughing and struggling to breath from the gas. 

As the two ships close I can see the petrified looks on the faces of all of the mages in the external netting before the Tel Kharan pilot breaks away, pulls down and to the right and clips an old iron gargoyle off a roof as we shoot past them. 

It goes down hard into a big parking lot.

The Kruk swings around in a long circle to come back at them, but I reach forward and put my hand on his hindquarters. He looks at me with wild eyes, and I shake my head. “There,” I shout, pointing at the far Residential section, this one with tall houses topped with steeply peaked and gabled roofs. “I want to take them out, too, but we’ve got to get there!”

The Kruk blinks, shakes himself in frustration. But then he nods.

• • •

We put down in a small square, tiled in old blue slate and surrounded by older homes. A fountain still sputters water erratically from the mouth in the shape of a giant goat’s head.

Councilor Ghat is there to meet us. She’s a dark-skinned older human, much like an older Kjat, with long white hair, bright violet eyes, and she’s got the commanding presence of the general she had been once, before going into politics. She wears a grohver rider’s thick enameled armor and as we climb out of the ship her grip on my arm is firm and resolute, a warrior’s grip.

“Ercan Kerul. Blackwell. A beautiful ship you have there! You might not remember me, Hulgliev, but I certainly remember pulling you out of the mangroves one night some years back. You’re not easy to forget.” The knife at her chest was an old one, battered and scarred about the hilt from a lot of use. The armor she wears does nothing to cover a thick white scar that crosses her throat from side to side.

“I was grateful for that ride,” I say, grinning. “It would have been a long walk home.”

“So it would have.” She smiles. “I was disappointed to hear you’d gone over to that fat, flaming witch, Blackwell. Glad to learn that not everything I hear is true.” 

I nod, flattered.

“Councilor Ghat,” Ercan says. “Thanks for meeting with us.”

“Please, Ercan. You know any Family support…” She holds up a hand as Ercan opens his mouth, “…even if it’s
unofficial
support is a godssend for us.” She led us into one of the smaller houses on the square. The smaller Kruk helps Capone along. He’s pale and still working to get his balance back. Men and women, human and Kruk and a white Halfromen throw netting over the ship to camouflage it. A minute later, the Tel Kharan ship passes high overhead but doesn’t slow.

Ghat pulls out a chair for herself and sits, gesturing for us to do the same. The rough table here is covered with city maps, and a slender human woman with pale hair and eyes the same color as Ghat’s is making notes on them. They’re troop positions, locations of the Akarii—as I’d guessed, it looks like they hold the Residence, the Alabaster Tower, and the Chambers, but I'm surprised to see they have pulled back from the Warrens and are holding at Hechinger’s Bridge.

Ghat puts her heavy, booted feet up on the table and pushes back in her chair. “So tell me, oh Mr. Kerul. Why is your family holding back? Where are the rest of your troops? You all made a pledge some years ago, if my memory still serves me. In fact, I think I signed the motion next to Family Chair Abeloc himself, the old lecher, just before he died.”

Ercan nods. Someone hands him tea and he sips at it. “Kerul is considering its move, Councilor. I wish I could say I had better news. I can say that Chair Shoi wishes to help you, but the senior members of the Families feel there are many factors to discuss.”

“As ever.” Councilor Ghat’s violet eyes glitter fiercely. “Kerul
considers
a great deal. But will it
act
is what I want to know! And when! All of us know that it’s only a matter of time until Nadrune gets the Old City under control, and then she’s going to move into the main Residential areas. You tell old Donhovan to get off his fat ass and do something for
us
for a change. That mansion of his up there in the mountains is going to get pretty chilly if he has to get his power feeds all the way from Tilkasnioc. Yours too, Ercan.”