Beyond the Shadows (25 page)

An Enforcer is a part of this?
Yara’s feeling left her hands as she felt her shock steal through her body, leaving behind a terrifying numbness.

How deep did this revolution go? If those tasked with keeping order in the mid cities were on Cyn’s side, the Elite were in real danger. Without the Enforcers on their side, they didn’t have the numbers to quell an uprising.

Yara’s fear gripped her. This was much bigger, much more organized than she ever could have imagined. It wasn’t just criminals on the ground. All of Azra was about to take up arms. Why hadn’t anyone seen this coming?

Cyn stashed Bug in his belt and led Yara toward the canopy cruiser. “We need a way around the Elite communications array. The Nudari have developed angrav tech and have modified ships ready to rise. But they can’t enter the high cities until we disable the com system, or the cannons will take them out.”

Why was he telling her this? He just gave away their greatest weakness, communication.

“Cobra,” the Enforcer greeted. “You brought a guest, I see. Welcome back, Yara.”

Cyn looked at the woman as if he had known her for years, another of his trusted soldiers. “Just take us down. I need to meet with Ceer.”

Cyn helped Yara up onto the step of the cruiser and seated her on one of the bank seats along the side. They lifted off without another word. Yara watched the turbulent waters of the ocean fly beneath them. Occasionally, the form of a large felam beast stalking schools of fish would darken the clear waters.

As they reached the sea cliffs of her home, instead of rising to the canopy of the dense forest, they cut through it. Yara had to hold on as the cruiser darted with precise agility through the thick foliage of the outer forests. As they came under the shadow of the canopy, the smell of rot and decay choked her. She fought the urge to vomit as the putrid air stung her eyes.

Daylight faded into shadow, lit only by fires burning in pockets of darkness. A city formed beneath them, bits of light Yara could barely make out through her stinging eyes.
City
was a generous term. It was as if people had desperately tied together decades of refuse to create shelter, resulting in a tangled maze of jagged garbage and dreck.

Nothing could shelter her from the smell of sickness and death. Black mud clung to everything, painting it in sludge and stealing what little light remained in this depraved darkness.

Mercy of the Matriarchs, it was worse than anything Yara had ever imagined. There were children here?

She looked over at Cyn; his expression seemed as hard and calculating as the moniker he had adopted, Cobra, the snake of Cyrila, but in his eyes she caught something else, a lingering sadness.

He had been a child here. This sickness was his home. This was
his
Azra.

The ship slowed, and the air seemed to thicken around her. She fought the urge to cough as she inhaled slowly through her mouth. She could taste the filth. How would she ever get the smell off her skin? This was a place of disease.

Did the Grand Sister know what she was sentencing people to?

She didn’t know what was worse, the slow fall to the ground for those sentenced to live in this cesspool or the quick one for those condemned to death.

She managed to breathe without choking, but her eyes still streamed.

Tuz sneezed and vigorously rubbed his face with his paw.

The weight of gravity pressed down on her as the glider slowed to a stop on a crooked platform, spliced together from two different pieces of cracked metal.

Yara blinked through her burning eyes long enough to gaze out on a towering pile of garbage. That is what it looked like, anyway. Bits of old ships, great fallen limbs, and jutting pieces of discarded metal and wood formed a maze of leaning shacks covered with a thick black mud.

The humid air buzzed with insects, but Yara couldn’t see them in the dim light of small fires burning here and there throughout the maze of debris. The entire slum seemed abandoned. The heavy choking air didn’t move at all.

“Welcome to Ahul. It’s relatively safe here,” Cyn stated as he leapt down off the platform onto a street of packed mud. “This section of the city is protected by the Cyri.”

As if on cue, two young women carrying torches marched toward them. The younger girl, no more than sixteen, wore flimsy scraps of rags tied over her young breasts and around her too-thin waist. The older of the two wore what remained of a low-cut smock, its sleeves and skirt hacked back to reveal long, jagged, and rusted blades tied to her arms, legs, and shoulders. Each one brandished a staff with a rough-cut metal spike protruding from the end.

Yara found herself staring at the starlike scars arching across the chest of the younger girl. Were they brands? Had she done that to herself? Somehow, she didn’t think so, and the thought made her sick. The other guard bore the telltale puckering on the skin of her abdomen. She had borne a child here.

Yet in their eyes, she saw strength and resolve. Yara felt like she was looking into the faces of any of the Elite. There was power here in the shadows.

Cyn helped her down, and the two guards watched her with suspicious eyes. Suddenly she felt ashamed. She’d never thought of the people down here as people. In all honesty, she hadn’t given them much thought at all. They’d been an abstraction.

This was too real, and her guilt ate at her.

“Come with me,” Cyn murmured in her ear.

They passed down narrow alleys of packed dirt.

“Outside of the gates of Ahul, the mud is looser, filled with insects that will strip your flesh if you step in the wrong place,” Cyn stated. Yara immediately picked up her feet, treading gingerly on the ground.

Cyn watched her awkward hop but didn’t acknowledge it as he continued. “The whore-masters build houses up some of the larger trunks where they hold the girls prisoner. Higher up the trunks, out of the stench, they build clean and decent
houses
just below the mid-cities. They take their enslaved whores and bring them up to the higher brothels to work so the high-hawks don’t have to get dirty.”

He kept his hand on her, but his eyes remained wary, and he held one of his knives in his hand. Yara barely had time to process the systematic exploitation of the women before he stilled, listening to the sounds around him like a stealthy beast of the forest.

“I thought you said it was safe here.” She stared into the shadows, suddenly aware of the feeling of being watched.

“No place is really safe down here. My mother did her best to create law and security out of the chaos, but sometimes the mad ones get in.” He looked back over his shoulder, then continued at the same careful and steady pace. “The Cyri are in a constant battle with the whore-masters. The attacks never stop.” He brought her to a hollow trunk of a long dead eldar tree. The center had been carved out by rot, and the interior bustled with activity.

In front of the strange dwelling, a woman with shaved hair, a heavily scarred face, and a missing eye crossed her arms and glared at them.

“You bring pretty presents, boy.” The woman scowled, then spared a glance to Tuz, who had a similar expression on his face.

Suddenly a little boy wearing no more than a rotting sack for clothing ran out of the tavern and threw himself on Cyn’s leg. The boy bore the same scars across his neck and arms that the younger guard had.

Cyn smoothed his hand over the boy’s hair and gently pushed him toward one of the guards.

“The Nudari are ready. Have you heard from the other islands?” Cyn asked the one-eyed woman.

The other islands? Yara closed her burning eyes as she realized all of Azra was involved. The high cities would turn into a slaughterhouse. Forty Elite warriors, the guardians of the temple, and maybe a thousand Enforcers couldn’t take on ground dwellers and all of the Nudari, especially if the Enforcers were in on the conspiracy.

The one-eyed woman wiped her hands on a ragged bit of cloth. “We have a total force of over one thousand three hundred from the ground.”

Yara saw the unfolding disaster in her mind, and each time seemed more bloody and hopeless. There had to be a way to stop this.

Before she realized what she was doing, she glanced up at Cyn. What was she thinking? He was the one behind this. He wasn’t going to help stop it.

He met her gaze, the fires reflecting in his eyes.

“I need a place to interrogate the prisoner,” he said, without taking his eyes off her. There was no malice in his voice, no threat. But she still felt paralyzed by the horror around her.

The woman slapped the bit of cloth over her shoulder, as if they were discussing ordering a drink at some Scum bar. “Take her to the storehouse around back.”

Cyn took her away from the light of the doorway. In the near darkness, she had to depend on him to lead her. He moved slowly, keeping a hand on the rotting trunk of the dead eldar as they climbed over large coiling roots and ducked under haphazard and threadbare awnings with support poles thrust into the decaying tree.

They tucked themselves under a hanging bit of cloth that served as a door, and Yara froze as she found herself in pitch darkness.

Cyn moved with ease and lit a single taper that smelled pungent but offered the small shack a little light.

Cyn placed the tiny light on an overturned bucket between them. “It’s past time we had our talk.”

“SO TALK,” YARA STATED AS TUZ PERCHED ON A HALF-BROKEN CRATE AND sniffed at the mud on his paw. The flickering light from their small fire cast her face in a wavering light. Cyn didn’t know where to begin. He only knew he had to tell her everything. He had to somehow convince her to join his side.

It was now or never.

“I know you’re mad,” he began.

“Mad?” She half laughed.

“We’re going to argue here, now?” He didn’t want things to erupt between them the way they had in the brig. He needed her. He needed her to see all that he was and to understand.

Yara frowned but let him continue.

“I’m sorry I lied about my name, but what was I supposed to do? Shake your hand and introduce myself as Cyn? That would have gone over well.” He crossed his arms. If he had admitted his name from the start, he’d be in a cell in the high cities right now waiting for the Grand Sister to use him for her own sick schemes.

Yara looked down at a half-rotted casing for an old environmental control system. The tension fell out of her shoulders. “I know why you hid your name. I can’t blame you . . . for that.”

“If you need more to blame me for, I’ve got a running list.”

Yara sat back on a heap of junk and looked up at him from under an arched brow.

The blackness of the small room closed in until all he could see was her face. He couldn’t joke anymore. She had to understand. Time was running out for them. “My name is dangerous,” he admitted, feeling the truth of his words. Even here, his real identity could kill him. “You’re one of a handful of people who know it.” He tightened a buckle on his bracers. His identity had to remain secret. He couldn’t lead his people and fight off bloodhunters and the assassins of the whore-masters at the same time.

“Would these people still follow you if they knew who you were?” she asked.

To her, his name was synonymous with disgrace. Her Elite world was so small, could she see the pain of all of Azra? Azra needed a hero. The name didn’t matter.

“The Nudari would follow me no matter what my name. They would follow anyone willing to offer them justice for the deaths of their children.” He paused.

Yara could appease them. He knew it. Dalan had seen her face and knew the truth. All the Nudari wanted was retribution and security. If she offered them justice from the throne, his Pix could prevent this war. He lingered on that thought. She couldn’t prevent it alone. She needed the loyalty of all of Azra, and Azra was deeply divided in so many ways.

Yara let out a long, slow breath, making the flame of the candle dodge the shifting air. “The Nudari are patriarchal. What about the Canopy-Azralen? The women of the mid- and high cities aren’t going to follow a man into war,” she dismissed.

“Are you sure about that?” He crossed his arms as the flame flickered and dimmed. The quiet isolation of the darkness forced him to see her and only her. “What about the men?”

“The men aren’t going to fight.”

His expression hardened. “I fight.”

She huffed, “You aren’t—” Her eyes went wide as she clearly realized she was heading into a stupid mistake. He could see it in her abashed look.

“From Azra?” He glared at her.

“Damn it, Cyrus.” She shifted, twisting her body, but there was no room to move.

“My name is Cyn.” He lowered himself onto a broken stool, feeling like a cat about to pounce on unsuspecting prey. “Where have you been the last ten years? When was the last time you spoke with one of the male artisans of the mid-cities?” He pounded his fist on the bucket, nearly overturning the candle. “Oh, that’s right. The men from the mid-cities aren’t allowed to sell their own work. They have to be gouged by an approved, which means female, dealer from the high cities, so the women don’t have to debase themselves.”

“You’re being dramatic,” she defended.

He shook his head in disbelief. “Have you spoken with any of the scientists? No. Why? They aren’t allowed to keep or represent their work. It is stolen from them by the government. You haven’t noticed, because the high cities don’t bother to look down, but the economy of the mid-cities is crumbling. Even the women of the mid-cities are frustrated and ready for change.”

Yara took a deep breath and twisted her fingers together. She looked afraid and so very alone. Her humility cooled his anger. He wanted to reach out and touch her, convince her that the problems of Azra could be solved, but at this point, he couldn’t see how.