Vergence (64 page)

The small man lifted his head, and watched as he approached. Ebryn stepped past a severed arm and a body lying half in shadows with the top of it's head missing, shorn away along with the helmet it had worn. Some of the soldiers had made it this far, but none had survived, it seemed, apart from the four prisoners.

As Fla moved, the four men groaned in unison, their mouths opening and shutting together. Like the guards on the steps he doubted there was much left of the original men in the shells of their bodies.

Ebryn could see only the right hand side of Fla's face. A single eye, as bright and dark as a winged battlefield scavenger, watched him, searching his face.

“They kindly volunteered to help me by sharing my pain,” Fla said, following Ebryn's eyes. “It took four of them, in the end, but I haven't felt this free for as long as I can remember. Our vitality is shared now — cut me, and they all bleed. Something I borrowed from a librarian friend.”

“I'm not here to admire your work,” Ebryn said.

“They sent you to kill me?” Fla said, his voice flat, and toneless.

“No, I came here for myself, not to kill,” Ebryn said.

Fla laughed, a rasping mirthless sound. “What? Capture me then?”

“They sent me to get rid of the sevyric iron. The ones who want to harm you are following.”

“Why then, the iron is gone?”

“While you were loosing your creatures on this city, I was in Senesella. I had a chance to consider what I saw when Sash was hurt.”

“Sashael?” Fla asked, his voice coming out as little more than a croaking sound.

“Sash is safe,” Ebryn said. “I took her home, where they could heal her.”

Fla dropped his head and turned away in his seat, body heaving in great, silent convulsions, and with each movement the four soldiers groaned.

When Fla looked up again a dark line marked where a tear ran down his cheek. “Why did you come?

“I need to know something,” Ebryn said. “You were following us before we were attacked near the spike.”

“Yes—”

“You tried to help us—”

“For Sashael,” Fla said, scowling. “To protect Sashael. Only Sashael, not you.”

“Using a casting?”

Fla grunted. “What else?”

“You used a casting before I folded the spike away,” Ebryn said.

Silence settled over the room. Fla stared at him.

“We're the same. I felt it,” Ebryn said. “I can get rid of sevyric iron, but it doesn't affect you at all, does it? You knew what I could do, why didn't you talk to me?”

Fla spat dark stained spittle onto the floor near his feet. “Why should I talk to you? As I boy, I knew not to show this, I hid what I could do. Look what they did to you, look what happened to Sashael because of you, because you wouldn't hide what you are. You saved her — yes, but they nearly killed her because of you.”

Fla's words felt like a blow to his stomach. Sash's mother had told him much the same thing just an hour past.

“You're right. I was stupid when I came here. I didn't know what sevyric iron was then, but I should have realised its significance when I did the admission test. I'd have kept your secret though, we're the same.”

“You think we're the same?” Fla said. “You understand nothing. You're not like me.”

Fla pushed his hood back, letting it fall away to reveal his full face. The other half of his head looked a grotesque mess, resembling something assembled from bloated remains of a decaying corpse. His bad eye sat lopsided, and his crooked teeth were permanently exposed by misshapen thin lips. Bruise-coloured swellings stretched from the visible part of his neck to the top of his head. In places, open sores on his skin oozed a rancid grey coloured liquid.

“
This
is what it's like to be different. Do we look the same to you?”

“It's not how we look, it's what we are, why we're different from everybody else,” Ebryn said.

Fla glanced towards the corner where a figure, like a man with shining iron skin, crouched on the ground like a toad preparing to leap. It radiated pure power, reminding him of the archon he'd met on Arborea. Not an archon, he realised, a demi-archon, or prince of some ephemeral realm, hunched down in the shadows like a servant.

“There's more, isn't there? You know why we're like this,” Ebryn said, catching the look between Fla and his creature. “It's not by chance we can both do these things.”

Fla's face twisted. “Isn't it obvious? We weren’t born as other men, we were bred for this, to be weapons in a war.”

“Whose war — who did this?” Ebryn asked, although he suspected he already knew the answer.

“Who's in the library, wearing shackles of sevyric iron?”

Ebryn felt as if his insides had fallen away. “You mean Ben-gan?”

“No, not Ben-gan. Do you think I'd look like this, if he'd had a hand in making me. The stuff is his creation, why would he oppose it? If he didn't want them to have it, he wouldn't have made it. Besides, his skill is not so easily limited by sevyric iron, as others like to think. It was Sevoi, Hoi, and the others,” Fla said, spitting on the floor. “They bred ephemerals into us — and not ordinary ones — we're from archons. Too strong for pure volene, and all the other things we do, which they cannot. It did this to me, what has it done to you?”

“And our parents? Where are they?” Ebryn asked, holding his breath for the answer, feeling again like he had in that moment, before he'd gone over the waterfall and smashed so many bones.

“They killed my mother,” Fla said. “ … hunted us. That's the first thing I remember. Always running, hiding, running. Until she died. Yours too, except they hid you better.”

“No, they stopped trying when they had me,” Ebryn said with certainty, the pieces of his life falling into place. “They didn't think they needed you, or any of the others they created. I remember Sarl saying something about that, about them sending tutors somewhere as far away as Conant. It's why they taught me folding, to get rid of the iron.”

“The ones they had no use for, they killed.” Fla said, with a hollow laugh. “We're the two left, and in their plan it should have been only you. The dead can't tell secrets.”

Fla's creatures shifted restlessly in the shadows. Noise of fighting came echoing along the outer passage. It sounded like Brack had gained the bottom of the circular stairs.

“Brack and his men are nearly here,” Ebryn said.

“Then they'll soon be dead, too,” Fla said flatly.

“And after that, what? You know Sash loves this city, and the people in it. If you kill Brack and his men, they'll send others, and some will be Sash's friends. Will you kill them too? She's already lost some of her best friends today. Do you want to cause her more pain when she returns? They might even send her down here.”

He spoke harshly, knowing he only had the time it took Brack and his men to work their way along the outer corridor to prevent a slaughter, calculating that invoking Sash would have much the same effect on Fla as it had on him.

Fla glared at Ebryn, the little remaining colour in his face draining away. “It's not my fault they died. I did what I could.”

“I know. She won't blame you for the ones who are gone — if you don't kill any more.”

“What am I supposed to do, surrender?” Fla asked. “I'd be dead before the words passed my lips.”

“Go somewhere else,” Ebryn said. “You're powerful enough to make your way anywhere. Choose to leave.”

Fla hunched forward in his seat. A black drop from his bad eye fell smoking onto the stone floor. When he looked up his cheeks were wet with dark stains.

“I'll go,” Fla said. “For Sashael.”

“And I'll tell her it's what you chose to do, to spare lives,” Ebryn said.

Fla nodded, and heaved himself up from the stone seat. The four guardsmen cried out together as he moved.

“I'll miss them,” Fla said. “See you again, brother.”

With a word and a gesture, a fissure appeared in the air between them. A rip directly in the world skin. A black cloud, as thick as dark smoke, billowed from Fla as he stepped into the gap, and disappeared. The fissure collapsed behind him, drawing inwards, and vanishing in the time it took Ebryn to draw breath.

With a sound like a dry wind blowing on leaves, all the shadow creatures evaporated, the last gossamer hints fading from view as Brack and his men entered the far end of the room.

Released from the grip of their demonic captors, the four guards fell forward, as a black tarry substance streamed from their mouths and noses. They lay on the floor, gasping like stranded fish.

“Where is he?” Brack asked, approaching cautiously.

“He fled to the between when I destroyed the sevyric iron, after he heard you approaching,” Ebryn said.

“Ha, I hope the runt stays there. I told you he wouldn't stand and face us once he lost his protection. The old summoners were all the same — cowards.”

From the look of relief on the faces of the brighter looking Aremetuet, they clearly hadn't shared their leader's confidence.

“Check to see if he's hidden anything,” Brack said, heading for a disorderly bundle of books and parchments in the corner. “See if he had any allies.”

Ebryn stood thinking, barely aware as the men ransacked the room. He hardly noticed Brack pull a piece of paper from a pile near where Fla had sat, and wave it triumphantly.

The quantity of sevyric iron he'd folded away burdened him. It could easily be the greater part of the thousands retrieved from the furthest parts the city, as Fla had said.

He faced a clear choice, and an easy one. While the raw form of sevyric iron existed in the city, other than in the spikes, he and therefore his friends would be in constant danger. To keep them safe, he would need to destroy every last piece.

Return

T
HE SYMOR DEPOSITED PALONA
at the edge of the terrace where the ship waited for her. Loose flakes of paint from the vehicle stuck to the front of her dress, and her hair had come loose during the nauseating journey from the embassy.

Palona bent over, holding onto the wheel arch, retching against an empty stomach, while the driver dropped her few bags onto the ground behind her. She wanted to feel anger at his insolence, a natural outrage, but inside she found only emptiness.

He climbed wordlessly back into his cab, waiting just long enough for her to let go before goading his trikawi into a fast trot. One of the replacement guard officers had arranged her departure with perfunctory politeness, paying the driver in advance to bring her here.

A fresh set of guards had arrived with the new ambassador, and a letter from her cousin, ordering her back to Ulpitor. The new men were veteran career soldiers, led by efficient officers with politely indifferent faces.

She looked up at the looming vessel, a massive bulky thing, floating unnaturally in the air, trembling at the idea of having to travel inside one. It looked as if it might fall at any moment and smash into splinters. It seemed like another calamity waiting to happen.

After long hours, when she'd been sure he was dying, Orim had taken a ragged breath, and crawled back to his feet. The journey back, brief but terrifying, returned her to a scene of carnage.

For days afterwards she wished he'd left her to die in that terrible place, with the burning sky, and the rattling stones.

The embassy had been devastated in the attack, with nearly the entire staff massacred alongside her uncle. The few survivors had fled, and refused to return. Nobody would explain what had happened. As near as she could discover, the same thing had occurred in many other places across the city.

Two full weeks had passed since. A nightmare existence, fending for herself, relying on the charity of her friends until the new ambassador arrived, and now this.

Palona took a steadying breath, and picked up her belongings. They were heavy and hurt her arms to lift, but she could see no porters, and would rather suffer the indignity of carrying her own luggage than the humiliation of begging a stranger for help.

She held her head up as she walked towards the ramp, forcing away tears, and suppressing any outward show of the dread she felt. However quickly the people of this city may have forgotten her, she still had a status to maintain as the daughter of an Ulpitorian nobleman.