The Horns of Ruin (4 page)

"So why are we doing this?" I asked, nodding at
the quiet girl in her black robe and dull chains. "We've had no need for
an Amonite for one hundred years. Why now?"

"It is a matter for the Elders, Eva."

"Well. Let me know if this one is lacking. I can be
persuasive."

The girl looked up. Her face was impassive. "I will
serve you, scion of Morgan. But not out of fear."

I snorted. "As you say. Just keep in mind that-"

"We're being followed," Barnabas said under his
breath.

And we were. Of course we were. Damn Barnabas's fault for
calling me out, and that damn Alexian's fault for being a windbag and giving me
a good reason to get in trouble. That was my first mistake of the day, I think.
Probably not the worst. I pulled our little group to the side of the road,
grabbing the girl by her thin shoulders and pretending to shake her. Like we
were arguing.

"Where are they?" I asked. The girl kept staring
at me, indifferently. Barnabas pulled my hands away from the girl.

"They've passed us now. Probably more around and
they're just handing off the tail." I looked up at his face, then followed
his eyes down the street. Two men in bulky overcloaks, the hoods up, were
strolling casually along. They turned a corner and one of them spared us a
glance. His face was cowled, a ventilated metal mask covering his nose and
mouth. His eyes were much older than his body suggested, and there were strange
markings around them like tattoos. The pair disappeared behind a building. I
looked back at Barnabas and the girl. She was still staring at me.

"Distinctive couple," I said. "Not terribly
sneaky."

"They snuck up on you," Cassandra said.

I grimaced, but ignored her. Barnabas was looking up and
down the street.

"They were pretty obvious. Maybe just trying to spook
us?" I asked.

The old man shook his head. "There was something
different about them, right up until they passed us." He twisted his staff
in his hands like he was wringing a towel. "I didn't see them either. Not
at all. For all that they stuck out, I didn't see them."

"Invokation of some kind?"

"Something."

I looked at the girl again. "Maybe the sworn rites of
Amon the Betrayer?" I asked. She flinched, but her eyes did not leave
mine. "One of your assassin friends, come to collect his girl?"

"The Betrayer's invokations are proscribed," she
answered. "They are not recorded, they are not practiced. They are not
known, to me or any of my brethren."

"Sure, honey. Everyone believes that. You're all
innocence and knowledge. We get it." I turned to Barnabas. "What do
we do?"

"There won't be any more. The Amonites' shadowkin work
alone, or in small teams. If those are truly Amonites of the Betrayer ..."
He trailed off. "We should find a Justicar's post. Get an escort."

"What happened to not causing a scene?"

"That was to avoid attention." He gathered
himself up, holding the staff in front of him like a plow. "We seem to
have attracted attention."

"Nearest post is five blocks. North, north, west,
follow the iron stairs," Cassandra said, as though reciting scripture.
"We can be there in two minutes."

"You just happen to know that?" I asked.

"We maintain the city. We know the streets."

"Very well," Barnabas said. I put a hand on his
shoulder, then made my second mistake.

"North is out of our way," I said. "The
Strength is east and south."

"The nearest post-" Cassandra began.

I interrupted her. "We're going south and east. There
are posts along the way."

Barnabas shrugged. I unholstered my bully and quickly
invoked the Long Reach, the Iron Teeth, and Balance of the Songbird. The
cylinder hummed as the etched rounds in the revolver glowed with power. Weaker
invokations, but they were the only bullistic rites I had. I was a girl of the
blade, but this wasn't the place for that much steel.

"We'll move fast. Elder Frat, you and the girl move
side by side. Stay ahead of me. If I yell, you drop. Unless I yell something
about running. Then you run."

"Shouldn't you be in front?" Cassandra asked.
"Leading us, or something?"

"Bitch Betrayers come from behind. If I can see them,
I can shoot them. It's a pretty simple system, really," I said, then
crossed the bullistic over my chest and nodded. "Let's get going."

We moved out into the crowd, which was rapidly dispersing.
Crowds smell trouble. In this case, maybe the crowd saw a heavily armed Paladin
of Morgan with her bully out, escorting an old man and an angry girl, all of
them looking nervous and a little trigger-happy. Barnabas invoked as we went,
something I didn't know. An almost invisible force washed out in front of us,
lapping around our legs and trailing in our wake. I had no idea what he was
doing, but it made me feel better to hear the old man chant and see the
blessing of Morgan around us. It made the crowd nervous, but that was okay.

Four blocks, six, then ten. The old man's voice was
faltering. There really should have been a Justicar's post by now. Barnabas
finally stopped invoking and just moved, taking long, deep breaths that
shuddered as we walked. I hadn't seen any more of the Betrayers, but I didn't
expect to. The crowds were pretty much gone. I kept looking up at the buildings
we passed. Betrayers were blade-men, but what if they hired help? What if they
hired a sniper? I was jumping at shadows now, and the empty streets were not
calming me down.

We stumbled into an empty square and the Fratriarch stopped
by the dry fountain at its center. He leaned against the concrete and hunched
over. His breathing sounded bad. The girl stood next to him with her hand on
his shoulder, looking for all the world as if she cared. He couldn't go on,
though he would try if I asked him.

"We aren't going to make it like this," I said.
Barnabas didn't answer, his thick shoulders heaving as he tried to get his
breath. I looked at the girl. "Where's the nearest post now?"

"Same post. It's just twice as far away now."

"There's got to be one closer. Why the hell am I
asking an Amonite where I should go to hide from another Amonite?" I
started to pace around the fountain. The buildings surrounding us were part of
the old district, tired and stone and settling into themselves. Faces in the
windows quickly disappeared. "This is ridiculous."

"There have been a series of post closings in the last
six months, mostly for maintenance issues," Cassandra said, again as if
she were reciting holy writ. "The southern horn of Ash has been
particularly hard hit, as the base level of that part of the city has been
settling into the lake at an unusual-"

"Stop it. You don't say two words together all the way
here, and now you're giving a lecture. I don't need a lecture on city
infrastructure. What I need-"

There was a roar that filled the square, and the ground
shook. I dropped to one knee and aimed my bully before I realized it was just
the monotrain line. Tracks ran across the northern edge of the square, the
elevated rails held up by rusty iron trestles that seemed to grow out of the
brick of the surrounding buildings. The train rumbled past, filling the square
with clattering noise and a wind that smelled of hot metal and burning grease.
When it was gone I looked at the girl.

"The nearest mono station?" I asked. She nodded,
and we helped the old man to his feet.

The mono lines of Ash travel the city in wide, sweeping
arcs, like the cogs of a giant clock. Riding one is never the most direct way
to your destination, but it is certainly the fastest. I ran up the stairs at
the nearest station while Cassandra and Barnabas struggled to keep up. I caught
the car just before it was leaving, kicking everyone out of the forward
compartment and holding the door while the Fratriarch got on. Some of the
passengers grumbled and then got on one of the other cars. A lot of them took
one look at my bully and just waited for the next line. I watched everyone who
got on the other car after us, then pulled the compartment shut. We rolled out
of the station with a groan.

"I used to ride the train, when I was a boy,"
Barnabas said. He sat with his eyes closed, his head leaning gently against the
car window as we bumped up to our full speed. "My mother and I would take
it to the northern horn, to visit the docks. She made a brilliant fish chowder,
every Sunday."

"They had trains back then, old man?" I asked.
"I always pictured you growing up in a cave, maybe with a mule or
something to carry you down to the rock store."

"We had trains, Eva. And revolvers and elevators and
hot water." He smiled, and his face filled with wrinkles. "We were
very civilized people back then."

"These lines were laid by Amon the Scholar, in the
hundredth year of the Fraterdom," the girl said. She was standing, leaning
against the wooden frame of the window, one hand on a leather loop that hung
from the ceiling. "He laid the lines and built the centrifugal impellors
that power them with his own hands."

"Was this before or after he murdered his brother Morgan
on the Fields of Erathis?" I asked. "Oh, right, it must have been
before. Because afterward we hunted him down, chained him into a boat, and
burned him alive. So it must have been before that, right?"

She didn't answer at first, swaying with the movement of
the train, her eyes on the city as it ripped past.

"Yes," she said eventually. "It was before
all of that. But not much before."

We rode in silence for a while, the Fratriarch breathing
quietly in his seat, the girl watching the window. I paced the length of the
car, my boots wearing down the already heavily worn carpet. It had probably
been nice carpet, once. I cancelled the invokations of the bullistic revolver
and just paced. I kept looking back at the other passengers in their cars, but
they made a point of not raising their eyes from their newspapers. I was
glancing back when the light hit, so at least I still had my eyes when it
happened.

It was a fast shot, traveling from my left and going toward
the front of the car. It came in through the windows like a lightning flash,
first behind us, then keeping pace, then ahead of us and nearly gone. I was
just glancing over my shoulder to see what it was when the sound came. Tearing,
like ripped cloth. The tracks shook and then everything was washed in red and
gold and a terrible, terrible sound.

We fell. I hit the carpet hard and slid all the way to the
front of the car, slamming to a stop with my shoulder against the wall. The
girl slid into me, screaming. Barnabas ended up against the benches. He was the
first to his feet. I pushed the girl away and stood. Cassandra lay on the
floor, burbling and wailing. When she rolled over I saw that her right hand was
a mangle of skin. There was no blood, but the bones were broken, and there were
long, angry friction burns across the palm and back. Her thumb was pointing in
several wrong directions.

Outside the car, there was smoke and metal. Something had
hit the track. The creosote-smeared wooden spars of the tracks were burning
with chemical brilliance, thick black plumes of smoke rolling off in heavy
waves to the street below. The rails themselves were as tangled as the girl's
hand. We were off the tracks and leaning in dangerous ways. The other
passengers were screaming. I was screaming, too.

"Get up and away from the windows. Get off the
car!" I yelled. In the cars behind us, people were slapping open the
emergency hatches and riding the telescoping chutes to the ground. I started
toward our own chute just as the car torqued under some unseen force. All the
windows popped, then the ceiling peeled open like a scroll. Fat coils of rope,
three of them, landed on the floor around us.

They landed in a rough semicircle. I turned my back to the
Fratriarch, pushing the whimpering Cassandra behind me. The girl stumbled to
the ground, cradling her limp hand against her chest. I hurriedly invoked armor
and strength, sketchy bindings that I could snap out without thinking. I didn't
have time to think. Gold lines traced the edges of my greaves and pauldrons,
and the air around me tightened. The runes of my noetic armor settled down to a
warm glow. As invokations went, they were weak, but there wasn't time for
anything fancy.

Our assailants wore armor, actual armor, though it was
roughly formed. Their faceplates were flat and plain, two bulbous gogglelike
eyes over a voxorator grate. The metal of their breastplates and pauldrons was
dull gray, sheened like oil on water. Wickedly barbed blades snapped out from
their armguards. They attacked without saying a word.

I laid into them. My opening strike was to the left,
scything past the first brute's guard with the weight of my attack. The blade
struck his shoulder, denting metal and drawing a staticky shriek from his vox.
He collapsed to the floor, and I followed the force of the blow, letting my
sword swing low. My momentum rolled me over the fallen warrior. I came to my
feet. This separated me from the Fratriarch, but their attention was fully on
me. That's right, watch the dangerous bitch. Don't worry about the old man. The
two remaining guys were nicely lined up. I turned the flat of my blade toward
them and invoked.