The Mirrored City (46 page)

The eye sockets closed, and her head tipped back. Her body broke apart and slithered onto the floor, like someone had opened a meat sluice over the bed. The floor was covered in worms, and Maddox tried to withhold his visceral disgust, to appreciate the fluid motions, like a school of fish or flock of starlings, as it reassembled in a ball on the floor.

Gradually it resumed a crouched human form, and skin began to grow back over it, along with hair, jewelry, and clothing. Lyta stared up at him with brilliant blue eyes. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Maddox said. “I’ve been to the Dreaming a lot. I know how this stuff works. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

They stepped through the red painted door.

Maddox stepped into a musty depressing infirmary. Cramped dirty windows let in a trickle of overcast light, and the place smelled of medicinal salves and poultices. Second-rate alchemy, judging by the cloying stink. The rich used healers, the brave used blood mages, and the poor were stuck with herbal cures. He walked along a row of short empty cots with straw-stuffed mattresses. Tattered partitions afforded privacy between the beds.

Soren was sitting in a bed with a notebook. He looked like a bag of bones, and one of his legs was bound in a rusty brace. He stared out a window.

“Soren?”

He turned, and smiled brightly. “Hey, Maddox.”

“The fuck kind of nightmare is this?” Maddox glanced around at the ratty furniture, the sad uneven table by Soren’s bed, the chipped paint on the face of the Saint Lucian statuette.

“It’s the infirmary from the Dessim Boy’s Orphanage. I was sick a lot.”

Maddox’s eyebrow raised. “You’ve had a colossally shitty existence. This can’t be all there is to it.” He looked under the bed. Dust and a bed pan.

Soren shook his head. “When I was in the orphanage, the other boys used to play jokes on me. I broke my knee during a game of stickball, and they liked to hide my crutches. Sometimes I’d have to wait up here for hours until the brothers realized I was gone. I would watch them play from this window. Once on Unification Day, I was here all night.”

Maddox wrinkled his nose. “If those fucking assholes only knew what you really were…”

Soren shrugged weakly. “Nobody knew. I don’t hate them. They’re only kids.”

“You never fought back?” Maddox peered at Soren skeptically, seeing just how frail he was. Maddox had never been much bigger than Soren, but Maddox was at least mean and didn’t shy away from a bloody lip or a kick to the ribs. He had taught his tormenters more than a few lessons once he became proficient in magic. This was just heartbreaking.

“I never saw the point.” Soren looked out the window. “Plus when they hid my crutches it gave me time alone. I liked to draw this tree in the playground. See?” He showed Maddox a sketchbook. A lone barren tree stood on the page in black charcoal.

“I draw too,” Maddox said, craning his head studiously. “And that’s not total shit, but you need to resist the urge to smudge so much. You blur the details on your lines. We have to get out of here.”

Soren shut the book and sighed. “I was hoping I could stay here and draw a little longer. Before I have to leave. You could show me how.”

“That’s what it wants.” Maddox slid his arm under Soren’s shoulder and helped him to his feet. He grunted.

“If this is your darkness, you’re too good for this world.”

You poor, simple fuck.

F
ORTY

Scions of Patrea

S
HANNON

Subservience is as much a part of our selves as our strength. Discipline is built on the foundation of obedience to orders. A soldier obeys, immediately and without hesitation, any order from his commander.

As a Patrean, it is in our nature to comply with commands given by superiors and follow rules to the letter. Without structure we are restless, uncertain. It is a gift to know with absolute certainty one’s place. We awaken each day knowing what is required and rest easy each night knowing we have fulfilled our duty.

Yet there will come a time when every soldier must think for himself. On the field of battle, decisions must be made swiftly and no one will be there to make them. An effective warrior knows
how
to think like a commander. A superior warrior knows
when
to think like a commander.

—The Kan Wo, The Patrean Manual of War,
Chapter 26

THE PATREANS HAD
built an impressive makeshift fort out of improvised barricades atop one of the long bridges that spanned the two twisted halves of the city. Wagons, doors, crates, and bits of stone formed high defensible walls where archers could perch. Tents and bedrolls were being laid out in orderly rows.

Shannon sat on an empty barrel huddled under a blanket, watching through their eyes. They worked as a team, soldiers from both sides, securing a perimeter, gathering weapons, organizing into platoons. The bridge had no river below it, just an endless abyss. Providing nothing snatched her from the depths, it was as secure a place as any.

They were more effective when not under her direct control, but they seemed to accept, even welcome her ability. Like her brothers and sisters, she was strong in her own way. She coordinated through her web of shared senses, leading more of her siblings to the fort.
And I thought I had a big family before.

A few of the soldiers jokingly called the bridge “Fort Shannon” as it was being built around her safety. The air about the encampment was serious but also one of excitement.

If any group of people would be excited about the potential end of the world, it was the Patreans. They had been preparing for centuries, maintaining caches and stockpiling arms.

Scarcely a minute went by that someone didn’t offer her water or bread or ask if she was injured. “I’m fine,” she said each time, thanking them and trying to remember their names. To outsiders, all Patreans looked alike, but they had a fine-tuned way of recognizing each other—the pattern of the iris was unique, something she had never noticed before. Now it was the first thing she saw when looking at someone.

A burly man who’d introduced himself as Titus approached her. “How are you holding up?” The others deferred to him because of the markings on his arms and neck. They were of a similar style to the runes that appeared on her skin, but more blocky and sharp edged.

Shannon smiled. “Everyone keeps asking me that. I’m fine.”

“You’re very important to us.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “These soldiers will die before we let anything happen to you. Do you even know why?”

“Because I’m one of you?” she asked.

“More than that,” he said. “You’re a new hope for our people—a Patrean who can use magic. This changes everything for us, Shannon. For centuries we’ve spilled our blood in their wars because it’s all we knew. That was our purpose. Fight and keep Creation safe. The High Command denied your existence. They took kids who were even slightly different and shipped them off to Fathers know where.

“Some of us are sick of that shit. We’re sick of being treated like second-class citizens by the people we die for, like we’re disposable. My mother and brothers were human. She raised me. As you can imagine, her husband was none too happy when she popped out a Fodder instead of a blue-eyed Turisian. They put me to hard labor on the farm, and when I got tired of being their mule, I enlisted. Didn’t care for it. Still don’t.”

Shannon frowned. “I always knew there was something more for me out there in the world. I just never imagined it would be
this
. We had security in House Ibazz, but I was always told they were nothing more than soulless livestock. I didn’t know what I was, just that I was different from my brothers and sisters. I think that’s what drew me to Lyta. She was… something different as well.”

He nodded.

“Just tell me one thing. Are we going to survive?” Shannon asked.

Titus smiled. “Surviving is what we do. The Fathers chose us to carry on their legacy.”

“The Fathers didn’t make my breed as fearless as yours.” She placed her hand on his. “But Lyta and my brother are with people who seem to know what they’re doing, may Ohan guide them through darkness and into the light of dawn.”

“You’re a religious type, then?” He had a twinkle in his eye. “My mother prayed to the Host. We’re supposed to be atheists, but I do it sometimes myself. It’s not like there are hells for bad atheists, you know?”

Shannon looked over the edge of the bridge at the yawning blackness. “I was raised in House Ibazz as one of the seven daughters. Force of habit, I suppose. So what happens if my friends succeed?”

Titus shrugged. “Dunno. That’s up to you. You’re our leader.”

“I don’t know the first thing about leadership.” Shannon blushed.
But that isn’t exactly true, is it?
She had spent years in Ibazz listening to the secret dealings of the Patriarchs and Dessim delegates. She knew the intricate workings of the city and had reams of scandalous information on every high-ranking official. Hells, when it suited her purposes, she had even let a few secrets find their way to Vyzad or Safina.

Shannon said after a while, “The Assemblies will hold a joint emergency session to impose martial law during reconstruction but—”

“Do we follow the Assembly?” he asked.

She chuckled at the thought. “They have no power to impose martial law without an army. We could take the city in the chaos. We could demand votes for a new Assembly and elect our own members. Hells, I may still be listed on the roster for Ibazz if they don’t have a replacement. With enough of us in the districts to take seats, enough to break the deadlock between the two sides, the Mirrored City could be ours if we wanted it. It would be easy…”

He leaned in closer. “It’s as good a city as any, sister. A new start for our race.”

“The Protectorate would never allow it,” Shannon said.

Titus weighed that idea, stroking his chin. “Yeah, but who would they send?”

She felt the floodgates open inside her mind. Beneath her own memories, the memories of the Fathers came rushing forth. Their methods, their strategies. “This was their plan all along. Send their soldiers to every corner of Creation as mercenaries. Replace the militias with sworn sellswords of unquestioning loyalty. Make them think we were their submissive property. It was always a plan to gain leverage until Patrea was ready to return to glory.”

“Huh.” He scratched his head. “Really? That seems like a long shot.”

Shannon shuddered. “They never thought small or short term. It was never about just surviving with them. They wanted us to inherit the world after they were gone.”

“Shit,” he said. “I don’t know that we need all that. I kinda like humans, to be honest. But it would be nice if they treated us as humans, too.”

“Conquering the world was the Fathers’ vision.” She looked at the troops as they buzzed about the encampment, sharpening weapons, setting up fortifications. “Right now I’d kill for a hot bath and some scented oils.”

Titus chuckled.

A week ago Shannon was like a bird in a gilded cage. She had not been treated as badly as the warriors, but she knew a thing or two about being second class in a society that viewed women as objects. As a woman, she was bound to the obligations of status without power to go with it. She never had any grand ambitions aside from being able to walk freely in the street and hold Lyta’s hand for all to see. Even that simple freedom had been denied to her.

Now she was handed the keys to an empire, essentially. It was no longer a cage, but the burden felt even heavier. Perhaps her brother—

Pain blossomed in her chest.

A crimson stain, unfolding like a flower across her dress with a stem like an arrow shaft.

She leaned into Titus, clawing desperately at his arms.

Blades were drawn. Shouts erupted all around her.

She felt herself laid gently on the cool stone of the bridge.
Ruptured aorta.
Some clinical self-diagnostic part of her racial memory floated to mind.

It hurt, but she shut out the pain, allowing her senses to flow outside her body into the myriad swarm of eyes around her.

There!
Atop one of the fortifications. An archer, her bow drawn and back hunched slightly, eyes locked on Shannon’s bleeding body.