City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) (6 page)

Primo halted at the dais and, to Leech’s surprise, bowed his head with great reverence. And then again twice more.

Curious, Leech sidled up next to him to see the mummy of a woman lying upon her back, completely encased in a suit made out of apple green plaques and sewn together with gold wire.

“What’re you doing?” Leech asked Primo.

Primo straightened, his face solemn. “Paying my respects to a beautiful lady.”

The boy gazed at the face covered by the jade squares. “How can you tell?”

“The… songs and tales all say that’s the way she was,” Primo said. “And she had a soul to match. When Lady Tabiti was young, her father gave asylum to a noble Kushan family. She and the daughter became best friends and swore to be loyal to one another. Later, when the family was exonerated and returned to the empire, her Kushan friend grew up and married the emperor. By then Lady Tabiti had become the leader of her people. When the Kushan empire was invaded, Lady Tabiti honored her childhood oath. She led her warriors to war and destroyed the invaders. She could have assumed the throne herself, but she chose to serve her friend instead.”

Next to them, a pair of tourists seemed more interested in gawking at the Kushan warriors rather than the treasure they protected.
For months the San Francisco newspapers and radio stations had been talking about the real-life “Amazons” as much as about the treasures they were going to guard.

Leech had been expecting muscular giants, so he was disappointed to see that they were just women in funny costumes. Though one of them was tall, the others were of average height. Even some of the human museum guards looked more imposing than them.

The Amazons stood straight as swords, ignoring the chaos all around them as they guarded the dais.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” a fat tourist demanded.

“Not today, sir,” the woman said politely in accented English.

“Excuse me,” Primo said to the obnoxious man, “but you might want to show some respect.”

“It’s quite all right, sir.” The Amazon flashed him a grateful smile. “You are all Kushan’s guests.”

Primo nodded approvingly. “Spoken as graciously as she would have wanted.”

“How do you kn—,” Leech started to ask him when the rumbling began. It sounded like a train was heading straight toward the room. As the floor began to vibrate, cups and other things crashed over in the display cases.

“Earthquake!” someone shouted.

Primo whirled around, searching for the boys. “Stand under a doorway.”

The only trouble was that everyone else was rushing for the single exit, as well. The spectators were only one moment away from turning into a panicked mob, and Leech thought they were in more danger of being trampled by the crowd than being crushed in the earthquake.

Primo tried to shield the boys from the stampeding spectators when the floor collapsed near them.

Through the six-foot-wide opening, Leech could see the huge
pipes in the museum’s basement. Out of it flew a creature straight out of a nightmare. A flapping wing brushed a tourist teetering on the edge. It hovered overhead as the flailing man fell through the gaping hole.

Another winged horror followed it. And finally a third and fourth.

Their gray, leathery bodies were about six feet long and as slender and supple as serpents. Each of their four legs ended in sharp talons ready to strike, and they flew with four wings, which beat in the same alternating pattern as dragonflies.

Chairs crashed as people jumped to their feet in the roped-off section near the podium. A woman screamed as her husband pulled her away from the hole.

Overhead, the monsters swung their heads back and forth, picking out their first victims.

Scirye

Lady Sudarshane rose, no longer the diplomat but the warrior she had once been. Her voice rose commandingly over the tumult. “Get the weapons from the cases!”

She set her own example by picking up her chair and striding over to a display of halberds with their spiked, axe-like heads and sharp-pointed spears.

Scirye stared open-mouthed at her mother. In her mind, her mother was a charming, fussy woman who was always telling her what to do, not someone who went about vandalizing museums. In her antique costume, this woman might have stepped out of a painting of an ancient Kushan battle.

Lady Sudarshane swung the chair legs against the window. Dozens of cracks spread outward from the point of impact, but the
bulletproof glass did not break and the magical wards held. An alarm bell began jangling loudly instead.

Lady Sudarshane had to hit the glass with the chair three more times before she created a hole but the glass itself hung in fractured sections.

By then, Prince Etre had joined her with his own chair and was helping her finish clearing the window of glass. “Quite an invigorating morning, isn’t it?”

Scirye’s mother and the prince snatched spears from the exhibit, but Nishke and the other Pippalanta seized halberds. The rest of the consular staff was copying their Consul and attacked other display cases to get at anything that could be used as a weapon. A troll museum guard hadn’t bothered with a chair but was hammering one of his stone-like fists against another window while the other guards waited anxiously.

They were the only ones moving. The city dignitaries and the spectators stood gaping just as Scirye was. The monsters were flying in ever widening circles, scanning the people below as if they were no more than a flock of sheep and the monsters were selecting their first victims.

On her wrist, Scirye felt Kles stir. His fur and feathers were bristling as he spread his wings and shrilled his battle cry. Her hair flew every which way as Kles rose with a flap of his wings. He circled a few feet above her head, ready to defend her against monsters nine times his size.

Scirye looked up at him admiringly, knowing that the griffin’s heart was bigger than anyone else’s in the room—including hers. And that made her love him all the more.

She could not let Kles fight while she stood by like a sack of laundry. If she wanted to be a Pippal, she had to do more than read about them. She had to
act
like them, too.

Scirye had always been a definite sort of girl. When she made up
her mind to do something, she did it or she learned how. That was the reason she could speak several languages, could operate the teletype machine in the communications room, could make a soufflé and unstop an embassy sink—admittedly, she had plugged it up in the first place, but that was nit-picking.

The terrified girl forced her numb legs to stumble toward her mother now, away from the frightened spectators. The stumble steadied into a walk and finally into a run.

Lady Sudarshane had skipped the golden, jeweled ceremonial weapons to take a plain spear with a three-pronged blade. It was only when the light reflected off the steel that Scirye saw the patterns that swirled along its length. From her sister, she had learned that the patterns marked the steel creation of a master weapons-maker.

Scirye’s eyes searched the case until she saw another one to match her mother’s. She was just reaching for it when her mother stopped her. “See our guests to safety,” her mother ordered.

“I can fight, too,” Scirye said stubbornly. “Nishke’s been showing me.” The Pippalanta were expected to be as equally proficient with swords, spears, and bows as they were with modern guns.

“We are their hosts,” her mother insisted firmly. “And by the rules of hospitality, a host must protect her guests.”

“Mistress, we have a duty,” Kles reminded her as he kept an eye on the monsters overhead.

“You must help them escape,” her mother instructed her.

Tears stung Scirye’s eyes, but she knew her mother and the griffin were right.

Pivoting, she ran back toward the dignitaries and spectators who huddled in the center of the room.

“Go,” she said, waving her arms at the frightened man in front of her—she thought he might be the mayor. “Get out of here.”

“Go, go, go,” Kles said, hovering long enough to beat his wings in the direction of the doorway.

As the Pippalanta and museum guards rallied around her mother, Scirye and Kles gathered up the city dignitaries and the other spectators and herded them like sheep from the room.

Mrs. Rudenko fell over a chair and might have been trampled by the people behind her, but Kles darted in, flapping his wings at the oncoming startled faces so that they swept around on either side of him and the woman.

“Don’t panic,” Scirye shouted. She placed herself at the back of the group, fists ready.

With a screech, a monstrous head darted downward and Scirye crouched. Her limbs were stiff with fright, but it was only a feint. The gray dragonfly, she thought angrily, was only playing with her.

As she straightened to check on her charges, she saw an Asian-looking man using a chair to break into another case. Next to him were two boys. The larger boy was pear-shaped, with hips and legs too big for his slender torso. His black hair had a silvery sheen.

The smaller boy had brown hair with a slender iron ring around each wrist.

“You need to leave, sir,” she said to the man.

He smiled grimly at her. “We’ll need something that will reach those monsters,” he explained as he began helping himself to the throwing stars. Scirye could see the sense of that, so perhaps he did know what he was doing. “But take the boys out of here.”

“Right,” the bigger boy said with some relief. He was stocky, with most of his weight about his hips.

The brown-haired boy, though, looked stubborn. “We’re not going to leave you, Primo. We know how to fight.”

“This is no street punk, Leech,” Primo said gravely.

“Well, what do you know about fighting dragons?” Leech
demanded. He was fiddling nervously with the iron bracelets on one arm.

“More than I want to,” Primo said, and nodded to the other boy. “Get him out of here, Koko.”

“Come on,” Koko said, grabbed his friend’s arm. “We’ll just get in Primo’s way.”

Leech pointed at Scirye. “So will she.”

Scirye saw the contempt in his face and it angered her. He was just as bad as her schoolmates in other cities, but thanks to Kles, she didn’t put up with that. “I’ve been trained to fight,” she snapped— though she added truthfully to herself,
At least, I’ve started
. She took a certain satisfaction in shoving him toward the doorway. “You’ll just get in the way.”

Leech opened his mouth in protest, “I—”

“She’s right,” Primo said firmly.

His mentor’s words hurt, but Leech allowed Koko to pull him toward the doorway. Scirye stayed at their heels while Kles flew protectively overhead.

As they neared the doorway, Scirye saw a mousy woman standing there as if she were watching a movie.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Scirye demanded, waving her arm angrily. “Leave!”

Bayang

Bayang had been as surprised as anyone when the floor had caved in, but she had not survived this long without learning to recover quickly from the unexpected—and to take advantage of it.