Requiem (28 page)

Charles’s horse regained its footing even as Renard spun around in the saddle, opening his mouth to shout something.

He’s going to tell me to leave her.
And it made sense. She was a girl. They wouldn’t harm her. But she couldn’t leave her, and if the metal man was who she thought he might be, he couldn’t either.

“I’ll get her,” Winters shouted.

She reined her horse in, slipping from the saddle as she did. And even as she did, an invisible wall struck her horse, knocking it aside. She saw the metal man now, lifting and tossing another magicked scout with ease.

As it did, it roared out a name. “Marta!”

Winters drew her knives and moved in the direction that she’d seen the girl fall. Something moved past her, brushing her back as it did, and she spun. The footfalls around her now were quiet coughs in the snow, but the clink and clang of steel blade on steel blade betrayed what happened around her. The metal man was moving now, too, and it overtook her to race for a dark, still form half buried in the snow.

Just as it was in reach, the metal man toppled beneath the weight of something that struck it hard in the side. And even as the mechoservitor tumbled to the ground to be dragged through the snow, she saw the limp body of the girl lifted from the snow by invisible hands.

Winters had not used her new skills with the blades. She’d actually witnessed very little combat, let alone participated. Taking a deep breath, she moved for the girl, running low and fast across the snowscape.

“This girl is under the protection of the Blood Guard of the Crimson Empress,” a voice whispered from the dark. “Stand down.”

Winters gritted her teeth. She could see Marta now, dim in the moonlight. Her eyes were closed, and her hair was wet with blood. “I will not stand down,” she said. “Release the girl.”

The Blood Scout chuckled. “Take her from me.”

Winters kicked snow up in the direction of the voice and then launched herself at the form it betrayed. She felt her knife strike steel and then felt the scout’s other blade tear through her coat sleeve. Winters fell back, finding her footing and moving into the dance Jin had taught her. Twice more, she was close enough to be parried, and her side was nicked by a blade that slashed through her coat.

Then, she dodged and came in low, feeling the blade strike cloth and then flesh. It was a jarring sensation that nearly cost her the knife. She heard the scout gasp and came in with her right only to be parried aside.

The strength behind the parry moved her back across the snow, and she lost her footing for a moment. Just as she regained it, she felt the scout’s blade slice into her shoulder, near the neck. Twisting, she rolled away and onto her back, kicking more snow up onto the scout. Then, she threw her left knife and heard the scout grunt as it glanced off her and into the snow. Winters braced herself, and even still, the wind went out of her when the Blood Scout fell upon her. She felt the scout’s blade cutting through her coat and tried to get her own knife hand free to no avail.

Then suddenly, the metal man loomed over her, and its hands came down to seize the Blood Scout and slam the woman against a tree. Then, it scooped up the little girl.

A hand touched Winters’s shoulder, and she sat up. “Take this,” a voice whispered. “Chew it.” Rough hands pushed a small bit of root into her hand.

“What is it?”

“You run with us now,” the voice said. Then, the hand pulled her up to her feet.

She placed the root in her mouth and chewed it, wincing at its bitterness. But she felt warmth suffuse her, and her exhaustion and anxiety melted away even as she felt her legs beginning to twitch.

The mechoservitor now ran toward Charles and Renard with the girl cradled in his arms. “This human requires medical attention.”

“There’s a medico at the house,” Renard said. Then he turned his horse and whistled it forward.

She wanted to look for her knife but knew better. There were more behind them, certainly, and they were at least two hours from the house. So instead, she ran, falling in behind the metal man, who ran alongside Charles.

They changed course twice over the next hour, and as they drew closer to Kendrick’s Town, they started encountering the occasional house or farm. Most lay abandoned, but at least two were well lit with smoking chimneys.

Surely we’ll be seen.
But they kept their pace and ran until they entered the clearing and saw the house and its barn awaiting. The barn door was open, and a solitary lamp lit the front porch of the house.

Renard led them to the barn and dismounted, handing his reins to a young man dressed similarly to him. The man climbed into the saddle and spurred the horse out of the clearing. Another did the same with Charles’s horse, and a handful of gray-dressed men took Marta from the mechoservitor.

As Winters approached, a horrible smell assaulted her, and she covered her mouth. “What is that?”

“Dead cattle,” Hebda said. “Come inside.”

Inside, the smell was stronger, and now, she saw a faint light ahead, but it came from the floor. No, she realized.

A hole in the floor.

There, set into the middle of the barn, was a round steel hatch that stood open. Renard knelt at it, helping Charles down. Behind him, the medicos examined Marta quickly, and a small gang of young men stood by with pitchforks and shovels. Hebda took her by the elbow and guided her toward a medico.

“Lady Winteria has also been hurt,” he told the young Androfrancine, who nodded and gestured for her to sit. She flinched when the medico pulled back her coat and shirt to find her wounds, and she winced as his hands poked and prodded. While he cleaned the wounds and bandaged them, Winters watched Hebda and Renard where they stood apart talking in low tones.

When the medico was finished, she stood and walked to them.

“After the site is secured,” Hebda told Renard, “get word to Rudolfo of what’s transpired here. Tell him he has help.” Then, Hebda leaned in and kissed Renard, and it lingered long enough that Winters looked away and blushed. “Don’t be gone so long this time,” he said.

Renard squeezed his shoulder. “I won’t.”

Then, Hebda climbed down into the well. She could see now that it stretched down quite a distance, and a lantern far below leaked the light she’d seen.

The medicos carried down Marta next. They were followed by the mechoservitor, and then the surviving magicked scouts slipped past. Finally, Winters lowered herself down, surprised at the warmth of the metal rungs. Already, whatever the medico had rubbed into her wounds was taking the ache away, and she was grateful for it.

Renard smiled down on her. “You drew blood on a Blood Scout,” he said. She heard bemused respect in his voice and waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.

So she inclined her head to him and then descended into the Beneath Places as the hatch above her closed. She could not hear it, but she knew that already, dirt and moldy hay were being shoveled and forked onto the hatch. And after, the barn would be sealed up with its dead cattle. And the farmhouse would be left abandoned.

As she climbed down, she saw wires and bags that were fastened to some of the rungs. And when she reached the bottom, a middle-aged man, his hairline receding, scampered up the rungs with more wire and more bags.

She looked to Hebda, who must’ve seen the curiosity on her face. “We’ve set all our access points to the Named Lands with blast powder charges,” he said. “We can’t afford for the Beneath Places to fall into Y’Zirite hands.”

She nodded, then went to Charles. He stood beside the metal man as the medicos checked Marta again. Now her eyes were open, though both were bruised heavily. “How is she?”

“She’ll be fine,” he said.

Then Winters nodded to the metal man. “And how is he?”

Charles looked at her with tears in his eyes and smiled. “He’s … alive,” he said.

And she felt the same tears rise in her own eyes and hoped that the old man was right.

Lysias

It was easy to lose track of time without the benefit of the sun, but the lack of cold made it a fair trade. In his few ventures into the Beneath Places this winter, Lysias had always been surprised by the warmth. Now, it was saving lives, he suspected, and that was worth having to rely upon a mechoservitor to know the time of day.

He stretched and stood, then rolled his bedroll. He’d considered a quick wash and shave, followed by a fresh uniform, but if today followed after the last several, it would be futile. He was bound to be wet or muddy before lunch.

Lysias pulled the metal cup from his mess kit and followed his nose to the portable stove his cooks used and the strong chai they had ready there. Crouching, he helped himself and then straightened.

He heard the clanking and clacking of the metal man approaching. “Good morning, General,” it said.

He inclined his head to it, though he did not know why. “Good morning.” Then, he sipped his chai and moved to the corner of the large cavern that they’d established as the command center.

There, several blankets had been spread out, and the mine chief, Turik, sat on one of them with parchment maps laid out all around him. Lysias noted the dark circles under the man’s eyes when he looked up at the general.

Lysias hunkered down and looked at the maps, his eyes finding the red marks that showed passages now either underwater or collapsed. Some had been there already, but more damage had been done by the earthquake in the north. “When was the last time you slept, Chief?”

The man shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

Lysias opened his mouth to dismiss the man to his bedroll, but as he did, a wet and muddy lieutenant appeared. “We’ve found another hatch. This one is wired, too.”

His eyes went back to the map.
Those would be the blue markings.
There were two on the map, one to the east—not far actually from the Keeper’s Gate—and another farther south.

Turik dug the blue pencil from his kit. “Show me.”

The lieutenant pointed to a section of the map and the chief marked it, looking up to catch Lysias’s eye. “Someone is definitely interested in restricting access. That’s three hatches total now, each wired with enough blast powder to collapse a square league of tunnels.”

Lysias nodded. They’d known for some time that they were not alone down here. Even in the early stages of mapping the Beneath Places, they’d come across boot prints and other evidence that someone else was active down here. And these more recent discoveries showed that those people were intent upon keeping others from gaining access.

But who are they?
With Y’Zirites excavating Windwir and the recent passage of mechoservitors en route to the northern Marshlands, the Beneath Places weren’t the great secret they’d hoped to keep them. But these charges were set for anyone accessing the hatches from above, and that made little sense to him. If everything had transpired as he suspected it had, the Machtvolk already controlled the lands north and west of Windwir, and by now, the Y’Zirites surely had a foothold in the southern nations. It was someone, he suspected, who already occupied the subterranean passages and did not want others joining them.

Lysias looked to the map. “We’re going to need food soon,” he said. “How easy would it be to defuse one of these hatches?”

Turik shrugged. “I can’t imagine it would be too difficult. They’re wired from below. I’d just need to get a look at it.”

Lysias nodded. “First though,” he said, “you’ll need some sleep, Chief.”

The chief chuckled. “I did sleep, sir. I’ll get some chai and head out right—”

Third alarm sounded at the far edges of the cavern, and Lysias turned toward it. Three nearby scouts vanished on the run as they magicked themselves, and others rose up from their bedrolls, spears and swords at hand. Lysias drew his own blade—a saber he’d carried since his days in the Academy on the Delta—and set out at a run for the commotion.

He heard the ring of steel on steel and saw a storm of bedrolls and blankets and mess kits being tossed and kicked aside as magicked scouts fought.

As Lysias drew nearer he heard a voice bellow. “Hold, Gypsies.” It was familiar, but not a voice he could recognize out of context. And he saw a small group of men standing in the shadowy entrance to the southern passageway. “Is that you, Lysias?”

He drew closer as the man stepped from the shadows. He wore a simple gray uniform, but the eye patch was all Lysias needed to see. “Stand down,” he said to his men. “Orius?”

It wasn’t possible. Orius had perished at Windwir with the others. Only about a thousand Androfrancines—those who’d been outside the city busily about the Order’s business—had survived that desolation.

The general of the Gray Guard smiled. “When my scouts told me it was you, I had to come myself. What in the hells are you doing down here with a Gypsy army?”

“What are the Gray Guard doing here? How did you survive Windwir?”

Orius shook his head. “A long story, friend. But it is good to see you.”

“You as well,” Lysias said. Then he realized he’d not yet called the camp back to first alarm. He gave the whistle, and as the men dispersed, he gestured Orius and his entourage toward the chai kettle. As they walked there, he fell in beside Orius. “How did you know I was here?”

Orius chuckled. “We knew someone was down here in large numbers and started gathering data nearly a week ago. Solo scouts, magicked, in and out quickly to learn what they could. But I didn’t know until yesterday that it was you.”

They’d gone to the Academy together, and of course for years they’d interacted in their respective capacities as generals of neighboring armies. They’d forged a respectful relationship through dozens of affairs of state, though it was of a variety that recognized its limitations. Lysias, when shown evidence that the Androfrancines planned to deploy mechoservitors throughout the Named Lands to deliver the Seven Cacophonic Deaths, had backed Sethbert’s plan. He’d been on the side that brought down Windwir before he saw the actual enemy that pulled Sethbert’s strings.

And now, a man he thought killed by his nation’s preemptive attack on Windwir stood with him in the Beneath Places, holding parley.