Eternity's Blade, page 20
Now he clambered beneath the Vault itself. Here the footfalls of guards echoed ceaselessly as they circuited its outer terraces. Soh’shoro stumbled across a latrine, open to the Ocean but slick with urine. Pride died before necessity. Swallowing, he scuttled up its fetid walls.
Inside the outhouse, he listened to make certain no one approached. Then he moved like lightning, dashing onto the outer walkway. He had only moments before the next patrol. And Soh’shoro leaped, taking two steps up the Vault’s banded iron wall, kicking upward, then arching his body back. Parallel to the ground, his fingers snatched the sloping steel cornices swinging overhead. He rolled atop the Vault’s eaves, smiling at his own talents.
Then his world exploded in pain.
Chapter 18
War
The roundhouse kick caught him completely unaware, nearly snapping his neck. He spilled across the roof tiles, scudding against their banded metal. Only the Ocean slickness saved him, as two shurishi buried themselves beside his sliding form.
Qu’su. Soh’shoro spat blood from his mouth. Of course they would wake Outside too.
He kipped up just as the three assassins closed. A ri’shou’an arced overhead, searing across his back as he dove away. On instinct, Soh’shoro reversed his momentum, shouldering the monk. But a second darted to attack, drawing his weapon in a long, low slash. Soh’shoro tumbled over it, spiraling against the roof tiles to sweep the man’s legs. The assassin spilled sideways. But another shurishi sang through the starlight, warding Soh’shoro away from his killing blow. Now he turned, gazing at the slipping shadows encircling him.
And Soh’shoro drew his mother’s blade, flashing electric blue in the watery glow of the moon.
“I killed you in the Valley,” he threatened the closest Qu’su, remembering how he had sliced his ribs atop the City’s eaves. “I can’t wait to do so again.”
But one assassin towered above the rest. His stance was easy and confident, his footfalls eerily silent as he prowled closer. There was no doubt in Soh’shoro’s mind: This was a master Qu’su, trained far beyond his brothers. When I defeated him before, Soh’shoro realized, he wanted to die. To serve the Onan’ji Outside . . .
And the elder assassin tapped his ear, smiling luridly. Moments later, Soh’shoro realized the guards below had heard their battle.
The first of the Cultists’ cries broke: “On the roof!”
Then: “Something’s above us.”
“Fire to kill!” called the master Qu’su. “This abomination does not belong in our Eternity!”
And suddenly, in the brilliant sweep of the night, only violence remained.
The first weapon cocked beneath him, and instinct blurred with training as Soh’shoro moved. The roof’s tiling exploded in a gout of flame where he had stood moments ago. The two novice assassins lunged for him, flanking and cutting with terrible eagerness. Soh’shoro worked flat between their blades, reversing mid-step to elbow one in the soft part of his neck. Leaning into the blow, he weaved beneath the other’s cut, trying to finish the counter.
But without the Voice, he moved too slowly. The master Qu’su intervened, sliding from the night, catching Soh’shoro’s wrist, and twisting. He rolled with the joint lock, backhanding another slash away as he kicked the elder assassin. But the Qu’su stepped into Soh’shoro’s blow, torquing his knee cruelly and hurling him flat to the roof’s edge.
And all three monks descended upon him, like vultures for the feast.
Soh’shoro rolled sideways as another gunshot disintegrated the eaves behind him in a cloud of needling shrapnel. He half cartwheeled over a slash, trying to stand. But the master assassin’s cut caught him off balance, spitting blood into the night as he slit Soh’shoro’s arm wide. He fell with the blow, tumbling from the roof. Reflexively, Soh’shoro’s hands snatched rafters to swing him onto the Vault’s latticed walkway. A Cultist stood right beneath him, caught completely unaware. Soh’shoro kicked him so hard his skull cracked open against the powder house’s ribbing. Another Lily-Eater rounded the corner, and Soh’shoro snapped his gun loose, catching the stock and firing through the man’s chest.
Blood hissed over his face and hands as the Qu’su leaped from the roof above.
Soh’shoro dove away from the first shurishi, catching the second on pure instinct and hurling it back at the master assassin. The elder Qu’su twisted midair to avoid the weapon, landing off balance on the brine-slick walks, suddenly separated from his companions. Soh’shoro saw his chance. There is no Voice here. You must trust yourself. And in the next instant he slid between the other two monks, tripping one and rounding with the blow, throwing three lashing kicks that worked up the other’s body: cracking his knee, then his ribs, then his neck. The man crumpled like a doll, even as Soh’shoro cut the other Qu’su in two.
Only the master assassin remained.
Soh’shoro tumbled reflexively as a blast of gunfire broke from the walkways behind him. Shouts were everywhere now, as Cultists descended upon the Vault like an army of ravenous shades. Glancing back, Soh’shoro caught two more Lily-Eaters sighting their rifles. He desperately sprinted full tilt for the elder assassin, hoping the Cultists would not risk shooting their own. Closing, he slashed early with his golden ri’shou’an, anticipating the Qu’su’s counter and weaving beneath the blow.
A burst of gunpowder broke from behind Soh’shoro.
He dove sideways as bullets rippled past his leg. The flooring between himself and the master Qu’su crackled with the errant shot, then split wide. Suddenly Soh’shoro and the assassin tumbled through the collapse into the latticework pillaring beneath the Vault.
Free-falling, for one instant the elder Qu’su gained the advantage. The monk’s legs caught an Ocean post, levering his body overhead to stab for Soh’shoro’s stomach. But midair, Soh’shoro parried the blow, kneeing the assassin and flipping him beneath. The Qu’su turned his blade, slashing again, but Soh’shoro snatched a support beam, his other hand locking both ri’shou’ans dangerously close to flesh. Momentum did the rest. The master Qu’su fell along the length of Soh’shoro’s sword, spilling warm blood into the night. Moments later, the man’s limp body splashed into the Ocean depths, floating serenely to the surface amid a smattering of sea foam and lily scum.
“Fire!” a Cultist cried.
Soh’shoro glanced up in panic, finding Lily-Eaters blasting at the Qu’su’s floating corpse, mistaking it for his own. Each bullet spat blood and splintered bone into the restless waves.
Soh’shoro climbed beneath the walkway, drawing close to its collapsed flooring. As Cultists reloaded, he leaped among them, sword flaring. Soh’shoro slew four helpless men clumped together in the space of a single breath. The last two died moments later, fountaining crimson screams into the salt-stained air.
Look what I’ve become. Soh’shoro fought down fury, surveying the butchered corpses. Only I did this. For he had killed these men without any whispered guidance from the Voice. Talent and training alone had gifted Death. Nothing more.
Could I be ready? Could I face him again?
Elsewhere in the night, gunpowder retorted, shattering his reverie. Already more Lily-Eaters rushed to protect the Vault. Soh’shoro had to act now. Snatching a rifle from a fallen Cultist, he scrambled back atop the powder house eaves.
He ran to where gunfire had cracked the roof’s iron banding. Soh’shoro kicked at the remaining tiles. Their slats gave way easily, creating a hole just wide enough to shimmy through. Then he half fell, half stumbled into the innards of the Vault.
He landed atop elevated scaffolding before scanning the bulky dark below. Only a thin crescent of light spilled through the cavernous powder house. Its halls stretched on and on, like a shrouded tomb, in metallurgical litanies of ancient weaponry. Quickly he identified the largest store of saltpeter, freighted alongside massive rifles, twice the size of men and made entirely of iron. Cannons, the chirurgeon had called them. One shot and this whole place will take flame. The massive guns slept monstrously on their carriages, beside crates of wadding and fire starter. Soh’shoro clambered down to their graveyard of steel.
In moments he smashed open the closest cannon case, scattering fistfuls of primer. Then he tore free iron lids and slashed leather tarpaulins, exposing everything he could to open air. Last he kicked into the powder kegs, their splintered wood leaking stinking yellow filament across the bare floor.
Now he climbed, madcap and desperate, back atop the Vault scaffolds, then onto the roof. Here he turned, sighting his stolen rifle through the narrow gap. Without hesitating, he pulled the trigger. And the powder store exploded skyward.
Soh’shoro never heard the full detonation; his ears already rang dead from the muzzle flash. Instead he felt it: rippling across his skin like water, singeing his flesh with vicious heat. The Ocean itself illuminated, reflecting vermilion fury like a shattered sunset. Then the blast broke Soh’shoro, snapping his vision black and buffeting him into the cold of the waves.
Time jumped.
He jolted to panicked consciousness in the frigid depths. When he gasped on reflex, water scorched his lungs. He began to drown. Desperately he kicked for the surface, before spotting sheets of flame blistering its waves. Soh’shoro fought every instinct in his body, forcing himself to swim underwater to escape the fire-scoured sea. He stroked until his senses bled, until his mind thrummed with stains like melting glass, until even the heat of the tides lapped dead against his skin. Then at last he had no choice but to breathe. The last fiery comber washed overhead instants before he burst through the Ocean’s calid break. And Soh’shoro choked watery gasps again and again, the taste of their salt blending with blood and sick in his mouth.
For a long time after, he floated atop the waves, letting his heaving quiet. Half aware, he watched the Vault-born fire spread on wings of smoke, leaking from its skeleton wreckage and fanning across the Haven, staining even the stars a gory cerise. A corpse drifted past, charred to the bone. Elsewhere screams blended with the sea’s evaporating hiss. At last, Soh’shoro forced himself to move, the pain of the explosion numbed by the sea’s frigid burn.
He swam toward the nearest sea walk, clambering up to look across a city fully aflame. Soh’shoro’s explosion had caught the Haven’s bright nacre, and the summer winds spread that conflagration easily. The silhouettes of Cultists flickered erratically, shouting as they tried to tame the insatiable inferno. Still, more and more structures sparked a brilliant burgundy into the night.
It was too late to stop now. The whole Haven would burn.
Then he heard it: cannon fire, echoing from the sea.
Soh’shoro climbed split tiles and sparked timber, gaining vantage to look out across the deep sea. There the Black Cloaks’ ships shelled fiercely, as they descended upon the Haven’s weakness. The same winds fanning the blaze protected their ships. Already long yawls disembarked, rowing infantry toward the city’s ports.
War.
There is no time.
Soh’shoro knew he was badly hurt. That he was mad to try to rescue his princess. But he could risk nothing else. Blood flowed from his calves and forearms; burns protested the damp fabric of his charred robes. And always the blaze’s heat drifted over him, billowing ash and lily-scented smog.
I promise.
And Soh’shoro sprinted into the inferno. He lost track of everything then, except the chaos of the streets and the pounding desperation of his run.
Approaching the Cult’s pagoda, Lily-Eaters scrambled futilely to douse fires. Beyond its bronze gate, Soh’shoro stumbled blindly into an entire battalion. They should have shot him dead. But instead they rushed past, focused only on the flames. Not one of them noticed the prince; he was just another panicked survivor of the firestorm.
He slipped deeper inside. Now the terrific beating of warning gongs, pathetically late, blended with the cacophonic snap of blaze-buckling timbers. He glimpsed a smearing of rot atop an upper staircase. And then, squinting through the smoke, he made out the princess. She still lay encased in the Qu’en Shard, its weight carried by countless Cultists straining beneath mighty plinths. An-go’yi’ki stepped into view moments later, shielding the relic from falling sparks, shouting commands.
“The docks!” he ordered. “To the inner docks!”
Soh’shoro tried to follow. But a sudden bombardment of cannon fire rocketed through the pagoda. Streaking shrapnel shattered its grandeur, shivering bodies into maimed mists. A roof support cracked, collapsing rafters in an inferno of nacre-fueled heat. Soh’shoro had to turn back, sprinting from the ruin as the spire disintegrated into flames.
In the courtyard outside, he caught the Shard’s silhouette again, on the opposite side of the collapse, crossing a wooden walk onto windswept jetties. In the canal beyond, Black Cloak yawls docked hastily, disembarking their first battalions onto the Haven’s streets.
They could kill her by mistake while fighting the Cult.
Heedlessly, he chased after the princess. Ahead a bridge smoldered to tinder, and Soh’shoro flew across its blackened beams like a sparrow alighting on twigs, leaping spar to spar to cut the canal. But his route was circuitous, and he reached the docks only as An-go’yi’ki’s procession boarded a waiting ship. The galley’s sails were already unfurled; its mooring lines swung half free. The Shard hung at its lee side as pulleys wrenched it atop the deck.
Suddenly gunshots pocked the ship’s ribbing, splitting timbers and bone. He turned to see the Black Cloaks reloading after their opening volley, even as more and more rowboats settled into the canal berths, disembarking waves of riflemen. Soh’shoro found himself pinned by cross fire as the Lily-Eaters aboard An-go’yi’ki’s ship blasted back. Dark shapes surrounded him. Pyre light spilled across an approaching face.
Soh’shoro gasped.
“Yei’an.”
“Hold!” she screamed, moving her body to shield Soh’shoro. Black Cloaks flanked them, guns raised.
“I said hold!” Yei’an cried again. “He’s our friend!”
Thick cloth bandages wrapped Yei’an’s brow, and a strange, dark patch covered her right eye. Complications of surgery.
“You’re here?” Soh’shoro asked, disbelieving.
“I couldn’t leave you.” Yei’an smiled brightly. “Not yet.”
The pair crouched behind dock crates as the Cultists’ counterfire pocked the jetty.
“My family is on that ship.” Soh’shoro jerked his head toward the galley. “The Ang’soon and—”
“We know. We followed the Shard here. We can’t let them escape with it.” She shook her head. “But they’re pinning us on purpose. Buying time to set sail.”
Soh’shoro smiled savagely into the ruddy flames. “Cover me.”
Yei’an’s single eye creased with fearful anticipation. But instead of protesting, she merely pressed her hand over his, resting both atop the ringed pommel of Soh’shoro’s ri’shou’an. “I know you care for her.” She smiled sadly. “But come back to me.”
The Qu’en Shard thundered onto the galley’s deck, churning the waves white with the impact of its massive, settling weight.
“Fire!” Yei’an screamed. “Now! Now!”
The wharf vanished beneath gun smoke. Aboard the ship, Cultists ducked for cover, giving Soh’shoro one precious instant. And he vaulted the dock crates, unthinking as he dashed toward his bride. Already her vessel rocked free, its mooring lines floating lazily. And Soh’shoro took one final step atop the jetty, leaping after it.
Everything happened at once. The Cultists returned fire, their rifles fountaining smoke. Soh’shoro’s shadow danced above the sea, like a swooping heron. The galley drifted into open water. The Haven burned brilliantly, its blazes perfectly mirrored in the pyre light of the clouds.
Soh’shoro took two full steps atop the waves before slamming against the warship’s lee side. His hands snatched one of the Shard’s loose pulleys, swinging round the keel as Cultists fired down at him. The depths drank each bullet, before Soh’shoro mantled atop the sloop. His ancestral ri’shou’an glinted ginger beneath the inferno’s light as it flew from his side.
I promise.
He moved like chain lightning made flesh. Sliding beneath rifle fire, he slashed into the first Cultist, catching his flintlock in the same motion and striking the muzzle wide. Its shot echoed fatally into another man as Soh’shoro wheeled behind masting, bullets ricocheting off the spar like driving sleet. Rolling free now, he slashed a third Lily-Eater from sternum to neck, rounding with the cut to shoulder another into gunfire. He skipped flat across the prow, weaving low between rifle arcs and closing on a group of men reloading. They died before powder ever touched their hollows, the last blocking with a gun barrel that split like dry reed. In the same motion Soh’shoro hurled his blade, spearing a distant Lily-Eater and knocking his shot wide. He then vanished into clouds of gun smoke, emerging at the other end of the deck, killing three men unarmed before reclaiming his ancestral blade. A lone Cultist remained, dodging Soh’shoro’s first slash and palming a dagger. He caught the man’s counterstrike before kneeing him into the rigging and cleaving him in two.
In the moments after, Soh’shoro gasped again and again into the crimson night, alone among the dead. His muscles quivered in stilling fury, mind numb with ardor and hate. At last he wiped blood from his eyes, blinking up at the clouds. The ship’s masting gouted flame. Either gunshots or fiery breezes had sparked its sails. Already the sloop listed with the wind, rudderless and drifting toward the shoreline. It wouldn’t be long before the winds drove the vessel into the beach, to crash and burn.
The Qu’en Shard.
It loomed before him, anchored tightly to the deck with heavy ropes. But its glass had been folded back; the chamber inside was now as hollow as new bamboo. She must have fled belowdecks. Soh’shoro descended after her.
