The Horns Of Ruin Part 2

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 Ca.s.sandra 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 pa.s.sengers 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 b.u.mped 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 pa.s.sengers 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. Ca.s.sandra 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 pa.s.sengers 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, pus.h.i.+ng the whimpering Ca.s.sandra 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 a.s.sailants 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 b.i.t.c.h. 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.

"Morgan stood at the gates of Orgentha, broken city, broken wall. He stood in the stones and bones of the defenders; he stood before the spears of the invader." My voice was flat and quiet, grinding like stone in the grist. This was a new invokation for me, and I had to focus to draw into the past and pull out the power of Morgan's story. Hard lines of energy danced around my legs, light cutting in spirals through the train's dusty interior. The attackers stared at me impa.s.sively with their gla.s.sy eyes. I hurried, binding the invokation as quickly as I could. "Three days he stood against them, alone, s.h.i.+eld as a wall, sword as an army. The city stood. He stood. The Wall of Orgentha."

The long, complicated length of my sword flashed, the power springing from the floor and coalescing against the blade. I swept it down and a brickwork of light traveled across the train, cutting the Fratriarch and Ca.s.sandra off from the attackers. The bug-eyed men looked the wall up and down, its light winking brightly off their lenses. When they looked back in my direction I had moved. I stood at the rough opening that had been torn in the car, swinging my sword in the slow circles of a balanced guard.

"Wall behind you, sword before you," I snarled and smiled. "Nowhere to go, boys."

The fallen attacker stood slowly. He moved his arm sparingly, and the dents around his shoulder leaked blood. He watched me warily. Odd curls of cold fog wisped out from under his mask.

"Three to one?" I asked. Their absolute silence was getting to me. "I am comfortable with those odds, now that I don't have to worry about the Fratriarch." I slid from balanced guard into a more aggressive stance. "Let us settle our differences, as warriors do."

The air filled with the roaring drone of engines. Behind the s.h.i.+mmering wall, Ca.s.sandra's eyes went wide, even around the shock. The Fratriarch grimaced, then put a hand on the girl's shoulder and began invoking. Reluctantly, I glanced behind me.

A dozen more, their bulbous green eyes bright as they arced toward the train from the ground on columns of black smoke. These men wore two barrel-wide burners on their backs, flame flickering around the turbine blades as they whined forward. Couldn't hold off this many. I looked back at the Fratriarch.

"Go!" he yelled. His voice was m.u.f.fled behind the wall of light.

"If I leave you, the invokation will unravel."

"Girl, I have my own tricks." He planted his staff and leaves of metal began to tear through the ruined carpet from the car and swirl around him like a tornado on an autumn day. The leaves slapped together into a rough, hollow column around the Fratriarch. He drew the girl close to him. "Morgan on the Fields of Erathis, Eva Forge. Remember."

The last metal flake fell in place, and I dropped the wall. Light continued to flash from the column. Other invokations, other wards. The Fratriarch was Morgan's First Sword, his greatest scion in the world, I reminded myself. One of the framework towers that held the monotracks up over the city was nearby, and I jumped to it from the car, leaving the old man to take care of himself. Third mistake. That was probably the big one.

I clambered down as the flying goggle-men adjusted their trajectories to intercept me, jumping the last twenty feet. The arcane strength of my legs cratered the cobblestone street when I landed.

Morgan on the Fields of Erathis. A fateful thing for the Fratriarch to say, I thought as I jogged away from the elevated tracks. There were small crowds of injured civilians still clambering down from the train and dispersing into the city. Trying to get away from the fighting. Lots of screaming, lots of blood, but there were no threats among them. No hidden a.s.sa.s.sins. It made me think briefly about the Betrayers. This was nothing like their usual attacks, their small teams, their knives in the backs of their enemies. No time for that now. The distant moan of emergency sirens echoed beneath the urgent roar of the burnpacks of the attackers that were even now descending to the ground. They landed in the streets, fire and smoke haloing around them, scattering the already panicked civilians like leaves before a forest fire. I ducked into an alley.

In some ways, Erathis was Morgan's greatest battle. The Rethari horde that had been rolling through the northern provinces spread out when it came to the unpopulated Erathisian gra.s.slands. Morgan led a cadre of Paladins on a monthlong campaign against the horde. They traveled on angelwings, hitting the Rethari in unpredictable places with crippling force and speed. Morgan led his company against the Rethari weaknesses, and also against their strengths. Wagon trains and armored columns fell to Morgan's blade. They even tore down a couple of the Retharis' divine clockwork totem-men. The Rethari G.o.ds cracked under Morgan's a.s.sault.

I watched the bug-eyed men spread out, searching for me, ignoring the civilians. The three up top called down in strange, static-laced voices from the train above. Outnumbered but mobile, I moved, searching for a weakness to strike. The comparison that the Fratriarch made was apt. As always, there was wisdom in his words.

I circled away from the elevated track, lacing new invokations into the air around me as I went. My armor tightened in memory of Morgan's Hundred Wounds, and my blade gleamed as I bound it with the Sundering. My step lightened as I invoked Morgan's march against the city of Ter-Trudan. When I felt appropriately buffed, I returned to the site of the crash from a different direction. Three of the strange men were standing in the wreckage of the ruined building, gla.s.s grinding under their feet. One of them was carrying some sort of heavy bullistic, awkward loops of ammunition twisted around his waist and shoulders. The street was thick with smoke and the sharp smell of idling burners. I came at them low to the ground, running forward in a squat, silent, hiding in the smoke of their burners until I was upon them.

"The Warrior stands!" I shrieked as I rose from the smoke behind them. I had one in half before he could raise his blades. The second offered feeble resistance, batting away my attack with his bladed gauntlets before he succ.u.mbed to a trio of armor-crumpling strikes across his chest.

Thunder rolled between the buildings as the backpedaling gunner slewed his bully around and let tear. Smoke vortexed out in whipping tendrils as the slugs ripped toward me. The hardened air of the armor invokation shuddered, knocking the breath from my lungs. Each shot hammered a little closer, the sh.e.l.l of my protections s.h.i.+mmering in protest. The metal of the noetic armor gleamed with heat as the friction of the attack sluiced off of them, the runes entangled within them failing one by one.

I went to one knee and rolled, buying seconds as the gunner corrected the stream of fire, his shots skimming off the edge of my protective sh.e.l.l. He dug up cobbles, shards of stone cutting my legs as I focused my defense on the impossible torrent of lead and fire. I braced my heels and sprang forward. Slugs hammered across my blade, nearly knocking it from my hands. Only the blessing of Morgan made me strong enough to hold on. The tip of the blade nicked the barrel of the gun and his aim faltered, st.i.tching a line into the building behind me. I brought the sword around, and the backswing struck the firing chamber. The gun exploded, was.h.i.+ng away the last of my protective invokation in a wall of fire. The gunner staggered back, windmilling the shredded rags of his arms. I stepped forward and struck him cleanly through the chest.

"d.a.m.n unnatural weapons," I spat. My hands and legs were shaking, and curls of smoke wisped up from the tired runes of my pauldrons. I went to one knee. There was blood and ash in my mouth. The air around was a ruin of smoke. The static voices of the fallen man's comrades began to drift from the surrounding alleyways. I struggled up. My chest felt like a trampled wicker basket.

Morgan, on the Fields of Erathis. His greatest victory. The hordes of Rethari undone, the gra.s.slands fed with their dark blood, their G.o.ds shattered into wreckage, their armor broken. The Fraterdom saved, all by the hand of Morgan.

But also by the body of Morgan. The Fields of Erathis, where treacherous Amon crept through the night, among the smoke and the confusion and the bloodletting. As Morgan slept, he came. Jealous Amon, the Betrayer, the a.s.sa.s.sin. Morgan on the Fields of Erathis, murdered by his brother.

I blinked sweat and fear from my eyes and slipped away. More of the strange men came into the square. More bullistic weapons, more bladed gauntlets. More than I could handle on my own. I looked up at the mono car, where the Fratriarch still waited, bound by his wards, s.h.i.+elded. For now.

Morgan on the Fields of Erathis. An apt description.

*hey were beginning to panic. You could see it in the way they cl.u.s.tered under the tracks of the elevated train, hear it in the strange squealing language of their voxorators. The sirens were getting closer, the emergency response teams rus.h.i.+ng to rescue the injured from the monotrain accident. Several of the strange men had set off to intercept the sirens. That would bring an armed response, and they knew it. Time was running out.

Nothing they had was going to cut through the Fratriarch's wards. And it was clear that he was their target, from the way they kept close to the train, the way so many of them kept climbing up and arguing and then climbing down. The way they looked up nervously to the car dangling from the ruined tracks, flaring light and dull explosions marking their failed attempts to get inside Barnabas's s.h.i.+elds. No way they were going to do it. No way I could let them do it.

When I stumbled out of the square, there was no immediate pursuit. They cl.u.s.tered under the train and regrouped. I did the same in a quiet alleyway, weaving invokations into armor and strength, flaring power along the length of my blade, cursing myself for letting the Fratriarch out of the monastery without a full guard. For letting him outside at all. I would get one chance to make it right, I knew. One chance to go in and cut them down before the old man's wards failed. Balancing act between recouping my arcane reserve and guessing how long Barnabas could last. Lots of unknowns in that equation, so I played it dangerous and went back in before I was fully invoked. No use being at full strength if they got away with the Fratriarch while I was buffing up in some corner.

I crawled to the edge of the roadway behind some wreckage from the mono derailment to see how my strange little friends were progressing. The goggle-faced crew was under the tracks, talking and pointing. As I watched, a couple of them shrugged their burnpacks more firmly on their backs and walked to the center of the square. The wide, loud turbines began to cycle up. Hot, stinging air washed off them in oily waves.

Going to get help. Going to get bigger explosives, or cutting torches, or ... Brothers knew what else. Going to get one of their renegade Amonites, probably, to Unmake the whole d.a.m.n car until they could pry the old man out by his teeth. I couldn't let them go. If I was going to stop them, it had to happen now, or not at all. Now.

I had already incanted the Rite of the Stag Hunt for speed, Morgan's Journey and the Long Stand to keep the fatigue far enough away, and, finally, the Walls of Alteraic. I didn't have the words that the Fratriarch could manage, or the more complicated invokations of the bullistic revolver that came with devotion to other paths, but I sparked up what I knew, and came in burning like a flare. The sword is my path, the sword my fire and my strength.

I came out of cover at a blind sprint, the wide, flat steel of my sword held up over my head. They were facing away from me, the barrel-like engines of their burnpacks blocking my approach from their view. Halfway across the courtyard, my legs hammering the cobbles like iron pistons, I began to yell the invokation of the Mortal Blade. It doesn't last long, and you have to wait until the last second to flare it or it runs out before you run out of enemies. Plus it's nice for the intimidation.

"I bind myself to the Champion, the Warrior, the battlefield, the blade!" I intoned, my flat, arcane voice grinding out like an avalanche of steel. As I spoke, fat red sparks rolled off my weapon like crimson leaves in an autumn breeze. The air around me coiled with power. Red and black flecks coalesced in front of me, plowing forward as I ran. "I bind to blood, to fire, to steel, to grave! I bind myself to battle and the war eternal! For Morgan, dead and unending!"

They saw me, too late.

The near one turned, raising the intricate double blades of his gauntlets into a guard that would never withstand such arcane fury. I cut him down, the blade sliding in an easy cross against his chest, his blades and his arms falling away as he crumpled to the ground. His companion took one look at the invokations roiling over my noetically armored body and fired the turbines on his burnpack. Flames and heat filled the square and a plume of smoke boiled down to the cobbles.

I rushed toward him, my blade catching the fleeing warrior on the shoulder. He twisted, his control of the 'pack wavering as he sluiced sideways. I punched forward with the blade, strength and force coming from my hips, my legs. The tip of the wide sword parted his chest and drove back into the whining furnace of the turbines. A tongue of flame lashed out from the man's chest, charring the scream that died on his lips. I whipped the sword out in a backhand slash. The turbines ruptured, tearing the man apart.

The explosion battered my s.h.i.+elds, framing me in angry fire, flames of blue and red that tore up into the sky. The shock wave rippled up into the towers that surrounded the square. Gla.s.s shattered into a diamond snow that crashed down to the cobbles. Glittering shards flaked across the remnants of my s.h.i.+eld, building up a sh.e.l.l of starry light shot through with skeins of furious red.

The gla.s.s settled into a field of sharp light, reflected from the sun above. The cataclysm of the explosion echoed through the canyons of the city. The bodies of the two men lay twisted under the tiny gla.s.s flecks.

I turned to the men standing beneath the elevated tracks and raised my sword in salute.

"I bind myself," I said quietly, gasping with the effort of the invokations and the fight, "to battle. The blade. The grave."

The last misty shards of gla.s.s shuffled to the ground. They crunched under the k.n.o.bby treads of my boots like broken bones. In the s.h.i.+ning light that reflected off the broken-tooth windows far above, the courtyard was silent. The goggle-eyed men and I stared at one another. Before they gather themselves, I thought. Before they recover from watching me blow one of their comrades into rags of meat and ash. Before I collapse from the strain of the attack, from the sheer arcane weight crus.h.i.+ng my lungs and straining against my bones. Before I became something I couldn't control.

I moved, and the air s.h.i.+mmered around me as I ran. Waves of force tore away from my sword as I swung it into a variable guard-to-strike position. The stones under my boots boomed as I rushed them, rushed them like an avalanche broken free from the mountain of G.o.d. My scream was meaningless and terrifying, full of incoherent rage, full of pain and anger.

I moved and they fell back. Dropped their weapons, their guards, their formation, and fell back. But not fast enough. Never fast enough. The first one I caught on his heels, his sword held forgotten by his knee. Two more fell before any of them held a guard worth avoiding. I burned bright, flaring my invokations for quick results. Had to break them fast. I couldn't win a long fight, not against this many.

Another down, arm and shoulder split from his chest, the heat of my blade curling up in wisps of smoke from the edges of the wound. My head was a dull roar, little in it but the form of the sword and the rage of murdered Morgan arcing through my bones. Something lurked at the edge of my attention, though, something begging to be heard through the fire of the battle. The next one managed a guard block and counterstrike as my mind raced.

Blood. The blood. I raised my sword warily, sparring with the warrior. The others were circling. Another one came at me and I fell into a dual guard position without thinking about it, cycling my sword in broad, sweeping arcs, finally finis.h.i.+ng the first attacker with a cut to the inner thigh that slid through bone and whirled up into the stinking mess of his guts. He folded, and I spun around to give my full attention to the second man. I held my sword in front of me.

The blood hung on the wide blade like lumpy mud, smearing across the sun-bright metal in uneven streaks. Old blood, cold blood, blood that had clotted and cooled and stiffened like tar.

Dead man's blood.

I looked at the man at my feet. He sat on the ground, a clumpy pool of thick gore spilling out of his burst gut. His voxorator squealed in mindless complaint, then he raised the gauntlet of his right hand and drove the blade into my knee.

Pain burst through my leg like a wildfire, and I shrieked. The tip of his weapon skidded off the hazy sh.e.l.l of my invoked s.h.i.+eld, but was thrust hard enough and came close enough that it drew blood and sc.r.a.ped bone. Still screaming, I brought the sword down. Put the blade into his head near the base of the sword, then drew back, slicing, running the dull metal of his helmet along the full length of the sword in a long, rasping strike that slid through metal, bone, and meat. Tarthick blood spilled out. A swirling tendril of fog followed the blade through the wound like smoke s.n.a.t.c.hed by the wind. Frost glittered along the blade, and then the man fell back. Dead. Finally.

The others were on me in a breath. Seven or eight of them, and it was all I could do to stay in one piece. Blades slipped through the waning s.h.i.+eld, the power of the invokation stressed by the explosion and the sheer number and ferocity of their attacks. I was able to sneak in a handful of guard strikes to legs and hands that would have crippled living men. These things, these warriors, these cold-meat, dead-blood monsters ... they fought on. Glittering frost and gummy blood slopped from their wounds with each strike. I retreated, foot by foot, s.h.i.+fting my stance closer to the edge of the square. When I got to the mouth of an alleyway I dropped the rest of my arcane bindings and flared the invokation of the Rite of the Stag Hunt, pushed it into my legs, and leapt away from contact with the dead men in a series of long, ground-shuddering steps. I slid around a corner and started to run in a staggering gait.

I was spent. By the time I disengaged, I counted five attackers left. Just as many more were limping off, arms or legs mangled beyond use. Still too many in my present condition. As I ran the final invokations wisped away, leaving me drained. When the Hunt faltered, I stumbled to a halt against the side of a building to catch my breath. h.e.l.l, it was all I could do not to lie down and tremble into sleep. I slid to the ground, sword tumbling to the stone of the street.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on back there?" I gasped to the empty street. My hands shook as I wiped the clods of blood away from my sword with a rag. Tired, bone-tired. Scared, too. I tried to go through the meditation of a.s.sessment, struggling to focus against the hammering of my heart. Blood leaked from my knee, both arms, a dozen smaller cuts, and a deeper wound that had sc.r.a.ped my ribs. The invokations that had wrapped me away from these things were gone, and now the flesh was back and full of holes. My hands hummed from the constant striking of metal against metal and yielding bone. I fumbled open the first-aid kit from my thigh pocket and bandaged up as best I could. I didn't have it in me to invoke the Binding of Flesh just now. Didn't have anything left. I wiped the blood from my hands and threw the rag to the ground.

I struggled to my feet. Tired, scared. Unsure of the tactical situation. Had they gone for help? Had they gotten at the Fratriarch? More important, why in the name of the living Brother was I fighting dead men, and what did they want with the Fratriarch? I was used to fighting alone. I expected to fight alone. Just not dead men, and not with the life of the Fratriarch on the line. And he was back there, alone with the girl. With the Amonite. Those wards of his wouldn't last forever.

I jogged toward the wreck of the monotrain, taking a longer, circuitous route back. The streets were quiet. I held the double-handed sword in a loose grip, hugging it close to my body. So tired, afraid I was going to drop it, but more afraid that if I sheathed it I wouldn't be able to draw fast enough if one of those dead men jumped me.

Creeping the last few yards to the square, I invoked a weak s.h.i.+eld and snuck up to the corner. The courtyard was empty.

I moved carefully around the wreckage of the fight. The civilians were long gone, obviously, but where were my attackers? I reached the elevated track and reluctantly put the blade away, then started to climb. The iron trestles offered good handholds, but I was drained to the bone. Twice I nearly fell before I was able to scramble onto the track.

The car leaned dangerously away from the courtyard, probably unsettled by the burnpack's explosion or some other tampering by the undying a.s.sailants as they tried to pry Barnabas from his sh.e.l.l. I stepped inside carefully, this time holding the revolver in shaky hands. There was a body in the entrance, the scarred metal of the dead man's armor rimed with frost. I put a boot into his shoulder and turned him over.

His chest had burst open, the grim smile of ribs clenched behind the metal. That same tarry blood lined the wound, but where there should have been heart and lungs, there was a gla.s.s cylinder. A piston cycled slowly inside the gla.s.s, a plunger of leather and bra.s.s that rose slowly before settling to the bottom of the tube with a metallic sigh. Up and down, slowly. Breathing.

I drew back the hammer of the ordained revolver and sighted along the barrel, then fired a slug into the dead man's chest. The gla.s.s popped and a cloud of fog erupted out, twisting up to the revolver before dancing across my chest and filling my face. Startled, I gasped for air and swallowed a century's cold lungful of ancient, stale breath. It tasted like metal caskets and the frozen memories of tombs, buried in stone and ice. I staggered back, coughing until my lungs were clear. s.h.i.+vering just as much from the memory of that breath as from the cold, I stepped into the car.

The floor was charred. Not an easy task with metal. The seats were nothing but twisted wreckage, the windows all blown out, and the Fratriarch's column of metal was gone. Where it had been, the floor was clear, spotless. There was something at the edge, a tiny dot of color against the dark metal. I bent down for a closer look. Just a drop, really. I put a finger to it and it burst, splattering across my nail. Holding it up to my face, I twisted to get a better look in the light from outside the car.

Blood. Real blood, red and warm and slippery between my fingers. The Fratriarch was gone.

My earliest memory of the Fratriarch is one of my earliest memories, period. I was in a car, the interior warm red leather, the woman sitting next to me dressed in a tight gray dress, her face covered by a white lace veil. My mother, I think, or a woman who was mourning my mother. I had the feeling of coming from some complicated ritual. Something that I hadn't understood, but that everyone around me took very seriously. Very sadly. Later in life I told myself it was a funeral. It could have been anything. I remember not understanding, but also not being afraid.

It was raining outside. The car drove through parts of the city I didn't know. More than that. Drove through a city I didn't know, like I didn't know what cities were. I knelt on the seat and looked out the window at all the close-together houses, the tall buildings, the crowded sidewalks. So many people. Something in my memory compared this to long gardens, carefully manicured, perfectly empty. Even the trees of my memory were empty. No birds, no squirrels.

The woman sitting next to me pulled me to the seat beside her, wrapping my tiny hands in her long, cold fingers, pressing them into my lap. I looked up at her, but she was facing forward. Watching where we were going.

The driver was a man, just another man, gray coat and hat and gloves. He drove stiffly. I pulled on my mother-mourner's hand, straining to look out the window, but all I could see were the rainstreaked clouds and the stony tops of buildings.

The car stopped and the man got out and came around to our door. The woman looked at me for the first and last time, then released my hands. The man opened my door. A wave of rain washed into the car, spattering across the deep-red leather. I s.h.i.+ed away from the sudden cold and wet. Afraid to ruin my dress and my little hat. The woman put a hand on my hip and slid me out. I stumbled on the runner and nearly fell, catching the man's pants leg in a twist of my fingers. He closed the door and went around to the front again. I looked back at the car, water beading across its beetle-smooth black sh.e.l.l, its engine huffing quietly in the rain. I was getting soaked.

A square, like a courtyard, but shabbier. I don't know what I compared this place to, to consider it shabby. There was a statue, a high wall that surrounded the circular drive, an iron gate that was open. I was standing in the lee of a grand high building, made of old stone and curving smoothly away from the ground like a big old egg. It looked like the coldest, hardest place I'd ever seen. There was a door that looked tiny, but only because it led out from this enormous place. A dozen half-circle stairs led up to the door, and there were two men in simple gray robes standing close to the building, out of the rain.

The car roared to life behind me, and I turned just in time to see it roll through the iron gate and out of view. How did I feel about that? Surprised? Relieved? Cold. Mostly I felt cold.

The closest man tossed a cigarette into a puddle and shrugged his hood over his head, then ran out into the rain to me. He was a large man, his shoulders wide as blocks, his face wrinkled and smiling. Like he enjoyed running in the rain. He leaned over me, cutting the rain off with his bulk, then held out a wide, flat hand to me.

"Miss Eva Forge? Welcome home. My name is Barnabas."

"Barnabas what?"

He shook his great head slowly, happily. "Silent. But never mind that. We don't have use for more name than that, here. Would you like to come inside?"

I looked back to the gate, where the car had driven off, then up at the friendly man and his enormous face.

"My name is Eva Forge," I said.

"Of course, dear. Now come inside."

His hand smelled like nicotine and oil. I held it and walked back to the door. He took tiny steps at my side, hunching down and keeping the rain off my nice, new hat.

I burst through the door and swept into the foyer. The Alexians had given me a white linen cloth to clean up with on the way over, and I tossed it at the stony feet of the idol of Saint Marcus and made for the holy nave. The whites.h.i.+rts who had given me a ride cl.u.s.tered anxiously at the door, afraid to enter but anxious to see the scene.

"Tomas!" I yelled. "Isabel! Any of you b.l.o.o.d.y old ... lords.h.i.+ps, if you please. Tomas!"

"You rode in on every siren in the city, Eva. You don't have to yell," Tomas said from the engraved stone archway that led to the Chamber of the Fist. "We're gathered, all the Elders. Let Barnabas come inside and we can talk about whatever it is-"

"Talk later. He's been taken."

"Taken? Who?" He dropped his cigarette and ground it out with an old, oil-stained boot. "The Fratriarch?"

I brushed past him, not sparing a glance toward the open door of the Chamber. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the upturned faces of the rest of the Elders. There was a relic of armament next to the Chamber. I threw back the cowl and began rummaging through the offerings.

"They came at us after we left ..." How much did he know about our business? What had the Fratriarch told him? Barnabas had said nothing to me of our business, and I was his guard. But these were the Elders. "After we left the Library Desolate. There were two guys, following us, and then-"

My hand strayed to the dark wood tray of bullets. I hadn't seen those two again, I realized. The two bulky men with their metal cowls and tattooed cheeks. They had been following us, for sure, but they hadn't been in on the attack.