Wicked Throne, page 15
Hyriath says, “Lady Trold authorized all commercial gates opened to Vorsmad to recall our fleet. Permit me to take you to safety.”
“Where is Nyrene?” I slur.
“Her Highness is waiting for you in the Strong Hall.”
“I need to get to the war tower.” Outside, the sky is inflamed pink with smoke. Deep-chested bells echo their terrible cry through the City on Stilts. Loudspeakers order the millions who live in Almathea to get to higher levels. Private airships, airships wearing sports colors, and airbridges still draped in holographic advertisements dip between the city’s bottom levels and the slums up top.
A fresh bombardment on the eastern cliffs blasts the high-above ocean into the sky. Blue water rolls over the basin wall, plummeting the mile down to Almathea in a huge, frothing sheet. Razanhi’s guards grab me and the skywalk railing to keep us from pitching over the edge. Fifty feet below, the ocean charges over Almathea’s palace green and crushes the southern wall. Floodwaters smash lower pylons and roar through our defenses in cataclysmic explosions.
We make the Red Tower just after the shields rise. I charge through the chaos, shouting, “Lady Trold.”
“Your Highness!” Relief colors her voice sweet and sharp.
“What news from the seagates?”
“What have you done?” Deercat chokes. I shoot an impatient glare at his image on Trold’s rig.
Trold says, “Princess Chiski vouched for seven witches. I’ve assigned them to the eastern seagate.”
“Forget that. Drop the lockdown. Summon any magicians, witches, sorcerers, enchanters, and bondsmages familiar with seagate operation. Now. They have the Ash Womb.”
Deercat tears his black hair and pounds his thighs while Trold delivers my command. “What are you calling into my city?”
“Is he talking to me?” I look at Euri, who is operating the rig.
Deercat bares his teeth in a silent howl.
I rage, “You, brother! In case this is shocking to you, artillery plasma cannons aren’t enough to defend against an entire armada. When the palace shield comes down, we’ll be completely defenseless! Deercat, Kemdislat, I want your divisions in place for teleportation.”
“Any deaths in Almathea and I will hold you personally responsible.”
It’s such an impudent thing to say, even for Deercat, that I’m offended on the prince’s behalf.
Deercat’s tawny-brown face is so pale it’s garish. His muscles jerk and quiver. He’s not being impudent.
He’s not talking to Razanhi. He knows.
Blood rushes from my head. The war gallery shrinks to a dim, dark flicker. He knows, but he hasn’t told them yet.
Why? Is he protecting me? Has Nyrene spoken with him? I can’t tell. One word from him and it’s over. And if I can’t tell, I’ve got to take preventative measures. I need leverage.
I sidle up to the rig and lean in so he can get a good hard look at how much I’m not joking. I adopt a smirk that tastes like blood and force mild amusement. “Deaths? Are you referring to your human concubine? Because she’s here with me.”
Fear and anguish fill his hologram.
I hiss, “So I suggest we concentrate on saving our city and worry about the rest afterward. Keep quiet and the two of you will be reunited soon enough.” I turn away with my best villain impression and, in sotto voce, order a passing clerk, “Please find Lord Deercat’s human woman and bring her to this council chamber.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Unharmed, please.”
Trold interrupts my scheming. “Black Tower magicians en route to primary seagate.”
“Good. Reroute two of our palace war bands to provide an escort. I don’t know whether the elves left any nasty surprises in—”
Trold shakes her head. “The bands were outside when palace shields rose.”
I stoop to look at the scope she’s glaring into. A hundred people huddle under a bridge as fire lances from the raging sky. Elf ships roar under the smoke, cutting down anyone caught in the open. Trold’s white hands jet across the control like ghosts. She bangs a fist on her desk. Her gold-clad hair chimes and sparkles. When she sags back in her chair, her knuckles leave red stains on the hardwood.
“How many in the evacuation areas?” I say. “Haven’t heard.”
Four million souls in Almathea. Fifty thousand safe in Vorsmad. Three thousand work in the palace. Except for the guards, three thousand plus should have been inside when the palace shields went up.
Grimy water foams over rubble that used to be a municipal school. Explosions bloom across the holographic city map. Trold grinds her teeth. “They’re targeting our seagates.”
Deercat orders, “Show me what is happening. Reverse a divining scope.”
“Do it,” I say.
The palace rocks. A fresh onslaught cracks across our shield. Titanic-charge loops pop and realign somewhere outside the tower, filling the air with static electricity. Ice creeps into my veins. Unless we can teleport our host back to Almathea and salvage the battle, this is how the war ends: the palace shattering with us inside.
“We must get more civilians inside the shield. There is a tunnel in the emperor’s chambers that leads into the city. . . .”
“Your Highness.” The clerk returns, without Zavia.
“Where is she?” I hiss while Lord Deercat tells the entire world how to sneak into the palace.
“Rose Market.” He bows his apology.
“What, here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In Almathea? Are you joking? Why is his pet human here?”
“Lord Deercat brought her into the city last night. I apologize, Your Highness. I was not aware.”
Deercat howls, “If Zavia’s hurt, I will hunt you to the end of the world. You won’t escape. Not this time.”
Shit. He had to hear that? There goes my leverage.
I spin round. “Permit me to go and retrieve her.” Deercat’s emerald eyes narrow.
“You already threatened my life. Let me get her,” I say. He shuts his eyes and looks at the heavens.
“What the hell have you got to lose?”
“Everything.”
“Apart from that.”
He opens his eyes.
“Run the battle,” I offer. “Razanhi will save your human. Personally.”
Deercat bows his head. “Lady Trold, send for an Imperial band. You’ll meet them outside the shield,” he orders me. He turns back to our war leader. “Tell them to escort . . . him . . . into Rose Market. They’ll bring him and Zavia back here or I will hang any man unlucky enough to survive the mission.”
“That’s an order,” I add, for appearances’ sake.
I burst through Razanhi’s soaked dressing room doors and tear open his underwear drawer. Uthgarab the World-Ender and the Cloud Sapphire glitter between unmentionables. I untangle the oak pendant and stuff it into my breast pocket. The Cloud Sapphire goes into my robe’s left inside pocket and the Ambergris Knife into the outside right, where I can reach it at a moment’s notice.
A palace war band meets me outside the tunnel’s exit.
“Good work,” I say. “Now, piss off. I’ll find Deercat’s concubine myself.”
“But, sir—”
“Have you located her?”
“Yes, sir. In the Unicorn’s Secret, second floor, eastern wall.”
I orient myself and head for Almathea’s leisure district. The guards follow.
“That was an order,” I snap. “In case my rank compared with Lord Deercat’s was unclear.”
The captain swallows. He and his men break off.
Deercat picked a hell of a place for Zavia’s breakfast. The animated doors hang ajar, but their enchantment still holds; the handsome unicorn prince and his lady love smile with oil-paint mouths and beckon me inside. Sand-colored brick littered with broken light globes wind under a make-pretend glass city, and luminous roses twine around a round table set for the supposed Twelve Tribes. Skin-changers wave at me from a long mural behind their set piece.
Nab drowned in a well. Deercat’s idea of romantic.
I conjure flames to light my path and stride past topiary manicured into children’s shapes: cubes, spheres, pyramids. The stairs twist down in the far corner like tree roots from an ancient oak. Pixie lights and small furred things peep from whorls in the steps. I climb alongside painted soldiers.
The second floor took a direct hit from an elf ship. The florid pink wall opens into a smoking crater. Shattered leaf- and rose-shaped flatware carpet the floor under toppled chairs and dining tables woven from polished brambles. Pastel pastries, sugar puffs, maple water, and tiny golden eggs squish underfoot. Trying to avoid them means stepping on glass. The unicorn prince, who’d been a little too close to the blast, fumbles at his painted neck at the crater’s edge. His lady love doesn’t seem to notice he’s missing his head. She holds his hand and beams at me like she’d gone and killed him.
Creepy.
Ash and dust flow through the hole, filling the syrupy air with noxious fumes. The eastern wall opens into a rose-colored kitchen. Coffeepots fly past onto heart-shaped trolleys, pouring themselves into pink bowls stirred by enchanted spoons. Silver bonbons whisk themselves from a stove onto a pastry rack where glittering bottles dance and weave, decorating them with rainbow frosting. I open the storage chamber, then an unused vat.
“Hi,” says the vat’s contents.
“Come on. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”
Zavia struggles upright, tangled in an unseasonable winter gown festooned with wild jewels and a furry green cape. She clambers to the floor and hauls a large bag after her.
“Are you injured?” She doesn’t look injured.
Zavia shakes her head. She stares at her feet. She makes the worst bow I’ve ever seen.
I say, “I’m going to take you back to Deercat.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes. Stop bowing.” I head back into the dining area. A shuffling scrape follows me. I turn around to see Zavia close behind, trailing her enormous bag. “You might wish to leave that behind.”
“I can’t.” She pushes up her eyeglasses. “I need to take it home. I need to prove to Lily and Ben this is real.”
“The city’s under attack. We’ll travel a lot farther a lot faster without it.”
Zavia edges around behind the bag and eases open the top. She stares at the insides for a long moment before pulling out a magic clock that poofs into vivid blue smoke before reappearing as a large sky-colored egg. She sets the egg by her bejeweled knees and pulls out a small potted plant. Then an enchanted toy knight. A map of the Summer Empire. An ice-cream wrapper whose animated advertisements flash up and down its carefully folded length.
A bomb thunderclaps somewhere outside and the restaurant floor shifts. Zavia scoops up her choosings as though those tacky pieces of trash—and actual trash—are her life’s worth. She says, “What’s happening?”
“We’re under attack.” I pull out the Ambergris Knife.
“Is that magic?”
“Hold out your arm.”
She shrinks back.
I sigh. “Yes, it’s magical. Watch me.” I nick my thumb with the sun-colored blade, and her eyes blow huge as the enchantment banishes me from sight. Zavia holds out her hand, palm down. Eh, good enough. I prick the side under her little fingers, where hopefully the cut won’t hurt too much.
We sprint downstairs into the street. The ground shakes again. Brown clouds roll over the smoking buildings toward us. I cast dust wards over her face and mine. The grit engulfs us in cloying ashy soup, swallowing our view into mud. I slide a hand around Razanhi’s Cloud Sapphire.
Wind, I tell it. If anything, the smoke crowds thicker. Wind. Blow a hole in the smoke.
An elf ship screams through the haze blasting plasma bolts from its dozen guns. I grab Zavia’s arm and drag her into an alley as the sky erupts in flame. We thread through burning streets dotted with crushed stone pillars. A heavy stone tunnel appears through the mire. I kick open the narrow doorway and we race into cooler shadows.
Sheltered from the bombs, Goose Market Complex is nearly intact. Tidy shops stand in eerie perfection under hanging flags. An elf hologram winks into existence above a candy stand, promising caramel rollies are half price with an exaggerated accent. I head left, deeper underground. We pass a sex house, two clothing shops, a souvenir boutique, and a collapsed balcony where smashed chairs and three corpses lay in the rubble. I point out the boutique across the street so Zavia won’t look at the corpses.
The complex dead-ends at a zoological garden.
“Is someone coming to get us?” Zavia says. “Can they see us?”
I backtrack, pointing at the street map plastered above ticket prices. “There’s an exit on Nab Street. That will take us back to the palace.”
“But someone’s coming, right? I mean, you’re—aren’t you, like, the prince?”
“No one’s coming for us.” I unhook the garden’s velvet rope and wait while Zavia juggles her treasure before shimmying past. The ice-cream wrapper falls. She hobbles backward, picks it up, and stuffs it into her shoe.
A plasma bolt lances from the sex shop window. The bolt sears past my head and strikes the ticket booth, buckling glass and steel. I drag Zavia behind me and conjure a shield.
“Cool!” she crows.
Another bolt sprays off the shield’s face and splashes purple fire across the granite ceiling. Soot and ozone pour from the gash. Animal calls erupt from the garden’s foliage.
“Back up,” I command. “Stay behind me.” We creep backward into thick vegetation. A bolt jets past our right and something screams. Burnt flesh and hair weeps from an azalea bush. Zavia gasps. I point her toward a barrel tree.
She stands her ground, face flushed autumn red. “Shoot back.”
“It was just a bird.”
“Aren’t you a wizard? Do you have magic? Shoot back!”
“They can’t see us. If I start casting away, they’ll pinpoint where we are.”
“They’re shooting at us.”
“Invisibility doesn’t mean we’re inaudible.”
She glares at the sex shop.
Nab on ice, she’s just like Deercat. But Deercat’s three hundred pounds of muscle, and Zavia’s not. I snag her under the shoulders and drag us backward across the earth. My shield evaporates. Plasma bolts fry the greenery where it lands. The woods disappear behind us, and we tumble out onto a cobblestone path. Birds take off screeching between towering palm trees. I sprint left, pulling Zavia along until she claws my fist away, hikes up her winter formal, and charges ahead past me.
Someone shouts. Heavy boots pound the earth a hundred feet behind us.
The path winds between exhibits. Branches clatter on our left. Zavia flinches away from the cage as a horned peryton lowers its antlers and bellows. A giant peersboon swings arm over arm behind us, hooting a guttural chorus. Zavia shoves her trash into her right arm, sticks her left hand under her headscarf, and yanks out a flat pink rectangle. She thumbs it like it’s a crystal display and points it at the peersboon without breaking her stride.
“What’s that? Stop that,” I hiss. A plasma bolt jets by on our left. “This way!”
Zavia doubles back and flies past me again down a fork leading off the main path. The undergrowth rustles. Savannah grasses spring up on either side, replacing the trees under a huge azure sky enchanted under a greenhouse ceiling. A massive black lion strides by licking its yellow teeth. Zavia makes a weird little squeal. Enfields scurry along our left, their curious fox faces sniffing their force field while their spotted wings lash back and forth.
“Stay down, guys,” Zavia whispers.
Mumwees dart from a silvery boulder ahead, fanning their peacock tails in alarm as they leap to the cobblestone path and take off under an abandoned ice-cream cart.
“Aw, kitties,” Zavia says. She points her rectangle at the mumwees, too.
We pelt by the ice-cream cart and the path opens into a wide central square. Hanging restaurants and toy-shop treehouses could provide some cover. The elves’ll search there. They’ll spray fire into the shops.
Zavia races ahead past a Nab fountain with water spraying from his upturned hands. I follow her through a ground-level restaurant into the open-air patio, my breath sawing in loud gasps. Anxious pain whips down my side. Zavia kicks in her heels to stop and throws out her arms, catching me, and holding on to me and her treasures, at the blue edge of an overflowing hedgerow around a reedy pond.
“What do you think?” Her doleful green eyes look at mine.
“Get in.”
Zavia splashes in up to her waist, holding her potted plant aloft. Iridescent birds flee to the far bank on their long fog-blue legs. I steel my nerves and stumble in after her. The chilly slime closes over my knees and laughs up my thighs, over my hips. I duck down to join Deercat’s human concubine behind the tall brown reeds, and the slime pours up my chest. It smells horrific, matted together from bird scum and rotten vegetation. Ice-cream wrappers like the one Zavia’s keeping in her shoe flash their tacky ads along the sticky cement bottom.
A deercat, perched on its nest, flaps its tiny brown wings at my head. “Shoo.” I hiss a burn hex. The deercat bursts into the air squeaking, showering the reeds with feathers and poo.
Zavia shushes me. I scowl. She smiles.
I shake it off to focus on slowing my painful gasps. Zavia does the same, muffling her nose and mouth with a dripping wrist.
Did they see us?
Stupid question. Of course, they didn’t see us. Did they hear us?
Quiet seeps back into the garden. I hold my breath, straining for a footstep until my ears ring. I count to thirty, and count to thirty again.
Zavia’s pink rectangle dings. She drops her toy knight, the map, and the egg; fumbles the rectangle over; and whips her thumbnail along its side.
Engines scream. Zavia flinches against me, wrapping her arms around my arm.
“Ship,” I mouth.
Her eyes blow huge and she shakes her head in evident wonder.
The engine’s scream rises to a long, hearty purr and blasts away. I scoot my palm along the scummy water, miming liftoff.
