Page 19

The aftermath of any explosion is an opportunity, both for picking up the pieces, and for moving on.

Maintenance of Munitions , by Sergeant Tyler Dickerson

Arpix

Arpix lay amid the rumbling and the dust and the page-fall, unsure of whether he’d been hurt in the detonation that had thrown him across the chamber, and if so, how hurt. He tried not to breathe, not wishing to fill his lungs with the sour smoke. At first that had been easy, what with the wonder of it all stilling his breath. And then, when the wonder had worn thin, it had still been easy, since his lungs, evacuated of breath by the initial impact with the floor, refused to fill themselves. Now though, starved of air beyond the point at which complaining chest muscles and bruised ribs held sway, Arpix sat up sharply, shedding drifts of loose pages, and inhaled with the ferocity of a drowning man.

The act might have drawn attention to him, but for the fact that dozens of similar figures were also in the act of sitting up, or rolling from side to back, or struggling to their knees, anonymous in their powdered whiteness.

One person, turning onto their side, promptly vanished with a scream, having rolled into one of many broad fissures spreading across the floor. Arpix would have paid this distressing occurrence more attention but for the fact that he suddenly understood himself also to be sitting beside a chasm large enough to swallow him.

He shuffled away and got unsteadily to his feet, his mind still dazed. The old smoke, reinvigorated by a new explosion, hung in the air, sour on the lungs and reducing vision to ten yards or so. Where Arpix stood, the floor was largely intact, though divided by cracks. Towards where the Mechanism had been, the cracks became chasms.

Dust-clad as the survivors were, it was hard to tell friend from foe, but as his focus returned Arpix could identify the soldiers by the shape of their uniform, and of course those who had found and picked up their ’sticks declared themselves immediately. Glancing around, it seemed that more than half of the company had fallen through the cracks into— Arpix peered into the nearest one and found this did little to answer the question. The darkness onto which the fissure opened was populated by shifting shapes and distant islands of light. He thought he even glimpsed the Exchange for a moment before a grey cloud of what might be leathery wings obscured the view.

“Salamonda!” Arpix called out her name in the instant memory returned her existence to him. He felt immediately guilty. “Salamonda? Neera?” He spun, trying to find them in the crowd of dazed and dusty figures. In three strides he had a hand on the shoulder of the nearest non-soldier, turning them to face him. A stranger.

“Arpix?” A voice turned him back towards the Mechanism.

The thinning smoke revealed a yawning pit where the structure had been. Around the jagged perimeter, with their heels at the very edge of the bottomless drop, stood Clovis, Evar, Starval, and Mayland. A fifth figure swayed there with them, far shorter, holding a staff out for balance.

“Arpix!” Clovis began to run, slamming into him a moment later, lifting him from the ground, swirling him in a tight embrace alarmingly close to the edge of another chasm. And although her face was pressed against his neck and shoulder, breathing him in despite the dust, he found that he didn’t mind at all.

“You’re alive!” They said it together as she set him down. They grinned at each other and then, looking about them and realising both where they were and who they were among, their smiles slipped, Arpix’s into a worried frown, Clovis’s into a snarl. The white sword flashed into view, and around them a dozen soldiers either bent for their ’sticks or began to raise the ones already in their hands.

“Don’t!” Arpix held his palms out. “We don’t—” But it had been too late even before he started. The time for reason and negotiation had long since passed.

Clovis spun away, snarling. She’d let her heart lead her into a situation that her warrior mind would never have allowed. Weapons levelled at her on all sides, ones that could sidestep both her quickness and her blade skills. Arpix found himself stepping towards her. Not wanting either of them to die alone.

“Stop!” A barked command, spoken in canith.

The soldiers might not have understood the word, but the tone made their eyes flicker to the source. Brows rose and the soldiers stared at the dust-white apparition now holding a blade to Lord Algar’s overlong neck.

Somehow during Arpix and Clovis’s brief reunion Starval had found a circuitous route that must have involved considerable leaps, camouflaged himself in the dust, identified the enemy’s leader, and come through their number to take him unawares. The shortest of Clovis’s brothers, he was barely taller than the man he had hold of but looked infinitely more deadly.

“Lower your weapons!” Evar arrived through the thinning dust clouds. He snarled the words in the soldiers’ own language.

Even with the dark eyes of several ’sticks pointed his way, Arpix’s heart lifted a fraction at seeing Evar alive. He reached for Clovis’s sword arm and held it below her wrist, her almost invisible fur bristling against his palm.

Behind Evar the fifth figure, the staff-bearer, drew near, plotting a more cautious path along the broadening strip of floor. A ganar!

“I’m sure these differences can be settled without violence.” The ganar spoke no louder than Arpix had, but all eyes turned her way. “My name is Celcha. I am on my own journey and where I travel, all stand under my peace.”

One of the soldiers swivelled to direct her aim at Celcha, and Arpix recognised her to be the woman from the trio that had beaten him back in the other chamber. She’d revelled in her power then, but now seemed close to broken by her lack of it, clinging to the ’stick as if it were all that kept her afloat in a sea of confusion.

Evar began to say something, and in that instant someone fired. The booming detonation set off several more before the first echo of the shot had time to return, a deafening cacophony of explosions, each pushing death before it.

“As I was saying. You stand under my peace.”

A dull metal ball rolled from the end of the first soldier’s ’stick, dropping to land noiselessly in the white powder at her feet. The same thing happened to half a dozen others, though the woman was the only one of them to throw her weapon aside as if it had become a serpent that might suddenly strike her.

Evar took several strides towards Lord Algar, the man still held by the blade at his throat. He seemed to be wrestling with some strong emotion, for his fist holding the dagger trembled.

“He was going to take your eye,” Clovis growled. “He doesn’t deserve to live.”

For a moment Evar hung in the grip of the dilemma that tore at him, his knife ready for the thrust, easily close enough to plunge into Algar’s chest. In the next moment he freed himself with a shudder and turned away, calling, “Livira?”

“She’s not here,” Arpix said, and Evar swung his way. “I don’t know where she is.” The intensity of the canith’s stare drew more from him. “A city somewhere. I saw her in a city. With Yolanda and Leetar.” It dawned on him only now, though it had been obvious from the start. “The city. The statue. She’s on the plateau. Or was there. She’s a ghost in the city that stood there.”

In Arpix’s moment of epiphany Clovis had pulled herself away from his grasp and stood now with the tip of her white sword touching the soiled finery that wrapped Lord Algar’s chest. The man’s single eye showed only bitter contempt where fear should lie.

“Clovis…” Arpix pushed past Evar’s half-hearted attempt to stop him reaching her.

Clovis glanced at him, quickly returning her gaze to Algar. “He deserves to die.”

Arpix wasn’t sure he had an argument against that, only that it felt wrong. “You’re a warrior, Clovis! I’ve seen you fight. It took my breath from me. This”—he waved a hand at Algar—“this isn’t war.”

Clovis’s lips rode up, exposing a worryingly sharp array of teeth. A growl rose through her, so deep that the air throbbed with it. With a snarl she spat at Algar’s feet and turned away.

“And this is why we have Starval.” Starval drew his knife through Algar’s throat and let him fall, gasping and clutching at his neck with both hands. “What?” Starval spread his arms. “We live in a library for gods’ sake. Have you never read a book? You let the bad guy go and he comes back to make you regret it.” Starval stepped over Algar’s twisting form. “If anyone deserved to die it was that one. Right?”

Behind him, Algar was making quite a production of his death scene. Starval made to wipe his knife before returning it to its scabbard. He frowned at the gleaming metal. Algar meanwhile was shuffling backwards, raising a cloud of dust as he headed into a clump of his men, the veteran Jons among them. He took the other hand from his neck, choking on his own dust. The wound that should have been there wasn’t.

“As I said—” Celcha spoke again, “there is a peace.”

“Dammit.” Starval started back towards his victim. “I was going to break his neck. I should have. But no, I didn’t want to copy Mayland.”

Evar caught his arm. “Wait.”

Celcha nodded her thanks. “I’m moving on. In normal times I would offer to escort you to an exit, but time is no longer normal, and my search for the centre must take precedence. You’re welcome to follow, of course, as long as you respect the peace.” And with that she turned away.

Clovis began to follow, snatching hold of Arpix’s wrist. “Wait.” Arpix resisted. “I can’t…” He turned back towards the soldiers and the civilians dotted through their number, anonymous in their dusty whiteness. “I have to check…” He couldn’t say the words. He had to check to see if he’d killed Salamonda. If the explosion he’d made happen had sent her tumbling into blackness along with Oanold and so many of his troops. Livira’s childhood friend Neera too! Where was Neera?

“I…” Arpix spotted Salamonda first, her dark eyes seeking his. Then Neera, limping along behind a large soldier. The relief he felt drew a gasp from him, almost a whimper.

“Arpix. Are you unwell?” Clovis moved closer.

“I’m better now.” Arpix nodded ahead to Celcha. “We’re going with her?”

“Of course,” Clovis said. “Where else is there to go?”

And Arpix allowed himself to be towed.