Page 54

I t’s not the lumpy foamcore of Acker’s guest bed that wakes me four hours after Kez and I finally call it a night.

It’s Kez, who is moving restlessly against my side.

Feels like a shivering-shaking nightmare tonight.

I turn towards her, cradle her to my chest, so she feels me all around her when the nightmare releases her from its grip.

The foamcore crunches under me as I move.

Cheap crap; I’m really going to have to have a word with Acker.

A sound distracts me from the discomfort of the mattress. A sound I shouldn’t be hearing at oh-three-hundred. The thud of running feet.

I appreciate the rats are nocturnal, but no one should be running anywhere at three in the morning.

I slide away from Kez. She wakes with a start and sits up as I climb out of the bed.

“Hale?”

“Somethin’s goin’ on.”

She joins me as I gear up, pulling her bracers on as I strap on my wrist sheaths and katanas. I reach across and still my tingler so its low blue light doesn’t give us away when I open the door.

I listen for a moment, then tap the door open.

The corridor’s empty, lit only by low red safety lights along the tunnel floor, but I hear shouts in the distance. I glance at Kez and when she nods, head towards the source of the noise.

Through the dim corridors, past Acker’s dark suite, past the flowstone wall. Kez and I are all but silent on our bare feet. I hear the scrunch of sand ahead and have time to draw a katana before a rat-man charges around the corner and nearly impales himself on my sword.

He draws up short, clapping his paw to his mouth to stifle a shout.

“What’s goin’ on?” I growl at him.

“The prisoner’s gone,” he says, between hard breaths, and I recognize him. The guard who put the Ojos in the cell furthest away from his station. Amateur.

“Where’s Acker?” I ask.

“In the south tunnel. I woke him first. He sent me back to get you.”

Good.

“Lead the way. Then you head back and watch over the wounded. No one in or out until Acker or I come back.”

The guard frowns, probably at my presumption in giving him orders, but he doesn’t argue and beckons with his claws.

He leads us through the central cavern, eerily lit by the pool and empty except for some cots in one corner.

Then we’re into the maze of the rats’ tunnels.

These are different tunnels than I’ve been in before, and undamaged, if a little dusty.

In the low, red light, I see a welter of tracks in the sandy floor, both clawed and booted.

No way of knowing whether the Ojos came this way.

“You got any vid in these tunnels?” I ask the rat-guard.

“Yes, but it was knocked out when the Ojos attacked us. Heckter hasn’t gotten it back up yet. ”

So my tingler was wasted. I’d have had Gig help with the internal vid if Acker had told me it was down. Maybe he forgot.

Or maybe he didn’t want me to know.

The guard leads us up a flight of metal stairs, which are freezing underfoot, but at least they don’t clang. At the top of the stairs, he turns and I see Acker’s broad, black back a few meters ahead. He’s huddled with Match over a palmtop.

Acker glances up as soon as he hears our footsteps and his shoulders visibly relax. “Thank you, my friend. Our captive proves more slippery than expected,” he says.

“Any idea where he is?”

Acker nods. “There’s an exit ahead. Your surveillance system went off, but the exit is still sealed, so he must be between us and the exit.”

“How far’s the exit?”

“A hundred meters. It is not a simple exit. There’s a climb through old piping.”

“Where’s it lead?”

“The Splendid Pillars,” Kez says unexpectedly. Either she knows this entrance, or she’s got an even better sense of direction than I do. I could have said we were south of the Night Market, but beyond that, I’m not sure where we are, or what we’re under.

Acker nods again. “There is a basement beneath the Pillars.”

“So they’re not natural,” I say. The Splendid Pillars are a pair of weird magnetic columns that thrust up out of the sand south of Tiv.

They’re not much more than a tourist attraction, since no one has been able to figure out what they do.

Or even if they’re natural or alien-made, since the metal isn’t anything known to man.

Acker’s white teeth flash in the reddish light. “Someday I will show you all the wonders of the Deeps, my friend.”

“Yeah, tour’ll have to wait.” I turn to Kez. “You stay here with Match.”

Her chin lifts, and she gives me the blue death-glare.

“There’re wounded behind us. If the Ojos gets past Acker and me, I need you and Match to stop him from getting back to Tiancha and the others. Do whatever you have to do.”

Kez immediately nods. She unwinds monofilament from her bracer but doesn’t start it glowing. Smart kitten.

Acker pats Match on the shoulder. The grizzled rat-man steps aside so I can pass him in the tunnel. As I move by, Match catches my forearm with his unweaponized hand. “’Um don’t hesitate,” he tells me.

“You, neither,” I respond.

He gives me an approving nod and lets me go.

The tunnel’s wide enough for me and Acker to walk side by side, but only just. After the second time he bumps my sword-hand, I transfer the katana to my left hand and draw a short knife with my right. Acker’s carrying one of the kukris I made for him, but he’s still got it sheathed at his waist.

“Word of advice,” I whisper to him. “Take out your damn knife.”

Acker grunts but does what I tell him. “How do you intend to climb with both hands full?”

I don’t. Because I don’t believe I’ll need to. The Ojos is a brainwashed kid, but he’s had some training. He won’t get cornered in a pipe.

I’m right about that, as it turns out, but wrong about the climbing. The kid chooses the top of a long flight of metal stairs to ambush us, and it’s only Acker’s free hand that saves him from falling as the kid rushes us.

I back up against the rail of the top step, tuck my chin to my neck so the kid’s strike hits my jaw instead of my throat, and sweep his leg while he’s stepping back for the next attack.

He stumbles instead of falling – give the kid points for balance – and launches himself at me again.

“You said you’d get me out!” he howls at me.

I ball my knife in my fist and smash it into the kid’s stomach. “I told you to be patient,” I growl.

“You abandoned me to the Debased!” He staggers but rushes me again.

Tenacious fucker. This time he aims for my right knee, where I’ve got most of my weight as I straddle two risers.

I block the kick that would have broken my knee and follow up with a punch to his thigh, aiming for the femoral nerve.

My first knuckle crunches between the handle of my blade and the thigh-plate of his body armor, but the rest of my fist connects solidly.

The kid drops, screaming and clutching his leg, which is good because I won’t be hitting anything with my right hand for a while. Fuck, that hurts.

“Stay down,” I growl at him.

The kid wriggles in pain but doesn’t try to get up. I sheathe the knife gingerly. Feels like my knuckle is broken. I should have told the damn rats to strip him.

“Now what?” Acker asks as he pulls himself up to the top step. He sounds winded. I didn’t see where the kid hit him on his initial charge, only that he connected and Acker fell back several steps before catching the handrail.

“Now we all go back to our respective cells,” I say. “Your guest room leaves somethin’ to be desired, by the way?—“

I’m interrupted by the kid’s movement. He gathers his good leg for a kick, a kick that could send Acker tumbling down the stairs, since the rat-man’s standing in the middle of the riser now, nowhere near the handrail.

I have a second, a heartbeat, to make a choice.

I swing the katana over my head and into the unprotected meat of the kid’s throat. His body jerks. The blade sticks in his spine. When I tug it free, his head lolls back against the metal grating.

I don’t inspect the wound, or the corpse.

Acker climbs over the kid, onto the platform, and peers down at him. “I would not have asked this of you,” he says heavily. “It is not justice. He was barely more than a child.”

I shrug. I learned long ago that justice ain’t something you find in war.

There’s destruction and survival, and the winners are the ones who survive.

“You mind sendin’ some of your people out here to carry him back?

I don’t want to leave him here—” For whatever might come along for a late-night snack.

“But I’m not gonna be able to carry him.

” I show him my right hand, which is already purple and starting to swell.

“I can carry him.” Acker lifts the kid’s body without straining. For all that Kein was strong and wiry, he was still just a kid. A scared, stupid, brainwashed kid.

Acker hoists the body over his shoulder and pads down the staircase ahead of me, carefully grasping the rail with one hand.

Blood drizzles down Acker’s back to spatter the stairs; I move to the other side so I’m not walking in the kid’s blood.

We don’t speak on the way back to Kez and Match, and I wonder if that’s because Acker’s finally figured out he doesn’t want to be friends with the monster.

Kez has no such compunction, and she runs to me as soon as she sees us coming down the tunnel. She notices my hand immediately, pulls off her tank, tears it in half and wraps the strips around my hand.

“Kitten—” Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, or her naked chest.

“Shut up,” she says. “No one’s looking.” That, at least, is true. Both Acker and Match are very studiously looking at the floor. “I knew you’d get hurt. I just knew it. Whenever you leave me behind, something bad happens to you.”

Not entirely true, since I get injured with her just as often as I do on my own. “You are my good luck charm.”

“Stop joking. What happened?”

“He didn’t stay down?—”