Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

" Leal?" The huge-eyed woman gave a shriek. "It is you!"

"What--? A-Antaea?"

Suddenly they were hugging, laughing wildly, while the men all looked at one another in confusion. Keir shrugged at the leonine Jacoby Sarto, who scowled in return.

"I got your letter," Antaea was saying. "We came to find you!"

"Among other things," Sarto pointed out.

"But I never in a million years would have expected to find you fighting monsters in a ... a place like this! How did you get here?"

Now Leal's expression became cautious. "It's a very long story," she said. "But what it boils down to is, I'm here with a message for the people of Virga, and these men have risked their lives to help me bring it here."

"I ... see." Antaea and Jacoby Sarto exchanged a look, and then so did Leal and Piero Harper. This bizarre tension was interrupted as someone shouted, "Incoming!"

Flashlights swirled around and their light pinioned a door on the far wall of the gallery. The three men who'd suddenly appeared there blinked at the lights. "Uh ... Captain Sarto?" one of them said hesitantly.

Sarto laughed. "You made it!"

"Yes, but those things're right behind us, sir."

"Then we'd best save the stories for later," said Sarto. "Who's got a clear idea of how to get out of here?"

One of Sarto's men put up his hand. "I do."

"Come on, then. Let's form up. We need one of those special guns you brought," Sarto said to Leal, "aimed at each of the six directions. We'll bunch up so they can't cut us off from each other like last time. Is everybody ready?"

"What about..." Two of Sarto's men were cradling the bodies of their dead comrades.

"Bring them, then," said Sarto brusquely. "But don't fall behind."

Leal Maspeth looked around until she spotted Keir, then she flew over. "Are you sure you want to come?" she asked. "You still have time to turn and go back."

He hesitated. The plan had made so much sense just a few hours ago--but that had been before his dragonflies had died and left him half-blind. "I don't know what to--" He shook himself. "Seems I have no choice but to go with you. If you'll have me."

"Of course, but how are you going to get home again?"

He shuddered. "Brink's not home."

"Let's go!" shouted Sarto. The big-eyed woman--Antaea--was leading an unruly flock toward one of the black entrances. He should really get the weapon back; on the other hand, he'd never fired any sort of gun before today. Maybe it would do more good in her hands.

He and Leal followed the rest. Two of her people took up the rear, one moving forward, the other clutching the back of the first one's belt. He let his comrade tow him while he faced backward. "Pull me like that?" Leal asked Keir.

Keir wanted to say no--he couldn't see properly, freefall was making him nauseous, and there weren't even any scry tags on the people or things here--but in the end he nodded. It would be better to let Leal watch for danger coming up from behind, because he was beginning to doubt whether he would be able to see it if it came. He would just keep his two remaining eyes fixed on the backs of the people ahead of him.

What followed was chaotic and terrifying and seemed to go on forever. They bounced, toppled, and flew up small passages like capillaries, large ones like arteries. Hissing whispering things awoke as they passed, and the darkness behind filled with the angry drone of pursuit. Startled shouts and gunshots erupted at random moments; once, everything dissolved into screaming and orange flashes and bangs for long minutes, and then Leal's hand found Keir's wrist again and pulled him onward.

He did his best. He'd expected to lose his extra senses in Virga; it was just that he hadn't counted on the terrible feeling of helplessness that came with that loss.

His scry had gone out for the first time in his life, and too late he was realizing that he'd relied on it far more than he'd known. Half-blind, half-deaf, he held the hand of a stranger as they fled together through a city of monsters.

Only when the pursuit had faded behind them did he begin to feel the sharp pain in his left hand and realize he was tightly clutching something in it. He raised it in a stray beam of lantern light, and stiffly opened his fingers.

One of his dragonflies nestled, half-crushed in his palm. Suddenly it seemed infinitely precious and he regretted leaving its brothers behind. He tenderly teased it out, and slipped it inside the pocket of his coat.

9

THE ICE-CHOKED CITYof Serenity fell behind, and with it the constant edge of anxiety that had become so familiar to Leal that she hardly knew it was there anymore. In the first minutes of the flight she felt a huge lifting away , as though some immense weight had lain on her heart; over the next hours that lifting continued, combined with a growing revelation that really, they were safe.

In the little hold where the refugees from Aethyr had been put, Leal watched her lads celebrate with something like maternal affection. Their initial backslapping and cheering had faded to grins, but now they were starting to tell each other stories about the ordeal they'd been through together--stories they all knew, but were delighted to hear again.

The biggest surprise was Piero, whom Leal had known for a few months now. She'd met him on Hayden Griffin's yacht, one black-skyed day when they'd been beset by monsters in the dark, and she'd told him a ghost story to distract them all. Now he was surprising her. "It's not so much that I think she'll be frantic with worry," he said about the wife Leal hadn't known he had, "as it's that I'm afraid she'll have remarried by the time I get back to her."

The other lads variously grumbled and joked at that; one smacked Piero lightly on the back of the head and said, "As it is, she's not going to recognize you with all that weight you've lost." They all laughed--except for Keir Chen, who was half-curled into a silent ball on the edge of the discussion.

Piero pressed his stomach with tentative fingers. "It's muscle," he protested; but Leal had turned away from the discussion. One of the ship's crew had appeared at the edge of the lantern light and was gesturing for her to follow him. Harper flew over to perch next to her. He looked where she was gazing, and nodded.

"If this Antaea Argyre really has had some kind of falling-out with the Guard," he said, "then she may not take us to them."

"All I can do is ask," said Leal. She was still astonished that her halfhearted appeal to Antaea had actually been answered. The Guard had accepted the letter from Leal, but had made it very plain that they had little intention of bringing it to Antaea herself, since they considered her a traitor.

Leal shook her head. "Maybe she'll remember my friendship with her sister." She kicked off lightly and, following the airman who'd come for her, sailed up the center of the ship.

She was traveling the length of two decks that visually made a floor and ceiling, but which were both rigged as floors. The ship must split lengthwise, probably so the two sections could spin around a common center for gravity. The portholes were open, letting in cold air and revealing only blackness. Leal knew the ship was running at speed with its headlights poking as far ahead into the darkness as they could--but that was not far, and their airspeed was not great.

"Haul it in, boys!" Up ahead, one of the big starboard hatches was open. Some airmen were pulling on a rope, and to Leal's shock a dagger-ball bounced into the ship. It was securely netted and unmoving, but still her hackles rose at the sight of it.

The older man, Jacoby Santo, was there, directing the airmen. "It's playing dead or something," he said. "Better clip those knives just in case."

Leal saw an opening. "Not playing dead," she said as she flew over. "Really dead--or dormant, at best. Where did you find it?"