Tekela closed her eyes tight, another sob escaping her as she withdrew the blade from his neck. “What?” she said, head sagging and voice laden with defeat. “What is it you have to do, Sirus?”
“Remember . . .” He extended his hand to her again. “Will you . . . help me?”
She stared at his hand, baffled and appalled in equal measure. “How?”
“I need . . . to remember . . . what it was . . . to be free.”
His vision grew suddenly darker, Tekela’s face becoming a vague shadow, as if veiled by a curtain of black lace. He felt her take his hand, the first time she had ever done so. It was smooth against his callused, scaled palm, small but also strong, hardly the hand of a girl. He forced himself to focus on her face, piercing the veil that covered it just for an instant, but it was enough. Once he had thought her a doll, something so beautiful as to be not quite real. Now she had a small bloody scar on her chin and another tracing across her brow into her tousled and unkempt hair. Her eyes were red with tears and dark with fatigue, lips pale and drawn back from her teeth in anguish. She was so very real and he knew she had never been a doll at all. He looked upon a face that possessed only an echo of the girl she had been, a face transforming into the woman she would be.
Sirus closed his eyes, drawing his mind back into himself. The bright shining crystal was waiting, a gift from the Contractor Catheline had imprisoned in her mind. It shone brighter as his purpose found a connection with the memories it held, blossoming out, filling him with its gift. The memory it revealed was strange, but filled with enough visual clues for his archaeologist’s mind to divine that he was seeing a moment from the past, a moment which contained a vital piece of information. He watched the memory play out, and summoned Tekela’s face once more, let it lead him to the moment he had first seen her. It had been some tedious ball his father forced him to attend, trussed into a suit that didn’t really fit him, scratching his collar as he concealed himself in the quietest corner of the room.
When he saw her it was like everything else went away, fading into a mist with her at the centre, so bright, so utterly captivating. She moved with a peerless grace across the ball-room, gliding into a curtsy as Burgrave Artonin presented her to the Governor General. Her smile was a thing of wonder and her necklace glittered in the glow of the chandelier as she gave a delighted laugh at the governor’s witticism.
But it hadn’t been like that. Her smile had in fact been nervous and forced, often veering into a scowl as she scanned the other ladies present with badly concealed disdain. When she danced it was a clumsy, inelegant spectacle that drew titters from the other guests. Also her necklace, Sirus saw now, hadn’t glittered very much at all. The jewels were glass set into a brass chain. Sirus discovered later that her father had sold much of her mother’s jewellery to fund his expeditions to the Interior.
He had thought that the many humiliations he endured over the following months had been inevitable, that his helpless pursuit of her had been beyond his control given how completely she had captured his heart that night. He was her slave, after all. Except he wasn’t. He was a foolish youth who had convinced himself he was in love with a beautiful but, on occasion, deeply unpleasant girl. He had made a choice, because a free mind can do such things and in time he had learned what it was to have no freedom at all, not in mind or body.
Until now Sirus had been shutting out the other Spoiled, the babble of their minds in the midst of battle a low, ugly murmur at the edge of his consciousness. Now he let them in, all of them, and shared the gift of long-dead drakes.
At first it was like pouring cold water on white-hot coals. Thousands of Spoiled minds snatched from the fury and chaos of battle roiled in confusion as the gift spread through the multitude. Some slipped instantly into madness, their minds breaking at the sudden intrusion of a sensation they had never suspected might return. Others fought it, raging against the separation from the all-powerful consciousness of their White god. But most welcomed it, joy filling them as the invisible shackles fell away. As the gift leapt from mind to mind like a fire let loose in a dry forest, Sirus felt more and more souls blink out of existence.
They’re dying, he realised, pausing to look through the eyes of a Spoiled, seeing those around him standing still, faces drawn in wonder or shock as bullets and cannon flayed them from above. I’m killing them. The thought was accompanied by panic that came from an awareness of how little time he had left.
Sirus flitted from mind to mind, searching the now-silent and immobile army for a soul that might save them, finding it close to the Redoubt gates. He found Forest Spear lying only seconds from death as his life seeped out from the many bullet-holes in his chest, his mind filled with memories of his days hunting through the jungle with his brother warriors. Sirus touched minds with him, feeling a pulse of gratitude before the darkness fell. He moved on, finding Veilmist under a mound of dead and dying Spoiled. There were hundreds of them, all seemingly cut down in an instant, by what means Sirus couldn’t know. Veilmist had survived the calamity but the weight of so many corpses would soon crush the air from her lungs.
Help her! Sirus commanded. The Spoiled were slow to respond, some stumbling in confusion, others taking advantage of their new-found liberty to rejoice in the novelty of refusal. Please, he added. You know me. I want you to live. All of you.
He felt a pulse of recognition run through them, shot through with a sense of trust and empathy. He had been a slave like them, and now they felt his desperate desire to preserve their lives. Several hundred Spoiled surged towards the gates, braving the continuing fire from the walls above to drag Veilmist from beneath the mound of corpses.
Get them away from the walls, Sirus told her. He found the Islander’s mind warm with welcome and a seemingly endless well of gratitude.
Where are you? she asked. We will come to you.
It doesn’t matter. Just . . . Sirus felt a growing chill creep over the fringes of his awareness, the combined vision of so many eyes rapidly eroding, shrinking to just a few images, one of which brought a fierce urgent need to cling on to life.
The White!
He could see it, mighty wings spread wide as it came to earth on the plain, the slim figure of Catheline slipping from its back. Lying near by was the body of a large Black drake.
It’s there! he told them, putting every ounce of will and strength he could in the thought, the last command he would ever give to this army. Kill it!
The Spoiled left him then, the tumult of rage and blood-lust fading away. He blinked and found himself looking up into Tekela’s eyes once more. He raised a hand, pressing it to her cheek and took joy in the affection he saw in her face, a face he found himself content to take with him into the dark.
CHAPTER 56
Clay
For a time he lay stunned, vision clouded as he sought to refill his lungs, the ominous sound of fast-approaching wings loud in his ears until it was swallowed by the roar of engines. He blinked, vision clearing to reveal Lizanne staring at him from the hatchway of her aerostat. It hovered above, engines pointed towards the ground. He lifted a hand to wave in greeting but then a loud, ragged exhalation drew his gaze and he saw Lutharon lying some twenty yards away, wings flapping and tail coiling weakly. Clay tried to stand, found he couldn’t, and cursed as he reached for the product in his duster, drinking down a full flask of Green. Rising to his feet he half-stumbled to Lutharon’s side, letting out a groan of dismay at the sight of his injuries.