Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (35 page)

When Lizneth mounted the pile of stones which had once formed
the inn’s front wall, the pup got its paw caught as it tried to follow her.
“Here, let me help you,” she said, going back to pick up the animal and carry
it across. “There we are,” she said, putting it down on the far side.

Lizneth searched the village, but there were no survivors to
be found. The pup trotted beside her, limping all the while.

“I told you not to follow me,” she said. “There’s barely
enough room for my family where I’m staying, let alone food and space for a
growing pup.”

Lizneth had never owned a pet, nor had she heard of anyone in
Tanley keeping animals for anything besides meat or milk. When she returned to
the river bridge and the pup was still beside her, she decided she might as
well bring it across in case its mother was somewhere on the other side. She
would keep the animal with her for now, until she could find its family. “Are
you a
kecu
or a
lecu
?” she asked it. She had always thought Ryn
was a good name, and it would work either way. “That’s what I’ll call you,
then. Your name is Ryn.”

“What is that thing?” Barlyza asked from across the bridge.

“Her name is Ryn,” Lizneth said. “She’s a jackal.”

“Where did you find it?”

“She was in the village. She’s hurt.”

“Find anything else?” asked Stevrin.

“Nothing. I’m coming back across now. Come on, Ryn.” Lizneth
gathered the pup in her arms and picked her way across the bridge, using the
markings she’d left earlier.

“What do we do now?” Stevrin asked when she was safe on the
bank.

“First things first. I’ve got to clean and dress Ryn’s wound.
After that, I’ve decided I’m going to the rime caves. If Sniverlik still lives,
he must be there.”
So must Raial and Thrin
, she thought.
And Deequol,
and the rest of our lost ones
.

Stevrin twitched his whiskers. “Sniverlik?”

“The stronghold is where we’ll find out what’s being done
about the
calai
invasion. My Papa says villagers from all around are
amassing there.”

Barlyza shook her head. “The Marauders are cruel and scary.”

“Are you scared of
everything
?” Lizneth asked, too
irritated to be polite any longer. “I have family there. You all must have
family there too…”

“The Marauders have taken three from my litter,” Stevrin
admitted. “Two brothers and a sister.”

“I have three brothers and two sisters there,” said Krinica.

“A sister and a brother,” Barlyza added.

“Let’s go, then. Don’t you want to see them again?”

Barlyza shook her head. “I don’t want to go. The Marauders
will take us too, and make us fight.”

“No, they won’t,” Lizneth insisted. “They don’t usually make
the
ledozhehn
fight.”

“Great,” said Stevrin.

“Take the carts back to Molehind then,” Lizneth said, irritated.
“There’s no one to sell Uncle Enzak’s goods to here. If you won’t fight for
your homes and your families, I don’t want to be around you anymore.”

The others were silent.

“I think we’d better go home,” Stevrin finally said.

The does agreed.

“Fine. Go. I’m not stopping you.”

Lizneth watched them disappear down the tunnel, carts
trundling behind them. She supposed it didn’t matter to them that half the
reason they’d been sent here was to keep an eye on her. She was glad they
didn’t care. She wanted to be on her own anyway. She wasn’t quite on her own
anymore, though. Now she had Ryn to keep her company.

CHAPTER 28

Brother

Jallika Weaver could wait no longer. She swung down
from her saddle and pressed her palms to the flat black pavement as the shapes rushed
toward her through the darkness. If this tunnel had ever collected the desert’s
leavings—if ever a vehicle had shattered a bulb or windshield, or a drunkard
had dropped his bottle—she would find what was left of it.

Gunshots flashed in the tunnel, Lokes’s silvered revolvers
dancing in his hands. To Gish’s credit, the horse stood firm between his legs
even as the gun blasts thundered through the darkness. Lokes’s fiendsight was
his best-kept secret; a deadeye who could see better than a fox in the dark
didn’t want that information getting around.

A breeze woke in the tunnel as Weaver called upon every grain
and shard. The effect would never come close to what she could achieve on the
wastes, but she could do more with a few grains of sand than with the knife
she’d given the shepherd. Even as her wind began to howl, she heard the screams
of Lokes’s victims, felt the bodies thudding to the pavement.

It was only when she directed her senses toward what was
below—resonating, the Guild of the Calsaires called it—that she felt the true
rumbling. The tunnel had collapsed further on, or it was still collapsing.
These shapes were not running toward them with violent intent; they were
fleeing the devastation behind them. The starwinds were wreaking their revenge
upon the city.

Another tremor shook the earth. Weaver could feel the faraway
vibrations, though her senses were dulled given so little sand to carry them
back to her. She was on her horse in an instant, yelling for Lokes, telling him
to run, the tunnel was collapsing; telling him to stop being such a bullheaded
brute and follow her out. She couldn’t protect him here like she could out
there. Didn’t he know that? Didn’t he know he needed her protection?

A rush of thick air buffeted her as she wheeled Meldi around,
and she was galloping back toward the entrance. The dust engulfed her and swept
forward to eclipse the daylight.

She shot through the opening and crested the rise before
stopping to look back. The highway above the tunnels was cracking and falling
in like the shell on a burnt cream custard. People began sprinting into the
daylight, covered in dust and carrying nothing but the ragged clothes on their
backs. No horses came; no Lokes, and no Toler.

In the distance, a skyscraper shed ten stories of fragmented
veneer from one side. A shorter building simply leaned over and collapsed in a
cloud of dust. Weaver surveyed the buildings around her, dreading the same. She
hated cities, even when they weren’t falling apart.
Why didn’t we agree to
meet the southerner in the outskirts?
she wondered.

Long moments passed. Excruciating moments in which she
wondered whether she could accomplish anything by going back in for them. Had
they been caught in the collapse? Had one been trapped and the other stayed to
free him? She spurred Meldi forward and reentered the darkness.

The tunnel ended in a heap of rubble. Daylight was streaming
in now as the light-star beat its path into the morning sky.
They didn’t
hear me. They didn’t know I was trying to warn them. Probably didn’t know I was
gone until it was too late
. Sudden grief surged in her chest. She didn’t
know whether to cry or scream or vomit.
He’s dead. They’re both dead
.

The words of the Calsaire’s oath echoed in her mind.
For
ere the world is ended, we will meet the fates as one
. She would sooner
have been inside that tunnel to meet the fates with Lokes by her side than to
wander this life without him.

A voice called to her from behind, outside the mouth of the
tunnel. “What in tarnation are you doin’ in there?”

She turned. Infernal wrapped their silhouettes in white, two
gaunt men on two tall horses. “What in the name of—” She rode out to meet them,
relieved but bewildered. “How—”

Both men were gray as ghosts, as were the top halves of Gish
and Seurag. A sparse crowd of survivors was filtering out of the left-hand
tunnel, coughing and shielding their eyes.

Lokes began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“You look like you done messed your drawls, woman,” he said,
his voice breaking into a high, dry cackle.

“I thought you were dead,” she shouted.

“I wasted a dozen of them beggars for nothin’,” Lokes said.
“Poor dead saps might’ve made it out, too. I never gave ‘em a chance.” He
seemed to find this very amusing. It was just the sort of thing Lokes
would
find amusing in the face of death.

“How did you get out?”

“There was an opening from one tunnel to the other. Saw
people going through, followed ‘em. Left one’s better built than the right,
turns out.”

Toler wiped his mouth and tried to spit the dust off his
lips. “I don’t know how he saw all that in the dark, but he pulled me along
with him. Next thing I knew, we were back on the surface.”

“You’re my cash cow, Shep. You ain’t getting left behind.”

“
Now
can we go around the tunnel?” Weaver said, not
asking.

“Used to be we could follow the lay of the land. Seems to me
the lay of the land’s changed. We gonna have to find ourselves a new route.”

Aside from the highway collapse and the structural failure of
several buildings, the only significant destruction they came across on their
way to the Scorpion’s Uncle was a man whose leg had been nearly severed by a
fallen traffic signal. He was in shock by the time they found him, lying in the
road, watching his blood flow over the asphalt and trickle through the holes in
the sewer grate. Lokes shot him in the head.

“Man in a position like that deserves a quick death,” he said
when they were a hundred fathoms further on. “Worth the lead.”

The Scorpion’s Uncle was a madhouse when they arrived, its
patrons spilling onto the streets in a frenzy over the earthquakes. A quick
check inside revealed the saloon to be packed, though Daxin Glaive was nowhere
to be found. Weaver met Toler and Lokes outside to tell them the news.

“Well, I guess I’d better head home then,” Toler said with a
hopeful grin.

“Not so fast, Shep. We’re late. Might be he showed up earlier
and took off when he didn’t see us. Gotta do a little asking around. We’ll find
him… don’t you worry.”

“I’m not.”

They booked a room at The Foundry, an old machine factory
across the street which had been converted into a hotel. Weaver and Lokes had
stayed there before. Its rooms were as dingy and musty as the city south
itself, but its guarded stables and monitored hallways were worth the price of
admission. Plus, it beat sleeping in an alley or an abandoned building.

Lokes returned to the saloon for a beer while Weaver took
Toler upstairs to their room. She pulled aside the thin yellowed curtain and
scanned the narrow street below, where Lokes was working his way through the
crowd outside the saloon’s entrance, making nice with the locals. He could be a
real charmer when he needed to be.

Toler sat on the bed behind her, bound hands resting in his
lap. He’d been playing it cool since they arrived, but she could tell he was a
bundle of nerves. “So where are you two headed next? After you drop me off in
the care of my mentally unstable brother?”

Lokes had warned her about the shepherd probing them for
information.

“We ain’t headed nowhere too quick. I figure we ought to hang
around and see what he does with you.” She glanced back at him. “You know, just
for shits.”

“I’ll be fine,” Toler said. “I’ll play his little game,
whatever it might be, and then I’ll be off home again.” He smiled a sinister
smile.

Weaver supposed it was none of her concern what happened
after the job was done. But there was something about Daxin Glaive; something
about his look, and about the amount of hardware he’d been carrying around with
him. Ordinary people didn’t throw those kinds of resources around without
regard for their value. Daxin had been set on something else. Determined.
Hiring protection for his brother had been an afterthought to whatever he’d
been doing.
Vantanible’s empire won’t be long for this world
, his letter
had said.
I’m sending these folks to spare you from the war that’s coming
.
What had he meant by that?

“Still no sign of the southerner down there,” Lokes said when
he returned half an hour later.

“Were we too late?”

“That’s the strange thing… he’s the one who’s late. Ain’t
nobody seen him for weeks. Barman says the last time he remembers him coming
around is the day he hired us. Says he’ll let him know we was looking for him,
if’n he does show up. Guess all we can do now is wait. You better hope he turns
up, Shep.”

“Coff on you, pal. It’s not my fault if he doesn’t show up. I
don’t own the dway. What are you so uptight about?”

“I came here to get paid. That brother of yours don’t come
through for me, I got no choice but to sell everything you got to make up for
it. I know a fella looking for fresh man-bits. Might be he’d pay a handsome fee
for a young dway like you.”

“If hardware’s what you need, I told you back in Unterberg I
could’ve paid you to leave me there.”

Lokes sighed. “And I told you we had a deal with your
brother. This one here, she got some moral dilemma about going back on our
word. We need that hardware, and we ain’t got time to hike all the way back to
Unterberg to pick it up. Speaking of hardware, you wouldn’t believe how much
they’re charging for a beer down there. Highway robbery, I tell you. Word is,
there’s been one train come in the last few months. One. Running low on
everything, says the barman. Savages goin’ wild out there, worse than ever
before. Say, you must know somethin’ ‘bout that, Shep. What’s all the fuss
over?”

Toler’s face flushed. “I don’t know anything besides what
Vantanible tells us. I haven’t been out on a train in a long time. Apparently
the nomads have been more aggressive lately. They’ve been taking us by
surprise, somehow. Who knows, maybe that’s what happened to Dax. He’s always
been a nomad-lover. Maybe he finally found himself on the wrong end of a bone
knife. Serve him right…”

Weaver noted the color rising in the shepherd’s cheeks.
He
ain’t telling us everything. I guess we ain’t telling him everything, neither
.
“Why do you hate your brother?”

Toler’s gaze was sharp. He spoke without doubt or hesitation.
“My brother is the kind of dway who’d stomp on your toes for tying your
shoelaces wrong. He believes there’s a right way to do everything, and he’s got
no tolerance for anyone who says different. Cuddly as a cactus, my brother.”

“Sounds like he wants to make amends for whatever it is he
done to you.”

“Then he should’ve come and said so himself.”

“He didn’t have a clue where you were when we met him,”
Weaver said. “Said he was headed somewhere north and didn’t have time to track
you down. That’s why he needed me.”

“He needed you because he’s a coward. The last time I saw
him, he stabbed me in the coffing face. It’s no wonder he wants me tied up. All
the easier to get me for good this time.”

Lokes cut in. “Hold on just a daggum minute. He’s your own
flesh and blood, and you say he done stabbed you?” He whooped with laughter.
“You wasn’t kidding, Shep. I thought my family was coffed up. Y’all are about
the looniest screwballs I ever heard of. You both look so reg’lar, too.”

Toler took the jests in stride. “That’s not even the worst of
it.”

“Oh, my. Go on,” said Lokes, boundlessly amused.

“I don’t want to get into it. The important thing is he’s not
here. I’m trying to go home, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just be on my way.”

“Not even close, Shep. If he don’t show up by dayrise
tomorrow, I’m sellin’ you off piecemeal to the highest bidder.”

Toler laughed.

Weaver knew Lokes wasn’t joking. He’d do as he promised,
especially if he could get decent hardware for it. “Don’t scare the dway,
Will,” she tried.

“Ain’t nobody scaring nobody,” said Lokes. “Just giving him
fair warning. He can be yellow if he wants. Don’t bother me none.”

She sighed. If they didn’t find this Daxin dway soon, Toler
was in trouble. Trying to stop Lokes from doing what he wanted seldom went well
for her. Maybe another tack would yield better results. “So your brother’s a
friend to the savages, is he?”

Toler nodded.

“I guess we ought to find us some savages, then. No one else
around here seems to know where he’s at. Maybe they do.”

Lokes lit up like a fuse. “Shit, woman. You’re wackier than
Shep, over here. You got a death wish or something? I got plenty of good years
left in me, and so do you. No sense cutting our lives short on account of some
southerner.”

“Well, Willis Lokes,” she said, resting a hand on her hip. “I
never thought I’d see the day.”

He frowned, confused. “What day?”

“The day you’d turn yellow over a couple of savages. You
never cease to amaze.”

Lokes straightened. “Now you listen here. I done said nothing
of the kind. You the one ought to be afraid, what with the sand so far away and
all. We get in over our heads on this one, that’s on you.” He pointed at her.

She hated when he pointed at her. It made her feel like he
didn’t trust her, or he thought she needed help remembering who she was. “The
savages trade with aions all the time. Why would we be in over our heads?”

“‘Cause they’ll take an aion slave as soon as trade with him.
I ain’t no slave, and neither is Shep, here. Are you, Shep?” He knuckled Toler
in the chest. “Besides… I don’t think I could bear to see my darlin’ hauled off
in chains.”

Weaver resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “That’d just break
your heart, wouldn’t it?”

He frowned. “You’re breakin’ it right now, buttercup. You
don’t believe me, do you?”