Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (46 page)

Raith rolled Merrick onto his back. The healer was
unconscious; the child’s body flopped from his arms, a smooth cauterized pink.
Raith tossed a sheet over the infant, wishing there were some way to spare his
parents the agony of seeing him.

It was too late. The father fell to his knees with a mournful
wail. The mother rifled through a nightstand drawer and drew out a gleaming
blade. She dived across the bed before Raith could stop her and drove the point
into Merrick’s face.

Raith felt a pinch in his lower back, so sharp it made him go
stiff. He turned, reeling, to find one of their escorts armed with his own
blade, now wet with Raith’s blood. In the doorway, Derrow was staring wide-eyed
at the knife handle protruding from his abdomen.

“This is what we do to outsiders who murder our own,” the
mutant croaked.

We were trying to help
, Raith wanted to say. But his
voice would not come to him amid the pain, and there were others closing in on
him now, filling the tiny room, brandishing sawblades and axes and clubs. The
woman was stabbing Merrick in the cheek, the eye, the throat. Merrick lay
motionless beneath her assault.

Raith ignited. “Away,” he shouted. “Away, all of you.”

They gave a collective start when his shield flickered to
life. He couldn’t carry Merrick while shielded, and he couldn’t extinguish
himself with half a dozen mutants waiting to kill him. There was no way out but
to fight.

For this, may the fates also forgive me
, he thought, just
before he sprang forward to tear every mutant in the room to shreds.

A few moments later he was dragging Merrick down the hall
while Derrow stumbled after them, one hand pressed to the bleeding wound in his
stomach. Mutants watched from their doorways, but did not interfere. Nor did
they give chase when Raith heaved Merrick over his shoulder and carried him
down the long flights of steps to the gate on the second floor.

“I do not wish to compromise your defenses,” he told the
guards there. “But if you don’t let us through, I
will
tear this gate
off its hinges.”

The guards looked at each other, studied their three
visitors, then glanced up the stairs. They opened the gate and let them through
without a word.

When Raith opened the cafeteria door a minute later, the Sons
of Decylum came rushing to his aid. Derrow staggered in behind him.

“What happened?” asked Mercer.

“What in all the Aionach…” Theodar breathed.

“Look at his face. It’s—”

“Clear off a table and lay him down,” Raith said. “He’s
undergone a great deal of trauma. Theodar, see to Derrow’s wound.”

They had just gotten Merrick settled when they heard shouts
from beyond the doors.

“Did they follow you down?” Mercer asked.

“You’d better come see this,” said Gregar Holdsaard from his
spot beside the window. “There’s some crazy shit going on outside.”

They rushed over to join him. Raith struggled to rise from
his chair and limped over.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Brence Maisel.

“I’m fine. Sore from carrying Merrick down all those stairs.”

Concern darkened Brence’s brow, but he nodded and went to the
window with the others while Theodar put pressure on Derrow’s wound.

Outside, Merrick’s followers were scattering like geese,
screaming in terror as they fled in every direction.
The mutants are taking
their revenge
, Raith thought at first. But the shapes emerging from the
city’s hazy gloom to brutalize Merrick’s unsuspecting followers were not
mutants. They were dark of skin, tattooed with scars, and dressed in white
cloth.
Nomads
.

Arrows sprouted from backs and calves and buttocks. A crowd
stampeded down a side street only to find itself facing a line of waiting nomad
warriors. When they turned back, more nomads closed the gap behind them. A
brief but decisive slaughter ensued.

“What are they doing?” Peperil Cribbs wanted to know. “Why
are they attacking us?”

“The nomads hate us all,” said Ernost Bilschkin, eyes
darting. “We’ll be lucky to escape with our lives.”

“Stay quiet and we’ll have nothing to worry about,” said
Raith. “I don’t think they know we’re down here.”

Behind them, Merrick woke screaming.

Raith hobbled over and tried to hush him.

“Are you bleeding, Raith?” Theodar asked.

Raith grunted as he twisted around to look. The wound was
worse than he’d thought. Blood was soaking through the white fabric on his
lower back. “I’ll be alright,” he said. “It’s Merrick and Derrow we should be
worrying about right now.”

Merrick’s body was healing itself, but the shock hadn’t left
him yet. Some of the men gathered around to restrain him while he twitched and
writhed in pain. There was a red line through the pupil of his right eye where
the knife had gone in. A flap of skin hung from his forehead where the mutant
woman had grazed him with another stab; Raith could see the skull bone there
above his eyebrow.

“This may hurt, Merrick, but I hope it’s only for a moment,”
Raith said. He lifted the tender flap and smoothed it over the wound.

Merrick screamed. His eyes widened, and a thin runnel of
blood ran from the gash in his pupil. He clamped his eyes shut and managed to
get a hand free so he could press the heel of his palm into the socket. The
skin at the base of his knuckles was growing back.

He lay still for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, the
gash was closed. Only a hairline sliver remained across the right pupil. He
blinked. Inhaled. Sighed.

Brence and Hayden let him go. Something behind Merrick’s ear
glinted in the dim light. Raith reached for it, but Merrick pulled away.

“Is that the resonarc?” Raith asked.

“How do you think I’ve been healing so many people without
falling asleep for days at a time?” He sat up, looking tired and worn, eyes
sunken and shoulders hunched. The knife wounds on his face were closing up,
adding a new layer of hideous scars to his previous ones.

“How long have you been wearing it?”

Merrick tried to speak. “… I don’t remember.”

“Isn’t that what your friend Swydiger said about his? That it
made him forget?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“You’ve just pushed yourself beyond any limits I’ve seen a
blackhand reach before. Perhaps it’s time you got some sleep.”

Merrick turned his dazed stare toward the window. “What’s
going on outside?”

“Your loyal devotees are getting their asses handed to them,”
said Gregar Holdsaard, still leaning against the air conditioning unit beneath
the window.

“By who?”

“The savages.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s no joke. They hate you, Merrick. A lot of people hate
you.”

“I know I have enemies,” Merrick said. “Anyone in my position
would.”

Gregar looked doubtful. “You’ve got friends, too.” He nodded
toward Derrow.

Merrick lurched to his feet and went to the table where
Derrow was sitting, gritting his teeth while Theodar fastened a bandage to his
ribs. Derrow’s eyes were distant, his cheeks pale.

“Hold still,” Merrick said, laying his hands on Derrow’s
chest.

Theodar moved out of the way while Merrick ignited.

Color returned to Derrow’s cheeks in an instant. Merrick
extinguished himself, then pulled away the bandage Theodar had just taped on,
revealing a shiny scar.

 “Now let’s get out there and put a stop to this,” Merrick
said.

Raith shook his head.

“Yes, Raith. Yes. I can hold my own out there now.” Merrick
ignited his shield, though the skin on his fingertips hadn’t finished growing
back.

“You’re in no condition for that,” said Raith.

“My people are getting killed out there. We’re blackhands.
Don’t we have the advantage here?”

“There are four of us,” said Raith. “We cannot hope to take
on a hundred armed nomads.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this—from you, of all people.
Mr. Heroic can’t get off his ass and help, now? Those people out there are
going to run back to whatever shithole they crawled out of once they find out I
can’t protect them. What do I keep you around for, anyway?”

Raith didn’t know how to answer that. He had wanted so badly
for Merrick to be the kind of man a healer should be—kind and selfless and
wise. But the harder Raith had tried to impress those qualities into him, the
more the young man resisted. Perhaps it was time to accept that Merrick would
never be a Decylumite. He was a product of the world he’d grown up in; a world
where survival was paramount and the unfortunates were left to suffer and die
for their weakness. “This is for your protection, Merrick,” he said.

“What about everyone out there? Who’s going to protect them?”

“Your plan was to turn those people into an army and attack
the city north,” said Brence Maisel. “You think you stood a chance against
thousands of Scarred Comrades if a few nomads can do this much damage?”

“This is an ambush,” Merrick insisted. “That’s not the same
thing as a coordinated attack that’s been planned out in advance. I’d be scared
too if a bunch of coffing savages jumped out and hacked my friends to pieces.”

“I don’t reckon the mutants can help, can they?” asked Sombit
Quentin in a thin, gruff voice. He hadn’t sounded the same since he’d been
injured during their escape from the Scarred prison.

“It didn’t go well with the mutants,” Merrick said.

“I guess they’re not going to fight for you either, huh?”
said Brence.

“This gift makes absolutely no sense,” Merrick said, idly
watching his fingers as new skin formed over bare bone. “I can raise the dead.
I can regrow my own skin. But I can’t even cure an infant of mutantism. How is
that helpful?”

You may have raised the dead,
Raith thought, glancing
at Jiren,
but not to something I’d call life
. “Mutantism is neither
disease nor injury. That’s the only explanation for why you couldn’t help that
child.”

“My gift has a mind of its own now? Mutantism is not normal.
Regular people don’t grow extra limbs or have pieces of their body fall off. If
muties have something wrong with them, why can’t I make it right?”

“I wish I knew,” Raith said. With that wish came the memory
of Myriad, who would know what this meant, if there was anyone in the Aionach
who did.
Where did you go, Myri? Why did you leave us?

“I just wish something would go right for once,” Merrick said
irritably. “I can’t win. My life has been a pile of shit ever since this
Infernal-forsaken thing happened to me. Things were finally looking up, and now
this.”

The nomad attack was coming to an end. Bronze-skinned
warriors picked through belongings left behind, looting tents and mercy-killing
stragglers. Where crowds once filled the streets between high-rises, a warm
wind now blew their detritus down empty lanes and guttered their fires.

“I’m sorry this had to happen,” Raith said.

“It didn’t have to,” Merrick muttered.

“We’ll wait in here until the nomads clear out and then
figure out our next move.”

“I know my next move,” said Merrick. “I’ll rally my followers
and move forward with the plan. If I got there once, I can get there again.
Coff on the savages, and the mutants, and the Gray Revenants. They can all suck
my dick. I’m going to take the north, with or without them.”

If that’s your plan, you’d best go on without us
, Raith
almost said, but thought better of it. He didn’t see how any such goal was
achievable without the aid of at least one of the city south’s most powerful
groups. He didn’t see this campaign ending in anything but defeat. On top of
that, he and the Sons were nowhere closer to achieving their goal of finding a
way home. Weeks of travel throughout the city had proven fruitless. The one
thing Raith did know, when it came to the future, was that the Decylumites’
time with Merrick Bouchard was drawing to a close.

CHAPTER 38

Bolt

Toler Glaive couldn’t help but feel a certain
appreciation for Jallika Weaver. Lokes wanted to leave him in this musty old
department store, delirious with pain and unable to stand, but it didn’t look
like Weaver was going to let him.

“What if the rains come back and we get stuck again?” Lokes
was saying. “We got too much riding on the next couple days to let some cripple
slow us down.”

“That all he is to you now?” Weaver asked. “Some cripple?”

“That’s all he ever was. ‘Cept he could walk before. He’s
dead weight, Jal. Wish this’d happened weeks ago. Would’ve eased my mind about
him getting away. We could’ve strapped him to that old nag and run him here
without a peep.”

“I won’t get away this time,” Toler said.

Jallika crouched beside him. “Toler. There you are. How are
you feeling?”

“Like shit. How’d you find me? Have you been following me?”

“Don’t be a dumbass,” said Lokes. “We done the same as
you—run to the first building we come to, just to get out of the rain. We was
next-door neighbors all night long and didn’t know it ‘til we heard you
hollering.”

“You won’t be our prisoner anymore, if you come with us,”
Weaver said. “You’ll be our companion.”

Lokes spat. “I wouldn’t be this dway’s
companion
if he
had four legs and a tail.”

“Will,” Weaver pleaded, “we brought the poor dway all this
way for nothing. His brother’s dead. He can’t get around on his own, and he’s
got no one to help him. He’ll die if we leave him here.”

Lokes gave Toler an appraising look. “What do you say, Shep?
You wanna die?”

Toler couldn’t bear the thought of taking up with these two
again, but the alternative was worse. In the trade caravans, minor injuries and
mishaps could be absorbed by the sheer number of resources available. Here
there would be no escort branching off from the main group to bring home the
wounded. He had no choice but to accept Lokes and Weaver’s help; they were the
only help he was going to get. “I want to come with you. You don’t have to take
me far. I know a good healer who lives in the city north. Just get me to him
and you can go on about your business.”

“The city north? You must be out of your mind, Shep. Ain’t no
way we’re going north. We got as much chance of getting in there as that horse
of yours has of getting up and taking you for a ride.”

Toler frowned. He’d forgotten about Seurag until now. The
fall from the balcony had done for the poor old dway. “Seurag was the best
horse I’ve ever owned,” he said. “He was with me for a long time.”

“Boohoo. Don’t reckon I’ll get me a thank-you letter for all
the hurtin’ I saved him.”

“You shot him.”

“Spent good brass doing it, too.”

“If I could walk…” Toler said through gritted teeth.

Lokes howled with laughter. “Aw, Shep, ain’t you a hoot with
them broken legs. Bet if I broke your arms too, you’d be a regular laugh riot.”

“You shut your coffing mouth, you bastard.”

Lokes laughed all the harder. He doubled over and hollered
until he was red in the face. Toler was too hoarse from all the screaming he’d
done the night before to raise his voice. The pain in his legs was still so
terrible, every word Lokes said sounded like a fly buzzing in a tin can. There
was nothing for it; Toler was on the losing end of this exchange. This feeling
of helplessness was foreign to him, except when it came to Reylenn. The healer,
Merrick Bouchard, had been his only glimmer of hope in the sea of despair
surrounding Lenn’s accident. Now it seemed he would never get the chance to
find him again.

“Will,” Jallika shouted, cutting through the laughter. “We’re
taking Toler with us, and that’s the end of it. You don’t like it, you can
leave me here with him.”

The deadeye’s tone shifted in a blink. His scowl made Toler
think of a rope creaking tight, its strands liable to snap at any moment. The
look was gone a second later, replaced by a stiff, humorless deadpan. “You want
to stay with him, do you? I getcha.”

“Will…” Her voice was plaintive. She shifted on her hip,
revealing her hesitation. “I want to be with you.”

“I’m leaving.”

“I’ll walk,” she said. “Toler can ride Meldi. We’ll keep up.”

“How ‘bout when Fink and his gang come chasing us from
behind? What’ll you do then?”

She turned to Toler. “Look. I want to help you. But if we get
caught up in a situation like that—”

“I’m on my own,” Toler said. “I know. Worth the squeeze, I
guess.”

“See? You heard him, Will. He’s willing to take his chances.”

“Fair enough, Shep. No hard feelings if I gotta blow your
head off so we can pick up the pace. I’d expect you to do me the same kindness
if I was a no-good cripple.”

I’d do you that kindness even if you weren’t
, Toler
wanted to say.
Just like you would’ve done for me already, if it weren’t for
Jallika
. “Sounds great. When do we leave?”

“Now.”

“I say we find Fink and pay him, then head to the old
church,” Weaver said.

“Nuh-uh. We’re skipping town after we find out what this
thing’s all about.” Lokes held up the iron star around his neck.

“Where did you get that?”

“Off some dead dway,” Lokes said.

“He wasn’t dead
before
we found him,” Jallika
clarified.

“That’s irreverent.”

She smiled. “Irrelevant?”

“Whatever. You know what I meant. Anyhow, this here’s a key.
There’s catty-cooms under that church, and this unlocks ‘em.”

“What’s in these
catty-cooms
?” Toler asked.

“Riches beyond count, says the dway I got it from.”

“So you’re after more hardware, huh? What if you get it? You
really going to leave town without paying that scarecrow what you owe him?”

Lokes chuckled. “Scarecrow. That’s Fink to a tee. ‘Course we
ain’t gonna pay him. He don’t expect us to, neither. It’s this little cat and
mouse game we like to play.”

“No one likes it except you, Will.”

“Sounds like you’re asking for trouble,” said Toler. “And
while you’re playing games with your girl, I’m spending more and more time away
from mine. I’ll be lucky if her dad doesn’t break all the
other
bones in
my body when I get home.”

“You sure you still wanna go back?” Lokes asked. “I can make
the decision real easy on you.” He fingered the pearlescent grips of his
sweeties.

“Asshole,” Toler muttered. “Of course I want to go back.”

Lokes snorted. “Say, how’d you get away from them savages,
anyway? Might be we could turn you in for a double ransom. Just ‘cause you’re
damaged goods now don’t mean they won’t pay again. Might be they’re out looking
for their little escapee as we speak.”

“They don’t want me back,” Toler assured him. “They let me
go.”

“Hah. Yeah, sure. Tell me another one.”

“I couldn’t believe it myself.”

Lokes stared at him. “They paid us good hardware for you,
then told you to get lost? Them savages is richer’n I thought. Nicer, too.”

Toler shook his head. “These cuts and bruises aren’t
all
from the collapse back there.”

“Learned you a thing or two, did they?”

Toler nodded. That he had received the wounds in recompense
for trying to murder Lethari Prokin was not something he cared to mention. “Lethari
released me on the condition that I deliver a message to Nichel Vantanible. A
warning.” Lethari had also made him promise to take care of Savvy, but he dare
not utter her name in the company of these bandits. Better they didn’t know she
existed.

“Oh yeah? What kind of warning?”

“He said our people would keep dying as long as they cross
these sands. Savages think they own the whole coffing Inner East. They think
it’s theirs by birthright, and we’ve got no business being here.”

“We don’t.”

Toler scowled up at him. “Oh, no. You too? I thought you
hated the savages as much as I do.”

“Nah,” said Lokes. “I hate ‘em more. But I know a squatter
when I seen one, and last time I looked in a mirror, I was staring myself right
in the face.”

“You’re a bleeding-heart sympathizer,” Toler said. “I can’t
believe it. You’re the last dway I’d ever expect to be a nomad-lover.”

“Now look here, Shep. I don’t love nobody. ‘Cept my old lady,
here, of course. I’ll drop a good savage where he stands any day of the week.
But even I know they was here long before we was. They got a right to want
their land back. That don’t mean I’m giving it to ‘em. You think I’m about to
go high-tailing it up Bleakshore way or some shit, just ‘cause they want us
out? You got another think coming. I can see their side of things, is all.”

“They can get boned,” Toler said. “What do they need with all
this coffing sand, anyway? What are they going to do if they ever get rid of
us? Use it as a giant litter box?”

“They think the ghosts of their dead grandpas live in that
sand,” said Lokes. “But what do I know? Jal’s the sandcipher, she’ll tell you
what lives down there.”

“There are spirits in our world,” Weaver said.

“How do you know that?” Toler asked.

“Experiences I’ve had at the Guildhall… and since.”

“I’ve never seen or heard anything about spirits haunting the
wasteland.”

“‘Course not. They’re spirits.”

Toler shook his head. “Whatever you say.”

“Alright, enough jawing. Let’s get on the road while the
rain’s holding out.”

“Give me a hand with him?” Weaver asked.

Lokes scratched his head. “How we gonna get a man with two
broken legs onto a horse? How’s he gonna ride? Seems to me we’d be better off
making a travail to pull him in.”

“Where you gonna get the wood for that?”

“I don’t know. I’m spitballing here.”

Toler knew where. “Got any rope?”

“Sure. Same rope we tied you up with. What you thinking?”

“The banisters in the mall. The handrails are made of wood.
If you can detach a couple from the iron posts, we could make those into a
sled. A saw and a wrench should be all we need.”

“Got you covered on the saw part,” said Lokes. “But a wrench?
Who carries around a wrench?”

“I’ve seen gangers use them as weapons to beat people over
the head with,” Toler said.

“Naw, forget it. Ain’t gonna work. We ain’t got all day to
sit here building you a go-bed.”

“Then lift me.”

Lokes was skeptical. “That’s gonna hurt like nobody’s
business.”

“I know it will. Just do it. I’ll manage.”

“Either of your arms hurt?” Weaver asked.

“Nope. It feels like the breaks are below the knees, so I
should be able to hold myself in the saddle.”

“You’re going to bawl like a baby,” said Lokes.

Toler shrugged. “Beats dying.”

“Lookie here, Jal. We got us a tough ol’ Shep, don’t we?”

“Sure do,” she said.

“Welp. Let’s get him up.”

They brought Weaver’s filly over and supported Toler on
either side as they lifted him to his feet. Pain stabbed through him, but with
Lokes’s help he hoisted himself onto the animal and threw a leg over. Meldi
snorted and stamped, but she held steady for him after a moment of Weaver’s
soothing.

Once Toler was as comfortable as he was likely to get, Weaver
led Meldi by the reins and circled the room a few times to get man and horse
used to each other. His legs hurt so bad he couldn’t use the stirrups, and
every step the horse took shook him with fresh pain. It wasn’t until the second
lap that Toler noticed his own saddle and knew he would have to leave it
behind.

“There’s no way to bring my saddle, is there?” he asked.

Weaver wrinkled her mouth. “Now I see what we’re up against,
I don’t think so.”

“I done told you that,” Lokes said. “Too big and heavy. We
gotta leave it here, Shep.”

“At least tuck it away behind a counter somewhere,” Toler
said. “Maybe it’ll still be here when I come back for it someday.”

“Wouldn’t bet on it, Shep. I’ll do you a favor and hide it
real good for you.” Lokes stowed the saddle beneath a sales counter toward the
back of the store and laid some thin fiberboard paneling against it. “That’s
about as good as I can do.”

“Thanks,” Toler said. As he ducked beneath the doorway and
ventured into the streets with Lokes and Weaver ahead of him, he felt anything
but good about leaving his father’s saddle behind. It was like leaving a family
member, only worse, in a way. There were the familiar pangs of loss at letting
go of something sentimental, as though the object itself were his only
remaining link to the person who’d given it to him.

He would never forget his father, for what few memories
remained of him. But that saddle—every crack and groove in the leather, the way
it smelled, the oiled feel of the horn in his palm—it was the embodiment of not
only his family line, but his whole adult life.

Daxin had never talked about their father, except when he was
repeating, ad nauseum, every anti-Vantanible sentiment the man had ever shared.
Toler had hated him for that; for being so closed-off about their family’s
history, even though Daxin had known Lyle and Priella Glaive a decade and a
half longer than Toler had. Toler hadn’t found out until he was almost twenty years
old that their parents had borne another son before him, Jerevish Glaive, who
had died in infancy.

Since Daxin never spoke of his own parents, he would surely
never utter a word about the brother they’d lost before they knew him. Toler
had only learned about Jerevish through a journal of his mother’s he’d found in
the family library.

That was why leaving that saddle behind put a sick feeling in
Toler’s stomach. It wasn’t the starwinds anymore. It was the abandonment of his
memories; the forsaking of all the loathing and curiosity and love he had ever
felt toward his family. Yes, even love, as rare as the occasion arose. He loved
Savvy. He would be crushed if anything happened to her.