Risen

13

Air rushed around me as I soared. I’d never pushed the headband to see just how far and fast it could go, and now I gave myself over to it. I felt the item come alive, exulting in the open sky.

The bridge was far, far below, Landis’s rearguard black specks against the stone. ‘Verus to command group,’ I called as I flew. ‘A marid jinn has broken away and is inbound towards the accumulator.’

‘Did you say a marid?’ Sonder asked.

‘Gamma team,’ Nimbus said. ‘Status on the accumulator.’

‘Sixty per cent,’ Lumen said, her voice tense. ‘We need at least five minutes.’

‘Acknowledged,’ Nimbus said calmly. ‘Beta team, engage the marid and slow its advance.’

Now that I was out of the tombs, I could feel the accumulator clearly, a glow of power behind the castle’s western corner. Up ahead, I saw Variam dip out of sight beyond the walls.

The castle’s north wall was coming up to meet me. I was reaching the top of my arc, and my eyes were telling me I was going to slam into the ramparts and fall. Despite myself, I glanced down: the castle’s walls fell away sheer and vertical, down and down to the rocks and crashing surf far below. My stomach lurched and I pulled my eyes up towards the crenellated wall, closer, closer—

My feet sailed in between two of the merlons and I touched down on the rampart, turning the landing into a run. I searched for Variam and found him, below me and to the left. He was soaring westward on fiery wings, jumping from walltop to walltop.

He wasn’t moving as fast as me, but he was fast. He’d reach the windmill in much less than five minutes. And once he got there, he was going to level that place and everyone around it.

The sovnya tugged, pulling in Variam’s direction. I shut it out; instead, as I ran along the rampart, I searched through the futures, calculating angles. There. I leapt, then leapt again, off the wall towards Variam.

Variam was flying towards a towertop that would give him a view over the western castle. I soared high, my arc carrying me over his. As I flew, I unclipped a grenade from my belt, pulled the pin, waited two and a half seconds, then threw it downwards just as I passed over Variam’s head.

The grenade went off in Variam’s face with a flat boompf. His shield absorbed the impact, but while Variam might be immune to shrapnel, he wasn’t immune to Newton’s laws of motion. The blast slowed his momentum, and all of a sudden the arc that would have carried him onto the towertop was falling short. Variam slammed into the wall and fell out of sight.

I alighted and jumped again. ‘Verus to gamma team,’ I said. ‘Stalled the marid for thirty seconds.’

A pause, then Sonder replied. ‘Can you do that a few more times?’

‘No,’ I said shortly. ‘Verus to accumulator team, friendlies coming in, repeat friendlies coming in, hold fire, hold fire.’

I came flying over the western walls and down towards the windmill. I saw the muzzles of light machine guns turning towards me; they tracked me all the way in but Little’s team were veterans and no one pulled a trigger. I landed on the grass by the millpond and turned and ran for the windmill. Men stationed by the building stood aside as I threw open the door.

This close, the accumulator’s power was like a furnace, filling the windmill with leaking energy. The focus looked like a thick white cylinder with a rounded top, connected by some arcane mechanism to a polished blue disc that I knew was the gate linkage. On the right side, Sergeant Little was speaking into his comm, his voice low and tense. The far wall held a big flat-screen monitor, and on it I could see Sonder and Lumen against a background of ramparts and sky. Below the monitor, a camera was pointed at me.

I strode into the room. Just being around the accumulator felt tense, like being in a room with a ticking bomb. ‘How long?’ I asked.

‘Four to nine minutes,’ Lumen said through the video link, her voice strained. She was holding a focus the size and shape of a spearhead that I knew would channel the blast; a silvery wire led away from it out of view. ‘What’s going on with the marid?’

‘Still coming. Two minutes out.’

Across the room, Little looked up and shook his head. ‘No reinforcements,’ he told me. ‘Orders are to hold with what we have.’

I hesitated, futures and battle plans unfolding. Little and me and twenty-two more, with rifles, three light machine guns and a handful of grenades. Against a marid . . .

We couldn’t win. Not even close.

I turned to the video screen. ‘Sonder. I need you here.’

Sonder’s eyes widened. ‘What?’

‘We don’t have enough to stop this thing,’ I said. Mentally I was tracking how long we had until the marid landed. One minute, forty seconds. ‘Your magic could do it.’

‘I can’t—’

‘A stasis spell.’ I spoke quickly. ‘It’s the only thing that’s got a chance of working.’

‘It won’t—’

‘It’ll land, I’ll make sure of it. Hurry.’

Sonder hesitated, the futures shifting. One second, two seconds, then his expression firmed. ‘No.’

‘Sonder!’

‘Our orders are to stay.’

‘We can’t hold against a marid on our own! If we try, everyone here is going to die!’

‘Then go,’ Sonder said.

I stared at Sonder, then towards Lumen. Lumen didn’t meet my eyes.

‘I’m not going out on a limb for you this time,’ Sonder said. He hesitated for an instant. ‘I’m sorry.’ He reached out towards the camera and my feed cut off.

I stared through the video link. All I could see was a black screen. ‘Sonder!’ I shouted.

There was no sound but for the whine of the wind.

Slowly I turned away. Sergeant Little was watching me, his face blank.

I couldn’t beat a marid. Not with the sovnya, not with the fateweaver. But Sonder had said it – I could go. Little’s men were under orders to hold this place. I wasn’t.

I hesitated, remembering the men outside. They were Council security, most of them veterans of the war, and I’d led many of them, learned their names. They had a dangerous job, with the usual profile for those in dangerous jobs: poor, low status and male. About two-thirds were lower-class British, the rest immigrants, most from Eastern Europe. If this were a Hollywood movie, they were the kinds of characters who’d be played by extras. No one would care if they died in a movie, and few would care if they died here.

I remembered what Nimbus had said when I’d confronted him. Security men were expendable; mages weren’t.

Thirty seconds.

‘Sir?’ Little said.

Little’s men weren’t going to make a difference to the battle. Cold calculation told me to abandon them.

Expendable . . .

‘Screw it,’ I said out loud. ‘Little, pull your men back.’

Little paused. ‘Orders—’

‘I am giving you new orders,’ I said harshly. ‘On my authority, get your men out of range of the accumulator and hold fire until further notice. Clear?’

‘. . . Clear, sir.’

I turned and walked out.

I strode out of the windmill, the sovnya in one hand, its blade low above the grass. The sun was directly overhead, dazzling and bright.

I came to a stop in front of the pond, then took a deep breath. ‘Marid!’ I shouted at the top of my voice. The echoes bounced off the castle walls, travelled on the wind. ‘Face me!’

The wind died away. The sails of the windmill above me slowed, the creaking coming at longer and longer intervals until it stopped. There was a hush.

Variam dropped out of the sky on wings of fire. He landed on the other side of the millpond with a thud before straightening to look at me.

I heard Nowy speak quietly over the tactical circuit. ‘I have a shot.’

‘Do not engage,’ Little said instantly. ‘Nowy, you pull the trigger on that LMG and I’ll stuff your dick down the barrel!’

Variam studied me dispassionately from across the water. Even if I hadn’t seen what he could do, I would have known it wasn’t him: his movements were wrong, too slow and too measured, as though he were used to brushing aside anything in his path. Flame flickered around his hands and feet, then died. ‘You challenge your doom,’ he said in that weird, too-old voice. He nodded towards the windmill behind me. ‘Stand aside.’

‘I will not.’ I levelled the sovnya at Variam; it quivered in my hand, eager to strike at the creature inside him. ‘For nearly ten years, you stayed with me. You slept under my roof, within the monkey’s paw, waking only to take your victims. I was your host, and you were my guest. You said as much when I spoke to you in the Hollow. Well, I am still your host, and under the laws of hospitality, you may not raise your hand against me!’

Variam paused.

I knew that I was gambling with my life. If the marid chose to attack, it could obliterate me. But I’d noticed back in the tombs that the marid from the monkey’s paw seemed different from the other jinn. The ifrit and the jann had acted like extensions of the sultan’s will, usually attacking us on sight. But Variam had spoken, drawing a line in the sand and waiting for us to step over it. The sultan cared only for war and death, but the marid inside Variam was a creature of law. That was how it had taken its victims back in my shop. It had offered them a contract, then extracted its price.

If I was right, I had a chance. If I was wrong, I was dead.

But the marid didn’t strike. It looked at me through Vari’s eyes, dark and unreadable. ‘The emperor commands. Stand aside.’

‘No,’ I said. I could feel the magic radiating from the accumulator behind me. It wasn’t fully charged: if Lumen fired now, everything we’d done would be wasted. ‘You want to destroy it, you’ll have to go through me.’

The marid stared at me. The futures shifted, slow and sluggish, and I felt a chill. The marid was making up its mind. ‘Intractable,’ it said. ‘You force a contradiction.’

I heard Nimbus through the focus in my ear, demanding an update. Sonder and Lumen said something that I didn’t hear. All my attention was on the marid.

Futures shifted, branching. I saw Variam’s eyes shift up to the windmill. He might try to strike past me, blow up the accumulator that way . . . I shifted position slightly, blocking a direct attack, and one of the futures faded out. The marid’s eyes shifted back.

Everything was silent. I held my breath, feeling the coin spin.

‘The contradiction is resolved,’ Variam said. He turned; fire ignited around him and he leapt up into the air, soaring away over the walls and out of sight.

I stared after him, checking and rechecking just to make sure he wouldn’t turn around. Nothing.

Variam was gone.

A wave of exhaustion rolled over me and I sagged, my knees going weak. There’s a special kind of fear you only get when your life is in someone else’s hands. All of a sudden, my limbs felt like lead.

Nimbus was still yammering on over the command channel, demanding updates. ‘Oh, shut up,’ I told him wearily. ‘The marid’s gone.’

‘Gone where?’ Nimbus asked. ‘Accumulator team—’

‘Verus!’ I heard Nowy call down from the walls. ‘You okay?’

I gave Nowy a half-wave, then walked slowly back to the windmill and pushed open the door.

The inside of the room was empty; Little had obeyed my orders and got everyone out of range, himself included. The monitor was once again displaying Sonder and Lumen on their towertop. Apparently they’d turned the camera back on once they didn’t have to worry about looking me in the face.

‘Alex?’ Sonder asked hesitantly.

‘It’s gone,’ I said. ‘No thanks to you.’ It was an effort to speak. I’d gone from fighting my way through the tombs to the chase over the castle walls to facing Variam, and right now I was running on empty.

‘Verus,’ Lumen said urgently. ‘Is the windmill clear?’

The accumulator was humming with power, filling me with tension. ‘Windmill is clear,’ I said. ‘Fire your damn weapon so we can get out of here.’

‘Sonder, charge,’ Lumen said.

‘One hundred and fifteen,’ Sonder said, checking something off-screen. His movements were jerky and quick.

‘How long to full?’

‘Three minutes, twenty seconds. Come on, Lumen, just fire.’

Lumen paused an instant, then nodded. ‘All right.’ She turned away from the camera, lifting the focus.

A soft voice spoke from out of view. ‘I think not.’

Sonder and Lumen whirled.

Green light flickered. Sonder and Lumen froze in place, every muscle locked and still. Footsteps sounded, and a figure walked out in front of the camera.

It was Anne, but it wasn’t. The first time I’d met Dark Anne, I’d felt as though I was meeting another person who just happened to be sharing Anne’s body and voice. This was the same, but worse. She had Anne’s long dark hair and slender grace; she wore the black skater dress that Arachne had given her at our last meeting together, and her bare arms and way of moving and the soft green light glowing around her hands were all those of the woman I loved. But then she glanced towards the camera, and it felt like a knife through the heart. The creature looking out from behind those reddish-brown eyes wasn’t her. I’d known that Anne had to be fully possessed, I’d had a long time to prepare for it, but I hadn’t been ready for how badly it would hurt. Actually seeing it was like being stabbed and then having the blade twist in the wound.

‘You,’ the marid told me. ‘I should have known.’ It turned towards Sonder and reached out, pale fingers resting delicately against his armour. Sonder was trembling, eyes wide with panic, struggling to move against the paralysis spell. ‘Worth keeping?’ the marid mused.

I tried to think of what to do. All I could think of was that last-resort idea I’d had about Arachne’s dress, but I was on the other side of a camera and—

The marid killed Sonder then killed Lumen. Their bodies dropped, dead before they hit the ground.

I stood frozen, trying to process what I’d seen. It had been so fast that it was over before I’d realised what was happening. There had been a flash of green light, something flickering into Anne from the bodies, and that was it.

‘No,’ the marid decided, and turned back to me. ‘I dislike being distracted from my work. Abandoning the nexus in this manner will delay the alignment. More importantly, I have been forced to perform with my own hands that which should properly have been attended to by my servants. This irritates me.’

I stared at the marid, then down at Sonder’s body.

‘I know who you are and what you desire,’ the marid told me. ‘Should you wish to save this human, seek me at the heart. Until you do, we will not meet again. Now.’ It reached down, picking up the focus from Lumen’s lifeless hand before studying it. ‘Human weapons have changed, but are apparently no less inferior. Ah, I see. This is linked to the device behind you. You intended to draw my retaliation towards your location, rather than here.’ The marid looked towards me. ‘I presume this is primed to project energy. I wonder what would happen if I aimed it back at that device itself?’

I looked down at the focus in Anne’s hand and saw Lumen’s magic still radiating from it, ready to be unleashed. My eyes went wide.

The marid pointed the focus at the portal.

I turned and ran.

I burst out of the windmill, sprinting with everything I had. I could see the futures converging ahead of me, narrowing in on a single event with a terrible finality. Three seconds. Two seconds. No time to get clear.

I dived for the millpond.

A beam of incandescent light flashed past, streaming away over the cliffs towards the horizon. I could sense the magic within it, the most powerful attack I’d ever seen, pure light and radiance. I’d already turned my face away to avoid being blinded, but I felt the heat burn the back of my arms and head.

But terrible as that beam was, it lasted only an instant. It hadn’t been targeted at me but at the accumulator, and as the accumulator was destroyed, all the energy it had gathered in the past fifteen minutes was released at once.

The windmill exploded behind me.

I dived into the pond, cold water engulfing my body. An instant later, I felt the water shudder as the shockwave hit. Through my divination I caught a confused glimpse of the windmill expanding outwards, the explosion rising up through its stories to burst upwards past the castle walls. A mushroom cloud of dust and white fire rose into the sky.

I floundered underwater, my clothes and armour making my movements heavy and slow. I heard muffled thuds as debris hit the grass, then missiles were raining into the pond. I twisted clumsily; a chunk of grey-yellow brick the size of a beachball crashed through the water’s surface and sank past my head. Then the sunlight was blotted out as something far bigger came flipping down and hit the pond with a boom, leaving me in shadow.

The thunder of falling debris stopped, and all I could hear was the rush of water. My lungs were burning; I hadn’t had the chance to take a breath, and I pushed off the bottom of the pond, swimming heavily upwards. My fingers scraped something and I broke the surface only to bang my head painfully against a wooden strut and go under again. Only after two more tries was I able to get my mouth above water and gasp in air.

The object lying flat on the surface of the pond was one of the windmill’s sails. The wooden struts made it hard to get my head up but there were a few inches of air and I got a grip on the struts and tilted my face so that I could keep pulling in breaths. Once I’d recovered, I kicked towards the edge of the pond, pulling myself hand over hand until I came out from under the sail and could see.

The windmill was gone. Only its foundations were left, and even they were hollowed out into a wide melted crater. Grass had been burned black all the way to the edge of the millpond. The castle wall had withstood the blast, but you could see damage all along its length where pieces of the windmill had been driven into the stone. Rubble and charred timbers were scattered everywhere, and a dozen small fires were burning.

I hauled myself from the water, clambering out onto the far side, where there was still some flattened grass. The shaft of the sovnya was sticking out from the shallows where the explosion had driven it into the mud; I pulled it loose and tossed it to the ground. Water ran from my hair and clothes as I crawled on hands and knees until I could twist around into a sitting position. All of my body ached.

I realised there was a voice shouting into my ear. Nimbus was speaking through the comm. ‘—gamma team, report! Mage Sonder, Mage Lumen, report! Accumulator team, what was that blast? Verus! I want to know what’s going on out there! Are you receiving me! Report immediately! This is a direct—’

I pulled the focus out of my ear and shut it off. The shouting fell silent, replaced with the soft hiss and pop of fires, and the whine of the wind. I stared at the smoking crater while in my mind’s eye I saw Anne killing Sonder, over and over again.

Sonder was dead, Lumen was dead, and the accumulator was destroyed. The Council’s attack had failed utterly.

Water dripped from my hair and ran down my face. I sat by the pond, cold and alone.