Storm of Locusts

Chapter 26

A concussive boom. Sounds become a distant echo, the screams around me dampened.

I hit the floor, scrambling for cover under the table. Rissa and Aaron do the same. The back end of the auction tent caves in, the wooden support beams cracking and collapsing the heavy canvas down onto the guests inside. A scream, and I turn in time to see the Kingdom representative, a splinter of wood as thick as my wrist protruding from his neck.

A hand touches my shoulder, and I have my knife out and swinging for the offender’s neck faster than the Kingdom representative’s last breath. It’s Ben. She looks like at me with huge eyes. Eyes that are painted with a thick layer of black liner and green eyeshadow. Heavy blush colors her cheeks, and her lips are an unnatural pink. She looks like someone’s sick version of a doll.

“Maggie!” she squeaks, and I pull my swing just in time, the knife edge striking the dirt floor inches from her head.

“What in the actual fuck!”

“Ben!” Rissa shouts, crawling toward us. She leans in and gives the girl a brief hug, which Ben returns. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” Ben asks, breathless. Her eyes cut to me, to the knife just to the left of her cheek, and then back to Rissa.

“We’re rescuing you!” Rissa says.

Another massive crack echoes through the tent, and the spotlight that was attached to the roof beam crashes to the ground.

“We’ve got to go,” Aaron says urgently. “The whole thing’s coming down.”

“Who’s he?” Ben asks, wary.

“One of the bad guys,” I say.

“Who’s helping us get out of here.” Rissa shoots me an annoyed look. “We’ll explain later. Right now we follow him.”

Which we do, scrambling through the chaos and noise. The auction tent has turned into a madhouse, people in their ruined finery stumbling through the semi-darkness, tables overturned, half the tent fallen down in a suffocating layer of heavy white canvas. Aaron clambers through the crowd, sometimes on his feet, and other times we’re forced to duck and crawl under tables and through the stampeding crowd. It seems like an eternity before we reach the side of the tent. Aaron grabs the edge, heaves it up over his head and motions us under. Rissa first, ducking, and then Ben. Aaron. Me last. The canvas comes down on my head, and there’s a moment of darkness and smothering weight. I push blindly forward, trusting that this is the way out. We clear in a handful of seconds. No time to rest, we sprint for the Tank and our waiting plane.

“Where are we going?” Ben asks, as light on her feet as ever, flushed with excitement.

“Aaron was the pilot, from the canyon,” I explain. “He can fly that plane. Was that your bomb?”

Ben beams. “I would have waited if I knew you were coming,” she says, sheepish. “Didn’t mean to ruin your rescue.”

She is completely sincere when she says it, and I don’t know whether I want to laugh or cuss her out. I settle on, “It’s fine. Next time.”

We hit the door of the Tank without pause, pushing through just as I hear someone behind us shout my name. I whip my head around and lock eyes with Elena Urioste. She’s across the yard, the collapsed tent behind her. Her dark eyes bore into me, an almost physical thing. I feel a hand around my throat and pull up short. It feels so real I stumble forward, gasping, but there’s nothing there. I lunge for my throwing knife, twisting to sight Elena, and the pressure of fingers on my neck disappear. She’s gone.

“Maggie!” Ben tugs at my sleeve. “Let’s go!” I spare one last glance for the matron of the Urioste Familia before I follow Ben inside.

The Tank is the same as it was before. Mercifully empty. I guess when the punishment for stealing is getting fed to the dogs, people become lax about guarding their stuff.

Aaron and Ben sprint for the plane. I run to open the far doors of the hangar, and Rissa detours to the fenced cage where she left her weapons.

That’s when I hear Aaron shout. He’s standing at the plane, the door on the pilot’s side flung open. His stumbles back, his hands raised.

I draw my shotgun, ready to confront whatever terror is inside that plane.

“Stop!” Ben runs toward me with her hands raised, putting herself between me and the plane, warning me off. “It’s not what you think!”

I’m not sure what I think. I just know there’s something in that plane that’s not supposed to be there.

“Aaron?” I ask. Aaron turns to me, his face pale, his expression thunderstruck.

“What is it?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”

“There’s a cat in my airplane!”

All that killing adrenaline firing, K’aahanáanii pooling in my stomach, I shoulder Ben out of the way and step forward to look inside to the open cockpit. Sure enough, there’s a black cat sitting in the pilot’s seat. Back leg in the air, shamelessly grooming herself.

“Mósí,” I say. It’s not even a question.

The cat looks up at me and blinks.

“Where have you been?” I demand. Not that I expect her to answer. Not that I’m sure she even can in this animal form. “And get out of the way!”

She lowers her leg, flicks her tail once, and then hops to the back seat, her whole demeanor radiating offense. Aaron slides into the vacated pilot’s seat and asks, “So, uh, you know that cat?”

“She’s with us,” I admit. “Marginally.”

He nods. Doesn’t ask any more questions as he turns knobs and flips switches and does a handful of other things I don’t understand to make the plane come to life. Ben and I pile into the six-seater. Rissa’s in last, taking the seat next to Aaron.

“Cover,” Aaron says tersely. I nudge Ben down below the window and she doesn’t argue. Move into position, shotgun aimed back toward the auction tent, as we clear the Tank. Darkness and chaos still reign, and now it looks like the bonfires outside have set fire to the canvas tent. Shapes run back and forth in the shadows, throwing sand on the fires.

I hear Rissa laugh, and I look up in time to see her fling open her door, lean away from the plane, one hand braced against the overhead wing, and fling something back toward the tents. Five, four, three, two, and the grenade goes off with a massive boom. Shrapnel flies, and some of the shadowy forms fall, but it’s fairly anticlimactic.

“Is that it?” Rissa demands, looking accusingly at Aaron.

He’s focused on getting the plane in the air, steadily increasing our speed. “Hang tight. I’ll show you what they can do.”

Rissa slides back into her seat, shutting the door, just as our wheels leave the ground. Ben makes a strangled-dog sound, and I have to agree. My stomach does a flip-flop as I realize I’ve never actually been in a plane and maybe hadn’t thought this through. Traveling the lightning with a trickster, sure. Flying, maybe not.

But it’s too late to protest now. Aaron lets out a shout as we gain air. But all I can see is the black sky around us, a small scattering of lights below where the fires still burn, and then nothing as we pass through thick cloud cover.

“How do you know which way to go?” Ben says anxiously.

Aaron taps the panel of instruments in front of him. “I don’t need to see. These see for me.”

He climbs for a while before banking the plane, circling back around high above Knifetown. He digs under the seat and hands Rissa something in a black canister. “Try this one,” he tells her. She slides a window open and drops the explosive. Six seconds later, with an air-shaking boom, the Tank goes up in flames.

“Now we’re talking!” she says, laughing wildly, the fire below throwing light across her face. Aaron laughs, too, whooping loudly. Ben joins in, and they’re all screaming and joking as we turn west into the night sky.

The only one besides me that’s not celebrating is Mósí, who has curled up on the back seat and is asleep. Sleep sounds like I great idea, so I move back to the empty seat next to her, pull the cowl I’m still wearing down over my eyes. Despite the knowledge that I am high in the air with nothing between me and a very long fall to the hard earth except a relatively thin layer of metal, the exhaustion takes me, and I fall asleep too.