Palace of glass, p.22
Palace of Glass, page 22
But if the runes on the car were supposed to protect it, they failed.
The floor underneath it heaved and snapped, jerking the car up on its suspension. A series of heavy crunches sounded from the concrete beneath it.
“Go, go, go!” Aeryn yelled, turning her backwards walk into a run.
The SUV jerked. Deep fissures broke underneath the glow of the Fire runes, and bits of broken rock skittered away like scree as the floor began to break, pinging off the walls. Two of them bounced across the toe of her shoe and hit the bottom of her shin. The car listed to the side like a badly heeling boat. Cracks and breaks continued to snap through the garage, growing in intensity.
Pausing to watch, McKay felt the exact second the floor gave away.
The resulting crash roared in her ears like an explosion, and the car vanished in a flood of dust and dirt, keeling back with the rest of the floor. She heard it land, smashing into the floor below.
Adrenaline pounded in her ears. She took in a gasp of air and choked on the dust.
Suddenly, she was back on the front.
Fear gripped her. She took another panicked breath, tasted ash, choked. Images screamed through her mind. Another crack smashed through her senses, and she flinched back with a wobble. Her bad leg stumbled, a wound reappearing as if it had never left, the blood and burns as fresh as the day they had been made. Acid burned in her throat—she’d been sick, had just seen—
“McKay!”
She snapped her head toward the voice, wide-eyed. There was a hand on her shoulder, someone she didn’t know. Jo was there, too, among the zone, an obvious juxtaposition to the war scene behind her.
“Jo, no—you shouldn’t—” McKay frowned, sputtered. There was going to be a bomb there. Some sort of screaming, shrieking thing that blew the world apart, and Jo—
And Jo was not actually there. She wasn’t on the front. That was over. Gone. Done with.
She wasn’t even in the army anymore.
Belatedly, she realized she was shaking.
McKay shrugged off the hand on her shoulder and, in the same motion, caught its elbow and pulled Jean Renaud back a few steps with her. Her grip was too tight on his elbow. She dug her fingers into his muscle, but he didn’t say anything, only moved back with her, a malleable weight in her fingers.
It took more than a moment to ground herself. It always did.
Fortunately, their attacker seemed to be giving them that.
The parkade was a shroud of dust. It smelled like gasoline and rust, and the underground humidity pressed against her skin like hot breath. The group had fanned out around her during her episode, their actions and locations telling her that it had only been a few seconds this time. She focused on the hole in the ground, barely visible in the silty gloom.
Green lights flickered within it, like flashes of fireflies in summer.
This, she surmised, must be the Earth Mage that they hadn’t wanted to meet.
Judging by the hole in the floor, and the large amount of metal and concrete surrounding them, McKay had a feeling she knew why.
The two Mages stood ahead to her right, visible by the crawl of symbols over their skin. She focused on them and tried to ignore the panic that still echoed through her mind. Slowly, she loosened her vise-grip on Jean Renaud’s arm, returned her second hand to her gun, and moved back into her combat stance, mirroring the other soldiers around her.
They seemed to be waiting for something.
A second later, she realized what.
A shadow drew her attention to the ramp. It stretched out long and thin, grotesquely misshapen, jerking with every step its source took and doubling when they walked in front of a second light. Despite the exaggerated, jerking movements it cast on the wall, she deduced that whoever it was was walking normally—like a coach calmly crossing a soccer pitch en route to talk with a player.
Not, she decided, like someone who planned to crush them all beneath the concrete ceiling without a chance to talk about their options.
After a few seconds, and with a deep frown on her face, Aeryn called out. “Mercari Orrist, is that you?”
“It is,” came the reply, echoing slightly on the walls. “You are lucky today.”
Despite the words, the speaker’s tone didn’t make her feel very lucky. It was male, with a slight hint of an accent around his vowels that she recognized from other Mages—which meant that he was at least old enough to use Lürian as a mother tongue. He sounded older than Aeryn, perhaps going as far as Amerand’s apparent age, but, when he finally rounded the corner and finished climbing the ramp, the distance made it hard to judge.
He was smaller than she’d thought—maybe even as small as her—with the kind of lithe, compact build that, had he worn the Mageguard black instead of a rich man’s polo, would have made her think of video game assassins. As it was, he looked like the kind of older white guy who’d misplaced his sports car at the grocery store.
He surveyed their group, taking his time to size up every person in the room, including herself and Jean Renaud.
Then, he turned to the hole in the floor, as if in an afterthought.
“I’m sorry about your car,” he said. “But you understand.”
“I understand that you are following orders,” Aeryn said. “Or, at least, you think you are.”
The man paused and slid his gaze back to her. He had a presence about him, McKay realized—a kind of stillness that she’d seen around only a few people in the military, with Buck being the most recent. The dust was beginning to settle toward the floor, layering the concrete in a powder that crunched like grit under her shoe.
“I don’t follow orders,” Orrist said. “And I am not part of the Council. Not anymore.”
“I know that,” Aeryn said. “But you are acting, I assume, based on outdated news.”
This man was more than just powerful, McKay realized—he was also someone important, someone higher up, or who had been higher up.
She wished she’d paid more attention to Mersetzdeitz politics.
He shifted, pulling his weight back into his heels. One hand had partially come out of his pocket, revealing a glimpse of skin that was completely bare of symbols—unlike Aeryn and Eric’s, whose skin still broadcast their unease.
“And I suppose you have something that is not outdated that may sway my stance,” he asked. “Otherwise, we would not be having this conversation.”
By his tone, it sounded like he did not think anything Aeryn said would make a difference. He seemed utterly confident as he stood there, his sharp eyes watchful and alert, but not afraid. Of course, he wasn’t the first Earth Mage she’d seen comfortable within concrete walls.
Why the hell did they always seem to face off with them underground? Was it luck, or were Earth Mages just smarter in choosing battlegrounds?
“Ivern is alive,” Aeryn said. “Does that matter to you?”
He paused, a considering look in his eye. McKay held her breath, watching his face.
“It does matter,” he said finally. “In the grand scheme. I suppose you have a credible source for this?”
Aeryn fished into her back pocket and pulled out her phone. “My brother. It’s the only message he’s sent me since Mieshka was taken.”
She tossed the phone toward Orrist. He caught it in the air with his power, pulling it toward him for a careful study.
“Password is 1824,” Aeryn said.
He hunched slightly, bowed his head over the screen of the phone as he keyed in the password, and, presumably, scrolled through the messages. The tension in the room was thick. Everyone watched. McKay found herself studying his face, straining to see any sign of emotion.
After a few seconds, he looked up. “Your brother, you said?”
“Aiden—Aedynan. He was in Ryarne before. He—”
“I am aware of him,” Orrist said. “People have told me what has happened.”
“Then you know who he brought over with him,” Aeryn said. “And what happened to her?”
“She was taken,” he said impatiently. “That does not prove your brother’s verity, though I do give him credit for his leadership role in Ryarne. I—”
“She was taken by Allish Statia,” Aeryn said.
McKay watched the man register the news with a carefully blank look. She thought she saw one of his jaw muscles slowly work, though the distance made it hard to be sure. She shifted, the dust on the ground grinding under her boot like tiny pieces of glass, and risked a glance around.
Buck had moved. He stood ten paces back from where he’d been, and was nearly halfway to the next SUV parked in the lane. Jo and Alexei had both shifted to cover his position, minimizing his absence as best they could.
McKay doubted that it mattered much. The man they were facing was an Earth Mage. Unless Buck suddenly developed wings, she doubted his relocation had gone unnoticed—they’d all spent enough time with Gobardon to know that much.
“They didn’t tell me that,” the Mage said. “Only that she had been taken.”
“Does that matter to you?” Aeryn asked again.
“It does matter.” The man smiled in a way that McKay suspected was not meant to be reassuring. “It matters significantly—if it’s true.”
Aeryn shifted. At some point, she had lowered her gun, but the Fire runes still burned brightly on her skin.
“I intend to find out,” she said.
“With Finnevar’s newest guests, I see.”
“They were being held,” Aeryn said. “Without charges. Belongings confiscated.”
“And you thought it prudent to facilitate their release, given the possible connotations of this message?” Orrist asked, his chin tilting up. “Rather than verify it by yourself? Potentially forsaking your career?”
Aeryn, if possible, stood straighter. “I did, sir.”
There was a lot being left unsaid between the sentences of this conversation, and although McKay didn’t have the background to completely understand its nuance, she was not a complete idiot. If Mieshka’s kidnapping and their own however-amiable imprisonment had anything to do with Aiden’s message, then they were already experiencing the possible connotations of that message.
And then, there was the fact that Aiden had sent the message to Aeryn, his sister, who would fully understand those connotations…
Orrist gave Aeryn another one of his thin, not-quite-friendly smiles. “Good thinking.”
He lifted a hand. Green flashed across his skin.
Behind them, with a great sound of rending steel, both doors to the parkade had wrenched in their frames, anchoring into the concrete around them like sharp, jagged tree roots.
“There are fifteen people coming down the stairs,” Orrist said. “If we are going, we need to go now.”
“We?” Aeryn asked. “Are you coming, too?”
“Of course I am,” he said. “Now, who knows how to hot-wire a car?”
Chapter 28
Rain dripped from the overhang in an unsteady patter, drumming hard against the broken curb ahead. The whole alleyway was slick, so wet that the stone facing itself seemed to exude water. Around the downspouts, the brickwork had turned dark with years of unwashed build-up and more than a little black mold.
Gobardon repressed a shiver. With the near-constant rainfall, Mersetzdeitz had enough awnings, overhangs, and shelters to keep its citizens relatively dry while they were on the main paths, but that protection did not extend to the alleys he had chosen to lurk in—and he’d left his jacket behind when he’d decided to jump out of Finnevar earlier that day.
Not his best plan, he’d admit.
But there had been little time to think things through. This city moved fast. He had to move faster.
He turned down the next alley, navigating mostly by Element rather than sight or sound. People might call Mersetzdeitz a city of rain—of water—but there was enough stone, wood, and steel to give him an exact map of the area. The rainfall sounded like static to his mind, but, if he focused, he could make out the individual footsteps of the people around him.
Too bad he couldn’t tell if they were Mages or not.
His thoughts buzzed. He’d had a few hours to run through them—walking was good for that—but he still had few answers.
Mieshka was an anomaly. That had been a certainty for a few days now. Crystal-human relationships were unheard of—ilia, excepting a few archaic texts and the ritual possession that existed in one or two primitive Lürian tribes, spirit-human relationships were equally unheard of—but now, there appeared to be two cases. He hadn’t met Ivern’s wife before, but he’d definitely heard the rumors, and, thanks to a quick jaunt through one of Finnevar’s computers, seen some of the footage.
She, like Mieshka, was a force of nature.
Les Amerand, on the other hand, was a more familiar force. Gobardon had spent enough time within the higher, more power-hungry social circles to know the man’s reputation. A quiet, unassuming veteran of the Acklentan Crystal wars, Amerand had passed through the Transition as part of the inner Mageguard, then had been shuffled into a joint black ops unit with the Mersetzdeitz military. He’d cut his New World teeth in international interventions and black dagger raids on Eastern European drug cartels.
His role as Kjaran’s head was well-earned.
His role as Council Head, however, was debatable.
Something was going on. Gobardon could feel it as keenly as he felt the blood running through his veins—the subtle whispering of something crucial going on behind the scenes. Mersetzdeitz was a pressure cooker for Mage politics. All the mixed hope, resentment, and change from the Transition years seethed in the city. And Amerand was not the sort of character to sit idle on such a gift.
Not when Ivern Elhert’s Council was so vehemently pacifistic.
Not when a dragon had shown up last month, and the only person who could fight it off had been a possessed, New World Elemental.
He shook his head at that thought. He needed more information than Finnevar had let him have.
He needed to talk to his own people.
He bowed his head as he stepped out from beneath the brief cover of a fire escape, ignored the rivulets of water that trickled down either side of his face, and continued up the alleyway.
A second later, he stopped dead.
A deep frown cut across his face. He tilted his head to the end of the alleyway, mentally listening to the beat of footsteps that jangled at the back of his Elemental senses like a bad itch. A familiar jangle, currently skipping its way toward the alley’s mouth on the street-side flagstones that made the sidewalk.
He opened his mouth, closed it again.
Kitty?
No, not possible. He’d left her in Finnevar. Hadn’t told her where he’d planned to go—hell, he hadn’t even planned to go; he’d just gone.
Slowly, cautiously, he pulled his Element around him. Green shivered on his skin, a flash of light in the alley’s dark that he hid quickly up his sleeve. Up ahead, a caged, industrial bulb spat a stark yellow into the drizzly haze, making him squint as he stared at the alley’s mouth.
As the rain continued to fall, his jaw slackened a second time.
It can’t be her.
And yet, it was. He’d know that step anywhere.
He slipped into the shadow of the wall, back under the rusting steel of the fire escape, and waited.
She didn’t see him at first. She appeared like a bird, pausing in a punk-rock silhouette against the mercurial, quick-silver backdrop of the rain-marked, lamp-lit street behind her, a scruffy rebel crow that flew in the backsplash of Mersetzdeitz’s nearest glut of advertising. He shrank against the stone as her pause became more than that, her head turning with a frown that was visible even from this far away, and willed the shadows to hide him.
Go away. For the gods’ sakes, don’t get involved.
But if anyone heard him, god or otherwise, they were not on his side tonight. Kitty narrowed in on him like a hound.
“Gobby!”
He winced at the nickname, which happened to coincide with an unfortunate term of slang he was only mostly sure that Kitty didn’t know, and sighed as he felt her sneakers pound down the alley toward him. She hit him like a sack of flour, arms wrapping around his middle with the same vise-like intensity of an exuberant child.
A second later, his entire body jolted with Electricity.
He jerked away from her as if bitten. Green flared on his wrist as he stumbled back, momentarily out of breath. “What the fuck?”
“You left me,” she snarled. Electricity snapped across her fists in an arc of white, its static crackle punctuating her words like a growl. “You’re lucky that’s all I did.”
She narrowed her gaze, brows pinching together as if she were deciding whether she wanted to hit him again or not. Gobardon shuffled back another step. She hadn’t hit him hard—more like an electric fence than a wall socket—but it still felt as if someone large had kicked him in the chest. “How’d you get out?”
“Second floor bathroom. I landed in a bush.”
“You didn’t have to do that. They wouldn’t have—”
“They took me in for questioning,” she hissed. “In one of them cop rooms. Do you know how much I hate cop rooms?”
Probably as much as she hated cops, he guessed. “Did they hurt you?”
By the way her nose wrinkled up, he had a feeling that his question was beside her point. When a second crackle of Electricity split the quiet—this time accompanied by something a bit brighter and longer-lasting than the earlier flash of white—he raised his hands and skipped back another few steps, well out of her immediate range.
“Okay, okay, I get it. I shouldn’t have done that.”
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