Alight (43 page)

Four Springers stand victorious. Coughing, bloody, wounded, exhausted—at least three of their kind are dead, but they
won
.

Through the smoke and flames, I see a final battle still under way.

By the ruins of the X, the old Bishop straddles the young one, raining down blow after blow, smashing gnarled, black fists into ravaged pink flesh. Any one of those punches would shatter me completely.

I slide the bracelet onto my right wrist. I feel it squeeze down on my forearm.

My lungs burn, my eyes water, the heat is cooking me alive, but I am not finished here.

Old Bishop stands on wobbly legs. His hands are a mangled mix of torn flesh and blood.

On the stone floor in front of him, my Bishop struggles to move.

The worm of rage writhes inside my chest.

I stride toward them. Borjigin and Barkah fall in at my sides.

Old Bishop stares at me, mask cracked and askew, chest heaving, red eyes blazing with pride.

“I
won,
” he says. “I beat him.”

I point my right arm at him. “And you still lose.”

He looks down again, then to the pedestal platform, where the corpse of Smith is lost in the raging column of fire. He looks at the broken X, then back at me, and I understand—even if I didn’t have him dead to rights, he has no way to overwrite his defeated, younger self.

The big, broad shoulders sag. The shine of victory leaves his eyes. He is old, sad, exhausted.

“I am so tired,” he says. “I
hurt
. All my life, I tried to do the right thing. I followed orders. But those orders…they were for the
wrong
things. I followed them anyway.”

He grabs his mask, tears it off, tosses it aside. He points down at my Bishop, at what was supposed to be his new body.

“Help him choose the
right
thing,” the ancient man says.

My scorched throat and sizzling lungs won’t let me answer him, so I nod once.

He puts his shoulders back and stands rigid.

“I am Ramses Bishop, and I am ready to finally rest.”

I flick my fingers forward. My arm tingles with deep pinpricks, then the white light flashes out and tears the black monster to pieces.

I am the wind…I am death.

I stumble, have to grab a coffin-table to stay upright. Borjigin and Barkah help my Bishop up. His face is a swollen, bloody ruin. I can’t believe he’s still alive. He coughs up globs of blood.

The other Springers swarm around us, push me stumbling through the thick smoke. I can’t see anything, so I let them guide me. I have to focus just to stay on my feet.

The sound of the flames recedes slightly, then a door creaks shut and the blaze’s roar drops to a dull crackling.

A torch flares to life. We are in a narrow hallway carved out of the Observatory’s rock. The Springers gently urge us on.

Only now do I get a good look at Barkah: leg bleeding, a blood-spotted patch over his middle eye, the other two eyes half-lidded from pain and exhaustion, his every move a source of agony. He didn’t run and hide—as badly as he was hurt, he found more of his kind and came to rescue me.

I glance at the Springer faces, and see one other that I recognize.

“Hem,”
Lahfah says.

He isn’t laughing anymore. How could he, after what we’ve been through?

I gently check my nose—even the lightest touch fills my face with pain. I think it’s broken.

Bishop gently pushes Barkah and Borjigin away from him.

“I can stand on my own,” he says.

He leans a hand against the wall, takes a rattling breath, then starts walking.

We all move down the hall. I try to understand what just happened, parse out the madness of the last few minutes. O’Malley is gone
(he was still in there and I killed him I
KILLED HIM
)
. I didn’t see Matilda’s body, or Gaston’s—I’m positive they’re both still alive. I tried to send Borjigin away, assuming he was weak, but he came back for me.

Borjigin saved my life, true, but without Barkah and his friends we would
all
be dead. The Springer prince is brave beyond words. Although he unleashed violence just now, he did so because he wants peace.

Together, we can deliver on that promise.

The corridor is long and straight—like the ones we walked on the
Xolotl—
but at least this one is flat.

“Matilda,” Bishop says, his voice a croaking, broken thing. “Is she dead? You’re not safe until she is.”

“She’s alive,” I say. “I’m sure of it.”

Matilda won’t stop until she gets me. And we have no idea what this city holds—she built it, maybe there are places other than the Observatory where she could wipe out my mind.

I assume Matilda got away…so where would she go?

No, that’s the wrong way to think about it—where would
I
go? If I was defeated, if my friends were killed, what would I do?

“Bello’s ship,” I say. “Matilda is too old to run far. She’ll try and use Bello’s ship to get back to the
Xolotl
. I don’t know what time it is—are we sure Aramovsky is still going to attack? If he isn’t, we can go after her.”

“He is,” Bishop says. “Aramovsky sent some of the young circle-stars out scouting on spiders. They had just come back when he ordered me here. They reported hundreds of Springers near a clearing west of the city. He said he was going to attack at dawn.”

I quickly explain what Barkah showed me about how the Springer king is luring Aramovsky in.

“Our people will be outnumbered a hundred to one,” I say. “Aramovsky is leading them into a trap.”

Borjigin shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” He’s still wiping at his eyes with his sleeve. The skin there is rubbed raw. “Before he ordered me here, I’d repaired four more spiders, so he marched with six of them. Zubiri and the others were working on other machines, but I wasn’t paying attention to them and don’t know what they might have fixed. The thing is, I fixed the cannons. All of them. The bracelets are
nothing
compared to what the spiders have now. Em, Aramovsky will slaughter Springers by the thousands.”

I wince and glance at Barkah, forgetting for an instant that he doesn’t speak our language. He has no idea that the Springer king’s trap is going to turn into a massacre.

We reach the end of the tunnel. We push through thick vines, find ourselves on the street—it’s still dark. We still have a little time, at least.

Coyotl’s spider stands there, motionless. Gaston and Spingate are beneath it. Five musket-armed Springers are on top of it. Their skin is reddish purple. More red than purple, really, and they are significantly smaller than Barkah, Lahfah and the others, so small their muskets look bigger than they are. These Springers are still children—the equivalent, perhaps, of our twelve-year-olds. Maybe Matilda came for Coyotl’s spider, but saw these armed youngsters and chose to slip away rather than engage in a shootout.

Borjigin walks to the spider. He puts a hand on one of the five legs, hangs his bloody head and starts to cry.

Far off on the horizon, I see the glow of morning. The sun isn’t up quite yet, but we don’t have long.

If I try to stop the battle, Matilda will reach her ship. She might escape. I want her
dead
. I don’t want to have to choose between those things, but that’s what a leader does: make choices.

“Barkah and I have to get to the clearing,” I say. “Before the sun rises. He and I can stop this.”

Bishop’s swollen face shows doubt that I can accomplish that, but he doesn’t argue.

“We’re in the middle of the city,” he says. “The clearing is way past the wall. Even with the spider, you won’t make it before sunrise.”

The moonlight shines down on his face: one eye swollen shut, cuts dripping blood, his lower lip puffed out and badly split.

For the first time since we left the fire behind, Gaston speaks.

“If we take the spider, we’re only ten or fifteen minutes from the landing pad—then the shuttle could reach the clearing in less than ten minutes, including the time I need to fire up the engines.”

The words hang in the air.

My friends are watching me, waiting. Bishop, Borjigin, Gaston, Spingate…even Barkah and Lahfah. There was no vote this time, and I don’t care—I know what must be done, and I will lead the way.

If we do as Gaston suggests, then we can never go back to the
Xolotl.
I swore I would die on Omeyocan before returning to that ship of horrors. But believing you won’t use an option and removing that option completely are two different things. If something else goes wrong down here, if there is another kind of mold, if the Springers decide they want war no matter what, if there is a disaster,
anything,
the shuttle won’t have enough fuel to let us run away.

Another decision, and all mine to make.

I make it.

A
thin arc of sun breaches the horizon. Long rafts of clouds blaze crimson, underlit against the dark-blue sky. Omeyocan’s twin moons are starting to fade, ready to sleep the day away until the nightfall comes again.

We had to leave most of the Springers behind—there wasn’t enough room for everyone. With me, Bishop, Spingate, Gaston, Borjigin, Barkah and Lahfah, it’s a tight fit, but we manage to hold on even as Borjigin guides the spider up and over the landing pad’s thick ring of vines.

The shuttle awaits us.

Farrar and a dozen young circle-stars crouch near the ramp. Three of the young ones aim muskets at us. The others hold knives or various tools: picks, shovels, axes, more.

The spider’s five hard feet
clack-clack-clack
against the landing pad’s metal surface. The machine slows; I’m off and down before it even comes to a complete stop.

The circle-stars see the Springers, shuffle backward, agitated and afraid.

“Hold your positions,”
Farrar barks to his charges.

The young circle-stars hold their places, but they don’t take their eyes off Barkah and Lahfah. Farrar can’t look away from them, either, not even when he talks to me.

“Em, what’s going on? Did you see Aramovsky?”

“Get everyone inside,” I say as I start past him toward the ramp. “We’re taking the shuttle.”

He grabs my arm, spins me around.

“Aramovsky is the leader now,” he says. “We’re not going anywhere without his orders, and those
things
aren’t coming aboard no matter what.”

Bishop leaps over the spider’s protective ridge, grunts in pain when he hits the ground. Fists curled, he limps toward us.

I hold up a hand, telling him to stop. He does, just a step away. Bishop is ready to fight, but in his condition, it’s a fight he won’t win.

“Aramovsky betrayed us,” I say to Farrar and the circle-stars. “The Grownups are on Omeyocan, and he’s working with them. Do you know why he didn’t take you to the battle?”

Farrar looks at me doubtfully. “We’re here to protect the shuttle against Springer attack.”

“You’re here because there is a Grownup waiting to put you in a box, to invade your body and wipe you out, forever,” I say. “They don’t want you getting hurt or killed in the battle. They’ve already murdered Coyotl, Beckett and O’Malley. You were all supposed to be next.”

I see the conflict on Farrar’s face, on the faces of the kids. They are afraid that I am right, but I am not the leader and I broke their trust when I didn’t tell them about the symbols. I also came here with Springers, the creatures they’ve been told are evil demons who want them all dead.

Gaston and Spingate climb down from the spider.

“Hurry up, you boneheads,” Gaston says as he heads up the ramp. “We don’t have time for this.”

Spingate follows him, as does the still-sobbing Borjigin. Farrar watches them go by—he has no idea what to do.

I reach out, take his hand, make him focus on me.

“Farrar, I’m telling you the truth.”

He shakes his head. “Even if you are, I have to follow orders. I have—”

Bishop’s huge fist crashes into Farrar’s jaw. Farrar’s hand slides from mine. He drops, unconscious.

Bishop draws himself up to his full height, shouts commands at the shocked young circle-stars.

“All of you, get in the shuttle, right now, or I will
throw
you in it. And take Farrar to medical so Smith can look at him.
Move!
”

The kids rush to Farrar, their previous instructions forgotten in the face of Bishop’s commanding presence. It takes five of them to lift the unconscious man and carry him up the ramp.

I shake my head at Bishop. “I was handling that.”

Bishop shrugs. “Enough talk. We don’t have time for it.”

He limps into the shuttle, leaving me with Barkah and Lahfah.

I gesture to the open door.

“Move,” I say. “Peace.”

Lahfah’s eyes scan the gleaming metal shuttle. Has he been told about these flying machines since he was little? Did his culture fill him with stories about the carnage that machines like this wreaked on his people? Asking him to go inside must be like asking him to walk into a monster’s mouth.