ElyriasEcstasy (34 page)

With a neat, careful slice, he took the lock off at its
roots.

Wonder shone in Urna’s eyes. A tear—yet another tear—spilled
down his cheek. He said, “Come with us.”

“No.”

“With the salvagers, they can hide us both, and we—”

“I know who you mean. And no. I’m returning to the Citadel.
To bring this back.” He brandished the bloody tress, rather grotesque-looking
now that it was severed from the Weapon’s head. “And because I have to go back.
I’m still a Shadowflash, Urna.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t speak for me.”

“Micah…”

Still the name had power, even after he’d had some time to
absorb it. Rune knew he would be repeating the word to himself for a long time
to come, in the night’s smallest hours. It would be his secret. None of the
officers or trainers or doctors would ever hear it. Aphael Chav would never
know the name.

He slid the knife back into his boot. He stood, seeing where
his clothing was scattered, glancing at the set of wings. “I’ll fly you down to
your…to your companions. Can you make it out of the Unsafe with them?”

Urna remained sitting. “Yeah. Can you get out?” He gave the
wings a dubious look.

“Fuel’s low. But I can carry you to street level. And I can
get myself back to the Safe. I probably won’t make it too far past the border,
though. I’ll get transport from there. Don’t worry about me.”

“I do worry about you.” Urna finally rose to his feet. He
palmed his cheek with a single, violent swipe. “Goddamn it, I wish you’d be
reasonable.”

Rune let a wry smile touch his lips. “I
am
the
reasonable one. Remember? I’m pragmatic. You’re the romantic.”

It got a returning smile from Urna, which sent an odd,
cheering warmth through Rune’s breast. Urna seemed about to say something more
then shook his head. For a moment, Rune studied the male’s lovely hairless
body, the beauty of his form, and wondered if he would ever see it again in
this lifetime.

“Get your clothes on, Laine,” Micah said. “I’ll take you
down.”

Chapter Nineteen

The speck of movement drew her eyes reluctantly skyward. Of
course, it wasn’t
sky
up there, and once again, Virge felt a fresh
tendril of nausea curl through her gut at the sight of the Ship. How did
anybody ever get used to it? But she thought maybe she knew already. You could
adjust to anything. That was how people were—the strong ones, anyway. The
survivors. She counted herself as one of the latter, considering everything
she’d done to stay out of the clutches of the Guard and the Lux.

If she could survive this fucking haircut, she could handle
anything.

So she squinted her eyes, gritted her teeth, and choked down
the queasiness as she looked up. And there she saw the descending shape.
Shapes. Two. Not a Passenger. Passengers, thankfully, didn’t fly.

Virge had slain quite a few of the ugly bastards since
taking position on the armory’s rooftop. She’d picked them off one by one,
lining up on her targets carefully, gently squeezing the trigger. On the street
below, Pelkra and Hervo had continued to take down others with arrows and crossbow
bolts.

Sometime during the past half hour or so, Virge had peeled
Yola Skott’s prosthetic pieces from her chin and the bridge of her nose. She
was Cawd Delfel no longer. First chance she got, she’d also get out of this
damned Guard uniform. And after that? Would she stay with Bongo, with this
illegal scavenger gang? Would she join the supposedly inevitable armed uprising
against the Lux, for which these weapons were being acquired?

She didn’t know. Certainly she couldn’t go back to being a
legitimate, authorized chemist. Maybe, though, her talents could be used
elsewhere.

Thoughts for later.

The two figures were sweeping downward. They were descending
slowly, gracefully, coming down from the elevated realm of the ruined but still
imposing towers. One wore a set of those military wings. He was carrying the
second figure. Both were male. Their line of descent looked like it would land
them on this very street.

Virge flexed her fingers on the pistol’s grip. Pelkra, from
below, had signaled a minute or two ago that the operation was almost done. The
others had nearly finished loading up the vehicles. If these two were here to
stop them, though—

Then she saw the silver hair on the man being carried. He
didn’t appear to be struggling with the other.

A grin bared Virge’s teeth. Urna. And Rune bearing him. It
looked as though the thief was returning his plunder.

* * * * *

They had quickly enough worked out an efficient system.
Gator moved the debris, and Arvra and Bongo carried out the long plastic crates
full of guns.

Arvra felt the quivery strain in her arms and at the sockets
of her shoulders, but she voiced no complaint. Neither did the blond mage.
They’d borne container after container, loading them into the vehicles waiting
outside, filling their holds systematically.

The inside of the police armory was a mess. Parts of the
second level had collapsed down onto the ground floor. At first glance it had
looked hopeless. Arvra had bitten down on a castigating aside to Bongo, whose
map had led them here. Gator, however, had merely strode past them, kicking
aside chunks of plaster, reaching down and heaving broken beams out of his way.
He pointed to the flattened remains of an interior wall. Beyond it, crates were
stacked.

Arvra had hurried to them, read the fading stencils on their
sides. D-17 RIOT RIFLES (10) & MUNITIONS (10,000 ROUNDS). She recited this
message, and Bongo gave a celebratory whoop that echoed eerily in the
moldering, cavernous interior of the building. “Let’s have a look first,” she
said, and they struggled with the catches on one of the containers. Opening it,
they saw the weapons, all laid out neatly.

“Lucky that upper level fell,” Gator pointed out, indicating
the wall that had collapsed. Metal reinforced it, though it hadn’t stood up to
the immense weight that had fallen on top of it. Time had burgled this armory
for them.

Gator dragged the crates down one by one, sometimes
wrenching them from underneath a good deal of pinning rubble. As Arvra and
Bongo hauled them out to the transports, Arvra grabbed up any other objects
strewing the ground that looked useful. True salvage. Pipes, metal fittings,
papers, anything that appeared to have been an electronic device. These she
simply loaded atop the crates she and Bongo were carrying. If the added weight
bothered him, he never said so.

Thus, the Order of Maji would be satisfied, and she would
return with a proper haul of salvage.

Hervo, Pelkra and—maybe especially—Virge kept off the
Passengers who were aroused by their presence in the city. Arvra saw glimpses
of the creatures’ bodies where they’d fallen in the street. The vehicles were
nearly fully loaded by now. They had to have taken on at least a hundred fifty
rifles at this point. Whether those weapons would prove functional, she didn’t
know, although the plastic crates appeared sealed, without any signs of decay
that would’ve let in damp and corrosion.

“That’s it,” Arvra said curtly as she and Bongo fitted yet
another crate into the cargo hold of the second of the two haulers. You didn’t
want a raid to last too long, and they’d spent enough time at this single site,
in her judgment. And since this was her operation, her decisions were all that
counted.

She called in to Gator. A moment later he emerged, hair
white with plaster dust. She too felt grimy with dirt and sweat. She wondered
distantly if he could put together another hot bath sometime in the near
future, and the thought tickled a memory of that previous time, of Gator’s
broad bare body, of his hands.

To shake this off, she raised her head to call Virge down
from the armory’s roof. Before she could utter a sound, though, a sharp whistle
came from above. Arvra shaded her eyes against the sickly Shiplight and saw the
woman in the Guard outfit waving. Waving and pointing. Upward.

Arvra looked past her, to the two figures descending. Next
to her, Bongo muttered darkly, “If Urna’s been hurt…”

The two men, one supporting the other, came down and down
and at last alit upon the street near the vehicles.

* * * * *

It was a tableau. Shadowflash, Weapon, salvagers. Rune felt
he could almost see the scene at a remove, as if he were outside himself. In
some sense, that was true. Urna—Laine—had undone his reality for him. Or, more
accurately, had clarified it. The past.
Their
past. Rune had always felt
that they two shared a history. What Laine had told him on the rooftop…it had
the tenor of truth, of fact.

Or else it was the most elaborate web of lies Rune had ever
heard spun.

They landed on the street. Everyone froze for that moment.
The scavenger gang members regarded them wide-eyed. Two were armed with
primitive weaponry that nonetheless appeared to have kept the inevitable
Passengers at bay. It was strange being down here at street level, on the floor
of the ruins. He was used to remaining high up, directing his partner from the
tops of towers. But those days were gone. Never again would the male with the
silver hair be his Weapon. That was how it had to be. Rune, though the thought
tore at him with grim force, believed he could accept that.

Laine had recaptured some part of the life that had been
taken from him. A life of which both of them had been robbed.

The stillness broke after a few seconds when one of the
salvagers, a man with blond hair, stepped forward. “Are you hurt?” he asked
Laine. His green eyes flashed past him, picking out Rune, the look dire.

“I’m fine.” Laine waved dismissively. Looking around, he
asked, “Are you done here?”

A female with wildly colored hair nodded. She turned, lifted
her head and gave a single shrill whistle. From the roof of the nearest
building, which the group seemed to have been engaged in raiding, a figure
started climbing down, quite nimbly. She found many helpful footholds on the
structure’s pitted front. The biggest man among the crew went around to the
backs of the two vehicles and closed up the hatches. Whatever salvage they had
come here for, it seemed they had obtained it.

During this, Laine had not looked at Rune. His dark-blue
eyes were on the ground. Rune had no reason to linger here. He had delivered
the former Weapon back to his friends. He had nothing to say to these people.
They were from the opposite end of the Safe’s society. Dregs. But they must
have some worth, he conceded. Else Laine wouldn’t have fallen in with their
company.

He had to return to the Citadel, to bring the bloody lock of
hair to Aphael Chav himself, to tell the lie that Urna the Weapon was dead. He
would do so, just as he himself would remain a Shadowflash, serving the Lux. It
was the life he knew. Whatever past his erstwhile partner had uncovered, it was
still inaccessible to Rune. So be it. Perhaps someday he might make the
discovery for himself. Perhaps not.

The wings’ abused motor had cut out on upon landing. As Rune
went to restart it, Laine suddenly lifted his head. Stricken eyes were large in
that beautiful face. Abruptly he bent, slipped something out of his boot and
held it out toward Rune. It was a square of stiff-looking paper. An old
photograph, it looked like. It depicted three people. Two were adults, one
younger. Sun reflected on water in the background.

“This isn’t either one of us,” Laine said. “But it could’ve
been.”

Bemused, Rune took the picture from him. He didn’t
understand the significance of this, but plainly it meant something to Laine.
Even so, he couldn’t resist saying, “You’re so sentimental.” He put it into the
same pocket with the tress of bloodied silver hair.

Laine said, “Micah—” But Rune fired the engine. The harness
was heavy and uncomfortable across his shoulders. His body ached, as the
bruises he’d acquired started to rise. It would be a long journey back to the
Citadel.

Whatever else Laine meant to say to him, Rune didn’t hear
it. The wings lifted him. The decaying street fell away beneath. He banked, up
and away, with a final glimpse of the silver-haired head, a daub of colorless
color against the gray of the surrounding rot, then the man who held his heart
was lost to him.

* * * * *

Urna watched the Shadowflash soar away, a smooth arc,
despite how labored the wings’ motor sounded. He hoped Rune would make it back
to the Safe. Not just for the great service the Shadowflash would be doing him
by bringing “proof” of his demise to the Toplux. It was more than that, beyond
selfish motives, beyond even what might be best for the Order of Maji. Rune,
who had once been a boy named Micah, was Urna’s mate, someone who was joined to
him on some impossible, profound level. He might never fully understand the
bond between them, but he was in awe of its power, especially now, with the
partial return of his memories.

Virge Temple was down from the roof. The operation had been
a success. Arvra was ordering everyone back into the vehicles, having paid Urna
no more attention than to level a gaze at him and ask, “Can you do your job?”
Virge strode up next to him and wordlessly handed over the pistol, lustrous
eyes brighter than ever, a satisfied look on her face.

He took the gun, the butt warm from her hand, and said to
Arvra, “I can.”

They all got aboard the transports, taking their positions.
As they set off back down the street, Pelkra’s bow twanging as she dispatched
another Passenger, Urna could feel that the big-wheeled hauler was moving a
little sluggishly. The gang must’ve taken quite a load out of the armory. He
hoped Bongo had gotten what he’d expected from this raid.

Gator quickly got the vehicle going at a good clip,
following once more in Arvra’s wake.

A short while later they were out of the moldering city and
making fast for the border.