Ninth City Burning (29 page)

A
small army of giants is waiting for me, stationed side by side, all armored in the same gray stone, each posed identically to the next, heads sleek and alert but blank of any life or consciousness, all exactly alike save for a row of numbers and letters stenciled in yellow across the chest. Printed on the one nearest me is:

IX EQUITES 126-011

THUNDERWALKING

The markings always begin in the same way, with “IX EQUITES 126,” but the final number changes on each statue, as do the words written beneath. After “011 THUNDERWALKING” comes “009 WARRIORSVOW.” I walk slowly down the row, past “007 FALLINGLEAF” and “005 LANCELIGHTNING.” Finally, I see it, the last in the line of gray stone monsters, “IX EQUITES 126-001 FIRECHASER.”

Somehow I recognize it immediately, even before I pick out the spots on the armor, lighter in color than the rest and shiny like newly healed skin, where my bullets left their pipe-bowl burns. I am tempted to give the thing a hearty kick, even though I know it's all dead stone and would probably break my toe.

From behind me, someone asks, “What are you doing, Cadet?”

I turn to find myself beneath the glare of a rugged brunette, slim-hipped but strong about the shoulders. She's roughly my age but wearing the black uniform of the Legion. “This is a restricted area,” she says. “How did you get in here?”

Why I don't just tell her I'm on a tour of the Stabulum I can't exactly say, but I expect it has to do with her tone and generally impertinent attitude. “Just admiring my handiwork,” I tell her. “Can't help being curious, after a fight, to see how the other guy came out.”

The girl's mouth twists in confusion. “What?” She seems prepared for further interrogation but pauses as two more bodies come jogging up, one male and one female, likewise clad in black and with similarly sturdy and mostly neckless physiques.

“Who's this, Sensen?” asks the man of the group, taking me in. He's unusually pale and has been attempting a goatee with mixed results.

“No clue,” Sensen answers, scowling. “I found her hanging around FireChaser. Said something about inspecting her handiwork.”

“Probably just some splatterhead volunteer from the Academy,” says the other newcomer, a smaller, curlier-haired replica of Sensen. “Who cares? Come on—it's your turn.”

Across the span of the Stabulum, I see more black-uniformed shapes gathered below another equus of the same breed as FireChaser and his neighbors. They've plainly been engaged in some game—cards or dice maybe, the sort soldiers play to pass time between battles, the sort I used to play with the scouts of my coda—but now they're coming my way.

“We can't leave some random cadet hanging around our equi,” Sensen says hotly. “And she's not a volunteer. Look.” She points to my collar, and the six black dots pinned there. “She's Sixth Class. No way she's trained to fix an equus. I'm reporting her. What's your name, Cadet?”

“Her name is Rachel.”

It isn't the deep, echoing voice I remember from my cell, but I know it's him. Bad Cop. The man in black. Imway. He's just as I remember him, neck coiled with muscle, bronzy hair combed back, silver spectacles perched on his sloped nose. “She's one of the unincorporateds we picked up in the valley,” he says, stepping up beside Sensen.

Sensen is outraged. “They let a noco into the Academy?”

“Don't be so surprised,” I say, jabbing a thumb toward FireChaser. “If I could take you on in one of those, imagine what'd happen in a fair fight.” I offer Imway a jolly grin, but he meets me with quiet indifference.

“How about now, then?” Sensen says. “I'll let you ride my Shadow.” She nods to the equus next to FireChaser, IX EQUITES 126-003 SHAD-OWSINGER. “Imway will use FireChaser. We'll keep it to arm wrestling,
I think—there isn't room for anything else in here—but that should be enough for you to show us how a fair fight would go, right? Unless that was just talk.”

“Fine.” I don't think I'd be able to decline a challenge like that even if I wasn't so proud of my talents in animation. My old self, that girl who'd never turn down a dare, comes swaggering back. I'd thought she was gone for good, but ever since I started at the Academy, she's been following me around, always up for the juvenile high jinks of my fellow Dodos. There's no holding her back now. I don't even wait for Imway to agree but walk up to ShadowSinger and lay a hand against its ankle.

I won't admit to this gob of bullies that I have no idea how an equus works. Instead, I rely on my experience with equulei, reaching out, searching for that place within an object that allows you to take hold of it, like a saddle to seat your soul. It's there, like always, and when I touch it, I feel the equus come to life. And then the stone beneath my hand lurches, knocking me away.

I stumble, barely keeping my feet, as ShadowSinger's face blooms into glowing red. There's a flash of movement, a fist coming down on me, then I'm in darkness, shaking with the force of a terrible impact.

When the ringing in my ears finally starts to fade, I hear laughter, and Sensen's voice, muffled by the dense stone around me. “Oh, sorry. I forgot Shadow's security settings. Can't have every idiot who wanders by riding my equus.”

“Very funny, Sen,” Imway says. “Now let her out. She's learned her lesson.”

But I haven't learned my lesson. I've figured out where I am, trapped like a bug beneath ShadowSinger's cupped hand, and I'm ready to be turned loose. No sooner has the darkness lifted to a view of Sensen's smirking face than I've landed my knuckles on her nose.

My left cross is a little rusty, but still enough to put her squarely on her rear. Blood comes pouring out of her nostrils a moment later, and she holds up a hand to stem the flow, looking wide-eyed from me to her reddened fingers while comrades crowd in to help her. I'm waiting to see if she'll get up when Imway steps between us.

“Walk away, noco,” he says coolly. “We'll forget about this. Just walk away.”

“Make me.” He's too close to get in a good swing, but I hold his eyes, waiting. “I still owe you a broken leg.”

He watches me a moment longer, impassive behind his silver frames, then heaves a resigned sigh. “Have it your way.”

His friends have gathered behind him, all of them pleasingly dumbfounded. Sensen is on her feet but shows no interest in coming back for another round; she only watches me, eyes narrowed, as Imway approaches the man beside her. He's holding a steaming cup, though he seems to have forgotten about it until Imway casually dips one finger inside. When Imway withdraws his hand, the liquid comes with it, pale tea bouncing like a big heavy drop about to fall. Only it doesn't fall; it rises as though preparing to drip upward, then stalls in midair, a globe of hot tea balanced on a thin liquid pillar. Imway has animated the young fellow's drink.

“I'll make you a bargain,” he says, extending his palm like he's offering me the dollop of tea. “If you can knock this out of my hand, I'll let you break any one of my bones you want.” With his free hand, he points to the little stream connecting the floating globe to his palm. “All you have to do is touch this part here. That will break the connection. I'll be drenched in hot tea, and you'll get to choose what to break and how to break it. I'll give you three tries. If you fail, you leave quietly. Deal?”

“Deal.” He must have some trick planned, some strategy, but I'll just have to figure it out. And how hard can it be, really, to poke a little glob of weak tea?

“Whenever you're ready.”

I lead off with a headlong charge. I may be lacking as a scholar in most areas of study, but in matters destructive, I have made a point of honing my skill. For all the new sorts of artifices I have learned, I retain a penchant for the explosive—I have been practicing one fiery technique in particular, and now seems the just the time to show it off. I make it to within five feet of him, too, gathering up my magic to knock him down like a tin figurine, but just as the first slivers of yellow fire begin to appear, the energy inexplicably fizzles. A sudden rush of air sweeps my legs from under me, and I land on my side, feet kicking over my head.

Imway hasn't moved. All he says is “One.”

All right, so he's better with magic than I am. No big surprise there. And I don't know how he snuffed me out like that. But I don't have to tackle him or smite him with lightning from on high; I just have to pop that floating globe.

I get up and back away, unsure just how far his reach goes or what his next attack will be, though it seems he's content to let me move first. I cast about for a better approach than the one I've just tried. Around FireChaser's feet are scattered scraps of metal and stone, probably shaved away during repairs, and these give me an idea. Seizing half a dozen smaller chunks with my magic, I sling them into the air, a long arc with Imway's smug head as the ultimate destination. Each is somehow batted down before it reaches its mark, sent clattering harmlessly away by the intercession of an unseen force.

“Shall we call that two?” Imway asks, or starts to, until he sees me coming at him. This time I am able to let loose with my favorite artifice, a golden fist of flame. My blood is up, and as a result the detonation is considerably greater than I had planned. The fire engulfs Imway completely, and I have just enough time to worry that I have taken things too far before the whole inferno dies out at once, as though swallowed up in a deluge. Again, there is no obvious evidence of magic, only Imway, his pose and bored expression unchanged, and another gust of wind to put me on the floor.

I've begun to wonder whether Imway might have some version of Philosopher Ooj's warding gear until I see a faint ruffle in his neatly combed hair, and I understand: He's animating the air, turning it into a kind of equulus to keep me away. I'm impressed. Air is exceptionally hard to animate, let alone powerfully enough to fling a healthy, fully grown girl around like a sack of beans. And there must be something else in there, too, some other magic to undo my artifices.

“You know, this isn't terribly fair of me,” Imway says. He strolls toward FireChaser and lifts something hanging on the wall. I consider taking a run at him while his back is turned, but he'll be expecting that. “Here,” he says, tossing me what looks like a thick black belt. “Wear this MSR. Maybe that will even things out a bit.”

Murmurs and chuckles from the gallery. What Imway called an MSR is the thing I saw that man, Hezaro, use to move around while he worked on HeavensHammer. If nothing else, those tentacles should lengthen my reach—if I can make the thing work, that is.

I fix the belt around my waist, then grope about for something to animate. It's there, a sort of presence I can take hold of, and when I do,
inky-blue tentacles spring out, lifting me off the ground. The chuckling stops then, and when I discover certain of the tentacles hold magical tools that seem like they'll serve nicely as weapons—a long, blood-red stinger being of special note—tense silence rises in its place.

The MSR makes me faster than I can believe, but not fast enough, not by a long shot. As I take my first gliding steps toward him, Imway changes his stance, turning to face me sideways, and the air around him assumes a faint red glow. And then he charges. I whip at him with the MSR's tentacles, only to see them lopped off by invisible blades, their liquidy shapes splashing like raindrops, my stinger and other weaponry shattering. The next thing I know, the tentacles holding me up have been sliced away, and I am once again on the floor, now borne on a slick of fragrant goo. I slide to a stop just short of Imway's feet.

“Three,” he says. Lukewarm tea splashes beside my face. “Good-bye, Cadet Rachel. I trust you can see yourself out.”

Seeing myself out isn't necessary. A whole tour of Sixth-Class cadets has watched my duel with Imway to its inglorious conclusion. Imway doesn't get ten steps from me before Kizabel accosts him, berating the whole gang of equites for misuse of Stabulum equipment and conduct unbecoming of legionaries, and in front of Academy cadets, no less. She makes no allowance for Imway's rank or authority but lays into him the way a rhetor might some misbehaving cadet. Imway endures the scolding silently, with the sour look of a child about to be sent to bed without supper.

The Academy cadets, meanwhile, are in full agreement that today has been the best of their little lives. Despite my unappealing smell, I am welcomed as a hero. Not only did I ride an MSR, I got into a fight with a real eques, and none other than Imway, one of their most revered deities. To their minds, this makes me practically a legionary myself, but I know that isn't true.

Imway did have a nasty trick to beat me: being the plain better fighter. I thought I was closing the distance between myself and the Legion—that I was almost there, in fact. I didn't mind if my skills had about reached their peak, so long I had only a little left to go. Now I know how far away I really am. I may be preeminent among the Dodos, but I am no match for a trained soldier. Perhaps, with Danyee's help, I can improve myself
enough to join my fellow cadets in their slow climb through the Academy, even insinuate myself into some quicker track toward enlistment, but either way it will be years and years before I'm ready for the Legion, if I make it there at all.