Ninth City Burning (46 page)

“Hey there, Vinneas! Looking for me?”

I take a surprised step back, but when I lower my durbun, I'm alone on the platform.

The voice of Lady Jane emanates from the railing in front of me. “Ha! Scared you!”

I raise my durbun again and adjust the view to bring Lady Jane into
focus. Once work on IMEC-1 began, Kizabel and I were able to convince the Consulate that Lady Jane would be a resource vital to finishing the project on time. She's been indispensable in helping us respond to the contingencies of putting the theory and design of the IMEC into practice. The rest of her time she spends making a gleeful nuisance of herself.

“I hope you don't plan on sneaking up on people like that while we're in combat,” I say to her. “Someone is going to mistake you for a secret Valentine weapon.”

“The Valentines don't have anything this pretty” is her reply to this sensible concern. Despite her jaunty attitude, she's plainly anxious about the prospect of battle. To bolster her confidence, she has donned the flamboyant uniform of a CE eighteenth-century field marshal.

“Of course. How could I have been so careless?”

“So,” she says, ignoring my question and assuming a singsong tone. “Who were you looking for?”

“Just making sure we're all in position. Reviewing the troops.”

“Really?” She smiles slyly. “It seemed a lot like you were looking for
someone
.”

“Listen, Lady, maybe you can help me with something.” It isn't just a blatant, artless change of subject. I'm still thinking about the look on Feeroy's face as he scrutinized the Board, like he was following some pattern I couldn't quite see. Feeroy's ego may on occasion override his more reasoned faculties, but he remains an experienced commander with an extensive combat résumé. And if something about the battle now taking shape has caught his attention, I want to know what it is. Looking at the Board more closely, I've already got an idea.

“Lady, where would you say Romeo has the best chance of breaching the IMEC's defensive perimeter?”

“That isn't funny, Vinn.” Lady's face registers offense that I would even suggest such a thing. “We've got battle spires and guns covering the whole thing. We're one big enemy kill zone.”

“Say you had to chose a spot. Which would it be?”

She's quiet a moment, and when I look through my durbun, I find Lady with her field goggles turned toward the real-life image of IMEC-1. “Well, I don't know, Vinn,” she says. “I mean, it isn't like we're invincible or anything. The IMEC does have its flaws, though if you tell Kizabel I said that, you're a dead man.”

Lady Jane is beginning to see what I see, what Imperator Feeroy saw. IMEC-1 is arguably the most devastating war machine mankind has ever produced, but it was still jury-rigged in under a month.

“And anyway,” Lady is saying, “that perimeter is huge. There isn't any one place . . .” She trails off.

There it is. I feel something cold tingle at the back of my neck, the fear I've been working to get under control all day. IMEC-1 doesn't have any single, disastrous weakness—not that I've been able to find anyway, and I've been looking—but it has cracks, faults, fissures; places where coverage from our artillery isn't quite perfect, places where the vagaries of artifice or geography create blind spots in communication or command, places where the city's layout makes it difficult for milites and equites to mount a strong defense. If I can see those weaknesses now, how long will it take the enemy to find them and press?

Our only chance of winning this battle was to introduce something new, something to offset Romeo's advantage in numbers. IMEC-1 will do that, so long as the City Guns keep firing. But if we lose the IMEC, we lose our one solid advantage, and if that happens, we lose everything.

“Vinneas?” Lady asks. She must be thinking along the same lines I am; there's a tremor in her voice. “What are we going to do?”

I'm not sure there's anything
to
do. We've prepared all we can. Now it's up to our legionaries to pull off the victory.

I shut my eyes, intending to block out everything—the Board, the Basilica, the fretful officers bustling along ladders and platforms—and focus on the problem at hand. Instead, I'm visited by the last view I had through my durbun before Lady Jane made her theatrical entrance. A scene from a Stabulum: the crowd of soldiers waiting for the order to launch, the tools of their trade lining the walls like ancient suits of armor, and Rae, in the black uniform of a legionary eques. She would have caught my attention even if she weren't already on my mind, I think, the one still figure in the last moments of lurid anticipation before a fight.

She stood apart, her head bowed, those lovely features serene except for the slightest furrow, hinting at some deep focus. At the time, most of my attention was occupied by the sharp internal tug that goes off whenever I see her face, but looking again now, I can't help wondering what was on her mind. The idea comes to me, suddenly, that she might have been praying. Most religions popular in CE society are alive and well among the
unincorporated peoples, after all. In any other person on any other day, I wouldn't give it much thought one way or the other. Spiritual inquiry isn't forbidden in the Principates, only discouraged in favor of more practical applications of the supernatural. Instead, I find myself hoping, more powerfully than I thought I could hope for anything, that there was indeed a prayer somewhere in her silence, and not only that, but that something out there will hear her and keep her safe.

Several levels above, Dux Reydann stands at his command post, calling for our attention. The Basilica goes quiet, frozen but for the Board and its orbiting pieces. The blue sphere representing Earth falls slowly away from the model of IMEC-1, even as a glittering spark that must be Charles Cossou drifts down to rest on the planet's surface. Reydann raises his voice to address everyone below, his words magnified in the enormous space: “Sound the General Call to Arms.”

There is a clattering of feet as everyone runs to their stations, the sound soon lost in the rising roar of the city's battle
call.

I
am among the giants now, a soldier commissioned to ride as the heart and mind of a metallic titan. Eques is how we're titled in the Legion, but I've decided the translation Vinneas proposed, “knight,” is a poor description. It's true we wear armor of a sort, and on occasion will wield a sword or shield after a similar fashion, but our lives are utterly lacking in the noble and courtly ways that always featured in Papa's tales of knight-errantry. In place of solemn oaths and trials of temperance and virtue, my mantle of knighthood was bestowed after a stern lecture and five days of determined bullying.

The lecture came courtesy of Centurio Kitu, chief of the Sixth Cohort's Armored Cavalry. In language altogether eschewing the flowery grace notes of chivalry, I was informed that the experimental equus I had debuted during the Battle of Lunar Veil, confiscated promptly thereafter, had since proven so damnably temperamental toward new riders that it was decided inducting me into the Legion would be easier than convincing that fitful beast to accept someone with any actual training or experience.

There was a place for me in the Sixth Armored, provided I could satisfy my superiors all that fancy flying of mine was no fluke, and swore to obey orders from now on. Any sign I was contemplating some rogue stunt, or exhibited the mutinous predilections one might expect from a girl who'd already stolen Principate property and used it in complete disregard of legionary mandate, and I would be locked someplace safely out of the way, that uncooperative equus of mine dismantled to hinder any further mischief. It was more than I could have hoped for, or so I thought, until I discovered Kitu meant to place me with the 126th Equites, under the command of none other than Bad Cop Imway.

I learned later that Imway was as unhappy with this arrangement as I was. He lodged a formal protest with Kitu, arguing that the effectiveness of his unit depended upon intuitive trust and synchrony borne of long association, harmony my presence was sure to disrupt. Kitu's answer was that the 126th was by far the greenest squad in the whole of Sixth Armored, with the least rapport to disrupt, and unless I proved incompetent or insubordinate, I would remain under his command. That said, Imway would have the chance to expose me as anathema to disciplined combat. Had there been time, I expect he would have taken months to test and torture me, but as it was, my gauntlet lasted less than a week.

The 126th made the most of their opportunity, sabotaging me at every turn, provoking me with relentless assaults upon my honor and person, daring me to prove myself unworthy of the name eques, a distinction that by their reckoning I had not earned and sullied by mere association. None of it was any real surprise. I had engaged in personal combat with their commander on two separate occasions and struck down another of their number with a sucker punch to the face. On top of that, I was the greenhorn of the group. Even in my coda, it was common for our scouts to greet new riders with a small taste of the hardships our world could offer.

I persevered, knowing that if I balked or rebelled, I would be out of the Legion faster than I could say Peter Cottontail. What I did not expect was the abruptness with which the trouble ceased. From the close of my fifth day with the 126th on, not a single harsh word or look was cast my way. Whatever they thought of me, orders were orders, and there was more at stake now than pride. I was impressed in spite of myself.

Since then, relations among the 126th have been marked by professional coolness. I've had the notion certain grudges and resentments have merely been set aside pending hostilities with a more dangerous enemy, but it's plain as well not all my new comrades took pleasure in tormenting me. A twinkling, moon-faced girl bearing the complicated name of Haiyalaiya, who during long-distance maneuvers clipped my ankle and nearly sent me crashing into some frigid arctic ocean, came to me with tears brimming in her large eyes and a lengthy apology for each and every act of cruelty she had been obliged to commit, several of which I failed to remember. Sensen, meanwhile, was sure to let me know she would never willingly occupy any sky with me in it, and only her orders and duty to the Legion now keep her from kicking me like the cur I am. For a time she made a point of referring
to me as “Thirteen,” a contemptuous allusion to my designation in our unit, but the name failed to gain purchase. To the 126th I am Rachel, Eques Rachel should an extra level of formality be required. That is how I know what distance remains between myself and the others. No one calls me Rae, and though it's common for equites to reference one another by the names of their mounts, no one mentions mine, probably out of fear of accidentally cracking a smile.

Kizabel and I both agree that to rechristen the equus she built and I rode into battle would be as unlucky as renaming a ship and as offensive as defacing a work of art. We have remained steadfast in this conviction against all inveigling, invective, and complaints about the dignity of the Legion and the solemnity of war. As far as the Sixth Cohort is concerned, I ride the X-2020, the model number assigned to Kizabel's singular design, but legionary protocol requires every equus bear a name inscribed on its breastplate, and no exceptions have been made for this one:

IX EQUITES 126-013

SNUGGLES

He's something of a runt compared to the other equi of the 126th, the StarHunters and RuinMakers and FireChasers, all Coursers, as their model is called, taller and broader than my Snuggles, but no match for his speed and power and grace. His white armor has been patched and polished, and fairly glows beside the deep, stony gray the others wear. Beneath that smooth plate, he has been prepared to do violence, armed with an assortment of deadly tools befitting an equus of the Legion.

Today, the Stabulum is deafeningly loud, thunderous with the pounding of hands and feet as the Sixth Armored awaits the call to battle. Lunar Veil cannot be opened except during the span of a few hours each month, meaning that the day and time of this fight was set the moment we decided to make our stand. Rather than leaving us each to hold a quiet and lonely vigil as the hour drew near, the planets and stars grinding down like the gears of a watch, Centurio Kitu summoned us all to the Stabulum, and, with artful speechifying and heroic words, worked the Sixth Armored into a lather hot and fine enough to shave a man's face. We are to fly with the vanguard, the first charge to break the enemy onslaught and win the Legion a foothold in battle. It will be a perilous enterprise, but Kitu has us
eager for it. I feel the excitement as much as anyone, but I leave the fervor behind, so that I can say good-bye.

I have a ritual, one Reaper Thom taught me to perform whenever the time comes to risk my life. I close my eyes, and in one breath I set aside the world and everything in it, all the loves and hopes I have ever felt. Once there is nothing for me to lose, I can fight without hesitation or fear. This came foremost of all Thom's lessons to me, before shooting and riding, before learning how to grip a knife. He would never have taken me on as his pupil were he not certain I could cast my life away at a moment's notice, step out of it like a second skin. But I had watched Papa die, seen my brother and sister taken. I knew how it felt to lose everything, and I could find that feeling again.

It is what I did each time I rode out with the scouts. While Mama kissed the part in my hair and implored me to come back to her, and heard me promise I would, what I was really saying was
Good-bye
. I say it now, silently, amid the pulsing shouts and stomps echoing down these corridors of giants.

Good-bye, Mama.

Good-bye, Baby.

Good-bye, Naomi.

It is as if I have shrugged off a warm blanket before a chilly wind. I am lighter, colder, alert, awake, free. I am ready for war.

The call isn't long in coming: a booming howl, loud enough to drown out our racket and every thought but the summons to battle. The walls and roof of the Stabulum glow with red light as equites sprint to their posts, and in the rows of stalls, towering shapes begin to stir.

Snuggles responds to my touch like a living thing, growling and keen for a fight. He kneels, laying one great hand on the ground to lift me aboard. His fingers have grooves where I can stand, handles I can grip to steady myself as I rise toward his core. His interior abounds in comforts and niceties missing when he was only Kizabel's Project, but he is the same Snuggles, the same fierce spirit I came to recognize in our first weeks together. The core folds around me like some huge and gentle palm, and I awaken to the formidable strength and senses of his giant's body.

I am reminded momentarily of Envy, my companion on so many journeys, killed in the desperate flight to Granite Shore. I am glad I did not have to watch her fall, her beautiful black-and-white coat marred in
blood, her strong legs slack in death. She would have done anything for me, I know, and proved it on more than one occasion. And while I have been told time and again that unless joined to a human spirit, equi are nothing but dead rock, I feel a similar connection with Snuggles now, the will to face any obstacle and never stop running so long as the heart this beast and I share keeps beating.

Like the others of my escadrille, as a war party the size of the 126th is called, I keep my mount in a kneeling position as Imway calls each of us to count off. Above, the ceiling of the Stabulum pulls slowly back. It is an hour or so after dawn in this part of the world, a dry southern continent where we have awaited the reopening of Lunar Veil, and the light stretching over the Stabulum's rows is the rich, juicy orange-pink of a ripe peach. As number thirteen, I am the last to sound my readiness for launch. Once that is done, Imway waits half a moment, then orders us together up into the glowing morning.

We rise into a sky swarming with equi of the Legion. Ours is not the only Stabulum mounted onto this flying fortress, and as we spin over dizzying views of towers and spires and sinister barrels of artillery, I mark glinting armored figures streaming from points all across the island, gathering and parting like shifting ocean waves. Sun shines across the tides of hard-plated bodies, and for a single breath I am taken by the beauty of this scene, the fighters sparkling and prismatic as spray washing over the city's stone peaks.

I sense Imway issuing orders by Directed Speech, the peculiar form of communication equi use, and obediently I circle Snuggles into cruising formation. The 126th has altered its habitual flight patterns to account for my presence, generally by wedging me someplace out of the way. While most of them have acknowledged my skill in flight, I am not trusted in battle, and whatever position I occupy is presumed to be our weakest point.

The vanguard has begun to gather into a sweeping arc some distance ahead of the IMEC, and Imway guides us toward our position, slightly to the right of the formation's apex. We have with us fighters from all twelve of Earth's Legions, including the overwhelming majority of our Armored Cavalry, a force built for swift and powerful assaults. Two fontani fly close behind, each a seasoned warrior, I've been told, though to me they seem nothing but small blossoms of sparkling night, an unlikely thing in this warm and lustrous dawn. I cannot keep my mind from wandering to
Naomi—another fontana, as she is, posted behind us on Earth—but my thoughts are distant, abstract, as though they belong not to me but some figure from ancient history, sentiments found in the journal of a person long deceased.

Ahead, Lunar Veil has begun to shift, the twist of its edges rendered distinctly in the morning's brilliant pastels. I have one last glimpse of us as shimmering droplets, now descending toward a vast surface of stirring water, and then the battle begins.

The first wave of enemies arrives like a flock of sparrows descending from a cloud, a scattering of dark specks swooping suddenly across an expanse of bright pink. Hardly have the Valentines made their appearance than they are met with a clattering of explosions, artillery rumbling across our mobile fortress. The sky before me explodes with incongruous colors, concussions shaking through the clouds and down into my armor to rattle my very bones. Distantly, I note my quickening heart, everything beyond this place and time receding into shadows, faces I loved taking on the pallor of ghosts.

Even before this first volley is finished, a second hits, fired from one of our cities below, so far from here that it is hidden behind the curvature of the world, yet still close enough to level its guns at Lunar Veil. When the sparks and thunder clear, all but a few of the invaders are gone. Of special note among the survivors is a single point of darkness, hanging in the sky like some backward reproduction of a morning star: a Valentine Zero.

Our enemies will have expected a vigorous defense. Very likely they had an idea of the placement and armament of our cities and knew their opening gambit would incur a heavy cost. What they did not expect was that we would bring one of those cities with us into battle. Where the Valentines might have counted upon a lull in our bombardment as each spray of shells crossed the long miles from our stationary guns, time that would have allowed them to recover and maneuver, our flying fortress is ready with a new barrage almost before the last one has ended. The shots pass neatly through the formations of our vanguard, causing no more disturbance than a warm wind, and collide with the faltering enemy. There is another jangle of reverberating flashes, and when it passes, the sky it leaves behind is empty. Even the Zero's dark star has fallen.