The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) (20 page)

The crate she’d been tied to exploded.

Evis and his men converged on the alley, rifles blazing. A rapid-fire rotary gun opened up from the mouth of the alley, sending bullets ricocheting off the walls. The giant howled and batted at the air as if being stung by wasps.

Buttercup wailed. She rose as she screamed, glowing bright. The giant stopped batting at bullets and clamped his hands over his ears.

Beside me, something stirred in the fumes left behind from the explosion of the crate.

It whirred. It clicked. I heard a metallic scratching, as though rats were hurrying past on tiny steel crutches.

Something brushed past me. I caught a brief glimpse of it, thin silver legs by the dozens moving, something silver and plate-shaped glinting in the flash of the rotary gun.

The sky above parted. Parted like a scroll, just as the priests preached. I saw faces against the sky. Mad-eyed faces, greedy and cruel, and then a hundred wizened arms reached down, and a hundred voices rang like thunder from the heavens.

“The slilth!” they cried. “Give it to us! It is ours!”

They reached.

Buttercup howled. The world shook.

Walls fell. Roofs too, timbers spinning. Stitches lashed out, threw handfuls of light, knocked bricks and wood aside. She stumbled, I caught her, we managed two halting steps, three, then we both went down. Debris crashed and rolled mere inches away.

Explosions sounded all around us. Things like fireworks, but bigger and faster, flew past trailing flames. Each thudded into the giant and exploded. I thought I could hear Evis shouting, his words lost in the hiss and roar of the missiles.

The giant howled, writhing as columns of fire arced out of the dark and slammed into him. From the sky, taloned hands reached down, raking at the giant’s face by the dozen.

 
Buttercup took my hand. I tightened my grip on Stitches and as the roof came down upon us, Buttercup tugged and leaped.

I watched the roof collapse from fifteen feet away. Stitches rolled to her feet, flinging ragged lightning blindly about. I let go of her and dropped flat, yelling for her to stop before she leveled the neighborhood or incinerated her favorite finder.

She stopped. We watched Evis and his band of halfdead fire flaming missiles from bulky contrivances held on their shoulders. Evis bellowed and pointed, directing the fire, and the missiles struck home, one after another.

The figures in the sky flew low, circling and swarming, their mad cries sounding all at once and rendering their demands unintelligible. Now and then something out of a nightmare would swoop down and grapple with the giant, who bellowed and howled in a voice that shook the cobblestones beneath my feet.

Missile after missile exploded in the fray. Evis kept his men firing even as the walls around them began to shake and split.

“The slilth!” shrieked a voice from the sky. “Mine! Mine!”

“Markhat. Mr. Prestley.
We must withdraw
,” said Stitches
. “At once.”

“What the hell is a slilth?” I asked.

Stitches pointed. There, rising up beside the giant, was the many-legged thing that walked out of the crate.

It towered up and up, silver legs glinting in the light of many fires, striding unhurried about the giant.

Instantly, the shapes in the sky descended onto it, keening and howling. The silver thing simply raised a few dozen of its jointless, flexible legs and batted the airborne sorcerers away, sending them hurtling across the sky with cracks of sudden thunder.

“That is,”
said Stitches. The slilth slashed at the giant, who stumbled and roared.

A building collapsed. Fires rose up. Bells and whistles and shouting sounded from all about.

The slilth raised a dainty leg and sprayed the sky with blinding sheets of fire.

“Now,”
said Stitches.
“Withdraw!”

I had just enough time to see Evis wave his men back before Stitches raised another brightly lit bubble and sent us soaring away from the fray, barely clearing the rooftops as we sailed toward the Brown.

Chapter Sixteen

The fires raged.

We watched from a vantage point high up on the Hill. Evis and his men, scorched and limping but all present and intact, joined us half an hour after Stitches put our bubble down just across the Brown River Bridge.

From a boiling mass of blood-red clouds, tens of dozens of mad-eyed sorcerers raged, hurling spells and curses with wild abandon. The giant stood his ground, massive fists punching, monstrous hands rending and tearing when a sorcerer flew too close.

The slilth grew tall enough so that its dome-shaped body brushed the underside of the ruddy clouds. It ambled about in slow circles, swatting and spraying blinding, white-hot flames from the tips of its dainty metal feet when attacked.

Stitches watched, enraptured, while Evis patched up his men, and I watched whole blocks go up in columns of sparks and flames.

I’d asked a few questions of Stitches—namely, shouldn’t we still be running, and will there be a Rannit left, come sunrise. She merely lifted her palm for silence and kept her eyes on the show.

“They are massing,”
she said at last, though I couldn’t see any change in the chaos.
“Observe.”

I observed from a point right behind her right shoulder.

The boiling in the sky quickened. The clouds whirled about a common center, moving so fast they formed an enormous red spiral lit by the flashes of spells and the slilth’s angry bursts of flame. A light formed at the center of the clouds’ rotation, rapidly grew bright as the noonday sun, and then plummeted down to the ground as the great-granddaddy of all thunderclaps shook the city to its core.

When the infant sun met the earth, there was a flash. I looked away, raising my hands against the wash of harsh white light, and when I could see again, the giant and the boiling dark sky and the towering silver slilth were gone.

Smoke rose where they had struggled. Fires winked and glowed.

But the giants were vanished.

“Meaning?” barked Evis.

“Ascertaining that now,”
said Stitches. She called her tame lights to her hands and then flung them toward the smoke.
“I shall know in a moment.”

“What the hell was that thing?” I asked.

“Two slilths are said to have survived the end of the last magical summer,”
said Stitches.
“One was an invincible engine of remorseless destruction. The other was a sentient being compelled by an irresistible geas to ends lost in the river of time.”

I groaned. “Need I ask which one we let loose on Rannit?”

“I have no idea,”
she replied.
“The container wasn’t marked.”

Her helpful glowing mists returned, flew into her hands, whispered words I couldn’t understand.

She let out her breath and slumped. If I hadn’t caught her she would have fallen.

“You can thank your god of chance,
Captain Markhat,
” she said.
“The giant is much diminished and has fled. The sorcerers were repulsed by the slilth’s final blow.
The damage appears to be confined to an area of ten city blocks.”

“The slilth?”

“Heading south. It has reverted to its original size. It prefers to go around obstacles rather than through them. It seems determined to make haste out of the city, which will lead the sorcerers away as well, should they regroup. We have faced an angry god and survived. Someone get me a drink.”

“Shall I send men after the thing with all the legs?” asked Evis.

“Waste of time,”
replied Stitches. She wobbled and kept wobbling, so I walked her to a bench and sat her down.
“It served its purpose. Brought the sorcerers into the fray. Hope the godlet swallowed a few.”

Evis frowned, giving me a ‘What the hell?’ look. I waved him off, hoping Stitches would shut up before she said something Evis and I would both regret.

She fell silent. Wispy lights darted and weaved about her, whispering sometimes. She never replied, and I wondered if she was even conscious.

“I’ve seen enough,” said Evis, after a time. The fires still burned, but didn’t appear to be spreading. I thanked no one in particular for the nearly windless night.

“You can come with us,” said Evis to me. “Get cleaned up. I’ll send you home in a carriage.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got a date,” I said. “Meeting Holder, right here on the Bridge.”

Evis frowned. “You sure that’s a good idea? After all that?” He nodded toward the fires. “He’ll be as likely to throw you in the Old Ruth as say hello.”

“I don’t think so. But if I turn up missing tomorrow you know where to look.”

“I can stay.”

“Better you don’t. He and I need to have this out sooner or later. Now is as good a time as any.”

Stitches began slumping over. Evis caught her, and she started and mumbled but didn’t appear to come fully awake.

“Get her home,” I said. “I’ll catch up tomorrow.”

Ever the optimist, Evis snorted. “Fat chance,” he said, steadying Stitches.

I watched them load up and disappear into the night.

Midnight meetings in the middle of the Brown River Bridge are a time-honored Rannite tradition. The Bridge has hosted everything from clandestine political meetings to ransom payoffs to meetings between active participants of blood-feuds. The only rule is this—all parties arrive unarmed, and all parties walk away unharmed.

Tradition holds that the bridge clowns act as enforcers, should someone break the old rules. I’d laughed at that idea before, in the friendly, bright light of day.

But as I laid my pistols on the rail and began my march down to the middle of the bridge, I realized I was being watched by at least ten burly, somber-faced clowns. Many held truncheons, or worse.

None looked likely to caper, cavort, or engage in pratfalls for my amusement.

I could smell faint the smoke from the fires. Only ten blocks destroyed, Stitches said. I wondered how many considered that mere ten blocks to be their entire world, how many had watched everything they owned or loved go up in flames.

It was well past midnight. But I was willing to give Holder another hour or two.

I smelled the smoke and surmised the man had been busy.

At the middle of the Bridge, I halted. I couldn’t see the Brown flow slowly past below me. The waters were hidden in deep shadow. But I could hear the lazy slosh of water, see the lights of a drunk’s fishing skiff pass by far below.

A clown ambled past, puffing away on a comically large cigar.

“Whole wagonload of bluecaps just parked out of sight on the city side,” he said, soft but plain. “Just thought you might want to know.” He reached up and honked his puffy red nose twice for emphasis.

“Thanks.”

I waited.

Ten minutes passed. Finally, a man came stomping up to the city side, yanked off his sword-belt, and let it fall to the street.

“It’s me,” he yelled. “Captain Holder. That you, Markhat?”

I turned to face him. “It’s me. Unarmed and determined to be polite. Shall we talk?”

The clowns went still.

“Hell yes, we’ll talk.”

Holder trundled forth to meet me.

Light flared at my back. I turned, only to find a skinny clown lighting a torch, which he leaned against the rail. “So nobody trips and takes a fall,” he squeaked before frog-marching away.

Holder stepped into the light.

He was drenched in sweat and covered in soot and ash. His uniform was charred here and there where embers had landed. His eyes were red and running, his lips were cracked and peeling, and it would be weeks before his eyebrows grew back from being singed nearly away.

“You’ve had a bad night, Captain,” I said.

I expected an explosion. He was puffed up, ready to blow. But he stopped and he ground his teeth and then he surprised us both by slumping over the rail and peering off into the dark.

“Lots of people have had a bad night,” he said. “Giants. Devils in the sky. Something with too many legs throwing lightning around.” He found a handkerchief and mopped his face. The cloth came away black. “You seem to be close by when things blow up these days, Markhat. Why is that?”

I joined him on the rail.

“Just lucky, I guess. But believe it or not, I’m on your side. I want the fires to go out and stay out, same as you.”

He grunted and spat. We stood regarding the dark in amiable silence.

“So no invitations to the Old Ruth tonight?” I said at last.

“Word from on high. You are to be left alone, unless I see you actually engaged in treason. As if you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t.”

He cussed. “I could lie and claim you confessed to arson,” he muttered.

“You could,” I said. “But you won’t. For the same reason you never threatened to snatch my wife up, and put her to the question.”