The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (33 page)

Merrick felt it. Or did what he thought was feeling it.
Nothing happened. “I can’t do this.”

“You’re a failure, commando,” the prisoner said, suddenly
cruel. “Nobody will ever want you, nobody trusts you, and everyone who acts
like they do is using you. People can see right through you. You’re as
transparent as the glass on those windows up there. Everyone knows your flaws
and weaknesses. You’ll never be interesting to anybody.”

“Why are you saying all this?”

“I’m telling you all the ways you lie to yourself. The stuff
you believe, and think is true, but that you’re too scared to say out loud.
You’ll never know the gift unless you learn to feel. You’re so far removed from
your feelings, you can’t even be vulnerable to yourself.”

The prisoner was right, Merrick knew.
These people are
like sandciphers, the way they can sense things
. Merrick believed in nothing,
least of all himself. But how could he overcome that? How could he scrape away
the layers of apathy he’d put there to protect himself? How does one break a habit he’s
spent his whole life forming? It would be worth it if he could realize his
potential… he just didn’t know where to start. The stranger in front of him
could turn solid rock to dust in seconds. If only he could incite a change
within himself that same way.

The soldiers were still fumbling with the gates, but they
were getting closer. The two other cell block guards had run over to help them.

“I did it before,” Merrick said. “I don’t understand why it
won’t just happen when I want it to.”

“Have you ever willed a dust storm into settling? Have you
commanded the light-star to rise sooner than it wants, or sent a river back
where it came from? You breathe without thinking; you blink with no motive
besides that your instinct tells you to. You can’t manipulate what isn’t yours
to control, but you can yield to what you know needs to happen. As you blink
and breathe—that’s how a blackhand ignites. It’s not a matter of desire; it’s a
matter of necessity. The emotions are complex and the pattern is different for
everyone. I can’t identify what ignites you. The only thing I can do is tell
you when you’re doing it wrong.”

Merrick pouted. “Obviously I’m doing it wrong, or it would
be working.”

The prisoner was amused. “Just by looking at you, I could
tell you were puckered up tighter than a nomad’s asshole. But I didn’t know you
were such a whiner until you opened your mouth.”

Merrick was getting tired of being ridiculed. The only thing worse
was being made a punchline, though the two often seemed to go hand-in-hand. He
glanced over his shoulder at the rifle, still leaning against the pillar across
the room. If he killed the prisoner now, he could report the man’s escape
attempt. That would be excuse enough. The other guards had seen the man break
down the cell wall with their own eyes; they’d vouch for Merrick.

“I guess I didn’t want to heal him that badly,” Merrick said.
“That must be why it isn’t working. If it’s about necessity, then maybe I don’t
feel the need to help him.”

The prisoner brushed his hair aside and stared at Merrick in
disbelief. “What kind of person doesn’t feel the need to save an innocent man
from death? We’re in need, commando. And helping people in need is a matter of
human decency.”

Merrick stormed over to his rifle and snatched it up,
bringing it to bear. “Human decency isn’t how you survive on the surface, however
things might be down in that hole you crawled out of.”

“I’m sorry that I can’t climb inside your head and flip the
switch for you, commando. I’ve explained it the best way I know how. You’re the
only person who can do the rest.”

When Merrick pulled the trigger, the rifle nearly jumped out
of his hands. It had been so long since he’d fired a shot, he had forgotten how
much the auto-fire kicked. On top of that, reloaded ammo could be inconsistent
at times. The echo off the concrete rang painful in his ears, the room
resounding like a giant tin can. He wasn’t sure he had meant to shoot so soon,
but the deed was done. He lowered the muzzle and peered past the cloud of
gunsmoke into the cell. The prisoner was encompassed in a bright red glow. The
half-sphere that encased him was turning the bars into columns of slag that
dripped like melting candles.

“I told you so,” the prisoner said, grimacing through
clenched teeth. “Necessity.”

The sphere winked out, and the prisoner kicked away a section
of bars, leaving a circular hole in their place. Steel sang a deafening melody
as it clattered to the floor. Merrick raised and fired again, a longer burst
this time. The shield was up again before his brain had processed the first
sound. Deep gouges began to crater the floor, walls, and ceiling around the
prisoner.

“Jailbreak,” Merrick screamed, turning to project his voice down
the hallway.

When he turned back toward the cell, the prisoner wasn’t in
it. He was right in front of him. Then he was grabbing Merrick by the collar
and heaving him toward the ceiling. Merrick could see the second-story cells
and the criss-crossed metal grating of the catwalk and the girders beaming the
high ceilings, all very close now. The prisoner was far below, and Merrick’s
rifle was in the prisoner’s hands somehow, and the prisoner knew how to shoot
it, and he had good aim. When Merrick reached the apex of his ascent he could
see the lines of scarlet trailing out from his body, unfurling like kite
ribbons on a gust of wind. His comrades would be here soon, he knew. The
Sentries would stop the prisoner. Pilot Wax’s capable Sentries.

The cold concrete floor came up to meet him.

CHAPTER 31

Jailbroken

Jiren Oliver didn’t care that his hands were charred
almost to the bone. Every soldier he’d killed was worth the discomfort. He had
never shot a firearm before, so he’d taken the healer’s, both to disarm him and
to try it out for himself. It was simple enough to hit what you wanted to,
especially when the thing gave you so many chances. The weight of it felt good
in his hands, but using it felt cold and judicial. It made killing easy; it
took so little effort to point it and press the trigger and watch something
die. Before he’d run out of bullets, he was already disillusioned with the idea
of it.

But he was beginning to understand: this was the tool men
used to make themselves feel powerful. He and every other blackhand alive knew
it was a poor substitute. There was nothing like being ignited, like feeling
the surge of true power running through you. Power with sacrifice. Only a
blackhand could understand the significance of that. By the time the last of
his rounds had left the chamber and the last of the soldiers had fallen, he’d
decided he would never use a firearm again. But he did like the weight of it,
as superficial a thing as that was. The firearm had shown him what it meant to
pretend.

The cell block was a ruin of twisted steel and crumbled
stone. The men were stripping dead soldiers and putting on their uniforms,
erecting a mound of naked bodies in the middle of the room. Jiren’s uniform was
a decent fit, though there was a gaping bloodsoaked hole through the thigh and
it smelled like it hadn’t been washed in months. He still couldn’t come to
grips with the fact that a healer had been hidden among this city’s rabble.

Jiren had been eight years old when Myriad left Decylum. It
had been a week after her thirty-fifth birthday, but she’d looked no older than
a woman of nineteen or twenty. Jiren had heard the tales Rostand’s granddad
told of his exploits in the above-world. But unlike Hastle Beige, Myriad had
never returned to Decylum. It was no wonder Raith had been so determined to
bring the healer home with them.

But the healer was dead now. It had been a messy thing, but
the healer was no man Jiren wanted in amongst his people. He quit too easily
and complained too much. There was that bit about the healer having tried to
kill him, too.

A heartless healer with an anger problem wouldn’t have
done us any good
, Jiren assured himself. “Look sharp, fellows. Finish gathering all
the uniforms, gear and weapons you can get your hands on. We’ve got to find Raith before we
go.”

Jiren knew Raith would sooner see them escape the city than
stage his rescue. He could picture the old man now, insisting they leave
without him, his piercing blue eyes resolute beneath a hedge of gray. But if
Raith had to fight his way through a horde of the bastards who’d murdered so
many of their friends and brothers unprovoked, Jiren Oliver had a mind to join him.
Besides, he was having the most fun he’d had since the hall patrols had nearly
caught him and Tesya sneaking into the hangar for a late-night rendezvous, and
he wasn’t keen on stopping now.
We’ll go back for Raith, or we’ll die in the
attempt
.

Jiren and the others had killed about twenty Scarred soldiers
during the scuffle. By contrast, seventeen of Decylum’s sons were alive now
that the dust had settled. Two had died in their cells: Owan Carbide, a skilled
mechanic; and Tare Halloway, an infrastructure repairman. Several others were barely
clinging to life.

While searching the cells, Jiren had found and released
several prisoners native to Belmond. They’d run off with the gate keys and left
them locked in. Two strangers had stayed behind, however; they were Salt Nomads,
dark-skinned and black-haired, who had introduced themselves as Sig and Tally,
and insisted that they’d have a better chance of escape if they stayed
together.

Jiren had encountered nomads on hunting trips in the past. Those
encounters had resulted in everything from friendly trade to all-out battle, so
he was loath to turn his back to these tribesmen until they’d proven themselves
trustworthy. In this instance, he felt he had little choice. Raith would make the
twentieth in their company, when they found him.

“Anyone know where the Hull Tower is?” Jiren shouted above
the commotion.

Derrow Leonard pointed at the pile of bodies. “Ask one of
them.”

“Anyone besides Derrow have anything helpful to say?”

Derrow scratched his head. “Wait… we left someone alive for
questioning, didn’t we? Oh no. What were we thinking?” Derrow slapped himself
on the forehead, then finished pantsing one of the corpses.

“I’ve never seen this many naked men in a room before,” said
Rostand Beige.

“Glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Derrow said, winking.

A voice came from outside the jailhouse, projected through
the barred windows. “Attention, prisoners. This is Captain Malvid Curran of the
Scarred Comrades, Division Commander of Mobile Operations. You’re completely
surrounded. You have five minutes to exit the building before we come inside to
retrieve you. Be warned: if you do not go peacefully, we have been authorized
to use force. Your countdown begins now.”

“Don’t trust them. They’ll shoot us whether we come out
willingly or not,” said Rostand Beige.

“So much for the disguises,” said Derrow.

“Don’t take off the uniforms yet,” Jiren said. “When we get
past them, we’ll need to blend in.”

“Get past them?” said Derrow. “That would be more heroic than
I believe we have the capacity to be right now. Look at us.”

He has a point
. Jiren studied the ragged bunch, a
motley assortment if ever there was one. Nine regulars from Decylum, eight
blackhands including himself, and the two nomads who were offering their help.
They were exhausted and starved; half had grievous wounds to boot. Theodar
Urial had tended to them however he could, but without medical supplies his
abilities were limited. On top of all that, now they were under a time crunch
as well. Jiren waved his hands, and the men gathered around him.

“At a time like this, a rousing speech is in order.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any rousing speeches. I
have
heard half a
dozen terrible ones, so I’ll summarize, since we’re short on time. There are a
bunch of dways out there who want to kill us. We surrender, and we might as well
let them. I know you’re hurt. I know you’re tired and you want to go home. Well,
I do too. I want to see my mother again. I want to see
Derrow’s
mother
again.”

Derrow shoved him hard, smiling. Scattered laughter echoed in
the cell block, but it was the laughter of tired, frightened men.

“So… either we rot in here, or you summon your strength. You
scrounge up everything you’ve got left and we give this a go. They hit us with
a real cheap shot when we came into town, didn’t they? They took us by
surprise. They didn’t even look us in the eye before they started shooting. If
it’s cheap shots they want, they’ll get no such treatment from us. We’re better
than that. It’s toe-to-toe, or it’s nothing. Let’s see how well these comrades
do in a fair fight.”

The men sent up a shout.

Jiren and Derrow led the way down the hall, shredding the
steel gates like tin foil as they went. Rostand Beige had a rifle in hand and
two more slung across his back, an assortment of half-full magazines shoved
into his pockets. Behind them was Frasier Dent, Laagon’s nephew, along with
Sombit Quentin and Theodar Urial. The rest followed after, among them Hewell
Rice, whose long bronze-colored hair matched his brother Sebastian’s; Edrie
Thronson, the architect who had prepared the master schematics
for Decylum’s expansion and presented them to the council the day before the
convoy departed; Cragg Walsash, the slender, muscled smithy; and Bon Menerey,
Kraw Joseph’s grandson.

There was no need for Jiren to console them or offer false
hope; he could feel the sense of foreboding settling in their midst. Sons of Decylum
all, sent to war with vengeance in their eyes and grief in their hearts. Whether
the day ended in victory or calamity, not one man among them was naive enough
to think this couldn’t be his final day on the Aionach.

The guards had left the lobby in decent order. The men spent
a minute rifling through drawers and cracking into the filing cabinets, but
they found little of use apart from a spare handgun beneath the desk. A set of
steps descended to the double doors at the entrance. Jiren was careful not to
walk past any of the large windows as he crossed the room and lifted himself up
for a look out the narrow glass pane above one of the doors.

“What does it look like out there?” Rostand Beige asked as he
finished flipping through a pile of papers.

“There must be close to a hundred of them out front. Probably
at least that many around the other sides, too.”
It’s going to be a miracle
if we survive this
, Jiren almost added.

“One day in the big city and we’ve already got a reputation,”
said Derrow, “despite the fact that we’ve been very careful not to leave any
survivors.”

“You’re forgetting about the other prisoners,” said Rostand
Beige. “The soldiers must have seen them leaving.”

“Or else they caught them and those sons of bitches gave us
up,” said Frasier Dent.

Jiren knew Frasier had come to Belmond under duress. Though
his father Erach had supported his decision to come, his Uncle Laagon had given
him a browbeating for it. Since the outset of their journey, Frasier had been eager
to cast a negative light on every problem that arose.

“You would rather we left the other prisoners behind bars,
Frasier?” Jiren said, staring him down.

Frasier gestured toward the door. “If it spared us this. They
were criminals, and we let them go free. Why shouldn’t we have expected them to
turn on us as soon as it was convenient?”

“Those men don’t owe us anything. We set them free without
condition. Besides, I don’t think it was them. This place should’ve been swarming
with soldiers an hour ago, and for some reason it wasn’t. I think there’s
something bigger going on.”

“Jiren, let me interrupt you for a second,” said Rostand. “I
just found this. It was in one of the drawers.” Rostand handed him a piece of
laminated paper. The corners of the plastic were peeling and curled inward.

Jiren studied it for a moment before realizing it was a floor
plan of the building. “There’s a basement. A whole second level underground.
It’s small, but we can get to it.”

“Is there another way out from down there?” asked Frasier
Dent.

“It’s a prison,” said Derrow. “What do you want, two back
doors and a fire escape?”

Jiren held the floor plan in front of Derrow’s face and
tapped the page. The label next to his finger read EXT. DOOR. “What do you
suppose this is?”

Derrow gave him a wry smile. “A back door.”

Jiren nodded. “The service entrance.”

“They did specifically use the word
surrounded
,”
Frasier Dent reminded them. “I’m sure they know about every door and they’ve
got them all covered.”

Jiren mulled it over. “You’re right. This is a good find,
Ros, but I doubt they’d overlook something like a back entrance. Chances are
it’s just as heavily guarded. Back to Plan A, then. We fight it out, here and
now.”

The thought of what he and his friends were about to go
through sent Jiren’s bowels into a tumult. The odds were hopeless, and there
was nothing he could do to avoid putting them in the way of further harm.

The projected voice came once more from outside. “This is
your final warning. You have one minute to exit the building.”

“You heard the man,” Jiren said, loud above the murmur.
“Blackhands, with me. The rest of you, arm yourselves and find a window, a hole
in the wall—anything. No one leaves this building until after the eight of
us have cleared a path. Oh, and one more thing. I don’t want anybody shooting
unless the soldiers shoot first. Make those bullets last. Now, let’s send up
their souls.”

“Send up their souls,” said Rostand, clapping him on the
back. “See you after.”

When Jiren looked at Ros, there was something trusting in the
younger man’s eyes, a vicarious confidence Jiren wished wasn’t there. It
reminded him of the way he trusted Raith. But in Ros there was an innocence,
too, the way a child looks to a parent to provide comfort in a dire situation.

Jiren was the only councilor left now. His vow was to protect
the people of Decylum. But in a situation like this, how could he? He had already
surrendered once in the interest of preventing further bloodshed. He’d given these
Scarred men a chance to treat them fairly, and they’d locked them up instead. If
his gut told him true, the Scarred would never let them leave the city alive.
Better to die fighting for our freedom than to live in the bonds of merciless
men
. “If it goes badly, fall back and get inside,” Jiren said.

With nods of understanding, the blackhands followed him down
the steps while Rostand and the others scurried into place behind desks and
armchairs and shelving units. The metal clap bars
cha-chunk
ed as Jiren
shouldered through the doors and stepped into Infernal’s blinding whitewash.
Descending the remaining stairs, they stepped off the curb and halted.
Soldiers were everywhere, standing poised to fire, laid up behind the long
shadows of adjacent buildings, in and around rusted vehicle chassis, and perched
in second- and third-story window bays across the street.

“Keep it coming,” said one of the soldiers. He waved them on,
the plastic orange road cone he’d been using as a megaphone dangling from his
other hand.

Jiren couldn’t see the man’s face beyond the glare of
daylight, but he suspected it was the one who’d addressed them: Captain
something-or-other, head of something important-sounding.
I’ll save this Captain
for last
, Jiren decided.
Let him watch his troops die on the pavement
the same way I had to watch my brothers die in the sand
. Jiren took a step
forward, ready to ignite. “This is as far as we go until your men lower their
firearms.”