The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (56 page)

The closest burrow-kin stopped and raised his nose to sniff
the air, whiskers thrust out. Now he stepped onto the same ledge Lizneth was
standing on, no more than five fathoms away. He was looking straight at her; he
knew she was there, though how well he could actually see her at this distance
was a mystery.

She could see every detail of him.

His face was covered in a cloth shroud that hung ragged from
his snout, damp with the froth around his mouth from running. He was the
strongest-looking of the three. Like the others, he wore iron digging tools on
his wrists, one jutting from his hand like a pair of claws, the other a pointed
triangular spade. His
haick
was a wet mineral odor, sharp and earthy.
The other two were dams, their scents less harsh than his. The one to Lizneth’s
left wore a rusted iron helmet over her snout; the other’s ears were pierced
with lines of concentric stone rings.

Lizneth held her dagger out in front of herself with both
hands, trying to steady her shaking as the burrow-kin crept toward her. The
buck waited while his companions circled around her, one to either side, and
slid toward her along the walls. There was only the sound of water slipping
past them until the buck spoke.

“
Ehi hijr leshenguhrneh
,” he said, in a warped
Ikzhethii dialect. His speech was so thick and slurred that Lizneth didn’t
understand him at first.

I’d rather keep my blood, thank you
, she thought. She
bent her knees and braced herself to be attacked from all three sides at once.
The buck alone would’ve been enough of a challenge for her.
As long as I
hold onto the dagger, I have the upper hand
, she reminded herself.

The buck took a swipe at the dagger, trying to knock it away.
Metal clanged as the rusted claws scraped it aside, but Lizneth held on. He
swung with the other hand, but this time she thrust the dagger forward and felt
the edge catch him on the wrist. He spat a curse, then lunged at her. Her feet
slipped on the rock and her back slammed into the sidewall. His weight fell
against her, his hands clawing at her flanks.

The dams hung back and watched, perhaps thinking their buck
was qualified to finish the job by himself. He raked at her, across the side of
her back and over her shoulder and down her arm. Lizneth’s dagger was caught
between her chest and his. She was trying to push him away when his arms began
to go limp. She knew he had no more than a few seconds before the paralysis set
in, so she used the wall to shove him. While he was still toppling backward,
she brought the blade around and stabbed at the closer of the two dams, the one
with the iron helm.

The dam was ready. Before the dagger reached her chest, she’d
swatted it away with her iron claws. She blocked Lizneth’s second strike as
well, but this time the blade raked over her hand and split the skin between
her knuckles. The second dam crashed into Lizneth from behind and knocked her
forward, and the three of them went down in a heap.

Icy water ran into Lizneth’s nose and mouth. The dam with the
ear piercings had fallen to the side but was still clawing at her. Lizneth
elbowed her in the gut and rolled away, slashing. Her attacker’s chest opened,
the cut running over one nipple and down her side. When the dam tried to get up,
the strength left her. She gave Lizneth a confused, helpless look, and sank
until she was half-submerged and drowning.

Lizneth got to her feet, coughing and sputtering. Green ooze was
still staining the white fur on her chest. She didn’t think the dagger had
broken the skin, but her back, sides, and arms were covered in scratch marks,
so she swallowed one of the vials of antivenom to be safe. The blade itself
still held faint oily waves of green, but the river had washed off the rest. She
swore when she saw that the scabbard, too, was full of river water.

It was just a normal dagger now, its
aezoghil
swept
down the river like dirt from under her claws. Another confrontation with the
burrow-kin wasn’t likely to end so well without the venom on her side. She
needed to get across that lake before the others found her, but the sound she’d
heard earlier didn’t put her at ease about it.

The three burrow-kin were lying around her, their limbs
swaying in the current like weeds.
Deequol would’ve been proud if he
could’ve seen me fight
, she thought, though she was more disgusted with
herself than proud. She left them there, ignoring the choking sounds they were
making, and descended the river steps until she found a nest of dry rocks a few
fathoms above the water. She rinsed the venom off her chest, gasping again at
how cold the river was. She was starting to feel faint, so she climbed onto the
rocks and rested there for a while, shivering and listening for the sounds of
more burrow-kin.

When she stood again, she felt okay. She drank deeply from
her skins and refilled them, then took every scrap she could carry off the
bodies of the burrow-kin, all of whom appeared to be dead by now. Each of them
had a small purse, but their coin was poor; mixed in with a few scraps of
copper were lengths of thin greened jewelry chain, screws, nails, clips, keys,
and rough gemstones—all the kinds of things one might find while digging in
places where the
calaihn
had once lived. The buck’s pouch held an old
round thing, corroded with rust and exposed to show gears and sprockets, as if someone
had ripped its front cover off.

While she was heading up the steps toward the lake again, Lizneth
heard a noise behind her. Another pair of burrow-kin was standing a few stairs
down the river. They were watching her, teeth bared and snarling. Like the
others, their fur pattern was unidentifiable; not agouti or fawn or black or
blue, but a mottled patchwork of dirty browns colored through with every
imaginable shade of gray. These burrow-kin were younger; both bucks, but both
scarcely more than nestlings.

They shared a look, then came at her. It was a look that
conveyed all the naiveté Lizneth had once known; they felt the need to prove
themselves, and like any youth on the cusp of adulthood, they’d been drawn into
the traditions of their culture. The burrow-kin were rough and severe and they
lived on a razor’s edge, and that was how these two were learning to behave.

Lizneth’s hand went to her dagger. She froze, unsure of
herself.
Should I run, or fight? I can’t kill nestlings
. Instead of
doing either, she spoke to them in Ikzhethii. “
Ehi fyer hijr guzpikh
.”

She didn’t want to fight, it was true. But she made it plain
that she would if she had to. For a moment she thought she’d convinced them to
stop. Then it became clear why trying to cross the lake would’ve been a bad idea.
The nestlings’ eyes grew wide, and they splashed to a halt on the step below
hers. They began to back away, then broke into a run in the opposite direction.

Lizneth cursed for the second time that day, forgetting her
manners.
Whatever made them run probably has no use for manners anyway
.
There was a rush of water at her thighs as the thing behind her splashed up
against the rim of the lake.

She began to turn, slow and quiet. It grumbled. Not a roar or
a growl, but a low grating sound, like a gargant clearing its throat in slow
motion. It was the same sound she’d heard earlier, only it had been further
away then. From up close it was apt to shake the belt right off her hips.

A cotterphage. With skin like a catfish, black and slimy-wet.
It had a long slender neck that ended in a broad, viperish head lined with high
bone ridges. Even with its mouth closed, thin spiny teeth jutted from its lips
like the bristles from an old brush. Its forelegs were short and
reverse-elbowed; it gripped the lake’s rim with thick fingers, webbed and
clawed.

Every
ikzhe
nestling had heard a hundred tales about
cotterphages—tales that said they swam in the rivers and lakes of the
below-world, slithered overland and lay in damp tunnels for days, still and
silent as the grave, waiting to snap up their unsuspecting prey in jaws as
strong as iron vices. Lizneth had known only two such stories she believed well
enough to think they could be real. Now that she was seeing a cotterphage with
her own eyes, she believed them all. She drew the dagger, noting that any given
tooth on the cotterphage’s face was longer than the blade.

The cotterphage grumbled again, then pushed itself over the
rim and came splashing into the highest bowl-shaped step of the river. It
huffed, spraying mist from two elongated nostrils that sat alongside the ridges
in its skull. The head swung from side to side, the neck flexing back and forth
like a curious bird. Another grumble, slowing to a serrated purr that made
Lizneth’s whiskers tremble.

It lowered its head and squinted at her through the darkness,
eyes shining like slivers of obsidian through spheres of pale amber. The moment
it locked its gaze on her, Lizneth knew the dagger wasn’t enough anymore. She
produced a handful of kelp, wiped the last traces of venom off the dagger,
and tossed the seaweed at the monster’s feet, hoping it might be interested in
a supper of poisoned greens. It leaned down to sniff the offering, huffed
again, then returned its gaze to her.

Lizneth was already gone.

Splashing down the river stairs, she heard the sound of an
earthquake beginning behind her. The cavern trembled, and the cotterphage came
slipping down the steps like some strange long-necked seal, knocking stones
aside as if they were pebbles. Lizneth was off the last step and heading toward
the tunnel when the cotterphage gave a grumble so loud she felt it resonate in
her chest. It threw itself off the last step and careened toward her on a great
slimed belly, sliding on the gravel like butter over burnt toast. It opened its
maw while the great clawed limbs churned up the ground.

The tunnel was just ahead. Lizneth would’ve kept going, but
she could see it clearly from where she was, and she liked the way it narrowed.
She could also
feel
; the tincture that cooled her tail also heightened
the sensitivity in her whiskers, letting her sense every vibration on the air
with utter clarity. So she knew in that moment that while the cotterphage was
hurtling toward her at an incredible, ravenous speed, it was also a speed that
was unsustainable. A speed assumed by a predator who thinks it will catch its
prey because it is larger, stronger, and faster.

Lizneth dug her feet in and shifted her weight. Instead of
going down the tunnel, she slammed into the wall beside it, letting it bring
her to a dead stop. The cotterphage reacted, twisting its head sideways to snap
at her. Its body, however, kept going. It couldn’t straighten out in time, so
rather than shoot down the tunnel like a bullet through a gunbarrel, it stuck
like a clump in a drainpipe.

Lizneth peeled herself off the wall and began to follow the
river down the side passage. She felt like she’d fallen from a height, but now
wasn’t the time for stopping. She wouldn’t risk being anywhere near the lake
when the cotterphage broke free. The big slippery beast was grumbling
uncomfortably, scrabbling for purchase. Dirt and stone exploded as it scraped,
trying to free itself from the awkward positioning.

The river steps smoothed out until Lizneth found herself sliding
down a limestone slope, caught in a wide smooth trickle of water no more than
an inch deep. There was no way to stop herself now; like the cotterphage, she was
at gravity’s whim. The end of the slope came sooner than she would’ve liked.
She would have preferred that it never came, the high waterfall that sent her
plunging a dozen fathoms down into a deep green pool. There was a mound of silt
behind the waterfall, so she swam over and pulled herself up to rest there,
heaving and shivering. The cave had a high ceiling, and the pool was smaller
than the lake she’d just seen. She began to notice dark shapes gliding around beneath
the water, long and slender.

In Tanley, Lizneth could’ve made it home blindfolded, using
only her whiskers and the
haick
of her family to guide her. Now she
could see and sense everything around her better than usual, but the scents
here were as strange and foreign as those in the blind-world. There was one
scent she had just recently come to know, however. The things swimming in this
pool were young cotterphages.

CHAPTER 50

The Crimson Thread

Bits of memory. The Boiler Yard. Kaylene. Her kiss, the
night Merrick had first met her. He’d thought he was in love, and he’d come
back from the bathroom a few minutes later to find her groping another man,
trying to earn a drink. Captain Neville Robling.
I’ll have to sit through
another one of his speeches when I wake up in the infirmary. He’ll be there.
Never fails. Things will never get better unless I can stop getting in trouble
all the time.

Pieces of someone’s voice. Two voices, maybe more. One
scratchy, like Captain Curran’s. The other calm and level, soft and measured.

“He was a Scarred Comrade once,” said the first voice. “See
his hand, where the mark used to be? Looks like he burned it off. Took off his
mark but not his uniform.”

The second voice said, “Look at the fingers. All the nails
are gone. Healed over, but not grown back. Weird.”

Merrick’s eyes rolled forward, and he became aware of the
first glimmer of yellow light beyond his eyelids. Not unconscious. He’d been
sleeping. Not even sleeping—just in a daze, like the night he met the shepherd.
Opening the eye that wasn’t swollen shut, he remembered where he was, and the
despair of his true circumstances came rushing back to him.
I’m not Scarred
anymore. This isn’t the infirmary. It won’t be, ever again. But if they know
I’m Scarred—that I
was
—why haven’t they killed me? Why hasn’t anyone in
this whole coffing city just killed me?

The shape—the figure. Merrick remembered now. The figure had
helped him to his feet, carried him in past the scaffolding, past the dry
fountain, up the steps, and into the Ministry building. The man had removed his
hood and laid Merrick down in something soft, a pile of tattered blankets or
shredded newspaper, maybe. The figure had taken off his mask and evaluated
Merrick with brown eyes flecked in gold, the color of dark whiskey. Merrick had
studied the figure and decided that if the man were going to harm him, he would
have done it already.

The severity of his wounds was coming into focus now, as the
adrenaline and the heat died away and yielded to the sensations of pain all
over. He had ignited the second he hit the ground back at the old laundromat,
he now realized. His gift had been the force that kept him going as he ran and
fell and broke his body over the city.

“I’m Caliber,” the first man said. His mask had left red
marks on a slender face, bare and nicked from shaving. Caliber thumbed at the
man beside him. “This is Leuk. He dudn’ talk much.”

Leuk was taller and also clean-shaven, with thin dark hair, a
wide jutting chin, and a pronounced cliff of eyebrow. “I talk plenty. You just
never listen to a blasted word of it.”

“You ever quit boo-hooin’ for two seconds, I might,” Caliber
shot back.

Both men wore hooded charcoal-gray dusters, and each had on a
patchwork of hard plastic armor underneath. Their kit was that of soldiers, but
they were no Scarred men.
They’re no proper soldiers by any stretch
,
Merrick decided.
Phantoms is more like it. Shadows masquerading as men
.
They were in a cavernous room; a library, by the looks of it. Painted ceiling,
stacks of empty shelving, dust floating through rays of daylight streaming in through
high windows. It was strange to see such grand things intact, undamaged by
vandals and storms. Yet there they were, and here he was.

“Merrick Bouchard.”

“Pleased to meet you, Merrick Bouchard,” said Caliber. “Those
drifters got you pretty bad, didn’t they? I’d have killed you, same as them,
only I noticed them pants. Gray camouflage. You’re a Scarred man, huh? A
Scarred man in the city south is like a bushcat in a fox’s den.”

Never thought I’d see the day when being Scarred got me
saved instead of killed
, Merrick mused. “Don’t I know it. Why did the pants
stop you from lumping me in with the drifters?”

“Because I noticed the mark, too,” Caliber said, pointing. “You
removed it. Long time ago, looks like. Your fingernails are gone too.”

“They tortured me,” Merrick lied.

“Really. I was thinking you might be a deserter, but now I’m
thinking maybe you got runned-off.”

“What difference does it make?”

“A big one. If you’re still Scarred—not if you used to be.”

Merrick considered his answer. “I used to be.”

“Well then. That makes it so you might be useful.”

“If useful keeps me alive, I guess it couldn’t hurt. What is
it you want?”

Caliber favored Leuk with a half-smile before he answered.
“Their weaknesses.”

“The Scarred’s weaknesses?”

“Yessum.”

“Why?”

“You ain’t makin’ yourself useful by asking questions. We
gotta go over this again?”

“I get it,” Merrick said, spreading his hands. “But I’ll be
able to answer your questions better if you let me ask mine first.”

Leuk leaned back in his swivel chair.

Caliber propped himself against a bookshelf. “Okay. You ask
all the questions you want. Get ‘em all out of your system. If I let you do
that, will you shut up and start making yourself useful?”

Merrick nodded.

Caliber gave a flourish. “Ask away, my good man.”

“What is this place?”

“This is a library. A bad one.”

“Yeah, I can see that. There are no books.”

“Books got nothin’ to do with it. You can stack books in the
middle of the desert, but that don’t make it a library. It’s the quiet rule
that turns a pile of books into a library. No rules anymore, no librarians to
shush you. We came here thinking this section of town would be nice and
peaceful, but it’s been anything but.”

“Seems like most people are leaving you alone in here.”

“Yeah. Most people are smarter than you, I guess.”

“Oh, believe me, I knew it was a dumb idea to come over here.
I was just curious why nobody else was around. This place looked like a good
setup from across the bridge. Who are you dways, and why are you here?”

“Everybody’s got a name, right? It makes you all
official-like,” Caliber said, twirling a finger. “We call ourselves the Gray
Revenants. You might say we’re the bastard do-gooders of the city south.”

“Vigilantes, huh?” Merrick said. “Or is it heroes?”

“Neither. Hard to be a vigilante without laws you can break.
And all the real heroes are famous. We got no laws, and nobody knows who we
are.”

The Scarred knew who the Gray Revenants were, but Merrick was
reluctant to mention that just yet; it seemed wrong to take the wind out of
Caliber’s sails. Like most groups in the city south, Pilot Wax regarded the
Gray Revenants as more of a nuisance than an actual threat. He still sent
Mobile Ops to track them sometimes, but their tendency to lay low and change
hideouts often made that difficult.

“Not much of an outfit then, are you?” Merrick said. “Just a
name and nothing else.”

“We ain’t got no need for more than that. The name is… sup—super—superfulous.
We don’t need it. You know what I mean. Mostly it’s there so we don’t forget
who we are.”

“What is it you do, then?”

“You’d call us the defenders of the meek. Like a kill button
for tyrants. Anytime we hear about somebody getting too bold for his boots, we
end him. We protect innocents from themselves that way. People flock easy to a
sweet tongue or a pretty face, and most of the time it just gets ‘em used. We
don’t like seeing people used, so we do what we can to stop it.”

“That’s why you want to know the Scarred’s weak points,”
Merrick said.

“He’s a regular box of brains, this one,” Caliber said. Leuk gave
an abrupt laugh. “Power groups come and go here in Belmond like storms over the
Tideguine. Old leaders die and new ones take their place, each one with his own
code, his own idea of the way things should be. The Scarred Comrades have been
around longer than they ought to. Copycats and hopefuls crop up all the time,
but none of ‘em have the staying power of that Wax fella. How he’s lived so
long without one of his officers puttin’ a bullet through him, I don’t know.”

“So you want to assassinate Wax.”

“I’m startin’ to like you, Merrick Bouchard,” Caliber said.
“You tell it like it is. What are your personal feelings on Pilot Wax and his little
circle jerk of an army?”

“The army’s fine,” Merrick said, “but Wax is a maniac. I
guess he kind of has to be. He’s the type of dway who survives on charisma. He’s
captivating, but severe when it’s called for. People don’t question him because
he doesn’t question himself. In the city north, they say
he was born to run
the show, so let him
. He does it well enough that nobody puts up a fuss.”

“You’re giving me the facts, Merrick,” said Caliber, leaning
in. “I know all that. I want to know how you
feel
about him.”

“He banished me because he was worried I was trying to
overthrow him,” Merrick said.

Caliber regarded Merrick with a curious look. “I can’t
honestly imagine you overthrowing anything. Were you, or did he just think you
were?”

Merrick shrugged. “I hadn’t made up my mind. Now I have.”

“You’re a coffin’ dream come true, you pudgy little bastard,”
Caliber said, a wide grin spreading over his face. “You’re exactly what we
need. Shoot, where’d you come from? It’s like you dropped outta the coffin’
sky.”

“You need me, huh?” Merrick propped himself on his elbows and
examined his bedding. It was a makeshift mattress, built from tatters of cloth
stitched together and stuffed with shredded paper.

“You’ll give us a hand, won’t you?” Leuk asked.

“With what? You want to know their weaknesses? The Scarred
Comrades
have
no weaknesses. Commiss—Pilot Wax has spent the last
seventeen years perfecting his system, working out the kinks, and training a
garrison with enough firepower to blow away every last person in the city
south, if he wanted to. Even if you could put together an army, and I mean a
real army, trained and armed and equipped, you’d never get past the blockades.
There’s a whole division of the Scarred devoted to signals. Wherever you
strike, he’ll put a company of men on the ground in minutes. The
nomads
don’t even attack the city north, and they’ve got higher numbers and better
warriors than you ever will.”

“All we want to do is kill Wax. Coff on the rest of the
army,” Caliber said.

“What do you think is going to happen? Even if you managed to
march in there, and you found some way to assassinate him, the whole thing
isn’t just gonna collapse. He’s got officers who know what they’re doing. The
system works without him having to lift a finger, even though he does,
sometimes. And ‘fernal forbid any of you becomes a prisoner of war. Once Wax
gets his hands on you, he’ll make you give up every hideout you’ve ever had.”

“Our dways would never squeal on us.”

“Then they’re going to live to see quite a few things crossed
off their list of attached body parts. My point is, the Scarred Comrades will
keep existing without Wax.”

“They’ll be weaker, though,” said Leuk.

“They’re already as weak as they’re liable to get. The
Commissar almost died this week. There was an attack… some inmates escaped from
the prison and wrecked the place. Lots dead. I’m sure they have it under
control by now. And there are still thousands of Scarred, even with the
casualties. What you want is impossible. The city north is staying where it is.
You’d be like a swarm of gnats trying to take down a wind gargant.”

Leuk shot him a disbelieving look. “The Ministry crumbled all
those years ago. It was much bigger and more powerful. Why couldn’t the city
north?”

“You just don’t know the way things are up there. The city
north will never fall into anarchy.”

“I don’t see how the aftermath is relevant,” Caliber said.
“Fact is, we both want the same thing—we want Pilot Wax dead. What happens
after ain’t important until the time comes. Let’s not make it a reason to
disagree.”

“I disagree with you about way more than that,” Merrick said.
“I’m with you on the objective, I just think your expectations are too high.”
But
‘fernal knows I need friends right now
.

“You leave our expectations to us. The objective is where you
come in. Even if the Scarred have ‘
no weaknesses
,’ like you say, there’s
gotta be something you can tell us that’ll give us an edge.”

“There’s plenty I could tell you, but I doubt it’ll make the
impossible any more possible. For example, I could tell you that Pilot Wax is
an absolutist. He doesn’t suffer trespassers on city north soil. If you or any
of your friends are caught trying to cross over, which you will be, you’ll be
tortured and hanged. Once he’s marked you for death, you can scream all you
want. He won’t care. Won’t blink. He’ll sit up there in his office and watch
you die without thinking twice about it. If that sounds like the type of dway
you want to go up against, go right ahead with your plans.”

“That sounds like the type of dway who doesn’t deserve to
live,” Caliber said, his face stern. “You talk like we ain’t considered the
risks. We’ll risk everything for this. All of us will. The Revs do what’s got
to be done.”

Merrick could see no hint of doubt on either man’s face. He
knew then that the Revs were the best allies he could’ve found. “I’m with you.
I’ll be whatever help I can.”

Caliber grinned his sanctimonious grin. “That’s good. Why
don’t you start by standing up?”

“We going somewhere?”

“I want to take you to the roof. Show you around.”

Merrick stood up on his good leg and leaned against the wall.
He could see a diffused reflection of himself in the marble floor. He wanted to
know how badly the drifters had beaten him. “Do you have any mirrors around
here?”

“We’ll get you tended to,” Caliber said. “Come on. You got
people to meet.”