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39. Survivors
🕑 Added 2021-05-25 15:20:59 +0000 UTCUpdate: Unlocked for all patrons.
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Hallon’s hands are covered in rock dust. A young girl, no more than eight, pours a dollop of water, so that Hallon can rinse them. Only once Hallon’s hands are clean does the girl give her a pastry stuffed with spinach and onions. Hallon is too tired to notice the flavors, but she eats anyway, knowing that her body needs the nourishment. A boy—the girl’s brother—comes by with lukewarm tea heavily spiced with walnuts, cardamom, and sugar. Hallon gulps it down.
There’s been no word from Karam, and the sun’s nearly at noon. Hallon can’t afford to stay much longer, spending out her strength on rescuing the dead. Before she can decide to leave, a team of Reds shifts aside a twenty-foot block of stone, and someone yells that there’s a survivor. Hallon stumbles towards the commotion, half the pastry left behind.
The news spreads like fire.
###
Fire surrounds Milo, eating at the walls of his bedroom. His old bedroom in the house before it was rebuilt. The door is blocked. The windows too. Somewhere downstairs, his parents burn.
A man wearing a black suit and dragon’s mask stands next to the bed. “You’ve had a hard, hard path, my friend.”
Milo is four years old again. “Wa-watch out,” he says, struggling to get the words out. “I-it’s dangerous. Follow me.” He slips under the bed where it’s safer. That’s where the brigade chief will find him and lift him up onto her broad shoulder, carrying him away from the burning house and away from his parents.
The dragon mask peers under the bed. “Is this where you’ll stay while the world falls?”
Tears stream down Milo’s face. What else can he do? The fire will get him if he tries to leave.
“What do your eyes tell you, Milo Nasser Rabbit?”
“Wh-what?”
“I asked you, what do your eyes tell you?”
“There’s fire. It’s burning!”
“Look deeper.”
Milo wishes the strange man would leave. For the fire to disappear. For his parents to find him and hold him tight. To pat his head and tell him he’s a good boy. His heart is full of steam. “It’s unfair,” he says, sobbing.
“Terribly unfair,” the dragon-man says. “Now look deeper.”
“Why?”
“A very good question. Now look deeper.”
“I’m afraid.”
“I know. There’s much to fear. Now look deeper.”
Milo’s head spins, and there’s a pain in his shoulder that spikes until his stomach lurches and he vomits, retching up a hissing black slime. He backs away from the mess, jamming up against one of the bed’s legs. He realizes there is something missing. Where are the numbers? He’s always been able to see them, even if he didn’t know what they meant at first.
The dragon-man nods in encouragement. “What you see is an illusion. Not even a dream, although it follows some of the same rules, for which we can be grateful. Otherwise, I’d not be here with you. Now, look deeper still.” The dragon-man has numbers, but they’re strange and threaten to send Milo’s head spinning again. “Ah, perhaps not there. Look at the room instead,” he says.
Milo takes the hand he’s offered and is helped out from under the bed. The hand feels solid in a way that the bed, the room, and even his own body do not. In the blink of an eye, Milo is his proper age again. “I see,” he says, standing next to Eratosthenes. “So this isn’t real? This time, it really is a hallucination?”
“So it seems.”
“How? Why?”
Eratosthenes quirks his head. “I don’t know. If it wasn’t for the portion of me placed in your shoulder, I wouldn’t be here.”
Milo shakes his head as he tries to separate reality from illusion. He’d been captured by Marid and Sab. Of that he’s sure. And there’d been an explosion at Groud’s before that. His breath catches—what about his team? The people he’d come to love? Abdullah had said that they’d gathered at the factory. Milo’s beats hard, rushing towards panic.
“Breathe!” Eratosthenes’s voice booms.
Milo grabs hold of himself. “D-do you know what’s happening at the factory? My team—”
“What you see of me here is a construct and not the real Eratosthenes. Think of me as a puppet. Normally, I can communicate with my original self, but something has us cut off. I don’t know anything outside of this place and time.”
The worry knots up Milo’s stomach, and he feels like he’s going to be sick again.
“Don’t lose your center,” Eratosthenes says.
“I’ll try,” Milo says.
“Don’t try. Just do.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“And you make it sound hard.”
Milo rubs at his face. “This is all very terrifying, you know?”
The dragon-mask smiles, showing teeth. “Yes, I know. Now look deeper.”
Milo wonders what would happen if he punched Eratosthenes. What does he even mean, look deeper? Milo closes his eyes and tries to disbelieve the illusion. He tries as hard as he can, but when he opens his eyes—the burning room is still there.
The mask looks affronted. “Seriously? That’s the best you can do?”
“I’m trying!”
“And I said there’s no trying. Just doing.”
“But it can’t be that simple, can it?”
“Can’t it?”
The whole situation is just so maddening, all Milo wants to do is scream and kick. To rage at the fire around him. Somewhere downstairs, his parents burn, and there’s nothing he can do about. Not now and not then.
“You’re not a child anymore,” Eratosthenes says. “This is a phantom pain, do not let it impede your escape. Now breathe!”
Eratosthenes shoves Milo, forcing him to take a step into the fire. There’s heat and pressure and pain and far away, the scent of lilacs. The flames lick up to engulf his hand and it hurts badly, but there’s no injury and the feeling slowly fades until it’s no stronger than a handkerchief run across his palm.
Milo stares at his hand, astonished. He takes another step into the fire, but nothing happens, except that the smell of lilacs grows stronger. He reaches for the door, and the world goes black. No, his eyes are closed. He opens them to find Noor looking at him, her equations concerned, but they needn’t worry. Milo is awake.
###
The crowd presses tight, but a pair of Reds clears a path for the survivor—Mr. Groud, carried on a stretcher but awake. Hallon edges closer and spots a woman pulling herself out from a steel cage under the rubble. She dusts herself off, straightens her hair, and walks—wobbly but under her own power—towards where Groud was set down. She has a clipboard in her hands.
A voice rises above the crowd’s murmuring. “He doesn’t know what happened. The factory was empty except for a crew given special permission to continue their work. The executive staff were here to make sure they weren’t troubled by the Army or Civil Order Corps. There was an explosion, and then everything went dark.”
Hallon slips closer for a better view. Groud sits upright with his back against the wall. He drinks from a canteen, wipes the grime from its mouth, and offers it to the woman with the clipboard. The singer Tanith Hatousi stands next to him. Had she been here this whole time? The crowd’s big enough that it’d be easy to miss one among the many. She’s covered in dirt and blood, so she’s likely been here for hours.
Groud says something too softly to be heard, but the singer lends him her voice. “There were fourteen downstairs and another five upstairs. The people downstairs were—”
The woman with the clipboard reads, and Hatousi repeats the names.
“Hussein Ghoursi.”
“Malek Paris.”
The names drop like pebbles into water, sending ripples through the crowd.
“Miriam and Rania Thalat.”
They are the women found earlier, but the crowd reacts again, the injury still fresh. They hang on every word—dusty, exhausted, stinking of sweat—for news of their friends and loved ones. In the end, nineteen names are read aloud. None of them are Milo. Hallon closes her eyes in relief. There’s a fluttering in her belly she didn’t expect.
Well and well, Milo’s survival shouldn’t come as that much a surprise. He has Eratosthenes to look after him, after all. The dragon would do his best to protect the boy. Yes, her student is safe. And elsewhere, apparently.
It’s time to go. Hallon finds an eddy in the crowd and follows it to the loose boundary of people leaving and joining. Karam isn’t back yet, but she can’t wait for him forever. Free of the crowd, she restarts her search for Milo.
###
“The guard’s gone to take a piss, and we’ve only a minute to get free.”
Milo’s head is full, the numbers bloated. A collection of mismatched blocks hovers beside him. Wires connect him to the blocks via a series of needles running up both his arms. “What?”
Noor pleads. “For the love of Saket, we don’t have time. Free yourself and untie me from this table.”
Milo shakes his head, but it only makes him dizzy. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but one thing is clear—this is not a good place to be. He sweeps the needles away, raising pinpricks of blood along his arms. He unbuckles the straps holding him to the table and stumbles free, knocking over the surgical cart. Tools clatter on the floor. He starts to pick them up. They’ll get dirty if they stay there.
“Milo, I know it’s hard to focus, but please do.”
Right. They have to escape. Milo ignores the numbers asking to be picked up. He apologizes to them before turning to face Noor. She has stitches around her scalp. The skin around them is black and blue. “Are you all right?” The words are slurry, but he gets them out.
“Of course I’m not all right,” Noor says, “but I’ll be much worse if the guard comes back and we’re still here. Untie me and then bring that sheet from over there. In the basket. Don’t mind the blood. It’s mine.”
Milo has questions, but everything’s fuzzy and he can’t organize his thoughts. Better to do what’s necessary now and find out the hows and whys later. He undoes the straps holding Noor in place and helps her slide down to the floor.
There’s a laundry basket tucked behind her table. The sheet in question is stiff with dried blood. It doesn’t bother Noor though, and she shapes it into a sling and arranges it across Milo’s shoulders. He winces when she climbs into it.
“Hurry now, the guards will be after us soon.”
Milo flees the operating room, but it’s awkward with Noor clutching at his shoulders. The equations resemble a gallop more than a run.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Noor says. “We’re going to keep going like this, with me directing us through these corridors. In about two minutes, we’ll round a corner and find two guards at a door. You’ll need to knock them out, take their keys, and pull them into the room they’re guarding. We’ll hide there until the search passes by and then take off running again. There’ll be a time when the guards shoot at us, so be sure to duck when I tell you. Got that?”
“I suppose, but—”
“How am I sure of what will happen? The Scholar, that’s how. The bastard’s been poking around in my brain. And made a right mess of it too, but—the things I’ve seen, Milo. The things I’ve seen.” She pulls the sling to slow him down. “It’ll be around this corner. Get ready.”
“But I can’t fight,” Milo says, panicking.
“You can and you will. If you don’t then everyone you and I love in No Town will die.”
“What!”
“I’ve seen it. But I also know we can stop it, but only if we fight—if we fight the Silent here.”
“But what do you mean—”
“We. Don’t. Have. Time.” Noor smacks Milo across the back of the head. “Move!”
Milo rounds a corner and finds two Silent standing in front of a door. All the techniques from the Soft Fist fly out of Milo’s head. All he can think to do is charge, barreling into the closer one. Noor is on his back, and the equations add her weight onto his. The Silent doesn’t see the attack coming. He’s knocked to the ground, his legs splaying into a V. The equations transform and guide Milo’s foot in a follow-up kick to the crotch. The Silent folds, gasping.
The other Silent yells in surprise. He pulls back his right arm to punch, but the equations are slow and inefficient. Hallon and the General are much, much faster—they don’t waste energy when they attack.
Milo has time to remember an actual technique from the Soft Fist. He firms his center and shifts his weight forward, stepping as he lifts his arm straight into a spear hand to the point at the base of his opponent’s neck. Not much is required beyond that. His opponent’s momentum does all the work, and the Silent drops, clutching at his throat. He doesn’t learn his friend’s lesson and also leaves his legs open. Milo kicks him in the crotch too.
###
Hallon kicks out, shoving the man who’d leapt out at her back into the alley. She follows up with a flying fist to his face, knocking him to the ground. He doesn’t get back up.
There are roving bands of rioters, fighters, soldiers, and people hunting for supplies all through No Town. A man on his own jumping a woman—clearly, he’d intended ill, and Hallon gives him a swift kick to the crotch for good measure. She ties him up like a pig with his own clothes before leaving him to his fate.
The street is clear of fighting, although there is evidence of recent battle. A half-track’s turned over, and the body of a Red riddled with bullets lies propped up against it. An old man stares down at the scene from a third floor window. More bodies lie strewn farther down the street—five Gloop and three soldiers. A Gloop drags himself away from the carnage, leaving a bloody trail as he goes. He doesn’t notice Hallon coming up behind him. She taps his wrist hard, causing his gun to spasm out of his hand.
She turns him over. Gut shot and no more than thirteen years old. “I don’t want to die,” he says. His face is drained of color. His lips quiver, then go still. The terror that had been in his eyes fades away. Another one lost to war.
“Be easy,” she whispers, the old prayer coming to her lips. “Let go your burdens and find your way back home.” She closes his eyes for him, adding on to the Ghost Burner’s words. “Next time, do better. All of you,” she says to the fighters and the soldiers, “do better.”
A rumbling sound approaches, and Hallon leaves the corpses where they lay. She ducks into an alley just as a tank turns the corner. Two snub-nosed cannons set forward on its chassis swing back and forth, searching for targets. The tank idles as the patrol following after checks their fallen comrades. Someone finds the Red and puts another bullet into him.
Hallon fades away, but this alley would take her towards the No Town market. It’s not a direction she wants to go, not with the mob still gathered there. She’ll have to risk the rooftops instead—it should be safe enough with the war dirigibles occupied elsewhere. She wonders if everyone at the Standing Goat is all right, and the pressure to hurry follows her up the wall.
###
“Hurry,” Noor urges.
Milo fumbles the key he’d taken from the Silent. His hands shake, but he gets the door open and drags the bound Silent inside. A moment later, there’s the sound of people running past the door.
Noor whispers. “I-I didn’t think we’d make it.”
Milo doesn’t answer. Whatever elation he might’ve felt from beating two grown men is drained away, replaced by horror. Bodies. The room is stacked with bodies, dessicated and naked, showing signs of being cut open and stitched back together. They all have tattoos—green, yellow, blue, brown, and a lone Red crumpled in the corner. The only light in the room comes from the violet glow of an assemblage of cube-machines. The area is frigid and scented with lilacs and something bitter under it. Milo shivers. He feels sick—he wants to throw up, but his body is paralyzed.
“The Scholar’s looking for a cure for the Gloop, and he doesn’t care how he gets it.” Noor’s voice is a whisper. “He’s betrayed us. Betrayed what it means to be Gloop.”
Milo gulps a breath. A scream rises inside—he’s underground in a room filled with dead people.
“Don’t panic.” Noor hugs Milo from behind. “I know you’re afraid, but you can’t panic. We have to wait here quietly for fifteen minutes before we can leave.”
Too much. This is much too much. Even being locked in the cell wasn’t this bad, so Milo closes his eyes and retreats into his calculations. All the calculations. Everything he’s working on—the mathematical models for the people he knows, the stagnation of the world’s weather systems, Applegate’s Outer Thesis, the Matter Transmission Engine, the Lion, the protocols for social interaction, the patterns for the Way of the Soft Fist and Barraket, the probabilities around his sanity—he brings them out of their working spaces and fills his mind until it’s full of nothing but calculations.
It’s all a jumble, but enough to swamp his fear and make the world disappear. When his inner clock reaches fifteen minutes, the social interaction protocol prompts him to ask, “Has enough time passed?”
“I’m not sure. The visions keep moving on me.” Noor hesitates. “I think so.”
Milo can’t wait any longer, even with the calculations shielding him. He opens the door and focuses on the outside world long enough to see that the corridor is empty. He runs.
###
Hallon runs towards the edge of the roof, hops onto a low wall, and leaps to the next building. She catches onto the rough brick surface and levers herself up and over into a rooftop garden that’s been picked clean. She steps away from the planters when a head pokes up from the opposite wall. She’d recognize those cobalt blue eyes anywhere. “Karam!”
The hairs on the back of her neck rise. What are the odds of running into the boy? Not very high, not unless a certain dragon is influencing events. If only there were a way to connect to him—
“Hallon!” Karam scrambles over the side to join her on the roof. “What are you doing here? I was on my way to find you. Where’s Milo? Still climbing?”
She shakes her head. “He was escorting supplies to Groud’s and disappeared along the way.”
“The factory! But the explosion—”
“He wasn’t there. Nor the men he was with. I checked.”
“Hells,” Karam says. “It’s dangerous to be out right now. I hope he doesn’t try to leave No Town.”
“Why not?” Hallon asks. “Isn’t this where the fighting is most intense?”
Karam looks away. “I…ah…can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”
###
“It’s the worst kept secret in Dawrtaine—Siloxin gas.”
Milo shifts the equations, so that Noor’s weight is more evenly distributed. Her words trigger a memory. “I’ve heard of it. From Hallon and the General.”
“There’s a treaty outlawing the stuff, but Dawrtaine never signed. The Army keeps artillery shells full of it stationed at the bases surrounding the city—to protect us from invasion, they say, except that everyone knows what the gas is really for.” She pulls on the sling and steers Milo to the right. “There’s a closet up ahead. The door’s unlocked.”
The closet has two brooms, a mop, and shelves lined with cleansers and disinfectants. There is room for Milo with Noor on his back, but that’s all.
“Close the door, sweetie, and be quiet please.”
Milo hesitates. There’s no light fixture. “It’ll be dark.”
“You can hold on for a minute, right? That’s all it’ll take, I promise.”
Milo closes the door, and the sound of running people passes by the door. Not even twenty seconds passes. “That’s amazing,” he whispers.
“It always has been,” Noor says. “We can go.”
The corridor is clear, and Noor steers Milo back the way they came to turn down a different corridor.
“As I was saying, everyone knows the Army can easily point their guns inward towards Dawrtaine if they want. The Siloxin is to keep the Gloop in line. If we act up, they’ll turn the gas on us.”
“But the vectors—the wind would carry the gas into the rest of the city. The collateral damage would be enormous.”
“Not if they shut down the turbines,” Noor says. “Some of the Untainted living Brickside would die, sure, but if it means getting rid of the Gloop forever? There are those that’d do it. Not all, but some, and that’d be enough.”
Milo shakes his head. “It would be inhuman.”
“Oh, sweetie. You really are so—I don’t even have a word for it—maybe kind. No wonder Hallon’s taken an interest in you.”
Milo nearly trips. “What?”
###
“What?” Hallon nearly lets go of the wall. She and Karam are climbing down to the street. The roof’s no longer safe with a dirigible traversing the sky above.
Karam waits to see that her grip’s firm before continuing. “The Councils have decided to use the Siloxin on No Town. I heard it from the Scholar. Well, overheard it—he didn’t know I was behind the door. Anyway, he said that the Councils have had enough and are going to wipe out the city Gloop. The Scholar has a plan though—he’s asked the Silent to take over the artillery and fire the gas at the Council House.”
“But, but, but—that’s in the middle of Dawrtaine. Thousands of innocents would die.”
“The Scholar says there are no innocents. All the Untainted are complicit. They’re trying to kill us, so it’s only fair we turn the tables. The Scholar—”
###
“—is lying of course. No one’s decided any such thing. Not yet anyway. There are still some voices of reason on the Councils, but it’s an excuse to justify what the Scholar’s doing. He’s afraid, you see.”
“Of what?”
“These stairs, sweetie.”
“He’s afraid of these stairs?” Milo asks.
Noor’s voice catches when she laughs. “No, go down these stairs.”
Milo does as he’s told and takes the stairs down to a room lit by a kerosene lantern. The door opposite is barred by a length of iron.
“We’ll need the lantern,” Noor says before pointing to the door.
The metal is well oiled, and the bar slides easily. On the other side is a dark chasm across from which is the face of a tall, ruined building. Behind it, there are more, a sea of old bones propping up the ceiling just above their heads.
“The old city,” Noor says.
“You’ve been here before?” Milo’s voice quivers.
“No one comes down here,” Noor says, “except for the Hidden and the Silent.” She gestures to a set of stairs leading down. “Street level is that way.”
The stairs zig zag down, cut into the stone. The light from the lantern doesn’t extend far, and Milo can’t see the bottom. He gulps. “I—is this really going to be all right?”
“I won’t let any harm come to you, sweetie. I’ve decided that. Now, please. We don’t have much time.”
Milo takes a breath. The fear doesn’t serve me, he thinks. I just need to focus on the steps. One by one.
The steps are thin and steep—only four inches long and a foot deep. All it would take is one slip from clumsy Bad Luck Rabbit to send them tumbling. The probable trajectories unfold in Milo’s mind.
“Where was I? Oh, yes. The Scholar’s afraid. He’s afraid that the Gloop won’t be needed anymore. That they’ll lose their advantages.”
Milo nearly misses a step, and his heart—already thumping—skips a beat. “Wh-what advantages?”
Noor clutches at his shoulders. “Ha. That was close.” She clears her throat. “The Red are strong. The Yellow think differently. The Blue have talents, some of them anyway. The Brown and Green… well, they’re cheap to hire, but there are machines now that do what they do, except faster and cheaper. And there are more coming that will be able to replace the Yellows and Blues, machines that will even make you as strong as a Red.”
Milo gasps. “The Lion!”
“Shush. Not so loud. What’s the Lion?”
“My project—the one my team was developing for Mr. Groud. It’s a suit to help Gloop be more able, but there’s nothing to stop the Untainted from using it, too.”
“So that’s what I saw,” Noor says. “I couldn’t make sense of it in the vision.”
“You saw the Lion?” Milo asks.
“I saw a mechanical man chasing after a woman, but couldn’t make sense of the rest.”
Milo feels angry. Upset. Dizzy. This is not the time to feel dizzy, and he retreats from his feelings.
Noor pats Milo on the back. “Don’t feel bad. This was bound to happen eventually. If not the Lion, then something else. The machines are only getting stronger and faster and better with time. And that’s exactly what worries the Scholar. If the machines replace the Gloop, then what place will we have in Dawrtaine? The Untainted won’t need us anymore.” She pauses to look out, past the light of their lantern. “He’s afraid of the future, which is why he’s intent on acting now, before the Untainted build too much of an advantage.”
Reaching the bottom is a victory, but the feeling is too distant to savor. Instead, Milo surveys the street, noting distances and the features of the rubble around him. The floor is sandy and crunches when he walks on it. “Which way?”
Noor points him into the dark.
###
Hallon points back towards the direction she’d come. “The alley exit is blocked. Any luck on your side?”
Karam shakes his head. “None. Civil Order set up a checkpoint.”
“And the rooftops are no good with all the dirigibles flying over.” Hallon bites her lip. “What do you recommend?”
“It’ll be slow, but we can go through the buildings.” Karam walks towards the nearest window and taps on the glass.
The curtains part to reveal a young boy with snot running down his nose. He opens the window for them, and they crawl through into a room with just enough space for three thin mattresses.
“Thank you,” Karam says.
The boy has a tail, scaly like a lizard, and it waggles when he smiles. He follows them through the apartment and into the hallway outside where several families are gathered together. The families stand up when they see that guests have arrived. The kids all know each other and call the boy over to play, while the adults approach Karam.
The families don’t have much, but they offer tea and bring a tin of cookies out of hiding. Hallon follows Karam’s lead and refuses both. They’re in a hurry, so they only do what’s needful—the polite talk, the sharing of news—before moving on. One of the elders shows them into an apartment in the direction of the Haughty Maiden and opens the window for them. The alley is clear, and the window across is already open.
Hallon and Karam make their way across into a room with a mural of Saket speaking in front of a crowd. Along the bottom, it reads, “We are not—” The last part is left blank. Hallon thought that most of No Town’s residents were out in the streets, but she finds more families huddled together in the hall outside. This is where it’s safest, she realizes, with multiple walls protecting the people from stray bullets.
The process from the previous building repeats—the families stand up to greet the guests and offer what they can in terms of food and drink. The families are hungry for news and press Karam to share what he knows about what’s going on outside. This takes time—time that feels in short supply—but Hallon wills herself to be patient. Karam is the family’s only real source of information since the lockdown began.
Hallon and Karam move through two neighborhoods in this way, going from one building to the next. Karam is about to knock on another window when Hallon stops him. “Hold a jot.”
“What is it?” Karam asks.
There’s a feeling that’s hard to define, somewhere that Hallon needs to be. Eratosthenes? The feeling grows stronger in response and pulls at her, asking her to go east. “Let’s head back to the street,” she says.
“That would be faster,” Karam says, “but do you think it’s safe?”
“I have no idea,” Hallon says, “but let’s risk it.”
The alley is like all the rest—narrow, brick-lined, zig zag. There’s nothing unusual about it except for the feeling that there’s something at end that Hallon needs to find. Approaching the next zag, she hears the rumble of gasoline engines and slows to peak around the corner. Ahead, past the alley’s exit, is a convoy stopped at a checkpoint.
The convoy is made up of two trucks led by a fancy car, and in front of them, blocking the way, is a double-turreted tank and machine gun emplacement. The captain leading the convoy steps out of the car to negotiate passage through the checkpoint.
“Oh,” Hallon says when the General steps out of the car to join him. She quickly scans the vehicles and finds Lady Barmaki and her children in the car. Rahima, Wahid, and Safi are in the back of the first truck. The feeling doesn’t go away though. Something’s about to happen.
“What are they doing here?” Karam says. “It’s danger—”
A rocket tube appears at a window overlooking the checkpoint.
“Watch out!” Hallon yells.
Flash. Whoosh. The rocket splashes against the tank’s far turret, rocking it. Rifles poke out of the building’s other windows and open fire. The convoy’s captain shields the General with his body, pushing him away, as they scramble back towards the car.
The machine gun emplacement returns fire. The tank’s remaining cannon booms and gouges the building, exposing a bedroom to the air. A figure falls. Whether they’re masked or not, Hallon can’t tell.
She steps out into the open. “This way!”
The General sees her and yells for everyone in the convoy to run for the alley. The last truck in line guns its engine and rides up next to the car to shield the passengers as they flee. Wahid jumps from the back of the first truck with Rahima in his arms and Safi not far behind, pulling her wheelchair behind him. They run for their lives.
Karam hurries them deeper into the alley. “Let’s go! Now!”
They turn a corner, but the convoy’s captain lags behind to lean against the wall. The General and Hallon stop to make sure he’s all right. There’s blood weeping from a wound on his left shoulder, just below his officer tabs and a pin in the shape of a rose.
“Damn it all,” the General says, and then, “We can’t stay. What will you do?”
“Stay with my men,” the captain says, drawing his pistol. “And if I happen to cover your retreat, then that’s just happenstance.” His smile looks more like a grimace, but the heart of it is there.
The General nods. He kisses the captain on the cheek. “Be careful,” he whispers.
“I will. Now go.”
They leave the captain behind to run after the others. Another explosion rocks the street, and the staccato of gunfire rises, as more fighters join the battle. Pelting down the alley, Hallon sees Karam waiting at an open door. He ushers them inside, through a small kitchen, a living room, and into the central hallway. Families stare wide eyed at the unexpected guests.
Hallon takes stock. The General, Rahima, Safi, and Wahid. All the Standing Goat’s residents are here and uninjured. Lady Barmaki has her children and two servants—the Steward Khem and a Red named Nabil. As a whole, their eyes are shiny with fear and adrenaline, but no one is panicked or panicking. The feeling inside Hallon eases. She’d found what she needed to find.
Khem hands Lady Barmaki a leather belt with two holstered pistols. She offers one to Rahima, who refuses with a quick shake of her head. The children also have pistols, one each. The General is unarmed, but Wahid has his kitchen knives, and Safi has his sabre at his side.
“You brought your sword?” Hallon can’t help asking.
Safi grits his teeth. “It’s what I have. Did you find Milo?”
“He wasn’t at the factory,” Hallon says. “What are you all doing here?”
Rahima looks at her like she’s an idiot. “We came for you. Do you even realize how long you’ve been gone?”
Wahid puts a hand on Rahima’s shoulder. “We’ve found her, and that’s enough.”
“But what will we do about Milo?” Safi asks. “We can’t leave him behind.”
“You’re leaving?” Hallon asks.
“Some olds friends from the Army came to visit. They said that No Town will soon be a place that is not good to be.” The General holds up a hand to stall Hallon’s question. “They did not know the details—only that there are whispers of a secret project bearing strange fruit.”
“So we’re leaving the Goat,” Safi says.
“It’s just a place,” Rahima says. “The people are what matter.”
“I’m taking them in,” Lady Barmaki says. “You and Milo included. It’s the least I can do.”
“But you can’t,” Karam says.
Lady Barmaki raises an eyebrow. “And why not?”
“Siloxin,” Hallon says.
“It’s a secret,” Karam says, grabbing her arm. “You can’t say anything. They’ll try to stop—”
“We have to tell them,” Hallon says, “because that’s exactly what we’re going to do: stop the Scholar.”
###
“We have to stop the Scholar,” Milo says.
“That’s what we’re aiming to do, sweetie.”
“But how?”
“Well, I haven’t seen that far ahead,” Noor says, “but you’re involved. You, Hallon, and that rascal the General.”
She directs him into another ruined building, through a rubble-strewn room towards a break in the wall opposite the door. They squeeze through to find themselves in a tunnel that’s recently been widened. Noor taps him on his left shoulder, and he heads that way.
The passage opens into a room. In the center is a fire pit with sleeping mats arranged in a circle around it. Art made from charcoal covers the walls. On one side, a group of figures dances around a fire. On another, Milo recognizes Saket, larger than life, his wings spread wide enough to enclose the whole city of Dawrtaine. The people who made the art are gone though, and the fire pit is cold.
Corridors lead away in two directions. “Left again,” Noor says.
The way zig zags through buildings, streets, and tunnels—it’s a maze, and he’s the rabbit running it—but Noor knows where she’s going. He’s exhausted, his back aches, his arms and legs are tired, but he follows her directions. At the end, somewhere, is Hallon. Noor promised, and she’s never broken a promise to Milo before.
Ahead, a light bobs up and down. Noor whispers, “This is where it gets tricky. That’s a group of Silent. Put out the lantern and follow them. There’ll be another group behind us soon, so we need to stay between them where it’s dark. Understand?”
Of course not, how could anything about this situation make sense? But Milo nods anyway. It takes all the courage he has to snuff out the lantern’s flame. The area around him turns pitch black, with only the spark ahead to guide him. Fear. The animal that is his fear rises, but he keeps walking, one step at a time, across the uneven floor littered with debris. Towards Hallon.
His breathing, Noor’s breathing, his heart beating—they sound loud in his ears, while the Silent don’t make any noise at all. Their light moves in and out of view as the tunnel turns and straightens. There are five of them, and they carry two large weapons in addition to their rifles.
One of the Silent scoops up a rock and taps on the wall. The clicks and clacks echo through the tunnel. A response comes from behind—the second group of Silent that Noor had cautioned about. The fear wants to get away from Milo and run gibbering through the tunnel, but he clamps down on it. All he can do is try his best to stay equidistant between the two groups.
The tunnel continues for another two hundred yards before opening onto a room where the first group of Silent put down their weapons to wait. Milo is thirty yards from the room before Noor taps him on the shoulder. “There should be a door on the right,” she whispers.
Milo inches forward with his hands on the wall. In the room ahead, the Silent prepare to go up a ladder leading to a metal hatch in the ceiling. One of them eats a meat bun. Milo can smell the yeast and cumin. He feels along the wall, up and down, but there are no exits other than ways forward and back. Noor grips his shirt.
Any closer, and Milo will step into the light cast by the Silent’s lantern. Could the door have been on the left? Milo doubles back on the other side of the tunnel. Meanwhile, the Silent are done waiting. They open the hatch, and a light appears at the top of the ladder. More Silent are gathered there. Estimating the trailing group’s speed, Milo has twenty-two seconds before he and Noor become visible. He pats the wall, moving as quickly as he can, as quietly as he can.
At ten seconds, he goes back to the right side, checking near the ground in case the door is lower than he expected. He squats while balancing Noor on his back.
At five seconds, he feels the outline of a door near his calves.
At four, his fingers find nothing but stone.
Three seconds. The door is a remnant from the city’s ancient history, and rubble blocks the way. It’s a door in name only.
Two seconds. Noor whispers to herself. “Silly woman. You should’ve known better than to bet on a dream.”
One.
Comments
3seed
It makes me so happy to hear that his worked as intended. :)
Alexander Dupree
You.... YOU.... HORRIBLE AND GLORIOUS AUTHOR. OK so I'm completely enthralled. The tension swapping between the storylines is awesome. Well done. Keeping the tension up and the parallels between them with the dialog is great.
