The Legion of Flame Read online

  She said nothing, fidgeting and glancing at the tunnel that led to the outlet near the docks.

  “How long since they left?” Sirus asked her.

  “Hours ago. Haven’t heard anything, could be a good sign.”

  “Or they’re all dead.”

  He saw her face bunch in frustration as she battled to contain an outburst. “There’s nothing here!” she exploded finally, water sloshing as she stamped her foot. “You wanna stay and starve amongst shit, then fine! I’m going!”

  With that she turned and disappeared into the tunnel. Sirus cast a glance back at the shaft and its eighty-foot drop, gave a tired curse then ran after her.

  The outlet ended at the western slip-way, affording a view of the harbour where Sirus was greatly surprised to find at least twenty vessels still at anchor, though he could see no sign of any crew. Some of the ships bore signs of damage or burning but for the most part had been left intact. Beyond the ships the tenements that stood atop the great harbour wall were a ruin, some destroyed down to their foundations, others roofless and burnt so that the whole edifice resembled a blackened saw-blade. Sirus found the complete absence of any sound save the faint keening of gulls more troubling than the absence of people. He motioned for Katrya to stay put then inched closer to the opening, darting his head out for a quick glance in all directions. Nothing, just silent docks and, due he supposed to the drakes’ appetites, no bodies. He paused then took another longer look, concentrating on the sky this time and finding only patchy cloud.

  “Told you,” Katrya said, giving him a hard nudge in the ribs. “They’ve all gone. Ages ago, prob’ly. We’ve been starving for weeks for no reason.”

  “Wait,” Sirus said, reaching for her arm as she stepped free of the pipe, face raised and eyes closed as she bathed in the sunlight.

  “Get off!” She shook herself free and trotted out of reach. “I’m going to find something to eat. You coming or not?”

  Sirus watched her march determinedly towards the nearest warehouse then ran to catch up, all the while casting repeated glances at the sky, one hand on the knife in his belt. The warehouse was mostly empty apart from a few crates stacked in a corner of the cavernous interior. Katrya gave voice to some protracted profanity when Sirus used the knife to lever off the lids to reveal only crockery. They moved from one warehouse to another until they finally uncovered some food, a shipment of fruit preserved in brandy.

  “Slowly,” Sirus cautioned as Katrya gulped down half a jar of tangerines. “Too much at once and you’ll make yourself sick.” She just stuck her tongue out at him and kept eating. In the event it was the brandy that had more of an effect than the fruit and Sirus was obliged to half carry her to the quayside, a sack full of jars slung over his shoulder.

  “My Auntie Sal lived there,” Katrya slurred, gazing at the ruined tenements.

  Sirus’s gaze roamed the wharf until he found the smallest craft, a fishing-boat about a dozen feet long with a single narrow stack rising from its guard-box-sized wheel-house. He had no experience of piloting a vessel and reckoned the smaller the better.

  “Shouldn’t we find the others?” Katrya enquired as Sirus led her to the boat. He didn’t answer, feeling the weight of the silence more heavily with every passing second. All his instincts led to one conclusion; they had to get away from here, and soon.

  “What about the door?” Katrya pressed as he threw the sack onto the boat and used a mooring rope to pull it closer to the quayside. Sirus raised his gaze to the great door positioned in the centre of the harbour wall. From the level of detritus and algae building up where the metal met the water it was clear it hadn’t been raised in weeks.

  “We’ll just have to fire up the engines,” he said, nodding at the wheel-houses on either side of the door. “I’ve seen it done, once. My father took me to . . .”

  He trailed off as he saw the expression on her face, wide-eyed and pale, staring fixedly at something that had banished her drunkenness in an instant. Fighting a sudden paralysing dread, Sirus pulled the knife from his belt and followed her gaze.

  The drake sat atop a near by goods cart, head cocked at an angle as it regarded them with a curious gaze, its tail coiling idly like a somnolent snake. Two very salient observations immediately sprang to Sirus’s mind. Firstly, the drake’s size. It was far smaller than any he had seen before, little bigger in fact than an average-sized dog, forcing him to conclude it must be an infant. Second was its colour. Not Black, not Green, not Red. This drake was entirely White.

  The drake stared at them both for a long moment and they stared back. Sirus would later consider that they might have gone on staring at each other forever if Katrya hadn’t voiced a small, terrified whimper. The drake started at the sound, tail thrashing and wings spreading as it opened its mouth to issue a plaintive screech. The cry echoed around the docks and through the empty streets beyond, a clear clarion call.

  “Have to shut it up!” he said, starting forward, knife at the ready. The drake’s cries redoubled in intensity and volume as he came closer, causing it to hop down from the cart and scuttle away, casting baleful glances at him as it did so, like a spiteful child fleeing a bully. Enraged by its continued screeching Sirus charged towards it, deaf to the warning Katrya screamed after him.

  The drake had begun to clamber up a warehouse wall by the time he got to it, claws scrabbling at the stone, screeching all the while. It bared small, needle-sharp teeth at him, hissing as he drew the knife back, all the horror and suffering he had endured adding strength to his arm. You did this!

  Something looped around his neck and pulled tight, jerking him off his feet an instant before the knife would have pierced the drake’s hide. He found himself dragged backwards across the flagstones, trying vainly to suck air into a constricted throat. He could hear Katrya screaming and lashed out with the knife, the blade finding no purchase before something hard cracked against his wrist and the weapon fell from his grip. Hands closed on him, seizing his limbs and head, pressing him down with unyielding force. Faces loomed above him, spined and deformed silhouettes against the sky. Spoiled.

  Knowing death to be imminent, Sirus tried to spit his defiance at them but the cord about his neck permitted no sound. As one the faces loomed closer and he was flipped onto his stomach, impossibly strong hands bound his wrists with more cord before he was jerked to his feet. He staggered, gasping for breath, finding that the cord about his neck had been loosened slightly. He was able to make out his captors now, a dozen or so, clad in a variety of garb that indicated different tribal origins, though he doubted that would make much difference to his eventual fate. Should have risked the drop, he thought.

  His gaze paused on one of the Spoiled, marked out by his clothing, fabric instead of leather or coarse woven hemp. Looking closer Sirus saw it to be the ragged and besmirched tunic of a Corvantine infantryman. He assumed it must have been looted from the bodies of the slaughtered garrison, then he saw the face of the wearer. This one’s deformities were not so pronounced as the others, the scales about his eyes and mouth barely noticeable and the ridge on his forehead scarcely more than a series of small bumps in the flesh. Also, his eyes, black slits in yellow orbs, regarded Sirus with a clear expression of recognition.

  “Majack?” Sirus said.

  The Spoiled gave a short nod before he and his companions stiffened in response to another cry, not the screech of the infant but something far deeper and more commanding. They raised their gaze to the sky as a very large shadow descended. A Black? Sirus wondered, squinting upwards as the shadow obscured the sun. The notion died when he saw that this drake had a wing-span greater than any drake known to science, but it did match one known to legend.

  CHAPTER 2

  Lizanne

  She was dreaming of the evacuation again when the noise of her father’s latest invention woke her. She bobbed in the chilly swell as the Blue rose above her, wa
ter cascading from its coils, eyes bright with malicious intent as it lowered its gaze to regard her as one might regard an easily caught fish, and spoke, “Can’t you make him stop? Just for a few hours.”

  She groaned, blinking bleary eyes until the drake’s visage transformed into the red-eyed, tousled-haired and annoyed face of Major Arberus. She grimaced, shaking her head and sinking back into the bed-clothes. “He’s your father,” Arberus went on.

  “And you’re a guest in his home,” she replied, closing her eyes and turning away. “If he has one principal occupation in life it’s in the generation of noise. If you could bottle it and sell it we would have been a much richer family.”

  Whatever retort Arberus began to voice was drowned out by a fresh upsurge of rhythmic thumping from downstairs. Lizanne bit down a curse and opened an eye to view the clock on the bedside table. Fifteen minutes past ten, and she had a very important meeting at twelve.

  “Go on,” she said, nudging Arberus’s naked form with her foot. “Back to your own room, if you please. Appearances must be maintained.”

  “Surely he knows by now. Your aunt certainly does.”

  “Of course she knows, and so does he. It’s a matter of respect. Now”—she gave a more insistent shove—“go!”

  She felt the mattress bounce as he got out of bed, hearing the rustle of hastily donned clothes. She heard the click of the latch then a pause as he hesitated at the door. “You don’t have to go,” he said. “It’s not as if you owe them anything, after all.”

  “I have a contract,” she reminded him. “I like to think that still means something in this world.”

  She turned onto her back as he slipped out, less quietly than she would have liked, and stared up at the ceiling. It was decorated with a spiral pattern made up of birds and dragon-flies, her aunt’s work. The colours were a little faded now but the swirling mass of flying creatures remained mostly unchanged from childhood. She would stare up at them every morning in the days before the Blood-lot saw her shipped off to the Academy. The notion stirred memories of Madame Bondersil and the lingering pain of her betrayal. She had a contract too.

  • • •

  She found Tekela at the kitchen table eating an oversized breakfast under Aunt Pendilla’s supervision. “Not healthy for a girl your age to be so thin,” Pendilla said, pouring tea and nodding at a plate of buttered bread. “Eat up now. Never catch a husband looking like a stick.”

  “I don’t want a husband,” Tekela responded in her now-near-perfect Mandinorian. “Lizanne appears to get along perfectly well without one. And so, I notice, do you, Miss Cableford.”

  Seeing her aunt’s face darken, Lizanne moved quickly to relieve her of the tea-pot. “Allow me, Auntie.”

  “This girl is of too sharp a tongue for her own good,” Pendilla stated.

  “An observation you are not the first to make.” Lizanne sat down next to Tekela and poured herself some tea as Pendilla disappeared into the larder.

  “She’s obsessed with making me eat,” Tekela murmured. “It’s unnerving.”

  “She’s obsessed with making everyone eat,” Lizanne returned. “Something many in the incomers’ camp would appreciate. I’m sure I could find one who would be willing to swap places with you.”

  A slight vestige of her old pout came to Tekela’s lips before she caught herself and returned to her breakfast with renewed enthusiasm. “Wasn’t complaining.”

  Lizanne sipped her tea and winced as a fresh round of thumping came from the direction of the workshop. It continued for about thirty seconds before stuttering to a clanking halt. “I see they still haven’t fixed it,” she observed.

  “Jermayah says it’s the intake valve,” Tekela said. “The Professor says the combustion chamber.”

  “Which means they’ll be tinkering with the bloody thing for weeks to come whilst more pressing work remains incomplete.”

  “We’re keeping up with orders,” Tekela pointed out. “Producing up to six Thumpers a week now. I believe I could probably assemble one myself without assistance, if anyone would let me. I think I have a way to do it faster too.”

  Lizanne hesitated before telling her to stick to their established piecemeal manufacturing methods. The three weeks since their rag-tag refugee fleet arrived in Feros had taught her that a bored Tekela was a very trying Tekela. “You can demonstrate when I return this afternoon,” she said, moving back as Aunt Pendilla returned to set a heavily laden plate before her. “Thank you, Auntie.”

  “You’re wearing that, are you?” Pendilla asked, her somewhat critical gaze playing over Lizanne’s rather plain dress of light blue fabric adorned only with a shareholder’s pin on the bodice. “It hardly reflects your current status.”

  Current status? Lizanne had puzzled over this particular question since stepping onto the Feros quayside. What was she now exactly? A hero to many. The saviour of the Carvenport Thousands to some. The refugees still called her Miss Blood, showing a sometimes annoying deference in her presence, as if the authority she wielded in fending off the drake and Spoiled assault still held true. In fact, whatever titles or respect they chose to bestow upon her she was officially a suspended agent of the Ironship Exceptional Initiatives Division, an agent currently awaiting the findings of a Board-sanctioned inquiry.

  “Sober dress is expected at Board meetings,” she told her aunt, glancing at the clock above the range. An hour to go, and it would be best not to be late.

  “Good morning, Major,” Pendilla greeted Arberus with a bright smile as he descended the stairs. She bustled over to pull a chair out for him. Lizanne had noticed before how her aunt tended to do her best bustling around the major. Lizanne assumed Pendilla was worried Arberus would decide to take himself off without marrying her ruined niece first. Both her aunt and her father retained some tiresomely outdated notions.

  “You do look smart today,” Pendilla said, patting the shoulder of the overly expensive suit Arberus had insisted on buying to replace his tattered cavalryman’s uniform. Lizanne often thought it strange that a man of fierce egalitarian convictions should care so much about appearance. “Doesn’t the major look smart, ladies?”

  “Green suited you better,” Tekela muttered around a mouthful of bacon.

  “I thought I should make the effort.” Arberus forced a smile at the veritable mountain of food Pendilla placed before him. Unlike Tekela, he retained a strong Corvantine accent, though his syntax was flawless. “It’s not every day a man steps into the lair of the corporatist cabal, after all.”

  “You’re staying here,” Lizanne told him, glancing at Tekela. “The contingency.”

  She saw him about to protest before a grimace of reluctant acceptance showed on his face. Their contingency consisted of a bag filled with all the Ironship scrip and exchange notes they could spare, plus a pair of revolvers. There was also a sympathetic Independent ship’s captain in the harbour willing to take them to a friendly port. “You think it might be necessary?” he asked. “The entire expatriate Carvenport population will riot if they lay a hand on you.”

  “Desperation may force them to extreme measures.” Lizanne reached for the toast. “I must confess I haven’t the faintest idea of how this day will turn out. But, if there’s one lesson we learned in Arradsia, it’s the value of contingency.” She buttered the toast and took a sizable bite. “There are two Exceptional Initiatives agents in the house opposite and another two playing the role of vagrants in the alley behind the workshop. I believe only one is Blood-blessed, a woman posing as one of the vagrants. If I fail to return by six o’clock and the agents at the front make themselves visible it means I’ve been arrested. You’ll need to kill the Blood-blessed first. Jermayah’s prototype portable Growler should suffice for the task. Assuming the refugees oblige us with a riot, it will provide sufficient cover to make it to the docks.”

  She finished her toast and glanced at
the clock once more. “Forgive me, Auntie,” she said, rising from the table. “It appears I shan’t have time to finish breakfast.”

  “Don’t you want to see your father before you go?”

  Lizanne looked at the door to the workshop, hearing the rising pitch of voices as her father and Jermayah commenced yet another argument. “As ever, he appears to be preoccupied with more important things.”

  • • •

  Although the Ironship Trading Syndicate had never been overly fond of ostentation in its architecture the early Board members had felt compelled to make an exception for their Feros Headquarters. The building stood five stories tall and had a castle-like appearance, being formed of four corner towers linked by recessed walls. The archaic impression was alleviated by the many tall glass windows behind which countless clerks, lawyers and accountants laboured to maintain the bureaucratic machinery of the world’s largest corporation. Lizanne’s visits here had been infrequent over the years, the nature of her employment requiring that she minimise any risk of identification by agents from the Corvantine Empire or one of the syndicate’s many competitors. Of course, such concerns were now largely irrelevant. She was, after all, quite famous.

  Before making her way to the main entrance Lizanne took time to note the building’s enhanced defences; Thumper and Growler batteries placed on the towers and also the roof-tops of surrounding ancillary offices. Despite Arradsia being a considerable distance away it seemed the Board had not been entirely deaf to the warnings contained in her initial report.

  Normally she would have been required to report to the main desk and spend a tedious half-hour pacing the foyer before being granted entry. Today, however, things were very different. Two Protectorate officers, both with side-arms, met her as soon as she stepped through the revolving door and she was conveyed to the Board’s private, steam-powered elevator after only the most cursory greeting. They made the journey to the Board-Room in total silence and Lizanne took care to note the pale patches of skin on the hands of her two escorts, the legacy of the Blood-lot. The Board, it appeared, were unwilling to take any chances today.