Chapter 50 A Song of Trust
A Song of Trust
“Open fire!” Carr screams.
In one move, Orran clashes their shield into the floor and sweeps Sascia behind it. Its hard gemstone surface vibrates with bullets and nova-light blasts. Orran crouches low, their face close to hers.
“Hello there,” the aesin says. A dangerous smile draws on his lips, one that she imagines the fiercest warrior in the Jagged Blade might often wear in battle. “I had a feeling I would see you again. I was the only one unsurprised when the itka appeared to rally us up.”
Mooch happily flaps its wings against her cheek.
Orran folds his fingers around her hand, where she is still gripping the hilt of her nova-sword. “Go get our prince, will you? We can handle the rest.”
They move before she has time to process their command. The battalion steps as one against the onslaught of fired shots, their shields interlocked to form an impenetrable barricade. Aesin stride around Sascia, more and more of them flowing out of the Darkgate.
Sascia’s palms are slick with sweat. She stands on shaking legs and surveys the scene: the humans are raining bullets and nova-blasts on the shield formation.
Every few seconds, the battalion’s defense parts to allow the archers to shoot their arrows.
Human soldiers drop here and there, aesin crumble to the ground around their comrades’ feet.
Thalla has remained by Sascia, firing arrow after arrow on the nova-light panels. Glass rains down all around the silo, enfolding the space in the sharp sound of shattering.
“I’ll cover you,” Thalla bellows. “Go!”
Sascia launches through the soldiers locked in battle, jumping over fallen weapons and bodies, ducking beneath wings and blasts of light. In the center of the room, Nugau is on his knees. His fists are braced against the floor, trembling with the force of keeping him upright.
A body slams into her, knocking her off-kilter.
The soldier, a human, casts her a panicked look, but before they can aim their gun at an approaching aesin, Sascia kicks it out of their hand.
The aesin pauses, scowling at her over bared fangs—it’s one of the council’s lackeys, Sascia realizes, who mobbed her on her first day in the dining tunnel.
“Traitor,” they hiss. “Killer.”
“I didn’t kill your queen!” Sascia cries over the ruckus. “Her killer is the same human who kidnapped your prince and has bound him here to fuel the gate.” She points to the nova-cannon at the end of the room. “You want to avenge your queen? Destroy the cannon. Destroy all their guns.”
The aesin’s eyes fasten on the display of firepower across the silo.
The urge to distrust Sascia seems to be rooting them to the spot, but then Mooch darts out to land prettily on their nose.
The aesin drinks in the presence of the holy itka.
Something within them changes. Blue flames flare around their fists.
When Mooch drifts toward the cannon, the aesin breaks into a sprint after it, calling others to join them.
Sascia takes off in the opposite direction.
Amid the fray of soldiers locked in combat, Nugau is a bundle of shivering limbs.
She slips to her knees by his side and traces the ridges of his back.
His flesh is raw around the circular plugs rammed into his spine.
Tubes protrude from them; his power oozes out in a trickle of pure Dark.
Both plugs and tubes are hot to the touch, singeing Sascia’s fingertips.
She needs to cut them.
“Nugau, can you hear me?” she says as she raises the nova-sword over her head. “I need to get you free. Brace yourself—”
Pain tears through her arm. The force of the shot throws her sideways to the floor. A scream bursts out of her. Ksenya’s white T-shirt is stained red where the bullet tore through Sascia’s bicep.
A few feet away, Professor Carr lowers his gun. His expression is unreadable no longer: his brows are stitched with barely contained fury. His voice rings over gunshots and the grinding of metal. “Will you never learn, you stupid, stupid girl?”
But Sascia is made of courage, of passion, of perseverance. Carr is no match for her.
“I guess not!” she screams, taking great joy in being obstinate one last time, because the bastard shot her, he really shot her, but he didn’t think to aim for her sword-wielding arm.
She throws all her strength into it and just flings the sword straight at him.
The blade soars through the air and buries itself deep in Professor Carr’s shoulder—not the part of its tip that is made of light, but the frame beneath that is a razor-sharp thin blade.
Blood drips from the blade, painted a shimmering pink against the power of the nova-light.
Carr blinks once, twice, then collapses against the shattered walls of the nova-cage.
Cradling her injured arm to her side, Sascia walks over to where he’s propping himself up.
His glasses are cracked, his lip is quivering, but she doesn’t care.
She steels a boot against his torso and wrenches the sword from his body.
He cries out, a gargle of curses that Sascia barely hears—she’s already walking back to Nugau, raising the sword high over his back.
She brings it down on the tubes.
Plastic shatters, black tar seeps out, and Nugau heaves a shuddering breath.
Sascia is already there, her good arm around his waist, and she helps him stand.
He tilts but doesn’t fall. Beneath the curtain of his bangs, his eyes are hooded and unfocused, as though he is a breath away from unconsciousness.
“We need to get you back to Itkalin,” she whispers. “Orran! Thalla!”
But she can’t even spot her friends in the throng. The lines between the aesin battalion and the human soldiers have been erased. A mass of wrestling bodies and clashing weapons lies before Sascia, any identity the soldiers might have now concealed behind armor, weapons, and war cries.
“Mooch!” she calls, but the itka is on the other side of the silo, helping the aesin hack the nova-cannon into pieces.
She is alone. She is not afraid.
She never quite figured out the soron mola, the itka’s true purpose, but she has purpose enough of her own: she’s going to get Nugau to safety, to the Darkgate on the other side of the silo, and into the Dark.
Fabric tears as she shreds the bottom of her T-shirt into a makeshift bandage to wrap around her bleeding bicep.
She places Nugau’s arm over her shoulders and takes a few steps, testing her strength; when she’s certain she won’t collapse beneath Nugau’s weight, she shoves the nova-sword into a loop of her jeans and picks up an abandoned onyx shield.
A strangled cry tears through her teeth as she props the shield before them with her injured arm, but she doesn’t stop—she can’t stop, not with Nugau’s back bleeding against her arm, with his head lolling against her shoulder.
She starts walking, a straight line to the Darkgate.
Bodies are locked in battle around her, barely sparing her a glance, but the errant bullets are too dangerous.
Twice already, shots have bounced off the shield.
She’s almost in the middle, where the fight is thickest, when a human soldier notices her.
“Hey!” he cries, shoving his opponent off him and striding in her direction. “Stop!”
He reaches to his waist for his pistol—
A deep pang rattles his skull. He drops like a stone. Behind him stands Tae, gripping the thickly rugged military tablet he just used to knock the guy out. He grabs an abandoned shield and rushes to flank Sascia and Nugau’s backs, screaming all the while, “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!”
They begin moving again almost compulsively, because standing still amid the blasts of magic and bullets around them is by far the worst choice.
They make slow progress through the throng, but they’re safe behind their shields.
They would be moving faster if Tae would just drop the tablet and pick up Nugau’s other arm instead.
“Tae,” Sascia cries out, “get rid of the damn tablet and help me!”
“I can’t,” he shouts back, turning the tablet’s screen toward her.
It shows the scene unfolding around them, with a red dot blinking at the top right corner—he’s recording this?
“They jammed our signal, but they didn’t jam their own.
I hid in a closet while the soldiers looked for me and I hacked this tablet to call Crow, who told me to come here, to record, to get proof.
She’s broadcasting this live to every social media she could access.
CNN picked up the feed just a few minutes ago. ”
A message appears on the screen. Sascia can’t focus enough to read it, but Tae can. “BBC, too, apparently, and Al Jazeera and CNC World. Crow says she’s estimating ten minutes before this place is flooded with Chapter XI agents and the military.”
“And who are they coming to help?” Sascia gasps out.
Her gaze locks with Tae’s. It doesn’t matter whether they’re coming to help Carr’s mercenaries or the aesin battalion.
They’ll still barge in here, guns a-blazing, to get things under control first and ask questions later, and meanwhile, the two armies will keep fighting, keep dying, and Nugau will bleed and bleed—
“Screw that,” Sascia says. “Screw all of this.”
She drops her shield, hands Nugau’s frail body to Tae, and calls.
It is soundless, her call, and yet it vibrates in her throat, fills her mouth, and unleashes itself, ringing like a tidal wave across the space.