2. Welcome to Gateway
WELCOME TO GATEWAY
TALIA
Within ten years, flux had made people rich beyond reason and transformed backwaters like Gateway into true cities. Few questioned where it came from or what it cost. There was simply too much money to be made.
The smell hit her first, a mix of sawdust, brine, and bodies.
Beneath it, the metallic tang of flux generators working overtime.
Dockhands shouted, cranes groaned, children darted through the crowd with open hands.
Gateway struck Talia as the sort of place where anyone could show up with a new name and an interesting story, and no one would care if either was true. A city for fresh starts.
She ran down the gangplank. Seventeen days on that cramped ship had left her itching to move. Holloway would track her down eventually. He always did. But if she slipped into this crowd, maybe she could be someone new first. Just for a little while.
The gangplank flexed under her feet, and she looked back to see Riven with a valise in each hand.
She hopped down onto the dock and gasped when the press of bodies didn’t make space for her.
An elbow dug into her side. Someone’s shoulder slammed into hers.
Hands tugged at her jacket, and she pulled her battered leather satchel to her chest, curling her fingers around the buckle.
“Spare a coin, miss?” A pair of dark eyes stared up at her from beneath a pile of curls. It was a child, their tiny fingers outstretched.
Before she could answer, Riven shouldered past and dropped her luggage with a crash. The child’s eyes went big, and they melted back into the street.
He stood out on the crowded pier. A head taller than Talia, who was taller than most men. Broad as a doorframe. His unusually fair hair—very pale blond, like his beard—was tied back, his expression unreadable.
“Stay close.” The crowd broke around him, and suddenly she could breathe. “This isn’t Vaelis.”
Perfect. He was already treating her like a child. But technically, wasn’t she his employer? She forced a smile.
“Thank you for the escort,” she said, reaching for the tone her grandmother used with staff. “I’ll manage from here. You can go.”
“No,” he said simply. “Do you have the address?”
He held out a hand. She hesitated, then fished the fellowship acceptance letter out of her satchel. His eyes fell to the page. She took one step back, watching his face as he read. She took another step back, but his eyes stayed fixed on the paper.
A gap opened between a man with a wide-brimmed hat and some kind of blue-robed priest. I’ll find a way to collect my luggage later, she decided as she slipped between them into the crowd.
The docks had crowded her, but the street swallowed her whole. Bodies pressed in, reeking of sweat. Mud sucked at her boots. A crane swung overhead, gears sputtering as it strained under its load. She wrestled a notebook and pencil out of her satchel, jotting in the margin: flux power everywhere!
She made it maybe twenty paces before a hand landed heavy on her shoulder.
“Nice try, boss.”
Riven towered over her as he plucked the notebook from her fingers, marked the page, and snapped it shut. He steered her out of the current of bodies and handcarts and into a narrow corridor between a warehouse and a flux transformer. It hummed so loud her teeth buzzed.
“I’m perfectly capable—”
“Of getting yourself crushed. I can see that.” He handed back the notebook. “Consortium is at Fourth and Fuller. Let’s go.”
She wasn’t sure what to say. She’d barely left the Upper City before this voyage. Could she even find the address on her own?
“Where’s my luggage?”
His hand found the small of her back. “I sent it on ahead. Stay close.”
They pushed into the next street, and Gateway shifted into new colors and shapes, like the turn of a kaleidoscope.
Half-finished buildings climbed between colorful market stalls and teetering stacks of crates.
In one storefront display, clear bowls overflowed with blue crystals that appeared to be charged with flux.
Wooden poles rose up at regular intervals with wires strung between them, and atop each pole was some kind of lantern. Back home, flux was rationed. Here, it lit every street corner.
She wanted to look at the window display, but movement yanked her attention back to the square. A massive wooden cart careened into view, an iron cage strapped to the top. As the cage rocked and tipped, a metallic groan echoed from the vehicle.
The crowd shifted like a wave, and voices rose to shouts, solidified into warnings. Talia pushed forward instead of back, craning her neck to see what was inside. The crowd peeled apart, and something pressed against the cage bars.
Her first impression was of a giant insect.
Mirrored eyes caught every flicker of light.
Mandibles clacked like misfiring gears. The spined neck led to a catlike body with a long, whiplike tail.
Veins under its hide pulsed with blue light.
Insect, panther, monster. Words slid through her mind, but none of them fit.
Riven’s arm locked around her waist, and he hauled her back, her bootheels dragging lines in the dirt.
The cart roared into the space she’d just been standing, so close her skirts whipped sideways.
The world seemed to slow as the cage passed in front of her face.
The mirrored eyes locked on hers, and Talia saw herself reflected as it saw her. Small and vulnerable. Prey.
A keening scream tore out from behind clashing mandibles, rolling into a pattern that sounded almost like words. The creature hurled its full body against the bars. Once. Twice. Three times. Metal whined under the strain.
The bars held. The wooden cart beneath it wasn’t so strong, and it folded. Wheels buckled. The axle snapped, and the cage slid back off the broken platform, slamming into hard-packed dirt with enough force to crack the door open.
The monster flattened itself between the bars and scrambled to its feet.
A scream climbed Talia’s throat, but she pressed her lips together so only a strangled hum came out.
Riven stepped between her and the chaos.
She wasn’t a small person, but he lifted her from the waist and spun her away from the street as if she weighed nothing.
He set her back down behind a wall of crates and pressed cold metal into her palm—a gold-plated revolver with Starscript etched along the barrel.
Undoubtedly a relic. In her panic, Talia’s only thought was how pretty it was.
“Stay here,” he said, voice calm. “Use this only if you must. Do not run. The ruthopanth will chase.”
Ruthopanth. She didn’t know that word. Was it Starscript? A few Starscript roots could fit. Rothma meant “shadow” or “darkness.” Ruthei meant “untamed” or “wild.”
Her brain chased the puzzle as she crouched behind the crates. Language made logical sense, even when the world around her didn’t. She had heard rumors of monsters in Valta, but this was something else—
Then Riven drew his swords, and she gasped out loud, losing her train of thought. He held two long blades made of some kind of silver metal, with crystalline cores that pulsed blue. As the blades cleared their sheaths, they hummed low like a swarm of bees.
He moved too fast to follow. The monster lunged, and Riven was already sidestepping, lowering a blade to catch it in the side.
Dark fluid seeped from the wound, and it recoiled with a howl.
The flux street lamps overhead flickered to life, guttered, flared blue sparks, and shattered, like they’d been overloaded.
The square had largely emptied, but not everyone had made it out. The cart’s driver lay pinned in the wreckage.
The wounded creature circled once, darted in, and yanked him out with its mandibles. Flipping its head, it tore the man apart. Bits of bone and flesh sprayed.
That’s when she noticed the children huddled behind a market stall.
Where are the enforcers? Is anybody coming?
Her gaze locked on the children, a girl clutching two smaller boys. The monster hadn’t noticed them yet, but it only had to turn.
It’s just me. Curse all the gods.
She raised the revolver and pulled back on the trigger. It clicked harmlessly, and she screamed in frustration.
Riven had circled behind the ruined cart. Now he stepped back into view, engaging the ruthopanth. His silk shirt was torn. Blood and ichor ran down one arm, red and black, but his steps were even. He’s fine, right? He has to be okay.
She couldn’t work the gun, and there was no clean shot now. She dropped the relic and edged closer to the children, flinching as broken glass crunched under her boots.
A generator behind the monster sizzled, blue sparks cascading from damaged coils. It didn’t look so different from the flux conduits at her grandmother’s manor. Shouldn’t the principles be the same? If she could just close the circuit, maybe she could get it to overload like the street lamps had.
She reached down and grabbed a piece of shredded lamppost. It felt like metal in her hand. Let’s hope it’s conductive. She lifted it and threw as hard as she could.
The shard twisted through the air before striking the generator, and energy exploded outward in a crackling arc of blue light.
She grinned. Definitely conductive. A curved bolt struck the monster squarely in the side once, then twice.
The veins under its skin flickered, too, like it was part flux itself.
Now that’s interesting. The creature’s howl sounded like metal on metal, and its head thrashed as it backed away from the generator.
Riven took the opening. He crossed both blades in front of his body, pointing down, and plunged them into the monster’s neck, nearly severing its head. The ruthopanth convulsed and went still.
He paused over the body, exhaled, and tipped his head to each side, cracking his neck.
He wiped each blade on the creature’s corpse, smearing black ichor on its ruined hide like he’d done it a hundred times.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been so eager to shake him off.
She took a steadying breath and approached him.
“You killed it,” Talia said, feeling ridiculous as the words slipped out. Obviously he killed it.
“You helped.” His face was splattered with blood and flux dust, but underneath the mess, he was looking at her differently. Brackets around his mouth hinted at a smile.
Was that a compliment?
A bell clanged somewhere nearby. The noise echoed through the empty streets and faded. The children emerged from their hiding place, glanced around, and took off running.
“What’s that bell about?” Riven called after them.
“Curfew, mister,” the girl yelled back, not stopping. “Best get inside.” The kids slipped down an alley and were gone.
The square stood at the intersection of four streets, and down each of them lights blinked out as doors and shutters slammed.
Talia picked up the revolver from where she’d dropped it in the dirt, sliding it into her satchel as she walked up to Riven’s side. The sun had fallen without her noticing; the streetlights were blown out, windows going dark. She shivered, rubbing her arms.
“We need to get off this street.” Riven’s voice rumbled, all hints of a smile gone.
They cut across the square, weaving through the wreckage of broken carts and spilled fruit. A squeak drew her attention up to a sign swinging on rusted chains: Rooms by the hour. The building leaned sideways against its neighbor, paint flaking, windows pulsing with strange greenish light.
Riven tugged the door open, gesturing for her to go ahead.
The bell tolled again, and Talia flinched.
“This place? Really?” she whispered. Her hands still shook. Blood and mud spotted her skirt, and the revolver weighed heavy in her satchel, still unfired.
“Safer inside than out.”
Talia had barely stepped over the threshold when the door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the bells mid-clang.
Heat and noise engulfed her, and sweat prickled her skin.
On the walls, blue flux lamps buzzed inside green glass bottles, casting everything in sickly turquoise.
Smoke twirled in the air, smelling burned and sour. She coughed.
Riven pressed in behind her, pinned between the closed door and her frozen form.
She mumbled an apology and stepped farther into the room.
A jerky movement caught her eye to the right.
A flash of skin. A woman was straddling someone’s lap in a corner booth, dress pooled around her hips, a man’s fingers clutching her bare thighs.
Talia’s gaze jerked away and landed on a raised platform. A dancer moved with nothing above her waist but jewelry and sweat, coins glinting at her feet. Against the far wall, a man knelt between a woman’s skirts. Suddenly she saw all of it, every corner, every booth. This isn’t an inn.
An emotion—lust—slammed into her chest, thick and suffocating. It wasn’t hers. Desire so raw it burned her fingertips. Anger spiked through her ribs. Fear coiled in her stomach, metallic and cold. Every emotion in the room crashed through her body, one after the other, tangled and relentless.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t sort her own feelings from the onslaught.
Her gift for empathy had only ever been triggered through physical touch, one person at a time. This, whatever this was, was radiating off the entire room like heat from stoked coals.
“Boss?” Riven’s voice came from somewhere far away.
The room spun. Her knees gave out. By every god, what was happening?