WARRIORBORN

A Cinder Spires Novella

Jim Butcher

For Fenris.

You little jerk.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from Podium Publishing.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 by Jim Butcher

Cover design by Alexandre Rito

ISBN: 978-1-0394-5243-5

Published in 2023 by Podium Publishing, ULC

www.podiumaudio.com

Sir Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster, Knight of Albion, newly minted lieutenant of the Spirearch’s Guard, strode into the Spirearch’s garden and into a storm of olfactory sensation. The tall young man managed not to break stride as his brain struggled to sort out the various scents, starting with that of the Spirearch’s valet who walked before him, a slim man whose silver hair and apparent years masked the odor of a much younger-seeming body than appearance would suggest. There was also about him the faint scent of steel, copper, and oil. He bore weapons that had been concealed flawlessly.

Flowers dominated the garden—delicate-looking things in a riot of colors, arranged around a brook that flowed through masonry crafted to look like the naturally rounded stones to be found on the surface. Benedict could sort out the scents of perhaps thirty different strains around him, plus the very faint scent of mildew that was doubtless gathering in the nooks and crannies of the artificial brook’s construction. Lumin crystals had been arranged above the garden to resemble a moon that had been designed to mimic the actual moon’s phases, and a glittering array of stars in their ancient constellations. Water was applied through a misting system in droplets so fine that a faint haze of surface-like mist clung to the garden and glowed in the faintly varied colors of the artificial stars.

The setting made Benedict distinctly uneasy. He had visited the surface twice, briefly, while transferring prisoners to the woodcutting camps. He hadn’t seen anyone be hurt or killed, but he had recognized in the eyes of men and women who knew that they were in constant, deathly peril.

Well, if his Spire’s monarch had chosen his garden to emulate the deadly hell of the surface world, that was certainly none of Benedict’s business.

The valet turned toward Benedict as they walked deeper into the garden. “His Majesty has asked me to inquire as to your assessment of his security arrangements, Sir Benedict.”

Benedict inhaled deeply through his nose and glanced around them. They were inside the grounds of the Spirearch’s Palace—though technically the original Palace now served as the administration offices of the Spirearch’s Council. His Majesty currently resided in what had originally been the complex for Morning University, though that had grown too large for its grounds and had shifted to the previous grounds of the Office of Shipbuilding …

Benedict shook his head back to the moment. It was often difficult to remain focused upon such mundanely human things as conversation when he was paying so much attention to his senses. “I think the façade at the entrance needs repairs if you want to keep the armored panels beneath in good shape. I can smell ironrot there. You had two men at the murder holes there, but neither was warriorborn, so if you have one on staff, you may be wasting him by not putting him at the narrowest choke point, where his physical power is most concentrated and with his senses able to detect potential danger first. Since we entered the garden, we have passed two more concealed guards, both with long guns.”

Benedict scanned around him. The garden was open to the “sky” of the uppermost level of Spire Albion, Habble Morning. It had the grandest open ceiling space of all the Spire, its vaulted roof being nearly a hundred feet above the floor level, and spangled with more lumin crystals, sparkling in various degrees of radiance and filling the place with a generally blue-white, apparently ambient illumination.

“Those two towers there and there should have marksmen with long guns in them,” Benedict continued. He sniffed. “And there are five men ahead. Four of them are warriorborn and have weapons. One of them stinks.”

The valet gave him a steady look for a few paces. He smiled slightly and said nothing.

They passed through a cloud of fine mist, around a profusion of lilacs overflowing with blooms, and came upon a gardener working on a bed of tiny flowers in dazzling variants of white striped with blue and purple. He was covered in dirt and grime, and hand tools were spread out comfortably around him.

“Sire,” said the valet. “Sir Benedict to see you.”

“Excellent,” said the gardener. “One moment, please.” He finished re-seating a tiny plant’s root ball in the soil and began gently kneading it back into place, before rising and brushing his hands briskly together. He was a man perhaps a year or two past his prime, with silver-threaded brown hair, a darker beard, and eyes that saw everything. He’d been working hard enough for sweat to have stained his shirt. The Spirearch of all of Spire Albion was a scholarly artifact of Albion’s history, and seemed to have little that was soft about him.

“Sir Benedict,” said the Spirearch warmly, extending a dirtied hand. “The new uniform agrees with you, Lieutenant. Though I notice you’re not wearing my medal.”

Benedict traded grips with the man. The Spirearch had long, sinewy fingers that bore a number of calluses beneath the grime. “Only for occasions, sire.”

“And why is that?” the Spirearch asked.

The award was one of the highest in all of Albion. And Benedict was warriorborn. Different. Wearing it was like donning a magical cloak within the upper ranks of Morning’s social scene—a cloak that made him so impervious to the usual slights and jibes that they were rarely made. Benedict valued that cloak. He didn’t want to use its magic wastefully. But that was definitely not the sort of thing one said to the Spirearch.

“It makes an excellent target, sire,” he said instead.

The older man held the look and for just a second flashed Benedict a knowing grin.

“Always practical,” the Spirearch said, nodding in approval. He waved a hand at a bench nearby, bidding Benedict accompany him.

They sat, and the Spirearch accepted a mug of water from his valet with a nod of thanks. “I have a mission for you,” the Spirearch said.

“I’m ready,” Benedict replied.

The older man studied Benedict with dark eyes that reflected little. “We’ll see,” he said. “What do you know about Spire Dependence?”

Benedict blinked a few times. “It’s … a seedling colony from Spire Albion. I don’t think they’ve even filled the uppermost habble of their Spire yet. Most of the habbles are bricked closed, unreclaimed. Between three and five hundred residents, perhaps. No fleet to speak of, beyond the port batteries and some armed merchants. They’re a waypoint for tramp traders and ships blown off course.”

“Yes,” the Spirearch said. “A quiet little backwater.” He drained the mug of water and tossed it back to the valet. “I visited once a good while back and left a bag of mine there. I need it retrieved.”

“A bag, sire?”

The Spirearch framed a rectangle with his hands. “About so big. Black leather with no markings.”

“About the size of a diplomatic courier’s case,” Benedict noted.

His Majesty’s eyes sparkled. “I suppose it is.”

Benedict’s head tilted to one side. “There’s no diplomatic office in Dependence. But there is an Aetherium Fleet requisition office.”

“I believe that is precisely where I left my bag,” the Spirearch agreed, smiling.

Benedict nodded once. “So, if diplomatic correspondence is going to that office, it likely means Aetherium Fleet Intelligence is involved.”

The Spirearch lifted both eyebrows, stooped to pick up a nearby trowel, and began brushing the dirt from it with his fingers, making an agreeable and noncommittal noise.

“So, why not send someone from AFI to fetch your bag, sire?”

“What sort of question is that, Lieutenant?” the Spirearch asked, his tone almost merry as he worked on the next flower. “You know how we besotted, old, rich widowers are. Eccentric.”

“There’s a traitor in Intelligence,” Benedict breathed quietly.

“In Spire Albion’s Aetherium Fleet Intelligence?” the Spirearch demanded, his voice shocked. “Lieutenant. I can hardly believe my ears, that a member of My Own Guard would suggest such a thing.”

Benedict looked up sharply. For an instant, the whimsy in the Spirearch’s voice had given way to deep granite, granting capital letters to words that could claim none on their own merits.

“Master Vincent has secured a small team of professionals newly deputized to the Guard,” the Spirearch said, nodding toward the valet.

“Professional bag finders?” Benedict asked lightly.

The Spirearch’s teeth showed. “Precisely. They aren’t, ah, quite as refined as your usual social company.”

“My usual company is Gwendolyn Lancaster, sire,” Benedict shot back. “If they give warning before they open fire, it will be more social grace than I’m accustomed to.”

The Spirearch looked up at his valet with a very bland expression. Master Vincent did not go so far as to roll his eyes at the Spirearch. But his lips pressed together quite firmly.

“I didn’t think that would be an issue,” the Spirearch said. He wiped the trowel clean on his pants leg with slow, gentle motions. “Harold Whitehall is the executive secretary for correspondence at the Aetherium procurement office you mentioned. He has been playing chess with me by letter for thirty years. In his most recent letter, he made a very foolish move. Not like him at all.” He withdrew his hands carefully from the flower. “I was expecting more from him. It did not come through. And our usual channels to signal some sort of problem have been silent.”

“You think your man was compromised,” Benedict said.

“Harold is loyal to Albion,” the Spirearch said simply. “Albion has many enemies. He has my bag. Find him, aid him, and bring it back to me. Speed is of the essence. I have to make decisions, and what’s in that bag will help.”

“And if Whitehall has been killed or turned, sire?”

The Spirearch set the copper-clad steel trowel down with a precise click. “Respond appropriately, according to your discretion. You will answer only to me.”

Benedict felt his eyes widen in sudden shock. “Sire?”

“I have had Sir Vincent blow the dust from a number of history books,” the Spirearch continued. “The laws are centuries old, but they’re still valid. I have appointed you my Laeva.”

Benedict felt his stomach drop out.

Laeva.

The Left Hand of Albion.

The Spirearch’s personal murderer.

Traditionally, back when the Spirearch was a monarch in truth, anyone appointed a Laeva of the Spirearch was free of the constraints of the law. A Laeva could, in theory, strike down the Spirearch himself and not suffer legal penalty for it.

There had never, in Albion’s history, been a warrior-born Laeva.

“You’re freeing me to kill for you,” Benedict said quietly.

The Spirearch bowed his head for a moment. Then he said, “The war that is coming will change the lives of every person in Albion. What’s in that case could determine the course of the war. You must accomplish your task. So yes, Lieutenant, that is precisely what I am doing.” He looked up and met Benedict’s eyes. “Sir Vincent has all the necessary paperwork,” the Spirearch continued. “It will be filled out and you underway on my personal vessel before the Council realizes the ancient legal spells we are invoking.”

“So, I’m going to be making enemies on the Council by doing this too,” Benedict said drily.

“Probably none you haven’t made already,” Master Vincent noted professionally, “simply by being related to the prime minister.”

Benedict shot him a glance. “Every day in the Guard is an adventure.”

“That’s what the melodramas say,” Albion said. The Spirearch rose and dusted off his hands. “History has begun the music. We now must all dance to her tune—or be crushed.”

“It’s that bad?” Benedict asked quietly.

“If we move adroitly enough, perhaps not,” said the Spirearch, his voice intense. “Bring me that case.”

“I will, sire,” Benedict said.

Albion picked up the trowel and set it down with his other tools, now as clean as the ones he hadn’t dirtied. “I know I’m giving you a great deal of rope, Sir Benedict. Try to hang the enemies of Albion with it and not yourself—or me.”

“As you wish, sire,” Benedict said, inclining his head. “When do I leave?”

“At once,” the Spirearch said. “Vincent.”

“If you will come with me, Lieutenant,” Sir Vincent said. “Your team is waiting. I believe you are acquainted with some of them …”

Sir Vincent led Benedict back out to the outer perimeter of the Spirearch’s Palace, and to a large, spartan room clearly used as a shared open space for the Spirearch’s Own. Most of the tables were configured for playing cards. There were three people seated at the table nearest the heater, a fairly new development out of Dalos—and there were half a dozen guards with primed gauntlets, their weapon crystals glowing softly against their palms, standing around the small group at a distance of twenty feet.

All three were warriorborn.

Benedict studied the three warriorborn, a male and two females. He recognized them all.

“You’re joking,” he said to Vincent.

“Warriorborn are notoriously uncooperative with the authorities,” the valet replied. “And those who are willing to work with us are desperately needed in the Fleet and Marines.”

“These three are criminals,” Benedict said.

“They’re warriorborn. A small, fast, difficult-to-stop team is precisely what is needed.”

Benedict grunted. “I arrested all three of them.”

“I did say you were acquainted with them.”

The tall young knight sighed. “That is the precise truth. What do they know?”

“That they’re bodyguards, and upon returning with their principal intact and successful, their sentences will be commuted and they will be pardoned.”

Life on the surface was a dangerous business. Prisoners were typically sent there to various woodcutting and harvesting camps. Warriorborn, like other social outcasts, tended to live their lives mostly on the surface, where their enhanced senses and speed made them suited to the dangers—and where all but the most atypical humans were afraid to go.

“They agreed to this?” Benedict asked.

“They all have enemies in the camps,” Vincent replied. “The guards try to stop it, of course, but murders aren’t exactly uncommon. They all had weeks, perhaps, before they wound up dead under a mound of woodchips.”

“They’re desperate,” Benedict said. “How lovely.”

“The Spirearch works with the clay he has rather than that he wishes he had,” Vincent said. “Like all of us. Good hunting, Sir Benedict.”

“Thank you,” Benedict said gravely. Then he squared his shoulders and strode toward the table. “That will be all,” he said to the room at large.

Benedict stopped. He looked around at the armed guards and repeated, “That will be all.”

The guards looked around a bit and then at Vincent. The Spirearch’s valet stood passively, giving them no indication of what to do. They looked at Benedict again, and at each other, and then lowered their gauntlets, crystals dimming, and began to shuffle out.

“You too,” Benedict said to Vincent.

The man bowed and followed the guards out, shutting the doors behind him.

Once they were gone, Benedict exhaled and strode toward the table near the heater.

Etheric engineers had worked out how to release the power from a gauntlet’s weapon crystal in a slow trickle and used it to heat coils of copper wire which in turn warmed the air. The warmth radiating out from it, compared to the Spire’s usual background temperature, was positively sunny and reminded Benedict of nothing so much as stepping out of the Spire and into its skyport on a bright summer day.

The three warriorborn watched him with cat-pupiled eyes as he strode to the table, pulled out a chair, reversed it, and sat down with his arms folded over the back. He looked around at each of them in turn, gauging expressions.

“What happens now?” asked the younger of the women. She was rangy, pretty, almost as tall as Benedict, and had her wheat-brown hair coiled into several yards of braid. She had the kind of face that reminded him of a child who was overly fond of sweets. Her smile turned wicked. “We all take our clothes off?”

“Maybell,” Benedict said to her, nodding. “Please quit trying to shock me, as I find it tiresome. And if you think you’ll distract me with such things while you steal everything in sight, you are mistaken.”

“Wait,” said the warriorborn man. He was of medium height and layered with muscle, his eyes set close enough together that it reminded Benedict of a tunnel rat. His dark hair was long and lustrous, tied back in a tail, and his face was freshly shaven. “Wait, let me get this straight. You’re the toff we’re supposed to nanny?”

“Jenson,” Benedict said to the man. “How are your arms?”

The other warriorborn narrowed dark golden eyes. “They got better.”

“Challenge me again and they’ll get worse,” Benedict said in a neutral voice. “That’s how it is.”

Jenson let a slow, bubbling growl rumble in his thick chest.

Benedict faced him without showing him any expression at all. “Try it. I already broke both of your arms once, murderer. One word from me sends you back to the surface.”

Jenson growled again—but Maybell reached over and put a hand on the man’s arm. Her wrist flexed a little, and her claws extended slightly, the nails lengthening.

“Not now,” she said calmly. “It isn’t the right time.”

The tips of her claws pressing into his flesh seemed to get the man’s attention. Jenson’s growl subsided, though he kept his eyes on Benedict.

Benedict faced them both without blinking. “I suppose it was optimistic to have expected that either one of you would be smart enough to see that sincerely working with me is by far the most self-beneficial thing you could do.”

“Ah-hah,” said the third warriorborn, speaking at last. “I take it this isn’t a simple diplomatic mission, then.”

Benedict inclined his head deeply to the woman. She was about fifty, stocky, and if her warriorborn metabolism had thinned her, one would hardly know it. She looked like a plump schoolmarm. “Lady Herringford,” he said. “You’re looking … well.”

“One of the guards sneaks me pies,” she said with an impish smile. “You’re looking quite fine … my goodness, Lieutenant now. Congratulations, Sir Lancaster-Sorellin. Dare I hope that I contributed to your promotion?”

“You murdered eleven men, Lady,” Benedict said politely.

“That you know about,” Lady Herringford said with a smile. “But come now, they were hardly men. And if the law had fulfilled its purpose, I wouldn’t have had to act.”

The woman smiled calmly. She’d been one of the rare warriorborn nobles like Benedict, and among the foremost philanthropists of Habble Song, until Benedict and a number of other investigators with the Spirearch’s Guard had opened an inquisition into the murder of a wealthy mercantile baron. Benedict had managed to track the killer back to one of the foremost houses of Song, and found Matilda Herringford meticulously cleaning the blood from her claws.

The victim’s wife and children had testified at the trial, in favor of Lady Herringford. No one believed why until they showed their scars to the court.

Lady Herringford had gone through the process with the same smile she had on her face even now, Benedict remembered. As the other murders had been tied to her, all of them some various flavor of monster, that smile had never faltered. The newsplaques had carried that smile in graven images, along with her quote about cats being unconcerned with the opinions of tunnel rats, and she had calmly submitted herself to justice when the Guard—Benedict—arrived.

Any of the three warriorborn could rip his limbs from their sockets with their bare hands if he allowed it. Maybell was treacherous. Jenson was volatile.

But Lady Herringford was damned dangerous.

Benedict met her eyes and said, “May I have your word that you will support me through this matter, lady?”

Jenson and Maybell scoffed.

Lady Herringford tilted her head and studied him for a long moment. Then she considered the other two prisoners with flat, electric-green eyes.

“If I have yours that you will ensure my pardon goes through when we are successful.”

“You have my word,” Benedict said instantly.

Herringford narrowed her eyes, studying Benedict. Then she nodded once, sharply. “You have mine.”

The other two scoffed again.

Lady Herringford’s eyes swiveled to them like a dreadnaught’s guns. “Sir Sorellin, I wonder if the Spirearch will much mind if these two do not return.” Her smile widened and showed her teeth. Her canines had been filed into dainty, sharp points. She’d ripped out three throats—that Benedict knew about—with them. “I haven’t killed anyone in a while. It’s like an itch you can’t scratch any other way.”

Jenson sneered, tossing his long ponytail back over one shoulder with a roll of his head. “Fat old lady,” he snarled. “Like you’re a threat to us.”

Lady Herringford’s smile widened. “You sound just like my fourth, fifth, ninth, and …” She glanced at Benedict and rolled her eyes a little. “… eleventh kills.”

And she just kept smiling at Jenson without blinking.

Jenson looked away first.

Maybell gave both Benedict and Lady Herringford a vicious look—and said nothing.

“Lovely,” Lady Herringford said, giving them each a hard look on each syllable.

Benedict glanced at her, impressed. She’d identified his biggest problem and was now attacking it as effectively as an excellent subordinate officer. Evidently, when Matilda Herringford gave her word, she meant it.

“Thank you, lady,” Benedict said to her sincerely. He turned his eyes to the other two. “Come with me, do your jobs, and you’ll get your pardon. I think you’ll both be back on the surface inside of sixth months, but the deal is good. Turn on me and you don’t come home.”

Maybell scowled and gestured between herself and Jenson. “Don’t you want us to promise you we’ll be good?” she demanded.

“What would be the point?” asked Benedict politely.

It was six days on a slow current by airship from Albion to Dependence, and every hour of it was uncomfortable.

Wind howled outside, vaster and more awesome than any sound one could hear while remaining within the safety of the Spires that sheltered humanity. Cold rain hit the sides of the airship like tiny bullets, half-frozen sleet popping against the sturdy whitewashed spars and timbers of the airship.

The guest cabin of the rather small ship contained four bunks. Jenson and Maybell currently occupied one of them, and the room was filled with the sound of their … Benedict hesitated to call it “lovemaking,” but the sound of it, whatever one called it, was unmistakable.

Lady Herringford, dressed in damp aeronaut’s leathers, considered the early stages of the chess game upon the small tea table between her and Benedict.

“I have never been so glad to be finished with all of that nonsense,” Lady Herringford commented, as she brought out a rook in an early aggressive move.

Benedict felt his cheeks color slightly. “Lady?”

“Going into season,” she clarified. “You’re fortunate, Sir Benedict, in that your sex has spared you a great many awkward experiences.” She cast a glance at the far side of the room. “Have you never discussed such matters with a female warriorborn?”

Benedict’s face definitely felt very warm, and he shored up his defenses with a cautious pawn advance. “Naturally not.”

“Naturally not,” Lady Herringford replied. “It’s rather like being drunk, except for days at a time. One doesn’t think about limits or consequences. It would really be quite liberating under other circumstances.” She considered the board for a time and then looked up sharply at Benedict. “I notice you haven’t availed yourself of Maybell. She would, at the moment, you know.”

“That has little to do with me,” Benedict said. The scent of the other two warriorborn was thick in the room, impossible for his enhanced senses to ignore. “Did you also comport yourself so?”

“Naturally not,” Lady Herringford replied, in a rather accurate impression of Benedict’s inflections. A small, knowing smile touched the corner of her mouth. “But I wanted to.”

“Maybell and Jenson are adults,” Benedict said. “They can do as they please. As will I.”

“Has it happened yet?” Herringford asked him.

He watched her expression for a moment. “What?”

She smiled, showing her canines. “Ah. It hasn’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

Herringford took a pawn. “For each warriorborn, there comes a Moment of … let us call it awakening.”

“Am I asleep, madame?” Benedict asked.

Herringford began to answer, paused a moment with a look of annoyance to wait for Maybell’s rising gasps to dwindle, and said, “You’re pretending.”

Benedict brought forth a knight. “Pretending what?”

“That you’re one of them,” Herringford said. She lifted feline green eyes to Benedict. “Human.”

“We’re all human, lady,” Benedict replied stiffly.

Herringford let out a low laugh. “Are we? Are you treated the same way at parties that I am? Do they assume you are willing to rut at any opportunity? Do they get that excited look in their eye when they insult you, afraid you’ll lose your temper and respond?”

Benedict sat staring at the board in silence for a moment.

“It happens to all of us,” she said. “Sometime along the line. The Moment you realize that you don’t belong. That you aren’t welcome. The Moment you understand why we’ll never fit in with them—because they’re afraid of us. And they will always be afraid of us.”

“It isn’t like that,” Benedict protested.

“No?” Lady Herringford leaned forward. “Tell me. Does that medal that Albion pinned on you make it better for you when you go out among them, Lieutenant?”

Benedict frowned at the board. Herringford’s aggressive play was making a confrontation inevitable, and there would be a rapid and decisive exchange soon.

“We are among them, Lady,” Benedict replied.

“My Moment came when I first tasted human blood,” Lady Herringford said calmly. “I’d fought—and mated—with other warriorborn before, of course. But not humans. Do you know the first time it happened?”

Benedict struck down a bishop in a key position with a rook, and the exchange began. “No, Lady.”

“I was returning from the butcher’s one night when I heard a struggle happening in an alley not five minutes from home. A man had dragged a young boy down into the dark.” She collected the offending rook. “For forty years, I had lived calmly in the Spire, amongst my peers and fellow Albions, and something came over me I had never experienced before.” She examined the rook in her palm and then smiled. “It felt so … natural. To tear out his guts with my teeth.” She held up her hands and extended her claws slightly. “I mean, I would have thought I would use these.” She shook her head. “Life is odd.”

Benedict pressed his attack steadily, his belly uneasy.

Herringford collected pieces easily, regretting nothing. “It was when the blood hit my mouth … it suddenly occurred to me, Matilda, why on earth have you twisted yourself into the shape of a mouse, for their sakes, when you are in fact a lioness?” She looked across the board at Benedict as behind them, Jenson let out a coughing growl. She waited for it to quiet again and then beamed at Benedict. “And that was when I started murdering animals that abused the weak.”

“That was when you went mad,” Benedict said quietly.

Lady Herringford’s eyes went ugly for an instant, and Benedict got the distinct impression that he had peered back into the depths of some shadowy cave and seen something spiteful and poisonous looking back at him.

“That question,” Lady Herringford said in a cold voice, “will eventually occur to you as well, in one form or another, on a level so deep, you will not be able to ignore it. And it will make an animal of you.”

“We are all animals, my lady,” Benedict said. “Some of us are better than others at working against it.”

Mocking laughter bubbled from behind the blankets Benedict had draped over the lower bunk, and Maybell and Jenson’s languid, flushed faces appeared as she drew the blanket away. Maybell’s slightly breathless voice was mocking. “Little rich boy. Grown up in the fancy house on the fancy habble. He thinks he’s one of them.”

“I don’t think,” Benedict said, bringing his queen into the fray. “I choose.”

Herringford neatly trapped and dispatched the queen in three ruthless moves. But in her aggression, she had forgotten a knight waiting quietly on the flank, and it swept in and forked her own queen and king.

Benedict watched her calculate the board. The resulting havoc coming from the disarray of her attack had left her unable to defend against the strike. The tide of the game must inevitably turn against her and toward Benedict’s more ordered ranks.

“It could be,” Benedict said, as Lady Herringford reached a similar conclusion, “that people are afraid of you because you’ve murdered eleven men.”

“Yes,” Lady Herringford said sweetly. “Eleven.” She moved her king and Benedict promptly took her queen.

Herringford took the black king and brought it down onto Benedict’s knight with such force that the head of the piece snapped in half.

“The game is yours. But the knight you sent on your behalf, it seems, did not survive.” She flicked the broken piece off the board with one finger. “Such is often the fate of knights errant. Sir Benedict.”

“I imagine the knight knew that before he ever took to the field,” Benedict replied mildly.

Lady Herringford rapped a finger on the tabletop in light rhythm. Her claw scratched the copper-clad surface. Then she smiled. “It really is a genuine pleasure to have someone to discuss such things with. Most are like them.” She hooked her head back at the bunk.

“Hey,” said Jenson. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You see?” Herringford mourned. “There is so little self-awareness to be had in the world, it seems.”

There was a rapid, firm knock at the cabin’s door.

“Come in!” Benedict called, over the wind.

The door opened, and an aeronaut entered in a howl of wind and a spray of half-frozen rain. She turned to them and stripped off her leather cowl and goggles, her long dark hair bound close to her head in a number of flat braids. Benedict’s cousin, Gwendolyn Lancaster, was the executive officer of the airship Predator, and had Certain Ideas about Maybell and Jenson’s behavior during the trip. She had the features of a porcelain doll and the personality of a tattooed wrestler from Pike.

“Good morning, coz,” she said. “Lady Herringford.” She pointedly ignored the half-curtained bunk. “We’ve arrived in Dependence airspace.” She shook her head. “There are no beacon lights on their skyport, Benny, no signal rockets, no response to bells.”

Benedict frowned. “That’s crazy. No one does that.”

“Maybe it’s the storm,” Gwen replied, her tone worried. “But we’ve had no contact from their ships, either. The captain says he isn’t landing his ship under the port’s battery without a go-ahead, so you’ll have to take chutes down. We’re sending signal rockets down with you, just in case.”

“You want us to use chutes?” Jenson sputtered. “In this?”

Gwen eyed him. “The rain should let up by dawn. But you’ve been a Marine, Mr. Jenson. If you feel it would assist in your mission, I could arrange for you to go over the side without a chute.”

Jenson stared at the rather small young woman in shock for a moment, and then a startled growl bubbled up out of his chest.

Benedict rose, fast enough that his chair leapt back away from him and bounced off the wall.

Lady Herringford’s chair did the same. Both of them were facing Jenson. Benedict had a hand on his sword. Lady Herringford’s claws were extended far enough for her to have split some of the skin around them. The drops of her blood lent an electric tang to the air, and Benedict felt his muscles quiver with the need to be used.

By the time they had risen, Gwen stood with her right palm raised, the weapon crystal against the palm of her gauntlet glowing brightly compared to the gentle light of the lumin crystals mounted around the cabin, the deadly weapon aimed directly at Jenson’s head.

“Sir,” Gwen said, “I think it would be for the best if you didn’t speak further. The Spirearch seems to think you might be useful.”

Benedict pinched his nose between his fingertips and sighed. “Coz, coz. What have we talked about when it comes to pointing weapons at people?”

“He’s warriorborn,” Gwen replied, faintly outraged. “I’m not going to hold hands with him, am I?” She gave Benedict an annoyed look, lowered the gauntlet and allowed its crystal to dim, and then said, “Prepare yourselves. Lieutenant Stern is bringing the harnesses in. You go over the side in an hour. Good luck, Benny.”

Benedict finished putting on his harness and assisted Maybell and Jenson with theirs—Maybell had never left her home habble, much less Spire Albion, and had never been on an airship. She didn’t know how to handle a chute. Lady Herringford did. The novice would be riding down in tandem with her. And, true to her word, the ship’s first officer had not provided a chute for Jenson. He too would be riding down in tandem, with Benedict.

“Why doesn’t the captain just land the ship?” Maybell complained.

“Because there’s been no contact with the skyport,” Benedict replied. “If they’re feeling unfriendly and Captain Grimm brings the ship in right under their batteries, they might well assume we are raiders and blow us all to glowing splinters.”

Jenson scowled. “What if we come down on chutes and they’re feeling unfriendly?”

Lady Herringford sniffed. “We’re smaller and faster-moving targets. And there are only four of us.”

“Still say we should have long guns,” Jenson muttered.

“Gauntlets and sidearms only,” Benedict said. “Dependence might be a colony port, but we’re not going to parachute in looking like a pirate raiding party.”

Maybell looked confused. “They get those out here? Like for real?”

“The port’s batteries aren’t there for the aesthetics, dear,” said Lady Herringford. “And while we might not have long guns, port security certainly will.”

“Maybell, you get the signal rockets,” Benedict said, issuing her a long bag of canvas filled with slender shapes about four feet long.

“It’s heavy,” Maybell complained.

The other three warriorborn paused in what they were doing and stared at her silently.

“Oh,” Maybell said, turning faintly pink in the cheeks and looking down. She took up the bag and slung its strap over one shoulder easily. “I forgot it’s just us warriorborn.”

Benedict suppressed a surge of irritation at Maybell. Jenson’s aggression didn’t bother him overmuch. Lady Herringford’s endlessly barbed speech was easily tolerated. But a lack of industry disturbed Benedict on a fundamental level. “Just hang on to them. They’ll be our only way to communicate with Predator once we leave.”

Maybell sighed. “Of course.”

“Thank you,” Benedict said. “Maybell, you’ll ride down with Lady Herringford. Jenson, with me.”

Maybell tossed her hair, and the room was suddenly thick with the smell of her. “You’d think I’d have ridden you down at least once already.”

Benedict suppressed a surge of primal reaction. His body thought Maybell an excellent prospect. That was, he reminded himself, his hormones and glands speaking—as well as hers.

Speaking quite loudly.

Benedict sighed. “Maybell, I am courting an excellent woman. As you are not that woman, we have nothing to discuss on the subject of romantic involvement.”

“Who said anything about romance?” Maybell replied merrily.

Lady Herringford turned to Maybell and her arm shot out like a steam-driven piston. She struck Maybell in the sternum and simply walked into her, sending her reeling back six feet until the smaller woman had her pinned against the cabin’s bulkhead.

“I,” Lady Herringford said in an exasperated, detached voice, “have been enduring your libido for several days, Maybell. Children’s playtime is over. The next time you take your mind off our mission in favor of your genitals, I am going to tear your pretty face off of your thick skull.”

Jenson let a growl bubble in his chest.

Benedict caught his eyes and stared.

Jenson stared back—and then eased his weight back onto his heels and waited.

Benedict nodded at him, then said, “Lady Herringford, I believe you’ve made your point. If you would be so kind as to desist, I would be grateful.”

“La,” Lady Herringford said, lowering her arm and turning away as if nothing had happened.

Maybell stared after the smaller woman, raising one hand in an absent gesture to rub at her chest, her expression dark.

“Maybell,” Benedict said, “I suggest you try harder to get along with the woman who could cut the straps on your harness and let you fall to a horrible death in a few minutes.”

Maybell blinked at Benedict—then at Lady Herringford. Her face grew slightly paler.

“Precisely,” Benedict said. “Maybell, Jenson, get out onto deck. We’ll be along in a moment.”

Maybell sneered and started to say something—then glanced at Lady Herringford and held her tongue. The two warriorborn left the cabin, stepping out onto the airship’s deck, where the light of dawn had indeed brought a lessening of the weather. Comparatively few droplets now fell.

Benedict turned to face Lady Herringford.

“You’re trying too hard,” he said.

The woman paused in the midst of fastening a buckle on her chute’s harness. “Am I?”

“If you like, madame, we can pretend that I trust you and that you are trustworthy. Or we could be adults.”

“I see,” she said. Lady Herringford took a deep breath. “You’re quite correct, of course, from an analytical perspective. You can’t afford to trust me.” She glanced up at him. “Nor can I afford to fail you. I’ve little desire to continue as a woodcutter, even without the gangs who want to kill me.”

“Gangs? Plural?” Benedict inquired.

Lady Herringford lowered her eyes and blushed modestly.

He found himself smiling at her despite himself. Which would not do. But the older woman was right—she couldn’t afford to fail him.

Of course, a woman who decided that murdering those who offended her sensibilities was an appropriate act might not reason in the same way Benedict would. She might say exactly such a thing to keep him at his ease until she could strike.

“When we get to Dependence, you’ll take the lead,” he said.

“You want me to turn my back on Maybell and Jenson?” she asked lightly.

“That’s right,” he said.

“While you walk at the back and keep an eye on all of us.”

“I won’t let them hurt you,” Benedict said. “You have my word.”

Lady Herringford looked at the small, dimly lit portal that let a little wan light in, perhaps at her ghostly reflection. “There was a time,” she said, “when my word was trusted. It is a terrible thing to lose, you know. Do not make use of it lightly.”

“I shan’t,” Benedict said.

She glanced at him and nodded once, briskly. “Very well, Sir Benedict. I’ll give you my back.”

“I have it,” he replied.

She studied him in silence for a moment. Smiled faintly. Then she strode out onto deck.

Benedict took a slow breath once he was alone. There was precious little solitude on an airship. He took a moment to assess himself.

His hands were shaking.

Benedict swallowed. He was about to travel down to a silent Spire with a group of violent criminals. Colony Spires tended to be wild places, where the rule of law laid only a very light hand on the actions of their inhabitants. His charges might well decide to do away with him and make their own way in the world. They’d be able to find work with a questionable ship’s crew—warriorborn were as valuable to pirates and raiders as they were to Fleet.

There’d been no time to say goodbye to Bridget. He’d hastily scrawled her an explanatory note and had written a longer letter since, but given that he was likely to hand it to her himself, if he survived, it had almost seemed a waste of time. Unless, of course, he didn’t survive.

Always a possibility when one worked for a Spirearch.

Benedict took another deep breath and willed his hands to stop shaking.

Then he checked his gauntlet, his sword, his knife, the two knives he had tucked away, and strode out onto the deck.

The three warriorborn were waiting next to the guardrail amidships, where Gwen was double-checking harness buckles and getting Maybell’s harness secured to Lady Herringford’s.

“It should be a mostly straight drop down, Benny,” she said as Benedict arrived. “You’ve only got about three thousand feet and there’s a light eastern wind. Give it a two count to clear the ship and then pull the cord.”

Benedict nodded. “Lady Herringford, did you hear?”

“Two count and pull,” she replied briskly.

“We’ve retracted Preddy’s starboard and belly masts,” Gwen said. “You should be clear.” She turned to the rail, flipped a couple of toggles, and hauled it out of the deck to be set aside. A couple of crew members extended a plank and fastened it down so that they would clear the swell of the ship’s sides.

“Lady Herringford, if you please,” Benedict said.

“Age before beauty,” Herringford replied. She nudged Maybell with a hip, and the two women awkwardly shuffled down the length of the plank.

A gust of wind nearly toppled them from it, and Maybell shrieked. “We’re going to fall!”

“That is the idea,” Lady Herringford replied—and then dove off the end of the plank, taking a screaming Maybell with her.

“Maker of Ways,” Jenson breathed. His chest rose and fell rapidly.

“Any combat jumps on your tour?” Benedict asked lightly.

Jenson gave his head a brisk shake. “Two training drops.”

“It’s nothing,” Benedict told him. “I’ve done this dozens of times. Keep your arms folded on your chest so they don’t get in my way.”

Jenson folded his thick arms. “Yeah. Right.”

The two of them shuffled to the end of the plank, and Benedict looked down into the endless grey mist.

“Ready?” he asked.

“No,” Jenson said.

“On three,” Benedict said. “One. Two.”

“Rut this,” Jenson said, and threw himself off the end of the plank, dragging Benedict with him.

There was a rushing moment of pure open emptiness. Benedict counted to two out loud and pulled the cord. They fell faster for an endless moment and then the parachute caught the air and flared out, the harness jerking hard against Benedict’s body as the double-weight load hit the lines of the chute. Dim grey dawn light colored the mist around them, dropping visibility to an unknown distance. They cruised down through empty grey mist, with nothing as a reference point, and Benedict set the chute in a slow downward spiral, keeping an eye out for the colony’s skyport.

“Can you see it?” Jenson called to him over the wind.

“Not yet,” Benedict said. “We should have seen their lights by now.”

They cruised for a couple of seconds before Jenson’s nostrils flared. “Bank left hard!”

Benedict hesitated for half a second and then did, hauling on the guidance lines of the chute. They swung out as the chute tilted, reversing Benedict’s slow spiral, and suddenly the black bulk of the spirestone tower materialized out of the mist, coming up fast. Benedict’s nose, free of the close quarters of the airship for the first time in days, finally made out a scent of mold, something faintly rotten, and the unmistakable sharp, acrid scent of the deadliest creatures of the surface.

Benedict spotted the other chute spread out on the surface beneath them, aimed for a point ten yards away, and came swooping down onto the surface of Dependence, his boots striking the spirestone roof with dull thuds of impact. He and Jenson kept their feet and slowed, and Lady Herringford came hurrying over to secure the chute from any gust of wind, while the two men unhooked their harnesses.

Benedict’s eyes swept around the skyport.

It was bare.

Just bare spirestone, dark and matte and unornamented.

Where were the buildings? The warehouses? The airship cradles, ready to receive trading vessels? Where were the batteries, the guards, the spotlights, the signal bells?

And where were the people?

For a moment, as the warriorborn scanned the tower’s roof, the only thing that moved was the wind.

“God in Heaven,” Jenson said. There was no anger or bravado in his voice. “I thought this Spire was inhabited.”

“It is,” Benedict said quietly.

“It was,” Lady Herringford corrected him.

“What’s that smell?” Maybell asked. The tall warrior-born woman had already rolled her sleeve back from her gauntlet. Benedict traded a look with Jenson and Lady Herringford, and by silent agreement, they all did the same thing. Benedict and Jenson both checked their Fleet-issue short blades, sturdy and clad in copper against ironrot.

Lady Herringford had opted for a dueling sword, long and thin, its razor-sharp steel edge coated in mere wax. She examined her blade as well. “Some hideous thing from the surface, I should think,” she said. She glanced at Benedict. “What happened here?”

He met her look and nodded slowly. “Yes. You’re right.”

“The chutes?” Lady Herringford asked.

“We repack them,” Benedict said, “just in case.”

Lady Herringford nodded, and the two of them immediately began the process of refolding the parachutes into their ready positions.

Maybell looked back and forth between them as they worked. “Right about what? What are you doing?”

“Making sure we have more than one way out of this Spire,” Benedict said. He glanced up at Maybell and said, “Make sure the cover on that bag is secure against the rain, Maybell. If the powder in the rockets gets wet, we won’t be able to signal Predator. Then our only way out will be the chutes.”

“To the surface?” Maybell demanded. “Are you mad?”

“Rot and ruin, woman,” Jenson growled. “Cover the damned rockets.”

Maybell sullenly fussed with the cover of the pack containing the signal rockets. Jenson took off his aeronaut’s leather jacket and tied it over the top as extra protection against the rain while Benedict and Lady Herringford worked.

It took a few minutes to get the parachutes repacked, but Benedict judged the time worth it. He kept an eye on the silent entrance to the transport ramps down into Spire Dependence the whole while, giving any potential danger some time to present itself. None did. The only sounds were the fall of rain and the breathing of the four warriorborn as they worked, in what should have been a small but bustling skyport.

The silence was eerie.

“Take point,” Benedict said to Lady Herringford, who nodded and started across the empty spirestone, toward the ramps that would lead down into the massive Spire.

“Hey,” Maybell said, her voice tight and nervous. The ongoing silence had begun to press on her. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Continuing the mission,” Benedict said.

“The mission was to go to Dependence!” Maybell said. “Well, we showed up, and it didn’t.” She shook the bag of signal rockets. “Maybe we should signal the ship. Let’s go.” She turned to Jenson and said, in a wheedling tone, “Come on, baby. Let’s just go.”

“He can’t,” Jenson said in a sour voice.

“Then I will,” Maybell said, opening the bag and drawing out the long, slender shape of a rocket and its launching brace. “Maker of Ways, something got them. Do you understand? Something got them. And it might get us, too.”

“Especially if we don’t learn what did it,” Benedict said.

“I’m not dying to find out,” Maybell snapped. She reached into a pocket and came out with a matchbox.

Benedict struck it with his fingers, swift and calm. The little copper-clad box flew into the misty air in an arc and vanished silently over the edge of the Spire, into a two-mile fall to the surface below.

Maybell snarled, and her hands lashed at Benedict’s face, faster than a human could have seen.

Benedict caught her by the wrists, before her claws could strike his face, and calmly threw her toward the edge of the Spire. She landed six feet short of the edge and stopped herself before momentum could carry her over. She looked up with wide eyes, her face gone pale.

“Last warning,” Benedict said to her. “Cover the rockets. We’ll need them as soon as we’re done looking around.”

Jenson had ignored the entire exchange, staring slowly around the empty skyport, his nostrils still flared. “Do it,” he told her. “The toff’s right. Whatever happened here, it could happen somewhere else. Like Albion.” He looked at Benedict. “I’m no coward, but I don’t have a life to spare. It gets bad, rut you all. I’m leaving.”

“You stay with all of us,” Benedict said. “We all go in together. We all come out together.” He nodded toward the ramp, where Lady Herringford was waiting for them, staring down into the interior dimness warily. “Get moving, you two. I’ll bring up the rear.”

“Do it,” Jenson said again to Maybell. The stocky warriorborn nodded toward the rockets. “Those are the ticket out. I’d keep them close.”

The woman snarled. But her claws retracted, leaving faint smears of fragrant blood on her fingertips. She said nothing but re-covered the rockets. Then she and Jenson stalked across the skyport toward Lady Herringford.

Benedict fell in behind them and took slow, steady breaths to fight the fear rising up in his belly.

Something had wiped out an armed and prepared skyport so thoroughly that it might as well not have existed. There were no signs of weapons being fired, explosions, bodies, none of that. The Dependence skyport was just … gone. Regardless of the importance of the contents of the Spirearch’s dispatch case, anything with that kind of military potential had to be examined. Something with the power to utterly destroy a facility as important as a skyport could alter the balance of the coming war with Spire Aurora.

Such a weapon could also, presumably, deal with far less critical targets, such as wayward lieutenants, quite easily.

Well. He was a fighting man. Fear was to be expected at times, wasn’t it?

Benedict let his fear prepare him: he kept his eyes on his companion’s backs and primed his gauntlet, feeling the weapon crystal warm slightly through the leather of the gauntlet’s glove. The copper cage around the bracer, wired to the crystal, quivered with energy as current washed through it. He checked his blades, thought briefly of the letter to Bridget waiting in his bag back in the guest cabin on Predator—and stalked forward to enter Spire Dependence.

They descended the ramp into the darkness of the Spire, their way lit by the glow of their primed gauntlets.

“God in Heaven,” Lady Herringford said, her throat tight. She tilted her head to one side, her expression faintly pained.

Jenson flinched and made a retching sound. Maybell suddenly pressed her free hand to her mouth. Then the smell got to Benedict and he staggered.

It was overwhelming: the smell of something foul, rotten. The acrid, almost-demonic reek of the surface dwellers. And something sweet and sickly, under all the rest of it. It took Benedict several seconds to fight his way past the blinding sensory input. When he looked up, Lady Herringford was offering him a kerchief made from torn cloth—she had ripped apart her own outer shirt, scented with her sweat and perfume, into coverings. Maybell and Jenson had already put them on.

Benedict nodded to her and accepted the cloth, tying it back behind his head. It cut down on the stench. Not enough to make it pleasant. Just enough to make it endurable. His stomach roiled.

“What in the world is that?” Maybell gasped, finally.

“Quiet,” Benedict said. “Jenson, can you smell anything through this?”

The stocky man grunted. “Just about nose-blind.”

Benedict lifted the cloth and tried to confirm Jenson’s observation. He got nothing for his trouble but reek and an imperiled breakfast. “Faugh. All right. Keep it quiet and close. The Fleet offices aren’t too far away from the ramps.”

“Rotting ruin,” Jenson spat. “I knew the Fleet would get me killed one day.”

“Quiet,” Lady Herringford growled. She drew her dueling sword in her right hand, lifted her gauntlet, and eased the rest of the way down the broad loading ramps that led down into the Spire.

They stepped out into Habble Dependence.

And found it … desolate.

Buildings, most of them made of spirestone, some of cheap, sturdy masonry, and a few of luxuriously carved wood, stood in silence. Lumin crystals decorated poles set on masonry bases, giving the whole place the usual starlight glow of every community. The residents of Dependence hadn’t yet filled a fraction of the space available, but the colony had clearly prospered.

Until recently.

Nothing moved. Doors stood open everywhere. There was no sound, none whatsoever.

“I don’t like this,” Jenson said.

Maybell elbowed him and gave him a vicious look.

Benedict reached forward to touch Lady Herringford on the shoulder. He tilted his head toward a three-story wooden building two blocks from the loading ramps. Lady Herringford nodded and started forward, her sword held low. She moved well. If the extra weight hampered her grace or flexibility, her warrior-born muscle made light work of it. Jenson followed her, and Maybell fell in between him and Benedict, who brought up the rear. They moved forward at a slow pace, laboring to keep their steps and movements silent.

They passed the first building, a mason-built house that might have belonged to the portmaster. Like the other buildings Benedict could see, the door stood wide open.

Benedict hissed and held up a hand. The other three looked back and stopped. He slipped silently up to the home and went inside.

The furniture was smashed, in disarray, as if something enormously powerful had slammed it into the walls. Expensive wooden furniture had been shattered to splinters. Humbler copper-clad wrought-iron pieces were bent or snapped, their ferrous cores only beginning to show signs of ironrot.

Benedict walked silently through the small house, taking stock of the rooms and the remains of what had been a living household. He heard the others crowd around the doorway.

“Looks like a father, mother, two children lived here,” Benedict said very quietly.

Lady Herringford stepped in and looked around. “What on earth could have done this?”

Benedict shook his head. “What do you see?”

She scanned the place, walking to each room. She returned to him and said, “Something broke the door. The shutters on windows, too—those from the inside. There are no bodies. Some things are missing.”

“Such as?”

“There are no pans in the kitchen. One of the chairs is gone but not the other three. There are cushions missing from the sofa. Just … random things that ought to be there.”

Benedict nodded. “What else?”

“No food,” she said. “There’s not a scrap of it in the house.” She frowned and said, “And the smell is getting stronger as we go.”

Benedict walked back out to the street. He looked at all the empty buildings with open doors.

“Something alive did this,” Benedict said, in a clearer voice. He doubted there was anyone in the deserted habble to hear them. “Something big.”

“Something big enough to devour a habble and destroy a skyport?” Lady Herringford asked archly.

Benedict lifted both eyebrows. “The people are gone. So is the food.”

“There’s nothing from the surface that could get into a Spire and do that.”

Benedict gestured at the street, at all the empty buildings. “Then where is everyone? Where is the skyport?”

Lady Herringford’s eyes narrowed above her mask. But she tilted her head as though acknowledging a hit in fencing.

Somewhere in the near distance, something clacked, perhaps steel on stone.

The warriorborn scattered instantly and silently, glowing lights of weapons crystals smothered at once. Benedict found himself sheltering behind the same corner as Lady Herringford. She pressed against the wall like a soldier, waggled the elbow of her gauntleted arm while she kept the crystal pressed against her chest and gave Benedict a questioning glance, mouthing, Attack?

The light emitted from the weapon crystal would give away their position readily. Benedict shook his head and drew his short blade.

She nodded and extinguished the prime on her gauntlet. She held her sword properly, Benedict noted. She flexed the fingers of her left hand. Her knuckles made a rippling series of pops as her claws extended.

Benedict scanned around for Jenson and Maybell, but the convicts were nowhere to be seen. The street was empty, just gaping buildings and broken shutters. He glanced back at Lady Herringford and nodded toward the next street down. He pointed at his own chest and indicated the near street. She glanced back and forth and nodded, then padded silently down the block to pace along parallel to him as he advanced. Benedict gave her a moment to get into place, and then slipped quietly into the street, sword held low.

Again, there was a clacking sound. This time, Benedict was able to pinpoint it a little better. Echoes were always an issue in a habble, but the stillness made the noise too obvious to be missed.

It was coming from the Aetherium Fleet office.

Benedict stalked down the street. In his peripheral vision, he could see Lady Herringford’s silent shadow keeping parallel with him one street over, on his right. He caught a flicker of movement on the street on the other side of him too—Jenson, he thought, moving forward on his left.

Benedict slipped silently up to the shattered front door of the office. Splinters of valuable wood were scattered all through the room beyond, which consisted of desks and filing cabinets and chairs, for the most part. They had been battered to flinders as well, as if some unimaginable force had smashed through the doorway and destroyed everything within while somehow leaving the walls intact.

The stench in the place was enough to make Benedict gag. He kept his gorge down and paused, listening intently. A single lumin-crystal lamp still glowed on the floor in a corner, lying upon its side, casting weirdly shaped shadows from the debris.

Again there was the sound of something falling, perhaps a book clattering to the floor. It came from the open doorway of a second room beyond the first. The door to the room had come off its upper hinge and stood tilted to one side, but a copper plaque upon the door read, in clear, simple letters, HAROLD WHITEHALL.

Benedict felt more than heard a presence beside him and a bit to one side, and Lady Herringford nodded at him when he glanced back. Benedict pointed to himself and then at the doorway with the broken door. She nodded.

He moved silently through the room, careful where he placed his feet, so that he wouldn’t kick pieces of shattered furniture around the floor.

There was a slow, moist, slithering sound from the office.

Benedict covered the last few feet in perfect silence and peered in.

He couldn’t make any sense of what he was seeing at first. There was … a mass on the woven rug in the center of the office, a more impressively appointed space than in the main area of the building. It was fleshy, that much he could see, and it stank to Heaven. The mass pulsated slowly, swelling and shrinking again in steady rhythm.

Benedict stared, his instincts screaming at him that it was time to fight or run, but he fought them back and held his ground, staying almost entirely still.

The mass seemed to be a knotted loop of flesh of some kind; that much he could see. And at one of the pulsations, a pale shape appeared from between the purple-grey coils and fell to the carpet with a dull thump.

It was a human femur.

Benedict felt his eyes widening as he scanned the rest of the room. There were more bones lying around the base of the fleshy creature. A pelvis. Several ribs.

And a glossy black leather courier’s case smeared with slime, like the bones and the throbbing mass itself.

Benedict swallowed, his eyes watering slightly from the odor of astringence in the air, and moved forward in silence to the case. He reached down and picked it up—and an instant later, his fingers began to burn.

Benedict dropped the case like a hot coal and turned his hand over. The skin was already red and burning, and even as he watched, a blister began to rise angrily from the base of one finger. Acid.

Benedict grimaced and turned to hold up his hand to Lady Herringford. Her eyes widened as she studied the wounds, and Benedict nodded grimly. He took the sharp edge of his blade to the lower corner of his coat and cut off a swatch of it. Even as he did, his fingers went numb as though he’d fallen asleep with his head on his hand, and though he could still move them, he could barely feel them. He used the swatch of cloth like a potholder to pick up the case, though he had to guide his fingers by looking at them, as if they were a tool and not his own digits.

Once he had the case, he began to retreat slowly and carefully toward the door to the office.

“Hey!” snapped Jenson’s voice from the doorway to the Fleet building. “Lady Stuck-up, where’s the toff?”

Benedict tensed.

The pulsating mass began to unwind. One end of it slithered up out of the coils, and Benedict saw that it was some kind of fleshy worm or slug. Its entire body shifted shape, from a flattened body to a round one, gaining speed as it went. A … mouth, of some kind, or at the least an orifice, opened at one end of the slugworm, opening wide and revealing twin ridges of some kind of chitin or horn. Air heaved in and out along the length of the creature.

And suddenly its mouth whipped toward Benedict.

Benedict sprang to one side as the slugworm’s … head, he supposed, shot by him and smashed blindly into the wall.

Lady Herringford moved instantly and swiftly. Her dueling blade struck like a serpent, plunging a foot into the creature’s flesh, as swiftly as a needle sinking into cloth. She whipped the sword out again, and its blade trailed a stream of acrid smoke as the wax sealing it seemed to boil away.

The slugworm reacted to the strike, its ten-foot-long body thrashing, as thick as Benedict’s two legs together, and its tail end lashed blindly at Benedict’s legs. He leapt over it, though his boots grazed the creature’s slimy flank and more stinking smoke roiled up from them.

Lady Herringford struck again and again, her arm blurring. “Quick! Get out!”

Benedict dodged the acidic body of the creature twice more, timed a jump, and leapt ten feet from a standing start, sailing past Lady Herringford and into the office outside.

Lady Herringford shouted and drove her blade with the force of both hands and her entire body, slamming it all the way through the slugworm and burying the point into the wooden floor beneath it.

The slugworm went wild, turning and thrashing and changing the shape of its long body, though the blade kept it pinned to the floor, and as it did, bits and pieces of a corpse, mostly bones, fell from its coils, though here and there a bit of flesh remained attached to them.

“Harold Whitehall, I presume,” Benedict said.

Lady Herringford stepped back and away from the splattering, burning slime coming off the writhing creature and murmured, “Rot and ruin. What in the world is that thing?”

Benedict shook his head and said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Or heard about it. Not even in stories.”

He looked over his shoulder as Maybell and Jenson entered the building. The other two warriorborn stared at the writhing surface creature, their faces twisted in revulsion.

“Ugh,” Maybell said. “It … There just isn’t anything pleasant about that.” She pressed her tied cloth a little closer to her nose and mouth. “What is that stench?”

“Acid,” Benedict said quietly. He tested his hand. He could still move it, and throbbing pain was starting to come back into his burned fingers. “Don’t touch the slime.”

Jenson peered into the office and said, “Rust and rot. It ate a guy and shat him out already?”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Lady Herringford. “It obviously wrapped around him, let the acid turn him to liquid, and absorbed him through its skin.”

“Oh, ugh,” said Maybell.

Lady Herringford eyed Benedict. “This thing couldn’t have done all this damage.”

“No, it isn’t big or strong enou—” He froze and his eyes widened.

“Well, you got the case,” Jenson said. “Let’s go.” He calmly raised his gauntlet, ignited the crystal against his palm, and send a bolt of blazing energy howling into the pinned monstrosity.

“No!” Benedict shouted.

The slugworm opened its … good God, its mouths, one at either end, and a piercing, whistling shriek came out of them.

A shriek which was immediately answered by at least twenty more coming from outside of the Fleet building.

Lady Herringford whirled on Jenson, her nails extending. “Idiot!”

“Oh, rot and rutting ruin,” breathed Maybell, her eyes wide. “How many of them are there?”

“Not now!” Benedict snapped at the pretty warrior-born. “We have to barricade the door. Pile up the biggest pieces in front of it! Come on!”

And he set his plan into motion, seizing the door to Whitehall’s former office and wrenching it off the hinges. Then he leaned it against the exterior doorway, seized the largest remaining piece of desk that he could find, and slammed it down at the base of the improvised replacement door.

“Right, right,” Jenson said, and started following suit.

“Windows,” Benedict said to Lady Herringford.

She nodded and went around to the building’s window spaces, closing the shutters over them. She paused at one of the windows, her eyes widening. “Oh, my.”

“How many?” Benedict asked as he and Jenson piled broken furniture against the door.

“More than enough,” she reported. “Dozens and dozens. They’re coming out of all the buildings in sight.”

“Oh, God,” Maybell breathed. “Oh, God. All I did was steal a little jewelry and scratch up that security guard. Now I’m going to die for it!”

There was a sudden rattle at one of the closed blinds as a slugworm’s questing snout probed it.

“Maybell,” Benedict snapped. “Check that door on the other wall. See if there are stairs.”

The pretty warriorborn dashed across the room, the bag of signal rockets bouncing over one shoulder, and checked. “Yes! Stairs up!”

“Of course the stairs go up,” Lady Herringford muttered.

Something slammed into the exterior door, rattling the furniture that held it in place.

“The roof?” Lady Herringford asked Benedict.

“It’s our only chance,” he said. “We’ll just have to hope we can make the jump to the next building. Get to some open ground and outrun them.”

At the top of the improvised barrier, a purple-grey mass began to ooze through a gap between the imperfectly fit door and the frame. Slime touched the wood, and it began to bubble with eye-searing smoke as the slugworm slowly pressed through the relatively tiny gap.

“Merciful Builders and Maker of Ways,” Benedict swore. “We can’t fight. We’ll all choke to death on the fumes while a dozen of them get in here with us. The stairs!”

He hadn’t finished speaking before Maybell had fled up the stairs and Jenson was right behind her. Lady Herringford wiped at her streaming eyes and stayed at Benedict’s side as he hurried to the stairs and shut that door behind them.

“Lady,” he said. “Thank you. It’s quite likely you just saved my life. Or at the very least my skin.”

“I make it a point to keep a promise now and then,” she panted. “It keeps things fresh.”

They pressed up the stairs to a long, narrow room with a low ceiling. A pair of bunks had been positioned along the walls near each other, and shelving took up most of the rest of the space. Windows stood at either end of the gallery, and Jenson was already opening the far window, leaning out to look around.

“Ladder up to the roof,” he reported in a low voice.

“Oh, now you start being quiet,” Lady Herringford said in a disgusted tone as she and Benedict approached. “Start climbing.”

“I’m not going first,” Jenson snapped.

“La,” said Lady Herringford irritably. She shouldered Jenson aside, glanced out the window, and climbed out matter-of-factly, taking hold of the rungs of a ladder set on the wall and running the height of the Fleet building. She climbed up almost weightlessly, and Benedict leaned out the window to see her slipping onto the flat roof.

“Clear!” she called in a hushed tone. “Come on!”

“What if they can climb?” Maybell asked, her voice high and panicked. “What if those things can climb?”

“We start chopping them to bits when they get to the top,” Jenson said. He went out the window next and followed Lady Herringford’s lead.

Maybell whirled toward Benedict the moment Jenson was gone, snarled, and all but slammed her lips into his. The scent of her flooded his startled brain, and suddenly, his body felt like it was designed to serve a single, incredibly important purpose, and all he could think about was pressing her against the wall and taking her.

He felt a snarl of his own bubble up out of his throat as he put his hand against her sternum and gave her a short, hard shove away from him.

She broke away from him with a nervous, quavering giggle. “You’re going to regret not having fun with me,” she murmured. But then she was out the window and ascending the ladder as easily as most people would use stairs.

Benedict felt rage and embarrassment and disgust run through him at her forwardness at a time like this, along with a hot and mindless need to break Jenson’s arms again so that the other male would no longer be a sexual rival. He ruthlessly shoved the impulses down. His nature as a warriorborn compelled him to feel his primal urges more strongly than most normal people. It was therefore incumbent upon him to exercise that much more control over them.

Besides. Maybell was the sort who would, sooner or later, make one regret getting closer. Most likely sooner.

He shoved his heavy sword back into its scabbard as one of the slugworms thumped against the closed door at the bottom of the stairs, made sure he had a good hold of the courier case, and scaled the ladder after the others.

In established habbles, the flat rooftops of buildings existed to provide privacy, since there was no need to keep off any weather, and often served as spaces for gatherings and gardens, grown beneath generous clusters of lumin crystals. They were also used as entertaining and recreational spaces, and in this case, a couple of old chairs flanking a battered end table showed that the staff of the Fleet office had used it for the latter.

Benedict paced a quick circuit of the rooftop, looking down. Several dozen slugworms were oozing toward the Fleet building. Their best speed seemed to be about that of a slow run, which gave them little time. Many of the creatures had already tried to crawl in through the door and were oozing slowly through the windows, but others, blocked out by their own numbers, were questing slowly up the sides of the buildings, leaving trails of simmering slime behind them.

Benedict looked around the worm-haunted habble and exhaled slowly.

“Which way do we go?” Lady Herringford asked quietly.

There wasn’t a building within jumping distance in the direction of the transport ramps back up to the ruined skyport. Benedict grimaced and said, “We’ll have to move further into the habble, then get to ground and circle back along the outer wall.” He glanced at Jenson. “It will probably be important to stay quiet.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jenson said, annoyed. And loudly. “I screwed up, I get it.”

“Shhhhh,” said Maybell. “I’m not getting eaten by one of those things because you can’t shut your stupid mouth.”

Jenson whirled on her, his ratlike face furious.

Benedict suppressed a sudden flash of rage and a desire to kick Jenson off the side of the building and let the slugworms have him.

“Children,” Lady Herringford spat. “If you please.”

“This way,” Benedict decided, nodding toward a rooftop about twenty feet away. “Can everyone make that one?”

“I’ll have to get up a bit of a run,” Lady Herringford said.

“I can’t with this bag,” Maybell whined.

Benedict turned and held out his hand. Maybell handed the bag of signal rockets over. Benedict took it, backed off a pair of steps, then sprinted forward with a deliberate focus of effort he rarely allowed himself to use, and hurdled the distance to the next rooftop. He took a quick look around, ensuring there were no slugworms nearby, then turned and beckoned.

Maybell came next, vaulting the distance easily, followed by Jenson and, a moment later, Lady Herringford. Benedict examined the acid-smeared streets below with a grimace and turned to them. “It’s probably best,” he murmured quietly, “if we keep going like this. Those things are quick within five or six paces, but if we can stay that far from them, they shouldn’t be able to catch us.”

“I’m not going first,” Jenson said immediately. At least, Benedict thought, he wasn’t shouting.

Lady Herringford eyed him. Then she nodded at Benedict and said, “You and I will take turns.”

“That way,” Benedict said, nodding to the next building.

And so it went. They leapt from one building to the next, covering perhaps half the distance across the small habble, noting three slugworms wrapped into balls around unknown forms.

Lady Herringford caught Benedict looking at the third one and murmured, “Survivors of whatever weapon was used?”

“Presumably,” Benedict replied. “Perhaps the worms were left behind to hunt them down.”

“Monstrous,” Lady Herringford said. Her mouth quirked at the corner. “And that’s me saying it. At least the people I killed had done something to earn it.”

“Everyone’s done something to earn it,” Jenson muttered under his breath.

Benedict checked the ground again. “One more,” he decided. “Then we go down quietly and slip around the edge of the habble and back to the ramp.”

“Your turn,” Lady Herringford said. She was breathing rather heavily. The explosive effort of the repeated leaps was catching up to her more rapidly than to the younger warriorborn, but she still looked game.

“I’m hungry,” Jenson growled quietly. “Need to eat soon.”

“Have a slug,” Maybell suggested sweetly.

Jenson stared hard at her and showed his fangs.

“Focus,” Benedict said. And he made the last leap.

The others followed and found him staring at a pile of military parachute packs on the rooftop.

“What’s that?” Jenson asked. “Those are … those aren’t Marine-issue.”

“Not Albion Marines,” Benedict confirmed grimly. “That’s Auroran gear.”

“Twenty,” Lady Herringford said, in the tone of someone completing a count.

“Three squads, officer and a noncom,” Jenson growled. “Aurorans like doing things in half-dozens.”

“Rust and rot,” Maybell swore tiredly.

“Nothing has changed,” Lady Herringford said firmly. “We’re still circling back to the ramp, signaling Predator, and getting out of here.”

Benedict held up a hand. “It stands to reason that if there are Auroran Marines here, they came after the weapon was used.”

“A survey team?” Lady Herringford asked.

“Seeing what the weapon destroyed and what it left,” Benedict said, nodding. “Which means there’s an Auroran ship nearby, too. They had to get here somehow.”

“Wouldn’t they have attacked when Predator arrived?”

“Not if they were trying to remain unseen,” Benedict said. “They might have dropped off their people, then backed away enough to remain undetected, with an appointed rendezvous. The mist is thick, the weather bad. With all the rain and sleet, could be they weren’t close enough to see or hear Predator.”

“We go launching signal rockets,” Jenson said warily, “we’ll be ringing the dinner bell. Predator is a lightweight.”

“Do you want to stay here? Or jump to the surface?” Maybell demanded. “We still need to get out.”

Benedict grimaced and took off his jacket. The bit he had cut off to wrap the courier’s case had been chewed to tatters by acid. He wrapped the case up in his jacket, hoping that additional layers would hold it longer, and lashed it to his belt with a bit of cloth he cut off with his knife while he thought.

“We need to find out whatever we can,” he said slowly. “We need to find the Aurorans.”

There was silence. The others stared at him.

“Twenty,” Maybell hissed, “to the four of us?”

“Four warriorborn,” Benedict said calmly. “In the right circumstances, that could be a fair fight.”

“In the dark, when they’re asleep, by surprise, maybe,” Jenson growled. “For all we know, they’ve been eaten by those things. We have the case. Let’s leave.”

“Whatever is in this case, according to the seal, it’s been closed for a week. It can’t tell us what happened to this Spire,” Benedict said calmly. “We need to know. Before whatever happened here happens to Albion.”

“Rust and rot and bloody ruin,” cursed Lady Herringford quietly. The others stared at her, and she looked at them steadily. “He’s right.”

“Well, I’m not going,” Maybell said. “I’m not a soldier or a Marine or a serial bloody murderer. I’m a thief and a harlot. If you want to fight Marines, go ahead. I won’t.”

“I’m with her,” Jenson said. “Once we’re off the rooftops, we’re in the open. Those things can’t catch us. But even we can’t outrun gauntlet blasts and long guns.”

Benedict nodded. “I can’t make you help me. But my chances are better with you than without you. And if I don’t come back, you don’t get your pardons. And I wouldn’t be too sure my cousin Gwen and Captain Grimm would take you back aboard Predator if they thought you’d left me behind.”

He left that hanging there in silence while Jenson and Maybell stared at him, thinking through their options.

“We can’t remain at Spire Dependence and expect to survive for long,” Lady Herringford said quietly. “Not with those worms and enemy troops here. I suppose we could take the parachutes and drop to the surface, but there won’t be any infrastructure or defenses down there. Warriorborn might survive a week, or a month. The airship isn’t a guarantee without Sir Benedict. May I remind you that not only are all three of us warriorborn, we are also convicts. We can expect no sympathy from Predator’s captain or crew.”

Maybell shot a murderous look at Benedict. “You bastard.”

Benedict spread his hands and said, “I’m not going to threaten you. But I have a duty to fulfill. Your best shot at a return to freedom in Albion is to go with me. What will it be?”

There was a strained, endless moment of silence.

“Rotting toffs,” muttered Jenson.

“Bloody Builders,” sighed Maybell.

Lady Herringford smiled mirthlessly at both of them and turned to Benedict, a quiet, controlled fury in her eyes. “Lead on, sir. We are at your … disposal.”

Once they had descended to the streets of the habble, even Jenson’s nose wasn’t good enough to scent the enemy through the chemical stench the slugworms had spread all over the place—but Maybell suddenly froze, her eyes wide, and the rest of the warriorborn stopped in place, not moving, all without any other signal.

Benedict looked back at the thief, lifting his eyebrows in question.

Maybell pointed a finger at her ear and then ahead of them, to the left.

Benedict nodded and gestured for everyone to hold position. Then he ghosted forward in silence.

He found the enemy in the habble’s monetorium. Of course.

Most habbles had been constructed by the Merciful Builders with a number of pre-formed buildings of nearly indestructible spirestone. One of those buildings was nearly always chosen to house a habble’s financial center, the monetorium, where cash, precious metals, valuable crystals, gemstones, and other expensive objects were often stored for safekeeping.

Benedict could not imagine that a monetorium for a Spire as small as Dependence contained any vast amounts of wealth—but the building would have only a single entrance and would otherwise have a roof and walls of unbroken spirestone. If one was to choose a place to spend the night in this slug-haunted habble, the monetorium would be the logical choice.

Low voices came from the building, and perhaps a little less than a score of men in mostly civilian clothing were stationed outside. They carried blades and long guns, and wore ethersilk tunics that looked newer than they should have for surplus civilian gear. The men had four sentries in an outer perimeter, standing facing out away from the monetorium, and the others, though they had doubtless been ordered to wait silently while their companions swept the building, were standing in loose groups, talking quietly.

In other words, Benedict thought, behaving like Marines.

He made certain the scattered lumin crystals of the deserted habble wouldn’t backlight him to the guards and crept as close as he could, using a rough masonry-built smithy to shelter from sight. He crouched down and watched intently.

“… don’t understand this at all,” growled one of the men, a lanky, tall warriorborn. “Why don’t we get out of this place, light the rockets, and go?”

“You’re not Auroran, Dannon,” muttered another man. “You don’t understand duty.”

“I understand that we’re sweeping the monetorium,” replied Dannon, in a derisive Piker accent. He nodded toward what looked like a sack on the ground. “We already got a witness to take back. How long before those slug things figure out there’s more food where the last three came from?”

“Shut up,” snapped one of the men, in a clear Auroran accent. He said something in the rapid, liquid tones of Auroran and then added, “That means that we know how to treat your kind in Aurora.”

Dannon showed the man his fangs in a lazy grin. “Yeah, you just try it, Mendoza. The slugs won’t leave anything behind of you but your bones.”

“Quiet, both of you,” said another, quieter Auroran voice. “I mean it. If you get loud, you’ll draw more of those worms, and they stink.”

“Sure, Sarge,” Dannon drawled easily. “I’m easy to get along with.”

Benedict peered more closely at the sack on the ground. Was it … moving? It wasn’t a large sack. Good God in Heaven, did the Aurorans have a child in there?

He thought furiously. He supposed it might make sense. Whatever happened here, if anyone had been given time enough to react, their first action would have been to protect their children. If the child had been hidden in a concealed compartment or trunk or some other small space, it was conceivable that they might have survived the initial weapon and the creeping horror of the slugworms that followed.

But why would Aurorans be investigating the effects of their own weapon? If anyone was going to attack an outlying Spire of Albion, it would certainly be Aurora. Though open war had not yet been declared, that was only because neither Spire was satisfied that their opening position was as strong as it could possibly be.

Unless this had been a rehearsal. Unless they were evaluating its effect.

Prior to using it against their true target. Spire Albion.

Benedict tried to imagine Habble Morning, his home, destroyed and deserted like Habble Dependence. Slugworms crawling through his own family’s home at Sorellin House. His parents, their siblings, the children half a generation younger than he was.

He kept himself from growling aloud only with a severe effort of will, focusing on the gently moving sack.

There was a sudden shriek from inside the monetorium. A man screamed in mortal terror and anguish.

“Dannon!” snapped the sergeant, already moving into the building. The warriorborn Piker sprinted after him, a long, curved knife appearing in one hand.

More screaming began. From inside the monetorium, gauntlets and long guns howled.

The plain-clothes Marines outside took their weapons and rushed forward, piling through the doorway, and Benedict narrowed his eyes. This presented an opportunity but a narrow one. Whatever was happening inside the monetorium, it wouldn’t be happening for long. There wouldn’t be time to consult with the others.

Within a quarter of a minute, only the four perimeter sentries remained, and their attention was clearly centered on the door.

Benedict decided.

He let the beast inside him, the one he worked so hard to contain and conceal, come roaring out of its cage.

He was across the ground between the smithy and the monetorium in several bounding, silent steps, and he hit the only guard looking toward him before the man could finish drawing in a breath. The man was trying to bring his weapon up, but Benedict slapped the long gun out of his grip with one hand and struck him in the side of the neck with the other, and the man dropped as if his clothes had suddenly gone empty.

The second guard never got to turn around before Benedict had seized his head and slammed it into the spirestone wall of the monetorium, either killing him or striking him from consciousness. The third man managed to get his knife out, but Benedict took it from him, hurled its heavy hilt into the fourth guard’s face as the man began to shout, and closed his hand around the third guard’s throat, shutting off his air and keeping him from screaming.

Benedict calmly throttled the third guard, while the fourth dropped without making a sound other than the clatter of the weapon falling to the ground.

He was fortunate the Aurorans’ warriorborn had gone into the building. It would never have been possible if they’d left him outside. As it was, dealing with four professional soldiers in silence was at the very edge of his ability. It had been a near thing, and his heart labored in his chest from the effort. He forced himself to keep his breathing quiet, despite his limbs and lungs screaming for more air, and checked quickly around him as the Auroran in his grip slowly went limp. He didn’t seem to have missed anyone and no alarm was raised. Benedict lowered the unmoving man quietly to the ground, seized the sack, and darted away from the monetorium.

He’d made it almost all the way back to his team before a cry went up from back at the monetorium—the Aurorans had taken up the alarm.

The others were waiting for him with wide eyes, hands on weapons.

“About bloody time,” Jenson hissed. “What happened?”

“I found them,” Benedict said shortly. “They were raiding the vault in the monetorium.”

“Oh,” Maybell said. “I had wanted to do that.”

Everyone stopped to stare at her.

“You know,” she said defensively. “As long as we were here. Why let the money rot?”

Lady Herringford sighed and turned back to Benedict. “Marines?”

“And a warriorborn with them,” Benedict confirmed. He set down the sack carefully, breathing hard from the nearly superhuman efforts he’d just put out. The sack wasn’t terribly heavy. The child must not have been very large.

“What is that?”

“Their prisoner,” Benedict said shortly. “A witness.” He upended the sack gently, his nerves screaming at him to hurry, that the Aurorans would not be far behind them—and that alert Marines looking down the barrels of long guns would be a far more difficult opponent than four distracted men taken by surprise.

Men started shouting, somewhere back by the monetorium—they would rapidly begin coming closer.

Benedict hurried, moving as gently as he could to unbind the sack and open it—but it wasn’t a child that spilled out.

Instead, half a dozen kittens tumbled out and sat blinking on the spirestone floor.

“What?” Jenson demanded. “You gave us away for a bunch of cats?”

“Quiet,” Benedict snapped. Then he turned to the cats and said, in his best Cat, “Hello. I am not your enemy.”

One of the kittens, a little brown-and-grey tabby, looked up at Benedict for a moment, and said, in Cat, “You speak a civilized tongue, human.”

“Only a few phrases, I’m afraid,” Benedict said, in Albion. “But I understand Cat fairly well, if you go slowly enough.”

“Like a kitten,” said the little tabby. “Still, half-soul. That is better than most manage to do. You have given us freedom. A debt is owed.”

The other warriorborn were staring at Benedict incredulously.

“You … speak Cat?” Lady Herringford asked.

Benedict waved a hand at her, focusing on the little tabby. “I apologize for speaking in haste. But if you would repay the debt, I need information.”

Jenson drifted several steps away and reported in a growl, “They’re spreading out in teams. They’re going to spot us soon.”

The little cat, far smaller than the adults of the tribes Benedict was accustomed to, looked toward the Auroran contingent with concern. “Do you have a means of leaving this Spire, human?”

“Yes,” Benedict said.

The little cat flicked its ears in satisfaction. “Then you will take my tribe with you, or we can tell you nothing.”

“Done,” Benedict said. “Let’s go.”

“Yes,” the little cat said. “We will go to my chief. Follow me.”

And the little cat scampered silently into the dark toward the outer wall of the habble. Its fellow cats went rushing after the tabby.

“What?” Maybell said, staring from the retreating cats. “What are you doing? We’re not going to follow a bunch of cats.”

“No,” Benedict said. “You’re following me. You needn’t concern yourself with the cats at all.”

And he took off after the retreating felines, his stomach beginning to growl from the intensity of his physical exertions.

Benedict and the others covered ground as quickly as normal humans could have managed at a long-striding run, but did so in complete silence. They managed to slip away from the Auroran troops, at least for the moment.

They followed the cats into what amounted to a junkyard for the small habble—since there was plenty of room within this level of the Spire, scrap wood, spare masonry, old clothes, broken furniture, and similar discards of the former residents of the Spire had been stacked up in a relatively small general area. An open space had formed vaguely in the center of the junkyard, and the cats had moved into the area. The warriorborn followed the felines, staying low and taking cover behind the stacked scrap material so that they stayed out of sight from the outside. It was well away from the formerly occupied portion of the habble, and if Benedict hadn’t been warriorborn, it would have been too dark for him to see there.

“A fine territory,” Benedict commented to the little tabby.

“We have only recently arrived,” the tabby replied calmly. “Wait here. I will inform the clan chief that you seek her counsel.”

“Thank you,” Benedict said.

Jenson crouched down beside Benedict and said, “Now what?”

“Now we ask the cats to tell us what happened here,” Benedict said, “and I take word of it back to the Spirearch.” He turned to Maybell and said, “Find someplace you can watch our back trail. Let me know if you see the Aurorans coming any closer.”

“And if they do?” Maybell demanded.

“We’ll see,” Benedict said. “They’ve got at least one warriorborn with them.”

The others looked back and forth at each other. Battle between warriorborn was as swift and savage as an exchange of chess pieces. The presence of a single warriorborn with the enemy meant that it would require at least two of them—half of their available strength—to defeat him decisively. That would leave the other two hopelessly outnumbered against the guns of the enemy Marines, thus changing the balance of power.

Benedict nodded as he saw that they understood. “I don’t want to fight them if we can slip away quietly. Take watch in a perimeter and stay out of sight. I’ll deal with the cats.”

Maybell looked nonplussed but turned and vanished into the dimness. Jenson followed her after a surreptitious look around. Lady Herringford rolled her eyes but paced out in the opposite direction, with a dubious look back at Benedict.

Benedict watched her go without allowing much expression to show on his face. He couldn’t afford to show what he was feeling—which was, mostly, good God in Heaven, hoping he was pursuing the course of his duty in fashion that would not get them all killed.

Within a moment of the others leaving, cats began to appear from the stacks of refuse. They were all quite small, at least by comparison to the cats to which Benedict had grown accustomed, all in a mixture of mostly grey and brown and black—stealthy colors. This was a tribe that had long lived with little access to safety or easy hunting, to be so small. A dozen of the little cats had appeared within a minute—a very, very small tribe, then. The tribes back in Albion numbered in the dozens or hundreds.

The little grey-and-brown tabby appeared a moment later and said, in a very serious tone, “Our chieftain. Saza.”

Saza prowled out onto the surface of a discarded washtub. The cat was strikingly colored, mostly black, but with a white chest and paws, and a flare of white at the tip of her tail, giving much the impression of a formal tuxedo. She sat down calmly and curled her tail about her paws, as regal as any queen (though Benedict supposed he hadn’t met a cat who didn’t consider itself royalty of some kind), and regarded Benedict with golden green eyes.

“Have you brought me a trespasser to hunt down and kill, Fenli?” Saza asked with perfect confidence.

“No, my chieftain,” Fenli replied. “This human seeks an Arrangement.”

“I see,” Saza said gravely. “And what boon does it crave?”

“I wish to—” Benedict began.

“Human, I was not talking to you,” Saza said sourly.

“Ah,” Benedict murmured. “Of course. Please excuse me.”

Saza rolled her eyes and said, “I suppose I must. Well, Fenli?”

Fenli thrashed his tail back and forth, almost amused, though his expression otherwise remained very grave. “The human seeks knowledge about what happened to its people in this place.”

“Ah,” Saza said. “And what does it offer in return?”

“Passage for all of the Swift Slayers to a more prosperous human Spire,” Fenli replied serenely.

At that, all of the rest of the cats became quite intensely focused on Benedict, tails upright and twitching with interest.

“So that our tribe, wounded and depleted of numbers, might have to battle the local tribes for our territory?” Saza asked.

Privately, Benedict thought that should the Swift Slayers go to battle with local tribes such as the Silent Paws, the matter would be resolved rather swiftly. The Albion tribe boasted better than two hundred members, and the smallest of them were three or four times the size of the little Swift Slayers. But he thought it prudent not to mention such a thing.

Fenli stared at Benedict and then rotated his ears slowly. For a cat, that was something akin to a human elbowing someone next to him.

“Ah,” Benedict said. “Chief Saza, I work directly for the Spirearch of Albion. He is called Longthinker by the tribes of my home.”

“It is a warrior for one who has earned a Name,” Saza mused. “And it is different from the other humans who have come to our territory?”

“When they tried to carry us away, this human aided our escape,” Fenli said.

Benedict thought he had rather more than simply aided them. But every cat he’d ever met had a towering sense of pride. Somehow, he suspected that the Swift Slayers might have even more than that. “What I did was a trifle,” Benedict said smoothly. “It was simple good fortune that I was in an opportune position to assist your people.”

Saza took this response in gravely, and said, “Then we owe you a debt.” She lashed her tail a few times, thoughtfully. “We will not kill you for trespassing upon our territory.”

“Um,” Benedict said. “Thank you.”

Saza inclined her head regally. “This time.”

“Most thoughtful,” Benedict said.

“I am the most magnanimous and forgiving of chieftains,” Saza admitted. “Very well, human. This is the Arrangement I am willing to tolerate.” She lifted a paw and cleaned it fastidiously before continuing. “You will provide transport to Spire Albion and sustenance for the Swift Slayers along the way. You will provide an introduction to Longthinker, whose name is known to us. And, when Longthinker has provided the Swift Slayers with access to territory of our own within Albion, we will offer up what we know of what happened to Dependence.”

“I agree to the terms and give you my word to live up to them,” Benedict replied immediately. “If you wish, you could inform me now.”

“Well, yes,” Saza said. “But … you are, after all, human. Even if you are a half-soul. Humans make many promises and mean to do many things, but they often do not live up to them.” She sighed. “No, human. Should we give you what you desire now, you might quickly forget your promise to my tribe. We must walk this ledge one paw at a time.” She waved one paw as if in demonstration. “You will, of course, have the protection of the Swift Slayers during this time.”

“Oh,” Benedict said. “How very generous.”

“It is to be expected of a leader as competent and well loved as I am, half-soul,” Saza said modestly. “This is the Arrangement I offer. How does it suit you?”

“Perfectly,” Benedict said quickly. “No one could ask for more.”

“That is what I think as well,” Saza said. “Though I am rather surprised that you did not do so anyway. It must be the cat in you.” She yawned and said, “Fenli, take charge of the details.”

“Of course, my chieftain,” Fenli said. He turned to look up at Benedict. “How will you accomplish our transport, half-soul?”

“My team has an airship waiting in the mist for our signal,” Benedict replied. “When you are ready, we will signal them, and they will pick us up and carry us back to Albion.”

Fenli considered this plan gravely and then said, “I suppose that is a plan simple enough that not even a human could fail to complete it.”

“I am perhaps overly fond of my home,” Benedict replied. “I am well motivated to go back to it.”

“Very well,” Fenli said. He looked around the circle of cats in the little junkyard and flicked his tail. “You may take us to your airship now.”

“Thank you,” Benedict said to Fenli, his expression serious. He had to say it in Albion, because Cat had no direct translation for the phrase. Naturally.

“Our tribe has little future here,” Fenli said frankly. “We can assist one another. It is reasonable that we do so.”

Which was, Benedict reflected, the closest Cat could come to saying, ‘You’re welcome.’

Benedict checked the diplomatic pouch still attached to his belt and nodded slowly. His primary mission had already been accomplished. And if he had not acquired the information about whatever weapon had been used on Spire Dependence, precisely, at least he would return with someone who had it. The Spirearch would take the word of cats seriously, something not everyone would be willing to do. He had done what he set out to do.

And his people were still alive.

Now he just had to get them out in one piece.

All fifteen of them now.

Benedict drew in his breath and was beginning to speak when the strident howl of long-gun fire shrieked through the air.

The cats reacted at once, getting low, eyes wide and ears pivoting about. Benedict dropped into a crouch himself, though he realized after an instant that the fire had come from at least some distance away.

And it was followed by the piercing whistle of a wounded slugworm.

Benedict clenched his fists, thinking furiously, only to hear a faint scuff of shoes on spirestone floor and to have Lady Herringford appear out of the gloom, her expression grave. “The Aurorans?” she hissed.

“I believe they’ve run afoul of the worms,” Benedict murmured. “That’s going to stir them up again.”

There were more faint footsteps, and Jenson and Maybell appeared. Maybell looked terrified and Jenson serious. “There is a six-man squad with long guns coming this way,” Jenson reported in a harsh whisper. “They have a warriorborn with them. I think he’s got our scent.”

“In this?” Maybell protested, her nose wrinkled. “How?”

“Perhaps he’s hasn’t been in bed with Maybell for several days,” Benedict said.

Jenson scowled and bobbed a shoulder in admission at the same time.

“I took the liberty of scouting the mouth of the transport ramp up to the skyport,” Lady Herringford said primly. “The Aurorans just became our secondary problem.”

They moved out as silently as they could, four warriorborn and a dozen cats moving in almost complete silence, lengthening the time it would take the enemy to locate them. They paused in the shadow of a building that had once been a cooper’s shop. Benedict (carrying Fenli on his shoulder) and Lady Herringford climbed a ladder to the roof and peered carefully out over the emptied, silent habble toward the transport ramp up to the skyport, where the wan light of a fading day shone down through the open passageway.

“God in Heaven,” Benedict breathed quietly. “A dragon.”

The beast was apparently resting on the ramp, out of the rain, a creature of beauty and sinuous power. It was a big one, nearly as long as a frigate, call it seventy feet with the tail. Plumage that rippled through every color of the spectrum even in the grey light shone with droplets of rain and congealed mist. A long neck, a snout with jaws the size of a bathtub, eyes like saucers, its forelimbs lined with great wings, its rear legs powerful and clawed, its tail rippling wider and then narrower again with plumes as long as Benedict’s leg. More plumes covered its long neck and spread about its head like a great crown. The beast radiated a predator’s confident power yet was so slender that it looked as if it could move with startling, serpentine speed.

“What is that?” Fenli breathed.

“A dragon,” Benedict said to the little cat. “An etheric beast. It sails on the currents like airships. Its plumes will turn aside blast and blade alike.”

“We’d need long guns to drive it away,” Lady Herrington said.

“One that size, we’d need an airship,” Benedict murmured. “Or plenty of pikes. If you get the angle right, you can slide a blade up under the feathers.”

“It looks … competent,” Fenli said.

“They’re more intelligent than you’d think,” Benedict replied, nodding.

“Why is it just loitering there?” Lady Herringford asked.

“They love lairing in abandoned Spires,” Benedict said. “Perhaps this one is scouting out Dependence now that it’s … unoccupied. They’re highly opportunistic.”

“And perhaps it’s avoiding predators larger than itself. There are two airships nearby,” Lady Herringford said.

“It is hungry,” said Fenli, his ears tilting forward. “I can hear its stomach working.”

Benedict frowned, tilting his head and listening. Now that he focused, he could hear something that sounded vaguely like a distant boiler. At least the racket would limit the dragon’s ability to hear at a distance.

Such a creature would require considerable victuals, he was sure. Sooner or later, it would come hunting.

More long-gun blasts howled from the far side of the habble, and the dragon clearly took note, its brilliant golden eyes peering into the twilight gloom. Its tail lashed, uncoiling, the plumes there stiffening like so many blades, then relaxed again.

“It knows there are humans here,” Benedict said. “And it knows we have to get up to the skyport to leave. Bother.”

“Rather an understatement,” Lady Herringford said. “Unless we want to jump on its back, we have no weapons that can hurt it.”

“There’s too much empty space around the transport ramp,” Benedict said. “It would see us coming and melt us.”

“What?” Lady Herringford said.

“Didn’t I mention?” Benedict said drily. “They spit acid. Then lap up the resulting mess.”

“Faugh. What is their range?”

“Sixty, seventy feet, according to the books.”

“Books?!”

Benedict shrugged. “There are always some Piker crews who hunt them for the plumes. I’ve read some of their accounts.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Well. This presents a problem.”

Lady Herringford let out a soft snort. “I should say so, yes.”

Jenson’s voice rose up softly from below. “Oi! Toff!”

Benedict and Lady Herrington traded a look, and then Benedict scrambled back to the ladder and slid down it in silence. “What?”

Jenson sneered at him and gestured around. “She’s gone.”

“What?”

“Maybell said she was going to find a chamber pot,” Jenson said. “She didn’t come back.”

Lady Herrington slid down the ladder and said, intently, “Isn’t it obvious? She’s gone to the Aurorans to betray us.”

“We don’t know that,” Jenson said.

“Perhaps she’s hoping to move into one of these charming homes,” Lady Herringford snapped.

“Bloody hell,” Benedict murmured. “She’s right. Maybell decided the odds were too long against us and she went to make some better ones on her own.”

Jenson frowned, and then his frown darkened to a scowl. “To the Aurorans? That wench.”

“She knows where we are,” Lady Herringford said.

Benedict looked around and spotted the heavy satchel that Maybell had been tasked to carry. “Well, at least she was lazy enough to leave us the rockets. Jenson.”

The other man grunted and snatched up the satchel. “So, let’s leave her and run like hell for the ship.”

“There’s a dragon in the way,” Benedict said.

“What?!”

“We can’t stay here,” Lady Herringford said quietly. “Maybell can lead the Aurorans right to us.”

“If we hide, we might walk right into more of those worms,” Jenson said.

Benedict pursed his lips and looked around. “I know,” he said. “So … we’re going to have to do something else.”

“What?” Lady Herringford asked.

Benedict spotted an expansive building sporting a pair of water-storage tanks standing over it. He pointed at it and said, “There. The water farm. That should be big enough. There are too many doors for them to cover every one of them. And there should be everything you need in there.”

“What?” Jenson said, looking back and forth between them. “What are we going to do?”

Benedict took a deep breath and said, “Your underskirt, Lady Herringford. I’ll need it for a flag. Chief Saza, with your permission, I’ll need Fenli to direct your people for a little while.”

The little tuxedo cat looked up at Benedict and flicked her tail in casual acceptance.

Fenli immediately began paying attention to Benedict.

Lady Herringford stared at him for a second and then said, “Oh. Bloody hell.” Then she bent over and started tearing fabric.

“What?” Jenson said. “What are we going to do?”

“I’m going to talk,” Benedict said. “The rest of you have a different job.”

Benedict sent the others off on their task and then looked around the exterior of the cooper’s shop. He took off his sword belt and settled it atop a stack of crates. Then he stripped off his gauntlet and put it down next to the sword. Then he found a length of rusting steel bar stored in a barrel outside the shop, waiting to be scoured and clad in copper, and tied the length of white cloth Lady Herringford had torn from her underskirt to the end of the bar, hefted it, and waited.

It didn’t take very long for the Aurorans to find him.

Dannon, the warriorborn, appeared from the row of buildings across from the smithy, utterly silent, bearing a long knife carried low along his leg. He tilted his head for a moment, studying Benedict.

Benedict slouched against the wall of the smithy as casually as he could. He nodded toward his discarded weapons, waggled the little white flag, and waved a hand.

Dannon was built more heavily than most warriorborn, sporting silver-green eyes behind a thick, well-cared for black beard. His teeth flashed white for a second, and he nodded at Benedict.

“You the one hit our people?” he asked.

Benedict shrugged a shoulder. “Maybell already told you that.”

“What’s a Maybell?”

Benedict snorted. “For this to work, both of us have to take it seriously.”

Dannon was still for a moment, and then the white flash of his teeth showed again. “Uh-huh. She did. Cute thing.”

Benedict nodded. “Where’s your commanding officer?”

“Other side of the habble,” Dannon said. There was the distant sound of more long-gun fire and Dannon shook his head. “Being subtle.” He nodded at the white flag. “What do you have in mind?”

“There’s a dragon on the transport ramp,” Benedict said. “Big one.”

Dannon looked skeptical.

Benedict nodded back toward the ladder. “Go ahead. See for yourself. I’m not armed.”

“Please,” Dannon said, showing his teeth. “Neither of us is ever unarmed.”

Benedict straightened from the wall slowly and eased down it, away from the ladder.

Dannon studied him for a moment. Then the other warriorborn moved gracefully to the ladder, and climbed almost weightlessly up it. He stared past the smithy’s rooftop for a moment and then came slowly back down, his expression thoughtful.

“Huh,” Dannon said.

“Seems like nobody gets back to his ship as long as that dragon is there,” Benedict said. “Troublesome for all of us.”

Dannon exhaled slowly. “There’s only four of you.”

“Four warriorborn,” Benedict said.

“Counting the frill who betrayed you.”

“Perhaps you’d prefer to do it by yourself,” Benedict suggested.

“Hah.” Dannon shook his head slowly. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“So, take it to your captain,” Benedict said. “See what he thinks.”

“Problem is,” Dannon said, “I got orders to hunt you down and kill you.” He regarded Benedict steadily. “And we’ll have plenty of help for the dragon once we’re overdue.”

“If it waits that long to come looking for dinner,” Benedict pointed out. “Or if the worms don’t get you first.”

Dannon shrugged. “It’s an imperfect world.”

Benedict felt himself growing increasingly tense and identified the scent of blood around Dannon. “Where’s Maybell?”

“Pretty thing. But the sort that will stab you in the back. She’s not a problem to anyone anymore,” Dannon replied.

And then his knife blurred toward Benedict.

Benedict had been ready for the strike, but even so, his enemy was so swift that he’d nearly been taken off guard. Benedict snapped the rusty steel bar down hard on Dannon’s wrist. The other warriorborn snarled in pain and the knife clattered to the ground—even as he brought up his other hand, gauntlet kindling to life, and unleashed a blast from point-blank range.

Benedict barely got a hand on Dannon’s forearm, knocking his aim wide as the bolt howled forth and smashed into the masonry of the shop’s wall, sending a cloud of glowing chips of stone flying.

Boots suddenly clattered on the spirestone floor nearby. Dannon’s squad had apparently been waiting for any sign of trouble, and if Benedict was still present when they arrived, he would not survive long.

Dannon delivered a kick to Benedict’s belly that he barely managed to absorb properly, and in response Benedict drove the end of the rusting steel rod down into Dannon’s hip.

The other warriorborn snarled. Benedict rolled out of the way of a second bolt from Dannon’s gauntlet, seized his weapons, and ran.

Dannon let out a coughing roar of rage, and Benedict took a stagger step to one side on instinct more than anything else. There was a hiss of motion, and then the rusting steel bar he’d left in Dannon’s hip plunged six inches into the masonry wall of the smithy, sending out another stinging cloud of stone chips.

Benedict put the building between himself and the oncoming troops, running at a speed that would leave normal humans floundering in his wake. He broke line-of-sight contact before any of the Aurorans could bring their long guns into use. Then he circled back through deserted buildings toward the water farm he’d sent Jenson, Lady Herringford, and the cats toward, his steps almost silent, and sprinted ahead.

If Benedict hadn’t known any better, he would have thought the water farm was still in operation. Except for a single set of shattered doors on the enormous, lengthy building, there was no sign of the chaos that had plagued every other structure they’d seen. Pure, warm, white lumin crystals burned in rows along the ceiling, and even with the shattered doors, it was ten degrees warmer in the water farm than outside it. The air was thick with moisture and the scent of green, living things growing in row after row after row of spirestone troughs, their roots reaching down into the nutrient-rich waters flowing beneath them. The effect of looking across the rows was a disorienting field of rampant, growing life, hectic and disorderly compared to the usual straight lines and heavily planned spaces of a habble.

Benedict made soft hissing sounds as he entered the building and began pacing down the rows of plants, until one of the little cats from the tribe appeared and flicked his tail to get Benedict’s attention. He followed the small cat down through the rows and sections of various crops, until he came upon Lady Herringford and Jenson, along with the rest of the cats.

“We heard shots,” Jenson said warily, looking out beyond Benedict, as though he’d been worried that Benedict might have taken the same course as Maybell. His fingers were covered in black powder. “What happened?”

“I talked with their warriorborn,” Benedict said.

“I take it he wasn’t interested in an alliance against the dragon,” Lady Herringford said from where she crouched with a number of small ceramic pots.

“He seemed confident there was plenty of help coming eventually,” Benedict said.

Jenson grunted. “More than one platoon of Marines, then,” he said. “There must be a heavy cruiser or even a battle cruiser somewhere nearby.”

“Yes,” Benedict said. “That thought had occurred to me.”

“Your breathing is ragged,” Lady Herringford noted.

“He kicked me in the belly,” Benedict said. “Knocked some of the wind out of me. I lamed him, at least a little, but I couldn’t kill him. He’ll be on our trail soon. Did you find what we need?”

Lady Herringford held up a large pair of heavy leather work gloves and tossed them to Benedict. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure if we try to shoot it out with them, long guns against gauntlets, we’re going to lose,” Benedict said. “Where’s Fenli?”

“Here,” said the little tabby.

Benedict nodded at the cat. “I need your people watching the entrances to this building. We need to know which way the Aurorans are coming in.”

Fenli looked over at Chief Saza, who nodded magnanimously.

“I will see it done,” Fenli said, and turned to the other cats, who scattered throughout the rows and rows of growing crops.

Lady Herringford stared at Benedict for a moment before she said, “That’s why you moved us to the water farm. So they could scout for us without revealing themselves.”

“They know what happened,” Benedict said. “My duty is to get them and their information back to the Spirearch. I can’t very well do that if I get them killed.”

Jenson grunted and turned to a large jug of fragrant oil that he’d found in the storage racks at the back of the water farm. “Here, give me the first pot.”

Lady Herringford slid one of the dozen or so bits of crockery over and held it steady while Jenson carefully poured oil in.

“A dozen was all you could do?” Benedict asked.

“There’s not as much powder in the rockets as one would think,” Lady Herringford said primly. “We got what we could out of three of them and left one to signal Predator.”

“If one is enough,” Jenson said darkly, as they began to fill more pots.

Benedict drew his knife and carefully began to stir the oil and the black powder within the pots into a thick, viscous mixture as the other two finished each. “There likely wouldn’t be time for more in any case. We might well summon down the Auroran ship instead.”

“’Bout how our luck has gone this damned mission,” Jenson growled.

“Careful,” Lady Herringford muttered. “You’re spilling.”

“Did you see Maybell?” Jenson asked.

Benedict stirred even more carefully. “According to the Auroran, she’s dead.”

Both of the others stopped and stared at him.

“But you don’t know,” Jenson said.

“I’ve no reason to think him a liar,” Benedict said quietly. “I smelled her blood on him.”

Lady Herringford was silent for a long moment. “Makes sense,” she said.

“Oh?” Benedict asked.

“It’s what I would do,” she said.

Jenson bared his teeth in a snarl.

“Don’t be a child,” she told him. “An obviously treacherous person shows up to betray her own folk. Only a fool wouldn’t realize that if she would do that to other Albions, she would do the same thing to him as soon as his back was turned. Besides. The Aurorans have a new secret weapon. Obviously, they’re going to kill anyone who knows anything about it in order to keep it that way.”

Jenson eyed her for another long moment, and Lady Herringford returned his gaze steadily, her eyebrows raised.

“Hngh,” Jenson grunted finally. “You’re not wrong.” He glanced at Benedict. “You sure this is going to work, toff?”

“Seed oil and black powder. Once a gauntlet bolt hits it, it will burn and put out a great deal of smoke. That should buy the two of you time enough to hold them back while I run my errand.”

“This seems unlikely to me to succeed,” Lady Herringford noted.

“Have you a better notion?” Benedict asked.

“I wondered, at first, if Maybell had beat me to the punch of the only other obvious play,” Lady Herringford said frankly. “Reason suggested it might well be futile, though. I suppose she gave too much weight to her instincts.” She glanced at Benedict. “Are you sure you aren’t doing the same?”

“No,” Benedict said. “But my uncle lives by a philosophy. When you’ve got one problem, you have a problem. When you have two problems, you might have a solution.”

“What about when you have three?” Lady Herringford wondered aloud.

“If you can’t craft a solution out of that, what are you even doing?” Benedict finished stirring the last pot, wiped the blade of his knife clean on a rag, and sheathed it. “Make sure the cats are behind you before you set any of them off. Don’t fire more than one shot from one position. Shoot and then move at once.”

Lady Herringford nodded, plucking unconsciously at her gauntlet with her other hand. “How many Aurorans are there?”

“There wasn’t time for me to get a count,” Benedict said. “I heard shots across the habble. If we’re lucky, their captain split them into two forces, and we’ll only be dealing with half of them, at least at first.”

“And if we aren’t?” Jenson asked. “If all of them are here?”

“Then hold them as long as you can,” Benedict said quietly.

A cat let out a hiss somewhere amongst the plants, and there came the nearly silent patter of dozens of tiny paws. Fenli and his scouts came rushing out of the foliage and gathered together near the warriorborn.

“Half-soul,” Fenli said politely. “The other humans come from the far end of the building. They will be here in a stare.”

Benedict translated.

“How the hell long is a stare?” Jenson complained.

“About two minutes,” Benedict said. “Time for me to move.”

“Well,” Lady Herringford said. “Best of luck to you. You’ll need it.”

“Tell me about it.” Benedict drew in a deep breath, donned his gloves, and took off back into the emptied habble at his fastest silent pace.

He ran directly toward the Fleet office.

The slugworms had completely covered the Fleet office building. The bricks and mortar of the walls and roof could only be seen intermittently, between coils of stretching, sliding, slime-covered flesh. The stench was hideous, and it took a beat for him to force himself forward into it as he pulled the heavy leather gloves onto his hands.

The worms were quick within ten feet or so. If he got closer than that to the building, too many of them would come at him to avoid, and he would be swarmed and dead in short order. Benedict darted to one side at a short distance, eyes searching for what he needed.

There. Late arrivals. The slugworms had been drawn by their dying fellow creature’s cries, and trails of acrid slime still smoked here and there on the spirestone floor of the habble. Several had slowed as they approached the worm-covered building and were simply lying on the floor, snouts wrinkling and unwrinkling, sniffing for food.

Benedict turned and stalked one, alone on the deserted habble street, that lay apart from the others. He flexed his hands in the heavy leather gloves, darted close, and wrapped his hands around the worm’s tail.

He had the thing off the floor and was half a dozen steps away, carrying it, before the slugworm had time to react. When it did, the mouth at the nearer end snapped down on a fold of heavy leather glove, and the other end whipped toward Benedict’s face.

He recoiled from the thing’s path and used its own momentum to whip it into a circular swing, spinning it out into a vertical plane as he ran. He swung it hard enough for the centripetal force to straighten the gelatinous body, striking one end of the slugworm, its nominal “head,” against the spirestone floor as he ran, gagging on the stench as the thing’s slime began to chew at the leather gloves.

Then he ran toward the dragon.

The beautiful, plume-crowned beast had heard Benedict’s footsteps as he approached, and its long, lean body rippled with predatory interest in the dwindling light of the fading day pouring down the transport ramp. The nostrils in its snout widened and contracted as it took in his scent and that of the slugworm, and with a shout, Benedict slid to a halt and hurled the slugworm at the dragon’s head.

The surface creature moved in a blur of speed and rippling color, its head whipping around to catch the acid-covered slugworm in its jaws, and chomped down on it with enthusiasm, its obsidian-black teeth shedding the acid, its golden eyes narrowing in pleasure as it lifted its head to the vertical and devoured the slugworm like a slice of bacon.

Then its head whipped toward Benedict, golden eyes glowing, and the beast let out a long, low, rumbling sound.

Benedict’s guts tried to crawl out through his back and escape, but he forced himself to stand his ground. He spread his still-smoking gloves out to either side of him in invitation.

“There’s more food where that came from,” he called to the dragon, his voice unsteady. He didn’t know if the thing could understand any human tongue, but the shifting of its eyes displayed a clear and wary intelligence. It began an almost imperceptibly slow movement of its limbs, gathering them beneath its long, lean body, as its lengthy back arched up and its tail began to lash back and forth like a cat’s before it pounced.

“That’s right,” Benedict said, his heart pounding. “One little worm wasn’t nearly enough, was it?”

The dragon let out a series of slow clicks that hit Benedict’s chest like bucketsful of hurled water, along with a low, birdlike whistle.

One must never run from predators, Benedict reminded himself. It would set off their pursuit instinct.

Benedict ran.

The dragon shot after him with lightning speed, and Benedict knew that had he not been warriorborn, the thing would have been on him before he’d taken three steps. As it was, he saw the werelight of the distributed lumin crystals of the habble reflected on the obsidian teeth in a dazzling spectrum of color as they clashed closed not three inches behind his trailing foot. Terror gave his feet wings as he sprinted away and the dragon pursued.

Benedict took one corner after another, acutely aware that if he allowed the beast to gather momentum and speed, it would quite readily run him down—and kept his focus on the location of the water farms.

He heard a short huff of inhalation and exhalation and on pure instinct dodged to the side, up over a mound of carefully stored wooden crates, and kept running on the other side. He heard a wet smacking sound and looked back to see a great gob of some kind of yellow-green mucus chewing into the crates he’d just dodged over with such violent acidity that one of them burst into flame. The dragon trilled its disappointment, wrapped its tail around a filled water barrel, and flung it toward Benedict like a snowball.

Benedict got clipped on the left shoulder by the barrel as it passed, fell forward, turned it into several powerful quadrupedal bounds, then regained his feet again and accelerated as the dragon came darting and slithering after him, its powerful mass graceful and controlled, brushing aside obstacles in the streets and alleys like so many cobwebs, its golden eyes alight with hunger and amusement.

The howls of gauntlet fire and long-gun fire suddenly blared through the habble’s twilight, and Benedict poured his reserved strength into a final, furious sprint, moving faster than he’d ever done in his life.

The long low building of the water farm rose up in front of him, and its interior was thick with grey-white smoke. Weapon fire flickered back and forth through the smoke, arcing streaks of white light that crossed one another almost too quickly to be seen. A man screamed. Someone else was shouting. But beyond the first row of planting troughs Benedict could see nothing.

The ground beneath his feet shook as the dragon closed the distance, and Benedict flung himself into the acrid smoke in a panic as he felt the beast’s jaws darting forward again.

Benedict was moving too quickly to react in time to prevent himself from tripping over the Auroran Marine with his long gun braced on a trough and pointing toward the position where Benedict had left his companions. He hit the man’s ribs with his knees and flew forward, dropping into a controlled tumble as best he could. The Auroran hit the floor hard, his breath expelled in a single huff, one hand already flailing to bring his long gun into position.

The dragon came out of the smoke behind the man, tilted its plume-crowned head like a bird, and promptly snapped him up.

The man screamed horribly, until the dragon casually whipped its head back and forth, breaking the man’s neck with an audible crack, and gulped him down as easily as it had the slugworm.

Again, that series of thudding clicks flooded out from the dragon, colorful plumes flaring at each, and the dragon’s head swiveled around like a cannon on a turret, as if it could perceive the positions of the Aurorans clearly through the smoke.

“Dragon!” screamed someone in an Auroran accent.

Benedict darted down the aisle of troughs and toward his companions as the dragon let out a pleased trilling sound and darted forward into the smoke, to the sound of intensive long-gun fire and more screams.

“Albion!” he shouted as he neared their defensive position. “It’s Benedict!”

Even so, he plunged out of the smoke just as Jenson loosed a blast from his gauntlet.

Lady Herringford smacked the man’s forearm to the side just as the gauntlet went off, and the shot missed Benedict by inches.

“Idiot,” she snarled.

Roars, trills, and screams began to echo down the long rows of the water farm. Weapons howled, firing at frantic rates. The hiss of the long-gunners using their water tanks to cool the weapons added to the din.

“Sorry, toff,” Jenson said sullenly.

“We’ve got trouble,” Lady Herringford panted. Benedict looked past her to see the still forms of two Aurorans, swords yet clutched in dead hands. Her nails were extended and covered in blood. “They flanked us. Their other two squads are coming in from that way. They’re covering the exits on that side of the building.”

“Rot and ruin,” Benedict swore. “He lied.”

“Yeah, enemies do that,” Jenson snapped, rising. “It’s almost as if—”

There was a thumping sound.

Benedict looked up to see Jenson topple slowly forward.

There was a boarding axe buried to the eye in the man’s spine, directly between his shoulder blades.

Only a warriorborn could have thrown an axe with that much precision and power.

Jenson hit the ground, his eyes wide, blood bubbling weakly from his nostrils and mouth, but his chest had already forgotten how to breathe.

“Idiot,” whispered Lady Herringford, more gently, staying low. She reached out a hand and closed Jenson’s eyes. “Some people never learn to shut their mouths. It’s their warriorborn, isn’t it.”

Benedict nodded shortly, willing his gauntlet to readiness while trying to veil its glowing light, and peering through the pall of smoke between them and the exit. Dannon was staying out of sight. If Benedict had been the one to throw that axe, he’d back off for several moments until he could come at the enemy from a fresh angle for another surprise attack.

Lady Herringford grimaced and gestured toward herself. “We have a problem. Those two took me by surprise.”

Benedict stared at Jenson. Even with the eyes closed, his expression was still set in faint confusion.

Jenson was dead. Benedict was supposed to bring him home again, and the man was dead.

“Sir Benedict,” Lady Herringford said gently. “Now isn’t the time.”

Benedict jerked his gaze away from the dead man and looked, first at the corpses of the two Aurorans and then at her. Lady Herringford had been stabbed in the side. Her undershirt had been soaked scarlet. She’d torn her skirts and bound the wound closed roughly. Even so, a runnel of blood leaked down the sturdy muscle of her legs.

“Can you run?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I might be able to dodder along like a normal.”

“Then you’ll get on my back,” Benedict said. “You’ll carry the signal rocket. Fenli, keep your people close.”

The little cats appeared from the smoke and the plant life, bodies crouched, eyes bright.

Lady Herringford stared hard at Benedict. “I’m carrying the rocket so that I’ll know you won’t abandon me, eh?” she said finally. “Young man. We both know you won’t be able to outrun an enemy warriorborn while carrying me.”

“No,” Benedict said. “But you’ve got your gauntlet. You lay down fire while I move. We’ll get to the skyport, take the parachutes, fire the signal rocket, and jump.”

“And if they pursue us?”

“They’ll have to go back for their chutes first,” Benedict said. “We’ll have plenty of time to plan something.”

Her face took on a fixed grin. “Ah. An optimist.”

“Yes, lady,” Benedict said. “Come on.” He took a knee, and Lady Herringford moved painfully, her breath catching as she leaned against his back, wrapped her right arm around Benedict’s chest and her legs around his hips with a hiss of pain.

“Can you hold on?” he asked.

“I find myself well motivated,” she murmured. The crystal of her gauntlet kindled to life against her palm. “Very well. I’ve saved one of the smoke bombs. If you would be so kind.”

Benedict spotted the pot of mixed black powder and oil nearby and seized it. “Can you make the shot?”

“If you don’t stagger about, I think so,” she said.

Benedict nodded. Then he glanced at Fenli and his people, jerked his head, and moved toward the exit from the water farm at a low crouch. As the smoke began to thin out, he put the pot on the spirestone floor and swept it out ahead of them, sending it scraping along the floor until it overbalanced in the doorway and spilled over.

Benedict braced one hand on the floor and held stock-still while Lady Herringford raised her gauntlet and loosed a bolt of energy at the rolling pot. Black powder flared and oil caught fire, sending out a billowing plume of thick white smoke.

Benedict took off at his best speed, leaving the little cats struggling to keep pace, and leapt over the burning pool of smoking fluid. There was a hissing in the air just ahead of him as he did, and his feline eyes caught the flicker of a thrown knife crossing in front of him. If he’d been moving at his unburdened speed, he thought, the point would have sunk into the side of his neck.

“Left!” Benedict shouted.

But Lady Herringford had already seen the tumbling weapon, and she loosed a flurry of howling bolts of energy through the smoke as they emerged from it.

Half a dozen long guns began to speak from the windows of the buildings across the street, but even weighed down, Benedict was moving faster than all but the swiftest normal humans. Shots went wide and splashed against the buildings to their right, shattering brick and smashing out windows, and the extra smoke had bought them all but the last twenty feet to the next corner. Behind them, the dragon bellowed in sudden fury, and a great crashing sound went up as it smashed through a masonry wall.

“We’re clear!” Lady Herringford said. “Well done, Sir Benedict!”

Benedict didn’t reply. He focused on running, though his chest and limbs were burning with the effort now. He sprinted until the wan, misty twilight pouring down from the skyport showed on the transport ramp, and he sprinted wearily for it.

He had no warning, no sound, no rush of air or even a breath of scent when Dannon leapt from the roof of the last building near the transport ramp, caught Lady Herringford by the hair, and sent all three of them hurtling to the unforgiving spirestone floor.

Benedict cried out in pain as he hit the floor, feeling something give way in his shoulder and snarling at a flash of red heat that went up from his knee. Lady Herringford tumbled away from him, rolling, and he tried to control his sprawling tumble.

But Dannon was already on him.

A flash of steel in his peripheral vision caused Benedict to move his hand, intercepting the blade of a knife by smashing his wrist into Dannon’s. The enemy warriorborn snarled and plunged his teeth toward Benedict’s throat. Benedict twisted his burning knee between his body and Dannon’s, and stopped the other man’s teeth from snapping closed on his neck. Dannon rode Benedict’s leg down, forcing the bend until Benedict felt his knee slam into his chest, and they struggled frantically over the knife as Dannon got both hands on it and began to press it relentlessly toward Benedict’s throat.

The other man had him by a good twenty-five pounds of muscle, Benedict noted with professional detachment. And Benedict was exhausted from the heavy effort of leading the dragon in and escaping with the weight of another person on his back. A quarter inch at a time, Dannon shoved the knife’s point closer to Benedict’s throat.

Then there was a flash of black-and-white fur, and little Saza, chieftain of the Swift Slayers, reached a paw around the side of Dannon’s face and buried her little claws in his left eye.

Dannon howled and flung his head left and right, throwing the little cat off of him, but Benedict got his other leg under the man and flung him bodily free. Dannon landed on his feet five yards away, and Benedict hurled himself to his own feet, both men raising gauntlets.

Dannon was faster.

Until Lady Herringford hit him from behind, claws raking, blood pouring from the wound in her side like a fountain.

“Go!” she screamed. “Warn Albion!”

Dannon whirled in her grip, her claws digging furrows in his flesh as he did. Bootsteps were coming hard through the streets behind the two struggling warriorborn, and Benedict dipped to one side as someone with a long gun opened up on him from seventy yards back, well out of effective gauntlet range.

Lady Herringford snapped her head forward and sank her teeth into Dannon, missing the neck and getting a mouthful of trapezius muscle. The other warriorborn screamed and discharged his gauntlet into her body from inches away, again and again, and as she gasped, he seized her by the throat and drove her skull down onto the spirestone floor with hideous power and finality.

The crack of it went through Benedict like a knife.

Dannon staggered and tried to raise his gauntlet, but Lady Herringford’s bite had damaged the shoulder. He fought to raise his arm, but it wobbled wildly and his shot went ten yards wide, before the enemy warriorborn staggered and fell to his side.

His heart pounding, Benedict turned and fled.

He went up the transport ramp while the little cats came trailing behind him. His last look at Dannon showed the man holding one hand to his freely bleeding shoulder and still struggling to raise his gauntlet arm for a shot.

Benedict emerged into the twilight evening of the demolished skyport. The wind blew cold and gusty, and a light rain fell through the mist. Lady Herringford had been carrying the pack with the last signal rocket.

He was alone.

No. Not alone. The little tribe of cats gathered around his feet, looking up at him, as he stopped at the pair of packed parachutes and seized his.

“They are coming,” Fenli noted.

Benedict looked back and heard the distant, cautious stomp of boots coming up the transport ramp. He lifted his gauntlet and sent half a dozen shots howling toward the mouth of the ramp, more to encourage the Aurorans to keep their heads down than in hope of scoring a hit.

“Where is your airship?” Saza demanded.

“They will come for me,” Benedict said. Indeed, he was certain that his cousin and Captain Grimm would already be worried. He checked that the diplomatic pouch was still secure on his belt as he ran for the nearest edge of the Spire.

“I have to get enough distance from the Spire that it doesn’t foul the parachute,” he said to himself. “Right.” He took a deep breath.

“He is going to leave us here,” Saza said in a disgusted tone. “And after I defeated that other half-soul for him when he fell down.”

“No, madame, I am not,” Benedict said in a firm voice. “However, it will be necessary for you and your people to get a good hold on me.”

Saza tilted her little head, her green eyes intent. “How?”

“Have you no claws?” Benedict inquired politely. He finished securing the parachute pack, noting the distant chirrup of mistsharks cruising through the evening air. The scent of blood was coming up the ramp and would be drawing their attention. “Please, Chieftain. We must make haste. My legs and front side, please.”

“Very well,” said Fenli, and calmly leapt up Benedict’s leg, bounded up to his chest, and sank the little claws of every paw through Benedict’s clothing and into his skin.

Benedict hissed and then nodded. “Good. Come on.”

And in seconds, the Swift Slayers had all attached themselves to him, claws piercing him in dozens of separate wounds.

Benedict took several steps back from the edge, adjusted a cat that had clasped on a little too centrally for his comfort—and a long-gun bolt howled past him.

He didn’t look back as more guns began to speak. He sprinted for the edge, and as he did, he saw a vast, dark shape appear out of the mist above him—an airship, raindrops sparkling as they passed through an active shroud, though there was no time to identify it in the gloom. He flung himself off the edge of the Spire.

Each Spire was more or less equivalent in size—a cylinder two miles high and two miles across. Dropping down along its side was like falling along a great black cliff, and he felt the wind press the cats into him, felt them sink their claws deeper into him in terror. He guided his fall as best he could with his hands and body, leaving the Spire behind him and falling through the silent mist.

Then he gritted his teeth and pulled the parachute’s release cord.

The parachute rustled out in good order, unfurled, and began to snap and billow as it caught the air.

Benedict jerked against the harness as his fall was abruptly arrested.

And twelve cats, each with four legs, each leg with five claws, suddenly raked down his body through his flesh, claws ripping skin and fat and muscle, cats scrambling and flailing to hold on. Fire erupted through his entire body as his flesh was neatly filleted, and it tore a harsh, grunting moan of pain from his throat as the overwhelming sensory input made him fight not to flail and instinctively hurl his furry tormentors from his tortured body.

He clenched his teeth hard instead, struggling to remember how to work the maneuvering flaps on the parachute. He settled his grip on the proper cords, looking around him blearily through the pain, keeping the black shadow of Spire Dependence at the edge of his vision in the misty twilight, until he had a few seconds’ warning of the uprushing ground. He hauled down on the straps hard, wincing, flaring the chute and bringing him down to a gentle landing he absorbed with his burning legs.

He staggered and fell, trying not to crush any of the Swift Slayers as he did. The little cats let go of him immediately, and as he fell, they spread into a quick, protective circle around him, their eyes and claws facing out into the coming night.

He remained on his hands and knees for a long moment, breathing hard, his heart pounding with pain and terror. The sound of Lady Herringford’s head smashing on the floor kept playing through his imagination. He started shaking and he couldn’t stop.

Then there was soft fur against his face, and little Fenli leaned into him, purring.

“Half-soul,” he said gently. “I am sorry for the deaths visited upon the half-souls you commanded. But the surface is not a place to appear weak. Can you stand?”

Benedict raised his head slowly. Fenli and Saza were both standing there, facing him.

“That was bravely done,” Saza said. “You and your people have bled for my tribe, half-soul. You have earned our respect.”

Benedict lifted his eyebrows slowly. “I … only did as we Arranged.”

“But it was done well,” Fenli said with gentle emphasis. “You have saved our tribe. That will not be forgotten.”

“Then you’re going to tell me what happened to Spire Dependence?” Benedict asked.

“Oh, naturally not,” Saza said. “Not until we have Arranged for territory of our own. You have earned a Name among cats.”

Benedict blinked gently. “I … I see. May I ask what name?”

“You will be informed when it is appropriate,” Fenli said calmly. The little cat tilted his head, his ears flicking this way and that. The surface beneath their feet was covered in a thick, spongy green plant of some kind. Here and there, rounded rocks poked up through it. There were strange cries and clicking sounds out in the mist. “It may be immaterial if we are stranded here. We cats will survive, of course, but I do not like your chances, half-soul.”

Benedict chuckled. Indeed not. Alone, wounded, bleeding, without shelter, on the surface, at night? He’d be lucky to survive an hour.

And then he heard a sound. The creaking of timbers. The whipping flap of ethersilk sails dragging in the wind. A calm baritone barking a sharp command, and he looked up to see the most beautiful sight of his lifetime.

Predator.

The airship had followed him down the side of the tower, tracking his fall almost perfectly, though he had no idea how Captain Grimm had managed that feat.

She descended gracefully, stopping not fifteen feet above the surface, the humming crackle of her power core, deep inside her, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Even as he watched, the wiry Lieutenant Stern rushed to the side of the ship and began to order aeronauts to lower lines.

“There is my airship,” Benedict said quietly. “We will leave now.”

“Tribesaver,” Saza said, pleased, “you are apparently almost competent.”

Benedict found himself suddenly blinking back tears.

Tribesaver.

He hadn’t saved the warriorborn whose lives he had been responsible for on the mission.

But he had gotten the Swift Slayers out alive.

The little cats crowded around his legs, bumping up against him and purring. If they hadn’t only moments before ripped him to shreds and covered him with blood, he would have found their affection utterly adorable. A dozen little lives were also safe because of what he’d done—and the intelligence they carried might save hundreds or thousands more.

“Thank you,” Benedict said. He blinked several more times and cleared his throat. “If you all would be so kind as to join me as my guests aboard Predator. I will introduce you to her captain and we will make preparations to speak to my chieftain, the Spirearch.”

“Excellent,” Fenli said happily. “Next time, try to kill the dragon, too. The tales of my people say they make fine eating.”

Benedict let out a quiet, weary laugh. He shook his head. Then he began limping, dragging himself as quickly as he could toward the lowered lines beneath Predator, exhausted, shedding his parachute on the way.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Butcher is a bestselling author and martial arts enthusiast. His resume includes a long list of skills rendered obsolete at least two hundred years ago, and he turned to writing because anything else probably would have driven him insane. He lives with his family in Independence, Missouri.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR