Like the shatter of glass, I hear it—Leizu is laughing.
Then a stiletto connects. With her impeccable logic, Elena has managed to find a pattern in Leizu’s shifting defense. The laughter ceases.
I am between them.
Saber drawn, my shashka absorbs a killing blow and is nearly wrenched from my grip. And then she is upon me, Leizu’s face, inches from mine. Bright embers die against the black scales of her unholy armor. One hand closing around my throat, she presses a dagger against my belly.
“You arrived,” she says, smiling. “Finally.”
Before I can react, she stands on her tiptoes and presses soft lips against mine, tugging at my lower lip with her teeth. I twist away as her dagger pierces my rib cage, the tip spearing urgently toward my relic’s cradle. Off target, I throw myself back before she can stab me again.
“Strong!” She laughs.
Something crashes and the ship lurches, leaning dangerously, water gurgling up to flood the splintered decking that still rests above the waves.
“Hypatia!” shouts Elena.
A few yards away, Hypatia’s body is sliding toward lapping black waves. Elena dives toward her, grabbing hold of lifeless arms. The girl digs in her heels, face lost in her hair, but Hypatia is too heavy, her limp body skidding toward the water.
“Leave us be!” I shout to Leizu.
She swings, the attack glancing from my saber, staggering me, forcing me to retreat downhill, closer to the water. Elena is desperately holding on to Hypatia’s body. Head down, she seems blind to the world. Human corpses are all around us, caught on railings and wrapped in fallen rigging, some of them alight, skin boiling and mouths vomiting smoke.
A terrific crack rends the air and a collective gasp rises from the spectators on the pier. The decking shifts again as something groans and splinters.
“Elena!” I shout. “Go! Please!”
Parrying Leizu’s attacks, I desperately move toward the girl. Kneeling at the water’s edge, she finally loses grip of Hypatia. The fallen avtomat slides, her body limp, rolling into the dark water and disappearing. Like a sleepwalker, Elena stands and gazes across the flame-licked waves toward the pier. In the distance, human spectators are packed together, a low skyline of silhouettes against bloody dusk, faces illuminated in snatches of flame as they watch us battle.
Grinding, disintegrating, I hear the center mast coming down.
I lock a hand on Elena’s shoulder and shove her away. Above, the mast streaks across the sky like a flaming sword. Elena plunges overboard as I sheathe my weapon and turn. A dark figure vaults toward me through a rain of falling coals. But before Leizu reaches me, the wooden pillar detonates against the deck like dragon’s breath.
Flame erupts over her shoulders, devouring her body as she reaches for me, screaming, falling. My eyes close against a shock wave of heat. Sightless, I plunge backward into the cold silence of the river.
Elena is lost in the water. Leizu is burning.
When I kick to the surface, what’s left of the mast is rolling across the leaning ship, one end splashing into the water, steaming and spitting. The remains of the cutter are sinking fast, canted to the side, great bubbles of air percolating the foul water. A curtain of steam has risen to join the smoke, obscuring the sky.
Tossed and smashed on chalky waves, I hug a piece of floating wood and kick for a shore I cannot see. My body fills with water, but I’m still buoyant as I push through detritus and half-burned corpses. In this purgatory of gray mist and hellish cold, time passes slowly, drifting with the river current.
Eventually, I hear voices.
On the muddy shoreline, the city’s poorest are looting the remains of the ship, dragging corpses, yanking off boots and rings.
I stagger to shore.
Craning my neck, I scan the water for Leizu. She is nowhere to be found, nor her damnable birds. The entire harbor has turned to smoke and bits of flame. Nearby, human vultures go about their work quietly and quickly, but I hear faint, raucous laughter echoing from farther up the street.
The cobblestones are gleaming with a ragged trail of water.
A group of half a dozen men are lumbering up a nearby alleyway like a beast with six heads. In their grasp, they carry a small, struggling body, held aloft. The gaggle of drunken men cast demonic shadows on the walls as they stagger together; like a rat king with fused tails, they are dragging my precious, beautiful Elena.
I have haunted the streets near the docks before. I have dragged debtors from these splintery wooden buildings with thin walls that conceal women and girls, muffling their cries and the moans of their clientele. I watch silently as the men enter a long wooden building with a red lantern hanging outside.
Hand on the hilt of my saber, I follow.
41
OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, PRESENT
Stretching my legs, I sigh and wriggle deeper into the luxurious white leather seat of a private jet. The G650’s engines hum quietly outside as we slice through thin clouds, cabin thrumming with smooth thrust. The remains of a meal I just devoured rest on the seat next to me, waiting for the attendant to return.
He’s in the galley, mixing a champagne cocktail.
Across from me, Peter sits with his long legs drawn in, stiff as ever. Sunlight cuts through the window and illuminates the lower half of his face.
He really is handsome, now that he’s been put back together.
“I’ve got to get one of these,” I say.
“It is easier if you founded a bank,” he responds. “Preferably, at least two hundred years ago.”
With a half smile, I watch a terrain of fluffy clouds roll past below. My entire body is aching, but after a meal and a shower and some aspirin and coffee…I’m feeling almost like a human being again.
“So you’re what, a secret billionaire?” I ask.
Peter shrugs.
“What do you spend it on?”
“Mostly research and development. New technology. Some transportation when necessary,” he says, gesturing to the cabin.
I wince and shake my head.
“Only progress matters,” he adds.
“You’re trying to understand your own anima,” I say. “To find a way to replenish your energy?”
He nods.
It’s fascinating to me that these creature comforts are wasted on Peter. All the money in the world doesn’t matter to him—not in the way it might to a person. Our civilization has nothing he considers worth buying. Not yet, anyway.
Peter is waiting for humankind to catch up, and has been for centuries.
“Still seems like a waste.” I sigh, rubbing my toes in the carpet.
“Not a waste. Without technological progress, the avtomat will certainly die. We are survivors of a cataclysm that has passed out of all memory. And we cannot afford another fall of civilization—our power will not last until humankind rises again.”