Steel Dominance (35 page)

Plunge the key into the cavity and twist. The clockwork sounds warbled into a whine and reached subsonic. Pain spiked into his ears. One last thing. He shook out his arm to draw attention and made the command—hoping like hell no one else knew the signs he’d taught her. Then he muttered a prayer, let go, and dropped into the smoke. On the way down a bullet thwacked the side of his thigh—a glancing hit.

My lucky lucky day
. But, if Sofia hadn’t seen the command, she was going to die.
Fuck
. He flattened himself to the earth, covered his ears, and prayed again. Above him the world exploded and roared away.

The smoke cleared.

One man was screaming, but it faded to a keening whimper and stopped.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Dankyo climbed out of the smoke to the top of the automaton. Sofia’s heart stuttered. The guards raised their rifles.
Oh God
. The crackle of shots, the fall of his body—these she dreaded.

Two shots snapped out.

No, no, no. Please miss.

She bit her lip hard and tensed every muscle. In a flurry of moves, Dankyo did something to the clockwork man, and the creature shuddered to a halt, his giant sword upraised. Sound screeched out. Then Dankyo gave the hand command.
Down
. She obeyed instantly. Halfway to the ground, she remembered the chains attached to her collar and grasped them on either side.

“Down!” she spat. The other women gasped at the jerk on their necks and followed her. But even before she’d spoken, Sofia had seen Tansu grab the arm of her neighbor to pull her to the ground. The woman thought fast.

She flung herself to the stone, her elbows scraping, the fine cloth of her skirt billowing about her upper legs, then settling like a mist of rain.

One of the women yelped.

“What?” Their guard turned and spied them. His shoes swiveled on the stone, crunching on the grit. “Up! Get up!”

Her cheek to the cool rock, she watched from the corner of her eyes. He stared back, anger spreading red across his face and neck. His hand wrapped about his sword hilt, and his other arm drew back as if to deliver a blow. Then his shoulders slumped a little, and he lowered his hand. “Look, I don’t want to hit you. Get up!”

A storm roared in and scythed him. Dust and metal and smoke spewed forth, cutting him with a screaming arc of destruction. Droplets of blood sprayed from his torso. Arms flailing as if struck by invisible assailants, he fell, tumbling onto the woman nearest the emperor-bey’s throne. She shrieked, pushed at him, and squirmed from underneath. After one last wheezing exhale, he lay there on his side, limp. His upper body was awash with blood. Links of torn chain mail dangled like shiny spaghetti.

The dust subsided.

“The key!” Tansu dived for his body and searched his belt, her hands fumbling. “Where?”

Key?
Sofia put her hand to her neck.
For the collars, of course. Ignore the dead man
. Afraid to blink, she stared another second or two at the slow leak of blood down his torso and arms, at the gaping of his mouth, and his wide unseeing eyes.
Damn.

She gulped.

Beneath her palm, the collar warmed, tinkled. And she closed her eyes, and somehow she could
see
. The diamante spots dancing at the back of her mind gathered and wriggled through the cracks of the lock, weaving gold-glass diagrams of the clockwork mechanism. Light flared in her mind. She
knew
this lock.

The cogs turned exactly right and slotted into each other. With a
click
, her collar unlocked.

She turned to see Tansu, still kneeling but with key and sword in hand, and with her own collar unlocked. Sofia gulped in air, held her breath.

“I’m not your enemy. They are!” Tansu waved the sword toward the throne, then frowned. “I’m sorry I deceived you, but I’m with the Heraklos. I’m
still
your friend. And allies come. Listen.”

Where was Dankyo? She searched frantically through the clearing smoke.

Above the ringing in her ears from the explosion, Sofia heard distant gunfire. A mile away, past the floating dust, a trio of gyrocopters breasted the wall of the palace compound and swept inward. Salvation. Then like toy fireworks, a burst of electro rockets flared in upward arcs and speared into the gyrocopters. Blinding flares and distant
pops
accompanied the craft as they fell to earth.

Tansu gasped. “Damn. There must be pockets of resistance.”

“We can’t rely on them.” Sofia pulled herself upright. “And Dankyo needs us.”

So Tansu was some sort of spy? The deception hurt, but it could wait. They were on the same side, right now.

Beyond the nearby mess of the dead soldier and whimpering slave girls, the plateau of the Garden of Audiences lay devastated. Everything above waist height was clipped and torn, dead or gone. The Clockwork Warrior replica had blasted apart and only his legs, lower body, and twisted curls of metal remained. The clockwork birds, the trees, and the soldiers had been shredded. Bodies, bloodied and with their limbs tangled, littered the ground. The columns of the roof were pocked and decorated with fragments but intact. And the throne…the throne lay tilted with the emperor-bey pinned to his royal seat with spears of shrapnel. He was dead—very, very dead.

Over by the destroyed automaton, Dankyo climbed to his feet. She smiled as he broke into a loping run toward her. He snatched up a sword. As he passed a body, the soldier flipped to his feet, and lunged at Dankyo’s side.

No
. Sofia gasped and took a stumbling half step.

Casual as a gardener picking up litter, Dankyo pierced the guard with his sword, through and through, the point poking out his back. The man crumpled.

Not everyone had been hit.

Like the slow dawning of a nightmare, Xiang rose before him, her sword describing a neat arc as she flexed, her body stepping as gracefully as a ballerina. She threw a knife that flicked out, a deadly steel minnow, and barely missed Dankyo as he lifted his arm and twisted. A dance began.

Xiang was fast and a superb fighter. But could any woman beat Dankyo in combat? She wanted to believe it impossible, but his chest ran with blood from reopened wounds.
Can he win?
He was strong and canny, but Xiang had a deadly determination that chilled Sofia. They stalked each other, feinted and withdrew, testing the other’s skill.

Anxiety gnawed at her. She wanted to do
something
, but she couldn’t fight, and if she interfered, would likely distract him rather than help.

Other men pushed themselves to their feet. The Ottoman and the janissary who’d arrived with Dankyo were alive, if groggy. They too found discarded swords and ran in to help.

“Look.” Tansu grasped her arm, pointed. Some of the guards carrying rifles struggled to rise—five or six each side.

Could they shoot without hitting Xiang?
I need to do
something!

The creak of leather and sound of boots warned of closer danger. She spun at the same time as Tansu did. Two of the emperor-bey’s personal guards moved forward, spears at the ready. They were fat with armor, big men to begin with, and they lumbered like mini elephants.

Harem women must be beneath their notice, for they trudged past Sofia toward where Dankyo and Xiang sparred. Their boots clunked and crushed rock; their armor bore scars from the flying steel, and on their backs, the haloed saint seemed to mock her.

A familiar tingling teased her skin. For a moment, their armor brightened and miniscule clockwork parts appeared. The cogwheels revolved; their teeth hummed and clicked. Hypnotism had nothing on this. She shuddered.

What a time to daydream. She must have concussion, or was the potion doing…something? Could this be the mark of the Clockwork Warrior? Inside her, something monstrous seemed to stir.

“Yaaa!” Tansu lunged and struck at the legs of the rearmost guard with her sword. Metal clanged, and he toppled—not wounded—he’d tripped, and he scrambled, like a disturbed tortoise, to turn onto his back and face her.

He growled and swept his spear in an aggressive arc. As she jumped back, Tansu’s foot turned on some rubble, and she too tripped, then sprawled flat on her back. The other guard stomped in. He raised his spear—only a quick thrust away from plunging the gleaming weapon into the woman.

“No!” Tansu dug in her heels and flung up her sword arm as if to deflect his strike. His spear arm drew back. The force of this thrust would drive past Tansu’s sword and into her chest, no matter how hard she tried to parry.

Courage
. As Sofia moved to throw herself at the soldier, the answer came to her. The next step was simple. She shut her eyes.

And she met the monster that lurked there, faced it, and offered herself to the strange glimmering power that awaited her in the dark crevices of her thoughts. Upon which, it took flight and ran amok, ticking and sizzling through her veins and her arteries, her muscles and her bones, before it returned, satiated, to the hidden places of her mind. And all in the blink of an eye.

Then she knew.
This is my territory. This is where I stand, in the world of the clock.

For I am the Clockwork Warrior.

When she opened her eyes, the men’s armor glowed, and the gold-glass diagrams of their inner mechanisms stood out like beacons. As the guard thrust his spear into Tansu, Sofia raised her hand. The very tip pierced Tansu just below her left breast, and began its slide through skin, through…

No!

She grasped that sliver of a second, wrapped it up, and held it, quivering.

It was a slippery little thing that wriggled to get free.

Thus, as her first true act as the Clockwork Warrior, Sofia stopped time—the one terrible deed that would kill her if she held it too long.

The groans and shrieks of captured time echoed in her head. Mouth open in a silent scream, her clawed fingers at her temples, she did the one thing she could. She gestured violently, her fingers splayed, and released her power into the workings of the guard’s armor. It imploded, hurling wheels and springs and tiny rivets far into his flesh and driving him backward. The spear was wrenched from his hand, and from Tansu. He toppled over, silent, dead, his armor falling from him like the scales of a killed fish. The spear clattered on the stone.

The other guard froze, eyes wide, halfway up from his crouch. She gestured again. With a loud series of whirrs, his armor popped and peeled from him as his clockwork went haywire.

His spear forgotten, he flung up his hand and patted down his front in disbelief. “Damn!”

As if she hadn’t been a moment from death, Tansu leaped, sword poised to strike. Training kicked in, and the guard went to defend himself, but her sword slipped past the spear’s shaft and sank deep into his gut. Where he clutched the wound, blood welled around his fingers.

So merciless
. Triumph and raw illness at her actions wrestled for prominence inside her. She swallowed down the acid of vomit and blinked. Dankyo needed her.

“Come! Your man’s in trouble.” Black hair flying like the mane of a demon, blood trickling down her bare breast, Tansu charged off. She jumped a body and continued.

The dead are dead. Even if I helped make them that way.

Sofia chased after her. Something wet and thick trailed down her cheek. As she ran, she swiped at it. Blood marked her hand.

I’m crying blood.

Why or how could wait until later. A battle raged somewhere below, in the rest of the gardens. Shouts, screams, and gunshots carried from there, as if from another world. Smoke sifted upward from small fires. Only five or six guards with rifles remained to aid Xiang. Some looked ready to fire if and when they could get a good shot. One of Dankyo’s escorts, the Ottoman, was down and still, arms flopped out like a discarded doll. The second, the janissary, leaped over a bench and sliced at a guard, felling him.

Xiang and Dankyo still played their deadly game, their swords lashing out, sliding, tapping, and whirling in a steel ballet. Only Xiang’s weapon was a lick of flashing steel, custom-made, and fought with on a thousand occasions. Dankyo’s was a borrowed blade, and he bled, and surely he would tire faster.

As he stepped back, a single gauss bullet zinged in, leaving the customary blue arrowed path of a magnetized gauss round. It zipped past his head and kept going.

She shut her eyes for a fraction of a second and slowed her steps.

Killing the other had been instinctive. Killing more… Reality sank home.

If anyone has to die, let it be my enemies, not my friends or my lover.

She broke into a fast lope, heading down the middle of the audience area’s path, and she unfurled her new senses and found them—the clockworks. Every rifle had a trigger mechanism. Every man up there clutched their guns to chest or to cheek if they aimed. Beyond them, she found another thing of clockwork and dismissed it, though it came in fast.
Zigzag?
These men, these guns, were her targets.

As she ran, she breathed in deep and slow, and she lifted her arms from her sides. She uncurled her fingers and unleashed the power. It rolled from her fingertips and sought out the intermeshing metal parts—the brass, the gold, and the steel. From near to far, she mangled them with purpose. She
felt
when the little wheels spun and crumpled, when the high-powered gauss rifles exploded gold and fizzing blue over their owners. The effect cascaded down the line of men, eating them up in fire, and they died.

Better them than us
. She gulped down the sickness rising from her stomach. But the tears on her face trailed thickly down her cheeks. More blood? If it was, she deserved it as penance. Death was never pretty and never good.

“Holy!” Tansu faltered and looked back at Sofia, stared. “Was that you? There’s blood on your—”

Explanations might kill. Sofia sprinted.

With her blade weaving in delicate counterpoint to the rhythm of her feet, Xiang fought on, oblivious to Sofia’s approach. She seemed fresh and strong despite a cut on one bicep, while Dankyo was painted in red and sweat. His glance over her shoulder spurred a quick feint and slash from Xiang; their blades scraped and clanged, and he barely recovered and fell back a pace.