The Black Rose (24 page)

His breath was ragged with the exertion of moving just a few feet, so she helped him down to a seated position. She crouched over him, ready to ask where he was in pain.

He feebly waved her away. “We have to get the others out. All of them.”

Ruth scanned the aisles of cells. There was indeed a person in every one: some were moving slightly, others weren't at all. The number must have extended into the hundreds, if not thousands. Her brief sense of elation was evaporating into despair. “Who
are
all these people?”

“Prisoners,” was the croaking reply. “Enemies of the state, enemies of the Cult, heretics, would-be dissidents.”

“So they don't kill you?” Ruth asked distractedly, still gazing down the aisle. “They just keep you here?”

The man spluttered, “Why would they kill us? That would be a relief from… from…” He looked up and shuddered.

Ruth took stock of the situation. The demons had gone, at least for now. Something had drawn them away. Now that the Darkness wasn't immediately present and she was able to think rationally again, she felt a stab of guilt for leaving her friends behind. They had almost certainly been captured by now, and she had a horrible suspicion that the demons drawn away from
her
were drawing closer to
them.
It had been a mistake to come to Nexus, she now realized. They had all walked unwittingly into a trap.

But then she looked again at the man, who was now coughing up blood. She and the Apollonians could still undo some of the evil of the Cult. If she could free these prisoners and get them safely away from here, then their trip would not have been entirely in vain.

She fumbled inside her cloak and produced her metallic egg. In the flurry of the chase and her remembrance of her last time on Nexus, she had almost forgotten that there were other Apollonians waiting as backup. She intoned a few syllables, and the machinery beneath the casing flared up. She twisted it, and with a slurping sound a bubble of turquoise broke loose, expanding upwards to the size of a dinner platter.

“Command deck.”

The bubble fizzed lightly, and as the surface cleared again she found herself looking into the command deck of
The Golden Turtle
from the angle of one of the computer monitors. Quentin, Gaby, Malik, and a pair of other Apollonians stood around the map table.

“Ruth, what happened? You look terrible!” Gaby exclaimed.

“There's a lot to explain and not much time. The others walked into a trap, and they've probably been captured. I managed to get out.”

“Where are you now?” Malik urged her. “Have you been detected?”

“I think I'm underground. I'm fairly sure I'm in the Precinct, but on the lowest level. Something weird just happened. There were demons swarming everywhere, but then they all retreated. I think something big is going on upstairs.”

“You're quite right there,” Quentin replied, his face ashen. “You haven't seen the sky, then?”

Someone evidently had pressed a few keys, because the bubble fizzed again. Ruth was now looking out the top of the ship. The storm had intensified since they had last been outside, the rain cutting almost horizontally across the air. Lightning flashed more frequently than ever and closer too; it looked like it might actually be striking the fringes of the city. The glare illuminated the mass of the Cathedral, and out of its core a pillar of indigo energy pierced the clouds. Darkness—not just the shadows of the night, but solid, impenetrable obsidian—was collecting around it, swirling downwards like the base of a tornado, as if magnetically conducted.

The view returned to the command deck. Ruth now understood the others' expressions.

“We think that's the Aterosa being activated,” Gaby explained. “And if it's their Shards being used to do it, then they're probably in the Cathedral.”

“We need a plan,” Malik added, quite unnecessarily. No one seemed to be suggesting that they just did nothing.

Ruth closed her eyes for a moment, thinking, trying to block out the other noises from outside. None of the others spoke. Her eyelids flashed open again, and she was ready. “If all the demons are collecting at the Cathedral, then we've got a window of opportunity. I'm not sure what that thing will do, but we know it's a superweapon, so it wouldn't be good to stick around too long. We need to get these prisoners out, and I'll need a hand. Can you lock onto my coordinates?”

One of the crew typed something in. “Done.”

“Right, I need you to get over here as quickly as possible—and bring the dimension ship too. There are a
lot
of them. Then we need to get to the Cathedral.”

“I thought you were going to say that,” Malik commented darkly.

“We need to get the others out of there and, preferably, as many non-Cultists as we can take. Even if it's too late to stop the superweapon, at least we can try and get out of here relatively unscathed.”

She surveyed the faces before her. She knew them well enough to see when they were hiding utter terror with steadfast bravery.

As she'd expected, only Quentin's sardonic wit interrupted the silent resolution: “You do know, Captain, that this is a suicide mission?”

For the first time in a long while, Ruth found herself smirking. “Yep. But right now it's a choice between suicide letting the Cult get away with it, or suicide trying to stop them. I know which one I'd rather.”

The bubble retracted into the egg, and the light faded.

The ex-prisoner squinted up at her with his single eye, his mouth spread in incredulity. “Who
are
you people?” Ruth smiled. “We're the Apollonians.”

Jack watched with bated breath. Even in their current situation, he had to admit to himself there was something fitting in this. The decades-long conflict between the Apollonians and the Cult of Dionysus had reached its climax in single combat between the two leaders.

He had seen Sardâr fight before—when the elf had taken on and, but for his opponent fleeing, defeated Iago on a floating battlefield above Thorin Salr. He had no doubt about his friend's skill; however, Sardâr was still recovering from the injuries sustained in Albion even before they had been overcome by demons in the Precinct. He must have been weaker than at almost any point in the past.

Moreover, Jack was under no illusions about how formidable an alchemist the Emperor was—the head of the Cult must have honed his powers for years in readiness for such a confrontation. The odds did not weigh in Sardâr's favor.

The orb of indigo around the Emperor's fist suddenly contracted and blasted towards Sardâr. The elf clamped his wrists together and caught it between his knuckles. Rotating it, arms shuddering as if resisting electrocution, he let it fly back at his opponent.

“Good, elf, but not good enough.” The Emperor seized the orb in his palm and plunged it to the ground. With an immense crackling, the marble fractured as a shock wave surged across the floor.

Sardâr was hurled into the air. Straining against the alchemical bindings, Jack watched helpless as the elf hit the ground and collapsed.

Sardâr staggered to his feet, crimson streaming from his forehead. He punched the air with both fists, and a barrage of ivory diamonds launched across the chamber.

The Emperor didn't move. He waited until the foremost diamond was inches from his nose, then pursed his lips and blew. A plume of dark flame emanated from his mouth and expanded to absorb the oncoming fragments.

Two horns of fire arched round symmetrically and surged towards the elf on either side. He threw up a barrier, but it was too late. The flames engulfed him, hiding him from Jack's vision.

The front members of the congregation—Cult and others alike—had ceased to pray and were backing away in apprehension. The flames had not quelled with the end of the attack but rose ever higher, growing to consume more of the chamber. Jack could make out the Emperor, striding out of the fire towards the fallen elf.

Jack turned to look at Adâ. She was paler than ever, and a thin stream of tears down her cheek reflected the light of the fire. His horror was heightened by seeing her face. If Sardâr died now, the Emperor wouldn't have to kill Adâ: she would really be dead already.

The Emperor's gloating could be heard above the crackling fire and rumbling storm. “This is over even earlier than I thought it would be. Is this really my opposite, the mighty leader of the Apollonians? I must say, I expected more. This is almost anticlimactic.” He extended his hand as if to help Sardâr up, but instead a sabre of Dark energy extended within a hair's breadth of the elf's throat. “Time to talk. Who's the Übermensch?”

Sardâr's words were uttered in a single, ragged breath. “I am.”

The Emperor paused in confusion.

That was all the time Sardâr needed. Two blades of white light blasted from his body. One sliced towards the Emperor, who, recovered from his lapse, dissolved it between his fingers.

“Only one on target, I'm afraid.” The Emperor grinned. “Pretty poor…”

But Sardâr wasn't looking at him. The elf, along with the rest of the Apollonians, followed the trajectory of the second blade.

The Emperor turned too late, just in time to see it strike directly into the heart of the Aterosa.

The bindings around him released. Jack dropped but was almost instantly hurled backwards by the blast from the hovering rose. The substance of the Aterosa had changed. It was no longer floating lazily, its tentacles lacing through the air—it was now twitching violently, as if unable to shake loose the light at its core. The stems flailed as gigantic whips, hammering through stone and stained glass like demolition juggernauts.

Jack hauled himself to his feet and glanced around frantically for the others. He found Dannie some way off to his right, battered against the altar, her skin now the texture of crumbling rock. He stumbled over the growing wreckage and helped her up, sparking an alchemical barrier around the two of them.

“Well, that was close,” she breathed. For once, her tone wasn't jovial.

They caught sight of Hakim and Lucy by the dragon statue and, farther away, Adâ and Vince. All of them looked fairly unscathed and had erected similar barriers. Ducking behind the altar to dodge the debris from a tentacle, the two of them darted over to Hakim and Lucy, merging their barriers into one.

The fire had dispersed a little now. Through the gap, they could make out the congregation—or, rather, where the congregation had been. The Cultists were swiftly fleeing via smoke, leaving the nonsorcerous majority to fight their way out. Some kind of riot seemed to be occurring beyond the spasming superweapon: the crowd had rushed to escape via the rear doors. People were screaming, and some were trampled in the surge.

With an immense cracking, the gothic arches were blasted apart. Chunks of stone were carried into the air, exposing a column of energy rising from the Aterosa into the clouds. It was conducting lightning, which now crackled down to claw at the rose itself.

Lucy pointed upwards. Something metallic had flashed by, and a moment later, mechanical flippers descended through a hole in the ceiling. The dome of
The Golden Turtle
came to rest at the side of the chamber, alchemically anchored. The hatch slid open, and Ruth and Malik clambered out. Jack had never been so happy to see them.

Adâ and Vince had joined them now. “Where's Sardâr?”

Jack looked again through the dying flames and saw them. Sardâr and the Emperor were the only ones standing entirely still. They faced each other before the Aterosa. A barrier of energy stood between them: the meeting point of two forces the exact mirrored equal of one another.

“So this is the way it ends, then?”

“If it ends for me today,” the Emperor spat, “it ends for you too. If I am going to oblivion, you are as well.”

Sardâr's expression hardened. “If I'm the price to pay for the end of the Cult, so be it.”