Chapter 11

Soren cast starfire with the intent to defend, which ultimately meant killing the Daijal soldiers nearest them with a searing burst of heat, sending those on the mezzanine scattering. The starfire was enough to make the soldiers fall back and look for cover.

"We need to leave!" he snapped. They shouldn't have detoured to begin with, though some part of him could understand Caris' need to reunite with the people she loved. But the revenants in that cell with dried-out husks for faces were no longer her parents.

"No!" Caris shrieked, fighting Blaine's grip. "No!"

Her brass goggles were fogged up from tears that had nowhere to go. She kept fighting Blaine, who clearly didn't want to hurt her. Nathaniel solved the problem of her panic by hoisting her over his shoulder and ignoring the way she pounded his back with her fists.

"They're gone," Nathaniel told her, voice breaking. "I'm sorry, my love, but they're gone, and we can't lose you, too."

The sound of pistols going off made Soren instinctively duck. He gestured sharply with one arm, causing starfire to rise higher in the air around them to act as cover. He did his best to keep it away from the prisoners in the cells, but if the heat melted the locks off, well, so be it. And if it burned the Daijalan soldiers who couldn't escape quickly enough, so much the better.

Soren opened up a route between walls of starfire back the way they'd come since it was the only way out. Maurus led the Royal Guard in a charge for the door, pistols out and ready to shoot. Blaine stayed beside Nathaniel, who refused to put Caris down, while Halyna took up the rear with Soren.

"Our cover is blown. We aren't getting past the barricades between here and the palace," Blaine called out.

"That was a given," Soren grunted.

"So what do we do?"

With the allied forces still locked in pitched battles in the trenches and the outer wall only partially broken through, they couldn't rely on the cavalry to arrive. They'd have to fight their own way through the handful of miles between the jail and the palace, and they didn't have the bullets to survive that.

"We evacuate who we can and burn everything down between us and the palace. The city survived the Inferno once before. I'm sure it'll survive another."

Blaine made a strangled, horrified sound that Soren ignored. Maurus had reached the door leading back to the administrative side of the jail but hadn't opened it yet. The Ashionen ordered everyone to stand aside out of shooting range before pointing at Soren.

"Ready?" Maurus barked out.

It didn't take a genius to know what he was asking for, and Soren nodded. He drew the starfire closer, shifting some of it into a rope of burning flame that he shoved through the doorway once Maurus yanked open the door.

The screams from the other side mixed with the crack of pistols going off, but the bullets melted in starfire before finding any targets. The soldiers on the other side didn't have time to escape the searing heat and died for their efforts. Soren shoved the wall of starfire forward, keeping it ahead of them as they all scrambled through the doorway. He let the starfire behind them in the jail die down once they all made it into the hallway.

Nathaniel set Caris back on her feet, though he kept her hand in his as they raced through the abandoned work area, kicking up ash along the way. The entrance was ahead, all the desks between their position and the door hastily abandoned. The only people left in the work area were the ones locked up in the holding cell for processing.

"Let us out!" one of them yelled.

Soren ignored their cries for freedom, all his attention focused on the forecourt he could see out the front windows. "Everyone get down!"

They dove for the floor as the thunderous sound of bullets tore through windows and walls. Soren slammed his back against a desk and unholstered his pistol. He looked over at where Halyna was crouched, one of the Royal Guards having handed back to her the shoulder-mounted-grenade launcher.

"I can buy us a few moments for you to get us a way out," Halyna said.

Soren nodded, pulling starfire from the aether. "Do it."

The suppressive fire from the Daijalan soldiers outside never stopped, forcing them all to stay hunkered down. Vibrations through the floor made Soren grimace, the sensation a warning that a sentinel-class automaton was moving into position. They wouldn't survive the strafing fire of a Zip gun.

Halyna finished loading her grenade launcher and hefted it onto her shoulder, the long-distance weapon primed to shoot. She'd only have one chance to take her shot, and she took it with a calmness all wardens were trained to carry when in the poison fields. The flare of the launch sizzled out the rear of the wide barrel as the chemical grenade streaked through a broken window, exploding amongst the soldiers outside. Soren didn't know what poison or toxin had been inside the grenade, but the screams from everyone in range of the explosion outside told him it was probably one of the more painful types.

Soren looked back at Halyna, mouth open, but the words on the tip of his tongue never made it out whole. They turned into a shout of warning that came too late as Terilyn appeared out of the lingering smoke behind the other warden and slit her throat.

"Hold fire! Hold fire!" a voice yelled from outside. Abruptly, the guns went quiet.

The Blade dropped Halyna's body and threw herself behind a desk for cover, escaping the burst of starfire Soren sent her way. He snuffed it out with a curse. He couldn't simply burn everything around him, not when he didn't know where everyone on his side of the fight was taking cover. He'd have to get in close with Terilyn in order to kill her, all while the enemy kept them boxed in.

"The Blade killed Halyna," Soren called out, scrambling after her. He stayed low, not trusting the absence of bullets. Maurus swore, and Soren hoped someone was with Caris to keep her safe. His focus had to be Terilyn.

Soren lunged for the desk Terilyn had taken cover behind, unsurprised to find she wasn't there. The brass goggles he wore impeded his sight, so he shoved them on top of his head and unclipped his gas mask. Revealing his face meant revealing his identity, but that wouldn't matter if he was dead.

He unsheathed his poison short sword, pressing his thumb to the tiny button beneath the crosshairs. It released a thin stream of poison from the vials in the hilt and internal tubing to trickle down the blade to coat it. The paralyzing chemical agent was meant to bring down revenants, but it would do fine against a Blade. Soren slid out from behind the desk and cut diagonally across the floor for the desk opposite him where Blaine was crouched.

"I expect they're holding fire because Terilyn is inside with us," Soren said in a low voice. "Try to get Caris to use her starfire and clear the front. I'll handle the Blade."

Blaine craned his head around, looking over his shoulder. Soren followed his gaze to where Caris and Nathaniel were crouched behind another desk. Caris huddled in Nathaniel's arms, small in a way Soren knew they couldn't afford her to be.

"She's in shock," Blaine said.

"We don't have time for her to grieve. Get her up and get her fighting before reinforcements come."

"Terilyn might be a good bargaining chip."

"I'm through with bargains."

Soren shoved himself back the way he'd come, focused on hunting Terilyn in the confines of the room they were in, with no way out. Not the best odds, but Soren would make them work in his favor—somehow.

All his people were behind him, and odds were that Terilyn would try to murder them. With that in mind, Soren cast starfire on the area in the rear, not caring where it landed. Wood and paper went up in flames, electric sparks fizzing out as wires popped and burst before melting.

A shadow streaked out from behind a desk, coalescing into a figure that lunged for the entrance back into the jail. Soren sent starfire arcing toward Terilyn but missed, the heat of it hitting the wooden floor and eating a hole right through it. He let it all die down, sparing the others the heat of the magic, before throwing himself toward that same door. He let starfire lead him through it, using it to melt the bullets Terilyn aimed his way.

Before he could orient himself to her position, Terilyn lunged toward him, quick and lethal, stiletto extended. Soren brought his poison short sword around to parry, starfire flickering around them both while nearby prisoners screamed. Their blades clashed together, and Terilyn twisted close again. Soren drove his other elbow toward her face, but she dodged, went low, her other hand snapping out, fisted for a hit, only it was a lie.

Something sharp pierced his thigh through the weave of his trousers. Soren grunted, locking his knee as whatever Terilyn had injected him with made that area go numb. Terilyn tossed the small syringe aside, her hand flicking to another weapon strapped to her body. Soren shifted his weight and spun, snapping his other leg out and catching her in the chest, sending her reeling back. She wasn't a revenant and so managed to duck the sweeping cut of his poison short sword where her head used to be.

"Poison?" Soren asked incredulously. "You know I spent my entire life becoming immune to most of them."

"The Klovod made this one especially for wardens," Terilyn snapped.

"Terrible craftmanship. The alchemist masters back on the island would be so disappointed."

Even as he spoke, he could feel a weakness spreading down his leg, up to his hip, but Soren could still move. Whatever the Klovod had created, perhaps it could incapacitate a warden in time. But the alchemy running through Soren's veins would hopefully counter it long enough for him to finish this fight.

He planted his feet firmer on the floor, concentrating more on the starfire curling through the air than his sense of balance. Fighting was muscle memory, something he could handle because pushing through the pain or worse while alone in the poison fields was something he'd trained for as a tithe.

He hadn't trained at all to wield starfire, but reaching for the aether and manipulating the raw magic into something ferocious was almost instinctive these days. After the past couple of weeks wielding it in defense of Solaria, the power of it came easily to him.

Soren no longer had to hide behind the mantle of a warden, the only road he thought he'd ever walk now lost to him. He'd do his duty to the wardens and leave it all behind, because his home was in the south, in Solaria, by Vanya's side, and he would not die here in a country that had never been his at the hands of a Blade who belonged to Eimarille.

Soren wrapped Terilyn in starfire, twisting molten white-hot flame around her body like ivy, forcing her to halt mid-lunge, her dark eyes wide in her face. The starfire hadn't touched her yet, but he could see the way her skin sizzled from the heat of it, the panic in her dark eyes something not even her own training as a Blade could push aside.

"I suppose it's too much to hope you'll betray Eimarille and get us through the checkpoints between here and the palace without me having to burn everything to the ground?" Soren asked.

Terilyn's mouth firmed, her grip on the stiletto never wavering even as starfire melted the blade of her weapon. "My loyalty is to my queen."

"I thought as much."

He didn't try to change her mind—fanatics weren't worth the effort. Terilyn's scream of agony was cut short before it could get high-pitched, starfire covering her in a pillar of fire.

In the end, there wasn't even ash left of her.

Soren turned to leave and stumbled, his left leg nearly giving out. He staggered upright, scowling down at the spot where she'd got him with the needle. He pried a travel-sized antidote kit from his belt pouch and took out a small vial. The broad antidote would hopefully help counter whatever poison had been in the needle. Downing it in one swallow, he slid the empty vial back into the kit and tucked it away into his belt pouch.

"Will you let us out?" The question came from a man whose face was half bruises. He shared a cell with two other prisoners, all of whom were looking at Soren.

"I don't have a key for your cells, nor do I know where it is kept," Soren said.

"The supervisor room overlooks the cell block. The controls there can override the individual locks and open the cell doors."

Soren glanced at the entrance. "I can't stay to help you."

"We just need a chance to flee. Please, don't leave us here to die like this."

Soren's gaze tracked down the rows of cells to the one he knew the revenants to be in. He couldn't open all the cell doors, release the prisoners and have them walking into reach of revenants. He made his way toward that cell in question, ignoring the numbness in areas of his left leg. He could still walk, and that meant he could still fight.

Soren stopped in front of the cell, staring at the dead who had once been Caris' parents. The revenants were on their feet, fingers with ragged flesh hanging off the digits wrapped around the metal posts. He couldn't see what they must have looked like in the bones protruding through desiccated flesh on their faces, eyes sunken and dried-out holes. He stayed out of reach, knowing how quickly revenants could move, driven by spores, always looking for the living to propagate.

There was no saving them now.

Soren raised a hand, starfire sparking at his fingertips, and set the dead alight.

They made no sound as they burned, bodies crumbling beneath the excessive heat until nothing was left of them but the memories their daughter would carry. Caris could grieve them at a memory wall. Soren let the starfire die, scorch marks all that was left of the people who had raised Caris.

This was his duty, and Soren hoped she would understand.

He left the cell block and located the control room, a window overlooking the floor of the cell block. The analytical engine was powered on, and Soren flicked toggles, pressed buttons, and raised small levers until he heard the gears of every cell door opening inside the cell block at the same time.

He didn't wait to watch the prisoners walk free. Soren headed back to the administrative side of the building on shaky legs, carefully entering the workroom he'd left everyone else in, staying low to remain behind cover.

The front wall had been blasted through in one section, but no damage existed inside. The scorch marks were familiar, as was the melted, twisted metal of the window frames. Starfire had taken it out, which meant Blaine had convinced Caris to finally join the fight. Soren discovered, when he crept closer to the front of the building, that she hadn't fought for long.

The forecourt of the jail was littered with melted vehicles, half-burned bodies, scorch marks, and a sentinel-class automaton that was little more than slag. Soren found Blaine, Caris, and the Royal Guard facing off against a man dressed as a warden who hadn't arrived with them, one who held Nathaniel in front of him like a living shield. Nathaniel didn't move, didn't fight, standing rigid in the man's grip while the clarion crystal tip of a wand pressed firmly against the underside of his jaw. Even from where he stood, Soren could see the way Nathaniel shivered, as if he was fighting against invisible chains, but they were all in his mind.

Soren didn't have to guess who this man was. "Olet."

The former warden's gaze jerked toward Soren, mouth twisting in annoyance. "That is not my name any longer."

"The Klovod, then. It doesn't change your betrayal any less."

"The wardens betrayed all of us who came to them as tithes."

"Let Nathaniel go," Caris pleaded, trying to take a step forward but held back by Blaine's grip on her arm. "Please."

"I think you've had my rionetka long enough."

"He isn't yours."

The Klovod smiled condescendingly, but his attention remained on Soren. "Where is the Blade?"

"Dead, just like Petra," Soren said.

Soren spoke the name of the warden who had guarded the border around Rixham for years and who he knew had been assigned to it once more when the wall had fallen around that city. He remembered Tock, Petra's strange clockwork cat, and what Ksenia had said about that automaton. How it had been gifted to Petra by a fellow warden out of care, perhaps out of love, but that love had died in the poison fields.

The Klovod shrugged one shoulder. "If you hope I have sentiment for my past life, you are sorely mistaken. But the girl's sentiment will be enough to let me walk away freely."

"Will it?" Soren asked, starfire curling around his fingers.

Caris shot him a frantic look, wrenching herself around Blaine. "Soren, don't!"

The Klovod took a step back, Nathaniel following in lockstep. "I think my rionetka dying would wound her better than any bullet. Eimarille will see to it."

Soren had killed Artyom when the man had held Raiah hostage during the Conclave, but he had been within touching distance then. He wasn't now, and Caris looked about ready to fight him and not the Klovod if he tried anything that might harm Nathaniel.

He weighed the cost of effort to get Nathaniel back right now against the fight he knew they were heading into with their push toward the palace. He wasn't sure if Caris could set fire to the city, and if she couldn't, then that responsibility would fall on him. If that was the case, then he needed to conserve his strength until his body fought off the poison.

The Klovod took advantage of his hesitation and Caris' refusal to allow harm to come to Nathaniel. He snapped his wand toward them, magic cascading out of the clarion crystal, the sheer force behind the spell like a bomb that sent them all flying.

Soren crashed into the wall behind him, the weakened wood breaking. He fell to the damaged floor of the jail, entire body aching, head reeling. He coughed through the dust his landing sent into the air. Training got him back to his feet, shaky though his balance was, the poison the Klovod had created a bit more insidious than he was expecting. But he was still breathing, sight was still functioning, and his thoughts were clear enough that Soren focused on the others rather than himself.

"Caris!" Blaine cried out.

Soren stumbled out of the jail, finding the forecourt empty of the Klovod and Nathaniel. The Royal Guard was scattered from the hit, some of the soldiers picking themselves up while a few appeared to be unconscious. Blaine was on his feet, crouched beside Caris' limp form. Soren hurried over to them.

"She's alive, just dazed," Blaine told him when Soren knelt on her other side.

Caris' eyelids fluttered before finally opening, gaze not quite focused. Soren ran his fingers over her skull and discovered a patch of bloody hair near the crown of it. Caris flinched away from his touch, curling in on herself.

"Concussion, maybe," Soren said.

"Nathaniel?" Caris rasped.

"The Klovod took him."

Soren curled his hand beneath her head and assisted Blaine in helping her up. Caris sat hunched between them, breathing heavily through her gas mask. Her brass goggles were askew, and Soren hesitated a moment before he removed them, along with her gas mask. The veil she wore beneath them showcased a face that wasn't hers. Caris fumbled at the metal clasp around her throat, managing to undo it and tear the veil off. The blonde hair and green eyes disappeared, revealing a face that Soren could admit shared features with his own.

Her gray eyes met his own, watery with tears, but her jaw was set in a stubborn way. "We're going after Nathaniel."

"Caris," Blaine said tightly. "We need to get you to the palace. You need to put out the North Star's decree and end this war."

"Claiming the starfire throne won't end the war. Bringing two countries together won't be fixed in a day. But my parents are dead, and I won't lose Nathaniel how I've lost them."

Her voice cracked when she spoke, gaze flickering over Soren's shoulder at the jail behind them. "The Klovod mentioned Eimarille. Odds are he might return to her with Nathaniel to lure you in."

"We don't know that for certain," Blaine said.

"She'll be in the palace," Caris muttered. She patted at the belt of her borrowed uniform until she found the travel pouch connected there. She withdrew from it a wad of paper that unfolded into a map of Amari. "But we need to know where Nathaniel is."

Soren watched as she spread the map between her legs, hunching over it. She unhooked a thin gold necklace, a tangle of pendants, a ring, and a shard of clarion crystal hanging from the chain. Caris clenched it in one hand, letting it hang over the map. Only when the clarion crystal jerked at the end and pulled on the chain of its own accord did Soren realize what he was looking at. "Who gave you a spelled map?"

"Your people did."

"They put a clarion crystal shard in Nathaniel's chest in case he became a rionetka again so we could find him," Blaine said.

The crystal pointed at a spot several streets from their location. The Klovod hadn't made it far with Nathaniel, but reaching them would be a problem if they didn't take extreme measures. The number of security checkpoints between them and the palace would impede their progress, but Soren was prepared to burn the city down if need be.

"Can you call your husband? Get him to bomb the area north of the palace?" Soren asked.

"He's an aeronaut, not a military officer. The airship might have different orders," Blaine warned, though he still took out his televox.

Maurus jogged over to them, gas mask and brass goggles still in place. "We have a truck ready for transport. It's out on the street and missed being damaged."

Soren offered Caris his hand. "Let's go."

She took it, the gold chain pressed between their palms, reminding him of the vow Vanya had given him. Caris clutched the map to her chest as Soren helped her toward the street while Blaine pleaded with his husband for aerial support.

"Did you burn them?" Caris asked in a low voice, staring straight ahead. "My parents? Did you burn them?"

"To ash," Soren said quietly.

Her lips trembled when he glanced at her, eyes wide and wet as tears trickled down her cheeks. "Thank you."

Her voice came out small and grieved, full of a pain Soren would never know because tithes never had parents growing up. "The dead are my duty. The living must be yours."

The future of a country rested on her thin shoulders, and Soren didn't envy her the road everyone on their side wanted her to walk.