Poire did not know how long he ran. Did not know where he was running. He stood at the top of a hill, looking down into the smoke-covered streets of the Midcity, his mind stuck on a single question:
How can there be so many people here?
The Conclave was all he had ever known. Two hundred thirty-three people in all.
But here . . .
Thousands of feathered and furred and scaled xenos yelling and screeching and crashing against each other as they rushed to escape the roar of the fires and the oceans of smoke that roiled above. Dozens, maybe hundreds of soldiers formed lines in the alleys and marched shoulder to shoulder as the crowds scattered before them.
They surged toward him, and all he could do was throw himself into the nook of a doorway before hundreds of talons and clawed feet and paws stampeded past, each one running at a different speed. Elbows and wings and scales crushed against each other and moved apart in waves, and a thin haze of smoke hung over everything, choking him with the stinging smell of firewood and burning oil. Making it impossible to see where the crowds were going and where they came from.
Every few minutes, another building groaned and cracked as the timbers burned and broke, collapsing in a heaving belch of flame and embers and smoke.
Where are the fire drones?
Where are the extinguishers?
None of that existed now. Everything in this world was made to break, made to catch fire. Why did they build their homes with wood?
His wrist implant threw up alert after alert, vibrating his arm into numbness.
Warning! Rapid increase in carcinogens detected. Connecting to air recyclers.
Connection failed.
Connecting to emergency services.
Connection failed.
Battery: critical. Please charge now. Entering sleep mode.
It was just more noise, muted below the crashing scream of the crowds. They surged past his stoop, and he squeezed closer to the doorway to avoid getting swept up in all that maddening motion.
Each time an avian came too close, his wrist would send sharp stabbing vibrations up his arm, and Poire felt the liquid armor, hidden by his cloak, writhe angrily over his skin.
One avian, a younger male with fine silks—now muddied and torn—jumped into Poire’s alcove.
“They’re coming,” the avian said, his attention still on the streets. “Vayu, we have to keep moving.”
Then he turned to look at Poire.
“You’re not Vayu—”
The avian’s eyes went wide with confusion followed by utter disbelief.
“By the gods,” he said. “Are you real?”
Crowds poured past the stoop, screeching and shouting. Even the brick stoop rumbled beneath their feet. The light danced through the smoke, too bright and too dark at the same time.
“Help us!”
“I can’t!” Poire shouted back over the din of the crowds. “I don’t know how!”
“You must!”
“How? Tell me how!”
“My family!” The avian threw himself forward, his feathered hands beseeching Poire. “Please!”
The armor acted on its own accord. Spikes of chromatic metal pierced through Poire’s shirt, stabbing toward the avian. Warning him off before he could clasp Poire’s hands.
Shocked, the avian fell back, his plea still caught in his beak. A surge of the crowds carried him away still gawking at Poire.
The liquid armor relaxed, sliding back through the ripped holes in Poire’s shirt. Hiding itself under his cloak. He clutched at his chest, trying to pull the metal off, but it only dripped through his fingers.
He couldn’t breathe. How could anyone breathe with all these people—all this smoke?
The crowds surged again and spread apart. An older avian hobbled among the crowds, trying to keep his footing. A cluster of xenos wearing long-snouted masks scurried through the throngs of people, squeaking as they tried to stay together.
Poire dared to peek out, searching for a sign. Something. Anything that might tell him what to do.
A reptilian child with a headscarf and a dress singed with ash and burns was standing under a lamppost as people threaded past her. She was sobbing, her clawed hands curled to her chest.
A rhythmic stomping seemed to silence all other sounds. Dozens of boots, marching in step. Imperial soldiers in their ash-smudged blues and blacks. Brandishing their bayonet-tipped rifles.
Someone blew on a whistle and started shouting commands.
“Run them down! Get them all out!”
More stragglers. More people, running out of doors or jumping down from balconies with anything they could carry. None of them even seemed to see the sobbing child.
Help us.
Poire tore himself out of his alcove and rushed into the street. He dodged around a black-feathered avian, who was limping on a bandaged leg and looking over his shoulder. Eolh?
No. His heart rose, but only for a moment. Someone else.
Poire ducked behind a hand-drawn cart laden with clothes and clanking housewares that cracked against each other as the cart bounced on the cobbles.
The xeno child was still crying out when a piercing whistle blew over the crowds.
Not one, but dozens of cyran patrols were converging on this street. Where had they come from? They stood at the mouth of every street, blockades of blue and black uniforms, gripping their rifles tight to their chests.
Even though they held the weapons, Poire could see the quiet fear in their scaled faces. None of the soldiers wanted to be here. But discipline overrode their fear, and they stood together until a gunshot cracked over the rooftops.
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A soldier at the front gasped. Touched at his stomach. His fingers were painted red with his own blood. His knees buckled, and he collapsed back into the ranks.
“Death to the Empire!” A shout from somewhere in the crowd. Heads turned, and people moved out of the way. An avian had his fist raised in triumphant anger, shaking it at the imperials. “Fight fire with fire!”
The cyrans swung their rifles up and threw a torrent of gunshots into his body, heedless of the crowd beyond.
Suddenly, the surge of xenos became a stampede. Screaming, shouting, stomping, hissing, screeching. Poire was marooned in the middle of the street as too many bodies crashed around him. The liquid armor was rippling wildly under his clothes, and every time someone touched him, it lashed out, tearing a hole in his cloak as snakes of metal whipped and bit at anyone who came too close.
By the time Poire pushed out of the crowd to the lamppost, the reptilian girl was nowhere to be found.
A green-scaled woman was screaming at the end of the street. Her voice was on the edge of hysteria. “Where is Alya? Have you seen her? I can’t find my Alya!”
And the ocean of bodies carried him away. He couldn’t see anything but feathers and leather and cloth pressed together. It was all he could do to stay on his feet.
Glass exploded into the street, followed by an oppressive blast of heat. One of the cramped row houses that had not been on fire moments ago was now completely engulfed in flames. Red and orange tongues burst through a street-side window, and fresh screams curdled the air.
“Help us!” a muffled voice shouted. “Please, someone!”
They were trapped. Why is no one stopping to help?
Poire tried to thread through the crowd, pushing closer to the source of the heat, when a door was blown open and a furnace gust of heat knocked into him. The liquid armor wrapped over his exposed skin, shielding him from the flames.
The avians nearest him were not so lucky, their feathers blackening as they screamed and the crowds surged away.
But all that shining, silver metal kept him safe. And so he reached into the building. Into the flames.
The metal began to ripple in the heat, and the buzz from his wrist implant made him flinch back.
Be brave, he thought. Be fast.
It was a stupid idea, and he knew it was. But he couldn’t ignore the screams. They sounded so . . . human.
Poire pulled his ragged shirt over his mouth and sucked in his breath. Before he could charge inside, there was a splitting crack! A rift formed down the center of the building. It seemed to fold in on itself, blasting Poire with dust and stone and cinders.
The screaming stopped.
Out in the street, an avian was clutching a body in his arms. “Don’t do this,” he was saying. “Don’t leave me.”
And the boots marched closer.
And someone was saying, “They can’t do this,” over and over.
And the boots . . .
“Burn the Empire!” they sang from the rooftops. And the whistles of the cyran officers. And a voice saying, “Take her with you!” and Poire was drowning in it all.
There were too many of them, and they were crushing him, and they all needed his help. He couldn’t breathe through all the smoke. Sweat stung his eyes, and no matter how much he blinked, it kept stinging so that he couldn’t see where he was walking. All while the liquid armor writhed and rolled over his skin, lashing at anyone who came too close. Stop that, he thought. Ignored.
“Stop!” he shouted.
A chime from his wrist implant: You don’t have access to that command.
“Override!”
You don’t have access—
“Please!” he screamed. But he couldn’t hear himself over the crowds and the groaning of timbers and the laughter of the flames.
The armor rolled up his neck, seeking his lips and his eyes, and he thought of Marsim, trapped inside the armor for so many years that his body had become so much dust. He thought of how the armor covered Marsim’s mouth, just as it was now touching Poire’s. He had to get it off. Poire grabbed at the liquid metal, meaning to dig his fingernails into the skin on his neck.
There was a string on his neck. His fingers followed it down to a piece of plastic. The shell of an old switch, given to him by that Sajaahin woman.
He didn’t know why, but it made him think, not of those underground scavengers, but of the corvani.
Just breathe, Fledge. But the smoke, and the crowds, and—
A gap started to form in the crowd. A pocket of movement as people shoved each other away from something.
Two dozen imperials marched in a square formation down the street, their bayonets jutting out. The square protected a cyran woman whose shining scales reflected the firelight. She held a brass horn to her lips so she could shout into the crowds.
“People of Gaiam, heed my words! Your Queen has betrayed you. Sold you out to the Lowtown scum. She has summoned her vile agents to burn down our homes. Only the Magistrate, in all his generosity, has unleashed his own personal guard to reclaim our beloved city!”
People were stopping and listening to her.
“Heed the rumors, for they are true! A god, a human god, has been awakened. Even now, the Queen of Cowards hunts him down.”
They were actually listening to her.
“Step forward if you know anything about the human or his whereabouts. Be a hero to your people! Help us find the human and bring salvation to our great city!”
The crowds were still. They looked at each other, doubt and wonder in their voices.
“A god? Here?”
“They can’t be serious.”
“By the Light and all the stars beyond, I told you, I told you it was true!”
And over their chatter, the crier continued her message. “If your information leads to the human, you will be granted”—here the crier shouted each word separately—“Full! Imperial! Citizenship! For you and your family!”
But that was the answer, wasn’t it?
The only thing he could do to help anyone.
“Help us find the human and restore peace to our city! Think of the lives you could save! Think of your family!”
Go, Poire thought. Turn yourself in. And then what?
They will find a worse use for you, Eolh had said. Even the Queen had seemed terrified at the thought of Poire getting too close to them.
But the streets were filled with smoke and the crush of too many bodies. People were dying, and the fires raged ever closer.
He was suffocating. They all were. What could be worse than this?
An old avian, hobbling on a cane, was gasping for breath. He couldn’t move, or maybe he just didn’t see the square of soldiers marching closer. They shouted at him, and when he didn’t move away fast enough, a thick-muscled soldier slammed the butt of his rifle into the old avian’s gut. He went sprawling into the street.
“Leave him alone!” Poire heard himself shout. He hadn’t meant to say anything, but if nobody else would . . .
The muscular soldier looked up. Long enough to give Poire a savage grin. In a single practiced motion, he flipped his rifle around and sank the bayonet into the avian’s back. The avian jerked and squawked at the same time. The squawk turned into a gasp. The gasp, a gurgle.
Poire shouted. Not words, just a savage sound that rose automatically from his throat. If he had looked down at his hands, he might’ve seen the wisps of light dancing at his fingertips.
The other soldiers stopped and shouted warnings at their compatriot.
But Poire was already running, both hands raised and trailing that glowing mist, meaning to throw himself into the cyran.
He smashed against a solid wall of muscle and hammered his fists against the cyran’s torso.
The guard looked down at him. Another savage grin spread across the guard’s lips, and the ridged fins on his neck raised. The muscles in his arms bunched up as he brought the butt of his rifle up and smashed it into Poire’s face.
Poire did not feel a thing. Not so much as a tap on his nose. Instead, before the rifle touched his face, a strand of metal shot out of Poire’s chest and caught the rifle on a single sharp point.
Where the metal touched the wood, the wood exploded. Splinters and rifle metal flew everywhere. The liquid armor caught anything that might’ve impaled Poire’s face.
The muscled guard had no such defense. Splinters speared his body and peppered his face, tearing holes in his cheeks and chest.
The cyran clawed at his own eyes, screaming as he fell to the ground.
For a moment, no one else moved. Not the crowds, nor the soldiers.
Poire looked down at his hands speckled with someone else’s blood. The armor was spiking and rolling under his half-shredded clothes as if hungry for more.
Whispers in the crowd. They were pointing at him. Horrified.
One of the cyrans started shouting, and the others lifted their rifles. Poire didn’t see where the first shot came from, but he heard his armor catch it with a slight ping!
And then, thundering chaos. The soldiers didn’t care where they shot. They launched volley after volley, filling the street with smoke and screams.
Hundreds of xenos shoved and tugged and ran at each other, fighting to get away from the cyrans. An avian shrieked, “Long live the resistance!” and came running out of the crowd with a pistol drawn. He squeezed off two rounds before they slaughtered him.
They kept shooting at Poire, and the liquid armor kept stinging bullets out of the air. The white haze drifted, quietly filling the streets from wall to window. And still they shot, right into the backs of all those fleeing, broken people. Bootsteps hammered on the cobbles as more soldiers came running down the streets, and someone was blowing a whistle, giving commands with a shrill twee! Tweee!
The crier was shouting at the cyran guards, pointing at Poire. Three of them slung their rifles over their shoulders and split off from the main formation. They boxed Poire against the crowd, shoving people out of their way. But they did not approach.
None of them wanted to be the first to touch a god.
You can save them, Poire thought.
He was frozen where he stood.
Give yourself up. You’re the only one who can.
But he could not make his feet move.
And he could hear Eolh’s voice, too. They will find a worse use for you.
Poire turned.
And ran.