As the Twin Pales and the Lone Soldier perform their dance of days and nights, June stands on a rubble heap and gazes across the charred grounds to the alcazar’s bullwheel tower, still spinning, pulling the ropeway cord toward Kaskit, not away.
“June?” It’s the young Skelton with the same insistence as Tale Jethry. She didn’t think she could get tired of a man so quickly, but this inferior sub-species of humanity still has ways of surprising her.
“Where are the incubators?”
“We’ve almost broken through into their vaults.” He stammers. “What… what is your plan for them?”
“Keep them safe,” she says while drumming up plans for the opposite. She’ll lean those pigs out, replace decades of fat with muscle, and put the women to their intended use, not as pigs anymore, but boars with tusks. Her Thurmgeists, once again.
June orders the Foktle Firestarter staggered and assigns squads of Ox and Ape-infused men to saw away at the hardened prison holding the First Signature, and the Second. There’s no doubt she’s in there— she wouldn’t place two eggs in one basket, herself and the incubators as a single target. The girl is an unnecessary complexity, and June will be sure to spare her to keep the Decree intact, to hold the female advantage over the maligned.
Yet through the night and the next day, the spinning bullwheel hypnotizes June. Its creaks are like an unspoken fact, the awkward guest that won’t leave. It is the only one spinning in the city now, and on its cord dangles that gondola she will be more than happy to call her own, not to mention the fire seed that lines Yosalus Ingram’s pockets. It won’t be hard to pry that from the man.
“It’s ready,” says the veteran conspirator, the man who had witnessed perhaps worse sights at the Abscess. June waits for him to stumble to her, not moving an inch to meet him.
The attendants bring the armor over, fit it onto her, adjust the straps, and carry over a mirror so she can gaze upon the conspirator’s hard work. Her focus fixes on the spinning bullwheel, but the reflection of herself in her periphery smiles back with the triumph of overcoming not just one adult Entrusted but two.
Yet the bullwheel still spins, not caring for her demonstration of prowess and opening up a possibility.
“Well?” asks the veteran.
“Stop it.” When the old man looks confused, June points up. “Stop that thing from turning.”
“And the incubators?”
“Leave them. We need to stop that thing now. It’s been running far too long.”
“But-”
A loud gulp fills the alcazar grounds, and all the robed acolytes, defected elites, and citizens of Kaskit turn to the fleshy mound as it gyrates and pulses. Orifices open up on the pile’s many sides and then launch forth oblong pods in an order June can’t discern. The giant objects tumble on the ground, roll, and come to rest to reveal uncanny resemblances to rhinoceros beetles, ten or fifteen encased in hard shells the shade of amber. They’re larger than Vakye or Sixt.
Another shoots out of the mound, slamming into a squad of fleeing Chant acolytes. It starts to writhe and throb, the other budding beetles joining in the strange dance. The closest of them shakes, cracks, and a black limb shoots out—a mandible.
“They bred!” she yells. “Break them! There are Entrusted inside!”
The order carries forth, and the men run at the pods, slamming them with fists, kicking them, skewering the things with bayonets and halberds, firing pistols, but these are the tough exteriors of otherworldly creatures, the same that guard the Decree’s Signatures, and they do not crumble so easily.
Despite the hatchings, the cord churns on, ignoring her frantic wails. Which fate is worse?
“Cutters off the mound!” she yells, running to the closest pod. “Everyone to the bullwheel tower! Go!”
She is alone in her run save for a few souls, but the Inciter strand must hear, doubtless realizing the predicament is much greater than this lowly Thurmgeist anticipates. The strand steals her orders and fine-tunes them, pulling the men up from the shelters beneath the alcazar towards the bullwheel tower, up the adjoining structures carrying the staircases, and when those fall under the men’s weight, they create ladders with their bodies that others climb up.
She runs to join the bullwheel tower assault, climbing shoulders, gripping hair for purchase, arms as rungs. She reaches the top and finds conspirators working the mechanisms as the bullwheel high above whooshes, flinging Incited men aside that try to grapple on and clog its relentless revolutions.
She follows the cord past the airlock, past the city’s enclosure, over the towns and villages, and on until a large shape presses forth in the distance, traveling not on the cord but underneath it and heading towards them. It is bigger than even the Skelton.
Just as she’s about to call out an order June finds the mound pulsing violently as if upset by the insurgence, the motion reflected onto the squirming pupae. The largest one flails its limbs and hurls men aside. Its shell cracks and rips down the middle. A shape bursts forth from it, larger than any of the Second Signature’s Entrusted, with a horn making up more than half of its body. It regards its surroundings. Then, it looks to June, and collects in a moment of recognition its father’s and its mother’s shells on June’s person, as her armor.
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It launches towards her, and the last thing June sees is its horn, taller than her, impaling through her armor and her chest.
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Understanding drifts between the web of synapses connecting Genebrict and Delah. No words are spoken, and none are needed. The two steer themselves while looking for threats, simultaneously calculating optimal paths and reaching quorum faster than one can blink.
Delah detects a Mind, a curious one that sees they are adequate—way more than that, and tries to reach out to them. Stalt builds themselves away from it, almost like a Skiff running on water but with each paddle pushing them across acres.
They push over barren fields, swallowing them, feeding on wheat, deer, raw ground, and anything else they can consume to keep pushing onward.
They come upon Kaskit with the Twin Pales setting behind them, casting shadows on the airlock leading to the Second Signature’s alcazar. Dozens of people crowd onto the customs terminal from the other side, forming a line between them and the mechanisms that will open the entrance to the city. More climb the tower not through its internal winding staircases or lifts but from the side walls.
Genebrict sees this through a panorama extending as wide as the Skelton’s entire deck. Kaskit’s enclosure seems much smaller than it did while he stood underneath it, and the fighting bodies inside even more so. They are like tiny arguing spiders that clack their limbs against each other, slapping and pushing but never killing.
Delah monitors the women in the pods as they move, building a protective barrier and molding it to match the contours beneath them. Their shape flows towards the city in a wave of tendrils that crawl over decaying raw ground and the outer towns and villages. Stalt does his best to throw needless men away, but some get too close, and The Twin Admirals have no choice but to reclaim the souls for a better purpose.
They reach the glass underneath the airlock, Genebrict’s side of their organism touching the organism first and alerting men on the other side. He ignores them, reaching the entrance and spreading his being out until he forms a protective artery around the airlock’s door.
Through the slits of the eyes on the being that he’s become, he sees a cloud of figures streaming into the airlock, impatient as they wait for the mechanisms to work while their kind fumble on the other side at the controls. They are giant rhinoceros beetles, much like the one who presided over the Hyrnlak briefing; only some are twice the size of the one before. More gather atop the bullwheel tower, throwing men off the side.
When the airlock doors open, the largest beetle takes the initiative and runs into the artery Stalt has created for it. It stops, regarding the passage of flesh surrounding it. Despite the command its size implies, it does not step further in.
Genebrict takes the more obvious approach. He forms into the closest approximation of his prior self, outer lungs included, and emerges from the artery’s walls with an appendage trailing from his back. The attempt is enough for the beetle to recognize him, even though they’ve never met.
“She’s inside,” it bellows like a canyon yawning its mouth wide and calling to him. “Do you have the seed?”
Stalt finds it in its glass case somewhere in the folds and pockets of their organism. Pulling it over and pushing it through the flesh at their feet takes seconds, and he picks it up and shows it to the beetle.
“Good.” It scans Genebrict as if gaging his worthiness of some critical task to come. “It’s not safe in there for you.”
“I’ll only be a second.”
He follows the beetle into the airlock, and when the doors close by their locking mechanism, he reaches out to stop them, sealing it with his decay, letting the inhibitors press hard around him as if manacles prevent him from growing, imprisoning his strands in his maligned cells.
Inside the terminal, seven more beetles heave and slash at various attackers. Stalt can’t discern any allies aside from the insects.
He makes his way over to the railing of a platform, looking over the alcazar or what it had once been. Most of the buildings he left weeks ago are squashed, the ones still standing barely half their size, collapsed and torn apart. The bullwheel tower is the only structure that is mostly intact, but even it is pocked with holes. The gardens that burgeoned and bloomed, and the plants soared high, are now gone, replaced by black ash and smoke.
Far below, men fight men in chaos, the only parallel to the first Kaskitian riot several years ago. Alcazar elites thrust pikes into robed Chant acolytes, only for both of them to turn on bands of commoners. Volleys of muskets launch from several directions, cannons firing into the city, their targets not obvious, and maybe not even aiming at anything at all. Allegiances have vanished, souls striking each other with abandon and without purpose.
Stalt’s perspective of the battle shifts as a quadrant of the beetles lands on a pulsing mound of flesh. It is perhaps twenty feet wide, equally as tall, and nestled in a crater large enough for a whole building. Men crawl over the thing, prodding it and hacking away, hungry to reach something vitally important. Scabs of it have been torn or burned off, trails of gore littered all around the alcazar’s ground. Some beetles land on top of it, engaging the fervent men, flinging them off and discarding them like trash or annoying pests.
At least fifteen beetles gather atop the bullwheel tower, waiting for Stalt—defending him.
“Entrusted?” he asks. “You’re hers?”
It nods.
Better be. He pulls the seed from the glass, feeling it heat up, eating away his flesh as Delah helps him replace it. “The city?”
The beetle shakes its head. “Gone. She would command it so.” He points to the mound of flesh, and it is then that Stalt knows who must be inside.
There is no way these Entrusted would recommend any course of action that would hurt the Second Signature, but there are people about the city, yet all of them are pawns in this cloud of melee. Not once does he catch a passive soul.
Under different pretenses, the girl inside that mound would still have led Stalt to his sister. He guesses that, had the Second Signature known the truth, she still would have reunited the two.
At another prod from the beetle, Genebrict holds the seed high. “Ready?”
It nods.
Stalt clutches the sizzling seed and winds back to hurl it off the tower.
He pauses.
Gen?
He holds his arm there. The beetle looks at him, curious.
Gen? You alright?
Gen stops, blinks, still holds his arm back, but speaks. “It sees me,” he says. “It’s confused.”
At that moment, it seems every head in the city turns his way and crooks.
Gen!
Stalt hurls the seed. It sails through the air in an arcing tumble, leaving behind a vapor trail as it boils moisture. Previously a mystery, Stalt can now see the Firestarter strand inside working, drawing upon a distant place the chemicals needed for the reaction.
Stalt runs back through the airlock, the beetles following, just before the seed hits the ground and ignites.