The Broken Eye
Page 189

“No! Ignore that order!” Eirene Malargos shouted. “You’re not in your right mind, Haruru!”
“Kill them!” the Nuqaba shouted. “Block the exits! That’s an order!”
“That’s an act of war! I forbid it!” Eirene Malargos shouted.
Chaos.
“This way!” the Guile soldier said.
He unlocked a door set at the level of the sand. They stepped through and he closed it behind them, locking it.
“Captain Eutheos, you son of a bitch,” Gavin said. “I thought I ordered you out of here.”
“Wasn’t much good at orders at Blood Ridge either, my lord.”
Gavin laughed briefly at some shared memory, then cut off abruptly, as if anything that made his face move spawned such pain that it nearly felled him.
“I can get us to an exit, but they’ll get there faster,” the soldier said.
“There has to be some kind of service exit,” Karris said.
“First thing they’ll think of,” Gavin said. And he was right. Dammit.
“Can you get us to the top tier, west side?” Karris asked.
“Absolutely.”
And he did. They dodged through corridors where only servants and slaves went, and crossed halls clogged with spectators eager to get out—the sight of men drawing swords and pistols and drafting and ready to kill anyone who opposed them did crazy things to people. Other people, who’d been outside the hippodrome and heard that amazing things were happening within were pushing to get in, creating vast snarls. One musket shot and this was going to turn into a stampede.
The Guile soldiers manning the exits were shouting, trying to bring order, but they were confused themselves. Were the Tafok Amagez now the enemy? Or were they still friends who should be helped? What had happened inside?
Gavin collapsed several times, apologizing each time. Karris and Eutheos ended up each taking a shoulder—another thing that being short made her ill-suited for. He was shockingly light.
But in minutes they made it to the arch where Karris had entered. She poked her head out over the drop.
Oh my.
But there was Ironfist. At the sight of her, he grinned big.
When Gavin poked his own head out, Ironfist’s grin slipped. Gavin’s eye was still bleeding. But Gavin smiled, delighted to see the big man.
“Are you going to make your own way down, Lord Prism?” Ironfist asked.
Gavin jerked back and turned. “Company coming,” he said.
Karris saw five Tafok Amagez running up the stairs she’d run down not fifteen minutes ago. These upper decks had cleared out. They definitely saw them.
“Afraid not,” Gavin said, quickly poking his head back out. “What’s the plan? Quickly.” He looked out at the river. It was a long way away, and a long way down. “Oh no, tell me that’s not the plan.”
“That’s it,” Karris said. “Captain, thank you. Now get the hell out of here. Five count, Gavin. Commander, I’ll come five after Gavin.”
Gavin had already backed up. He wobbled, but gathered himself. Eutheos steadied him. “Go, Captain, and bless you.”
Karris stood at the edge so both of them could see her. “One, two, three, four, five.” And Gavin leapt, right in front of her.
She didn’t watch. Couldn’t and make it to her spot in time. The Tafok Amagez were charging up the stairs. Oh damn, a five count was too much. By four she’d be dead.
She ran for the edge as metal cut the air. “Five, five, five!” she shouted. And dove into the air.
For a sickening heartbeat, she fell. She kept her body rigid, no time for a prayer or a curse.
And a soft cloud of Ironfist’s open luxin caught her for half a moment, and then flung her hard.
The timing was off, and the throw was less than perfect: instead of catching her at her chest and hips and throwing evenly, it was a little behind her. Being flung from that position spun her, hips over head, flipping. She would land flat on her back in the river.
From this height, it would break her.
Karris twisted hard. First lesson of fighting, how to fall.
But she had also turned sideways—and her feet hit the water first, before she was ready, and suddenly—black.
The next she was aware, she was underwater in billows of clinging skirts with no idea which way was up, and no breath. She flailed, and the last of her breath escaped with the wave of pain that crashed over her. Her left arm felt like someone had tried to tear it off, and her ribs and left breast had been crushed.
An unnatural hand—more hook than hand—grabbed her many petticoats and dragged her, upside down, to the surface. It shot water up her nose, and as she hit the blessed air, she coughed and spat and fought to push the blinding, suffocating layers of cloth away.
Ben-hadad dropped the open green luxin claw he’d used to grab her and extended a hand. Karris made the mistake of offering her left hand, and regretted it immediately when he hauled her up. Pain took what little breath she had.
“Ben!” Essel shouted. “Need you! Need you now!” She was standing over Gavin, who had also been pulled out of the water. He was wet and whimpering and holding a hand to his bleeding eye. He would be no help.
The sparse crowd that had already filled the market when they arrived was now a thick crowd with the events inside the hippodrome and the sudden spectacle of the insane people jumping all the way from the hippodrome into the river. Soldiers were trying to fight their way through to get to the river’s edge where the skimmer was docked.
Karris couldn’t see whose soldiers they were, just the fighting in the seething crowd, and the bobbing points of muskets.
She fought to stand, and saw Hezik break through the crowd and run for the stairs. He jumped halfway down the first flight. “Ironfist says go! Go!” Hezik shouted.
A musket shot rang out. Flesh and blood and cloth puffed from Hezik’s left arm. He was already running down the second flight of steps and it threw him off balance. He tumbled, rolled down the remaining steps.
The crowd bolted, and despite the clear visual marker of a big black cloud of smoke from the musket, people who’ve never been in combat do the craziest things. They went all directions at once. Some were pushed off the wall to fall onto the docks, shrieking, screaming, breaking legs and backs and necks, grabbing on to those who pushed them to try to save themselves.
Others pushed toward the soldiers, who turned their muskets and started beating anyone close with the stocks. One must have had his musket grabbed by someone in the crowd, because it discharged into the air.
Karris fought to her feet. “Ignition!” she shouted at Ben-hadad, who looked paralyzed.
“What? I, I don’t—I don’t draft—”
The red lens had popped out of her eye somewhere. She tore into his pack. Found the flint and steel and her red spectacles, the pain in her arm making black spots dance in her vision. Pulled the spectacles out and put them on, and filled her left hand with red luxin.
She turned her eyes in time to see Hezik stand with effort—it looked like one of the falling men had hit him. A soldier with a musket stepped to the edge of the wall, and fired.
Hezik dropped, a splash of red jumping into the air from his head.
“No!” Karris shouted. Drafting red for the first time in six months, she reacted instead of thinking. Like the old Karris, like she hadn’t learned anything. With enough red feeding constantly into her left hand to keep a fire constantly burning low, she made a red luxin ball in her right, and hurled it through the fire at the satisfied young soldier. It hit high on his chest, in his beard, and splashed over him, liquid red luxin drenching him for one heartbeat, then flames roaring over him the next.