I heard two howls of pain. After a moment I realized that one of the voices was mine.
Another long whistle sliced through the sounds of fighting, of screaming, of groaning. A long whistle that rose higher, a cheerfully sardonic whistle, a whistle that bled bale like blood.
I’d fallen to my knees, holding my arms up to shield myself — uselessly — from the sickening alterdimensional light that glared through the gap and threw the entire room in Pall. The whistle stopped my screaming. I gagged and vomited up what little I had left in my stomach on the cellar floor, where it joined Milka’s chalk and Aronson’s blood. I dropped my hands into the mess to brace myself, still retching, my head hanging low and my eyes screwed shut. The air was greasy and foul, and its taint coated my skin, my tongue, my eyes, my lungs. I’d have felt cleaner standing tits-deep in Cislunar’s sewer system.
Another man was screaming, a hopeless, agonized wail of pain. Somewhere far off, Droit swore and shouted my name.
A sharp ring: metal on stone drowned the other noises around me. I opened my eyes, panting fast and shallow. A heavy, hobnailed boot stepped in front of my face. It flowed and pulsed as if it were alive.
I spat to clean my mouth and dragged my eyes upward, hoping there was nothing left in my stomach to lose. The screaming continued like a signature movement from hell.
The transient was shaped like a man the way a balesteed is shaped like a horse, except the transient had a little better control over its form. Its boots and coat were clearly delineated — heavy laborer’s boots; a dark laborer’s coat. A badge flashed on the coat’s left side. Bronze, familiar from my own childhood — the badge of a parish poorhouse. But instead of bearing the name and number of the parish, its numbers shifted and flickered 123456789, its symbol a hopscotch board.
I looked at the transient’s face and gagged again, dry-heaving.
The thing was a mockery of humanity; twisted, pale, and shifting. Its eyes and mouth were dark pits with undulating borders. Its flesh was waxy, the way corpses get after they’ve been in the ground a while.
It was big, wide-shouldered, tall. A child’s boogeyman, a travesty of adulthood.
This had to be Far.
“Deal with it, Lorencz,” Droit shouted. “I’m busy!”
Still on all fours like a dog, I twisted my neck and looked at the Line. Transients swarmed over the floor, lapping at Aronson’s blood with rough tongues, scraping it off the stone with crablike claws. Axton knelt protectively over the Nobilis, batting the cat-sized creatures away whenever they came too close. Aronson was limp, silent.
The screaming continued, beyond them. The fat man.
Pain summons. Blood satiates.
Death dismisses.
I looked back up, my stomach convulsing and my eyes tearing. The transient held out a huge, thick-fingered hand. Dark metal, pitted and stained, jutted from its fist.
“Milka,” I choked. “Call it off.”
“Far! Not him,” she said, her voice shaking but clear. I wondered how she could stand it, looking into the bale untrained. Shamed, I reached up and grabbed a greasy handful of the transient’s coat. Then another, leaning against him, pulling myself up. The fabric was palpable but weak. Holding it felt like grabbing sheets of boiled chicken, the coat mildly warm, like rubbery flesh shredding beneath my fingertips.
I staggered to my feet, face-to-face with the thing. Well, face-to-shoulders. It was big, this Far. This impossible transient.
“Far!” Milka repeated. “Those are the bad men, the two over there. They brought me here, and they killed Ezery.”
Perdition stared at me from those dark eyes. And the worst part was that there was something intelligent in there, something that thought and felt … but wasn’t human.
The fat man’s screaming stopped, abruptly. For a moment, everything was silent, and the Linecrosser and I stared into each other’s eyes.
And just like that, I believed.
The Reverence was right. The place beyond the Line was hell.
“Go back,” I rasped, through a throat seared by bile and bale. “Go back. The call was a mistake.”
Far lifted its wide, blood-eaten knife. Turned it. Not in threat, but in response. And I understood. It had been summoned by its priestess, and it wasn’t going to leave until it had served her.
I took a step back. Behind me, claws scrabbled and Droit swore as he battered back the creatures.
“Aronson?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“He fell unconscious when Far arrived.” Axton said, still sounding calm despite the madness that surrounded him. “He needs a physician or he’ll die.”
“I’ll get right on that as soon as I’m done here,” Droit snarled. “Dammit, Lorencz, these things are impossible to kill. Next time I’m carrying Might and Lament can kiss my ass.”
Far began to walk forward.
“Milka?” I turned. She was still there. “Call it off.”
“Don’t worry.” Her voice had the calm clarity of shock. “Far is really good at what he does. Just the one, now, Far. The one that’s still alive.”
“Each moment it’s here, the Line gets worse.” I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, then scrubbed my face, trying to feel something again. Then I stepped forward and grabbed the transient’s shoulder, feeling bits of bale tear off in fleshy strips beneath my fingers. “Far. Stop. Go back. We’ll kill him for you. For her.”
I didn’t think it would work. I wasn’t disappointed. The transient just kept walking, its baleflesh squirming to fill the hole my fingers had made. Transients surged around our feet, tapping on my boots with bone-carapace pincers and claws, testing the leather before attacking. I stomped on them and turned around again.
“Axton, I need Aronson awake, now! Milka, dammit, call it off!”
Milka stepped forward with the exaggerated care of drunks and the traumatized and moved up to the transient. She didn’t seem to mind the bloodscrapers and painlappers that scurried around her feet, huddling close to enjoy her distress.
I kicked away a spider-shaped transient to kneel next to Aronson. Axton was fumbling in his coat. He pulled out a small glass phial and uncorked it beneath the Nobilis’s nostrils.
Aronson jerked back, drawing in a sharp breath. His eyes opened, but his pupils were pinpoints.
“Aronson!” I grabbed his arm. “Talk to me. How do I get rid of a transient?”
“Death —” his voice was thick.
“We ain’t killing the girl.”
“Balesword.”
“Droit didn’t bring Might and it’s too dangerous to make a call. Aronson, I need ideas!”
He reached out and fumbled at my coat a moment, his bloodless face turning to me.
“I can’t see.” His voice held barely restrained panic. My heart skipped a beat, then steadied. I grabbed his hand.
“It’s okay. You just caught yourself a dose of baleblindness. It’ll go away. How do I close a break in the Line?”
“Sacrifice.” He was shaking again, and I squeezed his hand.
“Stay with me, pal. What kind of sacrifice?”
“Living. Willing. Step into gap. Death dismisses.” He slurred the last, eyes closing. Axton waved the vial under his nose again and Aronson choked, reviving once more. I caught a whiff of it and felt my own head clear as the sharp ammoniac scent drove off the Pall. Axton slid an arm beneath the Nobilis’s shoulders.
“Shit!” I stood, limp with nausea and feeling more hopeless than ever. The gangrenous bale was still flowing into the room. The walls around us seemed insubstantial, and the shadows pulsed. The whole bloody room was sliding across the Line.
Far grabbed the last member of the Banishat and began dragging him back to the hopscotch board. Transients capered around its feet like alien puppies.
More of the abominations were spilling through the Gap every second. It wouldn’t be long before the larger transients noticed the Break and began to push through.
I don’t have a death wish. I’ve never had a death wish. But I do have a sense of duty, no matter what assholes like Lt. DeWitt might say.
Sweat ran down my back as I gazed into the gap and felt my sanity crawl.
Something hard and flat struck me across the side of the face. I lurched. A fist collided with my chin and snapped my head back. My stomach convulsed. Too many hits to the head recently. I swung back, glaring through tears of pain, and Droit blocked my blow. He swung again. I stepped inside the blow and landed one in his midriff. Instead of flesh, I bruised my knuckles on steel. He had a knife strapped across his belly. But I had the satisfaction of hearing him lose his breath a moment before he proved he was a bastard and a villain.
His knee slammed straight up into my nether regions and I swore, grabbing myself and falling. I was going to kill him, if the pain between my legs ever stopped. Who the hell taught Droit to fight? Nobody kneed women! Then I saw what he was doing.
“Goddammit!” I lurched up, holding myself, and staggered. “Axton! Stop him!”
“Shut up, Lorencz.” Droit put a foot on one of the cots and shoved it against the wall to steady it. “They’re brain-dead, anyway.”
I lurched to my feet and threw myself into him shoulder-first, ignoring the pounding agony of a crushed clit. His sword scraped against the side of the cot as he staggered.
“Listen!” He steadied himself and grabbed me by the lapels, shaking me one-handed. “I’m not trading a competent sentinel for a bunch of breathing corpses!”
“They’re children.”
“They’re meat.”
“You can’t do good by doing evil,” I said, staring up at him. My hands were clenched. I might go down, but I’d go down fighting. And this time I’d stay out of range of his knees.
“They’re already dead — they just haven’t stopped breathing yet.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Far gutting the Banishat sentinel. Not my problem. I shouldered Droit back from the cots, braced, and slammed a balewall between us. Transients brushed my feet, drinking my pain.
Droit glared through the squirming bale.
“You still aren’t over that tenement fire you started,” he sneered. “How do you think you’re going to feel when transients swarm through Dockside? Go ahead—save the kids. Hundreds of people are going to die for every child you keep alive.”
“I can’t do math with lives.” I took a deep breath, my skin crawling as rivulets of bale oozed over it. “Axton!”
“Yes, Captain?”
I fumbled in my pocket for my Watch whistle and tossed it over the wall to him. Droit didn’t bother trying to intercept it, although I saw him gauging the wall’s height.
“Get Aronson out of here. Whistle for the guard. Evacuate the neighborhood.”
“Yes, sen.”
I ignored Droit and closed my eyes, grateful that my stomach was empty at last. The gap in the Line hovered before my mind’s eye, ragged and pulsing, aswarm with transients that scuttled or crawled or slithered through the bale to get here. The call between me and my balewall was more of a rope than a thread — thick, strong, and heavier than any call I’d seen before. It was contributing to the problem, but I had no choice. At least, no choice I could make and still be able to sleep at night.
I needed help.
I sent a second call to Carel.
Another bale-dripping placental line formed, linking me to her. I felt like someone had smeared me with bloody lard. My bile burned like acid.
Droit swatted the insectoid, ichthyic transients away and spun on Far and the little girl next to him.
“What the hell are you?” he demanded. “Does Yzyrchye know about you?”
The pulsing, unsteady humanoid shape cocked its head, its focus on him.
“It’s not going to be happy,” Droit snapped, then looked down and stomped on a small bloodscraper; it crunched juicily, like a large beetle. “With either of you.”
I dropped into a crouch, wrapping my arms around my knees and lowering my head. A transient scuttled over the toe of my boot, then stopped, stabbing at the heavy leather.
“I’m calling Carel,” I said. “Get out of here. Take care of your cousin.”
“Aren’t you dead yet?”
“Not yet.” But I was sick and battered and wanted to lie down and go to sleep.
The Line was doing something new. Bulging, rippling. New tears began along its edges. My stomach tightened as long black claws pressed through the Gap.
“Incoming!” I shouted. Droit whipped around. His lips drew back in a snarl as even his mundane eyes saw the breach, and he grabbed his sword with both hands, raising it high. It came down on the claws like an axe.
Two of the appendages fell off. The others withdrew back into the Gap.
Far finished gutting its victim. It turned to Milka and lifted its knife. She said something. I couldn’t hear what.
The Line ruptured as Far stepped through it and vanished, and more transients flooded through, all claws and spines and pincers and carapace.
I felt along my call to Carel. She was coming, fast. Probably on a balesteed. More strain on the Line, but what else could we do?
“Captain!” Sergeant Connas strode into the room, her face twisted with disgust. Her constables followed, their eyes wide. She froze, fumbling for her sword. “Kyrchye, what the hell are you doing in here?”
“Get the kids out,” I said, dropping the balewall with relief. A little of the sick fell away.
“Knock ‘em unconscious, at least,” Droit snapped, still facing the rupture. Connas glanced at me and I nodded. It would be too little, too late, but at least their frightened infant-minds wouldn’t call more creatures across.
Someone began to pray, loudly. One of Connas’s constables was reverent. Good for him. I wondered if he’d leap into the Gap if I told him that was the only way to close it. I shoved the thought away, disgusted with myself. Was creeping moral indifference the first sign of balemadness? How can you tell if you’re rotting from the inside?
Another claw poked through the gap, tentative, testing. Droit swung again and it pulled back.
“It’s coming through any minute now,” he predicted. “Call a damn baleblade and help me, Lorencz.”
I glanced over my shoulder. The constables were carrying the children out on the cots without taking the time to unchain them. Transients scuttled around their feet. The constables looked scared stiff. A patrol of five, two per cot, Connas supervising. Not enough.
“Faster,” I said, surprised at how steady I sounded. “Something’s coming through.”
Connas started shouting.
As if in response, three more people burst in through the doorway — a flash of crimson and white, and a voice rose in a very loud, very aggressive prayer.
Cardinal Croix and his two inquisitorial flunkies.
“Get out!” I shouted, my head hurting. “This is Vigilance business!”
“Where’s Carel?” Croix asked, his voice edged with pain. I discerned and saw that he had a call sunk into his head.
“Here,” Carel snapped, striding in, and the calls criss-crossed between the three of us sloughed off like afterbirth. “Sorry, Cardinal, but I thought the Reverence might like to see us at work.”
I staggered to my feet, wondering what was going on.
“Hey, Cardinal, get your ass over here and see if praying will do any good,” Droit snapped. “Something wants through the Line, and it’s big.”
“You two,” Connas said, pointing to the inquisitors. “No time for sightseeing. Grab a cot and get it out of here.”
They jumped forward to help and I felt a moment’s appreciation for soldiers trained to instant obedience. Carel strode up to me.
“You were wise to call me, Arcady,” she said, watching the Line through narrowed eyes. “This is much worse than I’d expected.”
Kyrchye’s cardinal stood side-by-side with Yzyrchye’s ex-Hound, his hands raised and his face alight, praying. Droit held his sword at the ready.
The pall surged and intensified.
“Incoming!” I shouted again, reaching out and calling a balesword. It formed in my hand with unholy eagerness, warm, pulsing. I nearly sent it away again, repulsed, but then the gap tore and the transient pushed through.
It was big and it wasn’t at all like Far. It was a thing, that’s all, and I didn’t feel any urge at all to reason with it — just to kill it.
Behind me, one of the constables screamed. I didn’t look. I didn’t have time. The transient came out with lashing claws and whipping barbs and snapping teeth. Droit swung, while the cardinal’s prayers intensified. I abandoned Carel and lunged at the beast.
Droit’s blade cracked its carapace. My baleblade cut a long scar across the translucent shell, and whatever transients use as blood oozed out, grey and phosphorescent. Its tail whipped toward Cardinal Croix. Droit’s blade caught it, deflecting the blow. The cardinal never stumbled over a word. Whatever else you might say about him, he had guts. And maybe a little too much trust in a man who had once been the Reverence’s number-one bogeyman.
“Sergeant! Rally your men!” Carel’s sharp voice cut through the screaming and combat like a razor. Then she was next to us, wiry, white-haired, wielding her own balesword with practiced ease.
The two of us moved apart, attacking the transient from left and right. Barbs jerked around and claws tore across my chest, shredding my coat and my shirt and drawing blood. I sucked in a sharp breath, feeling the wounds burn like acid. The smaller transients scuttled close, clicking and tapping at my boots, trying to catch a drop of blood, a trickle of pain.
Carel cut a nasty gash across the big monster’s carapace and moist organs bulged through the crack. Then Droit dropped and rolled beneath it, his sword swinging up as he moved. Steel pierced the softer shell beneath and the transient’s internals spilled out with a wet splashing sound. Droit kept rolling to the other side, but the transient twisted and a hind claw raked across his back, slicing through his coat. Transients surged across the room toward him and he staggered to his feet, kicking.
The cardinal had stepped closer to the gap, gazing into it as he prayed. The transient’s tail sank a barb into my left arm and I yelped, swinging at it. I sliced the barb off and the tail whipped back up, leaving its hook in my flesh. Claws swept toward my face and I jerked back.
The creature was slowing down, crawling across its own slithering guts. Carel was striking low, trying to make the damage worse. Droit’s less effective sword scored its carapace, keeping it distracted. I moved around to the cardinal to protect him, slashing at the transient whenever an opening presented itself.
“Careful!” I shouted, to make up for my earlier thought. “Don’t cross the Line!”
Croix ignored me, deep in ritual. He lifted the jeweled sword-and-disk that was Kyrchye’s symbol, raising it from where it hung across his chest and bringing it to his lips. I listened to his prayer with half an ear, catching familiar phrases from my childhood, back when I’d had to sit through tedious masses to eat the free bread and soup offered to the parish poor afterward.
The transient turned and I slashed at the claw that jutted out toward us. It recoiled, stepping in a pile of its own offal, and lurched back toward the gap. I nudged the cardinal aside, feeling the transient’s barb digging deeper into my arm. Carel swept her sword in an arc at the transient’s sensory organs and it took another step back.
Droit joined her, and together they herded the creature toward the Gap. It lashed and chittered and snapped its teeth, but long, glowing streamers of flesh and muscle kept uncoiling from its gut, and it didn’t have any real fight left in it. Its tail swung around and I batted it aside with the sword blade, staying between it and Croix.
The cardinal finished praying and lifted the symbol over his head. Then he flung it into the hole in the Line.
For a moment the jeweled symbol hung there, glittering in the pall, its golden chain trailing behind like a comet’s tail.
Then it fell, and the gap snapped shut.
Half of the transient collapsed on this side. Its baleflesh broke apart like rotten meat and was absorbed back into the Line.
The pall dimmed. It didn’t go away — the damage to the Line was too critical for that. But it subsided, and that was something. Relieved, I let my balesword slip away.
“That was interesting, Cardinal,” Carel mused. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“Thanks be to Kyrchye.” Croix made the sign of the sword-and-disk across his chest. “He closes the gates to Perdition and even Yzyrchye bows to His dominion.”
“Not in my experience,” Droit muttered. “Besides, if Kyrchye were that efficient, we wouldn’t still be bothered by these bugs.”
“Anything that was already across the Line is still here.” I touched the barb in my left arm. Acid pain ran through my nerves and transients hissed and flocked around my feet. I turned. Milka was gone. “The girl…?”
Carel walked up to me and reached up. With a firm jerk she twisted the barb around and back up through my skin. I flinched as she threw it aside. Hungry bloodscrapers surrounded me. I clamped my hand over the wound, feeling hot blood oozing through my fingers.
“Get out and send in any sentinels who’ve shown up.” She turned and I followed her gaze. The cots were gone — Connas had managed to browbeat her constables into finishing their jobs, after all. Carel nodded with satisfaction. “We’ll clear out the rest of this vermin and inspect the damage to the Line. Cardinal, there’s more work to be done.”
“Of course.” He turned to me. “You fought well, Captain. Will you accept Kyrchye’s blessing?”
I hesitated. Pride struggled hard with fear. I glanced at Carel, who was watching me with a touch of irony in her eyes. I couldn’t help looking at her hands, which were encased in black gloves. No ring, not that I could see, anyway. Then I forced myself to shrug.
“Thanks, your eminence, but I’ll be all right on my own.”
He sighed and looked at the brass badge pinned to my coat as if memorizing it.
“Very well … Lorencz. Good luck.”
“Yeah.” I turned and left, feeling like a heel and not knowing why. Droit followed me out.
“They need you inside,” I said to the first sentinel I saw when I stepped outside. The cold, stinking Dockside air smelled fresh in comparison to bale, and I breathed deeply. Lanterns ringed the small alley with light. The sleet storm had stopped, at least for the moment.
“Good work, Captain,” Connas said, slapping me on the back. I grit my teeth against the pain.
“What did you do with the kids?” I looked around.
“Already on their way to Blackstone Hospital.” She turned. “Axton, we need your needle and thread over here.”
I was hustled off into a crowd of constables who stood watch over the alley and was shoved onto a step — not the one with the frozen vomit on it, I was glad to see. Knives cut off my coat and slashed at my shirt. I shivered, but the cold felt clean, at least.
Droit sat next to me and shrugged off his coat before it could be cut away. Seemed pointless, to me. The creature’s claws had shredded its leather back and side already.
“How’s Aronson?” I asked when Axton walked up. His hands were bloody. He wiped them on his coat. It didn’t help much.
“The baleknife entered him just above the kidney. He’s going to Blackstone Hospital with the children, and I sent a constable to talk to a friend of mine, Dr. Hawkins. Hawkins is very good. With proper treatment, the Nobilis may survive.”
“Is he still blind?”
“Yes.” Axton probed at the wound and I winced. “You called it baleblindness?”
“Yeah, it happens. Too much raw bale kinda overloads the eyes.” A constable set down a lantern and Axton ran a thick, curved needle through the flame, then strung it with catgut thread. I’d been stitched before. I looked away. “He’s more sensitive than I am, so Far’s entrance hit him harder. It usually goes away in a while.”
“Thank you.” Axton’s hands were cold; the needle was hot. “I need to learn more about sentinel-specific maladies.”
“Where’d you learn to sew people up?” Droit asked, watching as Axton ran the thread through my skin. I whined, despite myself, as he pinched the lips of the wound together.
“Medical school.”
“Had much practice lately?”
“I’ve been in Hellsgate for the last ten years, General.”
“I can tell.” Droit looked at me. “You’ll have a nice scar to impress your librarian.”
“Let’s hope he likes that kind of thing,” I muttered. His green eyes studied my face. I kept it as expressionless as possible. Axton tied off a knot and began probing at the wounds across my chest. I tilted my head back to look up at the cloudy night sky.
“Did they take Milka, too, when they took away the other kids?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sergeant Connas replied, walking up. “And the Vigilance is taking over the entire scene. No reports to write tonight.”
“Shit.” I grimaced. I wasn’t too sure how I felt about that, under the circumstances.
“These wounds don’t need stitching, Captain.” Axton waved over a constable. “Wrap her up.”
As the constable began wrapping bandages around my chest and shoulder, Axton moved over to Droit. “Would you please remove your shirt?”
“I’ll remove all the clothes you want.” Droit pulled the shirt off, acting casual, but I noticed him wince when he moved his arms. “After all, Lorencz already gave us a show.”
“Sure, if you’re into blood,” I said with disgust.
Axton ignored us and leaned forward, running a thin hand over Droit’s bare shoulder.
“Long but shallow. The wound would have been worse if your coat hadn’t been so heavy.”
“That’s why I wear it.”
“Are these flogging marks? I thought Might healed your wounds for you.”
Droit shot the small man a sharp look.
“I got those before I made my deal with Yzyrchye. Are you collecting more material for your treatise?”
“There’s no reason to stitch this. Just keep the cut clean, General.”
Droit eased back into his bloody shirt and looked at me.
“So, that’s it? We’re done?”
“Yeah.” I ran a hand over my face. “We’re done. What’s wrong with that? We rescued some kids from a bunch of nix-using slavers and rogue sentinels and kept Cislunar from sliding across the Line. Not enough for the Red General?”
“You let that thing escape. Far.”
I leaned back, fumbling one-handed for a cigar and lighting it with a quick beck.
“I’m a Watch captain, not a demon-killer. Stopping Far is the Reverence’s job.”
“What about the Banishat?”
“Aronson’s job,” I said.
Droit shook his head.
“Never leave unfinished business behind you, Lorencz. It always comes back to bite you on the ass.”
“Well, none if this is my unfinished business,” I said with finality, ignoring the way the three people around me looked at each other.