The chamber behind it was large and roughly circular. Five bodies hung suspended in webs of tendonlike cords that wrapped around their joints, melding into their flesh. Hollow sucking tubes and smaller probing limbs pierced the children’s throats, and some sort of translucent, resinous bale-armor was being molded around the children’s limbs.
Lorencz hesitated only a moment before throwing herself at the nearest child, a small red-headed boy. She started hacking at the chitinous probes with my dagger.
“Far! Give us some help!”
I swallowed my protests at her recklessness and worked my way through the chamber to find the child farthest back. She was already half-encased in hardening bale.
“Get them outta here!” Lorencz shouted as the rest of our group entered the room and looked around in shock. I turned my back on them, gave Jaspin’s rapier a dirty look, and sheathed it. Useless. I grabbed the nearest dangling probes and tore them away with brute force.
The girl twitched, her lips moving over the tubes and needlespines in her mouth. The probes began darting at me, evaluating whether I posed a threat. I snapped one that came too close to my face and dug my fingers into the bale around the girl’s arms, pulling it away from her flesh. The underbelly of her balearmor hadn’t hardened yet, and it slid off with gooey reluctance. A probe darted at my eyes and I slapped it away, breaking its slender needle-tip. Something crawled over my head and I twisted, feeling my bandages loosen.
“Yzyrchye, dammit, cut it out.” I grabbed a handful of carapace-tubes and slid them out of the girl’s throat, carefully but quickly. “You have plenty of willing followers.”
A narrow, mouthlike proboscis shot down at me, opening wide. Hollow ivory needles jutted from its jaws.
“Willing,” it repeated, its voice sounding like wind blowing through dry branches. I lifted an arm to ward it off, and it snapped forward and closed over my sleeve. Needles pierced the thick balefabric of my constructed Watch coat and punctured my arm.
I swore, breaking off spines and probes with my free hand as I continued to tear at the bale around the girl’s body. She was moving now, her eyes opening but blank with fear. My arm was going numb. I shook it and looked down. The proboscis that had bitten down on it was connected to the probes attached to the girl, and bale was building up around us both. Whatever was in her was in me now, too.
“Hey, Michael —” I began. The bale surged and I felt the numbness move up my arm and touch my spine.
The room was barely lit by a guttering rushlight, and a man was beating a woman. Blood trickled from her split lip as he raised his hand again. I stepped forward, wondering what my parents were doing in such dismal surroundings. Then the woman turned and I saw tears gleaming on her cheeks and sharp teeth gleaming in her mouth.
That wasn’t my mother. These weren’t my parents.
The man’s hand descended again, and this time the girl lunged, catching it in a hand covered with razor-sharp carapace. With a low growl, she bit down, and he screamed as her baleteeth severed three of his fingers.
“I see.” I stepped forward and grabbed the man as he lifted his bloody hand. Before he could collect his wits, I kneed him in the balls, then swept an elbow up under his chin as he doubled over. His head jerked back and I kicked his feet out from under him, then stomped on his throat, crushing it. “Another hallucination.”
The girl scuttled around me, growing shorter and more insectile with every motion.
“Stop.” I caught her shoulder, feeling sharp ridges beneath my fingers. A streak of light flashed across my eyes and I swallowed back a surge of nausea. “What’s your name?”
She twisted, her eyes dark and shining. I kept a grip on her shoulder, recognizing her shape. She was turning into one the transients the sentinels called razorbites. But to my surprise, there was a gleam of intelligence in her gaze instead of the emptiness of nix.
“I’m Tegeus Droit,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Caro.”
“Caro, this is a hallucination.” I shook her shoulder as she started to turn toward the moaning adult —her father, guardian, brother, pimp, whatever. I couldn’t help but remember Far’s words: He-gender is fear-gender. “Look at me.”
She reluctantly turned her deformed head back in my direction.
“Yzyrchye promises power, but it uses you as hard as any human. I worked for it, too. It promises everything, but it doesn’t leave enough of you intact to enjoy any of it.” I couldn’t tell if she understood me. Would I have listened to myself, when I was her age? I gave a sour smile at the thought. “You’re a sentinel. They kidnapped you and drugged you because they’re afraid of you. Come with me and you’ll learn how to use your skills so well that nobody will ever be able to hurt you again. You don’t need Yzyrchye. You’re already powerful enough on your own. Don’t give your power away.”
She blinked, and the hard transient-eyes became dark brown again. Brown eyes, black hair. She looked like Michael. I blinked. No, she looked nothing like him. What was wrong with me?
“Nobody hurts me now,” she said, her voice a grating, alien sound. The bale blurred and I caught fleeting glimpses of streets, people, buildings, places I didn’t recognize. “When I’m like this, I can kill anyone I want.”
“Is it your power, or is it Yzyrchye’s? Are you planning to be an oversized transient’s slave for the rest of your life?”
“I’m not a slave!” Her voice returned to normal as she glared at me.
“When you work for Yzyrchye, you are. Trust me. I know.”
She gave me a suspicious look. I crouched next to her.
“My cousin will teach you how to adjure, and I’ll teach you how to kill. No price tag.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” she asked, looking like herself again, except for bone shears where her hands should be. The pale blades moved back and forth, poised to slash if I made any sudden moves.
“You can’t. But it wouldn’t make much sense to me to rescue you and then hurt you later. If I can find people to abuse a lot easier than this.”
She looked at the man on the floor and then at me. Then she extended her hand. The knives were gone, replaced with normal fingers.
“What’s your name?”
“Droit,” I repeated. “Tegeus Droit.”
“You better remember your promise.”
“I don’t make promises that often. I won’t forget.” We clasped hands.
The bale illusion slid down around us like melting wax, revealing the transformation room. Caro’s hand slid from mine as she began tearing at the bale covering her and pulling organic probes out of her arms. Blood slicked her flesh as she struggled. I shrugged out of my coat, leaving the needle-jawed probe jerking back and forth, trying to dislodge balefabric from its teeth. It had left long scratches in my arm, but I couldn’t feel them or half my back. I grabbed Caro with the hand I could still move and helped her free herself from her shell.
“Out,” I ordered, lurching toward Jaspin, who was busy releasing another girl. Yzyrchye’s probes yanked and scratched at us, leaving long cuts in our flesh. Blood ran down Jaspin’s face like tears and he’d dropped his cane. With only two good hands between us, we got his captive out, too. Together we staggered for the door, where the rest of the rescued children huddled around Far and Milka.
“Your head’s bleeding again,” Lorencz said, grabbing my numb arm to steady me. A spear-like probe lanced toward us, large and black. I shoved Lorencz away and jerked to one side as it plunged between us. It snapped back and hovered by the ceiling, poised for another strike.
“Out!” I ordered, my head throbbing.
“Out!” Lorencz shouted in agreement, turning. “Far, get us the hell out of here!”
Far turned and exited. The children followed, herded along by Milka and Michael. I pulled out the rapier and parried the next limb that darted at us. Clumsy. My numb arm was useless and rapiers weren’t my best weapon.
“Go on,” I urged Jaspin, who hesitated. He looked at me, then nodded and limped after the rest. Lorencz stood at my shoulder, slashing at the limbs I couldn’t knock away with my borrowed sword.
“I promised the girl I’d reach her how to kill,” I panted as we took a step backward into the doorway. “You need some lessons, too?”
“Up yours, Droit. I can use a sword just fine, when I got one.”
“Maybe you should stop relying on bale and buy yourself some steel.”
“Steel is heavy. And I hit people’s legs with my scabbard when I turn around.”
“Since when have you cared about hitting people?”
“It ain’t the hitting that bothers me,” she explained as we kept backing down the hallway, fending off probes. Michael and Axton were shouting something to each other about bale. “I just hate looking like a rube.”
“You are a rube.”
“Ankham’s almost as big as Cislunar.”
“Ankham is the ass-end of nowhere.” A jabbing spear-claw got through my defense and grazed the side of my face. Lorencz slashed at it as it withdrew for another strike. Red streaks clawed across my blurring vision. The claw jabbed again and I barely raised my sword in time to deflect it. Lorencz pinned it against the wall and slammed her shoulder against it. The claw snapped.
“Gettin’ slow, Droit,” she said. She sounded worried. “And you look like shit.”
“I refuse to die from Michael hitting me with a candlestick,” I gritted.
“If you don’t get the lead out, you’ll die from Yzyrchye spitting you like a roast goose.”
“At least that would look better on my gravestone.”
The walls throbbed and began to melt inward. The rancid smell of rotting flesh grew stronger. The concavity lengthened and turned into a new tunnel. Transients scuttled over the tunnel’s floor, walls, and ceiling, their pincers clacking and mandibles snapping.
“Far, we need the bale freed up, now!” Lorencz shouted. She shoved me away and I staggered, my back hitting the opposite wall. “Aronson! Incoming!”
Then the transients were on us like a storm of teeth and claws. I swept the rapier back and forth, trying to knock them aside, the weapon nearly useless against their hardened exoskeleton. Claws dug into my trousers and the smaller transients began climbing up my legs, snapping and rippling spine-covered backs.
“We’ve got them up here, too!” Michael shouted. “Far!”
Lorencz spun, smashing an arm covered with small skinscrapers against the wall. They fell off, thrashed their short legs a moment as they righted themselves, and scuttled toward her again. She stomped on a bloodlapper the size of a large rat.
A bigger shape lumbered toward us, shoving aside its smaller kin. It was a misshapen gnawer, its huge jaws curiously blunt and its clawed forelimbs vaguely hand-shaped. Lorencz backed away, slamming her back against the wall next to me.
“This is so fucking not a good day to die,” she groaned, kicking a transient off her leg.
“Yzyrchye.” I looked at the gnawer, then closed my eyes and opened them again. I was having trouble focusing, but I was almost certain that my old freedom brand was seared into the bony ridges of the transient’s face. “Yzyrchye, what the hell are you trying to do? Threaten me?”
“Huh?” Lorencz risked a glance at me, then back to the gnawer. Her eyes widened as she registered the brand. “Hey, ain’t that —”
“It left it there on purpose.” I pushed myself up from the wall and raised my voice, even though it made my head hurt. “You’re petty, Yzyrchye! There’s a new word for you — petty!”
“Go on, piss off the Sovereign of Hell a little more,” Lorencz muttered. She swept two more transients off her coat and planted herself next to me. The gnawer snapped its jaws. I couldn’t see any sign of young Aidan Miller of Red Rock left in its eyes.
A small shape rushed down the hall and threw itself between the gnawer and me. It was the girl I’d saved, her body covered in baleskeleton spikes and razor edges and her hands extended into long, curving talons.
“Caro!” I reached for her and missed as she slashed her claws at the gnawer and left scores down its branded face.
“Th— wait, that’s one of the kids?” Lorencz sputtered, outraged. “She can’t —” She turned, and suddenly her voice rose into a panicked squeak. “Kyrchye, look!”
I turned and looked. All five of our budding sentinels had called bale around themselves, shaping it into the same weapons and armor sported by the transients.
“That’s impossible,” Lorencz gasped as the child-beasts began tearing through the transients. “How the hell did they do that? I can’t even call a bloody balesword!”
“Yzyrchye taught them a new trick.” I stabbed at a transient that ran too close as it fled from Caro’s talons and teeth. “Or their link to it lets them shape the bale here.”
“Bale don’t fucking work that way!”
“Would you stop bitching and just kill something?”
Caro had leaped onto the transient’s back and was slashing through its spines, but its jaws were still snapping. I couldn’t use the rapier effectively against it — the gnawer’s eyes were hooded by protective protrusions of carapace. Lorencz slashed at the transient’s face with my dagger, which at least made it flinch. Caro anchored her legs, her barbs digging into its exoskeleton, and lunged forward, her claws landing on either side of its head. Her talons raked backward, stripping through the creature’s exoskeleton. The freedom brand I’d seared into Aidan’s face years ago was trisected, and the gnawer’s eyes split and oozed down the sides of its bony face. It reared, mouth gaping in a voiceless roar as it tried to dislodge her. At last. I thrust the rapier forward and the tip caught it between its carapace plates, sliding into its throat.
It jerked and the basket hilt was ripped from my hands, tearing the skin off my knuckles. I yanked my hand back, swearing. Caro dug her talons into the gnawer’s skull, holding on as it thrashed and crushed smaller transients beneath it. Then, at last, it fell.
She leaped from its back to me, her inhuman movements graceful as she landed by my feet.
“Maybe I don’t need your lessons,” she said as her jaws reshaped.
“Maybe you don’t.” A wave of weariness swept over me and I threw out my numb arm to catch myself on the wall. Warm blood trickled down the side of my face and over my knuckles.
“Fuck, kid, I’m gonna take lessons from you,” Lorencz said, grabbing my arm and heaving it over her shoulder. More transients were pouring down the hall toward us. “But first we gotta get the hell out of here.”
I leaned on Lorencz and breathed heavily, trying to clear my head. For the first time it seemed possible that Michael might really have killed me. Maybe I should have left the son of a bitch decapitated, after all.
No. No, I wouldn’t give Yzyrchye my last surviving relative. I’d given it damn near everything else. It didn’t get anything more from me.
I wiped blood off my face and tried to focus on the people ahead of us. Michael was still there, in the midst of the flow of transients and child-sentinels, doing the best he could to defend himself with his makeshift, doorshell knife.
“Far!” Lorencz roared. “Far, get us out of here!”
“Caro.” I reached out my good hand. She took it, nearly human again, and looked at me with enigmatic brown eyes. “See my cousin, the one in the good clothes? Keep him alive. If I die, he’s the one you’ll need to talk to. He won’t be able to teach you a thing about killing, but he’s just about the best sentinel in the city.”
“Can I trust him?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “You can trust him. He’s a pushover.”
She nodded and loped off, twisting into a new shape.
“Droit, did I just hear you trying to protect someone?” Lorencz steadied me as I tried to stand on my own. Transients scurried overhead, slashing at us with claws and pincers.
“That’s what good dogs do.” Darkness swam at the edges of my vision.
“Yeah, yeah. The Hound’s a retriever. I remember.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Better start acting like a shit soon, because I’m starting to like you again. And every time I do that, I regret it.” She grabbed a banebeak that was clawing its way up my shirt and threw it down the hall.
“Remember what I said about regret.” I fought to find my usual grin. I could survive a little longer. I had to.
“Lorencz!” Michael shouted. We both turned as one of the bale-transformed children bounded around us, stabbing and tossing away the transients scuttling around our legs. Not Caro. One of the boys. Maybe Jack — hadn’t Milka said he was the small one?
Someone had drawn a hopscotch board on the ribbed wall and Far stood before it, his hands thrust wrist-deep into the Grave, pulling open a narrow slit of balelight. Milka stood next to him, her fingers digging into the edges, also straining. Michael dropped to his knees next to Far and grabbed the edges of reality, trying to help.
Lorencz released me and squeezed past Jaspin to add her wiry strength to the effort. One by one the child-sentinels hurried up, their clawed hands pulling the rip wider. I took an unsteady step forward and then leaned against the wall. I wasn’t ready to tear any holes in reality today.
“You’re not well, Droit,” Jaspin said. Like the rest of us, his clothes were torn, his skin bleeding from a hundred slashes and bites. His eyepatch had been torn away in a fight, revealing a scarred hole in his face. He was favoring his injured leg, using his good hand to brace himself on the wall.
“I’ll manage,” I said, looking past him. Axton stood on Far’s other side, covered in blood but watching the sentinels tearing through Yzyrchye with his usual expression of detached interest. Gore streaked his face, and he held his scalpel forgotten in one hand.
With Far and all of the sentinels pulling at once, the rip in Yzyrchye’s wall slowly widened, and a familiar hot wind whipped past us, whirling in through the break.
“Jaspin! Droit! Go through!” Lorencz glanced over his shoulder at us. I hesitated, then gestured Jaspin forward.
“We can’t fight,” I said, seeing the same reluctance in Jaspin’s expression. “We’re the liabilities this time.”
He grimaced and limped forward, awkwardly sliding through the gap. Axton waved me through next, and I worked my past the sentinels, feeling a moment of vertigo as I crouched to move beyond them.
I took three blind steps forward, then stopped, holding my hands over my eyes as my head spun. The throbbing was incessant now. I dropped my hands and squinted.
We were outside the palace again, standing on the narrow street that stretched out in three directions.
“Sit down, General,” Axton said, coming through behind me. He reached up and fastened the loose edges of my bandage. I tried not to flinch as the pressure around my head increased.
“I’ll sit down when we get back across the Line.” Bale roiled around us like ominous thunderheads. The asylum looked smaller and darker than ever. The cathedral’s walls had turned deep crimson.
I turned, everything swimming around me. The children were arriving now, sliding through a dark slit in space and appearing next to us. Jaspin helped each one through with his good hand, greeting them by name. He had a good memory. I nodded when Caro came through, her dark eyes seeking me out. She moved closer.
“Are you going to die?” she asked, inspecting my bloodstained, tattered clothing.
“Maybe not today.”
“I hope not.” She turned and went back to the slit, holding it open, with the other children. Michael slid through and turned, holding the gap for Lorencz. Far stepped through last, not bothering to squeeze through like a human, but letting the extra bale on either side slide through after the rest of him, then re-form when he was on the street with the rest of us.
The sentinels let the gap snap shut. Michael and Lorencz rubbed their hands on their trousers as if they’d been touching something unpleasant.
“Can you open the Line to Cislunar from here?” Michael asked. Far held out a hand.
“Wait!” Lorencz protested. “What about the cardinal?”
“There’s no time.” Michael pointed. “Look.”
The palace was twisting again, spiraling upward into the bale like a carpenter’s drill. Its spires parted and bent, falling toward the earth like a spider’s legs unfolding. Walls folded and were sucked into the ground. New pincers and claws emerged, digging their way out into the balelight.
Lorencz’s expression hardened. She ran a hand through her hair, its colors newly stained with drying blood and hardening bale.
“Far, get the others through,” she ordered. “Can you hold the Line open long enough for me to get Croix and come back?”
“Possibly.”
Lorencz began running toward the cathedral. I swore and started after her.