Veiled Page 16

  All of a sudden the futures were a whirl of violent deaths, all of them mine. Move that way and I’d be impaled; move the other way and I’d have a severed arm; stand still and the laser would burn a hole through my chest. I ducked and dodged, staying half a step ahead of the gleaming blades. I caught flickers of futures in which I hit the golem, and none of them did anything. My dispel focus wasn’t recharged, and even if it had been, it wouldn’t even scratch a monster like this. I’d forgotten all thoughts of Leo, or the force mage who’d been shooting at me, or the ice mage who was still lurking around. My world had narrowed to the next two seconds, and nothing more.

  The left sword came at my head and I half-parried with my forearm. Even using the angle to limit the blow, I felt the shock go up my arm, sending me lurching back. There’s this terrifying sense of power to golems, a kind of smooth, unstoppable force. So many of the machines we meet on a daily basis have checks, safeguards; it’s easy to forget how lethal they are until one’s turned against you. The laser fired and I ducked, letting the beam pass an inch or two over my shoulder, feeling the air heat and seeing the armour of the golem’s body backlit in the glow. Caldera was somewhere behind but I couldn’t take the half second to check. The golem still hadn’t used the device on its fourth arm: it looked like a torch with a gaping barrel. No time to study more closely. Swing, sword thrust, laser. Dodge and block and twist. There was a rhythm to the attacks, and I fell into it, matching the golem’s movements like a dance, and for a moment I was holding my own.

  But only for a moment. I’m losing. Had to change tactics. Couldn’t break its armour. What to do?

  Evade. Run.

  I stepped into the next swing, catching the golem’s sword arm. The blow was too powerful to stop and I let it lift me, pushing off the ground to let the golem swing me around like a roundabout. The golem stepped back, twisting, trying to bring its weapons to bear, and with the moment’s breather I pulled a condenser from my pocket and smashed it against the wall.

  Mist rushed out, filling the room, and suddenly all I could see was the shadow of the wall and the construct’s golden body. It swung again and I ducked past; two steps brought me out of its visual range and I felt the futures in which it killed me fray and scatter. The futures opened up again and I could see where I was going.

  Caldera was against the other wall, struggling to rise. I caught a glimpse of her side through her torn clothes; blood, a dark gash, something peeking through. I threw her arm over my shoulder, heaving her up. “This way,” I whispered. “Quiet.”

  Caldera resisted for a second, then let me guide her. “Where is it?” she muttered. She was still half dazed and her voice was loud in the mist.

  There was the sound of creaking metal and the floor shook as the golem zeroed in on the noise. I switched direction, pulled a stumbling Caldera to one side; a massive golden shadow loomed up, appearing out of the fog and disappearing again. The lines of its future didn’t turn to intersect ours; it hadn’t detected us. I held my finger to my lips and this time Caldera stayed quiet.

  We’d reached the stairs. The golem was no more than ten feet away but it couldn’t see us. Constructs aren’t sapient, and they’re very bad at dealing with unexpected situations. The golem had been sent into the house with a simple directive: kill us both. Now it couldn’t detect either of its primary targets, and following the voices hadn’t worked. It paused, waiting for input.

  I led Caldera up the stairs. A future flashed up of a stair creaking under Caldera’s weight, and the golem hearing and lasering us through the wall; I caught Caldera’s shoulder, signalled for her to place her foot to one side. Blessedly, she didn’t argue. The mist thinned and vanished as we made it up into the hallway.

  The light was still on in the room where the icecat had attacked, and I led Caldera into the other one. She was silent and favouring one side. “How bad are you?” I whispered.

  “Managing,” Caldera muttered.

  I looked sceptically at Caldera. She wasn’t trying to order me around. Bad sign. “I don’t think that golem can get up the stairs, so if you don’t mind, I’d kind of prefer to stay up here. You might be able to fight that thing, but I’d just as soon not go another round with it.”

  Caldera didn’t answer for a second and I wondered if she’d spotted what I was doing, but she didn’t push it. “Leo?”

  “Panicked and ran out the front door.” I hesitated. “The force mage was right there. No way he could have missed him.”

  Caldera glared. “I told you to stay with him.”

  I looked away, stung. I wanted to make excuses—I’d been tied up fighting the icecat, I’d gone back to help her—but on the facts, she was right. Guarding Leo had been my job.

  “Where are they?” Caldera said.

  “Ice mage is in the back garden.” I kept my voice very low. The golem was really damn close, and that laser could easily pierce the floor. “Lost the force mage. Golem’s still waiting.”

  “What if we make a break for—?”

  “Bad idea,” I said. I’d been looking at the futures in which we did exactly that. “The street doesn’t have enough cover—with you hurt, they’d chase us down and pick us off. Only reason they haven’t done it already is they aren’t sure where we are.”

  Caldera paused for a second, and I could sense her flicking through plans. “All right,” she said. “We’re going to have to stall them. I’ll—”

  The futures shifted. I took one glance at them and my heart sank. I caught Caldera’s arm and pulled her towards the bedroom.

  One of the few silver linings to these sorts of situations is that you learn pretty quick whether someone trusts you. Even wounded, there was no way I could have moved Caldera if she didn’t want to be moved, but after one startled glance she let me drag her inside.

  There was a weird low-pitched noise, like a deep cough.

  I twisted around. Through the doorway and out in the hall, where there had been carpet, now there was a big circular hole in the floor. Through it, I could see the mist-filled living room. As I watched, there was another cough and most of what was left of the hallway disintegrated into dust.

  From below, I felt the vibrations as the golem moved and turned. The cough came a third time, then a fourth. There was nothing left of the hallway: if we stepped out of the bedroom we’d fall straight into the room below.

  “Well,” I said quietly. “I guess now we know what that fourth weapon does.”

  “What the fuck is that?” Caldera whispered.

  There was another cough, followed by another. It wasn’t going directly towards us . . . yet. “Disintegration cannon. Wonder why it didn’t use it earlier. Maybe it’s got too slow a charge-up time. Or it could be one of those spells that needs the target to be stationary to—”

  “Did you hit your head?” Caldera hissed. “Focus!”

  “We all have our ways of dealing with stressful situations,” I said absently. Most of my attention was on plotting out futures. “It’s going to shoot the floor out from underneath us. Probably collapse the house.”

  More coughs sounded. The golem was destroying the small guest room in which we’d found Leo, one section of floor at a time. We’d gotten lucky that it had decided to start there. Not too lucky, though. Our room was next.

  Caldera hesitated one second, then lowered her head. “Fuck it.” Her voice was harsh. “We fight.”

  “No.”

  “We don’t have—”

  I didn’t raise my voice. I often get calmer in really dangerous situations. “If you go down there, you’ll die.”

  “You don’t—”

  “I do know that, and that’s without the ice mage interfering. He wouldn’t have ordered the golem to force a confrontation like this unless he knew he’d win.”

  “Then—”

  “Our best chance is to wait for backup. And no,
I haven’t seen it coming, I’m still looking. Please let me concentrate.”

  “When are—?” Caldera started to ask, then stopped.

  Another series of coughs. The light in the next room blinked out and the house went dark. One of the shots must have cut the power cable. There was a groaning sound and a rumbling crash that I could feel through the floorboards. The floor shifted under my feet.

  Caldera snatched a look out into the hall. “Mist’s clearing,” she said in a low voice.

  “I know.”

  “Got another?”

  “No.” I don’t stockpile condensers—they work best when they’re fresh. I’d lost two in the battle with Chamois, and the one I’d just used had been my last. I kept scanning through the futures. There was some sort of disturbance up ahead, something like . . .

  . . . fire?

  Now I just needed to figure out how to keep us alive until they got here.

  The coughing sound came again and the wall ahead of us shuddered. “I think I’m going to have to go keep that thing busy,” I told Caldera. “Wait up here, okay?”

  Caldera glared at me. “Screw that!”

  The wall shuddered again. A few more shots and it would collapse. “Stay in the corner,” I told Caldera. “When that wall goes it’ll take down most of the floor, except for the far corner. As long as you stay there, you won’t fall.”

  “If you—”

  “You’re hurt, I’m not.” I kept my voice calm. “I’ve fought these things before; I can stall it for a little while. We just need to survive another forty seconds.”

  Caldera hesitated. I don’t know much about medicine, and I hadn’t had a close look at Caldera’s wound, but I’d seen the futures in which she tried to fight the golem, and they’d been brief and messy. We didn’t have time to talk it through. “Stay back,” I said, and walked to the edge.

  There was a final cough. The wall groaned and collapsed, taking the section of floor I was on with it. I’d been ready for it and rode it down, jumping off at the last second to land in the living room, rolling to soften the fall.

  I came up to see the golem turning to face me. Plaster dust was in the air, and broken drywall littered the floor. Taking down the wall hadn’t collapsed the house, not quite, but it wouldn’t take much more. Caldera was hidden by the remains of the ceiling. From the back garden I heard a yell, then the golem moved to attack.

  The laser burned a line across the carpet as I dodged right. The golem approached, swords coming down, and I backed away. The living room flashed, lit in the glow of spells from outside: red, blue, red again. I couldn’t take the time to look and see. All my attention was focused on the mantis golem.

  The laser fired again and again, a glowing golden line of death. I stepped aside from each blast, calculating how to position myself to dodge the next. The golem was herding me, pushing me towards the corner. The spells from outside had stopped; the dust in the air was cutting the visibility but I could see the futures that were approaching and knew what I had to do. Just need a little distraction . . . I stepped forward to go under the next laser blast, letting myself be drawn into melee range. The golem’s swords came down.

  I jumped away, backpedalling, thumping into the wall. The golem adjusted its aim to focus on me, the laser emitter sighting on my chest.

  Light bloomed from behind the golem. A blast of flame stabbed out, washing off the construct’s back.

  The golem halted, turned. A figure strode out of the dust, wreathed in flame. The fire around it hid its form; all I could make out was a vaguely humanoid shape with glowing eyes. A second blast hit the golem before it could finish turning around. This one was narrower, more focused, a near-white beam the width of two fingers that was too bright to look at. It burnt into the golem and I saw armour glowing and melting, molten gold spattering to the floor.

  The golem fired, but as it did the figure raised a hand. The laser struck the fiery shape, hit a shield. The golden line fuzzed and faded. The white-hot beam didn’t. It kept going, burning into the golem. The golem took one stride forward, then its back went white and the beam burst all the way through, streaming out the other side. The heat was so intense that I had to shield my face. Through my fingers I saw the golem jerk, shudder. The beam sawed, melting the golem from the inside out.

  With a groan the golem fell, toppling with a crash that shook the house. Just for an instant I saw something expand from the metal body, stretching, sinking into the floor, then it was gone. The golem’s remains lay still and some light seemed to have vanished from its golden eyes.

  The fiery shape turned to me and I nearly flinched. It looked like a man sculpted from flame, invulnerable, godlike. Fires had broken out all around it, licking at its feet. For a moment I felt as though I were facing down some sort of fire spirit, not a human being.

  Then all of a sudden the flame shield winked out and Landis was standing there. He was dressed in some sort of close-fitting body armour I didn’t recognise, and he looked brisk and full of energy. “Verus! Glad to see you made it, good job on the distraction. What’s your status?”

  The floor around Landis’s feet was on fire. He didn’t seem to have noticed, and I dragged my eyes away. “Caldera’s hurt,” I said. Adrenaline was still pumping through me and I wanted to move, to fight. “The kid we were protecting, he ran that way. We need to find him.”

  “Leaving some of the fun for us, eh?” Landis said cheerfully. He turned just as another fiery shape came out of the smoke behind him. Again the fire hid the person’s features, but I recognised the signature of the magic and I knew it was Variam. “He’s running,” Variam said. “Do we chase?”

  “Not this time, we’ve got a civilian to find. Description, Verus?”

  “His name’s Leo. Boy, about ten, thin, blond hair. Wearing jeans and a black top. There was a force mage covering the door. He’s gone, but—”

  Landis was already heading for the door. Variam followed. “Shield off, Vari, there’s a good lad. Standard cover. Verus, you stay with Caldera and take a breather. We’ll take it from here.” They disappeared out into the street.

  I was left alone in the wreckage of the living room. Flames were still licking around and I tried to find a way to climb back up to the first floor.

  It took me a minute, and by the time I made it up, I found Caldera slumped on the bed. Blood had soaked through the side of her jacket and into the bedclothes. “Caldera.” I kept my voice low. “Can you hear me?”

  “Not like I could miss it, way you talk,” Caldera muttered. “Was that Landis . . . ?”

  “It was him.” Not good. I hadn’t realised how badly hurt Caldera was; she must have been forcing herself to keep going. “Vari’s here too. We should be safe.”

  “Didn’t call for Order of the Shield.” Caldera’s eyes opened; she stared at me suspiciously. “Should have been Star.”

  I sighed. “Seriously? You’re going to give me a hard time about this now?”

  “You were on your phone. When I took the kid down . . .” Caldera sighed and closed her eyes. “Never follow orders, do you . . .”

  “Yeah, well, you can shout at me later.” I was looking Caldera over. The gash on her shoulder didn’t look bad—it was the side wound I was worried about. How deep was it? “We need to get you some help.”

  “Already called for—”

  “On your com disc, I know. I think we can give up on that, all right? You guys must have backup ways of getting in touch. Phone number?”

  “There’s a number.” Caldera didn’t open her eyes. “For emergencies.”

  “You think this might qualify?”

  “I’ll read it. Type it in.”

  I made the call. It took longer than it should have to convince the woman on the other end that I was who I said I was. Finally I just passed the phone over to Caldera and let her give the authentication co
de. By the time it was done I could hear the strain in Caldera’s voice.

  At last it was done and Caldera hung up. “Hate those people,” she muttered. “Bureaucrats . . .”

  Caldera was still slumped on the bed; she’d stopped moving except when she had to, and when she’d lifted the phone to her ear I’d seen that it had hurt her. “You doing okay?”

  “You always ask such stupid questions?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got the feeling it might be a good idea to keep you talking until the medics get here.” I could still smell smoke; it wasn’t getting any fainter. “Oh, and I don’t want to worry you, but just so you know, the house is on fire.”

  “Lovely.”

  “On the plus side, I don’t think it’s going to collapse in the next ten minutes.”

  “You know,” Caldera said, “even by my standards, this was a really shitty night out.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “Quiet neighbourhood, door-to-door entertainment . . . there’s even romantic candlelight.”

  “My ribs are sticking out of my side.”

  “You did say you wanted a match against someone who could challenge you.”

  “Does this happen every time you go out with someone?”

  “Hey, at least I’m not a boring date.”

  Smoke rose from the floor below, ash drifting up into the night. We sat together in the ruined house as I searched through the futures, looking to see when help would arrive.

  chapter 8

  It was half an hour later.

  Blue light flashed from the roofs of the police vehicles, reflected back from car windows and the fronts of the houses. The lights were out of sync, creating a weird strobing effect that made the shadows dance back and forth. Although the police were here, they weren’t going into the house: the Keeper liaisons had done their job and the figures in the black uniforms and yellow hi-vis jackets were holding a perimeter and putting up crime-scene tape at either end of the road. People were leaning out of windows and watching from doors, peering at the house where we’d fought our battle, but there was nothing to see. Plastic screens had gone up at the door and windows and all the activity was taking place inside.