“It is finished.”
He raised his head. Beside him Nefertity stared down at the angry waters, her beautiful face calm and cold as the image on a sarcophagus. Fury surged inside of him and almost he sprang at her; but then she was shaking her head, and her voice sounded strange.
“Hobi. Hobi—we’re not alone.”
He looked where she pointed, to where the stream disappeared downhill. He blinked and wiped his eyes again, not certain if he was imagining it; but no, there was something there, a figure—and behind it many figures—the first one tall and wearing crimson leathers. An Aviator, wearing an enhancer, his face covered with a scarlet metal mask that gleamed in the rain like a warning flare. Behind him trudged sullen forms in robes and janissaries’ uniforms and the pleasure cabinet’s rosy silks, only their festival scarves of green were torn and stained, and their faces too seemed to have been wiped away by the storm.
“ Rasas ,” the boy breathed. His teeth chattered as he realized that the one leading them was a rasa as well. He would have run but Nefertity held him. The figures paced slowly up the hill, heedless of the rain streaming around them and the gale tearing at their clothes. Their leader walked the last few steps until he stood upon the plateau. When he raised his eyes to meet Hobi’s the boy saw that he was what remained of the Aviator Imperator.
“Commandant Tast’annin,” he gasped. He thought he might be sick.
“Horemhob Panggang,” the rasa said in a low voice. He turned his gaze to Nefertity. “You have her. The nemosyne. Nasrani’s metal woman.”
Hobi nodded dumbly. Behind the Aviator the other rasas had stopped. They stood, shuffling and silent. The rain where it struck some of them seemed to leave a soft impression on their skin.
“Yes,” the boy whispered at last. He coughed, tried to make his voice louder but succeeded only in raising it to a croak. “Nefertity—that’s her name—”
“Nefertity,” the Aviator repeated. He stepped forward, until he stood directly in front of the nemosyne.
“Commandant,” Nefertity said, her voice cool and uninflected. Her eyes and throat began to glow deep blue.
“I heard much about you, many years ago, from my friend Nasrani Orsina,” the rasa went on. “He said you were more beautiful than any real woman he had ever known, excepting of course his youngest sister. At the time I did not believe him. I see now he was right.”
He bowed, the rain spilling from the cusps of his leather jacket.
The nemosyne stared at him, her gaze implacable, almost cruel. “I think it is a pity you did not perish with the rest of your people down there,” she said, gesturing to where Araboth lay somewhere beneath the sea’s flow. Her voice had the husky, drawling edge of Loretta Riding’s.
“Oh, but I have already given one life to those people,” the Aviator replied, raising his head and glancing back at the waiting figures behind him. “As have these others. Araboth’s forgotten ones, The Fallen—Hobi knows about them, don’t you, Hobi? Forgetful revenants, corpses who stray away from their prams when their nannies aren’t looking. Military commanders who don’t linger long enough in the beds of imperious mistresses.”
The nemosyne stared at him before replying coolly. “Let us go free. Let the boy go, at least—there may be others who survived, let him go and see if he can find them.”
The Aviator swept his arms out, sending up a plume of silver spray from his jacket. “I won’t harm him. His father was a friend of mine, once. And I have had enough of killing, for a little while.” He gestured at the other rasas. “They were in the Undercity—they were following you, the light you shed as you passed through the tunnel. They followed me, and I followed you. We made it halfway up the hill before the gale struck. They are all that escaped from the city.”
He laughed mirthlessly, light glinting from his black teeth. Behind him the rustling of the waiting rasas grew louder. The rain was slowing. Overhead the clouds lightened to the color of verdigris, and on the eastern horizon sunlight darted from gaps in the clouds.
“I am not a military nemosyne,” Nefertity said, her voice harsh. “I belonged to the radical wing of the American Vatican. I am a folklore unit. I am useless to you. Let me go.”
The Aviator shook his head. “No. You can link with the others—you were all designed to interface with each other.”
“The others are gone.”
“I believe they still exist.” He stepped closer to her, took her gleaming metal hand in his dark and sanguine one. “Shiyung believed that as well, that’s why she sent me to the Capital. The Military Tactical Targets Retrieval Network. It is somewhere out there still. HORUS was receiving random transmissions from it, before the raid by the Commonwealth destroyed their satellites.”
Nefertity’s eyes darkened to cobalt. Hobi could smell something faint and metallic, like ozone, as she withdrew her hand from the Aviator’s.
“Metatron,” she said, and recoiled. “The primary military unit—that’s what they called it. Loretta said it was destroyed when Wichita fell.”
“I think it is still there. Somewhere. It broadcasts on a shortwave radio frequency. If we were to find an area where the airwaves were not contaminated, we might be able to find its range. You might be able to find it.”
The rasa’s hollow voice had grown low, almost wheedling. Hobi started to back away from him, when suddenly the Aviator’s hand shot out and grabbed him.
“Aaagh!” The boy yelled and tried to pull away, then stumbled to the ground. The rasa ’s hand cut into his flesh like ice.
“Let go of him,” Nefertity commanded. Her entire body blazed, the mist around her glittered blue and green and gold. Behind the Aviator the other rasas murmured and crept forward; some of them fell to their knees. “He is innocent, let him go.”
“Come with me, then,” said the Aviator. “Else I will kill him—and you will be responsible.”
Nefertity was silent. At the Aviator’s feet Hobi writhed, his arm held taut in the rasa ’s grip as a single long tear of blood ran from wrist to elbow.
Nefertity looked down at Hobi, her eyes glittering. “Let him go,” she cried. “Yes, I will go with you.” Anger flared in her voice. “But how dare you harm him, how can you break the laws that bound you from harming your creators—”
The rasa grinned horribly, the splintered light making a tortured skull of his goblin face. “I am not truly a rasa, Mistress Nemosyne, nor am I human. Nothing commands me but myself, and, perhaps—”
He raised his hands, letting go of Hobi so that the boy collapsed, moaning, at his feet. For an instant a shaft of sunlight struck the Aviator, setting his crimson jacket aflame. His pale eyes were lost in shadow as he cried out words the boy did not understand. Then the sun was gone, the rain hissed once more upon the broken ground.
“Master—”
A thin voice called from behind the rasa. Hobi looked up. In the gray-green sky something glimmered, a spark that seemed to flicker more brightly and grow larger, until he saw that it was an aircraft of some kind, and as it plummeted toward them he made out the unearthly grace of one of the Ascendant’s Gryphons.
“Kesef!” The Aviator’s voice rose in command. Abruptly the Gryphon’s wings folded back and it plunged to earth like a javelin. Hobi cried out; but at the last second the Gryphon hovered, seemed to stutter in the air; and then its six jointed legs descended, followed a moment later by a folding stair delicate as a gentleman’s fan.
“What—” Hobi began, turning to Nefertity; but before he could speak something fell from the aircraft’s belly. A tangle of arms and legs on the silver stairs, resolved into a single person struggling with some sort of ornate costume rife with spikes and lumens. A moment later and the stranger was on her feet, tearing at her face as though something clung there. When she turned, shaking rain from her cheeks, he saw that it was Âziz Orsina.