Benzamir felt his personal shield stretch and shudder at every blow, and knew it couldn’t take much more. Indiscriminate fire from the roof had started to include rockets, and people were dying around him simply because there was nowhere to run to. He back-flipped out of the way, caught a spindly metal limb as it flashed at his face and turned it round. The thing staggered into its partner and they both lost their footing on the marble floor.
In that moment’s respite he saw:
Wahir and Alessandra, the princess and the monk, left stranded by the retreating, panicked mob.
Solomon Akisi, abandoned by his captors, shuffling slowly backwards, not quite believing his eyes.
Said coming behind the emperor with a fallen spear and pushing him aside, just as the last of his guards fell.
The two metal creatures springing back onto their legs in front of him.
Time started again. One unmaker leaped at Benzamir, trying to bring its weight down on his body. The other started to carve its way through the crowd in a crimson haze. He ducked under the pounce, rolled forward and aimed his finger at the scuttling monster that had just sliced Said’s spear in two. The glass dome overhead blew apart, and before the first shards of falling debris reached the ground, a white-edged hole punched through the back of the creature. It jerked, transfixed, then fell across the throne. Vital components ran in smoking silver rivers down the dais.
‘Run!’ called Benzamir, taking his own good advice, throwing himself away from the dais as the first impact of thick glass marked the beginning of the cascade of crystal and broken metal struts.
Said threw what was left of his weapon aside, took hold of His Imperial Majesty Kaisari Yohane Muzorewa and jumped back. Alessandra and Wahir pulled at them desperately, at the same time trying to protect their own faces from the splinters and shards flying outwards.
Benzamir was hit from behind. He sprawled into the outer circle of broken glass, unable to ride the blow. He rolled, and kept rolling as a series of metal feet came slicing down, one after another. He stopped, waited for the last one to descend, took it in his hands, twisted it and used it as a lever to get back onto his feet.
‘Get the emperor out of here! Go!’
‘But master—!’
‘Go, Wahir.’ He ducked, jumped and spun as three knives tried to skewer him in turn.
He saw in passing the ruin the other unmaker was making of Great Nairobi’s elite – those who hadn’t trampled their way to the door. But then it abruptly stopped its killing spree and reversed direction, trailing streams of gore back towards the dais. The monk and the princess ran from it, towards his friends.
Benzamir thought to intercept it, but he was too busy fighting and keeping his feet on the blood-soaked floor of the throne room.
‘It’s me you want!’ he shouted, even though he knew that his life was incidental to decapitating the Kenyan empire.
There was a side door set in the nearest corner of the throne room. Alessandra already had it open; Said and Wahir had pushed the emperor through. Elenya was there a second later, and Va slammed it shut against the unmaker’s advance. It took scant moments to reduce the wood to matchsticks, and it too was gone in a crimson-tinged blur.
Benzamir was running out of time: he now had to see if he could stretch what he had left to beyond breaking point.
CHAPTER 35
THE ROCKETEERS AND bolt throwers had abandoned their posts to chase after the emperor through the palace; it was just the Kenyan thief and him. In a second it would be just him.
The remaining machine skittered towards Benzamir across a field of broken chairs. He rolled and ran. He needed clear stone floor to give him grip and count against the points of the unmaker’s legs. A blinding arc of knives missed him by a fraction, air singing in his ears. The machine slid, collided with the wall and immediately started for him again.
He scooped up a hide shield and slammed it into the unmaker’s body, knocking it off course and off balance. It ripped the shield from his hand; blades stabbed their way through, trying to reach him.
He wasn’t there. He was underneath it, hitting joints and panels with his hands and feet, putting stress and strain on the metalwork, trying to hit something vital.
It wanted him badly. The intent to kill him was only an artefact of its programming, but it felt real enough. Feet came off the ground in a wave, one after the other trying to spear him, and again Benzamir had gone.
An undefended eye-stalk. He took it in both hands and spun his body. The stalk came off, and he kicked to push himself clear. The unmaker tumbled away and fell in a tangle of long sharp limbs.
‘Akisi! The throne!’ was all he had time to say before it was up and on him.
After that there was no time to think. He let his mind slip from conscious action. If there was a stab, a feint, a sweep, he was ready with an immediate counter-attack. He blocked, leaped, spun, turned, staying only and ever only just far enough ahead of it. In a trance, beyond the effort of concentration, he danced before the unmaker’s onslaught.
But it would have to end soon. He was tiring, and it was forcing him back. Once he was against a wall he’d be supremely vulnerable. It would pin him against a pillar and keep at him until his own protection was overloaded. He would die there.
Akisi had reached the throne, leaving a trail of bloody footprints through the shards of broken glass. ‘Now what?’ he shouted.
Time was at an end: it snapped back with a rush of noise and colour. Benzamir ducked. Chips of stone pinged across his back as a claw screeched across the wall, leaving a white gouge.
‘Look up,’ said Benzamir.
The sky above the smashed ceiling went abruptly dark, and a cloud of lights descended through the glassless latticework, spiralling down towards the dais. They resolved into shiny bubbles of metal, each the size of a melon, with dents and protuberances pocking their surface.
They streamed towards Benzamir, who arched his back to avoid one last impaling thrust. Then the unmaker turned to swing wildly at the first sphere. The leg joint flashed, metal cracked and the articulated limb went sliding across the floor, still spinning.
A cluster of spheres dived between Benzamir and the machine, driving it away, carving its legs from its body in bright sparks. It stumbled, fell, turned on its back, still lashing out but unable to move. It found itself in the centre of a gyre. Its body glowed and sputtered, craters torn explosively from its shell. Then it curled up in a ball and stopped moving.
The spheres descended. They sliced off the last three legs and settled on its still form. When they rose again, the thing had been dissected, its innards laid bare.
Benzamir started to run over, realized that his knee had been forced at some point, and limped to compensate. He bent down to inspect the unmaker’s guts: the power source, the liquid motors and the insulated block of electronics, preserved like flies in amber. He was after none of those. Finally he saw it, a black resin wafer: the transponder with its minute but vital memory. He pulled it out, cables trailing around it like cobwebs. He held it up, checked the wafer was still in one piece, then buried it in the folds of his clothes.
Akisi was still standing next to the throne, blood oozing out of his feet and mingling with that of the imperial guard. Benzamir trotted up to meet him, the spheres forming an ever-moving cloud behind him.
‘Solomon Akisi, the court is adjourned,’ he said in Swahili. One of the spheres glided forward. ‘Lift up your arms.’
Trembling, Akisi obeyed. The centre link of his chains glowed and melted, and he was able to move his hands apart. The chain joining his feet went the same way.