Toru grabbed the first by the back of his coat, lifted him effortlessly, and hurled him into the street, directly into the path of a speeding truck. He hit the grill so hard that pieces went spinning off. The truck driver slammed on the brakes. Tires locked up and screeched, but the forward momentum was too much, and Xiang lost track of Toru for a second behind the truck. Then the truck was past, leaving a smear of blood behind, and Toru was twisting the last man’s head off. The other was already lying in a broken heap. The Iron Guard dropped the head, took one big step, leapt up all of the stairs, crashed through the heavy wooden doors of the building, and disappeared inside.
There was much commotion on the street. People were shouting and pointing, but since it had happened so very fast, Xiang doubted any of them really knew what had just transpired. Two seconds later there was a gunshot. Five seconds after that, a window on the second floor of the purported secret-police building exploded outward in a gout of fire and broken glass. Now the crowd knew something was wrong. The Shanghaiese were no strangers to sudden street violence, so they began taking cover or moving away in a fashion which would seem rather casual to most visitors.
There were more muffled gunshots, and though Xiang knew it was surely impossible from here with all of the city noise, he could have sworn that he heard screaming. Then on the fifth and final floor, another window broke open and a man came flying out. He flailed and kicked until he hit the sidewalk and burst open like a melon. Papers and documents came floating down after him like lazy doves.
Xiang had no doubt that Toru had systematically slaughtered every single person inside that building, and done so in less than a minute. The fire which had somehow begun on the second floor was spreading across the entire upper face of the building by the time Toru nonchalantly came out the broken front door and walked down the steps. He was wiping his bloody knuckles on someone’s shirt like it was a rag before tossing it into the bushes. The deadly Iron Guard looked across the street, right at Xiang, and the two briefly made eye contact before Toru simply strolled away to disappear back into the city.
Witness my conviction.
Chapter 14
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something in your life.”
Free City of Shanghai
“Good morning, Mr. Sullivan.” For being so little, her voice was incredibly loud when you had a splitting headache. “I brought you breakfast.”
Sullivan cracked open his eyes and groaned. The light sneaking through the boarded-up window told him it was just after dawn. “You are way too happy in the morning.” But then he smelled that she’d brought him coffee, and all was forgiven. “Morning to you too, Lady Origami.”
He didn’t like waking up in the partially bombed remains of an old tenement, but it beat not waking up at all. His skin hurt from his brush with absolute zero in the tunnels, but the healing spells he’d managed to carve into his body had been able to repair the frostbite. The ones on his chest were still gathering Power and burned with a feverish heat, which made him realize he was naked, so he quickly pulled the thin blanket up. Not that there was a whole lot in the way of privacy in the dump the Shanghai Grimnoir were using as a safe house, but Lady Origami was still a lady. “Where are my clothes?”
“You swam in the river. I hung them up to dry, Mr. Sullivan.”
He could barely remember much after he, Heinrich, Lance, and Zhao had stumbled their way here in a half-drowned fog. It was like Zhao’s magic had been so cold it had messed with his head. “Thank you for doing that.”
“It is fine. You are covered. I work with pirates many years. Pirate ship is very small place. A difficult place to have privacy. But none of the pirates are such a big man as you.”
“Excuse me?”
She looked away sheepishly. “I mean muscles. Very big muscles. Like picture in magazines. I…” Now she was blushing. “I mean the last page picture, where first is a skinny boy, who gets sand kicked in face by bully, and then sends away for book about how to lift heavy things. You look like last picture, with the muscles.” Now she was just getting exasperated trying to explain. “Sorry, Mr. Sullivan. I should not have spoken.”
“Comes with being a Gravity Spiker.”
“Yes. Omosa. Heavies. I am familiar. They are all so very big.”
“Thanks, I guess. And please just call me Jake.” Lady Origami smiled, as if to say that’s not likely. “What’re you doing here anyway? Doesn’t the Traveler need its Torch?”
“Not so much to do there now while she is parked. Whole ship is taken over by Fuller building his machine in the hold. She cannot fly until this machine is done. So until then, I come here to maybe help burn Iron Guards.” She knelt by his sleeping mat and set the tray next to his elbow. Breakfast appeared to be balls of sticky rice.
He had to remember that this lady also enjoyed participating in the brutal close-quarters fighting of a pirate boarding party. “That’s mighty brave of you.”
She shook her head. “Not so much. I like to help. And I do not like Imperium soldiers. Not at all. And this city swims in them. You are lucky to be alive, Mr. Sullivan. The Icebox child nearly killed you.”
Sullivan shrugged as he took the coffee, hot and black, perfect to warm his bones. “The kid did what he had to do.”
“I do not trust Iceboxes. Their magic is… hmmm… Forgive me. I am still practicing my English. Their magic is incorrect.”
Of course, to a Torch, whose magic was based in manipulating the consuming rampage of fire, the absence of heat energy would seem blasphemous. If he wasn’t such an analytical man, he might even feel the same way about Heinrich’s Fade magic. But he wasn’t feeling particularly analytical right then though, since huge Power use always left him starved. Going all wispy like that, just wasn’t right.
Lady Origami didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere, so he just started shoving rice balls into his face. They were either better than expected, or he was just so hungry that it didn’t matter. She knelt there, watching him, and he had to marvel how she was able to sit like that without hurting her knees.
“How is everybody else?” he asked between mouthfuls.
“They are fine. That very loud noise is Mr. Talon snoring.”
“Huh. I thought somebody had parked a truck next door and left it running.”
“Mr. Koenig was already awake. I think he does not sleep.”
Sullivan was normally a light sleeper, as were most who survived the Great War trenches. Heinrich’s paranoia made Sullivan look like an ostrich with its head planted in the sand. “Or when he does sleep, he leaves one eye open… Heinrich grew up in Dead City.”
“Ah… Then he slept in trees to not be eaten by zombies. I see. You would need to sleep lightly to not roll over, fall, and die.”
Sullivan had marched to Berlin at the close of the war. He didn’t think they had been many trees left there after the Peace Ray blast, but he didn’t share that, because it was a sad thought, and it didn’t seem fair to share that with the usually perky Lady Origami. “How is Zhao?”