Servants of the Nexus (Wayfarer Chronicles #1)

Chapter 9

They abandoned all secrecy in an instant, jumping down from the rooftop and taking the ridge at a run, a sprint, heads down and coats flapping in the wind. They hadn’t gone far before it became clear what they were seeing: Gaesten and his cronies weren’t just entering the quarry, they were leading something down with them. An automaton.
Which meant they were taking the Tremontine Box into an aetherflesh quarry. What purpose that could serve, Saenu couldn’t guess, but she didn’t think it’d be one she approved of.
She and Cam had begun their descent, hopping down the sharply stepped walls of the quarry, when someone stepped into their path. Gaesten, who’d left the protective cordon around the automaton and let that go on ahead.
It took all Saenu’s will not to draw her sword and run him right through, but it was folly to believe Gaesten was as unprotected as he looked, and she needed answers first. Instead, she halted on the step above, towering over him with her sword drawn.
“What are you doing with the Box?” she demanded. “Why here, Gaesten? What can this possibly accomplish?”
Gaesten raised both hands in a shrug, but there was a gleam in his eye. “You haven’t worked it out yet? An object that has crossed between worlds, combined with a source of immense power - what do you think that might achieve?”
Saenu pictured fire and ash, an explosion fit to level Howl. But it was worse, of course: the Tremontine Box wasn’t the only thing that had crossed worlds, if Cam was right about the provenance of the aetherflesh. Gaesten’s ‘power source’ had done just the same. She shook her head, genuinely bewildered. “Such devastation, Gaesten. How can you-”
“Devastation fit to break worlds,” he said, cutting across her anxiety. “To rip this one apart and tear so many holes elsewhere that even this boy of yours couldn’t fix them all.”
Behind her, Cam flinched, but Saenu had more pressing concerns. “You’ll destroy the Nexus,” she said evenly, trying to find reason in Gaesten’s madness.
“So I will.” Gaesten actually winked at her. “But I won’t be around to see it.”
And with that, he was gone, blinking out of existence as easily as he’d eluded her in the warehouse. Whatever method Gaesten had devised to travel between worlds, it was more flawless than she’d imagined.
As was his plan. If he really wanted to destroy realms, taking the Tremontine Box into the quarry was a sure way to do it - and his agents, oblivious to his disappearance, were in the process of doing exactly that.
Saenu launched herself down the hillside without further thought, leaping down the rocky tiers to plough into the nearest agent before he’d even realised she was there. Her sword plunged through his gut and he slumped sideways with a cry of surprise.
After that, it was the chaos of the fight, five agents turning upon her with the same mis-matched collection of weapons the last group had wielded. This little coterie, though, had significantly more skill than their brethren, and it was mere seconds before Saenu understood just how hard a fight this might be.
And before her, the automaton, lumbering onwards unhindered, four more agents flanking it. Even with Gaesten gone, they looked little inclined to abandon their posts.
There was nothing else for it: Saenu threw herself into the fight, blade weaving a deadly dance, slashing and thrusting and parrying. One fell back beneath her assault, blood gushing from a vicious wound to the chest; a second tried to duck inside Saenu’s guard and nearly lost a hand in the process. The other three, though, were more cautious, circling round, removing themselves from of her line of sight, spreading their attack.
No time for caution of her own. Saenu lunged for one, fully expecting to feel a sword in her back from the opposite side. Instead, there was a grunt, followed by the sounds of a struggle. The agent before her glanced over her shoulder, his concentration gone just long enough for Saenu to skewer him.
She pushed him away, then whirled to find Cam locked against another agent. Saenu moved to intervene, only for a line of fire to streak across her upper arm, setting her left side ablaze with pain. Too late, she remembered there was one foe unaccounted for.
Saenu spun, the lash of her sword striking with a viper’s speed. The agent to her left never lost her jubilant expression, even as her head detached from her body.
When Saenu turned back, the last agent was dead, sprawled at Cam’s feet. Cam was as bloody as his opponent, chest heaving and knife held limply at his side.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
Cam glanced up, some of the shock leaving his eyes. “No, but you are.”
She was, and her arm screamed with the pain of it - but Saenu wasn’t about to allow herself to become an easy target. As the four agents around the automaton peeled off, climbing back up the tiers towards them, Saenu raised her wounded arm. Teeth gritted, against the pain and what she was about to do, Saenu conjured a handful of flame.
It burnt red, licking at the blood slicked across her palm. It took all Saenu’s concentration to keep the fire burning - magic was not her strength, and her wound made her head swim. This fire was, in short, nothing but a bluff: there was no greater spell behind it, no sorcery like Gaesten’s, not even the strength to keep the flame lit more than a few heartbeats more.
In the end though, it was enough. The agents approached warily then, when Saenu raised her burning hand, looked at one another. If there was some signal between them, she didn’t see it. What she did see was all four taking a deliberate step away, then another, before finally sheathing their weapons. Loyalty to Gaesten only went so far, it seemed, when his cronies could see a quick death was coming for them. With a final dubious look at Saenu, they fled.
Saenu watched the retreating agents with unbridled relief. Her arm throbbed, pain pulsing up her shoulder and into her neck, whilst the incipient spell burning in her hand was enough to make her light-headed. Only when the last agent vanished over the quarry’s lip did she dare let it drop, the magic leaching away with her waning adrenaline.
Cam only approached once it was gone. He still looked wary and uncertain, but his hands reached for Saenu’s bloodied arm.
“Later,” she told him, voice taut with exhaustion. “First, the machine.”
They hurried after it. The automaton still rumbled along without guidance, clanking and whining, but manouevring its way down the hewn steps with little difficulty. It had the look of an unstoppable force, and it was heading for the heart of the mine.
Cam shadowed its steps for several seconds, before wheeling round to its front. Still he kept his distance, though when he finally darted closer, wrenching a panel from the automaton’s barrel chest, the creature never faltered.
He jumped free again, letting the panel clatter to the ground. “I can stop it,” he said, with a note of confidence that wasn’t entirely convincing.
Saenu followed him, wounded arm cradled against her chest. “Are you sure I can’t just put my sword through its heart?”
“It doesn’t have one,” Cam replied, this time with more certainty. “I can disable it, though. I’m sure of it. Just keep that lot clear.”
He waved backwards, where - in the bustling heart of the quarry - a congregation of workmen and idlers had gathered. Even as Cam hopped onto one of the automaton’s broad feet, balancing there as he set to work, a handful of the miners began to approach.
Leading them was a foreman, Saenu presumed. He looked nervous, but the party assembled behind him was enough to bolster his courage. “You can’t be down here,” he said, chest puffed out. “This area isn’t safe for civilians.”
“Do we look like civilians?” Saenu growled, noting all eyes drifting to her sword and the blood staining it. “It’s you and your men who are in danger. This automaton carries an explosive device.”
Well, that wasn’t strictly true, but the miners understood the concept well enough. Eyes widened, and someone exclaimed, “A bomb? In the mine?”
There was a brief, shocked silence at that, broken only by the grinding of the automaton’s gears.
Still, the workers hesitated. The foreman glanced at the automaton, then at Saenu, perhaps contemplating which was the greater threat. “I’ll need to inform the manager,” he began.
“There’s no time.” Saenu stepped forward, raising her sword for effect. “You need to evacuate this facility. Now.”
In the end, the foreman clearly decided breaking protocol was safer than facing Saenu’s sword, whether the bomb was real or not. He wheeled away, shouting orders, sending workers streaming away from the quarry. Saenu watched them go, but it was with little real satisfaction. If the bomb went off... Well, there’d be nowhere to hide in Howl, or anywhere in this world.
Cam was muttering to himself, long strings of words like some strange, technical poetry, liberally interspersed with curses. Finally, he looked up. Sweat streaked his forehead, darkening his pale hair against his skin. “It’s all gears and clockwork,” he said nervously. “I don’t understand the mechanism.”
Saenu moved as close as she could without being struck by the automaton’s lurching bulk. “You don’t have to understand it,” she said, low and fierce. “You just need to break it.”
“That could set off the bomb-”
Saenu cut him off with a sharp gesture that indicated the rear wall of the quarry. The great hump of yellowish material buried within the stone shone with the intensity of a small sun, filling the quarry with its radiance. Less than twenty feet away, by Saenu’s reckoning.
Cam turned back to the automaton’s chest. “Break it. Right.”
He took a deep breath, one Saenu couldn’t help but mirror, before plunging his hand into the automaton’s innards and ripping out a handful of parts.
After that: silence.
No, not silence. Saenu could hear the breath rattling in her lungs, and a harsh rasp from Cam. They were breathing. They were alive.
There was a tinkling sound as Cam dropped a fistful of tiny gears, sending them cascading across the quarry floor. The automaton was frozen, one foot raised, swaying as though the slightest wind might tip it over. Gingerly, Cam reached back into its chest, drawing out a small object which he held in Saenu’s direction. The Tremontine Box.
She took it, turned it over once in her hands, then slipped it inside her coat. Cam extricated himself from the automaton’s grasp, swinging down from its foot and landing beside her. His face was pale, too shocked to be jubilant.
“You did it,” Saenu said, sounding only stunned when she’d meant to offer praise.
That startled Cam into a laugh. “So I did. Huh.” He took several steps away from the automaton, watching it as though it might surge back into life - but the creature remained immobile, and Cam’s shoulders slumped.
Saenu tried to summon the same relief, but to no avail. Her bloodied arm throbbed, and her other felt heavy and tight from holding her sword aloft too long. They’d thwarted this plot, they’d saved Howl - but Gaesten was still out there.
Gaesten, who wanted to destroy worlds, to rip apart the fabric of the Nexus. He’d try again, and again, until he was successful.
At that, Saenu finally felt a smile curve her lips. Gaesten would try again, and he’d fail again, too - because she’d be there, every time, until the day came when she stopped him for good.