“That’s right,” he muttered. “Here’s your stupid ghost story.”
He tossed the clay bombs, letting them land at the Auxies’ feet. They were crackers, less spectacular than the stunner—too easy to blind himself at this range—and went off with more of a pop than a bang, but the explosion gushed an enormous cloud of choking, acrid smoke. Shouts of alarm and hacking coughs filled the street. Gyre held out a hand, warning Yora back from the expanding miasma. Only when the first soldier burst free of the cloud and fell to her knees, retching, did Gyre turn and run for the alley.
“They’re getting away!” the woman rasped. “To the right!”
Perfect. Any pursuit would focus on them, rather than the stolen wagon and its lumbering team of thickheads. Gyre darted into the alley, Yora close behind him. But another set of footsteps followed, and he turned in time to see someone else turn in after them. His stomach fell.
Legionary.
The Auxiliaries were local militia, indifferently trained and armed with weapons forged by ordinary human smiths. The Legions of the Dawn Republic were another matter entirely. Equipped with Chosen arcana maintained by the centarchs of the Twilight Order, they were the heart of the Republic’s military. They were spread thin—Gyre doubted there were a dozen Legionaries in Deepfire—but it was enough.
The soldier was armored in off-white unmetal from head to heel, an insectoid suit of overlapping plates that slid smoothly over one another at the joints. Gyre guessed it was a woman by her height, but there was no other way to tell, with her face obscured behind a pane of darkened Elder glass. On her left arm she carried a large round shield, and a sword rode on her right hip, one of the Legion-pattern unmetal blades. The snub nose of a blaster rifle poked up over her shoulder.
“Halfmask,” she said, voice distorted by the mask. “I am detaining you by order of Dux Raskos.”
“Get the door open,” Gyre muttered. He saw Yora nod out of the corner of his eye.
The Legionary stepped forward, the streetlamps giving her armor an iridescent shimmer. “Put down your weapons and surrender.”
Gyre drew his knives and charged, and the soldier drew her sword. Checking his momentum at the last moment, Gyre faded back from her slash, drawing her deeper into the alley. Then, with as little warning as possible, he planted his back foot and lunged.
It was a good move, and it would have worked against any ordinary opponent. His right-hand dagger curved in, wide and obvious, and the Legionary brought her shield up to block. His left thrust upward, fast and tight, even as his knife was skittering over the impenetrable unmetal. There was just a hint of cloth visible, where the bottom of her helmet met the articulated breastplate. Maybe—
She moved fast, faster than someone wearing armor had any right to. Her blade met his edge on, and where unmetal clashed against steel the Elder creation won easily. Gyre yanked his hand back and found himself holding the hilt of a dagger with perhaps an inch of blade remaining.
Oh, plaguefire. The Legionary advanced again, and Gyre danced backward. Something squishy burst under his feet, and for a moment he lost his balance. She thrust, and he threw himself sideways to avoid being skewered. His remaining dagger scratched uselessly against her shoulder, and she threw herself behind her shield and slammed it into him, driving him hard against the wall. Stars burst behind his eye as his head cracked the bricks.
“I am detaining you,” she said. “Just hold still, would you?”
Gyre tried to think of a good rejoinder, his mouth coppery with blood, his vision edged with shimmers. He reached into his coat but froze as the Legionary raised her sword to his throat. Then, abruptly, the soldier spun, shield coming up. She wasn’t fast enough, and Yora’s spear slipped under her guard to slam into her breastplate. The Legionary grunted, retreating a step, and brought her sword down behind the spearhead. An ordinary weapon would have been sliced in half, but Yora’s spear was of the same Elder make as the Legionary’s gear, and the sword rebounded with a distinctive crystalline ring.
Yora pressed her attack, spear whirling in her hands. Unmetal weapon or not, she was still unarmored, and she fought to keep the Legionary on the defensive. Her blade scraped against the soldier’s shield and glanced off her armored side, and the Legionary ducked under a swing that would have sent the butt of the spear into her head. But the soldier’s blade licked out, and Yora’s parry caught it too late to turn the weapon entirely. The edge bit into Yora’s thigh, raising a thin line of blood.
By that point, Gyre had caught his breath. More important, he’d gotten his hand into his coat pocket, grabbing his backup stunner. He ran forward, hurling the little sphere in the Legionary’s face. It went off as he collided with Yora, one arm raised so the leather of his cloak covered her eyes.
The bomb exploded with a soft whuff, a wave of pressure, and a light much brighter than the noonday sun. The Legionary staggered backward with a strangled cry. Even facing away with his eyes tightly closed, Gyre still saw an orange flash, and afterimages danced across his vision. He could see well enough to get to his feet, though, and pull Yora up after him. Her eyes were watering fiercely, so he grabbed her hand and ran for the door, which now hung slightly open.
It led to a dusty storeroom, which had another door leading into the entrance hall of a small apartment building. Gyre tumbled a stack of boxes behind him, blocking the way, and he and Yora pounded through, boots clattering on the floorboards. The front door was latched but not barred, and in another moment they were through into a dark, empty street.
*
In theory, Deepfire proper, the aboveground part of the city, was sealed off from the tunnel network that surrounded it at night. Great gates guarded by Auxiliaries blocked off the major entrances, where city streets dove underground and merged seamlessly with the largest passageways. In practice, however, there were too many tunnels and not enough Auxies, and getting underground was just a matter of finding the right forgotten corner or dark oubliette.
Or, in this case, the unused last stall in an otherwise legitimate livery stable. Yora opened the stable door with an iron key and led the way past wooden pens full of the curled-up shapes of sleeping loadbirds. A few interrogative chirrups followed them, but the birds remained calm as she entered the stall at the end of the row, kicked some straw aside, and raised a wooden trapdoor.
“Your leg all right?” Gyre said, indicating the wound Yora had taken from the Legionary’s sword. Yora glanced down as though she’d forgotten about it until that moment. “I’ve got some bandages.”
“It’ll keep,” Yora said. “I want to put some rock between us and Raskos’ people first.”
Gyre nodded. They’d stopped hearing the whistles of Auxie pursuit several blocks back, but that was no guarantee. Not if he’s sending Legionaries after us. That meant they had the dux’s personal attention.
Yora strapped her spear to her back and climbed down the short ladder under the trapdoor. Gyre pulled off his mask—and scratched his scar, a blessed relief—then followed. The ladder let them into a narrow stone passage, smooth walled except where chunks had fallen away to litter the floor with rubble. Yora took a glowstone from her pocket and shook it to life, its pallid blue light painting the walls with leaping, shivering shadows.
It was possible to forget, on the surface, that Deepfire was not a human place. It had streets and buildings, shops and restaurants, like any other city. If you were wealthy enough to live aboveground, only the deep, smoldering fire of the Pit and the white-capped mountains clustered close in every direction kept you from imagining you were somewhere in the central Republic.