Maya spends time in a cell, feverish and delirious. When she recovers, Nicomidi offers to clear her charges if she agrees to renounce Jaedia and drop any investigation into Raskos. Maya refuses and instead issues an ancient challenge to trial by combat, which Tanax, newly promoted to Centarch, must meet. During the duel, Maya discovers her gear has been sabotaged by Nicomidi in an attempt to kill her. She wins anyway, though, and Nicomidi flees, indicating his guilt.
Gyre and Kit, with the reluctant help of Sarah and Lynnia, break into the palace in Deepfire and steal the Core Analytica. Naumoriel takes Gyre and Kit to a mountain fortress called Leviathan’s Womb, where the greatest of the ghoul war-constructs is near completion. The Core Analytica is the last part needed to activate it. Kit suggests to Gyre that they double-cross the ghouls and take it for themselves.
Maya and Beq set out to find Jaedia. Tanax joins them, badly shaken by his master’s treason. They follow a trail that also leads to Leviathan’s Womb, where Jaedia has been joined by Nicomidi. Jaedia is under the control of the black spider, and she kills Nicomidi when he’s no longer useful. She nearly kills Maya, but Jaedia fights off control long enough for Maya to destroy the spider. Wounded, Jaedia asks them to go into the mountain and stop the Leviathan from being activated.
Gyre, Kit, and Naumoriel enter the fortress, with Maya and Tanax on their heels. Naumoriel leaves the two humans to fend the centarchs off, and the ghoul goes to the Leviathan. Gyre defeats Tanax, but Maya fights him to a standstill before Kit stabs her from behind. Kit removes the power source for Gyre’s augments, disabling him, and promises she’ll return after seizing control of the Leviathan. After she leaves, Maya, badly wounded, restores Gyre’s power source and begs him to stop the Leviathan. Gyre agrees, realizing his private revenge against the Order can’t include the mass destruction the Leviathan would cause, and goes after Kit.
Aboard the colossal construct, Naumoriel sees through Kit’s betrayal and mortally wounds her. Gyre sabotages the Leviathan, enraging the ghoul, but Gyre’s augments let him kill Naumoriel. He carries the dying Kit to the Leviathan’s control system, which transfers the user’s mind into the giant machine and its attendant swarm of smaller constructs.
Outside the fortress, Maya and Gyre talk, but both remain committed to their beliefs—in support of the Order or against it. Still, they hope they can meet again. Maya, Tanax, and Beq head back to civilization. Gyre is joined by small constructs, now remotely controlled by the disembodied Kit, and he plans to return to Refuge and find another way to bring down the Order.
Chapter 1
Gyre sat on a boulder and shaded his eyes, looking down the length of the little valley.
It was a beautiful day in a beautiful spot. Summer was shading into fall, putting a hint of chill in the air, but the afternoon sun was still warm. A shrunken stream wound snakelike between tufts of grass and stands of hardy mountain bushes. And of course there were the serried ranks of the Shattered Peaks, snowcapped mountains stretching off into blue infinity.
The problem is, it’s a beautiful spot that looks just like every other beautiful spot in the plaguing mountains.
“You think this is the right valley?” Kit said from behind him. “They all look the same to me.”
“Me too.” Gyre sighed. “We’re in the right area, but…”
“Well, we can always check the next one. And the one after that.” Kit’s voice was chipper. “I’m in no hurry. You’re the one who’s dying.”
Gyre frowned. “Who says I’m dying?”
“Just, you know, in general. Since you still have a fragile, aging human body.”
“Weren’t you the one who offered to give up half of eternity last night for a taste of my baked potato?”
“I’m trying,” Kit said in a tone of wounded dignity, “to practice positive thinking.”
Gyre lowered his hand and turned. Kit’s voice was coming from a construct, a spiderlike thing half a meter high with an oval central body and eight limbs that could function as either legs or manipulators. It was made of striated black muscle laid over a metal skeleton, the fibers stretching and pulsing as it moved. In the past week, Kit had become quite adept at controlling the thing, and Gyre even thought he could see some of her body language in the way it carried itself.
Kit wasn’t in the construct, of course. It was more like an appendage, along with hundreds of others, connected to the Core Analytica in the now-crippled Leviathan. Gyre had transferred Kit’s mind into the great construct while she lay dying, and now its swarm served as her surrogate bodies. There were three basic types: a roughly human-sized version for heavy work and an even larger variety for hauling cargo, in addition to this small scout.
“And the most positive thing I can think of is that I’ll get to watch everybody get old and die, while I don’t have to,” Kit went on. “It’s very comforting.”
“I think I read a fairy tale where that was considered a curse,” Gyre said.
“I don’t see why. I’m going to have such a good time outliving the shit out of all of you.”
“Fair enough. I suppose one takes one’s fun where one can find it.”
“Exactly.”
Gyre got to his feet, brushing dust off the tail of his coat. He patted his side, and the little construct swarmed up his leg and onto his back, tiny claws gripping. It settled on his shoulder, where he’d grown used its modest weight.
The boulder stood at the head of the valley, where the slopes grew too rocky to climb. Gyre was headed for a tall, flat section of cliff, which he desperately hoped looked familiar. A week or so previously, he’d emerged from the ghoul-built tunnels running under the mountains somewhere in this area, but finding the exact spot had proved to be more difficult than he’d hoped.
There. After a week, soft earth held no footprints, but a patch of bare rock showed a long, unnatural scrape. Naumoriel had come with them, in a cart-sized war-construct, and its traces were harder to obscure. This has to be it.
He hiked closer, legs straining at the slope, and ran his fingers along the wall of rock.
“Well?” Kit said from his shoulder.
“You said you could open it,” Gyre said.
“I said I think I can open it,” Kit said. “Assuming this is actually a door at all.”
“Try.”
“Just so we’re clear, if I do get it open, someone is going to notice.”
“I know.” He and Kit had learned the hard way that you couldn’t sneak into Refuge.
“Okay. Here goes.”
Nothing obvious happened. From what Kit had explained, ghoul constructs used invisible energy to talk to one another across short distances, and she could use this channel to convince some of them to do what she wanted. Gyre waited, holding his breath. The little construct on his shoulder shifted its weight.
“Is it—” he began.
“Quiet. This is tricky.” The construct gave a credible impression of the sound of Kit clicking her tongue. “There we go.”
A hole appeared in the side of the mountain, part of the rock face sliding aside to reveal a long, curved tunnel. Gyre let out his breath and closed his eyes for a moment. Finally.