“Shit, how many of them are there?” someone demanded, breaking the silence. “I thought I got one.”
“Get out of here. Too many.”
More rounds fired, but she could hear the thuds of the men running for the exit. They hadn’t figured out she had climbed up yet, and their shots hit the ground beneath her. So much smoke filled the air that she wouldn’t have been able to see even if there had been light. She could only use her ears to aim, this time shooting toward the footfalls—the men seemed to be running together as they shot. Her rifle was out of ammo, so she gripped the strap in her teeth and pulled out her pistol.
She thought about letting them go—she had stopped their plan, so did she need to cut them all down? But Duck and Zirkander were below. As capable as they were, Zirkander wasn’t at his best, and she would hate herself for the rest of her life if an enemy soldier she let go ended up killing one of her comrades.
If the men hadn’t blown out their lamp, they might have made it out, but in the dark, they couldn’t see the exit any more clearly than she. Someone ran into that duct and grunted. Cas took advantage and fired, having a sense of exactly where that was, despite her numerous rolls and dodges since then. The man shouted in pain and rage.
“He’s up high!” the wounded soldier roared.
Cas promptly dropped to a crouch, catching her rifle as she fell so it wouldn’t clang against anything. She fired three more times with the pistol, aiming at the sounds of people groping around, trying to find the exit. The bullets thudded into flesh instead of clanging off stone. Doubting they had all been mortal wounds, she followed the wall toward the kegs, or where she thought they were. She stretched her hand out in front of her, wanting to use them to duck behind so she could reload. But nobody else was firing. She crouched behind the kegs and listened, trying to still her own breathing to ensure she wasn’t making noise. The sound of someone escaping down the ladder reached her, but from the labored and uneven way he thumped down the rungs, he must be injured. He shouldn’t be in the mood to go after her team. But the others? In the dark, she couldn’t tell if someone might be feigning death, waiting for her to reveal her position so he could shoot.
A soft clunk came from the opposite corner, and a startlingly bright beam of light streamed up from below. Cas squinted, raising a hand.
Sardelle’s head poked up. She wobbled, as if she was standing on something shaky—or someone’s shoulders more likely. The ceilings down there weren’t low.
“Cas?” she asked.
Cas hesitated to respond, still not certain there weren’t soldiers capable of firing back. But she didn’t want Sardelle to be a target, either, and with the light streaming up around her, she was easier to see than a sun. Cas stepped out from behind the kegs.
At the same second, someone fired from the ground near the ladder. Cas shot, even though she knew it was too late. With the light seeping up from below, she easily hit the soldier, but that wouldn’t matter if—
She looked back and found Sardelle gazing blandly in her direction.
“Oh. I forgot. Your magical shields.” Cas slumped against the kegs.
“Yes,” Sardelle said. “That’s why they volunteered me to come up first.”
“And because you didn’t want me standing on your shoulders,” came Tolemek’s voice from below.
Cas mopped sweat from her face, relieved to hear him. From Sardelle’s calm tone, Cas assumed nobody else had been injured while she had been gone.
“I would have come up earlier, except nobody knew there was a panel here. We were debating on how to saw our way through the ceiling to come help, but, ah…” Sardelle’s head turned slowly as she took in the entire area—or maybe all the bodies slumped in the entire area. “It seems you didn’t need help.”
Cas didn’t say anything. Sometimes, she was proud of her skills, but it never seemed like she should be when death was the result. Weary and battered, she shambled toward Sardelle. She paused at the opening. “Maybe we shouldn’t leave the gunpowder here.”
“I can render it ineffective,” Sardelle said.
“What’s going on down there?” Cas wondered about the intensity of the light. Candles and lamps couldn’t account for that kind of brightness. “We might need it for something.”
“Roll it over,” Tolemek called up from below. “Zirkander would be upset if he didn’t get a chance to blow something up before leaving.”
Cas snorted. “You’re thinking of Captain Kaika.”
“They have similar mentalities. Now, get yourself down here so we can make sure you’re not injured, please.”
Cas pushed the kegs over to Sardelle, who floated them down to a floor that was awash in light. Cas squirmed through the hole and dropped down, her legs trembling as the enormity of that battle and how close she had come to being shot washed over her. Before she could decide if she wanted to collapse somewhere or try and maintain her stoic soldier’s facade for the rest of the night, Tolemek engulfed her in a hug.
“If Zirkander sent you up there alone to deal with those men, I’m going to kill him,” he growled into her ear. “Seven gods, are you all right?”
“Fine,” she murmured.
He brushed his fingers through her hair, and shrapnel fell out. “Fine?”
“Mostly. Anyway, it was my idea, not the colonel’s. I thought you might not like having your ceiling blown in.”
He gripped her shoulders, naked concern in his eyes as he looked her up and down, searching for injuries. Seeing that concern brought her thoughts from before the battle rushing into her mind, the words that she had lamented leaving unspoken. She opened her mouth, thinking to share them now, but he spoke again first.
“Does he know you went?” Tolemek demanded.
Maybe this wasn’t the right time for proclamations of love. Not when he was busy being irritated by someone else. She wanted to quell his irritation—and to bring his focus to her. She stood on her tiptoes, placed her hands on either side of his cheeks, and kissed him.
He blinked, and some of the ferocity bled out of him. He returned the kiss, his grip on her shoulders shifting and growing more gentle as he wrapped his arms around her. One hand came up to stroke the back of her head, and she smiled, her lips against his, when more shrapnel tinkled to the floor. She thought about kneading the tense muscles in his neck and back, but she was still on duty, and they were still in the middle of enemy territory. Reluctantly, she broke the kiss.
“That’s nice, thank you,” Tolemek rumbled, his voice softer now, “but this doesn’t mean I’m not going to punch Zirkander in the face as soon as he’s well enough to take it.”
“He would have stopped me, but he was too sickly and weak,” Cas said.
“Really,” came a dry voice from the doorway. Zirkander shambled in, his shoulders back, looking like he was trying his best not to look sickly or weak. “The things you people say about me when I’m not around.” He shook his head but met Tolemek’s eyes as he passed by and said, “I told you. My ego. It’s getting squished down so far, nobody will be able to find it soon.”
“Good,” Tolemek grunted.
“Hope yours doesn’t have that problem. How many soldiers did you single-handedly take down, Cas?”
“Enough that my father would probably be proud.” Her lips twisted. She had no wish to make the man proud, not at this point in her life, and not for this.
Zirkander seemed to read between the lines. He gave her a friendly thump on the shoulder as he passed, then walked over to one of the kegs. “No reason why we can’t go back out the way we came in, right?” He nodded toward the dragon’s chamber.
Cas finally had a chance to stand on a stool to see over the cabinets and cluttered tables and investigate the source of the light. But someone had leaned boards and crates all along the glass wall overlooking the chamber. Powerful beams of light seeped through the cracks, making the lab daylight bright.
“Ridge, are you planning to blow something up?” Sardelle asked with faint dis
approval.
“I was thinking of making that corridor disappear so Duck and I can do something more interesting than watching it. Like lying in the corner under that desk over there and taking a nap.”
Sardelle strode to him, bumping her hip on a table but scarcely noticing. She blinked away moisture in her eyes as she took his hands. “Ridge, nobody’s going to be upset if you sit down and rest.”
“Lie down and rest,” he said, squeezing her hands. “Don’t misquote me now.”
She leaned against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on her head. Cas looked away, giving them their privacy.
Tolemek was gazing down at her, and she clasped his hand. “What’s going on in there?”
“Jaxi is attempting to irradiate the dragon.”
“Uh. What?”
“The scientists have been removing the virus from the blood samples through radiation. From the logbook I found, it seems dragon cells are hearty enough to withstand everything from chemicals to deadly herbs to heat that would destroy the cells of any other animal, reptile, or bird.”
Cas didn’t have much knowledge when it came to science and medicine, but what she got out of his words was… “Are you saying you might be able to cure the dragon, but you’re not going to be able to cure us?”
“Sardelle believes that if we’re able to restore the dragon to health, he might have the power to help us, perhaps direct his energy more precisely than Jaxi can and target just the virus within us.”
Cas eyed the light blasting in through the cracks between the boards. “If that could be done, why couldn’t other dragons heal this one three thousand years ago?”
“Nobody knew what a virus was three thousand years ago,” Sardelle said. “Even in my time, we were only just beginning to understand the concept of things that were too small to see being able to affect us. And by we, I mean healers. The general population didn’t even know that cleanliness helped stop the spread of disease. And for all their power and magical ability, dragons were never known for being great scientists or intellectuals, so it’s very likely that they didn’t understand how to attack something too small to see. But perhaps with some instruction…” She spread her hand, palm up.
“Let’s see if Jaxi is able to help him first,” Tolemek said. “Right now, she may be doing nothing more than giving him a sunburn.”
He made a face, then rolled his eyes.
“I’m betting Jaxi had a comment for him,” Zirkander muttered.
“Something about talking about her behind her back,” Tolemek confirmed. “I didn’t realize swords had backs.”
Cas stuck her hands in her pockets, feeling superfluous in the conversation. “Anything I can do, sir?” she asked. “Help you with that powder?”
Zirkander started to nod, but Sardelle frowned at him. “Are you sure you want to risk structural damage simply to block off that tunnel?” she asked.
“Depends. By structural damage, do you mean blowing those disturbing cannibalistic carvings off the wall, or do you think a small, controlled blast could bring down the ziggurat?”
“I’ve seen you fly, Ridge. I don’t think you know the meaning of the words small or controlled, especially when it comes to explosions. Why don’t you come over here and rest?”
“I—”
A massive boom blasted through the lab, and Cas found herself hurled into the air. Someone crashed into her, and all of the light disappeared. Her back slammed into something, and she crumpled to the ground, but it wasn’t stable at all. It quaked and bucked underneath her. A cacophony of noise buried her, hammering her ear drums so hard, she wanted to wrap her arms around her head, anything to drive out the sound. But things were falling all around her—she couldn’t tell what in the dark. Furniture? People? The ceiling? The roar sounded like a rockfall, and she groped around for something to hide under, even as she doubted it would do any good, not if the entire ziggurat was collapsing.
She’d no more than had that thought when something struck her head. The world was already black, but her mind followed, unconsciousness stealing awareness.
Chapter 15
Panic welled in Tolemek’s throat as he groped about in the darkness, trying to find Cas, and where was Tylie? She had been in the corner near the dragon’s chamber. Had she managed to hide under something? The ground was still shivering, the aftershocks of the earthquake—or whatever that had been—that had been set off by the explosion. Everything in that lab that could have fallen probably already had, but rocks continued to thud and clatter to the ground all around him.
Tylie? he asked with his mind, thinking she might try to reach him that way if she was buried under debris and couldn’t call out. Are you all right?
Tolemek was about to repeat the question out loud and ask for Cas, too, but a white light came on, distracting him. Faint at first, it grew in intensity. That had to be Sardelle. At least somebody else had survived.
The light revealed much. Utter carnage had befallen the lab. Not a single piece of furniture remained standing, most of the ceiling panels had fallen, and shards of glass littered everything. He couldn’t see anyone amidst the mountains of wreckage.
“Ridge?” Sardelle called plaintively. “Are you… is anyone…?”
“Here,” Tolemek croaked, even though he knew he wasn’t the one she wanted to hear from. He pushed a ceiling panel off his side and crawled out from a pile of rubble that had nearly buried him. Sweat streamed into his eye, and he wiped it away. Not sweat, blood. It didn’t matter though. He wasn’t hurt that badly. But he needed to find Cas.
“Blessed gods,” Sardelle whispered.
He glanced at her, expecting that she had found Zirkander dead under the rubble, but she was staring across the lab, toward the dragon’s chamber. Tolemek almost didn’t look—the dragon was the last of his concerns at the moment—but Tylie had been over in that direction. He pushed himself to his feet to see over the piles of debris and gaped at the wreckage.
If he had thought the lab utterly destroyed, the dragon’s chamber was another matter altogether. The glass wall had been blown out, and nothing except rock was visible beyond it. A huge pile of rock that rose higher than the ceiling of the lab.
“The whole ziggurat fell,” he breathed. The part of the structure over the chamber anyway, the entire top half of the pyramid. There wasn’t a sign of the dragon. Or Jaxi. If the soulblade was still emitting light, it wasn’t visible through the tons and tons of rock.
“Tylie?” Tolemek called. “Cas?”
“They’re under the rubble,” Sardelle said. “Give me a minute, and I can be more precise. I—” She winced and touched a hand to the back of her head. Blood streaked one side of her face, too, and dripped from her fingers.
Tolemek had been closer to Cas, so he crawled in that direction first, but he kept trying to call out with his mind to Tylie at the same time. He wished he had asked Sardelle to teach him to speak into people’s heads. Or the way she could sense where people were. Why had he shied away from accepting his skills instead of embracing them?
Rubble stirred near the side of the lab where the front wall had once been. This one, too, had shattered, completely collapsing, only piles of glass shards remaining. It bit into Tolemek’s hands and knees as he crawled over it, but he didn’t care. If that was Cas, she might not be able to breathe. She might be bleeding to death under the debris.
He clawed at the rubble, cursing when glass dug into his palm. Where were those gloves he had used earlier? They had fallen out of his belt. He tore his vest off, wrapped the leather around his hand, and dug through the chunks of wood and glass. He heaved aside a broken tabletop, and a hint of skin came into view.
“Cas! Is that you?”
“What in all the levels of hell happened?” came a squeaky male voice from the corridor beyond the lab. Duck. He stared inside with eyes rounder than gold coins. “Sir? Colonel?”
“Get in here and help move this junk,” Tolemek snappe
d.
Duck glanced at Sardelle, who was also digging into a rubble pile, then scrambled over the mounds of broken glass to join Tolemek. He almost sent him to search for his sister—nobody was looking for her, damn it—but he had uncovered an arm. Cas’s arm. This wouldn’t take much longer. He would have her out and then… He gulped. She wasn’t moving.
“Cas?”
“Is the colonel under here too?” Duck asked as he pulled a beam off her legs.
“I don’t know where he is.” Tolemek flung a hand toward Sardelle. “She knows.”
“I’ve got him,” Sardelle said, flinging heavy objects aside without touching them. Her eyes burned, her plaintive tone from before gone and replaced with one of grim determination. And rage. Whoever had done this was going to be in trouble. “Duck, when you’re done there, Tolemek’s sister is in that corner. I can guide you to her.”
“Is she all right?” Tolemek asked, shoving aside a broken ceiling panel, revealing Cas’s face. Her eyes were closed, her short hair matted with blood.
“Better than Ridge,” Sardelle said.
Duck touched his fingers to Cas’s throat, something Tolemek had not dared do. She was alive. There was no way she couldn’t be alive, not somebody who could survive a gunfight with a squad of Cofah soldiers. She couldn’t die from this. She couldn’t.
His vision blurred, and he had to wipe his eyes before he could see Duck, trying to read the expression on his face as he withdrew his fingers.
“She’s alive,” he said.
Tolemek nodded, relief stealing the strength from his limbs. If he had been standing, he would have crumpled to the ground. He didn’t think he could talk, so he didn’t try. After pushing away the rest of the debris burying her, he slid his arms under Cas’s shoulders and hips. He found the energy to stand up, lifting her with the intent of putting her somewhere safe—less covered with glass—but he didn’t know where. The corridor Duck had been guarding had broken glass scattered on the stone floor, but that was it. He almost headed in that direction, but what of the soldiers? If they had caused that rockfall, they would send someone to check on the results of it soon. He headed for the flat stone top of a workstation instead. He had to set Cas down somewhere safe, then find Tylie. Fortunately, Duck was already heading in her direction, though he paused to stare at Sardelle, who was kneeling beside Zirkander. His eyes were also closed, his face cut, the front of his uniform dark and damp with blood. Sardelle had a hand on his chest, her chin drooped and her eyes closed.