Flare: The Sunless World Book Two Read online

  One down, many more to go, thought Rafe. Keep working, kayan.

  And so he did. It was a long, slow, and painful process. He needed about half again as much ka to keep up his protective gloves and net. As he poured ka into the cleansing quartz, he felt the clean product snatched away. Mirados’ workings were butterfly-light at the back of his mind. Isabella was a silver presence in the distance. Once or twice, he felt her come close, felt a coolness wash over him or a brief surge of energy. Giving him just enough to keep going on.

  Noises intruded on his consciousness, the pitter-pitter of voices, the rumble of engines, the whir of fans. A groan and a clanking as the Felicity shifted. Once more, Rafe stumbled back to the ka swamp. He was far beyond the point where he’d thought he could do this no more. Exhaustion gave him a kind of leaden energy, an automatic motion. It was less work to keep going than to will his body to stop.

  Rafe realized that he was staring, unfocused, into the swamp and gave himself a mental shake. Huge bubbles swelled and popped on the surface.

  This was new.

  The bubbles grew smaller and faster now, bursting in a tattoo of pops. The surface churned. Like soup, the swamp was simmering, on the verge of boiling.

  As if a great heat was applied from below.

  Ka roiled, disturbed. Rafe scrambled back, an awful foreboding in his stomach. Run! cried his instincts, and he tried to, to run back to his body in the submersible. All he could manage was a hobble, but Isabella was there and she pulled him and they rebounded…

  Rafe slammed back into his body, pushed against the seat, then jerked upright. His clothes squelched away from the sweat-slicked covering. “Run,” he said, hoarse, heaving up to his feet.

  “Sit.” Coop grabbed his arm, tried to shove him back down.

  “No!” Rafe’s voice was ragged, torn by thirst. His tongue felt thick and almost too heavy to move. “Get out of here! … bella?”

  “Rocketed for the engine room… what the…?” Coop lurched and Rafe stumbled and sat down—hard—on the arm of the chair. Engines strained to life, ka-systems trembled.

  “Get in this chair, Coop, and get us out of this trench,” said Rafe, through gritted teeth. His very soul felt stretched, sucked into a vacuum. All the world held its breath, and he was dizzy from the lack of air.

  Coop inhaled sharply, then lunged for the seat Rafe had just vacated. “Hold on, then,” he said crisply. “This is going to be fast.”

  Not fast enough, thought Rafe as he clamped his hands on the back of Coop’s chair. Already he’d seen the wave… and it was headed straight up through the quartz in the sea-floor.

  The Felicity took off, her plump, cigar-shaped body trying to arrow away. She wasn’t built for such speed, though Coop pushed her hard. She wheezed, rumbled, reached…

  Rafe threw all the clean ka he had around them. Shield us!

  And the wave hit.

  It hit in a flare of light, turning the waters white. It hit in a tremor that shook the very earth, tumbled rocks, boiled water.

  It hit in a wave of poison ka, dissolving Rafe’s shield. He flinched, but steam blasted and propelled them forward, out of reach. The Felicity tumbled and rolled, Rafe’s feet slid out from under him. He grabbed the arm of Coop’s chair and hung grimly on.

  The ka dissipated into the water. Tiny bits of it pocked holes into the Felicity, stung Rafe a with a thousand paper cuts. Coop swore, low and dark and angry, alternatively cajoling and threatening the ship as she swirled, uncontrolled, in the bubbling waters.

  And then her movements calmed, she bobbed, was still.

  Rafe let go of the chair and gingerly stood up.

  “What,” said Coop, “was that?”

  “A flare,” answered Isabella, back again without anyone noticing. “Are you all right, Rafe?”

  “I’ve had better days,” Rafe answered, trying for a smile. He felt like some worn piece of laundry wrung out and pegged to a line. As if a draft would blow him away.

  “A flare?” asked Coop.

  “Surge of ka… and light… through quartz,” answered Rafe. “I saw them… sometimes… in the Talar. Never… like this… though.”

  Coop shifted, and his seat crackled. “Lake Paxia…” he began.

  “Boiled dry and quartz shattered in just such a flare,” supplied Isabella.

  “What?” Rafe frowned. Aquaculture in Lake Paxia had comprised a significant amount of Clearwater’s food supply. “I didn’t hear that!”

  “It happened a month ago, and you must have missed the news flying Pointwards,” said Isabella. “It’s gone.”

  Rafe dropped his head in his hands, appalled. A year ago, a ka flare had taken out one of the smaller majid in the Talar. The smallest of the Three Pearls, built over a field of blue-tinted quartz, destroyed in a massive collapse of ironwood and broken quartz.

  He hadn’t been able to do anything about it, aside from holding back the surge with dozens of shahkayan to give the inhabitants a chance to flee with nothing but their lives.

  Even then, many had not made it out.

  Too much quartz fractured in the past few years, too much light lost, too many food suppliers gone. No wonder Clearwater was turning away refugees.

  “What do Furin and Mirados say?” Coop asked Isabella.

  “Well, we’re functioning, at least. I have both good news and bad news. Good news is that we’re not far from Renat Island.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “The squid’s still out there.”

  Chapter Six

  Rafe

  MIRADOS AND RAFE WERE arguing.

  The disagreement filled the entire lower level of the submersible, pushing Furin and Coop into the corners, their gazes flicking back and forth between the two mages.

  Isabella leaned against the wall, arms folded, surveying it all.

  “And I tell you that this ka-construct is self-adjusting and capable of outwitting the sea creature,” bellowed Mirados. He banged his fist against a metal table-top. Quartz crystals jumped in their slots and settled back down, just out of alignment. The broken pattern scraped against Rafe’s mind like jagged glass.

  Without moving his blind gaze off the rohkayan, Rafe reached out with one finger and pushed the crystals back into place. The feeling of a metal file along his nerves disappeared, but not the one of having bathed in acid nor the one of constantly beating his head against Mirados’ stubborn superiority.

  “We don’t know what the squid’s capabilities are,” he explained, trying for patience, though his words came out through clenched jaws. “I didn’t get to examine it thoroughly, but what I did see were complicated ka-systems that I’ve never encountered before”—Mirados snorted, to show what he thought of Rafe’s breadth of experience—“and since it was created by the kayan, it seems likely that it would be able to defend itself against a ka attack. If we could build a decoy—”

  “We have no time for a decoy!” Again the crash of Mirados’ fist, again the jump of crystals, again the scrape of ka-systems out of alignment. “Didn’t you hear Furin, boy? We have barely enough air to get to the island. We’ll be dead before we got the decoy of yours up.”

  “It won’t take that much time—” began Rafe.

  “We have none of it. General Cooper, you’re in charge, not this fussbudget mage. Shall we deploy or not?” Mirados indicated the thick bolt on the table, a sleek shining thing of metal and quartz, with debilitating ka systems coiled within it. Once it penetrated the squid’s nervous system, it was designed to unravel the creature from the inside.

  At least that much Rafe and Mirados had agreed upon. It was getting it into the sea monster that was the problem.

  The appeal to a higher authority—his own—obviously flummoxed Coop.

  Rafe turned a determined face towards Coop. He knew that his sightless stare, his expression, the set of his shoulders, and his very silence exuded a stubbornness that verged on mulishness.

  But they had only one chance. Rafe was tire
d. No, he felt shredded. Despite Mirados’ skepticism, getting and cleansing ka was not an easy job.

  He didn’t have it in him to gather more ka should Mirados’ bolt fail to find its target.

  He’d never tell Mirados that, though. The former Preceptor of Shimmer already thought of Rafe as a raw-material collector with an undeserved gift.

  Coop said reluctantly, “He’s right, Rafe. We have no time. Even if the bolt doesn’t take out the squid, it might give us enough time to get to the island.”

  “Yes, very stealthy that would be—roaring up to Renat Island with a sea monster in hot pursuit.” Rafe wanted to tear his hair out, shake his friend, and punch Mirados in the face (which, he was sure, was wearing a smirk right now) all at the same time. Instead, he settled for bitterness, and winced as he heard his own words. He was a doer of deeds, not a carping, complaining word-monger.

  What have I become? For a moment, he hated his kayan powers and thought he would gladly give them to Mirados in exchange for returning to his old life as government agent.

  “Gentlemen, perhaps we should consider a third possibility.” Isabella, finally deigning to take part in the conversation. About time, he thought, tamping down a spark of irritation.

  Like it or not, Isabella was his best ally here.

  “We can all agree that we are out of ka and we are out of time.” Isabella paused, until everyone nodded. Except for Rafe. He stared at her shadowed face, but it didn’t unnerve her.

  Ah well. Isabella, of all people, knows that I am incapable of seeing into a person’s soul.

  “Our mages also both agree that this weapon, once lodged into the creature, will kill it.” This time she did wait for Rafe’s nod, which he finally gave her. It was stiff and ungracious, but it was the best he could do.

  “The problem, though, is the squid’s defenses. Will the smart ka-systems within the bolt keep true to its target, or will the squid deflect the bolt? Mirados says the bolt will strike true, Rafe thinks not.”

  “Well…” both men began, eager to elaborate their positions.

  Isabella raised a hand, cutting them off. Even Mirados.

  Now that was impressive.

  “The solution is simple. I’ll take the bolt.”

  Everyone stared.

  “There are diving suits here, correct? And a harpoon gun?” Isabella said patiently. “I’ll swim out to the squid and shoot it right between its eyes—or whichever place Rafe and Mirados can agree on, and that will be that.”

  And this, thought Rafe, is the end of this discussion.

  “You’re sure about this?” Rafe asked for perhaps the tenth time. Or maybe the fifteenth. He’d lost count.

  Isabella, dressed in the sleek underskin of the diving suit, looked up from checking the harpoon gun. The empty shell of the diving suit, bulky and multi-jointed, stood in an open locker. It looked at blankly at them from the faceplate of its helmet. The whole scene was in shades of grey and slightly fuzzy—Isabella was no longer shoring up his kyra-sight with her own. “Who else would you send in my place?” She arched an eyebrow. “Especially since you’ll be helping me.”

  “I will?”

  “I expect you to ride along with me and keep an eye on the squid’s ka-systems. Use your kyra.”

  “Last time I did that, I got slapped.” Rafe rubbed his cheek in remembrance.

  “You were losing yourself,” Isabella corrected. “I brought you back to reality.”

  “Uh-huh.” Was she really deceiving herself that badly? But right now was not the time to discuss what he’d seen, not with her kyra as sharp-edged as it was. She’d slipped into fighter mode, tugging at straps and checking dials.

  Or is it killer mode? thought Rafe, thinking of other bloodier, darker fights.

  “And you won’t take the rest of the suit.” He said it as a statement, not a question, in one last attempt to keep her safe.

  Or safer.

  “That thing? How do you expect me to outswim and outmaneuver our acrobatic marine enemy in that?”

  She had a point.

  He didn’t like it, but she did.

  Isabella straightened up from her gear, put her hand on her hip, and tilted her head to the side. Rafe couldn’t make out her expression, but he heard the laughter and softness all mingled in her voice. “You worry about me. That’s new. No one’s worried about me for years.”

  “Sable worries about you,” Rafe said.

  “I’ve never noticed. She doesn’t cluck in the mother-hen way you do.”

  “No, but she knows exactly where to apply pressure. I wish she was here now.” The words rolled off his tongue, surprising him. Yes, he did miss Sable. If only for her ability to be a safe place in the middle of the storm that was Isabella.

  Isabella looked away. “So do I, Rafe. I don’t read people as well as she does. Perhaps I’ve miscalculated….”

  He waited for her to finish, but she didn’t. “Miscalculated what?” he prompted.

  She shrugged her shoulders, and just like that, the conversation slipped away from the topic. “I have something for you. Hold out your hand.”

  “It’s not a dead fish or something rotten you pulled out of Compartment Two, right?” he joked. “I did say I was sorry.” Compartment Two had partially flooded from Rafe’s inexpert handling of the submersible. Isabella had drawn cleanup duty. But he held it out his hand, palm up.

  Isabella dropped something heavy and brass onto it. The tang of metal was strong in Rafe’s nose. “What’s this?” He bent his head closer to make out details, kyra working slow and laboriously.

  A key. A thick old-fashioned key, the kind you’d expect to see worn on the belt of a chatelaine, probably one that locked the pantry or the china closet. If a pantry with a complicated lock as the blade hinted at even existed.

  Rafe rubbed the cuts of it with his thumb, the edges biting. There was no trace of ka in it, no sense of tiny quartz crystals embedded deep within it.

  And yet, there was some gravity about it that went deeper than mere weight. A kind of attraction, as it drew heat from Rafe’s palm. “What’s it for?”

  “I don’t know,” said Isabella. “But it’s for you, I presume, since you’re the only ‘young kayan’ I know.”

  “Where’d you find it? Or who gave it to you?”

  “I was given it in a miserable little settlement out in the Barrens. By a krin who had been invited to share a man’s body. With no further instructions. Krin can get rather confused, and their memories shaky, it seems.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Left, of course. I wasn’t going to take up mining and stay.”

  “I mean, the krin.”

  She paused a moment. The words were dragged from her, with reluctance. “If—if some choose to ally themselves with such monsters…” She shrugged. “It’s their prerogative, as long as they aren’t infecting the world with large with such nonsense. I expect I’ll return in a year or two to find that the krin haven’t been able to control themselves and devoured their hosts. I’ll deal with it then.”

  Rafe closed his hand over the key. She let them live.

  Isabella, krin-slayer, had let her old enemy live.

  The krin had spoken to her, sent him this odd gift through her.

  An instruction manual might’ve been useful, thought Rafe as he pocketed his new gift.

  A half-stage later Rafe was wishing he still had his sight, his old speed and balance.

  His old confidence.

  Hitching his kyra to Isabella’s was not enough. He briefly felt the whisper-glide of water, inhaled a sip of oxygen, heard a far-off hum.

  It should be me out there.

  But he was stuck in a chair inside a space that seemed to be closing in on him. Without Isabella’s presence, the four men stank worse than usual.

  “I have her on the screen,” said Furin.

  Coop and Mirados instantly crowded around him. Rafe faced the porthole, with its thick cloudy glass.

  He s
tiffened.

  Isabella reacted quicker.

  Tentacles snaked out towards her from a hill of tumbled rock, but she had already twisted out of their way.

  And then the monster was out.

  Triangle-shaped mantle, huge eyes, and those appendages, eight arms and two longer tentacles, cutting the water into ripples. Isabella readied the gun.

  Rafe threw both his kyra and ka-sight as far as he could. Ka tattooed the squid’s skin in ever-changing whorls of purple shading to blue, green shading to yellow. Not mechanical systems, like Mirados’, but living, growing, organic systems.

  We are nothing compared to the old kayan. Even as he thought this, Rafe was rapidly scanning the squid, searching for a weak point. There were holes in this biological dance of ka, holes born of age and lack of repair.

  Isabella! There. And he narrowed in on the spot, a vulnerable area on the underside of the creature’s head, half-hidden amongst its writhing arms, with a straight connection to its brain.

  And she moved. She sliced, swift and arrow-smooth, through the water, dodging the squid’s appendages.

  “What’s she…?” spluttered Mirados. Stay back, he’d told her. Take the safe shot.

  Rafe felt his lips curve up in a smile.

  Isabella didn’t stay back.

  A machete was in her hands. She cut through arms, even as they reached for her. Huge suckers slapped against her skin, and the far-away sensation of pain, a distant burning, made Rafe twitch in his seat.

  Not his pain, but it didn’t slow Isabella down. He felt the ka crawling all over her, parasitic ka designed to disintegrate and cut and poison.

  She ignored it.

  He could do nothing, except bite his lip hard to keep from gasping out. He couldn’t distract her with his reaction to her pain.

  Black ink clouded the water around Isabella and the squid. Mirados hissed annoyance, but neither Isabella nor Rafe were fazed.

  They both knew she could deal with the temporary darkness. Rafe felt her move her kyra outwards, cutting through the cloud, pin-pointing her target.

  And there she was, at the squid’s maw, with ka-poisoned arms closing around her in a lethal embrace. She sliced with one hand, fast, cool, quicksilver. With her other, almost leisurely, she aimed the gun.