Soren reached behind his seat for the storage compartment and withdrew the clip-on beveled lenses coated with an aether-magicked film that helped him see in the dark. He fitted those to his goggles, flipping them down. The blackness of the prairie lightened to something like predawn, which was better than nothing.
Soren eased his velocycle forward after a good ten minutes had passed, and the trucks had long since disappeared in the dark. He switched a toggle on the control panel in the frame between the handlebars. The pitch of his velocycle’s engine became quieter, a mechanical trick wardens used to help hide their passage through poison fields or dangerous territory.
He kept driving, occasionally stopping so he could use his double-lensed spyglass to ascertain the best direction to take. The half-moon provided enough light to see by, and Soren was used to traveling in the dark over uneven terrain.
The pinprick of a stationary light on the horizon caught his attention maybe an hour later. Soren drove until the illumination coalesced into a scattering of work buildings in the distance, the trucks he’d been following parked nearby.
He braked to a halt and killed the engine before sliding off the velocycle and carefully laying it sideways on the ground. There wasn’t any need for the thin, flexible tarp to hide it, but he did pocket the handheld device that would trigger the small flashing light which would enable him to locate the velocycle in case he became disoriented.
Soren’s field uniform consisted of leather and fabrics. It was hell when riding beneath the summer sun, but it came in handy right then. He checked his ammunition, secured his holstered pistols, and rolled his shoulders against the weight of the poison short sword against his back.
He headed for the buildings that should be on a map but weren’t. Soren made little noise as he traversed the prairie grass and crept closer to the perimeter of the place. He got as close as he dared before dropping to one knee and unhooking his spyglass from his belt to peer through it.
The wall around the buildings was little more than a metal fence, which wouldn’t be much security against a revenant, human or otherwise. Bison roamed the plains in large herds, the massive four-legged animals having branched off from their domesticated cousins in an earlier Age. The metal fence wouldn’t stand a chance against a heavily furred and horned revenant horde of bison or other wild beasts.
He supposed that was what the automatons roaming the perimeter were for. The boxy spiderlike machines outfitted with Zip guns were typical of the sort the Solarian Legion used. Only Soren didn’t see anyone wearing a Legion uniform in the people moving about beneath bright gas lamps positioned on the warehouse roofs.
They looked to be a mix of Solarians and Daijalans, but the people standing near the trucks in chains were clearly debt slaves.
Soren pulled the spyglass away from his face and hooked it back to his belt. “What is going on?”
He stood and skulked forward, careful of every step. He wasn’t sure who else might be patrolling the area, and Soren didn’t fancy getting shot. But clearly something was happening here that the House of Kimathivezirdidn’t want anyone to know about,especiallywardens.
He took a path around the warehouses, steering clear of the automatons as he went. As Soren moved through the darkness, it became immediately clear that the warehouses were situated near the lip of a fissure dug into the earth—a quarry.
Soren moved as silently as he could, putting distance between himself and the group behind the iron fence. At one point, he went to his belly to crawl forward, bypassing an automaton that skittered past on patrol, its Zip gun swiveling about on its boxy frame.
Soren stayed in that position as he moved toward the edge of the quarry. The closer he got, the brighter the light was, and he finally had to flip the night lenses up. Blinking to settle his vision, he crawled to the edge of the quarry, far enough away from the warehouses that he hoped no one would spot him.
The gas lamps below him on the quarry floor illuminated a nightmare.
The day had been muggy, with little breeze blowing across the Southern Plains. Night was the same, and the weight of the air wasn’t moving, which meant Soren didn’t smell the dead until he was practically on top of them.
“Oh, fuck,” Soren breathed out.
His gloved fingers dug into the dirt, heart beating fast as his eyes skimmed over the revenants packed into cages on the quarry floor. There were more revenants down there than would account from a bog or a fen. The numbers wouldn’t be atypical for a town that succumbed to a poisoned mist, but there hadn’t been anything like that near Bellingham in at least a generation.
Soren turned his head, staring back at the warehouses behind the fence. Whatever kind of partnership the Solarians here had made with Daijalans, Soren would bet theirvezirwas aware of what was transpiring, if not outright involved.
I need to warn Vanya, Soren thought.And the governor.
But first, he needed to know what was going on in the warehouse. He had a sinking suspicion that the debt slaves would end up at the bottom of the quarry, but Soren needed proof of some kind. He needed to see whatever was going on with his own eyes so a magician with mind magic could draw out the memories for him.
Getting any closer to the warehouses was risky, but Soren had no choice. He backed away from the edge of the quarry, not getting to his feet until he was well away from the hazy glow of gas lamps.
Rolling to his feet, Soren headed back the way he’d come, flipping his night lenses down over his goggles again to help him see in the dark. He steered clear of the automatons, moving slow so as to not draw attention. He was halfway to the other side of the warehouses when shouts and screams erupted from behind the fence.
Soren went to one knee, bringing out his spyglass again. Peering through it, he saw people panicking. The men and women in charge of the debt slaves had their pistols trained on them before shifting their stance and their aim to the threat staggering around the corner of a warehouse.
Newly risen revenants were slower, the spores still needing time to control the bodies. It took a few days, sometimes as long as a week, for a revenant to gain the speed that made them a threat.
The revenant racing toward the men keeping watch over the debt slaves looked like a newly risen revenant but moved with the speed and ferocity of one long dead. The men shot at the revenant, but the bullets only made it stagger, not stop. Behind the damned thing came another one.
Soren swore and got to his feet, flipped the night lenses up, and raced toward the fence. The automatons, alerted to the revenant threat, were scuttling back to the quarry, heading for the open gate. Soren didn’t go that way but toward the area of the fence the debt slaves were pressed against and trying to climb. Behind them, the revenant had reached one of the men who’d been shooting at it.
The man threw his pistol at the revenant and made to run, but the revenant got its hands on his shoulders and proceeded to tear out the man’s throat with its teeth.
Soren reached the fence and used his momentum to propel himself over it, feet and hands pushing against the metal bars. He flipped over the top, falling to the other side. The nearby debt slaves, chained together by a heavy chain running through ankle manacles, shouted in surprise, staring at him in wide-eyed shock.
