They didn’t know Alida was a traitor. It would gut Vanya, Soren knew, when he discovered Alida had betrayed them all of her own free will. But Vanya wouldn’t know unless Soren got out of the predicament he’d found himself in.
He scratched at the iron lid. The revenant’s bony fingers gripping the edge of the coffin suddenly tried to shove in deeper, but the last knuckle got in the way. Soren held his breath, held still, trying to quiet the rabbit-fast beat of his heart.
The air was thin and hot in the coffin, the strip of breathing hole the Blades left him barely enough to keep him breathing. Soren couldn’t tell if the pounding in his head was from the blow taken in the star temple or oxygen deprivation.
It didn’t matter.
He had to get out.
Soren flexed his feet, using his boot heels to drag his body down the coffin a few inches, all the space he could move, to stay out of reach of the revenant’s scrambling fingers. He flattened his hands against the coffin lid and closed his eyes. The world seemed to spin, even there in the claustrophobic darkness. He tried to drag his thoughts into some semblance of order, to center himself.
Whatever drugs he’d been given had been burned through by the resistance he’d built up as a tithe. The head wound was what hindered him, making concentration difficult. He’d been trained to push through worse, though, because a warden who didn’t get back up on their feet was a dead warden.
The lid was cool to the touch now, which meant hours must have passed. If he were anyone else, Soren would be stuck there, left to wait for Alida and the Blades to return and smuggle him out of the palace or until he died, missing and forgotten.
If he couldn’t command starfire, he’d be reduced to a pawn.
Except he could, and he wouldn’t be anyone’s bargaining chip against Vanya.
Soren drew in a breath, the air warm on his tongue, tasting rotten. He swallowed dryly, ignoring the scraping sound of bone on metal outside the coffin. He focused inward, reaching for that part of him which could touch the aether, could pull it out of where that power existed just out of reach, just a sideways step from the world they inhabited.
It poured through him the way a branding iron might feel pressing into skin. Soren couldn’t choke back the scream that escaped his lips, a band tightening around his skull as starfire crawled away from his fingertips, spreading out like a death vine. He forced the white-hot flames into the edges and corners where the lid met the coffin. It ate at the air in the coffin, making Soren pant in quick, harsh breaths, sweat sliding down his face and throat. He licked salt off his dried lips, unable to tell if it came from sweat or tears.
The pain in his head grew and grew, as if someone was slamming a pickaxe into his skull over and over again. His control of the starfire wavered, the flames flickering, nearly guttering out. The revenant let out a sound that was like wind blowing through a distant, broken tunnel—hideously raspy and horrifying.
Soren squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing back bile, refusing to stay where the enemy had put him. He dug his fingernails into the warm metal, skin on the tips burning, and strained the heels of his palms against the coffin lid. Pressure built and built—in his chest, in his head, beneath his skin.
It had to go somewhere.
When starfire exploded out of him, it shattered the coffin lid into molten pieces that cut through the air above him, ripping through revenants. A thin barrier of it kept molten metal from falling onto his body. Soren sucked in air as he scrambled to a sitting position. The world spun, sparks of starfire illuminating half a dozen revenants around the coffin, red molten metal eating through bone.
It wouldn’t stop them.
Soren’s head spun, and the nausea that assailed him couldn’t be ignored any longer. He leaned over the side of the coffin and vomited, gut heaving as he tried to clear his throat. He blinked wetness from his eyes, nose stinging from bile, risking an even worse headache when a still-upright revenant lunged at him. Soren swept his arm around in a clumsy half-arc, starfire streaking outward and lighting up the dead. They didn’t scream the way humans did, but they burned to ash all the same.
Soren hauled himself out of the coffin, falling knees-first with a twist of his body. Something rammed into his stomach when he landed, and he grunted, panicking before he realized it was his poison short sword leaning against the side of the coffin. His gun belt had been dropped there as well—all of it too incriminating, he supposed, for people masquerading as star priests to carry around.
Soren wrapped his hand around the sword sheath and hauled it over his shoulder, clumsily buckling the pauldron back into place. The weight of it across his back settled something in him, even if it didn’t make the world stop spinning. Soren wrapped the gun belt around his waist, buckling it back in place. Both pistols were missing. While he no longer had a distance weapon in hand, the pouches hadn’t been emptied. More fool them, as Soren came up with a tin every warden carried in their belt.
The pills inside weren’t a cure-all, but they were a pain reliever mixed with a stim to keep a warden on their feet, enabling them to get to safety in the poison fields. It wouldn’t knock him out, but it would keep him clearheaded as much as his body would allow.
Soren swallowed a pill dry before using the coffin to drag himself to his feet. He swayed there, blinking at the smoldering remains of the revenants, like coal embers in a fire. The starfire still burned, and it took effort to draw it back into the aether, all but a flicker of flame to light his way out. He stomped out the glowing bits of fire still burning through the dead before leaving the alcove on unsteady feet, poison short sword in hand and a wealth of anger urging him onward.
Eight
HONOVI
They’d chased the sun as far as they could before holding position, watching from the decking as the night sky formed in the east and spread west, blanketing the world in darkness. Honovi had given the order to kill the running lights on every airship, flying dark as the stars came out.
Foxborough had been a smudge on the horizon during daylight hours, made indistinct by a haze of smoke, as they waited for the hours it took the steam train to catch up. Caoimhe’s communications officer reported on the damage done to the city’s airfields and rail stations. The frantic warnings from the city’s government were being broadcasted on an open line, easy to listen in on.
“We’ll need to warn the Ashionens the rail station isn’t viable if they haven’t heard already,” Caoimhe had said after the first few reports trickled over the radio.
“I don’t think Ksenia’s plan to talk her way through the city gates will work. The airfield’s control tower reported it was wardens who set the bombs,” Honovi had replied.
Caoimhe’s smile had been wolfish. “Then we’ll open the gate for her.”
Now, the time for waiting was over. TheCelestial Sprite’s lookout had finally spotted the steam train’s lone gaslight shining like a tiny beacon on the ground. When Honovi got on the radio to contact their ground support, he wasn’t surprised to hear Lore answer his hail. “Does the map still show the package in Foxborough?”
