She pulled the trigger before he could stop her, aiming high over the magician’s shield. Honovi watched in horror as the launcher spat out a grenade with a clank of gears. The projectile arced over the magician’s shield and landed between their defense and the cluster of Daijalan soldiers positioned around a makeshift barricade of motor carriages.
The ensuing explosion sent cobblestones flying into the air, shattered windows all along the street from the sound of the explosion, and swirled up dust and smoke. Gas lamps lost their casings as gaslights went out, plunging their area of the street into darkness. The only light came from the glow of the magician’s shield, the interlocking shapes like tiny bricks floating in the air, and the bioluminescence poison that had been in the grenade.
“Ksenia.”
She loaded another grenade into the barrel with a grind of gears. “It won’t kill them. The poison is meant to incapacitate.”
He could see several soldiers who had been closest to the blast lying on the ground, some of that strange bioluminescence spattered over their bodies. They weren’t moving, but the soldiers behind them were shouting in Daijalan, looking to continue the fight. Their attention was split when Ksenia’s advance team roared down the other end of the street, having managed to get ahead and trap the Daijalans in a pincer move.
The soldiers shouted in alarm, turning from Honovi’s position to deal with the new threat. Gunfire echoed in the air, and Honovi flinched, trying to see through the shield that was taking on less fire at the moment. “You need to call off your wardens. I don’t want to risk Blaine’s life.”
Ksenia was primed to fire again but held her position. “Those are Daijalans.”
Wardens weren’t known for revenge, though Honovi supposed, after everything that had occurred, they were owed a debt by that country. What Honovi forgot—what many people forgot—about wardens was that they may not be the typical soldier, but they still knew how to fight. Their enemy tended to be dead, and they had ways of handling the dead that no one else could safely duplicate. Wardens could survive many of the poisons found on Maricol, but the same could not be said for anyone else.
Screams rose above the sound of gunfire—one voice, then two, then more. The gunfire faded, but the shield didn’t drop until a piercing whistle rent the air, the notes a frantic tone. Ksenia swore and pointed the grenade launcher at the ground, yanking her own wand free of its casing. “Move in!”
The remaining wardens drove toward the shield, which snapped apart in sections and let them through. Ksenia ran forward through the open spaces in the shield, Honovi matching her stride for stride. The magical barrier snapped back into place nearly on their heels.
“Honovi!” Lore shouted from behind them.
He didn’t look back. “Be ready to cover us!”
“You’ll want to be careful where you walk,” Ksenia called over her shoulder.
The bioluminescent poison glowed faintly in the dark, marking out the explosion radius. The downed soldiers Honovi ran past never moved to attack, and he tried not to brush up against any of the poison on the vehicles. He couldn’t avoid stepping on some of the poison spatters, hoping it wouldn’t be able to penetrate the soles of his boots.
Gears clanked together, metal ringing against metal as a clockwork cat suddenly landed on the hood of a motor carriage to Honovi’s right. He jerked back, bringing his pistol up automatically. Aether flickered like a heartbeat in the center of the large cage that made up the clockwork cat’s chest.
It reminded him of the one on the Warden’s Island, the beast having acted eerily alive in a way right before it tried to go for Ksenia’s throat. This one was the same, lunging at Honovi as if it were a wild beast and not a device made up of gears and magic.
Honovi aimed for the cat’s center mass, even as he stumbled backward, trying to get out of its reach. His bullets didn’t find the clockwork heart, but Ksenia’s magic did. Magic erupted from the tip of her wand like it had in the laboratory on the island, slamming into gears and plates that made up the clockwork cat’s chest.
The clockwork cat slammed to the ground, the glow in its bottle-glass green eyes flickering like a candle about to go out. It struggled to get its legs beneath it, mechanical limbs jerking, but another hit of raw aether from Ksenia’s wand shattered the spell framework animating it. The magic abruptly guttered out, and the clockwork cat collapsed to the ground, nothing more than lifeless metal and gears.
The clanking sound of gears from behind him had Honovi ducking, rocking on his heels as he tried not to touch the street and the hints of poison he could see glowing on the cobblestones. Ksenia twisted around, magic exploding from her wand like lightning to crash into the second clockwork cat hunting them.
“Maybe that warden of yours who made these contraptions isn’t really dead,” Honovi said.
Ksenia scowled at him, her white lock of hair falling over one eye. “Stay behind me.”
Honovi scrambled to obey, knowing his pistol would be useless against the clockwork cats. It did well enough against Daijalan soldiers, a bullet finding a home inside one man’s face when he lifted his head over the hood of a motor carriage. Honovi shoved aside the queasiness of the kill in favor of sticking close to Ksenia. The wardens had the area partially surrounded, and while the half dozen clockwork cats left were a problem, the biggest threat was a Blade.
She moved with the speed of someone well trained, dark hair twisted into a knot at the back of her head, teeth bared in a warning snarl. The Blade had a pistol in hand and was firing rapidly, forcing the wardens to take cover. The clockwork cats prowled the immediate area, darting between Daijalan soldiers to attack the wardens. In the mayhem that followed, one warden went down screaming with metal teeth in their forearm. Another took a swing with their battle axe at the clockwork cat coming for them and took several bullets to the chest.
Then the Blade unhooked something from her belt, ripped a pin out with her teeth, and tossed it into the middle of the street.
“Take cover!” Ksenia yelled.
Honovi dove behind a motor carriage, barely getting down in time before the grenade went off. His ears rang horrendously in the aftermath, and he frantically looked around for Ksenia. He saw her crouched on one knee, the grenade launcher braced against her shoulder and aimed at the rooftops, but she didn’t pull the trigger. Honovi followed her aim and saw the Blade flinging herself onto the roof of the nearest building, having scaled it while everyone had tried to escape the explosion.
The blast had ripped apart two of the clockwork cats. The remaining four were still a problem, and it took precious long minutes for the wardens to neutralize the damned things while keeping the remaining Daijalan soldiers pinned down.
The firefight ended when the last Daijalan was taken out and the clockwork cats were ripped to pieces. Not all of the wardens got to their feet, and while some went to tend to their fallen brethren, the others approached the motor carriage barricade and started methodically ensuring the Daijalan soldiers were dead with brutal efficiency.
The smell of cordite and blood hung heavy on the air as the remaining wardens pressed forward, clearing the area. Honovi followed Ksenia, eyes darting from side to side as he searched for any sign of Blaine.
A flurry of movement around a motor carriage in the center of the barricade had him rushing forward, nearly stumbling over a body or two in his haste. The wardens had surrounded the vehicle in question, weapons drawn on a man illuminated by someone’s handheld gaslight.
