Which meant he had to move quickly.
Soren hurried the rest of the way up, staying crouched low as he ducked behind the benches, trying to stay hidden. Keeping an ear out for any voices or footsteps, Soren made his way across the star temple to the side room he remembered Lore being held in, hoping she was still there. He paused at the entrance to the narrow hallway leading to it, voices finally reaching his ears.
“We shouldn’t be traveling when the Legion is bombing the city,” a woman said frantically.
“We do as thevezirorders,” a man grunted.
“We can’t do our duty if all of us are dead!”
“Our orders are to move the prisoners to the Imperial estate for the time being. A motor carriage will be brought around shortly to transport them. Your duty will be to ensure the lady doesn’t wake up.”
“Do you realize how delicate the state she is in? Keeping her unconscious requires a continuous application of drugs in a precise dosage at exact intervals. Moving her will disrupt the administration of everything.”
“You’re an alchemist. It’s your job to make sure she doesn’t wake up.”
Soren canted his head a little, wondering if there were more than two people in the hallway and where everyone else might be. If the star temple here was like the one Vanya’s House used, then it most likely wasn’t fully staffed. The guards might have been momentarily pulled for the defense of the estate, or they were still on duty somewhere he couldn’t see. Either way, Soren couldn’t risk standing around doing nothing, not if Joelle was planning on leaving her estate to hide somewhere else.
Soren flexed his hands, pulling magic from the aether to power his starfire from a spark to a firestorm as he stepped into the entryway to the hall.
The soldier and the star priestess—the same woman who’d sat beside Lore the few times Soren had been allowed to see her—jerked around as the brightness burned away the shadows in the hallway. Soren didn’t give them a chance to speak. He cast starfire at them with brutal intent, leaving no inch of them uncovered from the searing, deadly heat.
They died before their bodies even hit the ground, air burned to nothing in their lungs and bodies scorched down to their bones. Soren got rid of the starfire, but he couldn’t get rid of the way the hall smelled like a crematorium. Breathing through his mouth, Soren stepped over the pair of charred husks and hurried toward the side room where Lore was kept, hoping no one else was in the room with her. The door wasn’t locked, and he twisted the knob, shouldering it open.
The room was empty save for the table Lore lay on, pale and unmoving, still hooked up to that horrible machine, the tubing that held the poison clamped off. Soren didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until he’d slid the needles out of her veins, the sedative dripping onto the floor and the poison useless as a shackle to them both. He leaned over Lore, pressing his fingers to the side of her neck to get her pulse—steady but slow. He didn’t have his field gear to test what sort of drugs that star priestess who knew alchemy had used on Lore, and neither was he a healer. He’d have to wait until it all flushed out of her body naturally and hope she woke up from it on her own.
Hauling her unconscious form around while he himself had no weapons wouldn’t help either of them. Soren chewed on his bottom lip, thinking about his options. While he could burn his way out of the estate, they’d be on the run in a city whose loyalty lay with theirvezirand not Solaria’s emperor.
Swearing softly, Soren dug around in the cupboards of the room. One bay was filled entirely with vials of chemicals the star priestess he’d killed must have been using to keep Lore under. Drawers were filled with prayer candles and matches, while the other set of cupboards held stacks of fabric. He pulled one free, shaking it out, relieved to see it was what he’d been searching for.
The robe was one of the generic ones used by acolytes in the star temple. It lacked the fitted extravagance of a star priest’s robe, but that was fine by Soren. It would hide the uniform he wore, identifying him as a warden by sight. Shrugging it on, Soren did up the buttons, grimacing at how wide the sleeves were and how flowing the rest of it was. It would be easy to get it caught on something, and he’d have to be mindful of that. What he really wanted was a pistol or two, a knife, something that he could defend them with that wasn’t starfire. For now, he’d have to do without.
He took a couple of vials out of the cupboard and pocketed them, hoping he’d have time later to figure out what had been used on Lore. Soren turned back to the table, easing Lore’s limp body into his arms, concerned at how light she was. She looked and felt thinner than she’d been at Calhames, whatever they’d used to keep her unconscious having taken a toll on her body.
“We’re getting out of here,” Soren grunted, not caring that she couldn’t hear him. He couldn’t know if the woman he’d killed had spoken the truth—that the Legion had finally broken through Joelle’s defense. He wanted to believe it, but in order to get out of Bellingham, he had to assume everyone was the enemy.
The soldier he’d killed had said a motor carriage was being brought around to transport them out of the estate. All Soren needed was a chance to commandeer it and find some way outside the city walls. The poison fields in thevasilyetsurrounding Bellingham were a risk filled with encroaching front lines of battles and too many revenants, but they risked far more if they stayed.
Soren walked through the star temple as if he belonged, carrying Lore in his arms, head held high, gazing straight ahead. No one had appeared when he’d used starfire earlier, which was concerning in a way. He’d have thought more security would’ve been present, but perhaps the attack on the city was drawing everyone away.
And then he made it outside, where the motor carriage waited, and found the soldier meant to drive it on the ground with two revenants digging through his guts.
No wonder the star temple had been empty.
Soren immediately hiked Lore over his shoulder to free up one hand, keeping her in place with an arm pressed against the back of her thighs. He raised his right arm, calling forth starfire without any degree of finesse, opting for brute power over anything else as the revenants staggered away from the body toward fresh prey.
The dead caught fire, dried-up husks of bodies nothing more than kindling to Soren’s starfire. They went up in flames like a lit pump at a way station. The revenants crumbled in seconds, falling to the flagstone path, nothing but ash. Soren put out the starfire, glad the breeze he’d felt for the first time in weeks was too sluggish to really lift the ash and spread it. He didn’t have a gas mask for either himself or Lore, and spores were always a threat.
Grimacing, Soren hurried toward the motor carriage, the rumble of its engine almost too loud in the air between the rise and fall of the warning sirens. The star temple faced the House of Kimathi ancestral estate, and the revenants would’ve been like beacons as they burned to anyone who would be watching.
Which meant they had to leave.
And fast.
Soren maneuvered Lore into the back seat of the motor carriage, laying her across it and using two of the lap belts to secure her as best he could. He closed the door before turning his attention to the bloody mess of the dead soldier. Soren crouched near the body, the torn uniform useless to him, but the pistol still clutched in the dead soldier’s hand was something he could use.
Soren took the pistol, the extra ammunition he found in a belt pouch, and a small serrated knife tucked in the soldier’s boot. None of the weapons were the type issued by wardens, but they were better than nothing. He opened the barrel and reloaded it before snapping it back into place, the gears clicking away without issue. Soren tucked the knife into his own boot, clipped the pouch to his own belt beneath the robe he still wore, and straightened up with the pistol in hand.
He returned to the motor carriage and opened the driver’s-side door—and had to immediately duck behind it as bullets peppered the air around him and the motor carriage.
