“Will you let us out?” The question came from a man whose face was half bruises. He shared a cell with two other prisoners, all of whom were looking at Soren.
“I don’t have a key for your cells, nor do I know where it is kept,” Soren said.
“The supervisor room overlooks the cell block. The controls there can override the individual locks and open the cell doors.”
Soren glanced at the entrance. “I can’t stay to help you.”
“We just need a chance to flee. Please, don’t leave us here to die like this.”
Soren’s gaze tracked down the rows of cells to the one he knew the revenants to be in. He couldn’t open all the cell doors, release the prisoners and have them walking into reach of revenants. He made his way toward that cell in question, ignoring the numbness in areas of his left leg. He could still walk, and that meant he could still fight.
Soren stopped in front of the cell, staring at the dead who had once been Caris’ parents. The revenants were on their feet, fingers with ragged flesh hanging off the digits wrapped around the metal posts. He couldn’t see what they must have looked like in the bones protruding through desiccated flesh on their faces, eyes sunken and dried-out holes. He stayed out of reach, knowing how quickly revenants could move, driven by spores, always looking for the living to propagate.
There was no saving them now.
Soren raised a hand, starfire sparking at his fingertips, and set the dead alight.
They made no sound as they burned, bodies crumbling beneath the excessive heat until nothing was left of them but the memories their daughter would carry. Caris could grieve them at a memory wall. Soren let the starfire die, scorch marks all that was left of the people who had raised Caris.
This was his duty, and Soren hoped she would understand.
He left the cell block and located the control room, a window overlooking the floor of the cell block. The analytical engine was powered on, and Soren flicked toggles, pressed buttons, and raised small levers until he heard the gears of every cell door opening inside the cell block at the same time.
He didn’t wait to watch the prisoners walk free. Soren headed back to the administrative side of the building on shaky legs, carefully entering the workroom he’d left everyone else in, staying low to remain behind cover.
The front wall had been blasted through in one section, but no damage existed inside. The scorch marks were familiar, as was the melted, twisted metal of the window frames. Starfire had taken it out, which meant Blaine had convinced Caris to finally join the fight. Soren discovered, when he crept closer to the front of the building, that she hadn’t fought for long.
The forecourt of the jail was littered with melted vehicles, half-burned bodies, scorch marks, and a sentinel-class automaton that was little more than slag. Soren found Blaine, Caris, and the Royal Guard facing off against a man dressed as a warden who hadn’t arrived with them, one who held Nathaniel in front of him like a living shield. Nathaniel didn’t move, didn’t fight, standing rigid in the man’s grip while the clarion crystal tip of a wand pressed firmly against the underside of his jaw. Even from where he stood, Soren could see the way Nathaniel shivered, as if he was fighting against invisible chains, but they were all in his mind.
Soren didn’t have to guess who this man was. “Olet.”
The former warden’s gaze jerked toward Soren, mouth twisting in annoyance. “That is not my name any longer.”
“TheKlovod, then. It doesn’t change your betrayal any less.”
“The wardens betrayed all of us who came to them as tithes.”
“Let Nathaniel go,” Caris pleaded, trying to take a step forward but held back by Blaine’s grip on her arm. “Please.”
“I think you’ve had myrionetkalong enough.”
“He isn’t yours.”
TheKlovodsmiled condescendingly, but his attention remained on Soren. “Where is the Blade?”
“Dead, just like Petra,” Soren said.
Soren spoke the name of the warden who had guarded the border around Rixham for years and who he knew had been assigned to it once more when the wall had fallen around that city. He remembered Tock, Petra’s strange clockwork cat, and what Ksenia had said about that automaton. How it had been gifted to Petra by a fellow warden out of care, perhaps out of love, but that love had died in the poison fields.
TheKlovodshrugged one shoulder. “If you hope I have sentiment for my past life, you are sorely mistaken. But the girl’s sentiment will be enough to let me walk away freely.”
“Will it?” Soren asked, starfire curling around his fingers.
Caris shot him a frantic look, wrenching herself around Blaine. “Soren, don’t!”
TheKlovodtook a step back, Nathaniel following in lockstep. “I think myrionetkadying would wound her better than any bullet. Eimarille will see to it.”
Soren had killed Artyom when the man had held Raiah hostage during the Conclave, but he had been within touching distance then. He wasn’t now, and Caris looked about ready to fight him and not theKlovodif he tried anything that might harm Nathaniel.
