d, using tongs instead of his hands, brings back the razor from its gravity perch. “Show him this. I have not held her for many years. Her name is Shizuka. She is yours until I ask for her again. Take it, boy.”

I take the hasta in my hands. It is cold and alien and outlandishly long. Its handle is pale brown leather and is as long as my forearm. Its blade clear as glass, like Seraphina’s. My hand touches the small activation toggle near the top of the handle and the whip snaps rigid.

Gaia glances nervously to the door, no longer the collected woman who sat with me at the piano. It took all her energy to make that show of confidence, to sell herself, the gambit. Now her own nerves and exhaustion betray her.

“You must leave now. Goroth will lead you into the tunnels.” She guides me to a wall where she traces her fingers over the stone. The wall rumbles backward, revealing a dark passage. “We know the secrets of this mountain better than that Venusian tramp.” She hands me a transponder. “Remember, as soon as you have him and can hide, signal for the legions.”

“I will.”

The old Obsidian joins us there and looks sadly down at Gaia, torn by the parting. Tears glisten in his black eyes. “Oh, don’t weep, you old brute,” she says to the giant. “Tears do not become us.” He bends down suddenly and kisses her upon the brow with his tattered lips. She’s so startled she barely has time to be offended.

“Farewell, domina,” he rumbles.

She shakes her head and shoves him weakly in the chest. “Go!”

Goroth tears himself away and presses into the darkness of the tunnel. “Thank you for the sandwiches,” Pytha says to Gaia. “If they find out you helped us, won’t they kill you?”

“Stupid girl, not all who live fear death.” She backs away, the door closes between us, but I hear her last words weakly through the stone. “Save my son.”

GOROTH, PYTHA, AND I WIND through the bowels of the ancient city in a darkness so complete memory guides the man instead of his large eyes. Up and down and in twisting turns we go. Passing whispers that leak through the stone. Machines that shudder in unseen alcoves and rooms. Thin blades of light slice through the darkness from peepholes. I glance through them, hoping to catch sight of Seraphina, but the deeper we plunge, the farther from the Golds we go. What I see through the walls are Yellows hunched over holoDisplays, studying diagrams and videos, White hierophants reading in cloisters, carver laboratories alive with experiments, barracks of Grays, and great cisterns and botanical gardens abuzz with bees and Reds plucking fruits from rows of subterranean bushes growing under artificial light.

The tunnels are old and have their own humors. Wind rolls through them, whispering eerily. And deep in the darkness, as it bends around turns and passes over apertures, the wind howls. I walk closely behind Goroth. Without him Pytha and I might wander until we starve to death.

At each turn Goroth glances back to make sure we still follow, and I worry that he knows what I’m thinking. Knows what I plan. He continues to guide us until we reach a freezing stretch of tunnel where ice slicks the stone under our feet.

“Here,” he says. We stop and I hear his finger on the wall. The stone grumbles in complaint and then light seeps in through the expanding aperture, revealing a storage room on the other side of the wall. Goroth goes through first. I put a hand on Pytha to stop her from following. My hand trembles on the hasta. What if I miss? I find the toggle with my thumb. My fingers shake.

“Some ill wind, dominus?” Goroth asks, turning back when I do not follow. Now he senses my intentions in the air. I say nothing. His eyes narrow as he sees my finger on the toggle. Without a word, he lunges at me. His speed uncanny to his age and size. I activate the razor. The long blade springs into the space that separates us. I lunge for his kneecap, hoping not to kill him. It impales the bone and tendons, sliding through them as if they were not even there. Goroth’s momentum carries him through the blade. His huge hands reach for my throat. Pytha screams and slips on the ice. Her legs knock out mine from beneath me. I slam down just as Goroth sails over me and crashes into the wall. He rolls over, reaching for me. I scramble away down the tunnel, trying to gain my feet. He manages to grab only my left hand. I try to bring the razor around, but he jerks me down. I fall facedown and he almost throws his body atop mine. A narrow miss. Still on my belly, right arm and razor pinned under my body, I kick blindly backward at him, hitting his face and shoulders, leveraging my legs against him to prevent him from crawling up my facedown body to pin me there. With his strength and weight, he would nail me to the ground and shatter my skull into the stone. We flail there in the darkness, grunting, his immense strength slowly overwhelming my kravat-learned leverage. I can’t twist my right arm with the razor out from under me.

“Pytha!” I shout. “Pytha! Kick him.”

I glance back and see her in the dim light that bleeds from the storage room into the tunnel. She’s gained her feet and rushes up behind Goroth’s prone body to kick him in the back of his head. His grip doesn’t slacken. He’s reaching up my body, trying to take the transponder that will signal Vela. Pytha kicks him again with the heel of her foot and, using the distraction, I manage to wrench my body around so that I’m on my side and can free my arm. I stab down at him again with the razor, this time in the arm that holds me. The blade gores his shoulder. He doesn’t let go. His huge hand closes around my left hand, squeezing till I hear a popping like green wood over a campfire. The bones crackle and splinter under my flesh. Pain races up my left arm. I grunt and swing the blade down at his arm in frantic desperation. His grip slackens. I scramble to my feet, his severed hand still clutched around my left. I wheel around to kill him, but he’s rolled back away from me into the shadows of the tunnel past the storage room aperture.

One breath. Two. He does not reappear.

I rush to Pytha, razor pointed warily at the darkness, and shove her inside the storage room. “Lysander, what the blackhell was that?” My hand throbs with pain. In the light I can see the mangled fingers and the swelling underneath the skin. We weave through boxes, fleeing the tunnels till we find a door and go through it into a cold hallway. We’re in the Dust Cells prison facility. Cameras blink on the ceiling from behind small glass globes. “They’ll see you!” I go to my knees in front of one and throw the razor on the ground. She retreats to the doorway of the storage room. “Lysander…” An alarm begins to howl out of the camera. Doors slam somewhere in the distance. Boots hammer the ground.

“Pytha, get on your knees with me. They’ll be here soon.”

“Lysander, what are you doing?”

“Choosing a side.”

—

An hour later, Dido watches me after I finish my story. Pytha stands nervously with me; we’re surrounded by a handful of soldiers, along with Dido and Seraphina, both of whom look to have been woken from their sleep. My left hand is in agony, swollen like a waterskin and throbbing a deep black-purple. The shock wore off half an hour ago. My teeth don’t chatter anymore, but I’m sweating bullets. I compartmentalize the pain along with the fear, putting it in the void and focusing on my breathing. The pain becomes manageable.

“He had this with him.” The centurion of the platoon that captured us hands Dido a plastic container that holds Gaia’s razor, taking care not to touch the blade with his own hand. “It is the matron’s razor, is it not?”

My evidence.

“It is. Seraphina, what do you think?” Dido asks.

Seraphina scrutinizes me from the corner of the room. “I wouldn’t trust a Lune farther than I can spit.” She looks at her datapad as it glows. “But they found a hand in the tunnel and Obsidian blood. Field DNA inspection says it’s Goroth’s.”

“And that monster wouldn’t take a piss if Gaia didn’t tell him to.” Dido cradles the transponder that Gaia gave me. “So he is telling the truth. Your grandmother is not so senile as she appears.”

“Should we send a platoon to her quarters, domina?” the centurion asks. Dido’s finger glides along

Tags: Pierce Brown Red Rising Saga Science Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net