Chapter 1078: Gunshots on the Plains
She was not the most striking person in any room she entered.
Molly had thought about this over the past week, trying to articulate what it was about Anna that kept stopping her. It wasn’t height — she was slight. It wasn’t the work suit, which was Roland-designed, functional, a little dusty from days outdoors. It wasn’t even beauty, exactly, though her face was fine-boned and her ponytail made her look younger than a queen had any right to look.
It was the stillness. The way Anna held a map — both hands, arms relaxed, eyes tracking the paper as though she was reading something the paper didn’t know it was saying. Karl Van Bate talked and she listened; Edith Kant talked and she listened; and when she spoke back, the responses were not long, but they landed on the conversation like keystones and everything else arranged itself around them.
She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t gesture for emphasis. The lake-blue eyes were enough.
Molly unloaded her rails into the storage area and retreated before she could be tempted to interrupt.
She almost tripped over Shavi.
A stack of bricks reached four feet high at the edge of the dump site, and Shavi’s head appeared over it the way a cat’s does over a fence: cautious, assessing.
“Did you go back to the forest again?”
The bad feeling arrived before the question finished.
Molly walked around the brick pile.
Andrea sat cross-legged on the ground with cards fanned in one hand, blonde hair loose around her shoulders. Margie occupied the far edge of the impromptu circle with the posture of someone who had given up trying to leave. A half-finished game lay between them. It looked very comfortable. It looked like the definition of slacking.
“Little Molly!” Andrea’s grin held the particular warmth of someone who is about to be blamed for something and considers this a reasonable price for an entertaining afternoon. “You found us.”
“How can you—” Molly looked at Margie’s expression — hunched, hands folded, the specific misery of the conscripted — and felt her voice rise despite herself. “Lady Tilly will hear about this. Do you know what people will think of Sleeping Spell if they find you out here playing cards in the middle of a construction zone?”
“I was forced,” Margie said, lowering her head. “I want that to be recorded somewhere.”
“I unloaded every crate in that last train car,” Shavi said, entirely unruffled. “The workers would still be at it if I hadn’t. I’m resting, which is categorically different from slacking.” She tilted her head. “You’d know the difference if you thought about it.”
“Tea time,” Andrea said, pulling a strand of hair free from where it had caught on her shoulder, “is as essential as work. An elegant lady knows how to balance them. Margie’s presence means our little arrangement stays between us — after all, causing trouble for Lady Tilly is the last thing any of us wants.” She patted the ground beside her. “Sit down. Cards play better with four.”
“Absolutely not—”
The alarm cut her off.
Woo — woo — woo!
Three short blasts. Not the long sustained tone of a drill. Three short, each separate, each meaning the same thing: enemy sighted.
Molly spun toward the northeast. The plain was empty — half-melted snow and dead grass all the way to the horizon, nothing moving, nothing visible.
“Lightning and Sylvie run advance warning,” Shavi said, already on her feet. “If they spotted something, you won’t see it from here yet.”
“Anna—” Molly was already moving. “Her Highness is exposed at the end of the line, someone has to—”
Shavi caught her arm. “She has guards. Standing orders. You going back there puts two people in danger instead of one.”
“Based on Devilbeast flight speed, she has ten minutes minimum before anything arrives. Long enough for her to reach shelter.” Shavi kept her grip easy but firm. “Our orders: protect yourself, link up with the nearest First Army unit, Taquila God’s Punishment Witch, or designated combat group.” She nodded toward the brick pile. “Which means you don’t have to go anywhere.”
“You can protect me,” Andrea said cheerfully, already climbing.
From the top of the brick pile, Molly could see the whole front.
Or rather — she could see the absence of it. Two minutes ago the construction site had been the loudest place on the Fertile Plains. Now it was a sketch of what a construction site contained, all the human bodies having vanished into trenches and gun emplacements as though the ground had inhaled them. The train sat silent on the tracks. The sense of held breath was total.
Andrea had a Sigil of Listening pressed to her ear.
“Sylvie — was that your alarm?”
Static. Then: “No. That was Lightning. Four Devilbeasts carrying Mad Demons, coming from the northeast. Straight line from the railway head to the Taquila ruins. No Senior Demons in detection range.” A pause. “You should have visual in about five minutes.”
“Four,” Andrea repeated. She lowered the Sigil. “Accidental encounter, probably.”
“Probably,” Shavi agreed. “But don’t take it easy.”
They were visible in four minutes — four dark spots against the bright sky, high and unhurried. They came on at a pace that was not cautious exactly, but not reckless either, and when the railway came into their view they slowed. Hovering. Watching.
“That’s strange,” Shavi said. “They’re not attacking.”
The demons hung there, Devilbeasts beating the air in slow strokes. Molly could see no bone spears raised, no formation shift that looked like a prelude to a dive.
“Can you reach them?” she asked.
Andrea’s expression did the calculation before her mouth did. “Too far. Variables stack up at this range — coin toss gets complicated.” She paused. “There is another method.”
“What method?”
She pointed down the side of the brick pile.
Molly had walked past it twice without registering it: a rifle, but not any rifle she had a reference for. The barrel was over a meter long. The stock was proportioned for someone very large or someone who expected to brace hard against something. The whole assembly looked like it would take two people simply to carry, never mind aim and fire.
“Have you had that with you this entire time? While we were playing cards?”
“Thanks to Margie.” Andrea’s smile was unrepentant. “Carrying a variety of weapons is a basic soldier’s requirement.”
Molly raised her hand. Momota materialized, and Molly shaped her — spreading the body into a wide oval cushion, lowering it to a workable height, the posture of something that existed specifically to be a stable platform. She set the rifle on top of Momota’s head.
“Raise a little,” Andrea said, going prone on the cushion, one eye finding the sight. “Right there. Yes. Perfect.” She looked up for a moment. “It’s a pity I didn’t have you along the last time I used this thing. Ashes makes a terrible gun rest.” She settled back in. “Shrink the arms down — thin as your fingers. I need the ear protection.”
“If I shrink them that far she won’t be able to hold heavy objects.”
“That’s fine.”
Molly made the adjustment. Andrea worked the shrunken fingers into her ears like plugs, wrapped her hands around the rifle’s grip, and for a long moment nothing happened — she was simply still, the way a held breath is still, the way a pendulum at the top of its arc is still, the exact moment before momentum reasserts itself.
Then the guiding lines appeared. Then the trigger moved.
The bang was not a sound Molly had a category for. It was the kind of noise that reorganized the inside of her skull, that arrived before she could brace against it, that left a ringing in its wake like a struck bell that could not decide when to stop. She had been reaching for her ears. She had not reached them in time.
Four seconds of nothing.
Then one of the dark spots became a cloud of red mist, and the cloud scattered, and there was only sky where the Devilbeast had been.