Chapter XXX: Frantic Plans
For the first time in my life, the cops actually proved to be helpful. Not on purpose, of course, police would never help someone intentionally, but as we dragged ourselves out of the far end of our secret passage, the sounds of gunfire and shouting echoed in the distance. The police cordon around the factory had apparently caught on to a fight going down, distracting the wolves.
Even with the added distraction, we were a mess. The girl who was down had taken the worst of it, but the only people who weren’t at least bruised were myself and Anna, me because it had all healed and her because she’d had Stork as a personal bodyguard. Laura grinned with blood trickling from her forehead and soaking into her sleeves, Unity had one arm hanging limp, Tillie had taken a bite so bad that the wolf’s teeth were still embedded in her armor.
But the woman on the floor was the worst. She was about my age, with a wiry build and tightly braided black hair. Her skin had gone from tan to a sickly off-white as her blood spilled onto the ground. Tillie, despite her own wounds, was kneeling next to her.
“Hey, Mable, hold in there. Gonna swing the carriage around and get you to the hospital.”
I hadn’t even known Mable’s name before then.
“We got them all, right?” Mable said. “The kidnapped people, they’re all safe?”
“They’re safe,” Tillie said, nodding frantically. “They’re safe.”
“Aaah, then it was worth it.” For all that she was dying, Mable sounded like she’d just lost a bar-room bet. “Didn’t exactly sign up for this without knowing I might buy the ticket.”
“Well, you’re not going to,” Tillie said. “So don’t. Stork, grab the carriage!”
Stork looked down at Anna, still held in her arms. “You up for walking?”
“I’m not sure,” Anna said. “My leg’s never quite been this bad, I don’t know how long it will take to recover. If we need to move…”
Unity fake-coughed into her fist. “I might-might have something to help with that.”
Anna twisted around, looking at Unity’s face with an expression I’d never quite seen on her before. It was the first time she’d acknowledged Unity’s presence in the whole rescue, and her eyes were bigger than breakfast platters.
The entire time, Unity had been holding something strapped to her back that I’d thought was a club or some kind of bladed weapon. It was only as she swung it around, awkwardly untying it from the chest strap she’d attached it to, that I recognized the object for what it was. It was a wooden cane, the head carved into the shape of a bird, all simple but sturdy wood. Unity held it out to Anna like a bad joke.
Anna, for her part, took it, then nodded for Derby to let her down. It was a slow and awkward process, complete with a lot of wincing, but eventually, Anna reached the ground, the cane keeping her stable in spite of obvious discomfort. As soon as Derby was sure that she could remain upright, she ran off.
“You brought this all the way out here?” she said.
Unity shrugged. “Thought you might’ve needed-needed it. I dunno what I was thinking, I’m sorry…”
Anna moved ahead. It was an awkward, clunking process, her injured leg barely gracing the ground, but by the end of it she was standing so close to Unity that the tips of their noses nearly touched. “You were on a rescue mission, life or death, and you still took the time to think that my leg might be bothering me?”
Unity nodded, confused.
Anna opened her mouth to speak, then reconsidered. “Oh, to hell with it,” she muttered.
Anna placed her free hand on the small of Unity’s back and pressed them both together. It took only the slightest movement to make their lips touch. It was so surprising that it took me a moment to realize what was happening and redirect my attention onto a really fascinating bit of cobblestone. Unity apparently agreed with me.
“I-I-I, I thought, you weren’t, you didn’t, you-you…”
Anna sighed. “Changed my mind.”
“You changed your mind?” Unity squeaked.
“I am allowed!” Anna complained. “There was very little to do, blindfolded and chained to a chair, besides to think. And I found that quite a large portion of that of which I was thinking was you. Even when I was held by ghouls up in Urcos, I wasn’t as scared as I have been these last few days, and it was because I had you at my side.”
“But what about… you hated-hated my poetry.”
“Because I thought it was in mockery of me. And because you refused to relent even when I requested it of you. I’ll expect an apology for that.”
“And you’ll get it,” said Unity.
They kissed again. At least, that’s what I inferred, for I was still looking at the ground. The second kiss went on a little while longer than the first, though, until I eventually realized that I was going to have to intervene.
“We should probably get moving! Tillie and the others can take care of Mable.”
When I looked up at Unity and Anna again, Unity was at Anna’s side, holding her up, both of them having faintly abashed expressions. I couldn’t help but crack a smile at the silliness of it all in the face of imminent death.
So, as Derby and Tillie and the others loaded the wounded into their carriage, the rest of us scattered into the night. Violet and Alexis apparently had a plan, because after they were done thanking us all profusely for rescuing them, they fled into the warren that was the streets of New Alderburg. That left just the four of us, Laura, Anna, Unity, and myself to limp our way to the nearest streetcar station.
…
I was glad to have Anna back. I really was. As soon as we limped into the squat where we’d been staying, I collapsed into bed, able to properly rest for the first time since she’d been kidnapped. But as I lurched back into consciousness that afternoon, a new weight was on my shoulders.
Tersine was out there, in the Great Desolation. She’d won. The journal had revealed its secret to her, the location of the last survivor of the Secondmire Expedition, and she’d had easily a full day’s head start to carry out her goals. I considered, for a moment, the idea that it would be harmless. Maybe Tersine was well-intentioned, maybe I could let her run off on her mad dash into the desert where she would die of dehydration or write a bunch of really fascinating research papers about it or what have you.
As if. If she was really well-intentioned, if what she was doing was benign and harmlessly eccentric, then she wouldn’t have had to do… all of that. The murders, aligning herself with Cassandran Intelligence, the army of wolves. If nothing else, then Tersine needed to be brought to justice for her crimes, and prevented from killing any more innocents.
It was with a heavy heart and a mind stuffed over-full of thoughts that I stumbled into the main meeting room. I felt like I was sore. I wasn’t actually sore, of course; any soreness my body could possibly develop would heal in seconds, but between the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything in almost a day and the extreme pounding anxiety, I had the idea of soreness written across every scrap of flesh. It was thus to my great shock when my eyes adjusted to the light and I realized that I was walking into, not a group of defeated people licking their wounds, but an active planning session. An active planning session with food.
“Shortcake,” Laura said. “Good afternoon.”
“Is that food? Where the fuck did we get that food. I want it.”
Someone had rearranged the furniture again, this time bringing together two smaller tables to form what might almost be called a meeting table. Anna, Unity, Delilah Sandborn, Laura, and Tillie were all sitting around it, sharing a heap of flatbreads and a pile of thinly-sliced meat off of a bed of yellow cabbage and anonymous sauce.
Tillie made a gesture with a few of her fingers. “It’s Miranian,” she said. “Picked it up on the way over here.”
I grabbed one of the flatbreads, used it to shovel as much meat and cabbage as I could possibly fit, and started chewing. For the next couple of minutes, I didn’t stop once to think about what everybody was doing here, or how we were going to stop Tersine, or any of it. Food good.
Delilah suppressed a chuckle with the back of her hand. “For such a small woman, she has quite the appetite.”
“Indeed,” Anna replied, a wry smirk spreading across her lips. “You haven’t even seen her at a proper dinner party. She would devour her way through four whole courses back at the H—”
“Yeah yeah,” I said through a mouthful of what tasted somewhat like beef. “I wanna see you try healing through fifteen bite wounds. See how hungry you are.”
There were giggles all around, albeit strained ones. Amazing that in so short a period of time I had gone from being horrified by the sight of blood to being so nonchalant. Regardless, the mood sufficiently lightened, I finished my meal.
“So, what the fuck is going on here? Are we having a ‘we lost but at least everybody’s alive’ pity party or what? ‘Cause if it’s that we need to get more alcohol.”
Laura raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you gave up that easy, Shortcake. We’re working on a plan.”
“A plan? What plan? Tersine could be anywhere by now.”
Anna shook her head. “I remember when she left. We’re twenty-four hours behind her, give or take a little. And with the Desolation being like it is, we don’t know how far she’s actually made it.”
I frowned, trying to wrap my head around what it was that they were suggesting. In truth, it was an incredibly simple concept: it was also a concept so utterly, mind-bendingly stupid that my brain refused to even consider it. But as the seconds passed, I realized that there really was only one place this was pointing to.
“Laura, they’re going out into the fucking desert!”
“I’ve been into the desert,” Laura said. “And at the distances you wrote, a small team could make it out and back with a minimum of preparation, using just packed supplies.”
“Of course, putting together those supplies under short notice is the tough part,” said Tillie. “But that’s why I’m here.”
I blinked for a moment, almost speechless. With a sigh, I said, “Okay, forget making it there. Let’s assume we do somehow end up at this village before Tersine leaves. What then? We barely made it out of the factory intact, and that was with nine people and no unstoppable killer automaton in the way! What the hell are we going to be able to do to Tersine?”
The room fell silent. I was about ready to start berating them for not thinking ahead when Delilah Sandborn cleared her throat.
“Do you remember what Tersine wants?”
“Hm? Some map, or something?”
“Exactly. I’ve read Olivia’s journal, the one that started this whole thing. It was a fairly substantial ruin that she found the body in, and unless I’m misremembering, the entry gives very little information about where the body was found.”
“Sure, okay, so Tersine might still be there searching for it,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Falem will still kill all of us without breaking stride.”
“But we don’t need to fight Falem. If Tersine returns without the map, then she has already lost.”
My instinctive reaction was to object, but I paused. That would be a good way to screw Tersine over. Not a way to take her out of the picture, but a symbolic revenge if nothing else. I pulled out a chair and sat down, slumping forward with my elbows on the table and eyes staring into the whorls of wood grain.
“This is still a completely insane idea. I mean, rescuing Anna was insane, but at least we had a good reason.”
“Well, it’s either that, or we throw up our hands and admit defeat,” said Laura.
“Not permanently,” I said. “We can retreat, lick our wounds, get in touch with people.”
“Nika Tolva Tersine has murdered the majority of the people I can consider friends,” Delilah said, her voice almost tranquil. “I can no longer sleep without seeing the faceless mask of her assistant. I say we do not give up without bloodying her nose.”
Every fiber of my being was screaming that this was a terrible idea. But we had to do something. I scanned around the table, looking at each face in turn, wondering if I really believed that these people were capable of pulling through. Each face I looked into looked right back at me with a determination that appeared unbreakable.
“So, who’s coming along? What’s the plan for getting there?”
“I’m coming with,” Laura said.
“And me,” said Delilah. “I have to finish this one way or the other.”
Anna shook her head. “I won’t be of much use in the field. Sand is… difficult to walk on at the best of times.” She turned, clutching Unity’s side.
“Sorry-sorry, love. Just a bit-bit of revenge.”
“And I’ve got to go, because I’m driving,” said Tillie. “So that makes five in total.”
“Will we be able to pack enough supplies?” I said. “I’m still a little foggy on the logistics of all of this.”
“We should fit,” Laura said. “I’ve got an idea or two of how to pull this off.”
…
As it turned out, the archaeology department of the University of New Alderburg didn’t take very much care at all about the security of its gear. For the most part, this made sense; who would want to steal from a bunch of academics? Most of the equipment was a decade out of date, or else useless to anyone who wasn’t planning on going out into the Desolation to dig around in the sand for ancient relics.
Good thing we were planning on going out into the Desolation to dig around in the sand for ancient relics, then.
The department owned a small fleet of vehicles, the crown jewel of which was a massive half-track steam carriage, easily twice the size of an ordinary model. It reminded me a bit of those big military troop transports, imposing and bulky in black steel and brass. Laura explained that it was nicknamed “The Ogre”, and that she happened to have easy access to the keys.
So late that night, when the city had settled into half-sleep, we slipped up to the Ogre’s side, unlocked the doors, and got on. Each of us had a bag, heavy and stuffed almost to bursting, but once we were inside the Ogre it felt like we were woefully under-packed. The back of that thing could have fit ten tons. The open bed wasn’t fantastic for fitting people, but someone had modified it with a few benches, which was good, considering only two people could fit up-front. Laura had the keys and Tillie had the driving knowledge, so Unity, Delilah, and I had to climb in back and make sure none of our stuff slid around too much.
When the Ogre’s enormous sextuple-expansion steam engine rumbled to life, I was sure that someone would hear us, that some security guard or another would rush out. But whether because of the muffling effect of distance or sheer apathy, none did. It was an easy journey out to the edge of the city, past the scattered towns that clung to the outskirts of civilization, and then into the vast spread of land beyond.
That night was the first time I’d ever really seen the Great Desolation. I’d been out to the edge of the city in that direction once or twice, sometimes stared out over the horizon, but I’d never traveled up the river Rass to see what it was that made New Alderburg so notable. It became obvious fairly quickly.
Most of Bluerose was a warm, low country, vast fields and scattered forests spreading out in every direction. Down south by Amrinval, the climate even tended toward the subtropical, the forests growing thicker and the land slightly more brown as grass and flowers were replaced by hardy scrubland. Back on Earth I’d never really traveled far from Illinois, which was all pasture and farmland, aside from the smallest patches of surviving oak savanna. The closest thing I’d ever seen to a properly desolate place was Urcos, but even there the ground was covered in hardy mountain grass, and wherever waterways cut through the earth one could find stands of small trees and herds of wild grazers.
The Great Desolation looked wrong. There was no grass, no flowers, barely any plant life at all. Barely any soil at all. Sometimes I would look around and it would feel like the Ogre was the last moving thing in a dead world, a rover crawling across an alien landscape of blasted rock and dust.
Only once that entire evening did I hear any sign at all of movement beyond us, something I couldn’t see scrabbling into a hiding spot as the Ogre passed by. As tiredness took hold of me and I fell back into the bed of the Ogre, I suddenly understood the name. They called it the Great Desolation instead of the Great Desert or the Great Dryland because this wasn’t a natural result of the climate; something awful had happened to this place.
And yet, somehow, thinking about the terrain was the cheery distraction compared to the real work ahead. As we trundled along into the night, safety and familiarity fell slowly into the distance. I was heading towards a goal that I didn’t fully understand and a foe I knew I couldn’t defeat. At least the rocks and dust weren’t worried.
This is where they find the Statue of Liberty in the sand, right? Jk