Harlen's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

The smoke pulled them off the flats and onto a broken road that curved through the dunes. Cracks split the asphalt. The yellow line snapped and started again. Harlen kept six paces behind Elina, rig clamped to his throat, and watched her wings shift color as she moved. The road bent one last time and stopped. Ahead of them the pavement broke off into open air. A sinkhole. Wide as a house. The edges were fresh, still crumbling. Smoke poured up out of it in a slow black column. Harlen dropped flat and crawled the last few feet. Elina folded her wings tight and crouched beside him. Vael came up out of the hole. Two, then four, then more. Purple bodies, too many legs, tails dragging in the dust. They climbed the walls of the pit like it was nothing and spread out along the broken road. "They dug it," Elina said. "From under." "For what." She pointed. A cart rolled up the shoulder of the road behind them, pulled by two more Vael. Dark wood banded in iron. Blue light crawled along the seams. Inside the barred door, Harlen counted three bodies. One was moving. The other two weren't. The Vael steered the cart toward the lip of the hole. "They're feeding it," Elina said. Harlen counted seven Vael on the road. Two on the cart. He set the rig higher than he had ever run it. "I take the cart side," he said. "You take the pit." "Go." He stood up and breathed. The fire hit the two cart-pullers together. They came apart in the flame, legs still running as they burned. The cart slewed sideways and stopped. Harlen swept the line right and caught a third Vael crossing to help. It went down screaming a sound no throat should make. Elina was already in the air. She dropped on the pit crew with the sharp edge of the left wing leading. The first Vael lost its head clean. She landed, spun, and opened the second from shoulder to hip. Glass came away red. The last two ran for the hole. Harlen burned one on the lip. It fell in trailing fire. Elina threw the violet shard she carried at the other. It stuck in the base of its skull. Quiet came down fast. Harlen killed the rig. His collarbone throbbed under the fresh burn. He went to the cart. The lock was Vael work, blue and humming. He shoved the muzzle of the rig against it and gave it two seconds. The iron sagged. He kicked the door. One prisoner alive. A woman, older, glasses cracked, one arm bent wrong. Blood down her front from a hit she'd taken when the cart slewed. Harlen had done that. He knew it as soon as he saw her. Elina landed beside him. She looked at the woman. She looked at the hole still pouring smoke. "We carry her," Elina said. "Now."