“Under the mountain,” Jaedia had said. Maya looked at the flat cliff face, the spot where the rock was stained with plaguespawn blood, and suddenly understood. “Down there. There’s a way inside.”
“Inside?” Beq said. “Like into a ghoul tunnel?”
“Something like that,” Maya said.
“You have no way of knowing that,” Tanax said.
“Jaedia told me.” Maya picked up her haken. “She gave me a job to do, and I’m going to finish it.”
“You—” Tanax shook his head and glanced at Beq, who shrugged.
“You’re the one who wanted to join her expedition,” she said.
There was a long pause.
“All right,” Tanax said, looking down at the melee. “If we move quickly and don’t stop, we should be able to keep them off us. I’ll carry Jaedia.” He looked up at Maya. “What’s this job?”
“Saving the Order and the Republic,” Maya said.
“Oh,” Beq said. “Is that all?”
Chapter 25
Gyre
“Leviathan’s Womb?” Kit said. “What’s a Leviathan’s Womb?”
“You will understand when you see,” Naumoriel said, closing the canopy of his war-construct. “Come.”
The huge thing spidered over the dusty stone floor, and Gyre, Kit, and the two remaining soldier-constructs followed in its wake. They passed down a short corridor lined with more constructs, low-slung, six-legged, insectoid things of metal and black muscle. Kit eyed them with distrust.
“These guys weren’t willing to come help us outside?” she said.
“They are not yet active,” Naumoriel said. “The constructs here are … different. Without the Core Analytica, they are incomplete.”
“A construct army?” Kit said skeptically. “Is that the power you’ve come to find?”
Naumoriel said nothing.
Gyre had expected the whole mountain to be a maze of tunnels, like Refuge or the ruins under Deepfire. Instead, after only a few minutes, they came up into a much larger space. Much larger, he realized, as he stared around it. Even his silver eye couldn’t make out the ceiling or the far walls. They must have hollowed out half the mountain. They stood on a long walkway, a smooth rock wall to their right, while to their left and ahead of them was …
The scale of it was hard to grasp. A metal plate, stretching below the level of the walkway and up over Gyre’s head. A narrow seam, and then another plate, and another, on and on. Like a building, a fortress, the Spike laid on its side. Gyre was about to ask why the ghouls would build their fortification here when he spotted the curving, jointed shapes in the distance, like …
Legs?
His mouth fell open and stayed there.
It’s a construct. Something like Naumoriel’s war-construct, armored in steel, but vast beyond imagining. The size of a city. A mountain.
“Leviathan,” he whispered.
“Indeed,” Naumoriel said. He’d opened his canopy again, leaning forward to look at the awesome thing with his huge, rheumy eyes. “The greatest project ever created by my kind. The pinnacle of our mastery of dhaka, our power. It has slept here, undisturbed, for four hundred years.”
“This … this is what you’ve been looking for?” said Kit. For once, even she didn’t have a sarcastic remark.
“Of course,” Naumoriel said. “My father led the team that created it. It was designed to assault the Chosen in the heart of their power, to crush their precious city and bring their empire to ruin.”
“What happened?” Gyre said. “Why is it still here?”
“My father was betrayed,” the old ghoul snapped. “Before the Core Analytica could be completed, he was brought down by those who wanted to hide instead of fight. Those who thought it better to cower in the earth while our children were burned like vermin than to strike back and inflict the same pain on our destroyers.
He took a deep breath, something in his chest rattling wetly. “And since then, I have worked to bring it to life. Scavenged what I needed from the rubble of our empire. It was built to fight the Chosen at their height. Once it is activated, nothing in this fallen world will be capable of stopping it.” He looked down at Kit. “It hosts a swarm of constructs, all controlled by the Core Analytica, to gather organic material from the land around it, and so it can power itself indefinitely. It is perfection, and all that remains is to deliver the last piece.”
Gyre tried to catch Kit’s eye, but she kept looking at Naumoriel with a disingenuous grin.
“So,” she said. “What happens now?”
Naumoriel pulled his canopy closed again. The war-construct started forward, toward the end of the—dock, Gyre realized; that was the best analogy. Ahead, there was a tower, stretching up into the darkness and connected to a bridge that arched over to the top of the vast construct. The pair of constructs that had flanked them doubled back, toward the archway where they’d come in.
“I will install the Core Analytica,” Naumoriel said. His tentacle-arm flourished the code-key that had opened the door. “Once it is in place, this key will mark me as the Leviathan’s master. It will obey only me.”
“I see.” And now she did look at Gyre, and raise her eyebrows suggestively.
“And us?” Gyre said. “The things you promised us?”
“Elariel will provide Kitsraea’s cure when you return to Refuge,” Naumoriel said dismissively. “As for you, boy, Leviathan and I will grant your desire ourselves. The end of the Republic and the Order, and the final destruction of all the works of the sun-lovers.” He reached the base of the tower, and one tendril stroked its surface. “You only need to watch.”
There was a boom, echoing out of the tunnel behind them, and a puff of dust emerged from the arch. Gyre half turned, frowning, and saw the two soldier-constructs moving into the murk, blades gleaming. In that moment, the base of the tower opened, revealing a chamber barely big enough for Naumoriel’s war-construct. He stepped forward, and the doors began to close behind him.
“The Order comes,” he said. “You must delay them until my preparations are complete.”
“Wait just a fucking—” Kit began, but the door closed on her words. Gyre heard a whirr as the lifter chamber sped upward, toward the top of the tower, where the bridge connected it to Leviathan.
“Plaguefire,” Kit swore, skidding to a halt at the doors. She pressed her fingers to the metal, searching for the seam. “I have to get this fucking thing open.”
“I can set off the bomb,” Gyre said, moving to shrug off his pack to find the detonator. “Stop him.”
“No!” Kit said, turning to him and grabbing him by the shoulder. “No. Not until Naumoriel finishes installing the Core Analytica. Don’t you get it?” She gestured at the hulking shape of Leviathan, eyes gleaming. “This is exactly what we wanted, Gyre. Can you imagine if we were in control of that thing? Forget selling it to Refuge. They’ll fix me, or we’ll crush them underfoot. And the Order? You can take the Forge to pieces. This is it. This is what I’ve been looking for my whole life.” She gulped for breath. “All we have to do is get there.”