She attacked, and immaterial haken clashed with unmetal, deiat thrashing and sparking against the Elder blade. Maya held her block for a moment, blood dripping from her elbow, but it was clear the dhakim was stronger. She danced away instead, evading the next cut, aiming a riposte at the woman’s face that was easily countered. The plaguespawn kept pace with the duel as Maya gave ground, slowly circling the pile of crates. The dhakim’s mental control of the thing was better than Maya had given her credit for, and the creatures acted as extensions of her will, darting in to nip and slash at Maya when she was distracted and jumping away before she could cut them down.
Fuck. The fact that she wasn’t going to win this fight hit Maya like a revelation. Fuck fuck fuck. She had to think of something else—not because she needed to do well to impress the Council, to help Jaedia, even to save the children, but because if she didn’t, she was going to fucking die here, her guts spilled by an unmetal blade.
The dhakim came at her with a fast series of brutally strong blows, and when she went to parry, Maya was hammered to her knees. One of the plaguespawn darted in, jaws closing on the meat of her calf, and a scream tore its way out of her throat. Her opponent raised her blade, smiling in triumph—
And a bolt of blue-white energy tore across the room, hitting the plaguespawn and detonating in a burst of pulverized flesh and bone. The whole back half of the creature was blown away. The second monster spun with a gurgling growl, but another bolt caught it and blasted its head and shoulders completely apart.
“Maya!” Beq stood in the tunnel entrance, hair covered in dirt, blaster pistol held in a solid two-handed grip. She fired again, but the dhakim ducked, and the blast hit the far wall in a spray of dirt.
“Interfering plaguepit—” the dhakim growled. She sprinted toward Beq, dodging another blaster bolt. Beq scrambled back, far too slowly.
No. Maya, still on her knees, raised her haken and sighted along it. She called up every bit of power she had left and let it flow through the haken as a lance of white-hot fire.
Somehow, the dhakim sensed it coming. She spun and raised her sword, the unmetal catching the beam and splintering it in a dozen directions. Sparks sprayed across the woman, scorching holes in her clothes, but she gritted her teeth and kept her Elder weapon between them. Even unmetal would melt, eventually, but Maya didn’t have the strength. She felt herself faltering, the beam flickering out, and darkness clawed at the edges of her vision.
Beq, though, didn’t wait that long. She brought her blaster up and fired, and the dhakim’s head came apart like rotten fruit.
*
When Maya opened her eyes, the cavern was full of people.
Beq knelt by her side. Maya’s right arm was stretched out on a cloth, and Beq was applying something green and vaguely astringent from a tin. The wound in her calf was already wrapped up, and Maya recognized the numbing sting of quickheal. Beyond her, there were quite a few voices speaking at once, mixed with children crying.
“Maya?” Beq leaned over. “Are you awake?”
Maya gave a cautious nod.
“Thank the Chosen,” Beq said. “I’d hoped it was just power exhaustion that had knocked you out, but I couldn’t be sure. How do you feel?”
“Not … bad.” Maya swallowed. In truth, she felt oddly better than she had in some past scrapes; letting the panoply draw power until the last minute left her connection to deiat scraped raw, and she’d avoided that, at least. “Arm hurts, obviously.”
“Right. Let me finish up.” Beq went back to applying the ointment, twisting a dial on her spectacles. Lenses clicked. “You got cut up pretty good, but not too deep. With some quickheal it’ll be all right in a few days.”
“Right.” Maya lifted her head for a moment to look around, but the effort was too much, and she quickly lay back down. “What happened?”
“After, you mean? Of course you mean after. You remember what happened before.” Beq looked over, eyes made huge by the lenses’ magnification. “You do remember, don’t you?”
“I think so. You shot the dhakim.”
For a moment Beq went still, and then she gave a quick nod and looked away. “Tanax and Varo turned up not long after. That girl—”
“Streza?”
“Right. She came to Kaiura’s house, screaming her head off, but Tanax was in the middle of an interview and wanted her to wait. I argued with him and—” Her face flushed slightly. “When he wouldn’t listen, I just walked out and followed Streza. Varo convinced him to come along eventually.”
“You …” Maya swallowed again. Her chest ached, the flesh around the Thing tender. “You saved my ass.”
“I did? I mean, I guess I did. You probably had things under control. I just thought—”
“Nope.” Maya turned her head to look at Beq, who was blushing further. “I was definitely going to die.”
“Oh.” Beq went quiet for a moment. “Then I’m glad I rushed.”
“Me too.”
There was another silence. Beq pulled a roll of bandage out of her pack and started wrapping up Maya’s arm.
“So what’s happening now?” Maya said.
“Kaiura and a bunch of the villagers followed Tanax,” Beq said. “I’m not sure what they’re fighting about now.” She lowered her voice. “Tanax is really angry with you.”
Maya sighed. “Of course he is.”
A few minutes later, she had the strength to sit up, and Beq helped her wobble to her feet. A small crowd of villagers stood by the cages, all open now. Maya recognized Kaiura in their midst and caught a glimpse of Streza clinging to a bent-backed old woman and a filthy, sobbing younger boy in a fierce hug. Some of the rest were also comforting the rescued children, while a small circle around Kaiura spoke to each other in low tones, occasionally glancing up at Maya and the others.
Tanax and Varo, meanwhile, had pried the lids off a few of the crates and were carefully examining the contents. Small jars were packed neatly in straw, beside boxes stacked with waxy tablets wrapped in oiled paper.
“Up and about already, Maya?” Varo said.
“Didn’t want to get lazy,” Maya said. “Were all the kids okay?”
“Well enough,” Varo said. “Just scared and dirty. They were only here for a few days.”
“According to Kaiura, they were taken after someone discovered the smugglers moving goods into the cavern.” Tanax nodded to the entrance, where the wooden barricade had been. They’d removed it, and Maya could see out to the bank of the river. “Best guess is they use this as a depot before moving the stuff overland. Apparently they grabbed the children as hostages.”
“Thank the Chosen we got here, then,” Maya said.
“Indeed.” Tanax frowned. “It might have been a great success, if you’d exercised better judgment.”
Maya stood frozen for a moment, trying to digest that. Beq stepped forward, hands raised.
“We don’t have to get into that now,” she said. “Maya’s still—”
“What do you mean, better judgment?” Maya said. “And how is this not a success?”
“All three smugglers are dead,” Tanax snapped. “Two of them at your hands, I might add. We have no opportunity to interrogate them, which might have led us to the rest of their organization.”