piled out.
It was then that she spotted the raptor that could only be Twitch, the silver falcon with the long, incongruous horse’s tail trailing behind it, soaring above the trees and headed in her direction. Her wards of seeming and dissembling should hide the truth from the fairy at least for a moment, but Jane knew she needed to hurry.
She repeated her stay whistle to the Thracian Mare, wedged Azazel’s hoof fragment firmly beneath the saddle, and retreated to the sorghum, holding in her hand the gasoline-soaked rag wrapped around a rock.
Stepping a cubit’s length into the sea of grass, she pulled out a cigarette lighter and waited.
The Mare stood calmly beside the tractor, ignoring the thick reek of gasoline and the band. That was a reflection of the Mare’s impressive discipline, and her centuries of training—her sense of smell was so acute that she had led Jane across three States on the trail of the brown Dodge van and never lost the scent. The falcon overhead cried angrily, and the Mare ignored that, too.
Jane drifted a couple of yards to one side to get a better view; at a fence on the far side of the dirt aisle, she saw the rock and rollers climbing into the field.
The men all carried weapons, and they approached the tractor with deliberate steps, fanning out like the fingers of a groping hand. Even in the storm-confused dim light of night, Jane could see that Adrian was in the middle of the line, holding some kind of machine pistol in one hand and looking down into the palm of his other. Jim walked beside him, sword drawn. Mike and Eddie came forward on the wings, holding pistols.
She knew that what they saw must be the tractor, and beyond it, a parked motorcycle. Then the wizard hissed something and they all halted. He dug into a pocket and came out with a piece of glass that he held up to one eye like a monocle.
“Son of a bitch!” he spat.
Jane raised the lighter to the gas bomb in her hand—
and the sky exploded into flame.
***
Chapter Six
Qayna raced under the spires of Ainok as the trails of flame hurtled earthward. She knew that each burning meteorite, bright despite the noon sun overhead and dragging behind it a plume of black and yellow smoke, must be a Swordbearer. She should be hurrying to get out of the city, she knew, but instead she ran toward its center.
She wanted to warn Azazel; she owed him that much.
The crow flew on ahead, just beyond her reach.
Other Ainokites heeded the more sane imperative, though, and she struggled to push through them. Women and men of her own kind—not quite her own kind, but her kin, at least—rushed in a thick and burbling stream toward the gates of the city, and she had to push fiercely to force them to part and let her upstream.
The Fallen were fewer, easier to see and avoid, but much more dangerous. They towered above their mortal subjects, and though Qayna had become accustomed to their appearance, the beast heads and limbs were still terrifying when they rushed at her at full speed. A towering Fallen with the lower body of a horse, Ezeq’el, trampled people who might have been her servants, or even her lovers; a giant with the face of an octopus or a squid dragged shrieking bodies with him as he plunged into one of Ainok’s great canals, finding it a more expedient route to the exits; a corpulent man with long yellow tusks jutting from his face and spikes growing from his back and shoulders lowered his head and charged through the crowd, leaving behind him a trail of mangled corpses and blood.
These were Qayna’s people now, and they were destroying themselves in their flight.
The towers of Eden, Mother had told her, were observatories. She and Father had climbed within them to the platforms at their heights to watch the Messengers in flight above them, when they had been Eden’s lord and lady. The spires of Ainok, for the most part, were merely spikes, but they were enormous, fingers jabbed in accusation at the sky or daggers pointed at the throat of heaven. Their heights were not platforms—other than on the one, central tower—they were the sharp points of spears.
Whether it had something to do with the spires or not, the Bearers of the Sword burned in their inexorable paths toward points outside the city.
At Ainok’s center were the Grand Plaza,