and a very small supply of basic powders and salts. With all of the banned substances in Dirge there wasn’t much to be had from the alchemist, and everything of any value was buried in piles of discarded clockwork components and spare automaton parts. Cross tried his best to look interested at the wares while he watched the pale woman.
“ Graves,” he said, not looking up from the copper wiring he inspected. The speckled merchant who ran the table had finally left Cross alone.
“ I see her,” Graves said quietly beside him. “She’s not being very careful.”
“ Which means?”
“ We’re meant to see her,” Graves said. “She could be a diversion.”
“ I don’t suppose it could mean that she actually is trying to hide from us, and we’re just that good.”
“ Um…no,” Graves said.
Stone and Cristena had gone off in search of map paper and compasses, which had a propensity to randomly break down in the magic-soaked wastes of the Bone March. They regrouped in short order, and Graves told them about their tail.
“ Damn,” Cristena said. “She’s Raza.”
“ Huh?” Stone said. “Never heard of them.”
“ They’re new to Dirge. Monks who’ve sold their services to the Ebon Cities in exchange for immortality. They’re like constables. And they’re onto us.”
“ Monks?” Graves laughed. “Who cares about monks? What are they going to do, serve us champagne, drown us in porridge and ‘vow of silence’ us to death?”
“ Monks with martial arts training, magic, and guns,” Cristena said shortly.
“ Oh, okay,” Graves said with a nod. “Monks.”
“ Monks that aren’t very subtle,” Cross added. They pooled their purchased goods together and made for the weapons dealer carts, the last intended stop on their trip through the market bazaar. Cross thought they had more than enough guns and blades, but Graves insisted that wasn’t possible.
“ The Raza are unsubtle by design,” Cristena explained as they walked. The market was busy, but at least people weren’t shoulder-to-shoulder. “Do you guys really need to shop for more weapons? It might be best if we left quickly, before the Raza decides we’re worth more than just a casual look.”
Cross added his agreement, but Stone and Graves reminded him that Kray was gone, and they lacked anyone with good experience with the mini-gun (Stone and Graves both knew how to use it, but neither of them had logged enough hours with the weapon to carry it and shoot it effectively). That plus the fact that Cross was without magic meant they were short a heavy hitter. It couldn’t hurt, Graves argued, to make a quick perusal of the armaments, even if they were being followed.
The weapons racks of the bazaar were spare — the sale of magic artillery was illegal inside the city limits, so the selection was limited to jury-rigged arms and old blades, many of which, Cross thought, weren’t worth even the modest prices being asked. There were a few grenades (which they purchased) and some arming wire for explosives, but it wasn’t until they neared the exit that they finally found what they were looking for.
“ The grenade launcher is the M203 model,” the merchant explained. He was a tall and skeletally thin man with a thick moustache and a long black coat that made him look like a villain out of an old Western. “The machine gun is an M16A2. Both are well maintained, and I have ammo for sale.”
“ How much?” Graves asked.
The thick-stocked rifle of the machine-gun was attached to a short tube-like launcher underneath, an intimidating looking weapon with its own trigger and a barrel the size of a baseball.
“ And I’m sure you don’t think using that thing would be overkill,” Cross asked Graves.
“ Are you kidding?” Graves laughed. “That thing is my dream girl.”
In spite of Cross and Cristena’s misgivings, they used most of their remaining credits to purchase the weapon and all of the available ammo, and even then they could only afford it all by exchanging half of the remaining ammunition for the mini-gun. (Cross was of the opinion that they should have just traded the mini-gun itself, but he was again outvoted.)
They finished up their business and made for the camel. Cristena ushered them to hurry. Based on Cristena’s mood, Cross grew more and more afraid of the Raza by the second.
It was mid-morning when they’d finished packing the camel out on the crowded lane where they’d left it — Cross thought they’d actually made efficient use of their time, all things considered — and the sky had turned a shade of blood red. Thick and sulfurous clouds amassed in the sky like an angry flock. Long shadows fell over the streets, lending a dusk-like appearance to the mid-day air. Homunculi flew through the air delivering messages or missives for their masters, and mules towed heavy carts loaded with copper and iron ore to the factories to be broken down. Cross looked up and regarded the bodies impaled on the spikes of the central black tower.
The camel, ugly beast though it was, was highly cooperative, and it didn’t balk at all as loads of blankets, food and the weighty mini-gun were all strapped to the cargo boxes affixed tightly to the grotesque creature’s back. Cross, unfortunately, was handed the duty of handling the brute, by weight of the weak argument that warlocks had a natural sense of animal husbandry. Cross told the others what he thought of that theory.
It took him a few attempts at tugging on the reins and espousing a number of encouraging thoughts to the camel before the beast would be coaxed into following him.
“ I can teach you how to ride it,” Cristena told him as they started out of town. They’d managed to acquire horses with the aid of Cristena’s more trustworthy contacts there in the market. Cross was given a bay that seemed relatively unconcerned by his presence on her back, and her lack of spunk and fallen arches gave him the impression that she was far from a young creature.
They rode nonchalantly towards the north gate. Dirge’s streets widened at that end of town, and the number of inns, factories and other business noticeably dropped, replaced instead by shorter residential buildings and the remnants of old parks, greenhouses and statues, all of which stood in a general state of disrepair. Thunder growled on the horizon, a false precursor to rain.
“ So how long did you pit-fight there at the White Spider?” Graves asked Cristena as they rode. Cross knew Graves’ flirting when he saw it.
“ Not long,” she answered. “I get around.”
“ Do you, now?” Graves smiled. Cristena gave him a look that could’ve melted a vampire. It took quite a bit of control on Cross’ part not to laugh.
“ Are we going to have any issues getting out of Dirge?” Stone asked.
“ No,” Cristena answered. “They shouldn’t even notice us so long as we keep our heads down.”
They approached the gates. A crowd had assembled around a street brawl, and the squad had to take some time to navigate around the throng of people. The lower tip of the iron portcullis hung down over the open portal like a row of onyx teeth.
They had to pass through the center of a four-way intersection to get to the gate itself, which stood next to a small wooden guardhouse. The crowd was a hundred yards behind them by the time they reached the crossroads. Most of the buildings near the gatehouse looked deserted, and the entire area was surprisingly dark. There were no gate guards, at least not there on the ground. Cross saw sentries on the parapets.
“ I think there may be a problem…” he started, but Cristena cut him off.
“ Damn it!”
Two pale women, their blue-black hoods thrown back, stood in the center of each of the streets to the left and right of the gate. A third identical woman appeared out of nowhere and stood just outside the city, blocking their way at the far end of the neck, the walled road that led out of the city and to the portcullis. They could have been triplets, and any one of them could have been the woman Cross and Graves had spied earlier in the market. They had bizarre runic markings on their skin, serpents and spirals that twisted around their heads, necks and chests. Their eyes were blank and pale blue, like pools. The air felt suddenly static, and Cross heard a popping like distant firecrackers.
It was the sound of a witch’s war magic being readied, a sound Cross would know in his sleep.
Cross dug his heels into the flanks of his horse, who took off with such speed and force his rider was almost thrown clear. Gunshots rained into the dirt around them. Cross led the horse through the neck and out of the open gateway, half expecting the iron portcullis to drop down and perforate them mid-step.
The portcullis didn’t move. Neither did the Raza sister who stood in his path just outside of the neck. If Cross had been an accomplished rider, he would have steered his horse in a wide berth around her…but he wasn’t an
