On Earth, that was a classic drug dealer move—flash first to make sure there are no cops or to ask if the person there was interested before moving in for the sale.
“We’ve got to get up there.” I set the MealBagz down and headed for the cliff.
“Oi, go easy on the food!” Warcry grabbed up the packages. “I’m bushed, grav. I’ll fall off the bleedin’ rock if I don’t get something in me gut.”
“It’s got to be now. That shuttle that just landed could be Sanya’s getaway car.”
Warcry let out a cross between a growl and a sigh. “Like blooming Fight Month on Ku-Noctred, ain’t it.” He came to the base of the cliff with me and shoved a MealBag at me. “Eat this. We can’t crash in there on fumes.”
I bolted mine down, and he did the same, staring up at the cliff.
“We climb, then we fight, is that it?” He looked at me. “Think your legs’ll hold up after all that running?”
Something occurred to me then, an idea so nuts that it must’ve come from some kind of hunger delirium. That, or I’d been around Rali too long.
“Maybe they don’t have to,” I said.
I sank into the sword stance and pulled Wrathblade. Immediately, the whispers started tripping over each other.
I’d been there since I was born, Death cultivator. It wasn’t my fault I was this way. You never gave me a chance to find out if there was something better.
You think you stopped evil just because you cut me down? People like me seep into every dark corner and grow outward from there. You’ll never eradicate all of us.
I tried to stop. I would’ve managed if you’d let me live. I was so close to kicking it. So close to getting better.
My fingernails dug bloody crescents into my palms as the accusations echoed through my brain.
“What’re ya planning to do with that, grav?” Warcry’s voice snapped me out of it.
I forced my hands open, then hooked them in my back pockets so they wouldn’t ball up again.
Wrathblade was waiting patiently, whispers radiating off it like its purple glow.
“We need a ride to the top of the cliff,” I told the uchigatana.
It was a lot weirder talking to a sword when I wasn’t in the heat of battle, but Wrathblade moved immediately, turning sideways, then lowering to hover a few inches off the ground. The blade stretched until it was long enough for Warcry and me to stand on it at the same time.
The ginger gave Wrathblade the hairy eyeball, then glared up at the cliff like he was measuring it.
“I ain’t gettin’ on that thing,” he said.
This was serious. I could hear the whispers of the dead trying to drag me down into my own guilty conscience. I could see the lights from an enemy encampment where a backstabbing gangster whose kishotenketsu way outranked ours might already be using the ancient artifact she’d stolen from us. We were probably going to get seriously injured or killed or kill someone else to take that artifact back. This wasn’t the time for a joke.
But a setup like that doesn’t come along every day.
“Everybody knows you want to ride my sword, Warcry. Just get on.”
Riverside Recon
AFTER I STOPPED LAUGHING and picked myself up off the ground, and my script tattoo finished healing the jaw Warcry’s punch had almost cracked, we decided that ascending closer to the waterfall would give us better cover than going up right in front of the lights.
Flying on a magical sword was almost as much fun as flooring the gas on a straightaway with your windows down. The wind tore through my hair, and mist from the waterfall splashed in my face, washing away the sweat and salt grime from hours of running. We made it to the top in no time.
The glow we’d seen from below immediately made sense. It wasn’t a city, but hundreds or maybe thousands of work lights set up around the clifftop ruins of a temple. The temple was only four stories, but if you were standing on the top floor, looking out over the fall line at the treetops, it must’ve felt like the top of the world.
Beyond the temple, a small airstrip had been clear-cut, and just under the tree line a massive camp had been set up. Instead of tents, they had dozens of newer-looking metal sheds. Signs for stores—Noodles, Saloon, Healing & Herbs, Purchase Orders, Techsmith, and a bunch of others—were nailed across the tops, and more sheds were being constructed around the edges of camp, with construction crews still hard at work under bright work lamps. Banks of generators sat stacked at intervals, black ropes of power cords meandering between buildings. Their dragonfly drones buzzed around the camp, flashing iridescent green when they caught the harsh light from the work lamps.
South of the ruins was an open field of swaying grass that looked mostly untouched. There was a small trail matted in the grass around the temple, but nothing leading off toward the river. Hulking boulders lined the edge of the field and created a border with the river that looked like a herd of elephants leaning against each other.
I had Wrathblade set us down in the shadows between a pair of boulders the size of houses, then sheathed the spectral sword into nothingness.
The whispers cut off mid-hiss.
Warcry and I crouched in the shadows.
“We gotta move closer.” Warcry said what I was thinking. “Can’t see aught from here.”
He was right. It was a good hiding spot, but the crumbling ruins of the temple sat between us and the airstrip, where the shuttle that had flashed them would’ve landed.
“There’s no cover out there but the grass.” I twisted around to check the river. “Maybe if we head upstream, then come at them from the southwest, through the trees.”
“That’s a good plan,” a third voice said behind us. “It’s how I usually get over here.”
I triggered
