The Select's Bodyguard Page 7

  Chapter 7 - Discoveries in the Lab

  The final approach to the Academy is uneventful. The road is relatively clear, and the nearing goal has reinvigorated me. I know it is a momentary boost, but I will take what I can get.

  The Academy seems churned by giant hands, the walls mangled, but the damage seems largely superficial. It is built upon a stone pillar that rises out of the Well, a pillar erected by Select of several centuries past. They christened the well Curiosity’s Fount and set to work with their experiments. I wonder at their ambition, to create a residence in the center of the source of their power. Rumors say they attempted even greater things in their desire to live as near the magic as possible.

  As is well known, the laboratory and research center they established evolved into the hub of the Wheel and modern-day Jalseion; now, it is an isolated, empty edifice, stranded above a desolate canyon of no importance.

  And I am certain that the Academy is empty. Nothing moves in the exposed rooms. I remember the cars and generators in the city, blown to pieces by the blast, whatever it was. Did men who could feel magic and manipulate magic also fill up and overload on magic?

  “We’re almost there,” I say.

  “Save your breath,” Calea bites back. She is on the ragged edge of exhaustion.

  The entry arch held a vast wall of glass, in which had been set a number of doors. The ground is covered in shards now. I am glad for my shoes. It is as if we are entering some vast cave, dark and forbidding. The Academy is a pensive structure. Within, the rooms are close and cluttered, most cut off from sunlight and illuminated by the building’s generator, which is certainly destroyed. Luckily, Calea’s labs are on the basement floor, which is built into the rock, in the outer ring, since her experiments deal with the actual substance of magic. This places her both closer to the source and deeper into the rock of the pillar. This last is for protection if something were to go wrong with her experiments.

  I stop in the dark passage. Something is moving.

  “What are you doing?” Calea demands. “You’re not going to give out on me.”

  I squeeze her to quiet her, straining my ears. I hear it again, a rustling, but no voices. I thought I heard voices the first time. I turn aside, into the nearest room, one with walls taken off. Calea begins to protest, but I set her down in the corner with a firm command: “Don’t make a sound.” Her face is an entire diatribe, but she is silent.

  I wait. After a time, Calea begins to speak, but I cut her off. Ten minutes pass. The structure creaks. Wind whispers over the rooms. I am not satisfied.

  I have been examining the room. It is an office, with two walls lined with shelves. The books are oddly disordered. Whole sections are untouched, while others lie in disarray across the floor. I cannot see it from where I am, but some form waits behind the desk. I stand, holding one of my knives. I’m certain the pistol is worthless now, its magic charges overloaded. I approach.

  The form is a corpse. Another familiar face, a bookworm by the name of Julian. I used to see him in the common room, occasionally. His body is marred by scratches and bruises, but it is uncovered, so there is no evidence of what caused his injuries. It could mean a lot of things, probably, but to my heightened senses, it means this: he died face first and someone turned him over.

  “Let’s get this done,” I say. I lift Calea in my arms. She does not protest much.

  “What do you think--?”

  “I’m carrying you. I’d like you to walk on your own two feet as soon as possible.”

  The floor seems uncertain beneath me. The Academy stands, but the foundation has shifted beneath it, somehow. All the well-defined passages have been shaken.

  The door to Calea’s labs is open. I stop at a distance and set her down in the frame of a neighboring door. She does not ask what I am doing. She senses it too.

  I have a knife in each hand, now, and a third in my belt. After the encounter with mercenaries three years ago, I taught myself how to hit a target at thirty feet. A Select with a grudge is likely to snuff me out without getting close, but I’ll make him hurt.

  I step into the room, silently, listening. Muffled voices slip in from the connected room. Stepping carefully, I cross to the next door. I peer around. Two men in dark uniforms wait at the door to Calea’s storage room. They are exchanging words quietly and looking in. Military. A third and fourth exit from storage, one holding a cylinder between his thumb and forefinger for the others to see. Calea’s newest battery. He places it in a padded container with a dozen others of various sizes.

  It is time for me to go. I need to return to Calea and hide her.

  I step into the room. “I can’t let you leave with those.”

  They raise their guns at me. I walk toward them. The guns are useless. I think they are useless. “Those don’t belong to you.”

  “We outnumber you. Leave us be, and you’ll live.”

  “As I see it, you may very well be responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands, of Jalseians. I’ll take my chances.”

  “This isn’t your fight.”

  I laugh. He doesn’t know how wrong he is. I sold my life to Calea. It was my choice. I don’t back down from a choice.

  “You have ten seconds,” I say.

  “We’ll shoot.”

  “You’re Select. Thyrion wouldn’t send less. And I’m still living. You’re powerless. Five seconds.”

  I sense the move before I see it. My first knife leaves my hand just as it begins. The commander falls, the pack of batteries going down with him. My second knife lodges deep into the abdomen of the man beside him as the first man hits his knees. I rush in, barreling with all my weight into the third, smashing him against the wall. He’s dazed. I have a moment to grab the batteries--but the remaining soldier has already taken them. I lunge for him, but a hand grasps me from behind. The soldier with the batteries retreats from the room as I turn to face my attacker. Though dazed, the third man is flailing, trying to keep me busy and perhaps land a punch. He tries to pin me and I let him, using his momentum to my advantage. I force him around, press him to the floor, and choke him out. It takes no time, too much time. I should have pulled my third knife.

  A solid weight slams against me. Slippery hands grasp my throat, knees press into my back. His grip is strong but slick, and I pull my head free, forcing my elbow behind me with all the force I can manage. It connects solidly. I gain my moment and scramble away.

  I turn, lifting my knee. It slams into bone. I kick with my other foot. Solid contact. He falls to the floor with a squeal of pain. Only then do I realize who it is I’m fighting. It’s the commander; my borrowed shoes have dug into the knife wound. The knife itself has fallen out, apparently.

  I take a second to breathe. It’s a mere moment. I have to contain three men or I need to leave them and return to Calea. They are incapacitated for now, I decide, one unconscious, one twice beaten, and the last pale-faced in the corner. My aim was good.

  I hear her scream. Perhaps I’ve been hearing it, but it finally registers. A spike of panic lacerates my insides. I am already at the door, in the hall. Calea is writhing. I see a form racing away in the darkness. I throw my final knife, but it is too far and I am moving too fast. He escapes.

  Calea is screaming, holding nothing back. It is full of pain and anger. I see the wound in her side first, a nasty, bloody gash. Her hand is pressed against it in agony. I retreive towels from the bathroom in her lab. She has quieted a little, but she is cursing, mostly at me. Nothing coherent, just vile, hateful words. I place the first towel against the wound and press firmly. She intakes a painful breath before swinging her arm at me.

  “Stay still,” I command.

  “Let it bleed, let it! Let it run, let it spurt, let me die!”

  I know why she is saying such things. It is not the pain. In a little bit, she will tell me it does not hurt. I see what is missing. I saw it at first, but it was not the most pressing matter. Her leg and arm h
ave been stolen. The stubs glisten with blood. The limbs were removed forcibly, the grafts cut through.

  The last soldier--he took my knife from the commander’s body. My knife did this.

  I let her wear her tongue out against me. I place another towel on as the first soaks through, and then another. The flow is slowing. I need to move her as soon as I can, but where will I take her? It is a long way over dangerous ground to anyone who might have the skills and resources to help.

  “Why won’t you let me die?” she cries. “You’ve failed. It’s over. Now or in a few hours, I die. Let me die. There is nothing left.”

  I do not resist. I change the subject. “What will they do with your limbs?”

  “Who cares? Study them, wear them, hang them on a wall. The world is ended because of me. Let me die with it.”

  “It’s not your fault. Thyrion doesn’t have the resources to destroy a well, and they certainly didn’t do it to get to you.”

  “Quiet! Idiot! Fool! Someone destroyed it. Someone did it. Who else? Thyrion is covered in blood, from beginning to end. ‘Red as blood, red as blood, the Thyrion soldier comes.’ They are taking everything with them, all the resources, all the ideas, all the brains they lack.”

  “I’ll get you out of here, and when you’re better, you can move to another well.”

  I am putting her into a fighting mood. Her words become less emotional, more emphatic, as she argues. “You think this is the end? If they control who has wells, they control who has power. Will they let me live quietly near some backwater pool of a well? No! And I wouldn’t. I will be free to work and to use magic. But Jalseion is dead and the idea of Jalseion is dead and I am dead. You are lying to yourself and to me. Everything I have has been taken from me. You started this journey by coming to find me--you should end it. Take your knife and finish it.”

  I stand up, leaving her to press the wound. She is half a woman, covered in blood, and as pale as a corpse.

  “Coward!” she shouts. “Leave me then! Run away! Bodyguard, hah! How have you ever protected me? Weak, stupid, useless!”

  “If any magic remains, could you use it?”

  “The Well is empty!”

  “If any remains below, a puddle or a small spring, could you use it to save yourself?” She would have to be quite close to sense a source that small.

  “It doesn’t work like that. Magic is brute force. It doesn’t heal. It doesn’t perform miracles. It burns and moves and smashes.”

  “You can use needles of fire to close the wound.”

  “You are getting desperate, Bron.” But I can tell she is considering the possibility.

  “I will see that you live.”

  “Then why do you not take me back to the city? How would you find this hypothetical magic, anyway? Go down into the Well?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to see me die, then. This Well is the deepest on record. How would we get down? Fall?” She grimaces from pain as she speaks; I think she humors the conversation because it keeps her mind busy.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Why not the city? Don’t I have a better chance of surviving the trip to the city?”

  At first, I do not know if I will answer her. Perhaps I am wrong. What does it matter if I am? “You will not make it, because you will not try to make it. You will give up. You think there is nothing left for you.”

  She watches me carefully. “And the Well?”

  “If there is magic, there is hope for Jalseion--for you.”

  She looks at me from behind her mask. “I would rather stay here.”

  “You don’t really have a choice. I’m the one carrying you.”