City of Towers_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [82]
Lorrak nodded to his men, and the halberdiers at the sides of the lift began to move forward.
Daine studied the dwarf. This was no idle threat. If the two guards at the gate didn’t join in the fight immediately, he and Lei might have a chance. Daine had held his own against Lorrak the day before, but the sergeant was right. Even if they defeated the guards, things would only get worse. There was only one solution.
As the guards closed in, he turned to Lei and charged. He slammed into her, wrapping his arms around her. She was staggered by the blow and knocked off balance. He lifted her up and threw himself at the railing. His hip stung as his leg scraped against the top of the rail, and then they were falling, plummeting down the half-mile drop between the lift and the lowest streets of Sharn.
Lei struggled as they fell. She was shouting, but the roaring of the wind drowned out the words. As the ground rushed up at them, Daine wondered if he’d made a mistake.
And then they stopped falling.
For a moment, they seemed to be standing still, then Daine realized they were still drifting down, slowly as a leaf falling from a tree.
Lei stopped struggling, taken aback by the change in velocity. “Daine?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Why aren’t we dead now?”
“Feather token. Something Captain Grazen gave me. It’s a charm they sell in the markets. Easy to see why people buy them. Only one use, though.”
“And he just gave it to you?”
“Yes. When he was explaining how Lorrak survived the fall.”
They were almost to the streets. No one seemed to be paying them any attention. Apparently, the citizens of Sharn were used to having people fall from the sky.
“And when you were jumping off the lift, did it ever occur to you that he might have actually given you the charm Lorrak used with its magic drained?”
“No.”
“Next time, I think I’d rather take my chances with the dwarf.”
They drifted the rest of the way in silence.
Pierce stalked the streets of High Walls. He had lost Jode at the lift. He had hoped to pick up the halfling’s trail in the lower districts, but his gift for tracking in the wild was proving to be of little use in the city. Following the captain’s orders, he was returning to the Manticore, and after last night’s fight, he was treating the district as hostile territory. Every shadow was a potential ambush, every passerby a possible enemy. In a way, he found this a relaxing exercise. The battle they’d fought last evening had been a release, a chance to serve his true purpose. But at the same time, it had been deeply disturbing. The people they had fought were Cyrans, the people he had spent his life defending. Old allies were now enemies, old friends had betrayed them … nothing made sense anymore. He missed the war, when life had been clear—defend your friends, kill the enemy, and do your best not to die. Questions easy. Answers clear. Not anymore.
So far he had stood by the captain. For all that his purpose was to defend Cyre, Pierce did not have the same sense of nationalism he had seen in many of his fellow soldiers. Most of his old comrades came from families that had lived in Cyre for generations. Many had lost loved ones or relatives in the centuries of war. They fought out of a burning desire for vengeance against Breland or Karrnath, seeking to repay their losses with blood. But Pierce had no family history. For that matter, he had no blood. Borders on a map, the concept of a nation … these things were meaningless to him. What mattered was the shape of a face, the distinctive sound of a Cyran accent. And what mattered most were his fellow soldiers, those few who had survived. Cyre might be destroyed, but Daine, Lei, Jode … they were his nation, his country. But what use was he to them, if the war was truly over?
Although these inner issues troubled his spirit, Pierce never let his concentration falter. A cloaked figure had been following Pierce for some distance. The stranger was making an effort to remain unseen, slipping into doorways and