Page 30 of Chained Knight

Well, she could almost be comforted if she knew precisely what either of those translated to. She was too busy with another question. “What about the…”Robots. How do I say robots?But they had a different word, one that arrived with a few moments’ thought. “The clockworks.”

Darjeth sobered, glancing in the chained man’s direction—a flicker, nothing more. “If any appear, my lady, they shall be quickly dealt with.”

What about the moaning things?Her courage didn’t extend far enough for that particular question. She uncapped the canteen slowly, trying to organize what she needed to know.

There had to be a better way of navigating fairytale nonsense. She wasn’t a lit major, though she’d read Grimm’s just like any other kid. Go figure, she should have studied up on politics, Che Guevara, or separatists instead of major artistic themes in the late Renaissance or methods of sculpture from Michelangelo to Rodin.

Three whole years since she’d been able to sit down and read a book. She was free of Mike and his parents, but there didn’t seem to be any libraries around. A pained laugh bubbled into her throat; she chased it away with a swallow of pondwater.

It tasted just the same—clear and cool, no trace of leather from its container. Now she wished she’d spent last nighttrawling through memories of literature instead of passed out from stress and overload.

“Keep it, if you like.” Darjeth indicated the canteen with a brief, efficient motion. They moved so gracefully, and she was a gawky, waddling duckling. “We should reach the Breach before long, and Gesthel near sundown. The Grey Lady will speak again, seeing you, and perhaps afterward we shall break the faithless accursed’s?—”

“All will be accomplished in due time,” the chained man interrupted. “And I doubt our lady wishes a mention of the enemy.”

I wouldn’t mind knowing a little more. But clearly it wasn’t part of the agenda, so Ari just returned the canteen with a tentative smile. Darjeth looked relieved, but he also steered his horse away and didn’t approach again.

Ari suppressed a sigh, and went back to studying the rain-washed landscape.

She was still thinking furiously when they reached the Breach.

Thin purple clouds stretched across the sky, moving gently with a steady breeze. The trees drew back as if afraid, revealing undulating green starred with more of the high rocky hills. It might have been a welcome change if not for the great jagged crevasse slashing across their route.

Even the flowers were vivid, white and deep blue roaming in bands over the hills, peeking through vigorous mint-smelling grass. But the tear in the earth looked fresh and awful, its sides sharp and a faint hollow whistle rising from its lip. It looked bigger than the Grand Canyon—that particular geographicalfeature had been on Mom’s bucket list, one of the few items not crossed off.

The lemon-brick road ran right up to the brink. Ari rubbed at her eyes, once more not quite believing what pupils and optic nerves were passing down the ol’ brain highway.

A massive long-dead creature had fallen across the canyon somehow. Either that or bones had been dragged from the huge animal’s grave, because spanning the Breach was a long chain of giant vertebrae, faintly tarnished. Curved ribs rose, smaller near the chasm’s edges and gradually larger as the skeletal wonder bowed near midpoint. The wind fluted through bony reeds, a long modulated moan, and Ari’s stomach clenched as if every ounce of pondwater had suddenly turned toxic and was going to bolt for escape.

Oh, no. There was nowhere to go since hills and forest had sunk into a dark smudge behind them; she clutched the saddlehorn, leaning back as her entire body tensed, and tried to think of how to refuse this.

It wasn’t so much the height, although she was uneasy as any reasonable person should be with skyscrapers and cliffs. No, it was the… the bones, the thought of walking over a corpse, something that unholy large plus the subtle but undeniable strangeness of the structure.

Even dinosaur skeletons didn’t look thisalien. Now she was glad she hadn’t seen any of the forest’s fauna, but that was no help in the situation. Atavistic shudders poured down her back.

The big black equine slowed, its tail flicking, and the chained man halted. Which meant everyone else did too, and the men exchanged glances.

“My lady?” The chained man turned, regarding her sidelong. Walking with all that metal piled on had to be exhausting, but it didn’t show.

In fact, he was far less pale than he had been; maybe it was just being free of the helmet. His face had filled in a little more as well, though with that jaw he wouldn’t win any modeling work. Still, he was arresting.

“I’m sorry.” Another apology, she was helpless to stop making them. “That… no. I’m sorry, I can’t.”

Majan was to her left now. He eyed the bone-bridge, cocking his ivory-haired head. “It is quite strong, and larger than it looks. There is no danger, my lady.”

He could even be right, but there was only so much of this strange new world Ari could take. This was her tipping point, everything inside her trembling on the edge of the small, definitesnapwhich meant she could not be pushed further.

The last time that silent internal breakage had sounded, she’d lunged for a nightstand and the .38.

“I…” At least nobody had yelled at her to stop being such a whiny bitch yet, though Ari suspected that was a blessing of exceedingly short duration. “I can’t. I’m very sorry, but I just… I can’t.”

“There are other methods of crossing.” The chained man turned more fully, and iron-clad fingers lightly stroked the equine’s arched, glossy neck. “I suspect you would like them less, though.”

His tone was soft, as if it wasn’t a threat. Ari’s pulse ran thin and thready in her wrists, her throat, even her ankles. “I’ll stay in the woods. Or I can go back to the cave.” The mind-boggling stupidity of wandering around without anything to build a fire with or a weapon against giant golden robots was fully apparent to her rational self, but Ari didn’t care.

“Sarle, Darjeth.” The chained man’s burning gaze focused fully on her now. “Would you like the honour of crossing first, to show our lady there is no danger?”

“Of a certainty.” Sarle touched his hatbrim, smiling; he didn’t look like he thought the task was a punishment. Ari opened her mouth to protest, but he and Darjeth were already urging their mounts into a canter. They drew away, the chiming of their passage thankfully different than the thump-thudding of gilded clockworks.

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