Riddik's Story: Escape

It seemed like one minute, Jay'tiel had been sitting with the foreign princess, having sneaked into the embassy to share giggling observations about courtiers and the presentation of Riddik, and the next, she was aboard one of the new airships, speeding away from everything she'd ever known, with a trio of escaped constructs and a couple dead bodies.

And it had been a very full minute inbetween, too. So much had happened, she could hardly think about it, and it had all happened so fast.

Jay had never seen anyone die before. She'd never been to any of the bad parts of the cities, where people supposedly killed each other over things like drink and money and sex, because nobility never went to the bad parts of the cities, lest they sully themselves. She'd never been allowed to go to any of the bloodsport games, where constructs were pitted against each other to much betting and cheering, being both too young and, according to her mother, "above such things". She'd never even seen someone behead a live don-bird for dinner, because that was work for servants or constructs, and nobles' daughters were kept strictly out of the kitchens no matter how much they begged, threatened, or tried to sneak in.

Now it took two hands to count how many people-- people-- she'd seen die. Since the constructs had roughly undone her grip on the messenger one and bundled her up into a corner, she could even count them.

First-- she stared at her trembling hands and put down one finger-- and perhaps the most frightening: Kausani wen Delanau, Hol'anou's mostly silent but still smiling Binder mage. Smiling, right up until a slash of red opened up across her throat and a familiar face leapt away from her as she fell, a knife in his hand stained and wet with mage-blood. Hol'anou had screamed-- though Jay was too shocked to do more than stare-- but then the lights had gone out, she felt something cold and airy grasping at her, like Twenty-Eight's tentacles if they were made out of mist and darkness, and Riddik had grabbed her around the waist and thrown himself out the window, bloody knife and all.

Then-- she put down three more fingers-- the three sentries at the garden gates who had tried to bar their way. The two regular constructs had stopped short to avoid being speared, Riddik had leaned far to the right to plunge his already-bloody knife into the eye of one, ripping it out sideways through bone and helmet to slash the hand off another. That one had staggered back, had stared at his bleeding stump of his arm, until Twenty-Eight calmly pushed him right onto Riddik's other knife.

The third had come up from behind, sword in hand, ready to stab the distracted Riddik in the back. Jay hadn't even thought about what she ought to do. She'd just grabbed her heavy, copper collar off her neck and smashed it over his head, because she couldn't let anyone hurt Riddik. She just couldn't. There'd been a sickening crack and he'd crumpled down, and Jay, shocked at herself, suddenly terrified that she'd killed him, dropped her collar nervelessly and stared in horror. Twenty-Eight grabbed the collar in one coiled tentacle before it hit the ground and then shot off again, out of the garden and into the street. The one they were riding shot after him. Jay might even have fallen off if Riddik hadn't grabbed her and gotten an arm around her to steady her.

Jay hardly remembered the race through the streets. All she remembered was the death of a construct that leapt at them once-- she put down another finger-- probably to try and stop them, because three constructs and a noble's daughter racing through the streets certainly couldn't be up to anything good. They'd managed to avoid most of the police-constructs, since they were all swarming the embassy. They would know it was Riddik soon-- who else could it be? no one else was good enough-- and then they would be caught, but for now, they were somehow passing under everyone's noses without being seen.

She also remembered a very dirty woman in an alley who tried to grab hold of her jeweled slipper as they ran by-- she started counting on her right hand, now, out of fingers on her left-- who Riddik calmly carved a hole in to make her let go. He didn't shove her off, he didn't shout, he didn't even kick her: he leaned over, stuck his knife into her chest, gave it a quick twist, then straightened, the woman's body falling off the blade with a stunned look on its face. That was when Jay was sick-- she couldn't help it-- though at least she'd had the sense to lean over the construct's shoulder and do it on the ground. Riddik and the constructs ignored her; they just started running again.

The brief, fierce battle outside the airship, though, she remembered all too clearly. If she hadn't already thrown up, she would have, then. Riddik was a whirlwind of blades, cutting down the five docking guards and the single construct-- a low-grade Ursine-- they had on duty in the middle of the night, kicking them out of the way before they even went down. Twenty-Eight flitted around, practically invisible in how much attention the docking guards paid him, tripping and pushing and knocking off-balance so that Riddik could kill them faster.

Jay had run out of fingers to count the deaths on.

And now they were on an airship-- a stolen airship-- and there was blood on her robes and her hands and Riddik's knife, and a dead pilot across the hangar. She pressed herself further into her corner as the ship rumbled underneath her, above her, around her, shaking in time with the increasing noise. She felt like she was being pushed back against the wall; it was uncomfortable and frightening. What was it Riddik had called back? Hold onto something?

Hold onto... why?

The ship was shaking even more, squashing her almost painfully. It was hard to breathe.

Hold onto something.

Just in time, she came out of her shock enough that the command penetrated her brain and she grabbed onto the grilling on the wall with one hand and the handle of a securely locked drawer with the other. The airship gave a violent lurch, and it felt like her arms had been yanked out of their sockets, but she didn't go flying across the deck. They rose in fits and jerks, teeth-rattling and painful, and rocked this way and that, as if the big, heavy airship were trying to dodge like a tiny fighter-ship. A horrible whine and shudder proved that it wasn't nearly as good at it.

"What is he doing?" the equine construct moaned, huddled in the other corner with Twenty-Eight, the latter all but holding him in place with tentacles, tails, and his own body. He didn't have anything to hold on with against all the bumps and jostles.

"Getting us out," Twenty-Eight hissed. "Trust him."

"I'd rather trust the nice, solid ground," the equine gulped, closing his eyes.

Then he yelped, Twenty-Eight yowled, and Jay cried out as they were all thrown back against the wall and smashed there as the airship surged forward and up at a horrible speed. Jay couldn't move, could hardly feel her fingers holding desperately to the walls, and a growing roaring drowned out the equine constructs panicked crying. The airship shook with the speed it was accelerating, vibrating its helpless passengers, and all Jay could think was that they were going to die, right now, just like this, plastered against an airship wall until that wall disintegrated with the pressure. The feeling felt like it lasted forever, being squashed and rattled and breathless and terrified that the airship was going to fall apart around them--

Until it stopped. The shaking and roaring died down to a low thrum and a gentle vibration that, after the vigorous bouncing of a moment before, felt almost pleasant. But Jay still couldn't let go of the wall and the drawer handle; her fingers wouldn't loosen. What if the bucking started again? She kept her eyes squeezed shut, breath coming unevenly, as she waited for some new terrible thing to happen and make things even worse.

After a while, there were voices, but she didn't pay attention to them. A bored-sounding baritone, a panicked tenor, a gravelly bass.... A furry hand touched her face and she whimpered, flinching back.

"She's not gonna be good for much for a while," the bass rumbled. "Why don't you just put her out? Maybe put them both out--"

"Thirty-Two will be fine. But this one.... --All right, all right, I'm getting to it."

And then everything just went away for a while, and Jay was glad.