Va and Elenya were on their feet, Va giving his words to Elenya, she translating them into World so that everyone could hear. The soldiers cutting off the seats from the rest of the hall strained to hold the sudden press of curious, eager people back.
‘I appeal to your empire’s justice and your empire’s law. Stolen property must be returned,’ she called out.
A guard captain quickly detailed men to bring the interruption to an end. Through that gap in the fence of spears, Benzamir saw his chance and slipped forward.
He heard the whirr of spinning metal. He vaulted the lawyers’ desk feet first, using his hands to maintain momentum. Three bladed discs cut into the wood, following his movement but never quite anticipating it.
The guards sent to shut Elenya up started to turn back. Those still part of the fractured line tried to reach behind them as Benzamir skipped by. He was past the open-mouthed emperor, and the air hummed with missiles. A bolt took him between the shoulders, another in the leg, the stonework around him flicking up razor-sharp chips fast enough to disable anyone they hit.
Benzamir tumbled, landed on his feet and threw himself at the crimson curtains. Arms spread wide, he netted one of the figures behind it and wrestled them all to the ground.
More bolts, more discs hammered into Benzamir, who shrugged off the metal storm and pulled hard on the fixed end of the curtain. Its anchors broke and the fixing fell down, cloth rippling after it. Both captor and captives disappeared under the folds.
Inside the makeshift tent, Benzamir tore the material and reached through. He grappled with a mess of loose black cloth in an attempt to expose the person’s face, and came away with not just the coarse-woven hood, but the skin as well.
For a moment he was off guard, repelled by the texture of long-dead flesh on his fingers. Then an incredible force struck his chest and he was propelled upwards and backwards, bowling over two guards who had been about to stab down with their spears at the writhing curtain.
Benzamir managed to untangle himself first, and absently reached down to help one of the guards to his feet. Disorientated, the man climbed up Benzamir’s arm and pushed his helmet back round so that he could see.
The black-shrouded figure rose, a glittering, dagger-ended limb writhing from its belly. Its head, grey, lifeless, rolled away, and from the gaping neck sprang a pythons’ nest of sharp metal that cut its way down through the rotting corpse shell to reveal its true form.
Something stepped out, shining metal and glowing eyes. Benzamir had been aware of the screaming and the sudden sucking rush away, chairs toppled and thrown, but he had paid them no attention. All he thought about was that this was a thing that had never been done before. He knew what unmakers could do, had seen them fight and yet had never thought about facing one down with his bare hands. Now he had to try with three.
The curtain rose in two other places, and was nimbly turned to lace by snickering blades. Silver towers of quivering legs and eye stalks raised themselves up on knife points. They stood, poised for a moment as if waiting for a final command.
The unmakers’ controllers must have been looking at him, wondering if he could, in fact, stop them. When he looked back, he could feel their remote presence, weighing him, judging him, finding him and his cause wanting.
‘Don’t do this,’ said Benzamir. ‘We can still bargain together.’
His answer came swift and deadly. One unmaker darted for the throne; two went for Benzamir, blurs of light and dark that decapitated one guard and carved the other into a bloody ruin before he’d even got up.
The soldiers who had one moment been pushing forward with all their might suddenly found themselves redundant, and wondered what had caused the sudden change in their fortunes. As the crowd stampeded, they turned to see Benzamir twisting and spinning in a vortex of motion, and another spider-like thing ripping into the imperial guard even as the emperor was lifted bodily from his throne by his attendants in an attempt to save him.
Benzamir felt his personal shield stretch and shudder at every blow, and knew it couldn’t take much more. Indiscriminate fire from the roof had started to include rockets, and people were dying around him simply because there was nowhere to run to. He back-flipped out of the way, caught a spindly metal limb as it flashed at his face and turned it round. The thing staggered into its partner and they both lost their footing on the marble floor.
In that moment’s respite he saw:
Wahir and Alessandra, the princess and the monk, left stranded by the retreating, panicked mob.
Solomon Akisi, abandoned by his captors, shuffling slowly backwards, not quite believing his eyes.
Said coming behind the emperor with a fallen spear and pushing him aside, just as the last of his guards fell.
The two metal creatures springing back onto their legs in front of him.
Time started again. One unmaker leaped at Benzamir, trying to bring its weight down on his body. The other started to carve its way through the crowd in a crimson haze. He ducked under the pounce, rolled forward and aimed his finger at the scuttling monster that had just sliced Said’s spear in two. The glass dome overhead blew apart, and before the first shards of falling debris reached the ground, a white-edged hole punched through the back of the creature. It jerked, transfixed, then fell across the throne. Vital components ran in smoking silver rivers down the dais.
‘Run!’ called Benzamir, taking his own good advice, throwing himself away from the dais as the first impact of thick glass marked the beginning of the cascade of crystal and broken metal struts.
Said threw what was left of his weapon aside, took hold of His Imperial Majesty Kaisari Yohane Muzorewa and jumped back. Alessandra and Wahir pulled at them desperately, at the same time trying to protect their own faces from the splinters and shards flying outwards.
Benzamir was hit from behind. He sprawled into the outer circle of broken glass, unable to ride the blow. He rolled, and kept rolling as a series of metal feet came slicing down, one after another. He stopped, waited for the last one to descend, took it in his hands, twisted it and used it as a lever to get back onto his feet.
‘Get the emperor out of here! Go!’
‘But master—!’
‘Go, Wahir.’ He ducked, jumped and spun as three knives tried to skewer him in turn.
He saw in passing the ruin the other unmaker was making of Great Nairobi’s elite – those who hadn’t trampled their way to the door. But then it abruptly stopped its killing spree and reversed direction, trailing streams of gore back towards the dais. The monk and the princess ran from it, towards his friends.
Benzamir thought to intercept it, but he was too busy fighting and keeping his feet on the blood-soaked floor of the throne room.
‘It’s me you want!’ he shouted, even though he knew that his life was incidental to decapitating the Kenyan empire.
There was a side door set in the nearest corner of the throne room. Alessandra already had it open; Said and Wahir had pushed the emperor through. Elenya was there a second later, and Va slammed it shut against the unmaker’s advance. It took scant moments to reduce the wood to matchsticks, and it too was gone in a crimson-tinged blur.
Benzamir was running out of time: he now had to see if he could stretch what he had left to beyond breaking point.
CHAPTER 35
THE ROCKETEERS AND bolt throwers had abandoned their posts to chase after the emperor through the palace; it was just the Kenyan thief and him. In a second it would be just him.