Free Guardian by Jo Anderton

she resumed searching. “I was born in the colonies on the disputed border, my father Varsnian Mob, my mother a Hon Ji civilian. I’ve lived on both sides, I’ve seen the difference between the veche and the Emperor. I chose my side, Kichlan.” She paused at some invisible signal, gestured to her Mob and pointed at the ground. “And I’m not alone. So many of your local and regional veche are sick of having their authority eroded, and have turned against the old families. With the help of the Emperor, we have been sowing the seeds of revolution for years. With the city in disarray and the military loyal to the national veche already stretched, now is the perfect time for those seeds to sprout!”
    The Mob clamoured after her. They twitched their steel-clawed fingers and whispered, as they began manipulating pions. From the time it took them, and the tension in their arms and hunching backs, Kichlan gathered the pions were not being all that co-operative. Hardly a surprise, given the debris released from the puppet men ’s underground laboratory, and all the doors Tanyana had seen.
    “ Hurry up,” Natasha hissed, and tipped back her head to scan the sky.
    Kichlan followed her gaze. The sky was hard blue, the sun distant-seeming and weak, empty but for the Keeper Mountain. Countless tiny figures flew close to the mountain, white armour glinting in the rays of the sun. It wouldn ’t take long for them to swoop, if Natasha and her Mob were discovered. It had to be risky, surely, to march Mob through the streets, fight the Varsnian forces, and now dig through rubble so exposed.
    Kichlan jumped as the ground beneath them began to shift. It was rough, and noisy, and sent dust up into the air, but the Mob were digging deep into the foundations of the building. Far deeper than they could have gone digging by hand.
    They pulled something that looked like part of a machine out of the ground. Long at the front, bulging in the middle, riddled with handles and chains hanging loose from the dark cloth it was wrapped in. It was huge, easily longer than his arm—his whole arm—and thick as a man’s torso. Only a Mob, reinforced and strengthened with pions, could surely carry such a thing.
    Grinning, Natasha leapt out of the ruined building. “Another block to the south, three doors back from the Tear,” she said. “We need to move fast. Less than a quarter bell, I’ll risk being out here. The longer this takes, the more chance we have of being seen. You too, Kichlan,” she gripped his coat and dragged him along behind her.
    “ What—what is that?” Kichlan gasped as he staggered to keep up.
    Natasha paused beside the Mob long enough to tear the cloth at the thick end of the device. She drew it back to expose a dragon ’s head, wrought in iron. It had no bottom jaw, and its half-maw opened too widely, too roundly. Tiny, sharp teeth glittered in the sunlight. Deeply inset eyes stared darkly up at him, and Kichlan shuddered.
    “ The veche aren’t the only ones developing secret weaponry,” Natasha said.
     

9.
     
    When I woke, I was being carried. My head felt oddly disconnected, my body numb and heavy. I tried to look around but my neck wouldn’t work. All I could see was the ceiling, broken only by doors and the odd red, glowing symbol.
    “ You’re awake,” Aladio said, somewhere close to my ear. I didn’t need to look at him to know his expression was hard again, his jaw too square, that pent-up, forceful look in his eyes. “You should have stayed asleep, Tanyana. It would have been better that way.”
    “ Don’t talk to her,” said someone on my other side.
    “ Let’s just do this, and get back to the Specialist,” said another, near my feet. “Biggest moment since the Guardian came online, no way I’m going to miss it.”
    So, I was being carried by Lad and more than one programmer.
    “Wh—” I tried to speak. Nothing, not even the rattling of the silex in my throat. “What—” I tried again,