Chapter 167: Going to the headquarters

The loudspeaker coughed.

Batnac had not moved. He did not seem to be doing anything at all, except that his eyes had gone distant and his lips were pressed together in an expression of mild annoyance.

But when the loudspeaker spoke again, the voice coming out of it was no longer the hard, nervous one.

"This is Batnac," said the voice, rather wearily. "Do not land on the houses. Land in the road."

The helicopter stopped in the air.

For several seconds, nothing happened. The engine noise rose and fell, as if the pilot could not decide what to do with his hands.

Then the voice came back, and it was very small. "Master Batnac? Sir? Is that really you?"

"Who else would be speaking to you through your own radio?"

"We were told to secure this corridor, sir, and there is a notice about the target, and..."

"I know about the notice. I am looking at the target." Batnac coughed. "Everything is under control. Put the transport down in the road and bring your people out. All of them, please, and leave your weapons on the ground."

"Sir, I do not think..."

"Nobody has asked you to think. I have asked you to land."

The aircraft came down in the street beyond the wall, slowly, as if it were being lowered on a string.

The engines wound down, and the ramp opened, and a handful of crew members in gray uniforms stumbled out into the dust.

They were all young, and they looked at the ruined houses and the cracked road. They looked at the scorched grass of the yard.

Then they looked at the pile of scrap metal in the middle of it, and the pale face on top, and a boy standing beside it with his hands in his pockets, and not one of them said a word.

The other two transports hovered at a safe distance and did not come any closer.

"Wait over there," Batnac told the crew, in the voice of a teacher dismissing a class. "By the wall. Do not touch anything. I am borrowing your vehicle."

They went so quickly that one of them tripped over a loose stone and had to be helped to his feet by the others.

’They are terrified of you,’ Medusa said, but Leon didn’t respond to her.

All along the road, silver discs began to stir. The drones that had fallen out of the sky earlier lay scattered across the pavement, each of them dark and still, and one by one they lit up and rose into the air.

They gathered over the pile of scrap in the yard and lowered themselves around it, and they lifted Batnac off the ground as gently as ants carrying a crumb.

His head lolled against a padded cushion that one of them had produced from somewhere, and his ruined chest plates dangled below.

"Bring the arms as well," he told the drones, and a second group of discs settled over the heap of twisted metal that lay beside him.

"Every piece, please. They took me years to build, and I refuse to leave them lying in somebody’s flowerbed."

"Can they be repaired?" Leon asked.

"Given enough time, a great deal of money, and a quiet room." Batnac sniffed. "I do not suppose that you would be willing to pay for any of those?"

"No."

"I thought not."

One by one, the discs hoisted the broken pieces of metal into the air and arranged them in a neat line behind their master, like a procession of mourners.

It was a strange and rather sad sight, and Leon found that he did not feel like smiling at it, so he did not.

"Do not look at me like that," Batnac said, when he caught Leon watching. "I am aware of how it appears."

"I was only looking."

"Look at something else."

Leon looked at the wall.

Iris was still standing there, gripping the stones with both hands, and her face was pale under the soot.

She did not call out to him, and he did not go to her, because there was nothing he could say that would help and the helicopter was waiting.

He looked at her for a moment longer, and then he turned and walked toward the road.

The drones carried Batnac up the ramp and set him down in the back of the cabin, where a padded cot unfolded itself to receive him.

Leon followed and took the seat at the window. The ramp rose, and the crew standing by the wall watched it close with the expression of people who had been sent to guard a house and were now watching it leave.

The engines roared up.

The ground dropped away. The yard shrank to a small brown patch among the broken roofs, and then the whole street became a thin gray line, and the neighbors were tiny pale dots on the pavement, looking up.

The other two transports turned aside as the first one rose, as though somebody had pulled a rope.

"Where is it?" Leon asked.

"The nearest of our headquarters." Batnac’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

"It will take less than an hour. You should know that the ten S-ranks who are stationed there are the strongest the Association has in this part of the world, and that they have already been told about the corridor."

"Ten."

"Ten, and all of them are in the same building today, which is a thing that almost never happens." His mouth twisted.

"I am going to have to call them, you understand. If we arrive without warning, they will shoot first and ask questions afterward, and I would like to keep what is left of my body."

"Then call."

"And what do I tell them?"

"The truth," said Leon. "You found me, and I am coming in, and I want to join the Player Guild Association."

"They will not take it well."

"I did not expect them to."

"Some of them will do more than shout," Batnac warned.

"Then I will let them."

Batnac turned his head on the cushion until he could look at the boy properly.

For the first time since the fight began, there was something in his face that was not fear, or fury, or grief. It was closer to wonder, and a little pity, and a great deal of exhaustion.

"Everyone in that building will probably try to kill you," he said.

"Then they are going to have a very long day," Leon said.

Batnac closed his eyes, and a small speaker on the cabin wall clicked open.

It took the Association’s own channel only a few seconds to connect, because the transport was a machine, and there was no machine in the world that Batnac could not talk to.

A woman’s voice came through the speaker, crisp and hurried. "Council channel. Identify yourself."

"Batnac. S-rank. Priority."

"Master Batnac!" The crispness vanished. "Sir, we lost every signal from your house an hour ago, and the whole corridor has been..."

"I know. Put me through to Garrick Dole."

There was a long pause, and then the line filled with the sound of a large room, and a heavy voice spoke out of it. It was slow and deep, and every word seemed to be set down carefully, like a stone laid on a wall.

"Batnac," it said. "You have been silent for an hour. Where are you?"

"In a transport, Garrick, and I will reach your door in a little less than an hour."

"Alone?"

"No. I have found him."

The room on the other end of the line went still. Leon could hear a chair scrape, and a man draw a breath, and somewhere a woman said, "He found him?" in a low voice that sounded as if she did not believe it.

"Is he dead?" asked Garrick Dole.

"No. He is sitting across from me."

"Then give me your position, and keep your distance. We will send the whole building to..."

"That will not be necessary," Batnac said. "I am bringing him to you myself."

The silence this time was longer.

"Explain," said Garrick.

"He has a proposal." Batnac hesitated, and Leon could see that he was choosing each word like a man crossing a frozen lake. "He wants to join the Player Guild Association."

Nobody spoke. Then someone in the room on the other end laughed, a high and cracked laugh that stopped almost at once.

"He wants to what?" a young man’s voice cried. "Say that again! He wants to what?"

"Maelis," said Garrick.

"I am only asking him to say it again!"

"Then I will say it again," Leon said.

He leaned forward in his seat until he was close to the speaker, and he spoke clearly, without raising his voice.

"My name is Leon Allistar. I want to join the Player Guild Association."

The channel went quiet.

It was not an ordinary silence. Leon had the feeling that ten people were standing in a room on the other side of the speaker, and that every one of them had stopped breathing.