Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (21 page)

He turned back to the door, hurrying gratefully away. Dhozo stepped close beside Xartasia. "This isn't news that should spread through the fleet," he said. "It could split loyalties. You need to control the information."

"Sharlon has probably already spoken of it," Xartasia countered with a shrug.

He heard the conversation. Sharlon turned back to the table. "Only to a couple of friends, Your Majesty," he assured her. "I thought I should tell you…"

"Which friends?" Xartasia asked.

"Errin Aesus, Lannui and Shae de Wen," answered Sharlon. "And… and Ollen Certanan, I think."

Xartasia sighed and looked up at Dhozo. "Very well. If it must be. You may have Sharlon and his friends. Deal with them swiftly and privately."

"What?" Sharlon cried. He jumped back, but two of the glass-armored knights grabbed his arms and held the fairy in place. "But I–!"

Xartasia glided to the panicked Arcadian and touched her cool red lips to his cheek. "Go in peace and dignity, Sharlon Artain. I shall remember your name, my brother. This pain will not last and matters not. The White Kingdom will return and you with it."

"I do not understand–" Sharlon began, but Orix was already on him. Claws and hooks and teeth flashed in the dark and blood pooled on the deckplates. Xartasia stepped back from the spreading red, but even this was swiftly devoured by the boiling nanite swarm. Orix slowly turned dark, nearly invisible eyes on Xartasia. His wide, fanged maw gaped open.

"Enough, lieutenant," Dhozo snapped. "Zhyress, V'lox, go with the aerad knights and collect Sharlon's friends. Savor the meal."

Two of the tall, shadowy Devourers saluted and left with four of the glass-armored fairies. Dhozo returned his attention to Xartasia. "How does this change our schedule?" he asked the white-clothed Arcadian queen.

"It does not."

"You're just going to ignore this other queen?" Dhozo asked. It was difficult to tell whether his tone was of incredulity or grudging admiration.

Xartasia did not care what Dhozo thought. "No. I do not think that Maeve understands at all what I do, else she would not raise arms against me. But I cannot risk the trouble she may bring."

"What are you going to do?"

Xartasia gestured to the knight in red and violet again. He dipped his wings. "Yes, my queen?"

"Bring Syle to me," she ordered. "I find myself in need of his skills."

The knight saluted and left. Dhozo's swarm of dark nanites parted just long enough for Xartasia to glimpse his fang-filled grin. She did not think that was coincidental.

"You're sending an assassin after your own family?" he asked. There was no mistaking the approval in his voice this time.

"Syle is not an assassin," Xartasia pointed out. "His skills are far more… creative than that. There will be death, I am certain, but I would not send an assassin after my own cousin. I am not like you, Dhozo."

________

Titania alighted delicately on the soft green grass. The dryad gardeners did their jobs well and in utter silence… She did not even see any of the brown-skinned fairies in the royal garden. The knight landed beside her, the wind of his passage shaking free a handful of pale pink petals from the nearby rose tree. They tangled in the princess' black hair and hung there like beads. The handsome knight fell into step beside her. Together, they walked through the royal gardens.

"Your father summoned me last night," he said.

"I thought that he might." Titania smiled triumphantly. "And what did the king want with you, Sir Anthem?"

"You already know."

"But I want to hear you say it."

She stopped beside a curling green and blue topiary that looked like cresting waves and took Anthem's hands. He smiled indulgently. "He has asked me to come stay at court," Anthem told Titania. "If I am to be consort to his eldest daughter, to the future queen of Arcadia, King Illain believes that I must learn more of politics."

Titania balanced herself with outstretched wings and leaned close to the handsome knight. "Little does he know that you have already been learning."

"You are a very good teacher, my enarri," Anthem told her between kisses. "It has been most pleasant to be your student."

"Still, I hope you intend to do as the king asks."

"Of course. I will learn all I can." He cupped her cheek in one hand and brushed back her black hair. "You will rule the White Kingdom one day, Titania. You will be a great queen. I wish only to be a good prince to you."

Titania pulled Anthem close and wrapped her arms around her knight. The royal palace rose above them, over the gardens, towers casting glowing shadows across the lawns and blooming vines. The castle of glass, the crown of the worlds that would one day be hers. It was a frightening prospect, but not today. Titania could do anything at all, so long as her enarri was by her side.

"A queen's love must not be for a man, but for her people."

– Ferris Verridian (234 PA)

"We're out of money," Panna said.

"Again?" Duaal looked up from the datadex he was sketching on. "But we sold that new batch of phenno just three days ago."

"There are six thousand Arcadians out there," Panna pointed out. "And more arriving every week."

"We've got seven glassmiths working on housing and towers. If Stray's got one abundant and free thing, it's sand. We're moving fairies out of those tents at a good rate."

"They can't eat sand, Duaal," said Xia. "There is the cost of their medical care, too. Kessa's helping out – unpaid, I point out – but that doesn't help reduce the cost of the medications I need."

"There's the passage we're paying for off-world Arcadians to come here. There aren't that many yet, but hopefully that cost will only go up," Panna added.

Duaal groaned and threw his datadex on the table. Panna picked it up curiously. It was another crown design. This one was less elaborate than the others, not much more than a slightly pointed circlet of glass. Panna liked it. She held the datadex out to Xia. The Ixthian nodded.

"I think Maeve will love it," said Xia.

"She better," grumbled Duaal. "It's the seventh one I've designed. I liked number three better."

"It looked like a glass hedgehog," Xia pointed out, laughing.

"It looked
grand
," Duaal corrected primly. "Maeve could use a little grand."

"I think this one is perfect," Panna said. She pointed to the row of windows along the Blue Phoenix's mess. "The grand crown is out there."

A dozen slender spires rose from the desert, shining like needles under the pale sky. Another five spiraled up half-finished, slender lattices like translucent vines spun up into soaring towers. Hard as Hyra and Lorren worked, they could not entirely clarify the rust-colored Stray sand. The glass towers were shot all through with streaks of red, orange and yellow that turned them into elongated, frozen flames. The denizens had begun calling the little city Kaellisem –
Firehome
– for its brilliant sunset colors.

Arcadians flew between the towers, indistinct shapes from this distance. It wasn't much like Arcadia, Panna suspected, but she had never seen the five worlds of the old White Kingdom. For a girl from the farms of Cyrus, Kaellisem was something out of myth.

"I suppose it is rather lovely," Duaal said grudgingly. "Speaking of lovely, where is our little queen?"

"She's greeting the new arrivals," Panna said. She did not take her eyes from the view outside. "Coldhand and Gripper went with her. The ship from Prianus is finally here."

"It's been more than a month since Logan sent that message. No wonder we're spending so much on shipping," Duaal commented. He stood and took his datadex back from Xia. "I guess I better get this down to Hyra. We need something to put on Maeve's head at the coronation tomorrow night."

________

No one offered to help Ballad with his bags. That was fine with him – the young Arcadian didn't own much and did not particularly want someone else handling it. But they could have helped Vellania. The old woman struggled with an old sack that had gotten wedged between two seats. Kashan pushed and glared his way past a pair of chattering humans to her.

Ballad landed at the bottom of the narrow exit stairs. Stray was nothing like Prianus. The sun was large and dim and red, arcing ponderously across a pale sky. There was a low, dusty city to one side and sandy rust-red dunes on the other. The air was dry and dirty. Ballad broke into a fit of coughing. When he recovered, scrubbing his eyes and straightening with a rustle of feathers, Ballad saw a pair of familiar shapes making their way across the blastphault. It was Logan Coldhand and the strange alien who had accompanied him back in Pylos, Gripper. Ballad squinted against the red sun. Was the bounty hunter… smiling?

"Hey!" Gripper shouted, waving Ballad over. He enveloped one of the Arcadian's hands in his own and shook it enthusiastically. "We've been waiting for you!"

Ballad had questions, but there was no chance to ask them before Logan pulled him into a tight embrace. Ballad gaped as the Prian released him. Was this really the same haunted, harried man he had met in Pylos? There were the scarred illonium hand and the dark blond hair, the ice-blue eyes and even the Talon laser on his hip. But this Logan looked years younger, full of life and purpose – and sincere pleasure to see Ballad again.

"Vorus found you," Logan said as he released the fairy boy. "How was he?"

"Good," Ballad answered. "The palaestrum is doing well, he says."

"He… didn't come with you, did he?" Logan asked. He almost sounded shy about it. "No, he wouldn't have. Vorus would never leave Prianus. Where are Kashan and An'assi?"

"Kashan is still on the ship, helping the others. We brought more. Vellania and her family and some others, we couldn't leave them. An'assi died about a week before I got your message," Ballad said. The loss still hurt deeply. "He caught something. It went right to his lungs and killed him in two weeks."

Logan bowed his head for a moment and then turned, gesturing for Ballad to follow. "Gripper, help Kashan and the rest. I'm taking him to Maeve."

"Sure, Hunter." Gripper ignored the strange looks he was getting and made his way into the old passenger liner.

"Maeve?" Ballad asked. He had to jog to keep up with the much taller Prian. "That's the dove you were looking for back in Pylos, right? Sounds like you found her."

"Yes, I did."

The note of fierce joy and pride in Logan's voice made Ballad wonder. This was all too strange… Vorus appearing in Pylos with money and an invitation to Stray, saying that there was an Arcadian queen in Gharib. Logan led him around a small, unmanned control center and Ballad stopped short. A woman stood in the dusty gray shadows, an Arcadian woman in elaborately knotted red and gold scarves, with silver eyes and hair as black as the void between the stars. Ballad whistled.

"That's Maeve?" he asked. "The new queen?"

He suddenly understood the change in Logan, at least a little. Ballad had lived his whole life on Prianus, among the desperate and dying remains of the White Kingdom, worlds he had never known. Maeve seemed a piece of that history, a fragment honed to a spear point and hung with banner-ribbons like the knights of the old. He wondered if he should bow.

Maeve – Queen Maeve – bit her lip like a nervous schoolgirl. "Logan has told me that it is to you I owe my rescue on Prianus," she said.

"Well, he's the one who found you, Your Majesty," Ballad answered, then gave Logan a sidelong look. "Right?"

"Not without a lot of help," the human said. "But you were the one who sent me to the Kayton base camp."

Ballad smirked. So he really
had
helped. "They said that there was a Waygate up there and that the police had a claws-out war up there. Is it true?"

Maeve and Logan exchanged a look and the raven-haired Arcadian queen nodded slowly. "Yes," she admitted. "And we failed to entirely banish them. The Devourers are still out there, under the command of my cousin."

"We have many things to talk about," Logan told Ballad. "And some to show you. Once we collect Vellania, Kashan and the rest, we'll get back to Kaellisem."

"Kaellisem?" Ballad asked. It sounded Arcadian, but there were no Arcadian cities in CWA space.

________

Duke Ferris was waiting for her at the gates. At least, that was what the residents of Kaellisem called them: The Gates of the Sun. There were no real gates, just two red-streaked pillars of glass that rose up from the desert floor and came to sharp points thirty or so feet into the sky. They were actually just experiments, tests of the Stray glass' integrity. But the two pointed pillars had become symbols of Kaellisem, of the new Arcadia. Maeve hoped that they would not fall over during the next sandstorm.

Ferris stood in the flame-colored shadow with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his flowing blue robe. His braids whipped in the dry wind. They were woven with silver ribbons almost indistinguishable from the streaks of gray in his blond hair. Maeve stopped between the glass pillars.