Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (43 page)

"Who told you?"

"Some here," she cried, pointing both wings to the glass food dome. "Long line and we talk!"

A thousand Arcadians passed through the distribution center every day, most lingering for three hours or more with nothing better to do than gossip. There was no way Logan could trace the origin of the information. He released the Arcadian woman, who staggered away and flew into the air, beating her wings frantically in her haste to escape. Logan turned back to the glass dome. It was still mid afternoon and the center was crowded by lines of hungry, waiting people. The Arcadians inside watched him with a mixture of fear and anger. An old fairy man near the open door squinted suspiciously at the Prian.

Syle and Eranna were pushing their way through the angrily murmuring Arcadians toward Logan. The sight of their glass armor and spears seemed to comfort the fairies, but there were still a great many glares leveled at Logan.

"What is going on, sir?" Eranna asked. Logan held no official position in Maeve's court, but most of the knights showed him a certain deference.

"They're saying that Maeve was responsible for the fall," he told Eranna. Other than Anthem, the knights did not know the truth. No need to confirm the rumors. "I need to know who first said that."

The angry muttering rose again. The old man Logan had noted before shot out a withered, accusatory wing at him.
"The queen keeps company with a human bounty hunter,"
he shouted in Arcadian.
"She takes an alien to her bed. She spits on her own people. Maeve Cavainna destroyed the White Kingdom! "

There were more shouts and loud songs in reply to this, some in agreement and others in argument. Logan barely heard them. He lunged at the old man and seized his outthrust wing in his new glass hand. The fairy shrieked in pain.

"Her lover?"
Logan rasped back at the fairy in his own language.
"Her enarri? Maeve has taken her Arcadian king! For you!"

"Hunter! Stop it!" Gripper was in the door and shouting at Logan. "Let him go!"

Logan forced his glittering glass hand to unclench, dropping the old Arcadian to the floor. The fairy panted, but would not be so easily silenced.

"Her Arcadian king? You mean Anthem Calloren? Prince Anthem is a whore,"
he shrilled.
"Xartasia's whore and brother to Devourers! Our queen and prince are traitors. Kaellisem is a lie!"

A dented metal cup came flying from somewhere in the crowd and hit the hysterical old fairy in the temple, opening a bleeding gash in his thin skin.

The violence erupted as suddenly and explosively as a volcano. There were Arcadians in the air, grabbing and striking at one another or simply trying to escape the glass dome. Eranna waded into the burgeoning riot, calling for calm. Syle gave Logan an even, golden-eyed look.

"Leave," he told the Prian, loudly over the shrieking din but quite calm. "You will only make things worse. Tell the queen and Sir Anthem what is happening here."

Something about the way Syle said it made Logan pause, but then Gripper was grabbing his arm and towing the human outside. Voices and the sounds of blows rang out from the glass dome. Something crashed inside, and someone screamed.

"What's going on in there?" Gripper asked as they ran down the road, back the way they had come.

Logan yanked the com from his belt and didn't stop running. "Maeve? Are you there?"

There was a long pause and then an answer. "Logan?" the queen said. "What is wrong?"

"They know about the Tamlin Waygate, Maeve. I don't know how, but they do. Get knights to the food center now. The Arcadians are rioting."

________

"Where
are
they?" Panna asked.

"Gone," Ballad answered unhelpfully. He jumped down from the rooftop and landed beside Panna. "It's not like any Arcadian on Hadra has a job to go to."

"They might."

Ballad had the same thought. "Like Anthem did? That's mostly nighttime work. It's the middle of the day."

"Sir Anthem worked days," Panna protested.

"How do you know that?" asked Ballad. The two Arcadians moved through the glaring light and down the road in search of their own kind. "He doesn't say a word about his whoring to the knights."

"Not to me, either. But why should he? It's between him and the queen. How do you even know?"

Ballad gave Panna a sidelong look. "Syle told me. I'm not sure who said it to him. Why? Who told you?"

"Xia," Panna said. "I guess there were some uh… health concerns."

Ballad scowled. "Anthem is a right hawk. I don't mind working with him, but I don't grasp at all why Maeve left Logan for him."

Panna blinked. How could he not understand? Rough as Ballad was, he was a royal knight. "If Queen Maeve is going to create a new kingdom, it's important that she has an Arcadian husband."

"Why?" Ballad asked bluntly.

"Why?" Panna repeated. "What do you mean, why? You can't have a monarchy without a royal line."

"There are orphans. Why not just adopt some chicks?"

"Are you insane? The line of Cavain has ruled over our people – unbroken and undiminished – for ten thousand years! You can't just adopt new ones!"

"Even you say that Cavain was a tyrant," Ballad pointed out.

He was right. Panna's reverence for Arcadian history didn't mean that she was stupid. "But that doesn't invalidate his house's claim to the throne, Sir Ballad. Cavain a'Shae built the White Kingdom."

"Out of pyrad bones and on the backs of dryad and nyad labour," Ballad added darkly.

Panna flushed and wondered if the bright white sunlight blotted out the color in her cheeks. She was surprised that such a crass, rough young fairy would know enough about his race's history to even have an opinion. Panna had to admit – silently and only to herself – that she might have misjudged him.

"Yes, but…" she stammered. "Well, it's not as if Logan Coldhand would have made a very good prince."

"Why not?" Ballad challenged. "Because he's human? Because he's Prian?"

"Well, yes. His devotion to Maeve is beyond question–"

"You're telling me," Ballad said with a slightly crooked grin that made him look even younger.

"–but he doesn't know much about the Arcadian culture and history."

Now Ballad stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked at Panna with his brow furrowed under his short, sweaty blond hair. "Anyone can learn that stuff."

"Like you have?"

"Most of what I know, Logan taught me. Back home – on Prianus, I mean – most of the older Arcadians don't think I'm much better than a human. They didn't spend much time teaching me our history."

"How does Logan Coldhand know anything about Arcadian history and civics?" Panna wondered.

"Does it matter?" asked Ballad. "He learned. Logan doesn't have to be Arcadian to love Maeve or to care about Kaellisem! Is it really better to have a prostitute prince just because he's from one of our noble houses than a smart and devoted human?"

Panna walked faster. When Ballad put it that way, it sounded stupid. But it was important, wasn't it? Ten thousand years of history hung in the balance. Not an entirely spotless history, Panna admitted, but a proud and rich one on the verge of extinction. Surely that was worth protecting.

Ballad was not letting Panna off the hook that easily. He glided a few steps and landed at her side again. A Lyran walking the opposite way growled low in his furry throat and Ballad growled right back. The effect would have been comical if Panna wasn't so worried about the Lyran's claws. But the wolfin alien stomped past with no further incident. Ballad gestured to the retreating Lyran.

"Does that bother you?" he asked.

"No," Panna lied. "I'm used to it."

"Really? And it doesn't bother you that you had to cut off your wings to attend an Alliance college?"

Panna snapped her mouth closed so fast that she bit her tongue. "Ouch! Fine, yes! Of course it bothers me, Sir Ballad. I… I hate it."

"We all hate how the Alliance treats us. But you're not being any better, are you?"

Panna glared at him and tasted blood in her mouth. "What the black pit of the Nameless' heart is that supposed to mean?"

"What does Logan have to cut off before he can love Maeve?"

Panna had no answer. She walked on, keeping her head down but her eyes still streamed in the glaring sunlight. Where were the Arcadians? She had only been in the hospital a day.

They spent the entire day searching Yebdemi for other fairies, but found no one. Panna pointed out one of the stout buildings where several Arcadians had said they lived. With a grunt, Ballad launched himself up against the heavy gravity and scrabbled over the roof's edge. A moment later, his head reappeared.

"You'd better get up here," he said in a choked voice.

"Why?" Panna asked. "What's wrong?"

"They're dead."

She climbed up the fire escape ladder, kicking one window hard enough to summon the apartment's occupant, a scowling, barely-dressed Hadrian man that shouted at her through the glass. Panna told him to go back inside and call the police. The human grumbled and told her that he sure as hells would. She immediately wished that she had not.

Ballad grabbed Panna's wrist and hauled her up onto the roof. The flat, sun-scarred roof was covered in blood. It was dark and dried, but the stuff was everywhere. There were four contorted Arcadian bodies stiffening under Hadra's relentless suns. Their wings had been slashed, keeping them on the ground. Panna covered her mouth with her hand and crept closer. Tiny green ants crawled over their cloudy eyes and down open mouths. She turned away, retching. It was a good thing she had skipped breakfast.

"Oh gods," she gasped. "What… what happened?"

"They must have died fast," Ballad said. "Look, they're all sitting around this bag here."

Panna made herself turn back. Ballad was right. Death had splayed their thin limbs across the hot concrete, but all four Arcadians were more or less circled around a mycolar bag of bread. It was open and dried crumbs stuck in the darkened blood. For all the gore, they had been murdered quickly, attacked in the middle of a meal and unable to defend themselves. Or to make much noise, Panna guessed, remembering the unpleasant Hadrian below. All she had done was kick his window.

Ballad was crouching beside one of the bodies and reached slowly toward the man's bloated, blood-smeared face. The throat beneath had been opened with a long, deep gash. Panna recognized him. He was one of the men who had asked Panna for money just before Xartasia's knight assaulted her. He must have bought the bread. She choked back a terrified sob.

"Don't…" she told Ballad, who froze. "Don't touch him. The police are on their way. We shouldn't be here when they arrive."

"Why not?" Ballad asked.

"We can't get caught here. This isn't murder under Alliance law because they're not citizens, but there will be an investigation and the cops will make at least a token attempt to catch someone. We don't want to be their prime suspects."

Ballad cursed and stepped back. He helped Panna make her way – more carefully this time – down the ladder and back to the ground. As casually as they could, they crossed the street and strolled away. It was several minutes before a shiny white squad car came gliding down the road and parked in front of the building they had just left. A huge Hadrian officer climbed out, talking on his com. Ballad took Panna's arm gently.

"That guy at the window did get a look at you," he told Panna. "Let's get out of here."

Panna nodded and followed Ballad away. When they had put a few blocks between themselves and the crime scene, they heard sirens, but only faintly. Panna paid a few white cenmark chips and they rode a crowded bus the rest of the way back to their motel room.

"What do you think happened?" Panna asked quietly. She didn't really think that Ballad would have an answer, but she had to talk about what they had seen.

"They were killed," Ballad answered flatly, in a tone that Panna usually heard from Logan Coldhand. He shrugged out of his leather jacket and threw it over the corner of his bed.

"But why? And how? None of them were shot. Those were blade wounds. If they're going to murder some Arcadians, wouldn't most coreworlders just… just shoot them?" Panna dropped heavily onto her bed, tired of fighting Hadra's gravity.

"Plenty of people use nanoknives. They're cheaper and easier to get than guns. They don't use ammunition, slugs or batteries. Maybe that's–"

Ballad suddenly cut off. There was a thud from somewhere outside. Panna frowned at the young knight as his eyes went wide. Ballad leapt on Panna, tackling the girl to the rough beige carpet just as sharp, broken glass filled the air and a winged shape hurtled through the hole where the window had been. Panna could see only a shoulder and one arm beyond Ballad's wings, but her blood went cold. Plates of glass lay over pristine white scarves beneath and crystal-armored fingers wrapped around the glittering gray haft of the strange, long knife. Panna had a sudden, icy certainty that this was the weapon responsible for those slashed wings.