Lance of Earth and Sky (The Chaos Knight Book Two) (10 page)

“An old country,” the emperor said, surprised but—impressed? “Lost to civilization for centuries.”

“They are a simple folk,” Vidarian said, treading carefully, betting that the plausible slight to Calphille's people would reassure the emperor more than the truth.

“Simple,” the emperor mused. “Yet perhaps that is why she is so intriguing. My court could do with a good deal more simplicity.” The frank ruefulness in his voice shocked Vidarian, though he dared not show it.

“In the west I am educated, but here I fear I bring you too much simplicity, your majesty.”

To his surprise, the emperor laughed and looked at him with wry wonder. “If only that were true.”

He would have argued the point, but in just that moment, they emerged from the trees' golden canopy and into a meadow—where Altair and Thalnarra lay sunning, wings outspread.

Rai barked with recognition as he caught the gryphons' scent, and raced to meet them. In his exuberance, he loosed an arc of blue electricity, and though it missed Thalnarra's beak by inches, it set fire to the nearby grass.

Before Altair could voice his disapproval, Vidarian reached out with his own fire sense and drew the flames away, pulling their energy into himself. The water within him grumbled at this shift in energy balance, and it took him a few tense moments to quiet it.

“You were saying, Vidarian?” The emperor watched him with a strange expression, a mixture of amusement and fascination.

//
Compared to humans, gryphons are simple creatures,
// Thalnarra offered, languidly tucking her wings against her side and standing.

“Your majesty, may I introduce Thalnarra, adept of fire; and Altair, adept of air.” The gryphons dipped their beaks at each of their names. “My friends—Emperor Lirien Aslaire, Lord of the Western Reaches.” Then, after a quick glance, “For all our sakes, I hope he won't mind if I spare the rest of his titles.”

To his relief, the emperor laughed, and urged his mount forward. Vidarian's own horse danced with agitation, and he worked awkwardly to control him, envious of the emperor's easy reassurance of his own mare.

Then the emperor swung down from his saddle, landing easily and walking up to Thalnarra, now well below her natural eye level. She lowered her head to his lifted hand, touching her beak to his palm. Throughout, she radiated an impressed curiosity, her thoughts like warm spiced apples where they brushed Vidarian's.

And the emperor's face, for his part, shone with awe and adventurousness. “I have read of your people,” he said, returning his hand to his side, and turning to quiet his horse as she snorted at a frolicking Rai. The pup ran boldly up to the emperor, sniffed his knee, and then dashed back into the grass. Lirien chuckled and looked back to Thalnarra and Altair. “As a boy, I lost myself in tales from Alanndir, the sand kingdom on the far side of the world.”

//
The most recent alliance between humans and gryphons,
// Thalnarra said, appreciation like melting butter in her thoughts. //
The last to dissolve, if our records are correct. Only eight generations ago.
//

//
I'd no idea they persisted so long,
// Altair said, an edge to his thoughts like smoked mint leaves. Vidarian was relieved that, for once, he was not alone in lacking knowledge Thalnarra possessed.

//
They were a fire pride,
// she explained. //
Distantly related to my own. Sun-chasers.
//

“Their legends hardly scratched the surface of your strength and beauty,” the emperor said, and his words might have been all training, but the warmth in them was genuine.

Thalnarra turned one red eye on him, peering closely. Then her neck twisted and she bent her large head between her wings. Her beak, delicate for a weapon so large, closed around the shaft of a feather there, and with a precise jerk she pulled it free. It twirled as she shifted her lower jaw and brought it down to the emperor.

The feather was dark grey, edged with faded gold feather-paint. Against the emperor's hand it looked even larger than it had on Thalnarra, wider than his spread hand, and a third again longer. He accepted it with reverence, and lifted it between the two gryphons in a gesture of gratitude. “I will treasure this as it deserves, I promise you,” he said, and again a boyish wonder humbled his voice beyond anything Vidarian had heard at the palace. “Tell me, are all of your needs being met? What gift might I bring you?”

//
We leave in the morning, with Vidarian,
// Thalnarra said, her feathers fluffed with appreciation for the emperor's words. //
We would ask only that you treasure his trust as our own.
//

Gratitude washed through Vidarian, spilling through him like sunlight. He reached out to Thalnarra with his thoughts, and she brushed them again, a faint sensation of wings arching around him.

The emperor turned, looking at Vidarian with thoughtful eyes. “I shall,” he said.

T
he next morning, a predawn knock on the door and Rai's answering riot of barking woke Vidarian from a deep sleep. As she had been the last several nights, Ariadel was in his dreams, and when reality cracked through, he woke to a wave of chest-crushing loss all over again.

He calmed Rai with a thought as he climbed out of bed, steering clear of his fully roused ruff of spines. In addition to gaining size, the spines on the back of the pup's neck were starting to show faint stripes of color, like his packmates'. This was another sad thought, and Vidarian brushed it away as he moved toward the door.

An apologetic messenger waited beyond. “I'm sorry, Captain,” the boy said, “they told us you'd been informed. Fleet Admiral Allingworth will be preparing the launch at dawn.”

“The Fleet Admiral?” Surprise, and the wafting aroma of
kava
from a breakfast tray carried by an approaching maid, chased the last of the sleepiness from his thoughts.

“Aye, sir,” the messenger said, clearly relieved Vidarian wasn't angry. “He's asked to attend the delivery of the skyships. There'll be combat, scuttlebutt says.” The boy was young enough to be excited by violence and old enough to know what it meant; a dangerous combination.

“Like enough,” Vidarian agreed, letting his downward tone warn the boy off. He stepped to one side to allow the maid passage. She slipped adroitly by, set the tray on a side table, and, to Vidarian's surprise, passed Rai a bit of dried meat on her way back out the door. The pup wolfed it down, and the maid winked at Vidarian as she left.

“Do you think the Rikani stand a chance against the Qui, sir?” the boy asked, emboldened by Vidarian's distraction.

It was a good question, which was doubtless why the boy felt compelled to ask it of anyone, even a common stranger.

*
Or a less-than-common one. A strange stranger.
* Ruby corrected. Vidarian wondered absently if she ever slept.

“Wiser minds than mine believe they can, with our assistance,” he said.

*
Such a politician.
*

The boy, too, seemed vaguely disappointed, but nodded. He was sneaking looks at Rai, who was insistently poking his nose into the back of Vidarian's knee, demanding breakfast. Vidarian excused himself and shut the door firmly.

Rai began beating the leg of the side table with his tail as soon as Vidarian turned around, and whined with anticipation as the lifted cloche revealed his meat plate. Vidarian tossed his toast on top of the meat without being asked, lowered the plate to the pup, and proceeded to wolf down his own breakfast—oatmeal, this time with pinenuts and dried plums—without tasting it.

He spared the time to wash thoroughly, as there wouldn't be another opportunity for some time (Tesseract he might be, but getting water and fire to cooperate enough to produce wash-water that was neither tepid nor superheated was embarrassingly difficult). Then he donned the only set of clothes left in the room—the others had been packed off for the voyage—and made briskly for the door.

In the hallway, he stopped just short of closing the door behind him. Rai had finished his breakfast and stood there, snout still damp, giving a tentative wave of his tail.

A voyage of the kind Vidarian was expecting was no place for a young animal. But neither was the palace, even with the stewards' forbearance.

In the end he succumbed to Rai's large, hopeful eyes, seeing the Precious Outside and Vidarian's hesitation. He waved his hand once and the pup gave a little yip of excitement and raced into the hallway, clawed feet skittering on the marble floor. As Vidarian headed for the north end of the palace, Rai raced up and down the hallways, crashing into walls twice without slowing down.

At length they came to the north palace walls, and then beyond to the parkland where Vidarian had ridden with the emperor. When he caught scent of the grass, Rai leapt ahead again with renewed speed, dashing across the open field. Initially he sped off to the west, down the trail they'd ridden, and Vidarian had to whistle loud and sharp to get him to return.

To the northeast, the grass had been stamped down where it had not been cut. Tents were laid out along the western tree line, and workers swarmed through one of the stranger sights of the new gate-opened world:

Skyships. Not one or even ten, but over twenty, and no two exactly alike. Most had watermarks, betraying a conversion to sea-going vessels, but some were utterly unmarked. Of these, some had been decommissioned entirely and were now receiving new rigging, while others looked spectacularly, impossibly new, preserved by some kind of magic Vidarian couldn't fathom.

The smallest skyships were in front, little messenger skiffs or fast courier boats. The
Destiny
was among them, also being tended by carpenters and ropemakers. And beside her was Corbin Allingworth, Imperial Admiral of the Fleet.

Vidarian had seen the admiral's likeness on imperial shipping documents, and there was no question to his identity. His coal-black hair, curled like wool, was grayer in the front than the last portrait he'd seen, but the stern, craggy face and broad build were unmistakable.

Rai, still showing no sign of fatigue, dashed up to the admiral, barking a greeting. The man did not draw back, but he did eye the pup's spines skeptically—which now and then flickered with electricity in his excitement.

Vidarian rushed to stare the pup down, nudging him away from the admiral with a foot. “My apologies, Admiral. He's been cooped up some time.”

“This is your animal, then?” Allingworth said, his voice, too, gruff like old wool.

“I—had a commitment to his previous owner, no longer with us,” Vidarian said. It hardly seemed helpful to share more details of his origin.

“I see.” He looked up from the pup, the weight of his stare like an anvil, or a goddess. “And you're Captain Rulorat, I take it?”

“I am, sir,” Vidarian said, extending his hand, meeting the man's gaze with what was not quite defiance. “Reporting at the emperor's request.”

“I hope you're well in a scrap, then,” Allingworth all but grunted. “Nistra knows we'll need all the wit we can get, sailing these against the Qui. At least you'll have a berth bigger than this one, eh.” He poked the
Destiny
with the toe of his boot.

Vidarian felt heat creeping into his cheeks. “A small vessel, certainly, but she carried me well and safely across the Windsmouth Mountains all the way to this city.”

Allingworth scrutinized him, clearly weighing whether he dared trust him with a weapon, much less a ship. Then, like storm clouds breaking, a grin split his saturnine face. “Temerity. Good. And you stand by your craft. We'll need that, by and by.” Then he turned, waving Vidarian to follow.

They threaded their way through the lines of ships, workers flowing around them like steady streams of water. Most of the ships were supported by blocks, but a few hung suspended in the air, their elemental crystals aflame with blue light. As they passed toward the back of the field, the ships increased in size, until finally they came to a slender schooner so like the
Empress Quest
that Vidarian's heart convulsed.

A black melancholy settled on him as he looked on the ship. He realized now the root of his misgiving at this entire errand. The sight of the ships had only hinted at the shadow: now, seeing this vessel before him—the
Luminous
, according to her hull—the root of his misgiving crashed home. Vidarian, who had lived most of his entire life on the deck of a ship, could find very little he wanted to do with a vessel of this size now, since the destruction of his family's
Empress Quest.

When he turned to gather his thoughts, Admiral Allingworth was there, the gruffness in his gaze replaced by compassion and sadness. He reached out to grip Vidarian's shoulder with a massive hand.

“Your pardon, my boy,” he said, and some little part of Vidarian tried to remember who had last called him that, “I thought to reassure you with a familiar craft. The
Luminous
dates around the same time as your family's ship, if I'm not mistaken. And she's Targuli, too.”

The familiar red teak was a giveaway, of course. And Vidarian would have recognized those lines anywhere. The
Luminous
was dwarfed by the flagship beside it, a monstrous twenty-eight-gun frigate half again bigger than Ruby's
Viere d'Inar
—but with familiar shape and build, Vidarian's eyes could only be drawn to the smaller ship.

“I thought, perhaps, a friendly voice—” Allingworth began.

“Captain!” But the voice was not familiar at all. Still, the man clearly recognized Vidarian, and came running down the steeply tilted gangplank to greet him.

Dawn hadn't yet made her appearance, and so the light was dim, even when aided by numerous witch-lights on long iron poles up and down the path. So it wasn't until the man was practically on top of them that Vidarian had the slightest recognition.

“Malloray?” Astonishment shook him out of his sadness. For here, sure as day, was Malloray, who had served aboard the
Empress Quest
for twenty years—but Vidarian had never seen him like this, buoyant, confident—and he had never
heard
him in his life. “But—you—” He didn't know remotely how to phrase it.

Rai, caught up in the excitement, started barking again, and Malloray laughed easily, crouching to pet the pup. Vidarian started to warn him, then swallowed his objection—for Malloray was looking into the pup's eyes, and Rai, unbelievably, calmed down, the spines along his neck relaxing and ceasing their electric vibration.

After a moment, Malloray looked up again, still aglow with secret satisfaction. “I know, sir. I ain't never spoken in the twenty years you knew me. Nor been on land a day all that time. But now I have some help, you see.” He looked up, and Vidarian followed his gesture.

High above, from the rail of the
Luminous
, Isri, still wearing her black cloak, lifted her hand in greeting. To Vidarian's relief, she seemed at ease and happy.

//
He is a powerful mindspeaker,
// Isri said, and Malloray blushed. //
Extraordinarily so, to have been so affected he could neither speak nor tolerate populous places even before the gate opened. And now…
//

Allingworth, pleased at Malloray's appearance but oblivious to Isri's words, was still looking at Vidarian with concern. “The choice is yours, Captain Rulorat. I had thought to offer you the
Luminous
, and Nistra knows we have need of your leadership. But if it's too painful…” He lifted his eyebrows.

Vidarian looked from Allingworth to Malloray. “I could hardly refuse the vessel of so loyal and long a friend,” he said, and meant it. “I'd be honored with the
Luminous
's commission, Admiral.”

Malloray clapped his hands, and Rai barked again. “You'll not regret it, sir.” He thumped the polished side of the ship for emphasis. “
Luminous
is a relay ship!”

Vidarian had heard of signal ships being used in the Sea Wars, four generations past—but
Luminous
was a vessel of entirely different caliber. From the outside she had borne striking resemblance to the
Empress Quest
, but within—to Vidarian's relief—she was an entirely different creature.

Her crew was almost entirely officer class, and they moved about efficiently, many carrying stacks of paper tied with leather. Vidarian had never seen so many books aboard a ship before. And within,
Luminous
was a maze of cabins, all converging on a single large stateroom equipped with the same apparatus as the emperor's Relay Room: a single massive glowing sphere riddled with holes, and eight pairs of blue-lensed glasses that communicated with it. Thus, as Malloray had said, the “relay ship.”

All this Vidarian knew from a fast tour of the decks, as he scrambled to get his bearings for command. Malloray was not just a signal officer—he was the
Luminous
's first mate, made official when Vidarian accepted her captainship.

There was no time to become as versed as he would have liked in the launching and operation of the ship, with all able ships of the fleet taking off for Isrinvale and the front line of the Qui-Alorean conflict. And so after the ship took off—lifting easily into the air with a thrumming power the
Destiny
could not have hinted at—Vidarian, rather than standing at the wheel, was closeted in the captain's stateroom with Malloray.