The Paladin Caper (38 page)

He looked at Tern now. “I took my students, the Order of the Still Valley, across the Republic border. We entered Fort Guyer, where the airship that had fired was docked. It was not difficult. You have seen what I can do. Your soldiers were not ready for us.” His gaze moved to Loch and Kail. “We killed everyone who wore a uniform.”

“The Red Trail Massacre,” Loch said.

“We never heard about the fire,” Kail said.

“I am unsurprised that the Republic ignored that aspect of the story.” Icy bowed his head. “I told my students that it was justice, not murder, that we were better, because we had not killed civilians. Such justifications rang increasingly hollow as the Republic and the Empire veered toward war as a result of our actions.

“I could have stayed, held true to my anger. The Empire would have either gone to war or handed me over as a criminal.” He swallowed. “My students would have been handed over as well, however, and when I saw that potential . . . The two countries did not wish to go to war. Neither was ready at that time. Leaving the Order allowed for assurances that quiet corrections had been made.”

Tern swallowed, nodded, wiped at her eyes. “And coming here? Swearing your oath?”

Icy met her gaze again. “I wished to see the people whose soldiers I had murdered. I thought I could atone.” He started to speak, stopped, and when he did again, his voice caught. “I was down, Tern. I did not want to be a murderer again, and I did not fight, and so I fell. I could not have saved him.” He reached out slowly with one hand. “Neither could you.”

She said nothing, but she took the hand and held it tight while hot tears slid down her face again in the silent ship.

“Pathetic,” Mister Skinner said as he held his paladin band over the ogre’s throat. “Pitiful. I should give her claws or blood that erupts into flame when she bleeds. Perhaps
then
you lot might be useful.”

They were in the woods at the edge of the town, protected by other paladins, standard midlevel men who did the work that people like Mister Skinner didn’t have time for. The scorpion was unharmed, while the troll moaned softly, her burned skin peeling off in hunks.

“Arikayurichi gave you this chance to redeem your cursed bloodline,” Mister Skinner said, shaking his head, “and you waste it with this weakness.”

“Effort,” the scorpion said. “Unprepared.”

“Weak,” Skinner said. “You could have used your poison. The troll could have finished off the little alchemist.”

“Burning,” the scorpion said. “Injured.”

Mister Skinner brought his band close to the ogre’s skin, and the throat pulled taut. For a moment, it looked as though it might heal. Then a few little crystals bubbled out from the skin, tearing the wound even wider. With a little smile, Mister Skinner plucked the crystals free, wiping the blood from his pants as the ogre shuddered and then went still.

“Poor little thing,” Mister Skinner said, and turned to the troll. “Now, you, you, you, what to do with you.”

The troll said nothing.

“Smart girl.” Mister Skinner brought his band close to her, and the troll’s flesh took on a glossy sheen, like the glint of sunlight on metal. “There you go. Fireproof now. The burning feeling should fade in a moment as well.”

“Thank you.” She sat up and pulled herself into her human shape.

Or at least tried to.

“Oh yes, the skin doesn’t catch the way it used to,” Mister Skinner added as the troll’s upper body flopped over, slithering bonelessly to the ground. “The price of your new fire immunity. Shouldn’t stop you from tracking down your targets, but you won’t be impersonating a person anytime soon.”

“No,” she said, her loose arms flopping and jerking like a pile of snakes. Her voice was strange. Mister Skinner realized she was trying to cry, but her tear ducts didn’t work. “Please.”

“You want to be a pretty elf?” Mister Skinner asked. “Or a nice sturdy dwarf, or even a human, like your people were before the Glimmering Folk perverted you into the horrible beasts you are now?” He held up his paladin band. “Get your targets.”

He left the trackers to recover and entered the Lochenville estate. He’d been told there was one more for him to deal with.

The elf had dragged himself up onto a platform in the water garden. Mister Skinner sniffed disdainfully at the dead fish as he passed the paladins guarding him.

The elf had a great nasty wound in his chest. It would have killed a human, but the ancients had moved the elven heart over to make room for crystals that had replaced some of the less important glands.

“Another failure,” Mister Skinner said, looking down. “You little folks were always better doing the precision work than the manual labor.”

“I can . . . help you,” the elf said, coughing the words out.

“Now, now.” Mister Skinner smiled a friendly smile. “You gave us the Dragon, and you told us where Loch would be. You’ve served your masters well.”

“I can . . . make rings.” The elf coughed again. “Easier than bands. Cheaper. Can make more . . .”

Mister Skinner chuckled. “Now why, little elf, would we want to do that?” He knelt down beside the elf and held his hand. “You make rings, then the price of the paladin bands goes down, and all of a sudden it’s not just the best and the brightest wearing them. You think we want
anyone
getting one of us? You think we want to ride merchants and bakers and peasants?” He patted the elf’s shoulder. “No, little fellow, we’re fine as we are. And you can just rest easy now.”

Mister Skinner slit the elf’s throat gently. He had always been squeamish about watching animals suffer.

The day of the Republic Festival of Excellence dawned warm and clear, with fluffy white clouds joining the airships in the sky over Sunrise Canyon.

Princess Veiled Lightning watched the canyon as her airship approached. Even in the morning light, it gleamed with its own red radiance. From a distance, the valley looked like nothing so much as a wound upon the land. Near the northern cliff, the new festival ground had been built, a veritable city unto itself with tents and wagons instead of buildings clustered inside the great security fence that crackled, even at this distance, with arcs of pale-blue lightning.

Past the tents and wagons, a great amphitheater had been carved out of the ground. It was a perfect circle, insanely massive in scale, with 128 rows of seats from which the richest and most powerful people in the Republic would watch the contests of skill and strength on the fields in the middle. Veiled Lightning saw a running track, an archery range, and the pale white-chalked outline of a handball square. Near the middle of the field, a large podium stood for the winners to receive the paladin bands they had earned for their skill, and behind it, dead in the middle of the field, a steady red fire fountained from an enormous brazier set into the ground.

She had missed the opening ceremony last night, a calculated move to avoid making the event more political than it already was. A private glamour-screen on her airship had relayed what puppet shows across the Republic had displayed, however—a massive pageant of well-choreographed athleticism and flash. The paladins had leaped and danced with incredible skill, unmatched in so many who were so young. Veiled Lightning had never seen its like.

She was a little unsure why most of the female paladins had been bouncing in such skimpy outfits, but perhaps it was a Republic thing.

Veiled Lightning was a classic Imperial beauty, her face pale but touched with gold where light caught the delicate angles of her brow and cheekbones. Her hair was intricately bound, with two long braids running down either side of her throat and past her bosom. She wore a gown of shimmering red silk, and the Nine-Ringed Dragon, legendary blade of the Imperial family, rode at her waist.

She rested one hand upon the Nine-Ringed Dragon as she frowned at the amphitheater. “I hear they constructed this in only a few weeks.”

General Jade Blossom snorted beside her. She was an older woman whose armor, though enameled black and inlaid with precious stones in the shape of a twining dragon, clanked when she moved with the sound of grim functionality. “Brute work, carving all that out of the stone. Explains why it’s as ugly as it is, then.” She raked fingers through short hair streaked with white. “Any news from your contacts, Highness?”

Veiled Lightning sighed. “No, General. The Dragon requested the young man Rybindaris be given asylum but followed only with silence. From our other friends, I have heard nothing at all.”

Blossom glared at the approaching amphitheater as though she could wring answers from it through sheer force of will. “This feels like a trap.”

“It does. But if accepting the offer brings a chance for more lasting peace with the Republic, what choice do I have?” The last time Veiled Lightning had been in the Republic, she had been chasing Isafesira de Lochenville in an attempt to bring the woman to justice and avert a war. Instead, her efforts had brought that war even closer, and a blast from Heaven’s Spire had nearly destroyed a good portion of both nations.

The floating city hung low in the sky now, directly over Sunrise Canyon, the mirrors along its edges catching the morning light to direct it fully onto the glowing violet stones that held the city aloft.

“I will follow your lead, of course, Highness,” Blossom said with the grim disapproval that only a veteran could deliver.

Veiled Lightning wished, not for the first time, that Gentle Thunder were alive to offer her counsel. She had seen his mutilated body turned into a puppet for a weapon of the ancients, and then cut that body down to bring her mentor and guardian his final peace. She wondered what he would say.

“Isafesira—Loch—will be here when the trap springs, whatever it may be.” Veiled Lightning smiled. “When the time comes, hit whatever she hits.”

“Sounds simple enough.” Blossom grinned. “How long until we land?”

Veiled Lightning checked the paladin band that rode on her forearm, checking the built-in map and timer. “It should not be long now.”

“I don’t even know why they have us patrolling this place any longer,” said Matclar to the other guard beside him as they walked the outer grounds of the archvoyant’s palace.

“It’s where the most important man in the Republic eats breakfast,” said Ruck. “You want to explain why you stopped putting guards outside his bedroom?” They crossed the outside edge of the hedge maze, the gently curving path carrying them past a lovely fountain of Tasheveth. “Plus Archvoyant Cevirt is Urujar. You can’t take guards away. It’s going to look like a race thing.”

“The walls have aural shielding and the strongest security wards the Republic has ever seen,” Matclar said.

“You hear about how that Loch woman broke into the palace six months ago?” Ruck asked. The exact details of this were both classified and hazy, but Ruck had been around for a while, and guards didn’t stay around for a while without hearing things.

“Heard she turned into a fish and swam in through the sewer pipes,” Matclar said. “That’s why we spent two weeks putting shapeshifter wards on all the grates.”

“No, that was a fairy creature,” Ruck said.

“Was she the one who shot an arrow with a rope tied to it over the wall and slid down that way?” Matclar asked. “Because we spent
another
two weeks lining the walls with crystal amplifiers to increase the height of the wards, and barrier-wards to deflect arrows and whatnot that get fired in.”