THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 21: White as Snow
“It is darkness that sends us in search of light.”
– Anya Bowden, Quarran Education Minister (193 PA)
“What’s Varrth charging us to haul this stuff?” Ballad asked.
Panna squinted at him through her sunglasses. Stray’s sun was dim as ever, but the bright white sand of Bherrosi managed to make it blinding. Panna hoped that boded well for its future as Arcadian glass.
“Three hundred cenmarks a ton,” she answered. “Less than half the next best offer Vyron managed to find.”
Ballad stood nearby, squinting out across the gleaming desert.
“How the hells did we get a discount?” the young knight asked suspiciously.
“Varrth wants to turn all this into farmland,” Panna said. “He’s already got a contract to irrigate it with polar runoff. He just needs to change the nitrogen content of the ground to support plant life. He’s tried twice, but this sand just absorbs the infusions and doesn’t do any good. So we’re actually doing Varrth a favor in hauling the stuff away.”
“And he’s still charging us?”
“Yes, he is. Do you have any idea how much seven hundred tons of fertilizer costs?” Panna asked, raising an eyebrow at the short-haired fairy boy. “Varrth threw away a lot more into this land than he’ll make off us. If he’s lucky and gets a good rate, we’ll be buying him one-quarter of his next nitrogen infusion.”
“Still seems like we’re being cheated.”
Ballad turned his slit-eyed gaze to the Arcadians working the snow-colored dune, laboring under Duaal and Sir Anthem’s direction to large plastic canisters and then drag them onto the null-inertia loader. The white sand hill hid the Blue Phoenix from view. Panna wondered if she would be able to see it when they had sifted and removed enough of the dune to fill the old hauler’s hold.
“Is the nitrogen going to be a problem?” Ballad asked suddenly. “When Hyra and his birds make all this into glass?”
“What? Of course not,” Panna answered. “Have you ever taken a science class?”
“No,” Ballad said. “There aren’t lots of schools on Prianus and I sure as hells wouldn’t cut off my wings just to go to one.”
Panna scowled at Ballad. “It shows.”
“Wait, are you calling me stupid?”
“Nitrogen is a gas, Sir Ballad,” Panna pointed out. “And unlike the heavy metals in Gharib sand, the nitrogen will vaporize as soon as the glass-singers begin working the molecules.”
“How the hells was I supposed to know that?” Ballad asked.
“That’s what school is for!”
Ballad fumed, gripping his spear so tight that his knuckles went the same white as the dunes.
“I’m going up,” he said. “I may be dumb, but I can carry sand.”
“But you’re supposed to be watching for trouble from the city!” Panna protested.
She pointed to the barely-visible silhouette of Bherrosi in the distance. Ballad flicked his wings.
“We’ve been here all day,” he said. “No one in Bherrosi has even noticed. I’m just standing here and getting a sunburn, not doing anything useful.”
“If Sir Anthem needed you up there, he would call,” Panna told him. “You stay right here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ballad said sourly. “Because I need another old-fashioned fairy ordering me around.”
Panna was so pleased that Ballad was listening to something she said that it took a moment to register what he said.
“Old fashioned?” she asked. “Me? I had my wings removed and went to a coreworld college. I’m the most progressive Arcadian that you’ll ever meet!”
Bored or maybe just showing off, Ballad spun his glass-bladed spear in a flashing circle. A pair of blue ribbons streamed from the haft, probably awarded for success in some sort of training exercise.
“Really?” Ballad asked, arching an eyebrow. “Queen Maeve left my friend for Sir Anthem. Let me guess where you stand on that.”
“Hey, I like Logan, too,” Panna protested. “But it’s important for the queen to have an Arcadian consort!”
“Why?” Ballad asked.
He twirled his spear again and thumped the butt down into the sand. Panna shook her head in disbelief.
“Because Maeve’s our queen,” she said. “Because she’s the living embodiment of ten thousand years of history and culture. Arcadian history and culture.”
“So?” Ballad asked plainly. “Anthem gave up fighting to become a prostitute! He’s a coward!”
“What?” Panna asked, blinking her streaming eyes. “Who told you that? And anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore! Sir Anthem is an anointed knight and one of precious few noble-born Arcadians left in the universe. Queen Maeve needs him!”
“By that logic, she should marry Duke Ferris! And the one who should get to keep the dove is the hawk who fights for her!”
“That’s sexist,” Panna said. “Queen Maeve can fight for herself. And even if it were true, by that logic, Logan still lost Maeve. He left her, and was right to do so. We all make sacrifices for our people, Ballad. Maybe you’ll understand that someday.”
The young fairy man shot Panna a furious glare and took to the air. His takeoff kicked up a cloud of pale dust that made her cough.
“Well, I’m going to get some actual work done,” Ballad shouted down to Panna. “But you can watch Bherrosi, if you want to waste your time.”
When Panna finally figured out an answer, Ballad was already gone.
“What are those?” Logan asked.
Maeve looked up from her datadex full of numbers. Logan stood at the open window, ostensibly to watch the street far below, but his pale blue eyes were fixed instead on the fairy queen at her desk. The Prian looked like some kind of monstrous giant in the delicate glass room, with his decidedly un-Arcadian features, blocky metal hand and height generally towering over everyone and everything else.
“Reports from Bherrosi,” Maeve said. “Panna tells me that they have collected and loaded over seventy tons of sand. They should be done and ready to return to Kaellisem in just two more days.”
“A day early?”
Maeve’s smile faltered. That meant Anthem would be back, too. Duke Ferris had kept her busy for the last week, working on the new enassui and Panna’s reports had been sitting on her desk for the better part of a day. The time had gone by quickly, but it was lonely. Logan was there beside her every day, but it was nothing like it had been before and Maeve ached to kiss him. Or just to hold his hand…
“Do you need anything, a’shae?” Verra asked from her seat in the corner.
Maeve shook her head, then returned her attention to Panna’s report. She still felt Logan’s eyes on her, but she didn’t let herself look up again.
“We should be done by nine or ten tomorrow morning,” Panna told Anthem.
“Good,” said the royal consort. “Everyone is tired and ready to return to Kaellisem. We have all breathed much dust here. Do you think it will do any harm?”
“Probably some,” Panna admitted. “I’ll ask Xia about it when we get back.”
She was a little self-conscious sitting in Sir Anthem’s presence, but she was exhausted. Panna propped her chin on her hand and stifled a yawn. The sky outside the Blue Phoenix was dark and the ship was full of the muffled sounds of singing: the evening prayer-song before sleep. The Arcadians always sang and Panna quickly found herself humming along. Anthem watched her.
“I do not know how anyone ever mistook you for human, child,” Anthem said, even managing to not to sound condescending when he said child. “You are a true daughter of Arcadia.”
“Really?” Panna asked. “Would you mind telling Ballad that?”
“Is there trouble with him?” Anthem asked with a frown.
Panna bit her lip and wished she weren’t so tired. Weighing and tallying barrels of sand wasn’t that hard, but it was so hot.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Nothing important.”
But that didn’t seem to satisfy the knight commander.
“Ballad is an interesting disciplinary challenge,” Anthem said. “He is fierce and dedicated to the kingdom, but has little respect for the traditions of our people.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Panna said.
“You can,” Anthem told her. “But you would be wrong.”
Panna blinked a few times and burst out into nervous laughter. The prince consort was teasing her. Smiling at her… Panna’s cheeks went quite hot. Anthem was a handsome man. She knew that he had been a prostitute even before Ballad had said anything. Xia had discreetly put the knight through a series of medical tests to ensure that he could transmit nothing dangerous to Maeve. But Panna had a hard time imagining Sir Anthem on a street corner.
A sudden shout interrupted her thoughts and Panna jumped to her feet, banging her knees on the underside of the table. By the time she managed to stand and run toward the sound, Anthem was already through the door and sprinting down the cargo bay catwalk. At night, the bulky airlock doors were kept open to cool the overheated hold and its crowded contents of Arcadians and barrels of sand.
Someone stood in the airlock. Panna thought for a moment that it was Duaal. The shape was human, as tall as the Hyzaari captain but with a wider build.
The man stepped into the hold. It was a human with sunburnt red skin and a slit-eyed black hood pulled down over his face. He held a piece of pitted steel pipe in his hands. It was only about the length of his forearm and was hardly the most dangerous weapon Panna had ever seen, but that piece of dented metal somehow filled her with an instant sense of dread. A pair of tall Dailons came in behind the human, then several others whose racial marks Panna couldn’t make out from this distance. The Arcadian diggers shied away from the intruders, whispering and humming with the same fear that knotted Panna’s stomach.
“What the hells are you doing on my ship?”
The loud question came from Captain Sinnay as he pushed his way through the ranks of nervous Arcadians. The furious scowl on his face would have made Tiberius proud.
The hooded human looked Duaal up and down, taking in the captain’s lavender silk pants and black brocade vest, then swung the pipe in a short arc. The metal impacted with a loud thump against Duaal’s temple and he collapsed to the floor, blood oozing from the side of his head. The intruder lifted his hood enough to spit on the crumpled Duaal.
“Roodin’ fairy lover,” he said and then pointed with the pipe in his hand at the Arcadians. Duaal’s blood shone on the steel. “You come all the way back to Bherrosi to steal from me? You aren’t going to get another chance, you little rats!”
Steal? Steal what? Panna did not have much time to wonder. Sir Anthem was already unfolding his long wings and diving from the catwalk. When had he grabbed his spear? More of Anthem’s trainee knights pushed their way toward the armed coreworlders, who spread out in response, readying themselves for a fight… Panna saw more clubs emerge from desert robes and the greasy shine of several nanoblades, then a storm of wings obscured everything.
The Arcadians were breaking ranks, flying up and further into the ship. They scrambled over the stairs, through the catwalk where Panna stood and past her. Feathers drifted through the air like oversized snowflakes as Panna fought to keep her feet beneath her. She clung to the railing and gasped. Below, the fairies and coreworlders came together.
“Kill no one!” Anthem commanded, even as his own glass spear darted out.
Anthem lunged to one side, then beat his wings and was somehow behind a snarling Lyran that was reaching for him with claws extended. Panna gasped when he thrust his spear, but Anthem had twirled it around so that it connected butt-first with the back of the Lyran’s head.
An Arcadian in black leapt on one of the humans. It was Ballad, the sliced leather jacket he wore even in Stray’s heat making him stand out against the more colorful squires. Panna bit her lip. Only Anthem had glass armor… Ballad’s spear thrust out more awkwardly than Anthem’s, but it drove his opponent back and the kick that he delivered connected with an audible thud.
There were cries of pain whose source Panna couldn’t distinguish, and a few feathers floated on eddying currents as the cooling night air swirled through the hold. Some were spotted red with blood. She looked around the bay for something to do, for some way to help.
One of the invading humans loomed up over Duaal. The young Hyzaari captain groaned and struggled to push himself upright. He didn’t seem to notice the shadow falling over him. Panna swore. There was nothing like a weapon up on the catwalk. All of the tools were stowed down in the hold, in the middle of the fighting, to say nothing of any real weapons. The only thing nearby was a plastic barrel someone must have set up here to get out of the way.
Panna grabbed the bottom and thanked Aes that it was empty — she never would have been able to lift it full. Panna heaved and the barrel balanced on the rail for a moment, then overbalanced and tumbled down into the hold. It didn’t actually hit the man below, but it clipped his head and shoulder and knocked him sprawling to the ground.
By the time he managed to regain his feet, so had Duaal. The mage blinked blood from his eyes, and then they narrowed and fixed on the other man. Duaal raised his hand, songless and silent, and sent the Bherrosi man flying backward across the hold with a spell. He hit two more of their attackers and they tumbled together into a heap on the floor. One of Anthem’s squires — bleeding from her own stomach wound — retreated back toward Duaal and began helping the captain up the stairs.
Panna searched for Anthem and Ballad again. There were fewer people fighting now. Anthem held his spear to the throat of a man on his knees. The wolf-eyed new squire, Syle, drove his spear deep into the back of the Lyran that Panna had seen earlier, who howled in pain as blood gushed from his muzzle. Anthem turned on Syle, rage blazing in his dark eyes, but the younger knight was already leaping and diving away, as graceful as a hunting bird, at another coreworlder.
Ballad’s spear had fallen to the ground, but one of the Dailons lay curled in a fetal ball at his feet, gasping and groaning while the Prian fairy traded jabbing punches with the other one. When the remaining Dailon swung a blue fist nearly as big as Ballad’s head, Panna tried to cry out a warning, but all that came out was a strangled choking sound.
Ballad slid under the blow and answered with a flurry of his own, but the impacts didn’t seem to faze the bigger man at all. The black-clad young knight curled his fingers into a sort of claw and grabbed the Dailon, who shrieked far louder than Panna had managed and sank to his knees on the floor. He grabbed weakly for Ballad’s hand until Anthem stalked close behind him and slid his spear under the Dailon’s jaw.
“Leave!” Anthem commanded.
The kneeling Dailon nodded gingerly and Ballad released him. A midnight bruise was already spreading under the skin as they yanked the other Dailon to his feet and the two stumbled out the airlock, back into the cooling Bherrosi night. One by one, the others staggered or crawled from the Blue Phoenix.
Panna sprinted down the stairs as quickly as her trembling legs would carry her. Two of Anthem’s knights were on the ground and did not rise. Cyrene lay still in a pool of blood, a nanoblade buried to the hilt in her throat. The other young knight was dead, too, the left side of his skull crushed like an eggshell. Panna sobbed and closed the knight’s dull eyes. She crawled across the hold to do the same for the Lyran that Syle had killed.
Ballad grabbed the last man by his collar. It was the one in the black hood and now the cloth was torn and tacky with blood, but the human wasn’t wounded. That blood wasn’t his. Ballad swept the man’s feet out from under him and sent him crashing to the floor of the Blue Phoenix.
“We didn’t do anything to you!” Ballad shouted. “What the hells was this?”
“You stole my money, you roodin’ bird-back,” the man snarled back, angry but lacking the molten venom it once held.
“You’re lying! We never went anywhere near Bherrosi. And now Cyrene and Sellesian are dead!”
Ballad yanked the man’s hood off, making him suddenly squint in the bright cargo bay lights. Panna blinked. Their attacker had a round, friendly-looking face, with sparse brown hair and very pink cheeks. Ballad’s hands trembled and Anthem put his hand on the young fairy’s shoulder.
“And his Lyran friend is dead,” said the prince consort. “Release him, Ballad. There is no justice to be had tonight. Your brother and sister fought for their people, as they swore to do. They are with the All-Singer now.”
“Can’t we call the Stray police? We can’t just let this crime go unanswered!”
“The police on Stray are not like those of Prianus,” Anthem reminded Ballad. “They will not care that our own are dead, but may punish us badly for the Lyran.”
With a choked sob, Ballad threw the hood down to the floor and shoved its owner toward the airlock. “Get the hells out of here!”
The human jumped to his feet and ran. Only Anthem, Syle and Ballad remained in the hold with Panna. Anthem whirled on Syle.
“You killed one of them,” he sang angrily. “I ordered you to kill no one!”
“En xarri ma’anni,” Syle answered. They were killing us.
“Ae vae’ii si ven!” Anthem hissed. You will obey my orders!
“You must deserve obedience,” Syle told Anthem coolly. “Ballad is right. Cyrene and Sellesian are dead.”
Panna gasped. “You can’t blame Sir Anthem for that!”
Syle fixed his golden eyes on Panna and bowed his head.
“No,” he said. “Please, Sir Anthem, forgive me. I was angry.”
Syle hadn’t sounded angry, Panna thought, but Anthem shook his head.
“Forgiven,” he told Syle. “But a knight must obey orders, even if he does not agree with them. There is a time to ask questions and to argue, but in the midst of battle is not that time.”
“No, it is not,” Syle agreed. The yellow-eyed knight turned away and went to the bodies of his fallen comrades.
“We can’t stay here,” Panna said. “I doubt that man will call the police, but just in case I’m wrong, we should be gone.”
“We have not yet collected the sands that we promised Queen Maeve,” Anthem said.
“I think that our queen would rather keep her people alive than make more glass,” Panna told him. “Besides, if this goes at all well, we can use some of the profits to send someone else up here to collect sand. Someone that the locals won’t accuse of theft.”
“Perhaps that man’s accusation was not a lie,” Syle interrupted. Anthem shot him an angry look, but Syle held up a handful of red cenmark chips. “Cyrene had them.”
Panna wondered where she could have kept them. Cyrene didn’t have a suit of glass armor yet and her pale body was dressed in only a few scarves, much better suited to the warm, overcrowded cargo hold than Ballad’s leather. But Anthem took the plastic squares and clenched his fist around them. He thought a moment and then stalked to the airlock. He threw the plastic cenmark chips into the sand outside and slammed the doors shut.
“We are done here,” Anthem announced. “Panna, please check on Captain Sinnay. If he is well enough, ask him to return us to Kaellisem at once. Ballad, get our people back into the hold and secured for the flight.”
“What of me, sir?” Syle asked.
“Clean the blood from the floor, remove the bodies and reflect on the life you have taken,” Anthem told him.
“Yes, sir.”
Panna climbed up the stairs into the Blue Phoenix, but paused to look down at Syle as the fairy squire searched the cargo hold for a mop. Was he smiling?
