The Reforged Trilogy: Book 1 — Crucible of Stars
Chapter 22
Reunions
“I love not the stones less, but the skies more.”
– Prian saying
A deep red dawn smoldered on the western horizon by the time Xia finally told the men that they could come see the new baby. Gripper followed Tiberius and Duaal up the stairs and back through the close corridors to the medical bay, groggy but grinning.
Kessa was propped up on pillows and covered by a blue blanket scavenged from Xia’s quarters. The Ixthian was always trying to help, Gripper thought with pride. Kessa looked tired but happy and cradled a wrapped bundle in her arms. Xia and Maeve lingered protectively on either side of the new mother.
Tiberius hung back by the door, looking uncertain, and Duaal remained near his captain, but Gripper knuckle-walked carefully closer. Swaddled in the cloth was a tiny blue-skinned baby with huge, curious black eyes and a shock of startlingly un-Dailon white hair. Xia caught his look.
“His hair will darken in a few weeks,” she said.
“What’s his name?” Gripper asked.
Kessa blushed and caressed her son’s blue cheek with a tired, trembling finger. “I’d like to name him Baliend… if it’s alright. It means fire bird in old Dailois. After this ship.”
Tears shone in Xia’s white eyes. Gripper’s eyes were tearing up, too, and he sniffled. Even Duaal — well-groomed and proud Duaal — grinned proudly. Tiberius was looking rather red in the face, but he nodded. Even Maeve smiled and Kessa beamed, hugging her infant son to her.
“My little Baliend,” she crooned to the baby boy. “My son.”
He cooed in answer, reaching for his mother with short, chubby blue arms.
When Coldhand landed the Raptor down on a dusty sancrete pad, Gharib was stirring to life after the long, cold desert night. The bounty hunter unsealed the canopy, climbed out and stripped off his flight suit. Vyron was watching, but that wasn’t why Coldhand hurried to redress.
“Get out,” he told Vyron as he pulled on his pants and buckled his gun belt.
Still handcuffed, the Dailon took longer to clamber from the Raptor. Coldhand didn’t offer to help.
“Where are the people who want me? You didn’t call anyone,” Vyron asked.
Coldhand just motioned for him to follow. Vyron sighed and did so with shoulders hopelessly slumped. The hunter led him north through the landing crescent, past other fighters and small cargo haulers.
Coldhand paused briefly as he escorted Vyron by an extravagant silver ship etched with delicate red and gold designs. It was another Narsus model, this one far larger and even more expensive than Xoe’s Starstalker.
The name Oslain’ii was painted onto the yacht’s shiny flank. In the year chasing Maeve, Coldhand had managed to pick up a little of the Arcadian language.
Vengeance.
Despite a certain curiosity, Coldhand didn’t linger. A fairy with the money to buy any ship — much less an extravagant yacht like this — was strange. Maybe the Oslain’ii simply belonged to someone fascinated with the fallen White Kingdom, but Coldhand doubted it. The Arcadians were by and large viewed as vermin, frail and sickly creatures that swarmed uninvited into the core worlds. It was a mystery, but not one that was interesting enough to stop Coldhand from finishing today’s business.
In the stifling heat, Vyron had opened his shirt to the waist in a vain attempt to cool himself. The sun would burn the Dailon’s exposed blue skin within hours. But by then, Coldhand’s job would be done, so he didn’t say anything.
The hunter made his way to an empty landing pad not far down the row from the Oslain’ii. As he neared, the hunter reached for his Talon-9. Vyron jumped back, holding up his cuffed hands.
“Wait, no! I didn’t do anything!” he said.
“This isn’t for you.”
Coldhand pulled the laser pistol free and switched off the safety. He circled the dusty square of blastphalt, his glacial blue eyes frequently flickering toward the sky. Satisfied that the landing pad was safe, he reholstered his Talon-9.
Coldhand knelt and touched his fingers to the blastphalt. It was already warm under Stray’s fat red sun. The landing pad had been empty for a while. Without a ship to shade it, the pad was just as hot as the surrounding ground. Vyron watched Coldhand curiously, but he seemed to have finally given up on asking questions. Coldhand stood.
“They’ve moved their ship,” he said. “I need to find a computer, one connected to the mainstream.
Coldhand took Vyron by the shoulder and propelled him back out into the street. A veiled Hadrian man in the white garb of a Union of Light priest averted his filmed eyes from hunter and mark as he passed.
“What’re you talking about?” Vyron asked. “The ones who put a bounty on me? Is this where they said to deliver me?”
“No.”
Xartasia seemed preoccupied. Gavriel rested his tired body on one of the very few chairs in the black cathedral. It was a high-backed mahogany seat that had doubtlessly been expensive many years ago, but was now so splintered and worn that it had been thrown out. Beside him, the black-haired princess paced restlessly.
At least, it looked like pacing. Xartasia flew from one wall to the other, perching delicately on a piece of jagged stone jutting from the church wall and then fluttering to another outcropping. In years of association with the Arcadian — first as her student and then as an ally — Gavriel had never seen her like this.
“Princess, get down here,” he said.
Even aged and annoyed, his rich voice was smooth as cream. Xartasia turned, her eyes bright and almost feverish. She said nothing, but soared down from her most recent roost on silent white wings. She bowed gracefully to Gavriel and knelt.
“You are lord of this house and so due the proper respects, my old friend,” Xartasia said.
“Tell me what I need to reclaim the power Duaal took from me.”
The Nihilists were waking as the sun rose high enough to shine through the gaps in the wall, but they maintained a respectful distance from Gavriel and his guest. Two more had died during the night: a young human woman who declined blankets and let the cold Gharib night kill her, and an Arcadian man who looked young, but who was probably at least twice the age of the dead woman. A mottled red and black infection had finally spread to some vital organ and killed the fairy.
Gavriel watched his congregation lift the corpses up and begin the nearly daily ritual of burial, singing discordant hymns of praise and gratitude. Xartasia watched, too, with some unknowable rage blazing in her glorious twilight eyes. They waited in silence until the two bodies were carried away.
“You will find what you require in the mind unmade,” Xartasia answered at last.
“Damned riddle. Very well. Unmade? That’s why you want me to use the dying, isn’t it? When the brain is coming apart and unraveling.”
Xartasia nodded and smiled, her perfect white teeth flashing in the pale morning light. She took Gavriel’s liver-spotted hands.
“Yes,” Xartasia said. She stroked his papery skin. “There shall be a death. But what you require is the blooming of a new mind, like Duaal was when you began your work through him.”
“A child.”
“As fresh from the womb as can be had, a mind unformed and as malleable as fire-called glass,” Xartasia said. “Bring me such a baby and I shall do what must be done. When our task is finished, I promise that you shall regain the power you lost when the boy ran away and more.”
Gavriel stood, towering over the kneeling Arcadian princess. He clenched his withered hands into fists. “It will take some work. I’ve forbidden my congregation to breed. There is no greater sin than creating life here. But one will be found. Bren!”
The doctor appeared instantly when Gavriel called.
“Yes, Holiness? How may I serve?” he asked.
Gavriel told him. Bren bowed again and hurried away with purpose burning in his eyes.
That afternoon, Tiberius leaned against the railing of the catwalk that ran high across the cargo hold. Orphia was perched on his arm, preening her fading feathers. Down below, Gripper and Xia had drawn a pair of semicircles onto the floor in chalk for a game of pounceball.
They had attempted to coax their crewmates into the game, but Duaal stiffly declined and Maeve just stared blankly. They hadn’t even asked Tiberius to participate. The game wasn’t made for one-on-one competition, to judge by the frequent breaks in play for spirited arguments between Tiberius’ medic and engineer.
At the foot of the stairs, Kessa leaned on Maeve’s arm, cradling tiny Baliend to her breast and watching the game. Maeve had not left Kessa’s side since the birth and still had not given a full report on the Church of Nihil. The short Arcadian used her spear like a staff to keep herself upright under Kessa’s weight.
No one wanted to press Maeve for the uncomfortable details of her time with the Nihilists. They all knew what they needed to do — as soon as Vyron was delivered, they would move on to find Kessa and her new family a safe home. But until then, all they could do was wait.
The pounceball game seemed to be an even pairing. Gripper’s far superior size and reach were undermined by his tendency to stumble and blush any time Xia got close. The score — kept with tic marks around the edge of their respective circles — was nine to four in the Ixthian’s favor.
At the request of the two athletes, the cargo door was closed up against the hot Gharib afternoon. Gripper and Xia had stopped to argue again, the Ixthian defending her tenth and winning goal. She was punctuating her points with wild sweeps of her long-fingered hands while Gripper tried not to stammer. Kessa giggled as she watched the debate.
Tiberius watched his crew play. He was too old and too damned tired from decades on the Prian police force for silly games… but he had to admit it was good to see them relaxing. Everyone on the Blue Phoenix had been on edge ever since Kessa’s arrival. They were the crew of a cargo ship, not heroes from one of Gripper’s shows.
Tiberius stroked Orphia’s back. She nipped his fingers and he rapped her on the beak. The hawk stared at Tiberius with gleaming black eyes, then flipped her wings and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to draw her master’s blood.
There was muffled laughter from behind Tiberius. The captain turned to see Duaal in the hatchway, leaning out just far enough to watch the game below but not be seen himself. Duaal felt Tiberius’ gaze on him and looked up, sobering instantly. The young Hyzaari turned on his booted heel to leave.
Tiberius wished he wouldn’t go. Duaal was a boy, too young to have picked up the worries of an old hawk like him. Duaal should have been down in the hold, playing games and flirting. But then, life had been hard on Duaal even before the mage had stowed away on Tiberius’ newly salvaged ship.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the child sobbed, words almost unrecognizable through his tears. “I won’t hurt anyone. I won’t, I swear!”
Tiberius held the scrawny boy up by the scruff of his neck, staring. He was just a hatchling, and a half-starved one at that. He didn’t look capable of strangling a stonemouse, much less harming the battle-scarred Prian cop. Retired cop, Tiberius reminded himself.
“What are you doing on my ship?” he asked, tightening his grip on the child.
“Hiding,” the boy whimpered. “Don’t send me back to Gavriel! I don’t want to sing anymore. Please!”
A loud clang interrupted Tiberius’ memory. The thick hatch of the airlock beeped and slammed open, crashing noisily against the bulkhead. Xia and Gripper backed away as the door was filled with ruddy light.
It was Coldhand. His Talon-9 was drawn and ready, swinging the gun in a low, searching arc. Maeve pushed Kessa and the baby behind her. She spread her wings to shield them and whirled her glass-bladed spear, leveling it at the hunter in the airlock door. Xia ran past the cowering Gripper for her gun, hanging in its holster from the corner of an empty cargo container. Coldhand aimed the laser at Xia.
“Don’t. Hands up and back off,” he said.
Xia froze with her hand a breath from the slick plastic grip of her weapon and then turned slowly away. Coldhand pointed his Talon-9 at Maeve, the only one left armed. Her fingers tightened on the haft of her spear.
Tiberius went nova-hot with fury. Orphia shifted uneasily on his sleeve as the captain pounded his fist on the catwalk railing. Damn him! Damn Maeve! Of all the bounty hunters in the galaxy, why was Coldhand here? How had he known? Maeve had assured Tiberius that the chances of Coldhand taking Vyron’s bounty were remote, too small to even guess at.
“Where is Vyron?” Maeve asked.
Duaal was frozen in the doorway behind his captain, still out of sight of anyone in the hold below. Coldhand reached into the airlock with his metal hand and yanked another man into the light.
“Vyron!” Kessa cried.
She pushed past Maeve and ran to her lover. Vyron stared, black eyes wide and disbelieving.
“Kessa? Oh my God, Kes…” he gasped.
Coldhand released Vyron and he stumbled forward, awkwardly putting his handcuffed arms around Kessa and holding her to him. Both of their cheeks were wet with tears.
“Kes, I never thought I’d see you again!” Vyron said.
He kissed Kessa, then sobbed choked, half-formed apologies and confessions of love into her tousled black hair. Kessa answered Vyron’s desperate kisses with her own and assured her frightened, harried mate that all was well, that everything would be better now that they were together again.
“Vyron, look,” Kessa said. She nodded down to the little blanket-wrapped bundle cradled between them. “We have a son.”
Baliend burbled happily and then sucked on his stubby fingers, staring up at his father. Vyron burst into fresh tears and kissed both mother and child.
