THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 23: Red as Flame
“Some things are just too important to talk about. For those, you need songs.”
– Logan Centra (234 PA)
The site of the enassui as much a practical decision as a creative one. There was only one stage in Kaellisem and it happened to be where the royal subject of the performance had been crowned. In between their other work, the harried glass-smiths raised ranks of semi-circle tiered audience stands and a few small private viewing towers. The best of these seats was reserved for Maeve Cavainna herself. It was the royal tower in miniature, a spiraling needle of red and golden glass like a great flower that rose up over Kaellisem’s theater.
Syle Lamanna stalked between the low tiers of seats, pretending to inspect the glass-singers’ work along with his fellow squires. He raised yellow eyes to the sky where Sir Ballad flew in circles over the theater, speaking into a coreworlder’s com. In his ugly black leathers, the boy looked like a raven. The oldest knight and royal consort, Sir Anthem, stood at the top of the queen’s box and peered down at the rows of glass seats below. Neither Ballad nor Anthem watched Syle. Even after Bherrosi, the other knights suspected nothing.
Syle stared down the sloped tiers to the stage. Red and dun-colored sand was still heaped around the little glass plateau, despite the best efforts to sweep it away. Stray was a world of dry sand. Not even the desperate beauty of Kaellisem could change that. But tonight, this theater would house the first enassui sung in a century. After a hundred years of silence, the fairies would offer their song to the gods once more.
It was almost a pity that it would all end in blood and fire.
Maeve batted Duaal’s hands away and scowled at Verra until the girl backed off.
“I look fine,” she told them. “All eyes will be on the stage, not on me. I could show up in a sack and no one would notice.”
“Not everyone will be watching the show,” Duaal said with an irritatingly mysterious smirk.
“And anyways, this whole opera thing is about you,” Gripper pointed out. Even the big Arboran was dressed up in a fresh, clean pair of pants and a huge shirt that nonetheless fit him like a second skin. Gripper gave Duaal a stern look. “But don’t worry. Everything will go just fine.”
Maeve paused, not really sure what Gripper’s reassurances were supposed to mean, but Verra saw her opportunity and lunged at the queen, hurriedly applying a silvery eye shadow that made Maeve’s nose itch. She sneezed and Verra laughed at her. It was a soft, bell-like little sound.
“Sir Anthem will be unable to look away,” she told Maeve. “You are beautiful, my queen.”
She didn’t really want to think about that. Instead, she looked at Panna. “Where is Duke Ferris?”
“Already at the theater,” said the young anthropologist. “There are some coreworlders that came in from Gharib to watch the enassui tonight. Duke Ferris has gone to make introductions.”
Maeve nodded at her reflection. This time, Dain had firmly fixed the queen’s crown with an armory of pins and some sort of hair product that made Maeve think of the resin Xia used to preserve specimens. Verra painted a pink gloss onto Maeve’s lips, telling her not to bite them and she had to admit that the effect of her handmaidens’ work was impressive. Her silver gown was delicately embroidered like the foam of a sea never seen on Stray.
The queen in the mirror was a statue of ice and moonlight. She was royal, regal and commanding. She looked nothing like Maeve.
“Fifteen minutes,” Logan said from the doorway.
Maeve rose, her silver dress whispering softly around her.
“And where is Sir Anthem?” she asked. “He was supposed to be here by now.”
“Don’t worry about him,” Gripper answered. “He’s uh… already at the theater with the duke.”
“Anthem’s right where he needs to be,” Duaal agreed. “Let’s get going. You don’t want to miss this.”
Anthem Calloren looked around the Blue Phoenix hold. But for a few tangled orange cargo nets and a pair of large magclamps, it was empty. The barrels of white Bherrosi sand had already been removed and carted to Hyra’s smithy.
Where was Captain Sinnay? Anthem called out, but the only reply was an empty echo. Why had Duaal called Anthem here…? Behind him, the airlock light flashed from green to red.
“O2 leak,” warned a flat, recorded voice. “Now sealing all bulkheads.”
The airlock slid shut and locked with a loud thunk. Anthem ran to the controls and then stopped. He had no idea what to do.
How could there be an air leak on the Blue Phoenix? The ship was on the ground and — until a moment ago — the doors had been open. Something had to be wrong with the ship’s computer, but Anthem had no more idea how to fix it than how to kindle a star.
The knight remembered his com. It was a new addition to his equipment, but the coreworlder device had already proved useful on several occasions. Anthem was grateful that Gripper had given it to him. He scrolled through the pre-programmed contacts until he found Duaal’s name and then selected it. The com beeped as it signaled out. Just once and then there was the unmistakable click of someone answering.
“Um… hi,” said a nervous voice that was definitely not that of the young Captain Sinnay. “Hello there. I guess the airlocks closed up on you.”
“Gripper?” Anthem asked, confused. Had he called the wrong man? No matter — Gripper could surely help. “Yes, your computer seems to believe that there is some sort of leak.”
“Yeah,” Gripper said, his voice staticky and sheepish. “I kind of programmed it to. And your com. It’s not going to call anyone but me for the next few hours, Spear.”
“You have locked me away on your ship.”
“Sorry about that.”
Anthem sighed and switched off the com. Gripper — and Duaal, he suspected — would release him when the enassui was over. Probably. The knight folded his legs under him and sat in front of the airlock to wait.
Maeve left Gripper and the rest of her friends on a lower floor of the theater tower. There were seats set aside for each of them, but the top level was reserved for the queen and her consort alone.
Panna and Ferris were both there, grinning with excitement and eager for the show to begin. Duaal argued heatedly with Verra to convince her that Maeve would not need her handmaidens during the enassui. The queen would have her consort soon, after all, and who better to take care of her needs? It was the wink that Duaal gave Verra and the suggestion that it might be better to leave Maeve alone with Anthem that finally seemed to convince her.
Maeve wondered how unqueenly it would be to punch Duaal.
Only Logan, as her guard, was allowed to accompany Maeve all the way up to the top of the tower. She had to admit that it had been almost worth the bother. Her box was a small, intimate balcony decorated with vines of tiny white flowers that filled the warm evening air with their sweet, delicate scent. Where had anyone found such things on Stray? Nestled among the blossoms was a deep, backless Arcadian-styled seat, just wide enough for two and cushioned in a dark wine-colored red.
The theater spread out below, glass tiers full of winged shapes surrounded by slender glass tower seats all lit by the pale silver of Stray’s large, dim moon. The starkly simple stage rose up from the sand in the center and glowed in a brilliant spotlight. A circle of enassuanii knelt in the center of the smooth glass surface, creating a ring of overlapped white wings. They faced inward as they prayed in preparation for their performance.
Maeve knew the enassuanii had already been there for hours. Their song was more than a show; it was a holy obeisance, a sacred rite and duty before Erris All-Singer. He had created the Arcadians to sing what he could not, to create anew. There was no mistaking the Kaellisem theater for one of those lost with the fall of the White Kingdom, but the sight still brought tears to Maeve’s eyes.
“Where’s Anthem?” Logan asked suddenly.
Maeve turned back to look across the top of the tower. Logan was right… They were alone on the balcony. Maeve’s knight consort was nowhere to be seen. She frowned.
“I do not know,” she said. “He would not want to miss this.”
On the stage, the circle of Arcadian singers moved, swaying like willows in the wind. As one, they turned outward, facing the audience with hands and wings raised. Maeve’s heart sped. The enassui was beginning. She grabbed her flowing silver skirts and hurried to take her seat. Anthem could join Maeve later, but she had no intention of missing the show.
Logan stood behind Maeve. He wasn’t watching the Arcadians on the stage below, but the queen. She was so beautiful. Perfect. It wasn’t the gown or her sculpted black curls or the carefully painted makeup that made her silver eyes outshine the stars. Maeve leaned forward, grinning like a girl as the enassuanii beat their wings and rose into the violet evening sky. Logan would have given anything in the worlds to kiss those smiling lips.
Maeve grabbed his hand — his metal one — in hers and Logan’s heart nearly stopped. She turned that delighted grin on him, gray eyes sparkling. She tugged and Logan let her pull him down into the seat beside her. Maeve didn’t let go of his hand.
Below, the Arcadian enassuanii had risen into the air above the stage, circling one another on the evening breeze like great birds. What Logan had first taken for the soft sigh of the wind rose and swelled until he realized that it was the voices of the enassuanii.
The words were slow, long and sustained until each one became an alien, abstract sculpture of sound. The harmonies were subtle and close, layered and as intricate as circuitry. Logan couldn’t understand most of the words — his Arcadian still wasn’t very good and the complex music made the task no easier — but that detracted nothing at all from the beauty of the song. They were singing about Maeve. That was all he needed to know.
The enassuanii below had unwound long, flowing ribbons that trailed through the air as they flew. One by one, the singers added more flowing strands of color until the entire stage was alive with a shifting, slithering rainbow. The song rose as slowly as building storm clouds and the Arcadians above the glass stage began to swoop closer to one another, delicately brushing fingers and wings.
Maeve leaned against Logan, her wing brushing soft feathers along the back of his neck. His illonium fingers tightened on hers, making the queen hiss quietly in pain. But she was still smiling and her fingers curled warm and soft around Logan’s. His heart raced. The enassui was rising into a crescendo, flowing Arcadian voices that filled the theater as the first act reached its climax. Logan recognized one of the words… Not Arcadian, but the sound of his own name.
“They are singing of you,” Maeve whispered. “About my hunter chasing me.”
“You told them about me. Why?” Logan asked. “The enassui is supposed to be about you.”
“My story is hollow without you, Logan,” Maeve answered so softly that he had to lean close to catch the words. “My hunter. My enarri.”
“My enarri,” Logan repeated. My beloved.
The singers had threaded their flowing ribbons into an intricate knot, weaving strands of color into a spiraling coil, but Maeve was no longer watching them. She stared at Logan with bright, wide silver eyes and clasped his cybernetic hand tightly, as though afraid to let go. Afraid she would drown if she did.
Logan raised his other hand and traced the sharp, fine line of Maeve’s jaw. How could one woman be so strong — the queen of an entire race and the spear point for their war against Xartasia — and still be so vulnerable? How could Maeve Cavainna still need Logan? He was just an uneducated Prian man, a disgraced police officer, an unlicensed bounty hunter and her ex-lover.
But she did need him. Maeve still needed him…
She was so close, those silver storm-cloud eyes filling Logan’s vision. And her lips, as soft as silk and gently seeking his. Where was Anthem? He was supposed to be here, not Logan. Here with Maeve, surrounded by song and gleaming golden glass and the gentle fragrance of jasmine… His fingers curled against the back of Maeve’s neck, pulling her up, pulling her close. Her lips found his and she kissed him. She tasted like the jasmine smelled, so sweet and heady that Logan was dizzy with the sensation.
Maeve… My dove, my enarri…
Logan’s eyes closed and he pulled Maeve against him, hearing the queen’s soft, surprised gasp and tasting it in their kiss. The enassui surrounded them in sound, intimate yet concealing. Thousands of Arcadians below watched the show, not their queen in the arms of the man she was not supposed to love. They couldn’t hear her small cries as Logan’s hands moved across her smooth skin. It was just like playing his guitar… He had not forgotten how. He couldn’t forget. Not ever.
Thunder boomed out across the theater. No, not thunder, Logan realized nearly too late. An explosion. The enassuanii’s song tore apart into screams and glass filled the air in a rain of blazing crystal daggers. One of them tumbled and sliced a hot, deep line of pain along Logan’s spine.
Arcadians were everywhere, flinging themselves into the air in every direction, smashing into one another in storms of blood and feathers and seared clothes. Many of the fairies were on fire, hair and wings blazing. They screamed and fell to the shattered theater floor. The acrid stench of seared flesh made Logan’s throat burn.
The stage was gone and smoke billowed from the crater where it had stood. Glass glowed white-hot and flowed in melted rivulets across the blackened sand. One of the enassuanii singers was on the ground, pinned there by an overturned piece of the stage and screaming as liquid glass ran over his sizzling skin. More Arcadians lay dead and dying, torn apart by the explosion or impaled by shattered glass. Their blood was invisible against the red Gharib sand. Beneath Logan’s feet, the royal tower shuddered. Glass snapped and shattered with sharp, brittle retorts and the whole building swayed.
“Logan…”
The voice was quiet, strained. Logan spun to find Maeve on her knees, blood spattered across her diaphanous silver gown. One of her wings was stained red; the one that had been draped around Logan. The blade of shattered glass that had cut his back had sliced right through the delicate membrane of Maeve’s wing. Her feathers were sticky and matted with blood. There was no way she could fly.
Logan swept Maeve into his arms. She weighed no more than a child, but the glass beneath his feet cracked, opaque lines racing out in all directions like fleeing snakes. An Arcadian man in seared and smoking rags tumbled from the churning sky and down to the tower top. He smashed into breaking glass, leaving smears of red across the shattered remains.
There were shouts from the stairwell. Gripper shoved his way through the narrow confines.
“Hunter!”
“I’m here,” Logan called out.
He leapt over the widening crack across the glass. Logan wished that he could see the floor beneath his feet as he ran, but Maeve’s wings obscured his view. The theater tower shivered again and swayed like a tree in the wind. Logan landed hard, sooner than he expected, and the impact shivered up his aching, injured spine. The crumbling floor was slick with blood. Logan fought for footing and then Gripper’s huge hand closed on his shoulder.
“This tower’s falling!” the Arboran shouted. “Shimmer’s doing his best to keep it up, but he says the pattern’s too complicated. We have to get out of here!”
Logan nodded. His throat felt raw. There must have been glass in the smoke, too. He followed Gripper down the stairs, slamming into the translucent walls every time the tower moved and struggling to keep Maeve sheltered. Cracks snaked like bolts of lightning through the collapsing walls. The tower was full of jagged shards and deafening shrills of tearing glass. Blades of broken crystal tore at Logan’s clothes and the flesh beneath. Gripper’s thick skin was covered in cuts, many of them shallow but all oozing dark blood.
They staggered out of the tower at last, into the hellishly flickering firelight and billowing black smoke. Panna, Duke Ferris and Xia ran to Logan as he set Maeve down. The queen’s legs wobbled, but held. Xia gasped at the bloody rent in her wing and Panna went pale. Duaal stood a little distance away, fists clenched before him and his dark, ash-smeared jaw set as he stared at the tower.
“Everybody out?” he shouted in a strained voice.
“All clear!” Gripper called back.
Sweat shone on Duaal’s brow as he uncurled his fingers and raised his hands. The theater tower went milky all along its length with cracks. Duaal lowered his hands, palms down, and the glass spire fell in on itself like a house of cards. A few motes of glittering diamond dust rolled out from the stump of the tower, but the Hyzaari mage contained the rest of the dangerous razor shrapnel.
Maeve was pushing Xia away and struggling toward the chaos.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We have no idea,” Panna said. She coughed and held her hand to her side.
“Bomb,” Logan answered shortly. He pointed across the ruins of the theater to what had once been the stage. “There.”
Several winged shapes plummeted through the smoke, landed hard and ran toward Maeve. Logan moved to intercept them, but recognized Ballad and Syle leading the other young knights. The Prian fairy’s face was smeared in ash and blood. The Arcadians stopped in front of Logan, eyes wide as they stared at their queen.
“Is she…?” Syle asked.
“I am fine,” Maeve said. “How many are not?”
“Don’t know yet. We came to find you and Sir Anthem,” Ballad answered. “Where is he?”
“You do not know? Find him at once!” Maeve commanded.
Duaal and Gripper exchanged a guilty look.
“We know where Anthem is, Maeve,” Duaal said. “He’s back on the Blue Phoenix.”
“I programmed the airlock to seal as soon as he went into the hold. We thought that you and Hunter…” Gripper trailed off, pale-faced and trembling.
“You imprisoned the royal consort?” Ferris cried. “How dare–!”
“Enough!” Maeve shouted. She whirled on Gripper, blood still streaming from her wounded wing. “Get him out of the Phoenix and back into Kaellisem. I need all of my knights!”
“Maeve, we just–” Duaal said.
She ignored him. She turned back to Ballad and Syle. “Begin a search of the theater. Help those who can be helped and count the dead. Take those who need medical attention to the Blue Phoenix. Gripper, get Xia back to the ship and her medbay. You will need to return there, too, after all.”
“Yes, Glass,” Gripper said. He followed Xia from the theater at a stoop-shouldered trot.
“Panna, go with Duaal,” Maeve told the blonde girl. “Reinforce any compromised buildings and help the knights retrieve the dead and wounded.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Panna said. She grabbed Duaal’s elbow and the two of them ran off into the shattered ruins of the theater.
“Ferris, find Hyra or Lorren,” Maeve instructed the old nobleman. “This much broken glass is dangerous and only they know how to deal with it.”
“My queen, you could have been killed! For all we know, that was the very purpose of this attack,” Ferris said. “Syle!”
The yellow-eyed knight had not flown far. He wheeled and then landed again.
“Yes, Your Grace?” Syle asked.
“Remain with Queen Maeve,” Ferris told the knight. “Do not let her out of your sight and protect her with your life!”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Syle answered at once.
Satisfied for the moment, Duke Ferris took a step across the blasted glass and then took to the air in search of the smiths. He vanished quickly into the dark smoke. Logan looked at Maeve.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
Maeve’s gray eyes were narrowed slits like steel blades.
“You are released from my guard,” she said in a low, furious hiss. “You have a new duty, my hunter. Find the one who did this!”
Logan bowed. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Jessica Centra had not brought an umbrella. Stupid… It had been raining for two months. Why should it stop today? It was just another day on Prianus, no different from any other. The acidic rain fell in sharp diagonal lines, yanked north by the cold, razor winds. It probably didn’t matter whether she had an umbrella, Jess decided.
Captain Lain stood under the leafless old alder tree. He did not have an umbrella, either. The rain splashed unnoticed from the shoulders of his dark blue uniform. The left one was a slightly different shade than the rest of the uniform. Patched, probably shredded by a hawk’s talons… or by the bullet that had taken its previous owner’s life. There was always a bird, always a bullet, and always rain on Prianus.
Captain Lain raised his right hand. He was young. Barely more than a boy, Jess thought. A large oil-fed torch burned on his right side, hissing and popping and twisting in the rain.
“Our lives are only the last things we give for our world,” Lain said loudly, but still only barely audible over the drumming rain. “We each knew that when we put on the uniform and we face our life’s end without fear. But what about those left behind? We miss our brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, sons and daughters when they are gone.”
When they were taken. Stolen away on a routine chem investigation, right after finally making detective.
Jess barely saw Captain Lain. She had eyes only for the line of white-wrapped bodies on their biers, shrouded and soaked by the rain. All seven bodies looked the same, faceless and anonymous. Shouldn’t she be able to tell? Some instinct, some otherworldly sense that drew her? But there was nothing. There was only the rain and the fire.
Captain Lain was still talking, but Jess wasn’t listening anymore. She just stared at the dead.
Which one? Which one was her husband? Had been her husband? Beside her, Vorus tugged on his mother’s rain-soaked dress. Jess pushed him away. Where was Logan? Where was her hawk?
Captain Lain had finished his speech and took up the torch, walking slowly through the rain along the line of biers. Jess wanted to jump to her feet, to scream at the police captain to stop. Not yet, she had to find Logan! But she sat still as a statue while Vorus cried silently beside her. Rain ran down her face, burning and stinking of chemicals.
The first bier caught fire, red and gold flames spread along the cloth, turning it as black as the boiling clouds filling the sky. The wet wood threw sparks like miniature lightning bolts into the darkening night, cracked and popped like tiny booms of thunder. But the flames burned low and pale under the unceasing torrent. Captain Lain moved down the line, setting the second, third and more funeral pyres ablaze. Faceless white bodies became flickering golems of flame and then faceless black ash.
Where was Logan? Where was he?
Jess sat in the rain long after the fires had burned out.
