THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 24: Burn Away
“The moment you decided to fight, you lost the battle.”
– Syle Lamanna (234 PA)
Glass did not burn well. The fires went out within minutes of the explosion, sinking the ruined theater into darkness. The lights had either been blown to fragments or crushed under falling debris. The knights searched by flashlight and wavering glow spells, one of the first charms that Anthem had taught those who could learn Arcadian magic. The prince consort joined the search as soon as Gripper released him from the Blue Phoenix, asking no questions of the Arboran or anyone else until much later.
Not until his job was done.
By midnight, Panna had collected and confirmed the knights’ counts — sixty-eight dead, including all eight of the enassui singers and two royal knights. One hundred thirty-seven injured. By dawn, both numbers had climbed even higher. Duke Ferris estimated that more than three hundred Arcadians had fled Kaellisem.
“Where are they going?” Maeve asked.
Ferris shrugged. His wingtips dragged wearily on the floor.
“I do not know, a’shae,” he told her. “I doubt that they do, either. They are frightened. Some may return, but…”
Maeve didn’t ask the duke to finish. He did not need to. Those who left would not return. If they had the chance, they might even fly away to Xartasia. She could protect them. If they were frightened enough, it would not matter if she used Devourers to do it.
Maeve beat her wings in futile frustration, wincing at the bright slash of pain along the right one. Xia had cleaned and stitched the wound shut, but she still didn’t have a nanite supply to hasten the healing. Even if she had access to some of the microscopic surgical machines, there were those who needed them more.
The bloated red sun was rising slowly outside. Maeve had reluctantly withdrawn to her tower back in Kaellisem. She didn’t want to leave the theater, but she was only getting in the way of those with actual work to do amid the broken glass.
“Has Coldhand found anything yet?” Duke Ferris asked.
He asked the question grudgingly. Ferris liked the Prian hunter even less now, after Gripper and Duaal’s trick, but even the hidebound old nobleman had to admit that Logan Coldhand was the only one in Kaellisem with any sort of police experience. Maeve wished she could smile, but she was too tired.
“Logan found the remains of a bomb placed beneath the stage. Any…” Maeve searched for the words that Logan had used. “…trace evidence was destroyed in the blast. He is speaking with the knights who were at the theater yesterday. Perhaps one of them witnessed something of use.”
“I cannot imagine why anyone would disrupt the enassui, Your Majesty,” Ferris said. He held out a glass and Verra hurried to refill it from a decanter of watered-down wine.
“Really?” Maeve asked darkly. “You cannot? I have no difficulty. We have plenty of enemies, from local malcontents to Xartasia herself. Surely she knows we are here and that I am raising a kingdom against her.”
“If that is true, my queen, then this will not be the end.”
“No,” Maeve agreed. “There will be more. Arcadians will die. They will bleed and they will leave. If they go to Xartasia, all we have built here will be for nothing.”
Dain came into the room and waited until Maeve gestured her closer. The girl bobbed her wings. “Queen Maeve, Sir Anthem is here to see you.”
“Please bring him.”
Maeve felt as if she were choking on the words. The last time she had spoken with Anthem was before the enassui. Before kissing Logan at the theater, before the bomb. When Dain returned with the knight, Maeve dismissed Ferris and her two handmaidens. With Anthem there and Logan Coldhand notably absent, Ferris seemed happy enough to leave the queen alone.
Anthem’s glass armor was dull with dust and he wasn’t carrying his spear. But even now, his pale blond hair remained smooth and shone like Aes’ light. Sir Anthem inclined his head to Maeve.
“A’shae,” he said in a voice roughened by smoke. “Are you well? Ballad told me that you were injured.”
“Just my wing,” Maeve answered. Her mouth was as dry as dust. “I am alright, Sir Anthem. Thank you.”
He searched her face with midnight blue eyes.
“I came to receive your orders, a’shae. What would you have of your knights?” Anthem asked.
Sleep, Maeve thought at once. Anthem and the rest had worked throughout the night. They all needed rest. But she swallowed hard and took a deep breath.
“I… I must apologize for Gripper and Duaal,” Maeve said. “I am sorry, Anthem. They were trying to–”
“I know what they did,” Anthem interrupted. When he smiled, it was sad and gentle. “My queen… Maeve… I am not a fool. I know what you share with Logan Coldhand. I know that you love him with all your heart. Swearing yourself to me has not changed that.”
Maeve had no idea what to say. Her head spun. She needed to sleep, too. “But our people–”
“Need an Arcadian king,” Anthem said. “Yes, I know what Duke Ferris said to you. And I agree. Kaellisem needs us. But I understand perhaps better than you can know.”
“Understand what?”
“I still love Titania. Even though I know that she is a traitor to her blood. I know that she is our enemy and that the day will come when we must deal with that. But I love her still, Maeve. I always will.” Anthem took Maeve’s hands delicately. They were dirty with ash and curled immediately into fists. Anthem ran his thumbs over the tightened fingers. “But you are a noble woman, Maeve. You are strong, fierce and beautiful. I see why Logan loves you, how you fill even his icy heart with fire. I said that I could love you and I asked you the same. You have never answered.”
Maeve’s stomach twisted into a hard, painful knot.
Could she…? Anthem was a good knight. He had been nothing but kind to Maeve, even as she spat insults at him. Anthem was noble and intelligent. He had already taken up some of the burden of rulership from Maeve, but never with the overbearing disapproval that she faced so often with Duke Ferris.
Anthem was beautiful, Maeve had to admit to herself. He even shared Logan’s blond hair and blue eyes…
And Anthem was Arcadian. Humans made for difficult lovers, so much larger and stronger than a fairy partner. There were always their wings, too, which humans couldn’t seem to figure out how to handle. Anthem understood Maeve’s culture and her language. She would never need to translate for him. She would never need to explain the Arcadian gods to him, or why an enassui was different from a coreworld opera.
But Anthem would never love Maeve as Logan did. Her hunter. Logan had been there through her brightest and darkest moments, always holding her in that unwavering ice-blue gaze.
Sir Anthem still held her hands and drew Maeve to him. Something inside her wanted to struggle, to pull away from the knight, but something else craved Anthem’s closeness. Her work kept her so busy. She barely saw Duaal, Xia and Gripper anymore. Logan was usually nearby, but Ferris and her handmaidens watched over them always, ever on guard against impropriety. They had shared only that first act of the enassui, interrupted by the explosion. And then Maeve herself had sent Logan away to find the bomber.
The queen was lonely. Anthem leaned in slowly. Maeve could have stopped the kiss, but she didn’t. He held her there against his armored chest and did not comment on her tears. Maeve, in return, said nothing of his.
Xia worked through the night. Gripper wished that she wouldn’t, but the Ixthian would not listen to anything he had to say. Every time he poked his large brown head into the medical bay, Xia ignored Gripper and kept working on the endless stream of wounded Arcadians. Eventually, he brought a bowl of soup and a large cup of coffee. He put them on the counter and left without trying to talk to Xia.
Duaal was waiting for him in the corridor outside. Other than Xia’s busy medbay — which smelled now of blood and burnt feathers, finally overwhelming the pungent chemical scent of disinfectants — the Blue Phoenix was eerily quiet. Was it still night outside? Gripper had not looked out a window in a while and found that he didn’t really care. He missed having Maeve and Logan on the ship. He missed grumpy old Tiberius and even the ill-tempered, sharp-taloned Orphia.
“Is she still mad at us?” Duaal asked Gripper.
“Who?”
“Xia.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Duaal couldn’t walk beside the huge Arboran in the ship corridors, but followed close behind Gripper as he made his way to the engine room. The old ship groaned metallically all around them. She didn’t like sitting in the sand and gravity so long. The Blue Phoenix was meant to fly. Not unlike Maeve, Gripper thought unhappily. All he and Duaal had tried to give her was a little time to be herself. To be Maeve, Glass… not the queen of Kaellisem.
Gripper ducked through the human-sized door into his favorite room. The engine was quiet and still inside its cylindrical fibersteel case. Cables and pipes and colored wires snaked across the ceiling and floor, out into the rest of the Blue Phoenix. Duaal pushed himself up to sit on the edge of Gripper’s oil-stained workbench and looked around the engine room.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been back here,” he said. “What’s that?”
Duaal pointed to one of the walls of the engine room. It was a patchwork grid of lights and monitors. Most of the screens were dark, but a few displayed readouts, columns of numbers or blinking cursors.
“That’s the computer core,” Gripper told him. “It pretty much runs the whole ship.”
“I thought that was my job.”
Gripper did not have the heart to smile. He wasn’t even sure that Duaal was joking.
“There are way too many things on a starship to keep track of,” Gripper said. “When you bank the Blue Phoenix, there are seventeen systems that need to do stuff at the same time. Do you know how many filters and pumps work to keep us all from asphyxiating? The Blue Phoenix has over a thousand subsystems. There isn’t a captain in the galaxy that doesn’t rely on a computer. That’s why it was so bad when Hunter had me get into the Oslain’ii’s system.”
Gripper fell silent and Duaal kicked his feet, polished boots flashing under the lights. His shirt was torn, missing most of the left sleeve and there were several blackened scorch marks on Duaal’s cream-colored pants. But his boots were still somehow as shiny as beetle shells.
“Do you need something, captain?” Gripper asked at last.
Duaal looked up from his boots, which seemed to have captivated him as much as they had Gripper. “No. I just don’t know what else to do. There’s nowhere to fly. What do we do now?”
“I’m not sure,” Gripper admitted.
“You can help me with this.”
They turned to find Logan standing in the doorway. The Prian tossed a folded mycolar bag to Duaal, who caught it out of the air and held it up. There was maybe a spoonful of black ash inside.
“What’s this?” the mage asked.
“A piece of explosive, I think,” Logan answered. “But it’s been completely fused by the heat. So I need you to tell me what it used to be.”
“Xia has a bay full of equipment,” Duaal pointed out.
“This isn’t organic,” Logan said. “It’s chemical. Nothing Xia’s got can reconstruct consumed fuel, which I think is what we’ve got here. But your magic deals with things like chemical reactions. Can you figure out what it was?”
Duaal turned the bag over in his hands and shook his head.
“I… don’t think so,” he said. “I have to be able to visualize or at least conceptualize what I’m trying to do. I have no idea how this used to be structured, so I can’t revert it. Sorry.”
He tossed the bag of ash back. Logan pocketed it and nodded. He turned to go, but Gripper spoke up.
“Hunter, can’t the Gharib police help you with that?” he asked. “They must have labs to analyze this sort of thing.”
“Yes,” Logan lingered in the door. His pale eyes were hard. “But they won’t talk to me. I’m not a licensed bounty hunter anymore.”
“Why the hells not?” Duaal asked. He jumped down from Gripper’s workbench. “This is just ridiculous. Let me give Kessa a call. She got the Gharib police to come to the rescue once. Maybe she can make them do it again.”
Duaal’s determined march out of the engine room was somewhat undermined by having to squeeze sideways past Logan in the door, but made up for it by swearing blisteringly the whole way across the ship. Gripper waited until the captain’s voice had faded.
“Hunter?” he asked at last.
Logan looked up. “Yes?”
Gripper hesitated. Was Logan angry? Gripper could never tell what his friend was thinking. Was Coldhand really his friend? The thought tripped Gripper up all over again and he almost couldn’t speak. But he had to know.
“Is… is what happened tonight our fault?” Gripper asked. “Me and Shimmer? Because of what we did?”
For a terrible moment, Logan didn’t answer. When he did, there was nothing gentle or even friendly in his voice.
“No,” Logan said. “You and Duaal had nothing to do with that bomb. Anthem couldn’t have stopped it from going off. He might have been able to organize the knights a little faster, but Ballad did a good job bringing them to Maeve for orders.”
Gripper’s eyes filled with tears.
“Are you sure, Hunter?” he asked. “We… I didn’t kill all those fairies?”
“You shouldn’t have locked Anthem in the Blue Phoenix. That was a dishonorable way to deal with him and it was dangerous… But no, the bombing wasn’t your fault.”
Before Logan could protest, Gripper bounded across the engine room. He banged his head on a pipe, but didn’t care as he grabbed the hunter up into a long-armed hug and squeezed.
“Thank you,” Gripper said, lifting Logan up into the air. “It was so awful, what I did to the Oslain’ii pilot, but he was trying to kill us. I couldn’t stand that I might have killed a bunch of innocent fairies. Thank you!”
Logan remained still in Gripper’s embrace, even though the relieved, over-exuberant hug probably hurt.
“But until we find the one who is responsible, Maeve and all the Arcadians in Kaellisem are still in danger,” Logan said. “Duaal and Kessa won’t get any assistance from the Gharib police. They only helped before because Kessa promised them Maeve’s bounty. Unless we pay them, the local cops won’t raise a finger. I’ll be working alone on this.”
Gripper put the Prian down. “No way. I’m going to help you.”
Panna felt guilty sleeping when she was sure that Maeve was not. But she knew she would be useless to the queen exhausted, so she grabbed a few hours of rest before reporting to the royal tower.
In the pale pink dawn, Kaellisem was eerily quiet. Panna walked through the dust along the wide central street. Not empty… There were Arcadians in the windows of every tower, all with wide, tired eyes and closed mouths.
No one was singing. There were other fairies in the street, too, lining up in front of the Blue Phoenix. Late last night, Xia had called Xyn in from Gharib to help with the wounded. Panna suspected that the grumpy little scientist had come quickly and probably worked through the night alongside Xia. The Ixthians were an amazing species. They could seem so cold and distant at times, but little would stop an Ixthian from coming to the aid of the sick and injured.
Panna felt another pang in her breast, but this one wasn’t guilt. She missed Professor Xen. He had taken Panna under his wing and guided her education, even though she had lied to him about her genetic heritage. Xen had been brilliant, discerning and even handsome in a strange, alien sort of way.
Had she loved the Ixthian professor? Panna suspected so.
But now Xen was dead, killed and consumed by the Devourers. Though Panna had never set foot on Arcadian soil, the Devourers had still managed to take away what she loved best…
Panna walked past the Blue Phoenix. In the back, the cargo ramp was lowered into the dusty Kaellisem road. Kessa and Vyron both stood at the bottom, taking down names and entering information into datadexes. Panna waved to them and at Xyn, who was just inside the ship’s hold, bandaging up a young Arcadian’s wing. All three nodded to Panna, but didn’t pause in their work.
The Stray morning was dry and dim. Panna’s indistinct shadow stretched out behind her like a dark bridal train. There were two knights stationed at the base of Maeve’s tower and she saw four more circling in the dawn-violet sky or landed on balconies. Panna made her way past the pair outside and climbed the narrow glass stairs. They were a little too shallow to mount easily but too deep to just skip every other one. Hyra had insisted upon singing up the royal spire himself and the glass-smith clearly had a purely academic understanding of a staircase’s workings. It was depressing to think that Panna was the only Arcadian in Kaellisem who had to use them, but she reminded herself that Maeve often did, too.
Panna paused in front of a window a few stories up the tower. Outside, a flock of Arcadians flew over Kaellisem and toward the square silhouettes of Gharib. Leaving. Panna grabbed for her com and stared at it for several seconds before she realized that she had no idea who was leaving or how to contact them. Most fairies didn’t even carry coms.
She sighed and replaced her com into the pocket of her pants. They were made of a smooth, slithery blue fabric, woven by one of the Arcadians of Kaellisem. Maybe one of those flying away right now… Panna rubbed the cloth between her fingers and wondered what would become of its maker.
The queen was in an airy, light-filled room that was part parlor, part audience chamber. Maeve sat in a backless chair and a long cream-colored gown pooled around her bare feet. There were dark circles under her eyes, but they were barely visible beneath the skillfully painted makeup. Sir Anthem stood behind her. Someone had cleaned his armor. The plates shined like a frozen ocean over the blue and silver scarves. One of Anthem’s glass-gauntleted hands was wrapped around his spear, but the other rested on Maeve’s bare shoulder.
Panna blinked. Had she ever seen Sir Anthem touching Maeve before? She didn’t think so. Panna was suddenly quite certain that Anthem had never left the queen’s company that night. Gods, did Logan know…?
“Good morning, Your Majesty,” Panna stammered, covering her confusion with a deep bow. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes,” Maeve answered. “Thank you for coming so early.”
There were footsteps behind her and Panna turned to find Sir Ballad in the doorway. His short blond hair stuck to his forehead in sweaty points. He spread his wings and inclined his head.
“Sorry I’m late, Majesty,” he said through his Prian accent.
“It has been a long night for us all,” Maeve told him. “But I fear that I only have more work for you two.”
Panna glanced sidelong at the young knight. “Both of us?”
Queen Maeve nodded. She looked at Ballad.
“What I must ask of Panna is dangerous,” she told the knight. “I need you to protect her and help her, Sir Ballad.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Maeve returned her attention to Panna.
“You began this, Panna,” she said. “You were the first to suggest that I should take up the crown.”
Panna’s mouth went suddenly as dry as the desert outside. Did Maeve blame her for what had happened at the theater? For the end of her relationship with Logan Coldhand? For all of it? Was this dangerous work some sort of punishment? Panna couldn’t imagine Maeve doing anything like that, but the queen was a descendant of Cavain, the man who had wiped out the pyrads to build Arcadia. What would Maeve sacrifice for Kaellisem? Panna suspected it was much more than one wingless little anthropologist.
“Too many died last night,” Maeve went on. “And many more are leaving our city out of fear. You know what that may cost us against Xartasia.”
“Yes… yes, a’shae,” Panna said. “What do you want me to do?”
“The same thing that I have. We need to continue seeking out and speaking to the Arcadians scattered across the galaxy. I cannot leave Kaellisem right now, Duke Ferris tells me,” Maeve said sourly. “I must remain on Stray, but you must find our people.”
“Me?” Panna asked.
Maeve nodded and smiled at her. “Yes, you. You wrote most of my speeches, anyway. Now I ask you to go to more Alliance worlds to give them yourself.”
“Me?” Panna repeated, stunned.
“We will send you with whatever money Kaellisem can spare,” Maeve said. “Use it to send as many to Stray as you can convince. We can give them a home here and keep them from Xartasia’s grasp. Sir Ballad will be your protector and assistant.”
Panna was a little pleased to note that Ballad looked unhappy with this new assignment. Sir Anthem noticed, too, and gave the proud young Prian knight a stern look. Ballad’s wings drooped.
Maeve either did not notice or else simply said nothing.
“First, you will go to Hadra,” she continued. “The gravity there is much greater than what you are used to on Prianus or Stray, Sir Ballad. Have care. It is a hard world for Arcadians. Please, reach as many as you can and send them back to Kaellisem.”
“But I don’t even look Arcadian,” Panna pointed out.
Maeve nodded. “And so you will encounter less resistance from the Alliance. Tell your story. Tell all of our stories. Tell our people what we have built here.”
“I will, Queen Maeve,” Panna promised.
“I wish that I could send you on the Blue Phoenix, but I fear that I need Duaal and his ship to remain. Xia’s medbay there is all the help we have for most of those injured last night. Xyn has offered his help, for which we are unendingly grateful, but his facilities are of limited use. So Vyron has arranged passage to Hadra aboard another cargo ship. It will not be lavish, Panna, and I am sorry that I cannot offer you better.”
“It’s fine,” Ballad said quickly. “We’ll manage, Majesty.”
Panna didn’t really want to agree with the crude young knight, but had to nod. “The money will be much better spent getting Arcadians off Hadra.”
Maeve smiled, but her expression was tired and tight. Was she angry? Sad? Both, Panna suspected. A queen’s responsibilities were many and her worries many more.
“We’ll depart at once,” Panna said. She would get started at once and make Maeve proud.
“Your ship, the Vostra Sann, will not be leaving until tomorrow morning,” Sir Anthem told her.
Panna blushed.
“Oh,” she said sheepishly. “Right. We’ll leave tomorrow, then.”
