The Reforged Trilogy: Book 1 — Crucible of Stars
Chapter 27
Flight
“The finer the point of the spear, the more easily it is broken off.”
– Ai’ru Vallain, pyrad rebel (10,142 MA)
Coldhand chased Maeve down the hallway, his feet hammering on the fibersteel flooring. His computerized heart beat loud and fast in his chest. The hunter had lost a great deal of blood and his body struggled to compensate. There was a sharp tightness in his ribs that Coldhand recognized as pain, muscles cramping from lack of oxygen.
Before Coldhand could take aim with his Talon, Maeve turned sharply, bolted down a short side corridor and vanished out a darkened doorway. Almost too late, he saw the broken locks of a hatch that had been forced open and darkness beyond. Coldhand jerked to a halt as one foot came down on nothing.
The huge, flat pewter disk of Stray’s moon did little to illuminate the world far below. Maeve soared away on outstretched wings, not looking back at the hunter she left behind. The door was an airlock, located high on the freighter for orbital docking. The casing had been pried open and the interior wiring ripped out until the hatch finally opened. Not unlike Coldhand had done when he first escaped the Blue Phoenix.
Maeve was already a dwindling spark of white vanishing into the east. Coldhand leapt from the ruined airlock at an angle, landed with a resounding clang on the Blue Phoenix’s wing, and jumped again. He rolled with the impact, but when the bounty hunter stood again, he had torn free several of Xia’s neat blue stitches and was bleeding again. Coldhand raised his glacial eyes back to the sky, but Maeve was gone.
He didn’t waste energy on fuming or swearing. This chase was far from over, if Coldhand could figure out where Maeve was going and get her into custody before one of those Emberguard gutted her. Thinking of the red-robed creatures made Coldhand’s stomach clench.
Maeve had talked about several Nihilist cathedrals and guessed that Vyron’s baby was probably being taken to the closest one, at least temporarily. She knew where she was going and wasn’t restricted to the roads of the city. Maeve was flying east, so that was the direction Coldhand would go, too.
He considered following on foot. The princess was wounded and would be flying slowly. Maybe he could catch up. But Coldhand rejected the idea. Maeve was a creature of passions that ran as hot as stellar plasma. Her injuries wouldn’t slow her down. If the fairy was determined to retrieve Baliend, nothing short of death would stop her.
He needed the Raptor. The detour would cost him precious minutes, but it was a necessary gamble. Coldhand turned north and headed toward the landing pad where he had left his ship.
“Damn that girl! Damn her to the deepest hell!” Tiberius shouted. “We need to get that little hare-brain before Coldhand does.”
“Those Nihilists will kill Smoke!” Gripper whimpered. “Unless Coldhand catches up first. We have to help her!”
“You can’t leave!” Kessa protested. “Vyron still needs Xia!”
“Neither of them is going to make it very far in the shape they’re in,” Xia said. The medic was pacing and waving her hands in the air. “Tiberius, we have to get Vyron and Maeve to a hospital. Probably Coldhand, too.”
Tiberius ignored them both. Duaal had taken his hand again and the boy’s grip was cold. His voice was so choked with terror that Tiberius had to lean close to catch the words.
“Don’t chase her,” Duaal said. “Please, Tiberius. She’s going to him, to Gavriel.”
“We can’t just let this happen,” Tiberius told him.
“No!” the boy whimpered. His eyes were wild and wide. “You don’t understand. If Maeve tries to fight Gavriel for Baliend, she will die. And if you go after her, he’ll kill you, too. Please, don’t go!”
Tiberius wasn’t sure what to do and the feeling was irritatingly disorienting. Disobedient and often suicidal though Maeve was, he couldn’t just leave her to Coldhand or the Nihilists, but Duaal was so frightened.
By all the old gods, birds were easier! They never needed anything but a shred of food and a long leash to fly on. People had demands, strange emotional and psychological needs that Tiberius couldn’t afford to simply ignore.
“Please!” Duaal begged.
Maeve was a capable woman, Tiberius reasoned. She had been a knight back in Arcadia and had more experience in battle than any of them, Tiberius included. And after a career in the Prian police, that was saying something. Maeve’s wings gave her a significant advantage in a fight. Even birds couldn’t match an Arcadian’s soft, silent wings for a stealthy approach. If anyone could survive this, it would be Maeve Cavainna. She would make it back to the Blue Phoenix… right?
But Maeve was injured and even a cheap gun all too easily eliminated the advantages of flight. She would be fighting a battle on two fronts, against the Nihilists and against Logan Coldhand. If she somehow managed to get into the cathedral to rescue Kessa’s baby, the bounty hunter was right on her tail.
Without help, Maeve would die. Tiberius wasn’t like Coldhand. He didn’t just walk away from his responsibilities. Something of his decision must have shown in Tiberius’ face because Duaal covered his eyes with his shaking hands and whimpered.
Tiberius stood up, his back protesting loudly. He was too old and too tired to go off chasing a crazy dove, but what choice had Maeve left him? Still, getting the rest of the Blue Phoenix crew killed in the process seemed a stupid way to help her, if Gavriel was as dangerous as Duaal claimed. Tiberius wasn’t an overeager young fool like Maeve. He would think this thing through.
“Alright,” Tiberius said. “We’re going to get Maeve and the baby back in one piece. Two pieces. Whatever. Shove up and listen! We can do this, but we’ll need some help.”
“Do we have to run so fast?” Elsa asked. “It’s making the baby cry!”
She had bundled up the tiny Dailon child as best she could in her dark robes and held him close. Still, the baby hadn’t stopped crying since Alainna thrust him into Elsa’s arms and told her to run. Elsa was Mirran, born on a world of wide, open grass plains and sharp-clawed predators. She had long, strong legs quite capable of running for hours without tiring. But the baby didn’t like it and was screaming loudly.
“Close your mouth and run, woman,” Alainna panted.
The Arcadian was struggling to keep up. She had slender legs never meant to spend so much time laboring on the ground, especially dragging the weight of her broken wings.
It was getting late and the streets were swiftly emptying as the nighttime chill came on. Elsa eyed the occasional passing vehicle enviously, sealed up against the night. She might be able to run for hours, but she was cold and so was the baby. But sweat ran down Alainna’s white skin, washing away the blood until it was only pale pink ribbons. The fairy was panting so hard that Elsa wondered how she managed to keep her lungs from bursting like a corpse in the sun.
What did Gavriel want a baby for? Maybe the great man was just lonely. He spent a lot of time with the black-haired Arcadian, Xartasia, but Elsa supposed even her beauty wasn’t quite the same as the tiny warmth of a baby. Gavriel would be a good father to the little boy, Elsa told herself. She hoped it was true.
A low-slung car with peeling paint slowed on its spluttering null-field beside them. The driver blared his horn and made several gestures that Elsa didn’t understand, but he was laughing. One of the sealed windows hissed down and a young human man leaned out. His eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of narcohol, even from this far away. Their vehicle easily kept pace with the two women.
“Hey, little ‘Lainna. Haven’t seen you around here in a while,” he shouted at Alainna.
The fairy continued running, not looking at him. Another man appeared behind the one in the window, also leering at her.
“We’ve missed you, sweetie. Bet you’ve missed our money, too,” he said. The second man’s eyes lingered disapprovingly on Alainna’s rough black robes. “What the hells is that thing you’re wearing? Stop running and let us give you a ride!”
He made another gesture that Elsa couldn’t interpret. The first man laughed raucously and grinned at his friend.
“Looks like someone messed up those wings bad,” he called out. “Well, you won’t need them for us!”
“Oh, we’ll take nice care of you,” the second man agreed, “if you take care of us!”
Alainna still didn’t turn toward them.
“Hey!” shouted the first man. “Don’t you dare ignore me, you bird-back little whore!”
Alainna stopped in her tracks and Elsa stumbled to a halt next to her. The Arcadian’s chest heaved and her eyes were narrowed to furious, dangerous slits. The car swerved wildly at her sudden halt, spinning around to face the two women.
“Stay here,” Alainna hissed.
She stalked toward the vehicle and one of the men opened the door, beckoning to her. Alainna smiled, but Elsa saw her fingers close on the handle of a knife tucked into her robes.
The baby was still crying and Elsa tried to comfort him as the men inside the car screamed. At least they wouldn’t be running the rest of the way to the cathedral.
The wind raked icy fingers over Maeve’s skin as she flew and her injured wing cramped in the cold, but she was hot with rage and clutched her spear tightly. Gavriel’s Nihilists had stolen Baliend and would turn the boy into another Duaal — or worse — unless Maeve stopped them.
Maeve didn’t try to fight the stab of guilt. She was no better than Gavriel, but she swore by Anslin that she would return Baliend to his parents before she went off to face final justice. Nothing could ever repay the lives Maeve had taken, but she would at least do this one thing…
The jagged black Church of Nihil loomed up suddenly out of the night and Maeve beat her wings hard, pulling off just before she crashed headfirst into a warped strip of painted fibersteel. She caught her balance again and pushed her fingers between cracks of siltstone and metal, probed with her toes until she found purchase. The cathedral was still warm from the blistering Gharib day.
Maeve clung to the wall on one of the open steeples. She lifted herself high enough to peer over the uneven sill, down into the cathedral. Everything was dark and silent. No lights shone below and nothing moved. Maeve squinted in the starlight and could just make out the massive single room of the church beneath her, but there was no one inside.
Where were the Nihilists? Only a day ago, this place was full of desperate people. Maeve spread her wings and caught an updraft, spiraling skyward and then coming down on a pile of stone left over from the cathedral’s construction. Had the Nihilists gone?
A lone dilapidated car was parked outside. It was long and low, with paint peeling off in curling strips. The null-inertia field was powered down and the dented undercarriage rested directly on the ground.
Maeve caught a whiff of something coppery on the rising air. She jumped down from the rocks and tried the car door, surprised to find it unlocked. The interior of the vehicle was stained and torn, probably cheap even before its hard use. It stank of sex and sweat, but those scents were almost overwhelmed by the smell coming from several large, dark wet patches. Maeve touched one of the sticky puddles and rubbed the substance between her fingers.
Blood.
Maeve climbed out of the car. Now what? Where were Gavriel and Baliend? Were they even in Gharib? Maeve closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. Her rage would gain her nothing. Anger sped the hand but slowed the mind, as Caith often said. Any skills Maeve’s brother lacked with a spear, he always more than made up for with words. And love…
“Maeve, please…!” Caith begged. “If I do not see Karrian tonight, I swear before Aes herself that I shall die!”
Maeve sighed at her little brother. He looked like such a child on his knees down there in the grass, staining his pristine white spell-singer’s robes green.
“I have been away from Orthain for weeks, too,” Maeve told Caith. “No one ever died for lack of their lover’s kiss.”
Caith hid a smile of his own. He knew he had already won the argument. His sister’s resistance was only a part of the game. Maeve could deny Caith nothing.
“It is sung that Cavain could kindle flames with only the passion of his heart,” Caith said, folding his delicate hands over his chest. “And I am one of his descendants! The heart that could set the dryad’s wood ablaze could surely break in two when such love is denied.”
“You have no respect for our blood, little brother,” Maeve answered with a laugh. “Except to get what you want!”
“Please, I must see Karrian tonight! I swear by the gods my heart will shatter if I do not!”
“That will be nothing compared to our punishment if we are not at the Tamlin Waygate tonight,” Maeve said. She sat in the emerald green grass beside Caith. “Princess Titania herself is coming to the blooming fields this month. We are only the king’s niece and nephew — she is his daughter. Titania will be well within her right to thrash us if she finds the Waygate closed!”
“Our royal cousin is only coming to Tamlin to be with Sir Calloren,” Caith said. He caught Maeve’s eye and winked. “She is not denied the chance to see her enarri. Why should I?”
“She will see no one if you do not open the Waygate.”
Caith laid his head on Maeve’s shoulder, his black curls brushing her cheek.
“I have an idea,” Caith said. “You can open the Waygate!”
“What?” Maeve asked. “No!”
“You have been watching me do it for years!” Caith told her. “I have heard you humming the songs. You can do this!”
“I am only a knight.”
“You are my beautiful, brilliant sister. There is nothing you cannot do… if you wish it.”
“You are a menace,” Maeve said.
She swatted her little brother lightly, then smiled at him.
“Very well. Go see your love, Caith. I will open the Waygate tonight.”
Maeve swiped hot tears out of her eyes. Reliving old wounds and sins wouldn’t help her now. But what would? She circled the leaning black Nihilist cathedral twice, but found nothing. Maeve stopped in the stony graveyard and wrapped her wings around her against the cold, staring up at the colorless moon and silently demanding answers of the darkness.
It took just minutes to fly the Raptor across Gharib. The central hub of the city was brightly lit, but that illumination tapered off as Coldhand soared east until the ground below finally went dark. Thermal imaging showed nothing but flat black flecked only occasionally by the heat signatures of a few lifeforms below.
It was impossible to tell which one was Maeve Cavainna. Coldhand switched over to the spectrum densitometer and scanned until he found what he was looking for — a large, rectangular patch with higher density than the surrounding sand.
Coldhand investigated the display more closely as he slowed the Raptor. A rectangle with a thin black border — that was the wall of the church and then lighter in the center where the room opened up. Coldhand saw no interior walls, just the irregular gray mottling of stone and dirt. Nothing moved inside.
But behind the cathedral, Coldhand could discern dark blurs laid out in uneven rows. Something was buried there… many somethings. A graveyard? Maeve mentioned one and Coldhand could think of nothing else to explain the scan results. The bounty hunter frowned at his display. There had to be hundreds of graves beyond the Nihilist cathedral.
Coldhand inspected the sensor readouts carefully. There was something else superimposed over the cemetery. Or beneath it…
A network of intersecting lines crossed each other and turned at strange, sharp angles underground. A star? One with eight points. Coldhand had seen that symbol somewhere before, but where?
His questions would have to wait. The proximity alarm blared, warning Coldhand that he was perilously close to the ground. He pulled back on the control yoke, bringing up the Raptor’s nose and evening out. The fighter’s roaring engines churned dust into the air, boiling in low clouds across the graveyard.
The Church of Nihil jutted up from the murk. It was a towering yet decrepit thing, a massive, graceless piling of dark siltstone and riveted metal that looked as though it would topple at any moment. Coldhand switched back to thermal.
He didn’t have to look far to find Maeve. The Arcadian princess stood on top of an abandoned car in front of the Nihilist church, waiting with her spear in hand. Coldhand flipped a switch and a brilliant spotlight bathed his mark in bright white light. Maeve held her ground and didn’t run. Her long bleached hair whipped wildly about her, her wings laid flat behind her to avoid catching the wind churned up by the Raptor’s thrusters.
The fairy’s chin was raised proudly, silver eyes defiant and her mouth set in a grim line. Coldhand couldn’t help admiring her, just for a moment. Maeve looked like an angel from Prian legend — sad, lovely creatures of grace and power that carried out God’s will. But they were only stories. This angel was perfectly capable of killing.
Coldhand brought the pointed nose of the Raptor around to face Maeve. He trained his guns on her and turned on his loudspeaker.
“There’s no one left to help you, Cavainna. Stop flying and give yourself up.”
Maeve shouted something in reply, but the hunter couldn’t hear her over the rumbling of engines and inside the cockpit sealed for flight in the vacuum of space. The fairy shielded her eyes against the spotlight and shook her head emphatically.
No.
“If you fly off chasing Vyron’s kid, you might get yourself killed by Duaal’s demon mage and I’ll lose a very valuable prize,” Coldhand said. “I’ll kill you myself and take the smaller bounty before I let you out of my talons again, Cavainna.”
That was no idle threat. Maeve had trapped Coldhand and, unless she gave herself up, he had little choice. He had poured too many hours and cenmarks into hunting the princess to let someone else kill her.
A bright, impossible hope lit up Maeve’s face. How long had she pushed and pulled, trying to manipulate Coldhand into killing her just like this? Now chance and circumstances far outside her control had finally cornered the bounty hunter. But Maeve shook her head again.
No.
No? Coldhand was incredulous. He was offering Maeve what she wanted most in the worlds, and now she was saying no.
Well, it was no longer her choice. Coldhand thumbed the cover off the trigger of the Raptor’s lasers. He always got his mark and the bounty hunter felt no regret for killing such a lovely creature. No horror at gunning down the tiny winged woman, for stopping the only one trying to save Vyron’s infant son, no terror at the shell of a man he had become, no loss for the death of Logan Centra.
All he wanted was Maeve. All he cared about was the bounty.
Maeve held her arms up to her chest as though cradling something, then pointed imperiously at the darkened Church of Nihil behind her.
The baby. They have Baliend.
Coldhand’s mechanical metal fingers hesitated over the weapon controls. His cold blue eyes darted of their own volition over to the densitometer display. That star-shape… he had seen it before.
It was on Duaal’s coat, embroidered in golden thread across the young man’s back. A symbol of power. A focus, Maeve had said. Coldhand switched to thermal imaging and traced the interlocking lines with his cybernetic hand, unable to feel the smoothness of the screen under his numb metal fingers.
Twenty percent… But if Duaal was right, Baliend would have even less than that. Unless someone rescued him from Gavriel.
The Raptor landed on the uneven ground in front of the cathedral. The canopy clicked and unsealed, then slid back. Coldhand leapt out, already slipping his Talon-9 from its holster, and stopped outside the reach of Maeve’s spear. But not out of his laser’s range. The bounty hunter stared at her before speaking.
“They’re underground,” Coldhand said slowly. Each word was a clear struggle. “I picked up a network of tunnels running under the graveyard. At least two hundred heat signatures down there.”
Maeve gritted her teeth. Underground, beneath the cemetery. It made sense now. Where else would death-worshipers feel more at ease and powerful than among the graves of the dead? She hadn’t even thought to look there.
“How do we get into the tunnels?” she asked.
“According to the Raptor’s sensors, one of them comes up inside the church,” Coldhand said. “It’s likely hidden, but I know where to look.”
Maeve turned away and hurried into the darkened Church of Nihil. Coldhand followed warily.
