THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 27: The White Knight
“We scream and shout not to change someone else’s mind, but to change our own.”
– Panna Sul (234 PA)
Ballad didn’t try to talk to Panna very much over the next week. Each worked alone to speak with the Arcadians of Hadra and convince them to join Queen Maeve in Kaellisem. For each fairy that agreed, they bought a starship ticket to Stray. But luckily for her dwindling funds, Panna didn’t find many Arcadians on Hadra. The high gravity was hard on their wings and fragile bones. Fairies who could leave the planet had already done so. Unfortunately, those who remained behind were stubborn in their refusal to go except in the embrace of the Nameless. The gods had cast them down under Hadra’s burning suns to die, they stated flatly. So die they would.
In two weeks of work in five different Hadrian cities, Panna and Ballad convinced only thirty-nine Arcadians to make the journey to Stray and Kaellisem. The strain was beginning to show. Panna slept badly, dreaming constantly of forgetting her own speeches in front of a much larger crowd than she ever managed to actually gather, all pointing and laughing at her lack of wings. And that was when she could sleep at all.
Sir Ballad slept face down in the cheap motel beds, snoring into a stained pillow with his wings flopped to either side. Panna tripped on them every time she got up to get a drink or use the bathroom. By the end of the month, she was seriously considering smothering the knight in his sleep.
During their short breakfasts together, Panna repeatedly tried to convince Ballad to wear his glass armor.
“No way,” he answered each time. “I can’t move in that stuff. Not in this gravity. Besides, I get enough move along talks from the cops here as it is. Can you imagine what they would think of a hawk in full armor flying down their streets?”
The one time his stubborn pride might have worked in Panna’s favor, Ballad insisted on being practical. He wouldn’t even carry the spear that was effectively an Arcadian knight’s badge of office. Every morning, he slid his fibersteel boxer’s bracelets into the pockets of his worn leather jacket, put on his sunglasses and left.
Panna was no knight. She didn’t have the right to wear the glass armor, even if Hyra would agree to fit a suit for any fairy without wings. Instead, she had brought a large wallet of Arcadian glass in narrow strips. These small, glittering pieces of their heritage had inspired several Hadrian fairies to make the flight to Stray.
The little glass rectangles also served as samples when Panna had the chance to talk to local retailers. The planetary gravity made large windows difficult on Hadra and several manufacturers had expressed interest in the stronger Arcadian glass. Panna had no firm commitments or actual orders yet, but had spent an evening writing up and transmitting a proposal to manufacture a polarized version of Kaellisem’s sole export. She had not yet received an answer from Duke Ferris.
One bright Hadrian afternoon, Panna finished giving her latest speech to a dozen dirty-faced Arcadians. Or tried to… As soon as Panna reached the part of her story about surgically giving up her wings to go to school, half of the small crowd turned away, uninterested. The rest lost heart when told that they would be going to Stray, not back to their native planets on the galactic rim.
Panna quickly finished her speech and was unsurprised when only two of the fairies lingered to ask if she could spare any change. She dug the last white cenmark chips from her pockets and divided them between the pair. They thanked her in Arcadian and hurried away. On foot… They were too weak, too malnourished to fly in the high gravity.
Panna watched the other two fairies go and readjusted her sunglasses. She didn’t like wearing them, but for anyone born without the Hadrian membrane over their eyes, they were a necessity. The darkened plastic gave the whole world a dim brownish tinge that made Panna want to take a janitorial nanite spray to everything she saw. She turned the other way to head out of the little side street and back to the motel, but another Arcadian stood in her way, his wings spread wide to block the sidewalk. Even through her glasses, the fans of white feathers were almost painfully bright in the Hadrian sunlight.
Panna raised her hand, half in greeting and half to block a little more light. For an irrational moment, she thought Sir Anthem had come to Hadra. The man before her wore a brilliantly shining suit of glass plate mail. But it wasn’t the prince consort… This man was shorter than Sir Anthem and his braids were several shades paler. Almost white, though that might have been the effect of the glaring sunlight.
“Eru shen’ai?” he asked. Why are you here?
The newcomer’s eyes were concealed behind a black scarf tied across his temples, but they seemed to be narrowed. Panna smiled her best, most diplomatic smile.
“Ai na Panna Sul,” she introduced herself. “D’hanni ai an Cerri Maeve.” I work for Queen Maeve.
At this, the glass-armored fairy’s hands clenched into fists and Panna noticed the short, curved glass blades extending from the knuckles. Who was this man?
Panna squinted. His armor was not Kaellisem-made. The glass was utterly clear, like still water, and didn’t have any of the veins or swirls of color that marked the glass forged on Stray. Could Hyra be making suits from the white Bherrosi sand? But Panna knew all of Sir Anthem’s knights and she was quite sure she had never met this man before.
“En calla ma cerri. An na Xartasia!” the other Arcadian snarled. There is only one queen. Her name is Xartasia!
The White Queen’s knight yanked something from the pale sash around his waist, a knife with a strangely long handle. It had a double-edged glass blade and the haft was made of some sort of dark metal or ceramic. The knight slashed at Panna’s stomach. She was already staggering back, but the tip sliced through her shirt and into the unprotected flesh beneath. Blood poured down the front of Panna’s pants, hot and wet and heavy. For a dizzy moment, she worried that she had wet herself.
This was going to be a short fight. Panna was no knight or any other kind of fighter. How could she stand her ground against the other Arcadian?
Panna threw herself at the man, but to one side. He spun to face her, slicing another bloody wound into Panna’s inner arm as she brought it up. She felt soft cloth sliding through her fingers. Too fast…! Panna clutched at the scarf, yanking it clumsily from the knight’s head. The fabric tangled with his braids, snaking free from Panna’s grasp. But the scarf was no longer covering his eyes and the knight dropped his strange knife and clawed at his eyes, suddenly blinded by the dazzling sunlight.
Panna pressed her hands hard against her bleeding stomach and ran. Her pulse pounded in her ears, throbbing inside her eyes like some maddened creature struggling to free itself. Behind her, the armored Arcadian spread his wings and leapt into the air, but then landed again just a few steps away. The Hadrian gravity! Panna wanted to kiss the whole planet.
She stumbled out of the narrow side street, nearly overshooting the sidewalk and running into the wide main road. Several cars swerved and honked loudly. One cheap-looking flying sedan — null-inertia technology was very popular on Hadra — crunched into the shiny chrome bumper of the car in front of them. The driver leapt out, his face turning purple with fury.
“What the hells are you doing, girl?” he shouted at Panna. Then his white-membraned eyes dropped to her blood-covered hands. “Oh God, what happened?”
Panna looked back. The man in glass had recovered his weapon and ran after her, scattering pedestrians before him. Panna whirled back to the driver.
“Get me out of here!” she cried.
“Let me call you an ambulance–”
“Just get me out of here!” Panna interrupted with a gasp.
The Hadrian man nodded and yanked open the passenger door. By now, other cars were swerving around and sometimes over the stopped null-inertia sedan. Panna all but fell into the seat, slumping into an uncomfortable cushion of crinkling mycolar fast food envelopes and old drink boxes.
“Come on!” she shouted.
Xartasia’s knight was closing fast. He vaulted acrobatically over the broad shoulder of a tall Hadrian father clutching his frightened daughter close. The Arcadian spread his wings again. He couldn’t fly well in Hadra’s unrelenting gravitation, but he would surely be able to make the jump onto the car. Then what? Pull Panna out and stab her? Throw her out into traffic? A red convertible with sweeping, stylish lines shrieked past. That would certainly do the job.
The sedan’s driver finally clambered into his seat and slammed the door closed behind him. Had he seen the Arcadian man chasing her? He must have, Panna decided, as the Hadrian grabbed the shift control and threw his vehicle into gear. The inexpensive null-field filmed the windows over with faintly orange light and the whole vehicle jolted up into the air. The engine whined in protest — Panna hazily wondered how long since it had been to a shop — and then rumbled. Panna’s new best friend yanked his car back into the swift river of other vehicles, eliciting a raucous new chorus of honking and shouting.
But the Arcadian was too close. He vaulted up onto a corner news display, making the screen shudder, and then leapt onto the top of the car. Panna wondered who was screaming. Blood filled the hands still clutching at her stomach.
The Hadrian driver shouted and yanked the steering wheel as the glass blade scraped across the roof, shrieking against the metal. A blinking traffic signal spun past as the vehicle turned sharply and Panna squeezed her eyes shut. She was going to be sick and she was going to throw up her guts all over the dashboard. Ballad would have to finish this alone. She was going to die…
Xartasia’s knight slid across the wildly spinning car, boots scrabbling for purchase on the roof. He staggered and then fell over the side, barely holding on by glass fingertips wedged into the top of Panna’s door. They stared into each other’s eyes for a fraction of a second before the wind caught the knight’s wings and yanked him away. He smashed into the side of a building and fell out of sight. Panna slid down in the red-stained seat and swiftly lost the battle for consciousness.
“Does that hurt?”
“No.”
Gripper looked over the magnifiers strapped awkwardly to his huge brown head. His long, drooping ears twitched.
“Glass isn’t here anymore, Hunter.”
“Yes… that hurts,” Logan admitted.
“Good,” said the Blue Phoenix’s mechanic. Now Logan’s mechanic, too. “That means the wiring is still intact and carrying a signal. But the insulation is a little uh… melted in spots, so we’ll need to replace that with glass, too.”
“Will it be flexible enough?” Logan asked as Gripper withdrew a small probe from between the bundled wires running through the U-shaped cradle of his wrist.
“Normally, no. That’s one of the problems with glass insulation. By the time you nanostructure it small enough to bend, it gets toxic. That’s why no one makes fiberglass anymore.”
“Prianus does.”
Gripper flushed. “Anyway… we’ve been working with the fairies here to make a better version; something about a coiled substructure instead of fiberwoven like hull plating. I’m not sure, but we’ll be trying it out on your new hand.”
“Have you told him the even better news?” Duaal asked.
The well-dressed captain stood across a nearby table from Hyra, who studied the datadex that Duaal brought with a scowl.
“No,” Gripper answered. “It was going to be a surprise.”
“Well, too late for that now,” Duaal said cheerfully. “Those plans that Hyra’s glaring at right now are from Xia. They’re a little rough, she says. I wouldn’t know.”
“What are they for?” Logan asked.
“Nerve endings, more or less. If Hyra can pull it off, we will–”
“What is this we?” Hyra hissed in thickly accented Aver and his single wing twitched in agitation.
“Hyra will be able to use some of the metal-rich glass fibers like super-fine wires,” Duaal went on smoothly. “Like nerves. It should return some of the feeling you’ve lost.”
Logan blinked. “What?”
“Not all of it,” Gripper added quickly. “Glass isn’t skin. We can only give you about eighty-five percent sensitivity.”
“It will take time,” Hyra said, looking up from Xia’s schematics. “Lots of little pieces. But I can make this in one week.”
A week… After seven years of near numbness. One week more and Logan could feel again.
It wasn’t so long to wait.
But how many bombs could be built in a week? There was more to do than just to find and defuse the explosives — and even that was threatening to overwhelm Anthem and his knights. It was Logan’s job to find the one setting them.
There was too much work to be done. Logan shook his head.
“No,” he told them. “I don’t have time for that. Just get this thing sealed up again.”
Gripper sighed and rolled his big brown eyes at Duaal. “See? That’s why I wasn’t going to tell him.”
Duaal frowned.
“Are you sure about this, Logan?” he asked. “Just think how it will feel to hold Maeve with two working hands.”
Logan tossed a canister of compressed air up to Gripper and he got to work cleaning and sterilizing the exposed cybernetics.
“I can’t hold Maeve now,” he answered. “And Anthem never will if someone kills her. Just get me back out there.”
An Ixthian woman was standing over Panna when she woke. They were alone in a small, pale cubicle with a curtain instead of a door. The Ixthian was checking over something on the computer display at the end of the bed.
“You’re awake,” she said. “Good. I’m Doctor Xel. How are you feeling?”
Panna swallowed and thought about her answer.
“Thirsty,” she decided. “And sort of weak. But otherwise alright. Can I have something to drink?”
Xel filled a cup from a small nearby sink. Panna drank it down in three huge gulps.
“You lost a lot of blood,” the doctor said, then pursed her shiny lips. “We replaced it, but that very nearly killed you, Miss Sul.”
Panna wondered for a moment what that meant, then blushed scarlet and held out her cup for more water.
“You tried to give me human blood?” she asked.
Xel nodded and refilled the plastic cup. “You really should wear a tag or something.”
The doctor probably had some more to say — either a lecture on proper redprint identification or else on Panna’s surgical alterations themselves — but a crash from outside the cubicle interrupted her.
“Get your bloody hands off me!” someone shouted. The loud voice had a thick Prian accent. “Where the hells is she? You said she was here!”
The curtain was suddenly torn aside and then Ballad was there, wings tangled in the fabric. A human hung from each of his arms. The first was an Axial or colonist in blue scrubs. He shouted for Ballad to leave, but was shockingly unsuccessful at actually forcing the smaller Arcadian to do so.
The second human was more grabbed by Ballad than the other way around. It was the Hadrian man whose car Panna had tried hard not to die in. His white eyes were wide as Ballad hauled him into the cubicle.
“I’m right here,” Panna said.
Xel had closed a six-fingered hand on Ballad’s shoulder and was preparing to help the orderly haul him away, but she quirked her antennae toward her patient. “You know him?”
“Yes, I do,” Panna said. “We work together.”
Ballad stopped struggling and the hospital staff let go of him. He even released the Hadrian, but Doctor Xel waited until she was sure that Ballad was no further danger before excusing herself and the orderly.
“Just press the call button if you need us,” she told Panna.
“Thank you.”
Panna sat up slowly, wincing in preparation for the pain in her stomach, but there wasn’t any. She wished that she could check the wound, but unless she wanted to pull off her already rather skimpy paper gown in front of the two men, it would have to wait.
Ballad’s sharp jaw was clenched so tightly that Panna worried about his teeth.
“You shouldn’t have gone off on your own,” he said. “You could have been killed! What the hells happened?”
“Wait, how did you find me here?” Panna asked. She intended to answer Ballad’s questions, but she had a few of her own.
“He came looking for you,” the Hadrian answered, speaking up for the first time since their abrupt entrance. “I was still answering questions with the police when he showed up. They can’t find the guy. He got away. Sorry, I guess.”
“You helped Ballad find me?” Panna smiled. “Thank you. Um, I’m sorry. I never got your name.”
“Jacks,” the wiry man said. He looked uncomfortably between Ballad and Panna. “If you don’t need anything else from me…”
“No,” Panna said. “Thanks.”
Jacks quickly ducked out of the hospital cube. Panna smoothed the blanket over her lap and inspected her right arm, where Xartasia’s knight had cut her. There was a pink line across the skin, but even that was faint. She didn’t think that it would scar. The Ixthians did amazing work.
“Panna, what happened?” Ballad asked again. The young knight didn’t sound angry this time. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. There was another knight. At least, I think that’s what he was. He wore armor, but it wasn’t like yours. His was like the old suits.” Panna frowned and drained her water cup again. “No, it was definitely modified. But that glass didn’t come from Kaellisem. I’m sure of that much.”
Ballad refilled Panna’s water and handed it back. “What did he do? Did he say anything?”
“Yes, actually,” Panna said. “When I told him that I serve Queen Maeve, he answered that there was only one queen.”
A deep scowl tugged at Ballad’s lips. “Xartasia.”
Panna nodded. “Then he attacked me. I pulled the scarf off his eyes and ran. Jacks got me away.”
“And called the cops,” Ballad said. “They brought the Ixthians.”
Panna just couldn’t resist anymore. She held up the blanket as a barrier and pulled aside the pale green gown to look at her stomach. The skin was a little red, but otherwise there was no sign of her struggle with the knight. Panna covered herself up again and found Ballad staring at her, eyebrows raised.
“I’ve never actually been to a real Ixthian medcenter,” she said. “I was always careful to avoid them. I knew it wouldn’t take long to realize that I wasn’t human.”
Ballad didn’t seem to know what to say to that.
“What now?” he asked instead.
Panna pressed the nurse’s call button. “We settle the bill and get back to work. Xartasia’s got a knight on Hadra, too. We need to get to the Arcadians here before he does.”
