THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 34: The Song & the Blade
“No one can survive on honor alone.”
– Anthem Calloren (234 PA)
Maeve sat alone in the dark. Well, not actually alone and it wasn’t actually all that dark… She heard Anthem breathing and the soft, near-silent sounds of cloth against skin as he shifted his weight. But she kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut. She didn’t want to look at him. If she could just pretend that he was not there, that… that…
But it was useless. Maeve opened her gray eyes. Anthem sat at her desk, reading over a datadex with an expression of intense concentration on his handsome face. His lips moved as he sounded out the Aver. It was rather cute, Maeve decided, but she still could not bring herself to be moved. Anthem was strong and sweet and brave and a perfect consort, but Maeve could not love him. She had tried but all she felt was an empty, painful pit where her heart should be. With every passing day, it grew harder to care if Xartasia ravaged the entire galaxy. What did it matter anymore?
Maeve stood and went to her closet, wondering if there was a forgotten bottle of narcohol, some needle tucked away into her old clothes… There was a sound and Maeve glanced back at Anthem, but he was still focused on his datadex. The noise came again, so quiet that she almost couldn’t make it out.
Not noise, but music. The soft, thrumming notes of a guitar.
Logan.
Maeve’s heart pounded. She couldn’t remember the last time she heard the Prian play. Sunjarrah, that night under the stars on Maeve’s first night as queen? She checked the time. It was late, long after midnight by the Blue Phoenix’s clock.
Maeve darted another look at Anthem, but he didn’t seem to hear the music. Silently, she slipped from her room and out into the corridor.
The music was louder outside — still quiet in deference to the late hour, but Maeve could make out the notes now and the strong, smooth sound of Logan’s voice singing. She crept through the Blue Phoenix, down the hall to the hold. The bounty hunter sat on top of one of the plastic water barrels, his battered guitar across his lap. The sunlights over Gripper’s hanging garden glittered off Logan’s glass hand as he played. His eyes were closed in concentration, lips forming the words he sang with precise care.
“En ai enarra,
Eru lua’vi a arna…”
Maeve knew those words. An Arcadian oathsong. She slipped over the railing and glided down into the hold. Logan heard her landing behind him and looked up, fingers frozen on the strings of his guitar.
“Do not stop,” she said softly.
Logan didn’t look at her, but every muscle in his back tensed at the sound of her voice.
“I was only practicing,” he said. “I don’t know the last line. No one in Kaellisem would teach a human. I overheard the rest.”
Maeve stepped closer, remaining hidden behind her hunter.
“Ae lua’vi a arna delassua,” she sang, careful to articulate each of the vowel-heavy Arcadian words.
Logan’s fingers moved along the guitar’s scarred neck, playing back the notes until he knew them. The sound echoed through the cargo hold.
“En ai enarra,” Logan sang.
“Eru lua’vi a arna,
Ae lua’vi a arna delassua.”
Perfect… The song pulsed through Maeve’s entire being. The cold, empty place inside of her echoed with the sound of Logan’s voice. Her hands were moving of their own volition, sliding around her hunter and up to his chest. Through his shirt, she felt the hard, knotted scar over his heart.
“Maeve…” Logan said in a thick voice. He pressed his cold glass hand over both of hers and bowed his head. “I love you. I need you. Not to have, not to keep to myself… Just to live. I want you to know that it’s enough that you were ever a part of my life. The best part… I want to give you my oathsong, even if you can never sing it back to me…”
Maeve laid her head against his back. Logan was trembling and she could hear his mechanical heart beating so fast. She remembered now why she fought Xartasia. How could she have forgotten, even for a moment? Maeve kissed Logan’s back and his cybernetic fingers tightened convulsively over hers, beyond Logan’s control. It hurt. Maeve closed her eyes. She should go back to her room, back to Anthem and her duty…
“Play it again,” she told Logan. “Play the song.”
Slowly, he removed his hand from hers. It fell once again to the guitar strings and he began to play the rising scale of notes. Maeve took a shuddering breath.
“To you I give my love,” she sang to Logan in his own tongue. “My heart and life, the heart and life we share.”
The last note cut off.
“No, Maeve. Don’t–” Logan said.
Maeve pulled her hunter down from his seat and around to face her. There were unshed tears in his pale eyes.
“I need you,” Maeve told Logan, using his own words. “You have sung your heart to me, my hunter, and I have given mine in answer. I love you and I can love no other. You give me reason to sing and to fight on, Logan. I need you.”
The guitar fell from Logan’s fingers and crashed to the fibersteel floor. He grabbed Maeve and pulled her crushingly close. Through her own tears, Maeve managed to find Logan’s lips and press hers against them. Too hard… She tasted salt and blood. That was how her hunter always tasted. Her hunter. Logan was hers, sworn by oathsong, and she was his.
Maeve grabbed Logan’s pants as his strong hands went to her shirt, tearing fabric in his desperation. Clothes fell away and Maeve sang out in visceral relief at the sweat-slicked feel of skin on skin. Relief, need and longing churned through her. Logan lifted Maeve, held her against the wall of the hold and then that cold, empty place inside her was full of blazing love and light.
Syle crouched in the dirty darkness at the intersection of two large air shafts. The ventilation systems gave him access to every corner of the Blue Phoenix, as well as carrying sounds to him from all over the ship.
He had been waiting and listening for weeks, stealing food and water as he needed it. But Sir Anthem was never far away from his queen. Syle was good, but not good enough to fight the paramount knight to get to her. Not unless Anthem was distracted…
Maeve’s voice echoed through the airshafts, musical and sharp in her passion. Finally. Syle had begun to wonder if Sir Anthem’s charms would ever win out against the Maeve’s ridiculous affection for her human bounty hunter.
Syle spared a small, thin smile for Anthem Calloren. He hoped that the knight was enjoying his conquest of the queen. It would be the last thing he ever did.
Syle wormed his way through the ventilation. His wings ached, cramped and sore from too many days without room to stretch, but he barely noticed. It was finally time for Maeve Cavainna to die. The rest of the Blue Phoenix crew would follow her into the Nameless’ embrace, but Syle had to begin with the Gray Queen. Maeve was the greatest danger to Xartasia. Syle kicked his way through another air filter, dragging his spear behind him over the textured fibersteel. To judge by Maeve’s ringing cries, she was down in the cargo bay…
Why were Anthem and Maeve in the bay? Syle stopped at the vent cover. His fingernails still hadn’t healed from prying up other such barriers all over the Blue Phoenix. Syle squinted through the mesh. He could just make out the narrow corridor that led out onto the cargo bay catwalk below. He placed his elbows against the cover and pushed. The metal squealed — not loud enough to be heard over Maeve’s voice, he was sure — and then dropped to the floor.
Syle slid out of the ventilation duct and dropped to the ground. He pulled his spear down and crept toward the hold. The hallway glowed dimly with blue nightlights.
“I do not think that they wish to be disturbed,” said a quiet voice from behind Syle.
Xartasia’s spy and saboteur whirled. Anthem Calloren stood in the dim azure light, dressed for sleep but carrying his spear. The ribbons rippled in the breeze flowing unimpeded through the open vent above him. Syle stared.
“Anthem?” he hissed. “If Maeve is not with you, then who…?”
“I told her before,” Anthem said. “I know she loves Logan Coldhand. I thought that perhaps we could love one another, but we cannot give hearts that are no longer our own. Maeve should have gone to him months ago. She needs her hunter. No one can survive on honor alone.”
Syle fell into a low crouch, his spear held close and his wings curled. He whirled and sprinted toward the cargo hold, for Maeve. He would kill the queen and her human lover… Anthem was on him in a second, as silent as falling snow. Syle cried out once as the blade of Anthem’s spear slid between his ribs. The knight clapped his hand over Syle’s mouth even as blood poured from between his fingers.
“Go now, Syle,” Anthem said sadly. “You will not be alone in the dark for long.”
