THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 37: The Call
“You can’t always wait for the weapons you need. Fight with the ones you have.”
– Logan Centra (234 PA)
Ballad swooped over the blasted ruins of the theater, scanning the blackened ground. It had been over a week since the last riots in Kaellisem and even those had been small ones, resulting in little more than a couple of bruises. But the glass hunters were still a problem. Arcadian glass remained more or less unique to Kaellisem and even the twisted shards left behind after the enassui bombing were worth some money. Not much, but enough to lure scavengers that sometimes snuck in from Gharib to hunt for loose shards.
Ballad was from Prianus and he didn’t resent the coreworlders for trying to earn a bit of color. But the sorts of folk who were desperate enough to search the sands for a few lumps of glass were sometimes the same ones who might be more than happy to knife an Arcadian and it was Ballad’s job to protect the citizens of Kaellisem. With Sir Anthem gone, Ballad was in command of the remaining knights.
He whistled sharply to Suvaen. The other knight wheeled with Ballad, up and then around the dagger-like remains of the royal box. They flew a last circuit, but it was too hot out even for the glass hunters and Ballad led Suvaen back toward Kaellisem.
For such a dim sun, Ballad never ceased to be amazed at how effectively it could bake Stray’s surface. Prianus’ primary had to be three times brighter, but Ballad couldn’t remember ever being warm in Pylos. On Stray, though, several other knights — including Suvaen — had adopted his short Prian haircut. The long, flowing Arcadian styles just weren’t practical in the hot desert. Especially in the wearable prism that was their glass armor.
A sudden wind whipped up a funnel of sand and Ballad threw his weight back, cupping his wings to come to an abrupt stop before he plunged headlong into the whipping grit. A sandstorm…? Ballad grabbed for his com to warn Panna, but the cloud of sand was too small for a storm. He waved to Suvaen and the two of them landed, pulling scarves up over their mouths. It had been weeks since any sort of attack on Kaellisem, but they had never caught the elusive bomber… Maybe this was some new sort of menace.
The red and orange sand settled, suddenly revealing the large, spiny shape of the Blue Phoenix squatting in the desert dust. Frost crackled along its dented fibersteel hull and steamed in the desert heat. Ballad pulled off his sunglasses and stared. Surely this was… what? A trick?
The Blue Phoenix wasn’t supposed to be back in Kaellisem for another month or more. If it returned at all from the confrontation with Xartasia. And why hadn’t they seen the freighter’s approach? Surely Maeve would have told Panna if she was back in the Bannon system. And then Panna would have told Ballad… She was actually talking to him now. To him instead of down to him. She was almost bearable.
The Blue Phoenix’s fibersteel cargo ramp hissed and ground, lowering down into the sand. Duaal Sinnay stood at the top, his back turned to Ballad and Suvaen. The Hyzaari captain’s hands were spread in a gesture of humility that was anything but.
“Ha!” he said. “I guess there’s a new Waygate expert. Not even the Nnyth could have used a broken Waygate to move an entire ship halfway across the galaxy!”
Ballad had no idea what Duaal was talking about, but he told Suvaen to stay put and ran up the ramp. Queen Maeve, Logan Coldhand, Sir Anthem Calloren and the rest stood in the Blue Phoenix’s hold, all gathered around a large plastic crate. Other than Duaal’s swaggering confidence, the air was more like that of a funeral than a celebration. Logan was the first one to catch sight of Ballad and raised his translucent glass hand in a short greeting.
“What the hells happened?” Ballad asked. “Is it over? Did you stop Xartasia?”
“No, not yet,” Maeve answered. “Xartasia was not there. She is bound for Axis and we must get there before she does. I need to speak with Panna and Duke Ferris.”
“Vyron and Xyn, too,” Logan added. He stood next to the queen, Ballad noted, not Sir Anthem.
“Yes, sir,” Ballad said and hurried away to do as he was asked.
A half hour later, they were all gathered in the Blue Phoenix hold. Maeve would have liked to meet in her glass tower — she missed it far more than expected — but she would have been noticed moving through Kaellisem. Not yet.
Instead, Panna and Duke Ferris had joined Ballad on the ship, followed a bit later by Vyron and his family. The last to arrive was Xyn. The Ixthian scientist waddled into the Blue Phoenix with a suspicious look on his silver face.
“You’re back early,” he grumped.
“We’re fine, Xyn,” Xia said. “Thanks for asking.”
Maeve stood next to Gripper and touched his thick arm gently. He wasn’t fine, but there was still work to be done. The big Arboran looked down at her with red-rimmed eyes. He was tired. They all were… Reluctantly, Maeve returned her attention to the council she had called. She had refused to answer Panna’s many questions until everyone was assembled. There was too much to say, to do, and too little time. They had one chance.
“We must act quickly,” Maeve said when Xyn and Xia finished squabbling. She heard the hard tone of her own voice. “Xartasia intends to unmake all the years of history since the White Kingdom’s fall. To do this, she took her Arcadians and Devourers to the Tower. The Nnyth destroyed their own hive to prevent her from taking it, so Xartasia left. She goes now to the Devourers’ homeworld, Axis, and will arrive in eight days.”
“Hold on,” Panna said. “What? Can Xartasia do that? Just delete more than a century of life?”
“The Nnyth believe so,” Maeve answered. “And fear the results enough to destroy their own home and condemn themselves to a slow death.”
“So what do we do about it?” Ballad asked.
“Xartasia needs to get down to the surface of Axis,” Logan said. “To find a special Waygate there. We’re going to fight her for it.”
“How?” Ferris asked like an accusation. “How can we challenge Xartasia with a handful of knights?”
“We get CWAAF to back us,” Logan answered.
Now everyone was staring at him, including Maeve.
“Logan, we spent months trying to rouse the Alliance to action,” she reminded him. “With no success. They simply did not believe the threat that my cousin poses to the galaxy. How do you propose to convince them now?”
“By making a threat of our own,” Logan answered.
Panna’s eyes went wide. “Threaten the Alliance? Have you lost your mind?”
“We take every willing Arcadian to Axis and we gather them for a fight. We make it public and we make it loud. That will force the Alliance to respond. Xartasia is out of the way, working in relative secret. We won’t.”
“CWAAF won’t just let you amass an army — even a small one — on their capital planet,” Duaal said, dark brow furrowed. “They’ll respond in numbers.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Ballad asked, giving Logan a look of admiration. “It’s a trick.”
“Yes. And a dangerous one,” Logan admitted. “We want to get the Alliance ready to fight by threatening them ourselves, but we don’t want to give them enough time to actually start a war with us. If we fight on Level One, we should have a CWAAF response within an hour. A major mobilization within three.”
“We have a date for Xartasia’s arrival, but no time or location,” Maeve said. “We will be guessing where to make our stand.”
“And if our guess is incorrect, if we give the Alliance too much time to focus on us,” Anthem added, “Arcadians will die.
“Or at least spend their lives in prison,” Panna said.
“But if we do not do this, you will never have been born,” Maeve told the girl. She looked around the hold. “Most of you were born less than a century ago. You can let your world be cut out of time or you can die trying to save it.”
“But what about you?” Panna asked softly. “You and Sir Anthem and Duke Ferris? Almost half of us are older than a hundred years. Do you think they really want to risk their lives? How many of them would be just as happy to throw away the last century? It’s been horrible for them. For you.”
“I… have made my mistakes,” Maeve said. “And the losses have been staggering. But there are billions of humans, Dailons, Ixthians and Lyrans here in the core. Trillions of lives in the last hundred years. I cannot just let Xartasia unmake them.”
“Yes, my queen,” Anthem agreed, nodding.
Duke Ferris stood very still, his hands tucked into the flowing sleeves of his robes.
“Xartasia would restore the White Kingdom to all its glory, a’shae,” he said. “That is no small dream. Millions died at its destruction, and now even the Nnyth Tower is falling.”
“Surely you will not condemn the entire population of the CWA for that,” Maeve said.
For all his blustering pomposity and strict adherence to Arcadian tradition, Duke Ferris had always been loyal to his queen. It never occurred to Maeve that he might not back her now.
“My daughter is in an Alliance prison,” Ferris said, “for no crime greater than not having a home. We left her behind on Sunjarrah, my queen. I have not forgotten. Unmaking these last hundred years would be a blessing to her.”
Maeve had forgotten all about Ferris’ daughter… She swallowed against a suddenly painful feeling in her throat. Duke Ferris turned on his heels and stalked to the cargo ramp, then spread his wings and leapt into the pale blue-green sky. In a moment, he was gone. Panna sighed and rubbed her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “He’s been like that ever since I got back from Hadra.”
“Ferris is not wrong,” Maeve said. “Not so wrong as I would like. Xartasia’s plan is not quite the evil that we long suspected. But it must be stopped…”
“You’re going to need a lot of Arcadians to pull this off.” Vyron stood behind Kessa, his large blue hands on his wife’s shoulders and black eyes on Maeve. “And you won’t get their help if Kaellisem agrees with Ferris.”
“Vyron’s right. We need at least a thousand fairies if we’re going to get the Alliance to take us seriously,” Logan said. “Dove, I know you’re sick of speeches, but I think you’d better give one more. We can’t let the gossip get ahead of us on this one. Public sentiment is too much against us.”
Maeve closed her eyes and then nodded. “One more, yes. I can do this one last time.”
Kessa raised the one hand that wasn’t curled around Baliend.
“What do you need us to do?” she asked. “Not go to Axis, I hope. I believe with all my heart in what you’re doing, Maeve, but Vy and I can’t go back. We went through too much to get off that planet.”
“No,” Logan answered. “Xyn, we have something for you.”
The bounty hunter pulled up the lid of the crate they had gathered around. Inside lay the curled, striped shape of the dead Nnyth. Xyn gasped and pressed six-fingered hands to his chest.
“A Nnyth!” he said unnecessarily. “A whole Nnyth! Not just the skin that Tiberius brought me.”
“This is worth something to you,” Logan prompted. “And to the ship captains you supply?”
“Oh yes! With this, I don’t have to clone phenno. I can study and recreate the actual glands that secrete the protein.” Xyn clasped his hands over his heart as though he were looking at a particularly adorable child. “No more telomeric degradation, no transcription errors. Hells, I might even be able to produce a skin layer for ships that secretes its own phennomethylln.”
“Ew,” Gripper said.
Xia put one hand on the other Ixthian’s elbow. Her eyes were a serious sapphire color.
“Treat these remains with respect,” she told Xyn. “The Nnyth are our cousins and they gave a lot to help us.”
Xyn gave her a sidelong look and seemed as though he might protest, but he only nodded. “I will.”
“Good,” Logan said. “Xyn, we need you to charter ships. Enough to get a thousand or more Arcadians to Axis within eight days. You can use whatever remains of the royal treasury–”
“About five thousand cenmarks,” Panna supplied.
“Is that all?” Ballad asked, frowning.
“Glass production declined steeply with all the riots,” she said. “We’re still trying to get it back up.”
“–and promise whatever colour you need to from the profits of the phenno sales or the phenno itself,” Logan went on. “Whatever it takes to get as many of the fastest ships on Stray to fly Arcadians onto Axis.”
“Can’t Duaal just… magic us all to Axis?” Ballad asked.
“Not unless you’ve got a Waygate hidden in that jacket,” Duaal answered. “I can control the power, not generate it. We need ships.”
Xyn’s eyes turned scarlet. “Look, I know we’ve had a good partnership, but passage for a thousand fairies…!”
“You’ll be compensated,” Logan said. “Either by the Alliance or by us after this is all done.”
“And if you die?” Xyn asked.
“Then we have failed and you will never have been born at all,” Maeve told the Ixthian scientist. “Or at least, this conversation will never have happened.”
“Vyron will help you negotiate the best rates,” Logan said. “He’s a good salesman. And then your part in this is finished, Xyn. All you have to do is get rich and hope that we preserve the past.”
“How soon do you want to leave?” Vyron asked.
“Tomorrow morning,” Logan answered.
Vyron whistled and pulled a com from his pocket. “I better get to work, then.”
Maeve spent most of the afternoon letting Caith try in vain to talk her out of her pain. Orthain was a good man and a good knight, yes, but there were hundreds of those in the White Kingdom. She was a princess, niece to the king himself, Caith reminded Maeve. She would find love again. And in the meantime, they had each other.
So Maeve had smiled at her brother in the flickering light of the Tamlin Waygate before pleading hunger and flying alone into the city.
She swooped between the sapphire towers and domes that looked like ice. Other Arcadians landed, spread their white wings in respect and let the princess pass. Maeve ignored them…
Most of them, at least. A man in blue-edged glass armor flew past, with silver beads braided into his long gold hair. He did not land or step aside like the others. The knight was flying in a swift, straight line in the direction of the Waygate Maeve had just left. He passed so close to Maeve that his wings tangled with hers and both knights crashed to the ground, scattering a group of dryads working in the orchard below.
When the world stopped spinning, Maeve jumped to her feet.
“Watch where you are flying!” she shouted at the other knight. “You could have killed us both!”
It was an exaggeration, of course, but Maeve was in a foul mood. The man with the silver beads in his hair sat up slowly, holding one hand to his shoulder. For the first time, Maeve noted his red-rimmed eyes and the shining wet streaks down his cheeks. Maeve frowned. She was sure that she recognized the other Arcadian, but could not place him. The knight didn’t rise.
“I am sorry, princess,” he apologized. “I did not see you.”
Maeve scrubbed at the grassy green streaking her armor with one hand. “That much is clear. Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“The Waygate. I want only to get out of Tamlin. Away from…”
The knight’s face went red and he didn’t finish the sentence. Finally, Maeve recognized him.
“Sir Anthem Calloren,” she said, half to herself, and then cocked her head in thought. “Princess Titania is in Tamlin tonight, is she not?”
“Yes,” Anthem said. The red in his cheeks darkened to a deep, angry purple and he spat his answer bitterly. “She is. Titania is at the temple of Erris, praying for the health of her father, the king.”
Maeve wanted to ask what could have infuriated the elder knight so badly, but she didn’t dare… That was between Princess Titania and her consort. Maeve offered her hand to Anthem. He took it reluctantly and stood. Maeve wondered if he saw how bloodshot her eyes were, too.
“Your sorrows will not remain in Tamlin after you have gone,” she suggested delicately. “I thought to leave mine in the White City, but they follow me wherever I fly.”
Anthem sighed and picked up his spear from the ground. “You are right, princess.”
“I am bound for the Starflower,” Maeve said, naming Tamlin’s famous restaurant. Now that she thought about it, she actually was hungry. “It has been a long day. Do you want to come with me?”
Anthem nodded. “It would be my pleasure, princess.”
“Maeve,” she told him.
The handsome knight gave her a small smile.
“Maeve,” he repeated.
Maeve spent the next hours trying to listen as Panna updated her on what had happened in Kaellisem over the last three weeks, but worrying about money and politics felt so… so pointless when held up against the impossibility of trying to stop Xartasia and her army from unmaking more than a century of lives. Finally, Maeve raised her hand.
“Enough,” she said and stood. “Panna, you have been more than capable of handling Kaellisem in my absence. I trust that you have done right and from here, it no longer matters. All that is important now is convincing as many Arcadians as I can to fly with us to Axis.”
“But…” Panna glanced at the datadex in her hands. “There’s a whole city of your people out there. They need food and shelter and medicine every day…”
“And they have you to take care of that,” Maeve told the girl. “I’ve never done more than approve your ideas. This city is your creation, Panna, and that of Duke Ferris. For me, Kaellisem is a tool. A way to thwart Xartasia, to take Arcadians away from her. But to you, it has always been so much more. You know our people. You know the knights that protect Kaellisem. I cannot even remember their names.”
Maeve shook her head and combed her fingers through her white-streaked black hair. They were still in the Blue Phoenix mess. At Anthem’s insistence, the queen would return to Kaellisem only once to make her final speech. Maeve went to the sink and picked up the single bowl and spoon inside.
“Do you want me to work on your speech for tonight?” Panna asked uncertainly.
“No,” Maeve told her. “Tonight, I will say my own words. My last words, perhaps. I will plead our case to Kaellisem plainly.”
“What do you want me to do, then?”
Maeve washed the spoon and smiled at her inverted reflection inside its curve. “Whatever you wish, Panna. The world we know may end in eight days. Is there something you wish to do before it is gone?”
By the time Maeve finished cleaning the bowl and spoon, Panna was already gone.
Both Logan and Anthem were too well known and too little liked in Kaellisem, so the task of gathering the remaining Arcadians fell to the small group of remaining knights.
Ballad had just returned to the Blue Phoenix to report that only about fifteen hundred Arcadians had agreed to let Queen Maeve address them one final time. Less than half Kaellisem’s remaining population, Ballad informed them unhappily. The rest wanted nothing to do with their monarch.
“We might be able to convince some more with colour or extra food,” Ballad suggested, but Anthem shook his head.
“Anyone who requires such bribery simply to listen to a speech will not be of help,” he said.
“Those aren’t the people who will be willing to risk their lives against Xartasia and CWAAF,” Logan agreed.
Ballad’s sunburnt brow furrowed as he thought about that, but Panna swept down the stairs, grabbed the young knight and pulled him into a long, deep kiss. Ballad didn’t seem to know where to put his hands and his face went even redder.
“But I thought you didn’t even like me–” he began.
“Well, you’re wrong,” Panna interrupted, tugging Ballad toward the airlock. “As usual.”
The two young Arcadians vanished quickly in the direction of Kaellisem’s crystal towers. Anthem watched them go with a small smile on his lips.
“We will see them tonight, I think,” he said. “But not before.”
“Probably not.”
Anthem turned to Logan, the strange, sad smile still on his lips. “I can finish arranging this evening, if there is somewhere else you would like to be, as well.”
“You mean with Maeve,” Logan said.
“I do.”
Logan narrowed his eyes at Anthem. “You’re encouraging me to go right now to the woman who is supposed to be your enarri?”
“Maeve has loved you since long before I ever met her,” Anthem said. “Perhaps in another life, Maeve and I… But we have only one life, one heart, and she has given hers to you completely.”
“You’re not angry that she and I…”
Logan hesitated, not quite sure how to end the sentence. But Anthem shook his head.
“Syle was hiding on the Blue Phoenix,” he said. “He belonged to Xartasia, never to us. He intended to assassinate Maeve. He bombed the enassui, I think, and made the other explosives that you disarmed.”
“If he worked for Xartasia, then he would have known about Maeve and the Tamlin Waygate. He must have let it slip when he was working the food lines, starting the riots.”
“Yes,” Anthem agreed. “I believe so, too.”
“What happened to Syle?”
“He is dead.”
“You killed him?” Logan asked. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“What you were doing at that moment was far more important,” Anthem said. He actually smiled, the first real smile Logan thought he had ever seen on the serious knight’s handsome face. Not a bitter or sad look. “And loud enough to cover the sounds of our battle, brief as it was.”
Logan felt something hot on his cheeks and realized that he was probably blushing.
“Sorry,” he said curtly.
Anthem’s smile fell away. “No, I am sorry. Syle was my knight. I should have seen his treachery. I did not until it was too late.”
“Maeve is still alive,” Logan said.
“But Syle did a great deal of damage.” Anthem’s dark blue eyes seemed old and tired. “If he had not attacked the enassui, if he had not turned Kaellisem against the queen…”
“I should have found Syle, too.”
“He was a knight. He knew everything that you and I did. It was all too easy to maneuver around us. There is blame enough to keep us debating until long after Xartasia lands on Axis, but it no longer matters. What is done is done.”
“Not if Xartasia has her way.”
“My beloved is a strong and clever woman,” Anthem said. “For all that Titania has done, what she intends to do, I cannot help but admire her. She is still wrong — terribly wrong — but my enarri is a great queen.”
Logan couldn’t bring himself to agree, but he extended his left hand to Anthem. The knight took it and glass rang against glass. The two men held each other’s gaze for a moment and then both turned away, nothing left to be said.
Both Anthem and Panna had argued her choice of venue. But if this was to be her final act as queen of Kaellisem, Maeve would do it her own way. She stood on the uneven remains of the stage. For the first time since her coronation, she wore her armor. But not her crown… That symbol remained in Duke Ferris’ keeping.
The theater was a blasted, nightmare landscape of twisted black glass. Arcadians stood among the sharp, frozen shadows in clusters, none of them approaching the stage too closely. Was it Maeve they feared? Or something else? There were more than the seventeen hundred fairies that Ballad had promised, maybe drawn by some morbid curiosity. But not many more. There were still less than two thousand Arcadians willing to listen to Maeve speak. How many would do what she asked?
“How many ships did you manage to get?” Duaal asked Vyron, standing to one side of the stage. A dry wind stirred his dark hair.
Vyron looked across the ruined theater. “More than you’re going to need, I think.”
“Where’s Xyn?”
“Back at Unbreakers,” Vyron answered. “Gleefully dissecting the Nnyth you brought him. Xia’s with him, looking over his shoulder with her eyes turning red. What happened? I didn’t think Xia had any particular feelings about the Nnyth.”
“You had to be there, I think,” Duaal said, then turned to Maeve. “Are you ready for this?”
“No,” she told him. “But there is not time for me to get ready. We must leave by dawn.”
Logan and Sir Anthem walked silently on either side as Maeve strode to the center of the stage. Her glass armor was an unfamiliar weight and she felt strangely graceless lumbering around in it. Had it truly been so long since she was a knight, since she had worn a suit like this every day? Maeve took her spear from Logan.
“Kaellisem!” she called.
Or tried to. Maeve stammered. She was shaking and the plates of her armor shivered against one another like wind chimes. In the last year, she had given as many speeches as any Alliance politician, and even grown used to it. But this was different. She would ask her own people to risk their lives for the Alliance that had never, ever protected them… Maeve closed her eyes and fought for breath.
“Kaellisem!” she cried again. “We have been to the Tower and found it fallen! It was not by Xartasia’s hand, but the Nnyth themselves who sundered their own home to prevent the White Queen from using it. They knew what Xartasia plans, and have told us. She flies now to the center of the galaxy, to Axis, to unmake all that has happened since I went to Tamlin. To restore the White Kingdom. To save our homeworlds.”
There were a thousand cries and sharp, shocked notes from the crowd at this. Not displeased, but clear, happy songs that Maeve had not heard for a long time. She hated herself as she raised her spear like a banner.
“But to do this, Xartasia must destroy over a hundred years of history,” Maeve shouted over the noise. “The coreworlders do not live as long as we do! Trillions have been born and lived since the fall of the White Kingdom. Xartasia will sacrifice their lives, their history to save our own.
“The Central World Alliance has been no friend to Arcadia, it is true, but they are a young empire. The White Kingdom stood for ten thousand years! Next to us, the people of the Alliance are but children. Children can be cruel. They can be heartless. But they are innocent, Kaellisem. I come before you tonight not as your queen, but as a knight. We have witnessed true destruction, true loss and pain! Anslin Sky-Knight charges all warriors to fight such enemies.
“I will go to Axis. Not to face Xartasia — she has numbers beyond ours, and the Devourers held in thrall — but to the CWA itself. We will stand before the Alliance and challenge them to battle. We go ourselves as bait, as cause to rally their army, so that they will be ready when Xartasia comes to Axis.”
Another sound rose from the theater, no longer pleased but cries of disbelief and dismay. The Arcadians pulled back from the stage, cringing. Maeve longed to tell them not to be afraid, to retract the words that she had already spoken… but there was no going back now.
What has been can never be again.
“It will be dangerous, I know. Many of us will die,” Maeve told her people, struggling with the words and to fight back tears.
She recognized Duke Ferris in the crowd. The old nobleman stood at the base of a blasted tower, a blackened stump of shattered glass, with angry eyes and clenched jaw. But he was there. He was listening. Maeve brought her spear down on the uneven stage. The charred glass cracked with a sharp, hollow noise like a gunshot.
“We may die,” Maeve said. “Or at least spend the rest of our lives in Alliance prisons. And you know that itself is nothing less than a death sentence! Ever since the fall of the White Kingdom, we have waited to die, for the Nameless to finish her work. But now we have the chance to die for something.
“I know what it is I ask of you, Kaellisem! But I know that it is in you to give! When I came here, when I called to you, I did so with the sole intent to stop Xartasia. That was my only plan, my only desire. But you have built an entire city of sunset glass, of fire given form unlike anything even the pyrads ever dreamed to build!”
Maeve swept her spear in a wide arc to gesture out across the broken theater. “We will rouse the Alliance to battle. They may kill us, or Xartasia’s army may, but we will fall defending life and light. We are Arcadian! The gods made us to sing the new songs, to dance those steps never danced before. They made us to live and to die as they cannot. What has been can never be again. Xartasia has forgotten that. She would sing the old songs again. She would tear apart all that is new, turn back time and unmake all!
“It is our responsibility, our destiny, our right and our pride to stop her, to forge ahead and never to look back!”
Maeve raised her spear and sang out a single high, pure note. There were no more words. What else could she say? She had asked her people to die so that others could live, to throw themselves at the CWAAF in the mad hope that when Xartasia came, the Alliance would be ready for war. It was not even a hopeless battle. It was pure sacrifice of blood for the future of a galaxy that despised and dismissed them.
Logan was the first to take up Maeve’s note, an octave lower. And then Anthem sang, too, clean and clear as glass. Another voice joined the three, high and tremulous. It was Duke Ferris, his face raised to the darkening sky and tears streaming down his withered old cheeks. One by one and then hundreds of voices joined, a single thrumming, resonating note.
Maeve stared out across the shattered glass theater. Hundreds of Arcadians were turning away, so many leaving and returning to their safe home and filling the night with retreating white wings.
But more stayed.
