The Paladin Caper Page 4

  He reached out for the ax.

  “Wait.”

  The voice came from the edge of the chasm, and Westteich spun. No one else had been left when the Forge had fallen. The Hunters had all been crushed by the rocks.

  All save Commander Mirrok, it seemed. It pulled itself over the edge of the chasm, its armor scuffed and smoking. Westteich remembered that Loch had thrown it into the assembly chamber, which usually generated a great deal of heat as it fused crystals together.

  “Operative Westteich was exemplary in the performance of his duties,” it said, rising to its feet, “but only average in his physical capability. His intelligence would be wasted were he reduced to a thrall controlled by a sentient weapon.”

  Westteich very slowly lowered his hand.

  “I, meanwhile, lost my weapon in the destruction of the Forge. Nor do I have the means to gain another,” Mirrok continued. “I am useless as a Hunter, but still stand strong as a tool of the ancients.”

  “Well, then,” said the ax, “far be it from me to ignore the advice of a veteran Hunter. I am Arikayurichi, the Bringer of Order, one of the few living souls of the ancients bound to a weapon to await the return of my brothers . . . and I need someone to hold me while I bring them back.”

  The heavyset man tossed the ax to Commander Mirrok, who caught it, spun it, and nodded thoughtfully. “Excellent,” the ax added, rolling out Mirrok’s shoulders and tilting his head back and forth. “This will do for now.”

  Westteich nodded and smiled like a man who hadn’t nearly been reduced to apparent thralldom a moment ago. “Now that that’s settled, then, how can I best help you deal with Captain Loch and the others?”

  “Loch is mine,” said Arikayurichi, the Bringer of Order. “As for you . . . Ghylspwr could use a hand with a project of his own. You may find it interesting.” The ax chuckled. “If indeed you do wish to see the ancients return.”

  “All I’m saying,” said the griffon puppet as the crowd of onlookers laughed, “is that investing in education is something everyone should be able to agree on.”

  The manticore puppet continued its attempt to eviscerate the griffon with its stinger. “You’re looking to dump money into an education system that has proven time and again to be corrupt when the Republic should be increasing its internal and external security?”

  “Anyone worried about the Republic should be worried about our children showing little aptitude for mathematics and crystal work,” the griffon yelled back while clinging to the manticore’s stinger and raking savagely with its back claws, “while over in the Empire, their own educational program is working wonders!”

  “Does anyone else remember that one week where the politicians weren’t at each other’s throats?” Tern asked, idly munching on an apple covered with chocolate and small nuts.

  “No,” said Loch. “When did that happen?” She looked toward the edge of town, as she’d been doing for most of the afternoon, but Kail continued to not be there.

  “It was while you were dead.” Desidora took a bite of some kind of flaky cheese pastry and made a face.

  “Ah,” said Loch. “That explains it.”

  They had spent the last several hours in the little nothing town of Hillview, which, as far as Loch could tell, had come into existence primarily because this was about as far as a merchant who left Ros-Oanki with a good two-horse wagon would go before insisting upon a bed and a decent meal. Hillview was full of farmers, mostly white but with a few Urujar families there as well, along with small restaurants and inns that promised free crystal-charging stations to anyone who paid for the night. The roads were dirt, and the hill and whatever view it purportedly offered were lost to the ages, but the town had a kahva-house, and the Urujar on the streets didn’t tense up when white people walked by. In Loch’s view, that was enough for a town to be all right.

  “I am still uncertain that revealing yourself to the allies of the ancients was necessary,” said Icy, who held a carrot like a cigar between two fingers and nibbled it occasionally.

  “We slunk in the shadows,” Ululenia said. She also had a carrot, which she took a bite of and then frowned. “It accomplished nothing.”

  “I’m not sure nothing is really fair,” Tern said.

  Ululenia patted her shoulder fondly. “Now, my dear, we will nip at their heels, wait for them to spin and buck in terror . . . and then sink our fangs into their hamstrings.”

  “You are absolutely certain you are not evil now, Ululenia?” Icy asked.

  “Because that seemed like something an evil unicorn would say,” Tern added, and took a bite of what turned out to be the half-eaten carrot in her hand.

  “Consuming the essence of another fairy creature has not made me evil,” Ululenia said, as she’d said for the past several months repeatedly. “It has simply allowed me to become . . . more in touch with my own needs.” She took a bite of the chocolate-and-nut-covered apple that she now held.

  “You evil horse, give me back my damn apple! I have been eating crappy Forge-of-the-Ancients food for weeks on this job, and if I wanted a damn carrot, I would have gotten a damn carrot!”

  “My sorrow is the slow-flowing river, choked with weeds of guilt,” Ululenia said, and took another bite.

  Loch scanned the crowd. It was full of farmers and merchants and still held good numbers, even as the puppet show had wound down into the usual hijinks and yelling. The Republic and the Empire had almost gone to war again a few months ago, and ever since then, people had paid a lot more attention to things, even in little towns like Hillview. “Let’s move to the kahva-house.”

  “Loch, can you make her give me back my apple?”

  “But your apple now has evil-unicorn spit on it,” Ululenia protested. In her human form, she was a pale woman with ash-blond hair and a simple white peasant dress. Once it had made her look innocent. Now it slid along her curves in a way that made people wonder what it might look like slithering down into a pile on the ground. “You wouldn’t want to drink in my evil-unicorn spit and become evil, would you?”

  Loch turned to Ululenia. “Play nice or find a virgin. Come on.”

  The dragon puppet finally pulled the griffon and manticore apart. “Should Archvoyant Cevirt focus more on educating our future or protecting our present? Remember, it’s your Republic!”

  “Stay informed!” the crowd shouted back, and with the show over, the farmers and merchants began to go back to their lives.

  “You are concerned for Kail,” Icy said, falling into step beside Loch as they made their way across the packed dirt of the town square toward the kahva-house.

  “He’s a good scout. He’ll be fine.” Loch didn’t look toward the edge of town again. Kail was indeed a good scout and wouldn’t come into town through the main road, anyway.

  “It had to be him,” Desidora added.

  “Yep.”

  “The Hunters could detect Ululenia even if she took the form of something small,” Desidora added again.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “And my own death magic and Hessler’s illusions might well alert whatever airship comes to investigate the destruction of the Forge,” Desidora continued to add.

  “You’ve convinced me,” Loch said, and Desidora sighed.

  “You are concerned for Kail,” Icy said to Desidora.

  “Seriously,” Tern said to Ululenia, “we are going to talk about you stealing that apple. That was the last one they had, and do you have any idea what it’s like to want something sweet and beautiful and then see someone else get it instead? I mean, aside from Mister Dragon making off with Dairy?”

  “I am very happy for them,” Ululenia said crisply.

  “Because by all rights you had that virgin locked down,” Tern went on.

  “Very. Happy. For. Them.”

  “You really want to goad the possibly evil unicorn?” Desidora asked Tern. “Or is this like when you kept taking jabs at me because you didn’t like me being a death priestess?”

&n
bsp; “This is like she ate my chocolate apple,” Tern said, “and I think you need to pick a side here. Are you a death priestess right now, or a love priestess?”

  “I can pretty much go both ways now,” Desidora said.

  Tern glared. “Well, that at least sounds like something a love priestess would say.”

  Hessler, still looking like a collection of broomsticks someone had shoved into a wizard’s robe, came out of the kahva-house with a tray full of waxed-paper cups. “Oh, is the show over already? I had some questions about whether the kahva-beans were purchased from someplace that pursued ethical trading practices, and they had to get the manager to—” He broke off and looked at Tern. “You got a carrot instead of one of those chocolate apples. Good on you for taking care of yourself!”

  “Well, I thought I’d eat a little healthier.” Tern took a cup overflowing with whipped cream, with kahva presumably somewhere far underneath. Ululenia smiled broadly and took another bite of the apple.

  Loch grabbed her own kahva, which was simple and black. “We’re going to wait inside.”

  “Is there still no sign of Kail?” Hessler asked, frowning and squinting in a way that was subtly different from his normal expression of perpetual frowning and squinting. “Assuming that an airship came from the nearest port city upon detecting the destruction of the Forge—”

  “We’re not worried,” Loch cut in.

  “Kail is going to be fine,” Desidora said.

  “She has an itemized list justifying the current course of action,” Icy added.

  “I’d love to hear it,” said Kail, coming around the corner of the kahva-house.

  “We knew you’d be okay,” Desidora said, and her face darkened ever so slightly. On most people, it would have been a blush. On Desidora, it meant that her death priestess aura was slipping back into the shadows where it belonged, lowering the chances of anything nearby spontaneously taking on a silver-skulls-and-gargoyles decorative theme or getting the life sucked out of it. She stepped forward gracefully and didn’t quite kiss Kail, but did put herself beside him with their arms touching.

  “How’d it go?” Loch asked, moving into the space between the kahva-house and the bakery next door. It didn’t have enough garbage lying in it to be a proper alley, so by Hillview standards, it was likely a road.

  “Good news and bad.” Kail looked over his shoulder.

  “The bad news involves pursuit,” Icy guessed.

  “Boy, does it, and you’re all drinking those on the go,” Kail said. Loch took a sip of her kahva, inhaling the heat of the dark roast. “Good news is I got the tracking crystal onto their fancy-ass airship. Assuming it works, we’ll know where they’re going.”

  Desidora went slightly pale, her hair darkening from auburn to black. “It works. I can sense it now.”

  “Good. Now, running,” Kail said. “Trackers, professionals, an ogre and two things I couldn’t place. I think they were going by scent, but it could be by aura, or it could be both. I don’t know what two of them are, so until we learn how to lose them, we’re going to want some distance. Arikayurichi and Ghylspwr were both there too. Bertram was carrying them. They’ve got him enslaved.”

  “You’re certain?” Hessler asked. “If Bertram believed that—”

  “He’s certain,” Desidora cut in, giving Hessler a look, and Hessler blinked and nodded.

  “Nice work.” Loch took one more sip of her kahva, then sighed and tossed it into a garbage bin near the back of the alley. “Waste of damn good kahva.”

  “And ethically traded,” Hessler added.

  Then they were running for the sad little field where they’d left the airship, ready to flee yet another town just ahead of whomever was after them.

  But this time, Loch thought with a tiny little grin, they had a target.

  Fangs into the hamstring, Little One, Ululenia said in her mind, and Loch laughed.

  Things were actually looking up for once.

  A year ago, Dairy had been working on the farm, cared for—if not precisely loved—by good, honest people, with no further thought than next year’s harvest and a little annoyance at the silly birthmark on his arm that the farm’s old woman said was special and he should never show anyone. Ever since the night blood-gargoyles had come stalking around the farm, life had been one educational experience after another.

  Now, with a prophecy, some morally ambiguous military service, and several major robberies behind him, Dairy was finally happy, living with a man who loved him for who he was.

  But of course, the Champion of Dawn wouldn’t get a normal life. The Champion of Dawn had to do heroic things.

  At the moment, those things involved leaving the man he loved and running off to the Empire.

  Dairy knew that Mister Dragon wouldn’t have asked if it weren’t important. Mister Dragon hadn’t seemed any happier than Dairy himself. Princess Veiled Lightning could keep him safe, Mister Dragon insisted, and far enough away that nobody with any ideas could hurt Dairy.

  Dairy had asked whether that meant Mister Dragon’s own estate in the middle of the Elflands wasn’t safe enough, and had then felt sorry for doing so, because Mister Dragon had sighed and hung his head, which he knew from when Mister Kail and Mister Hessler did it meant that the answer was that Mister Dragon wanted it to be safe enough, but it wasn’t, and Mister Dragon was feeling sad about how life had turned out to make that the answer.

  Now, under the moonlight, Dairy looked down from the great treeship he had just boarded and waved down at Mister Dragon, who watched from the ground below. Mister Dragon waved back. He was smiling, but his face was still sad.

  The elven captain was named Thelenea. She had been the captain on the massive treeship Loch and Dairy had boarded back when Loch had been trying to steal the elven book from Mister Dragon. She clapped Dairy on the shoulder. “This is the fastest ship in the Elflands. You will be safe in the Empire in less than a day, Lord Rybindaris.”

  Dairy almost said, “Please, just call me Dairy,” but then remembered that elves hated it when you told them to do anything, so instead, he just said, “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  Captain Thelenea looked a little like Captain Loch, especially when she smiled, even though her skin was green instead of brown. Dairy wondered if it was something about being a captain. “He is trying to keep you safe.”

  “I would rather be with him,” Dairy said, and then looked away, because the words had come out bitter.

  “I believe he knows that as well,” Captain Thelenea said, and stepped back. “This ship only has one floor and a few cabins, unlike the last treeship you traveled upon. Whenever you are ready, someone will be happy to show you to your room.”

  “Thank you,” Dairy said again, and the captain headed off to the bridge.

  Dairy watched the great golden radiance of Mister Dragon’s estate fade in the night as the treeship slowly ascended. In what seemed like moments, the great thick trees that covered most of the Elflands had obscured the estate from view, and then the night was lit only by the silver-white moon and by the purple-and-blue glows of moss on the trees.

  The railing of the treeship was rough, the bark gripping his fingers. Overhead and behind him, branches rustled and creaked as countless intertwining leaves caught the wind, while the main hull beneath his feet was strong but faintly springy. It reminded Dairy of when he had climbed the young trees back on the farms, feeling the green wood flex beneath him.

  When he had ridden on the great treeship with Captain Loch, it had seemed almost like a normal airship, but with moss and leaves and no crystals. Dairy hadn’t realized at the time how much of that had been for the comfort of the humans visiting the Elflands. This was a real elven ship, though, as alive as the elves themselves, and as different.

  Dairy decided that he liked it. He was getting used to being different. He would find some way to help, even from the Empire. He hadn’t been able to help Mister Dragon with the reading, and he hadn’t been able to hel
p Loch and the others with stealing things, but he would find something he could do.

  Whether he liked it or not, he was a child of prophecy, he noted with a little smile. He was bound to be important somehow.

  He turned to find someone to take him to his room, and that was when the bag came down over his head.

  Three

  JUSTICAR CAPTAIN PYVIC sipped his morning kahva, which always made him think about the woman he loved, and then sighed and pushed himself up from his desk.

  “Something keeping you from the cabinet meeting, sir?” Justicar Derenky asked, poking his head around the corner of Pyvic’s door.

  Derenky was a freckled man who seemed to think that he could be in charge if he said everything like a question and smiled a lot. Once, Pyvic would have found that politically minded avarice off-putting. After seeing the man take a knife to the gut in defense of the Republic, however, Pyvic had been forced to accept, begrudgingly, that Derenky was a very good justicar, his desire for Pyvic’s job notwithstanding, and so he gave Derenky a comfortable smile and said, “I was deeply concerned about you not having asked me about it yet, justicar.”

  “Just a reminder that I’d be happy to attend these meetings if you are too busy with other matters, sir.”

  “Tomlin!” Pyvic called as he walked past Derenky into the main office. “Derenky said it again! Everyone has to take a drink!”

  “Right, sir!” The big man squinted, pinning a thumbtack to a map on the wall.

  “I expect a report about the fairy-creature disappearances when I get back,” Pyvic added with a look at both Tomlin and Derenky. “Something’s going on, and even if that something is in the woods, it could spill into the villages next week, and then the towns, and then I’ll be busy enough that Derenky has to go to my cabinet meetings.”

  “Wouldn’t want that, sir,” Derenky tossed back, and Pyvic grinned and headed off to the archvoyant’s palace.

  The floating city of Heaven’s Spire was quieter now than it had been a few months back. Businesses were open again, and the damage had been repaired, but the people who lived up in the sky had learned in no uncertain terms that night that their city was a weapon, and that weapons sometimes got sent into battle. The airborne metropolis had never been friendly for families—a floating city by its very nature restricted the amount of sprawl required to add new residential areas, and as the capital of the Republic, it catered to wealthy cosmopolitan tastes—and in the wake of Heaven’s Spire’s near-destruction, the city was almost entirely devoid of children. Pyvic wondered how many schools had closed.