There was an acolyte like that guarding every major intersection in Floodhaven, along with all the other conquered cities of Terra. They never switched guard. Never slept. Never ate. Just scanned the crowd with cold, ceaseless vigilance. Killed anyone who caused problems.
No wonder most of the Floodhaven natives had abandoned their own city.
Once they were out of the acolyte’s sight, Cabbage stopped focusing on not shitting himself, and turned his attention back to the task at hand.
“Please, Felgor. Last time you went on a three-day bender.”
“Bender? That was research. And it worked splendidly, seeing as that is how we found Brutus, our perfect little honey-pot of classified information, crying into a companion’s tits about his scary combat missions.”
“What if we run into him there?”
“Seeing as you’re holding his life’s savings in your hand, I find that unlikely.”
Cabbage swallowed. Before Queen Ashlyn had dispatched him to Floodhaven with Felgor, she had specifically told him to keep the thief out of trouble, which he was prone to wading into neck deep. Cabbage hadn’t thought it would be that difficult, seeing as he’d spent ten years trying to keep a lid on the pirate scum of Ghost Moth Island.
Oh, how wrong he had been.
“We can have dinner and a few drinks,” Cabbage said, knowing it was easier to bargain with Felgor than flat-out refuse him. “Then we’ll start back to the Dainwood.”
“Definitely,” said Felgor. “One good meal, then we’ll fly home like Balarian arrows—straight and true.”
6
VERA
Floodhaven
As soon as the Blue Sparrow was hovering above the skyship platform, Vera dropped a rope and slid down it. She had no patience for the three-minute landing sequence.
She headed straight to Kira, which was a journey all its own after Osyrus Ward’s expansions.
The skyship platform was attached to the middle levels of the Queen’s Tower and sprawled out over the city like a fan. Below her, seven city blocks were eternally cast in shadow beneath the heavy beams and wide planks.
Osyrus had ordered the platform constructed the morning that he took control of the armada, and his acolytes had finished within several weeks, despite the massive scale of the project. They worked tirelessly among the maze of construction rafters that encircled the towers.
Once the platform was finished, the acolytes turned their industry to the castle itself, which was hardly recognizable as Castle Malgrave.
The western tower was now a massive barrack for Wormwrot Company. The eastern tower—which had been nearly destroyed in a strange fire—had been retrofitted to be a massive silo for dragon oil. Its windowless walls were made from sleek, dark stone. There was a hunting ship hovering above it with a massive rubber hose connected to the tip, pouring oil from slain dragons into the basin.
Then there was the King’s Tower.
Osyrus had built scores of new workshops into the guts of the tower, then added more around the exterior that bulged from the walls like blisters on burned flesh. When he ran out of room there, he began adding extra levels to the tower. Its shadow now extended past the outer walls of the city.
The top of the tower was capped by a massive, black dome. Nobody knew what Ward did up there, but there was a near constant stream of valuable materials being delivered from abroad. Nickel, lead, and copper were mined from Lysteria and refined in the kilns of northern Balaria. Dragons were shot from the skies above Ghalamar and Dunfar for their bones. Rubber was siphoned from the trees along the northern rim of the Dainwood, and some unknown material was harvested from the dragon warrens in the south.
All of it was brought to Floodhaven. All of it ended up in that tower.
Whatever Ward was building, he’d conquered the entire realm to amass the materials for it.
Kira was being held several levels below that, in the garden room. As she crossed the platform, she glanced at the garden room’s tall, narrow window. Vera had to resist the urge to break into a sprint to reach Kira faster.
Vera entered the Queen’s Tower through a wide circular door that had been cut directly from the stone. Jogged up stairwells and trotted across long hallways until she reached the bridge that connected it to the King’s Tower. More stairs and hallways. More doors locked by Balarian seals and guarded by acolytes, who let her through amidst wheezing grunts and mechanical groans.
By the time Vera reached the floor beneath the garden room, she was breathing hard and her forehead had a sheen of sweat across it. As she climbed the final stairwell to the garden room, she took out her personal seal, which could open Kira’s private recovery chamber.
She froze when she saw an unfamiliar and enormous acolyte standing guard in front of it.
He was so tall that he would have never fit inside a normal castle room. But the garden room actually comprised three castle floors, which had been gutted long ago so that peach and orange trees could be planted on the loam-covered floor and grown in the high space.
It had once been a favorite meeting place for Ashlyn Malgrave. Now, it housed a domed healing chamber for Kira that was two stories tall and filled half the space. The massive acolyte filled the rest. The top of his gray pate was nearly at an even height with the top of the dome.
“What are you doing here?” Vera asked, moving toward the acolyte.
“Protect. Empress.”
Vera studied the acolyte. His arms were as thick as tree trunks. Fingers like carrots. A true giant.
“Get out of my way.”
“Protect. Empress.”
“I’m Vera,” she said. “Her widow.”
The acolyte’s muscles rippled with a coiled strength, but otherwise gave no acknowledgment that he understood her words.
“Ah, I see you have met Seven-Zero-Nine!” came a familiar voice from behind her.
She turned to find Osyrus Ward. He was wearing a new dragonskin jacket—this one went down past his knees and was made from a Ghost Moth dragon’s pale white hide. There were three engineers behind him, all of them wearing similar garments.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Vera hissed.
Osyrus frowned, puzzled. “With you abroad, I assumed that you would want Empress Kira guarded.” He motioned to the enormous acolyte. “Seven-Zero-Nine is one of my latest successes. I used a new slurry for the growth and strength hormones that have tripled his—”
“I don’t care, Osyrus. I want him out of my way and out of this room. Now.”
Osyrus bowed his head. “Of course, of course.”
Ward snapped his fingers and gave a firm command. “Sleep, Seven-Zero-Nine.”
The acolyte stiffened. “Acknowledged, master.”
He lumbered to the side of the room and squatted beneath a gnarled orange tree. Closed his eyes. Within a few moments, he was snoring.
“I said that I want him out.”
Osyrus winced. “Getting him in here to begin with was quite a challenge. Given his size, removing him would require either that Seven-Zero-Nine destroy a part of the castle, or I destroy part of Seven-Zero-Nine. I will do so, if you wish. But there is a value to a tireless protector outside our precious Kira’s door, yes?”
Vera chewed on her lip. She could deal with this problem later.
“That’s fine for now. I want to see Kira.”
“Of course.” Osyrus motioned to the men behind him. “When we saw the Sparrow on our horizon, we began all the preparations for removing Kira from the respirator. Let us all go inside.”
The interior of the healing chamber was humid and hot. Vera started sweating immediately.
Kira was laid out on a pallet in the middle of the room, the same place where Vera had left her.
Everything else about her was different.
When Vera had left, Kira had been in a coma, but her skin was pink and healthy. Now her lips were the color of raw clam meat. Her cheeks sunken. The circles under her eyes so dark, they seemed l
ike bruises. She was covered in thin bandages that crisscrossed her torso and hips, allowing access for two black tubes that were connected to either side of her chest and pumped her lungs full of air in steady increments. Other than their steady pumps, she was so still—almost like someone had carved her likeness from wax, and the real, vibrant Kira was hidden away in some secret room.
“Why have you let her deteriorate like this?” Vera snarled.
“What are you talking about?” Osyrus asked, squinting at one of his dials. “Her blood pressure is perfect. All of her organs are functioning at full capacity. The new respirator model is working wonders for the health of her throat and mouth, as well.”
In contrast to Kira’s horrific physical appearance, all of the machines and contraptions around her were brimming with movement and bright colors. Vats the size of ale casks hung suspended from the ceiling. They were filled with green fluid that pumped and churned with the cadence of a heartbeat, but the metallic clang of artificial invention. The floor and walls were dominated by copper and steel pipes that powered the vats’ ceaseless mixing and churning. The fluid was siphoned from the vats, through a series of rubber tubes, and into Kira’s broken body.
“Full capacity? She looks like she’s on the brink of death.”
For the first time since they’d entered the room, Osyrus looked up from his machines, giving Kira the shortest of glances. “Physical appearances are poor indicators of specimen health.”
“Do not call her a specimen.”
Osyrus bowed his head slightly. “I assure you, she is quite healthy.”
Vera moved to Kira. She removed one glove and put a bare hand on Kira’s cheek. Winced at how cold her skin felt, despite the heat of the room.
“Why is she so cold?”
“It’s necessary to lower her body temperature before attempting to rebind the nerves,” Osyrus responded. “Which we are ready to do, if you’d like.”
She gave Kira’s hand one more squeeze, then backed away. “Yes.”
“Excellent.” Osyrus signaled his engineers, who moved to various consoles and machines around the room, adjusting dials and writing down different readings.
“If you’ll wait over there,” Osyrus said, pointing to the only place in the dome that wasn’t dominated by machinery.
“I think you’ll find the new visualization matrix I’ve created to observe the process quite useful,” Osyrus continued. “A product of my latest filament designs.”
Vera didn’t say anything. She’d learned to ignore Ward’s esoteric descriptions of his work, and to stop attempting to understand how he made his strange creations and machines function.
She didn’t care how they worked, she just needed Kira to be free from them.
But when a series of black threads descended from the dome’s ceiling—connected and hung by some unseen force—and then braided themselves into the shape of a spinal cord, Vera became more interested.
“Is that … Ki’s spine?”
“A representation of it, yes,” said Osyrus, admiring his own work. “See those smaller filaments?” He pointed to a series of thinner wires that were wrapping around the spine like root tendrils. “Those are the nerves. And you can see where they’ve been severed. There. There. There.”
Osyrus moved to a rectangular panel console that was covered in hundreds of dials, buttons, switches, and pressure gauges.
“The fermentation of the latest healing steroid is complete,” he said, flipping switches in rapid succession. “Let’s see if those frayed nerves will connect with each other.”
He adjusted a few dials on his machine, then flipped a switch made from red metal. The vats bubbled with pressure. Liquid started flowing into the rubber tubes that connected Kira to the machines.
“I’m seeing a small activity increase in the Empress’s receptors,” said one of the engineers. “Look.”
Vera looked up at the strange filament model. Some of the thinner root tendrils did seem to be writhing around with a little more strength than before.
“But they aren’t attaching,” Vera said.
“We just need to coax things along a bit,” Osyrus responded as he flipped a few more switches on his console. He turned to his engineers. “Remove the lung apparatus.”
The two men moved to either side of Kira. Put their gloved hands on the tubes that connected to her chest. Vera winced at the metal click as they twisted each tube in unison and removed them from her chest, then placed them carefully in nearby holsters. They hustled back to their positions.
“Mark the time,” said Osyrus.
“Marked,” the engineer replied. “We have two minutes.”
Vera stared at Kira and dug her fingers deep into the inside of her palms. She said a silent prayer to the skies above, asking the stars that Kira’s lungs would work and her chest would lift.
“All receptors are spiking,” an engineer reported. “Her body is reacting.”
Osyrus didn’t respond. He just kept adjusting different dials and controls. Every machine in the room was whirring and pumping with activity now. The churn and the motion made Vera’s teeth hurt.
“I think I see a braid!” one engineer said, his voice cracking a little. “Right there.”
He pointed to a place in the model where two tendrils were twisting around each other, forming a bond. The filaments started to glow a deep, healthy green.
“Confirmed,” said the other engineer. “I have a few on my side as well.”
“It’s working?” Vera asked.
“Just an initial positive response to the latest steroid therapy,” said Osyrus. “We’re a long way from a full breath.”
Vera glanced at the clock. They had less than a minute remaining. But when she turned back to the filaments, there were seven or eight glowing. Color was returning to Kira’s cheeks and lips.
Please. Please.
She searched for more green tendrils, but didn’t see any.
“We have a healthy baseline,” one engineer said. Paused. “But I’m not seeing further growth.”
Osyrus frowned. “Begin the manual stimulus. Level two.”
“Level two,” the engineer repeated. “Charging.”
Vera looked away. She couldn’t stand this part.
There was a high-pitched whine when the stimulus machine was charged, kind of like a mosquito buzzing next to your ear.
“Primed,” said the engineer.
“Execute.”
There was a pop. Ki’s fingers started twitching, erratic and wild.
“Again.”
Another pop. More twitching.
“That’s enough.”
Her fingers stopped moving. Everyone in the room looked at the filaments. For ten long seconds, nothing happened.
Then they began to ignite. One after the next. Soon, the entire spinal column was aglow.
“Yes,” Vera whispered to herself.
But the filaments started to turn black again a moment later.
“What does that mean?” Vera asked.
Osyrus didn’t respond. Just concentrated on his console, furiously adjusting dials. Then he ran to another machine and worked a hand crank up and down. Crossed the room again to depress a series of pedals.
“We’re losing receptors!” an engineer called.
“I know we’re losing receptors,” Osyrus snapped. He dipped his finger into one of the vats and sucked the contents into his mouth. Made a weird chewing noise before spitting it on the floor. “Her body is rejecting the nerve growth.”
“Why?” Vera asked.
“Unknown.” He looked around the room. “We could try reinvigorating with a norishroot mixture…”
“We’re losing them faster,” said one engineer.
“It’s a full toxicity waterfall,” said the other.
The filaments were all black now. The tendrils withered like dying eels.
“We’ve passed the two-minute mark,” the engineer added.
“I’m aware,”
Ward said, voice tight. “Kill all therapeutics. Put her back on the breathing apparatus. Now.”
The engineers scuttled to work, adjusting some of the machines and then plugging Kira back into the machine with two metallic snaps.
“Turn off the filament model and leave the room,” Osyrus said.
The visualization model retracted into the ceiling. Vera and Osyrus both remained silent until they were alone.
“What happened?” Vera hissed.
“There was probably an impurity in the regeneration tonic.” He motioned to one of the many vats that hung from the ceiling, surrounding them. “Despite all of this machinery, a truly pure sample has remained elusive.”
“Pure? I wiped a bunch of muddy river moss across Silas Bershad’s bones and they healed in weeks.”
“Different injury. Different sp—” He stopped himself. “Person.”
“Different how?”
“You break a bone, all you need to do is put it in a splint and wait. Have you ever seen a paralyzed person start walking again all on their own?”
“No,” Vera said. “But I’ve heard of it happening.”
“What are you talking about?” Osyrus asked, screwing up his face.
“When I was last in Lysteria, I was told the same story by three different people. A child fell off a roof and had no feeling in his legs for three days. An old woman appeared from the hinterlands and gave him a tonic. He was walking half a day later.”
That was what two people had told her, anyway. The third had insisted that the woman was a witch who’d cast black magic on the boy, and that he was now a half-demon who talked to Milk Dragons in the night.
“Did I send you to Lysteria to interview peasants about the injuries of children?”
Vera tightened her jaw. Osyrus liked to change the subject of conversations he didn’t enjoy.
“No, you sent me to kill the governor of Kushal-Kin after he revolted. I did that, then I interviewed the peasants.”
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