Shards

by James Duvall

  “We will keep looking,” Timothy promised.

  The dragon's ears lifted up as he turned his tired gaze to Timothy. While the man had not discouraged Aebyn's interactions with the illusory luminarian, Timothy had not made a habit of becoming involved in the situation beyond giving Aebyn and his companion leave to explore the city on their own now and then. Even then it had not been out of a particular interest in the dragons. In fact it had stemmed from his own desire to encourage Aebyn to pursue his own interests.

  “Thank you,” Dawn said, bowing his head a little. He lingered a little while longer, listening as Aebyn recounted to him the dragons he had spoken to and their descriptions of the outsider that had come through. When Aebyn had finished Sapphire was no closer to found, but her mate seemed to have a light in his eyes that Timothy was sure had not been there before.

  Dawn bowed again to them both and disappeared in the same misty fashion that coalesced him from thin air.

  “What are we going to do, Aebyn?” Timothy asked at last. He sank into a bench outside a haberdashery where men and their ladies would wait for a coach to take them back to their hotels and estates. Timothy had nowhere to return to, nowhere but the Stormbreaker. He was used to that, as any airman was. Expeditions into the unknown, however, was not the life of an airman. True airmen would have moved on long ago in pursuit of safer coin.

  So why, he wondered, is the crew still here?

  Willoughby seemed the obvious answer. Nothnor was not a busy port but in the intervening weeks since their arrival and the disaster in the Mistwood there had been more than enough ships to deplete the Stormbreaker's crew. That was an airman's life; sailor's life. Be it by sea or sky, their life was to sail. This was different. Merindi was different. They had brought little to the port but men and supplies. This was not mercantilism. This was, at the heart of it, exploration. Like the first bridgers they had stretched a hand into the unknown and come back with scars and treasures from a world thought lost. This was a bridger's life.

  But I'm not that.

  “We should go to the ship and leave Isla Merindi,” Aebyn said, much to Timothy's confusion. The question had been rhetorical and his mind had wandered while the young gryphon was thinking it over. “Like you told Christopher, there's enough to start a new business and pay his debtors. Staying here while Donovan Skalde is around is a bad gamble, and you are, I think, not a bad gambler.”

  When Timothy met Aebyn's gaze he could see a smile in those bright blue eyes of his. He smiled back. “A new port and a new life. I like the sound of that. We can leave this all behind.”

  Timothy's resolve was still burning strong when he and Aebyn had returned to the Admiral's Inn.

  It is time to be a better man.

  Again the doorman made him wait. Outside the clock tower chimed 7 o' clock. Full of nervous energy, Timothy paced back and forth in the lobby. Eventually the manager offered him a glass of wine and a comfortable seat in the lounge. Timothy politely declined and, taking the hint, excused himself to the street ostensibly to smoke a pipe. He had purchased two as part of his bridger get-up. Cigarettes were something for the common man, and so beneath his status as a bridger. Both of the pipes had been left aboard the Stormbreaker, however. The fresh air was good. The twilight hour had begun in full, painting the sky a deep violet, tinged with cerulean and shifting, flickering tendrils of red along the horizon as though the sinking sun had set the shardwall ablaze.

  Timothy watched for a while, thinking about what lay on the other side. The Island of Glory was a place of legend, deadly to the incautious. As night set in on Pendria, Timothy could see the Glow through the shardwall. It was the only known thing bright enough to be seen through a shardwall. Even airships, high as they went, could not see through the thinner parts. There were stories, of course, about bridgers and magisters that thought better and took their airships even higher, to where the air got thin and claimed they could make out shapes. The clock chimed, marking half past the hour and shaking Timothy from his thoughts.

  “Maybe they forgot about us...?” Aebyn suggested. He scowled toward the elegant doors.

  No, that couldn't be it, Timothy thought. People forgot airmen, smugglers, thieves, and lockmen, all things Timothy had been, but they did not forget bridgers.

  Timothy recognized the manager immediately when he came out of the hotel with grim furrows in the deep lines of his face. He stood in the doorway of his establishment, looking up and down the street, hesitating as he looked Timothy up and down.

  “Mr. Binks, if I could have a word?” the manager asked.

  “Of course,” Timothy said, nodding. “What's going on?”

  “I'm afraid it's a matter of some delicacy,” the man said with an apologetic look. “Mr. Trammel is not answering his door. Here at the Admiral we afford our guests a certain level of privacy.”

  “Are you sending me away?” Timothy asked, arching a brow.

  “No, no, nothing like that, sir,” Joseph said, holding up his hands defensively. He looked flustered, adjusting his neck cloth and then motioning subtly for Timothy to keep his voice down. A gentleman might have picked up on the request for discretion, but Timothy was not in the mood for posturing.

  “Then spit it out,” Timothy demanded in a voice loud enough to draw several pairs of eyes.

  The hotel manager flinched, lifting his hat and bowing stiffly to a passing gentleman that gave a scowl of distaste in response.

  “I am very sorry for making you wait,” he continued. “I wanted to attend to your inquiry after Mr. Trammel myself, but was previously occupied with a disturbance in the inn's kitchens. It seems several men took it upon themselves to bully their way inside and then held some of my cooks at gunpoint. Fortunately no one was injured. As for Mr. Trammel, I was wondering, sir, if you had established an appointment with him...?”

  Timothy shook his head. “I will see him regardless.”

  “Sir, please, with all due respect this is not the way we prefer our guests to conduct themselves at the Admiral's!” the manager pleaded, making a grab for Timothy's shoulder as the would-be bridger swept past.

  Instinct responded before reason and Timothy spun quickly, taking the well-dressed man to the ground. The man stared up at him, wide-eyed in shock, his hat toppling off and rolling into the street amidst a chorus of gasps. Every eye was on Timothy and Aebyn now. Aebyn fetched the man's hat, offering it up to Timothy. Timothy knelt before the subdued manager.

  “I am not a guest of the Admiral's Inn,” Timothy said, jamming the hat back in place and pulling it down over his eyes. He entered the hotel unchecked and unquestioned.

  There was a little hiss of steam as the elevator engaged, lifting its two occupants up to the third level. Timothy listened quietly to the gears turning. Somewhere below was a steam engine that powered the hotel's lift. Back in Cahen, nearly every lodging in the shard would have one, but here on the edge of the kingdom it was a luxury that set places like the Admiral's apart from the tightly packed inns nearest the skyport. In Deshym, luxury was an industry, even this far from the capitol shard.

  Timothy wasn't sure why he was thinking of Cahen at a time like this. It had been two years since his last visit home. With the blood of Samuel Raimes on his hands it seemed unlikely he would ever see it again as a free man. There was a tapestry draped over the back of the lift, Deshym's lion in resplendent gold on a field of scarlet. Similar tapestries hung in most of the buildings in the capitol.

  “Have you ever been to Cahen, Aebyn?” Timothy asked.

  Aebyn looked up in surprise. “I was born there,” he said.

  “So was I,” Timothy said.

  As the hallway slid into view, a pair of large brass gears engaged with a complementary metal slat on either side of the lift. They turned a quarter turn, slowing the lift to a stop nearly even with the floor. Even on his second visit to the hotel, the vastness of the hallways and the finery of its decor was not lost on him. It struck him as one of life's great ironies
that his career as a smuggler, well-intentioned as he might have been, had never afforded him the luxury the two men had sought when they were so much younger. On the contrary, scarcity often won the day. It had made him lean, adaptable, and cunning. Traits that served him well as a knife flashed through Christopher's doorway, seeking Timothy's chest.

  Instinct brought Timothy to a snap decision, leaping straight back away from the knife even as he drew a pistol. He fired at his attacker, then slammed back against the wall. The would-be assassin took the slug in the abdomen, the wound was likely fatal but it would not sap the man's life away until long after it would do Timothy any good. The bruiser kept coming, knife gleaming red and dripping. Timothy fumbled for another pistol, eyes on the blade. Then a bright flash of light crashed into his assailant and carried him away like a ship lost at sea. Aebyn's hawkish screech deadened the sound of gunfire. Little bits of plaster and stone burst from the wall beneath the barrage. Timothy rolled aside, coming up with a fresh pistol. He charged the door, firing toward the source of the first volley. He heard someone scream in the dark. He dropped the pistol, drawing his sword. A third pistol found its way into his left hand. He had a fourth, tucked into his jacket, but it was better to let them think he had switched to the blade because he was out.

  Christopher was lying on the floor. An assassin had him in his arms, a knife pressed to his throat. A second man had taken refuge behind the overturned writing desk. He had a pistol pointed at Timothy.

  “Stop!” the gunman said. “Or we'll k-”

  Timothy's pistol cracked and the gunman fell silent. His dead eyes stared ahead, frozen in his last moment of surprise as the light ebbed from his body. Timothy dropped the pistol, producing his last while the knife-man was still startled.

  Timothy's vision went hazy as pain bloomed on the back of his head like a flower made out of steel spikes. The air rushed from his lungs as he hit the ground hard.

  Get up! he commanded himself, but there was no feeling of strength in his arms. He couldn't tell if he was still holding his sword. The pistol was gone, he knew that. He could hear it sliding across the floor.

  “Kill him! Kill him!” the knife-man was shouting.

  Timothy struggled to get to his knees, using the sword as a makeshift cane. Someone kicked it out from beneath him and he toppled back down. His vision had returned by then, blurry as his eyes watered from the smell of oil that still soaked the floor.

  The man that had clubbed Timothy over the back of the head stepped into view. “No,” the new man said. He had a certain bearing the others lacked. The leader, Timothy judged.

  “He killed Frederick and Randal!” the knife-man pleaded.

  “Skalde wants him alive,” the leader said.

  “Yes, that's a good idea,” Timothy said, his speech slurred. “Take me to Skalde. I'll kill him too.”

  The leader plucked Timothy's pistol from the floor and took a few steps back from him pointing it toward the doorway.

  “Order the lighthound to stay outside,” he said. “If he comes through that door, I kill him.”

  “Aebyn!” Timothy called in warning. “He's got a pistol on the door!”

  “How many are there?” Aebyn asked.

  Timothy started to answer but was cut off by the leader pointing the pistol back toward him in warning.

  “Not one word,” he said, quite redundantly.

  “What're we going to do with him?” the knife-man asked. “Bridgers are still dangerous without their blades and guns.”

  The leader chuckled. “He's a fake...”

  A groan came from Christopher's prone form. Timothy could see the man trying to get back up, crawling toward the door.

  The knife-man grabbed him up, holding him where Timothy could see.

  “A fake, huh?” he said, holding the sharp edge of his knife tight against Christopher's throat.

  Timothy could see wild, unchecked hatred in the man's eyes. Behind him lay the corpses of two of his friends and a third was surely dead in the hall. There was no logic behind his actions, no thought, only raw emotion.

  Timothy felt something slip from his belt, the Arlorian focus. It buzzed with energy in his hand, crackling like caged lightning. In front of him he could see that the assassin had made up his mind, a feral serenity crossing his face.

  “I will kill you,” Timothy hissed.

  The promise was not enough. The knife-man dragged his blade across Christopher's throat. The dying businessman's eyes flared briefly with pain as blood ran fresh across his shirt, staining it red with his lifeblood.

  Timothy screamed in rage, lunging to his feet with a strength he didn't know he had. He surged across the room, his fist awash in flame. Instinct guided his hand. Christopher's killers backed away in fright. The knife-man's face twisted in disbelief and terror.

  “But you're not a real br--”

  He died before he could finish the words. Timothy's fireball caught him in the chest and exploded. The murderer's lifeless corpse slammed into the wall and bounced off like a ragdoll. Aebyn had slipped in during the turmoil, fast and quiet despite his considerable size. The pistol was fired, its slug finding a home in the rafters. Aebyn carried his prey to the ground. Blazing claws of white fire rent three deep trenches in the screaming man's chest. Aebyn stepped over him. His beak dipped to the man's throat so quickly the motion was hard to see. After that, all was silent...

  Chapter 24

  The Poisoned Ones

  The Mistwood, Isla Merindi, Pendric Shard

  Mixture 37

  Added Firecrown harvested from Firevane Falls as substitute for the weaker purifier element in my formula. Reaction left much to be desired. Foam everywhere. Dawn liked the Falls. Spent some time exploring but did not find the source of the waterfall's strange colors at night. Sampled water during day cycle (vial 23) and night cycle (vial 24). Also collected a few seeds from local plants. Prevailing wisdom is that only the firecrown is affected, but if no one can explain why that is, how can they be sure? Also prevailing wisdom was that I should not be allowed in the Beronn University Library...

  Sapphire Nightsong's Journal of Remedies

  Beneath a silver moon Sapphire followed the warp singer into the haze of the Mistwood. Mist of blue and green coiled around her legs, breaking against her chest like smoke. Sapphire was not a mistweaver, and so she could not wield the mists. They welled up around her, obscuring her vision. This was not an obstacle for the warp singer. Far ahead, Sapphire could see her cutting through the mists like a ship through the water. The mists parted before her, drawing her forward. Tired and sickened as she was, it was all Sapphire could do to keep pace. Instinct and habit both commanded her to fly over the mist. She would be safer there, few things could follow a luminarian into the air.

  The mist is helping me, she reminded herself. For now it concealed her. If she flew, the warp singer would surely see her. The warp singer was bigger than her. That meant longer legs and bigger wings. Sapphire had no doubt that if she rose into the air she would be confronted by those purple-feathered wings. What would happen then?

  Every luminarian cub, regardless of flight, shard, or parentage, knew the story of the warp singers. Ancient luminarians had gone to hunt a monster that had come into the Ascended Valley and killed High Priestess Aria. They chased the Dark One across the known world and finally came to Alsimor, the First City. The Dark One had taken Aria's heart. They went to get it back and he cursed them with it. Aria's heart rebelled, sparing their lives. It was broken by the force of the attack, shattering into a thousand pieces. Songshards. One hung around the warp singer's neck. Sapphire had seen it when the Harvester died.

  The memory, so fresh, sickened Sapphire. She could remember the pungent smell of luminarian blood, freely spilled across the slaughter room floor. That poor drake's dangling, mutilated body would surely haunt her memory for years. If the warp singer did not kill her, that was. There were many legends about the warp singers, but few agreed on why the warp singer
s and the unchanged left the Ascended Valley. Sapphire reviewed them as she gave chase. Her legs ached and the pads of her paws felt sore and hot. Fresh, unused wings twitched, threatening to open.

  Not the time... Sapphire chided herself. Pain was something she could deal with. She could endure it for the chance to see the warp singer again, maybe collect one of its feathers. Dawn would like that. She wanted very much to curl up against his chest and sleep, to feel his comforting head resting against her own.

  Feeling a fresh pang of sorrow for their parting and the knowledge of how fearful he must be for her fate, Sapphire struggled to put her concerns aside and focus on the legend sprinting in front of her. At her heart, Sapphire was a scholar. She had so many questions. Why had the warp singers left the valley? Perhaps more importantly, where were they going now? And how had the warp singer known about the Harvester?

  A few of the legends came to the forefront, telling of the warp singers as avenging angels that lived in darkness and protected their weaker cousins from the tribulations of the world. These were more recent legends, but still so old as to pre-date the Shattering. It seemed impossible that a species as powerful and identifiable as a warp singer could propagate hidden from the world through the millennia of time that had passed since that first generation. Sapphire had never believed in the warp singers, not like Dawn did. Yes, at one point they must have existed, but to still be around? The odds seemed... but there she was.

  The warp singer came to a sudden halt ahead. Sapphire had to surrender the convenience of the creature's misty wake, letting the soft azure haze swallow her up. The warp singer held up her lantern. The mists reacted to it, driven back in a wide swath. Sapphire found herself retreating a few paces as the mist thinned around her, threatening to expose her.

  Am I going mad? Much like Sapphire had to continually lift her head up over the mists to see what the warp singer was doing, that singular thought kept resurfacing in the pool of thought that was her mind. First there had been the hallucinations, but each of those had been memories. Some recent, some long ago. Could the warp singer be a hallucination? She didn't think so, but she was less and less certain. In reality she might have never left that hay loft. Her brain, racked by fever, might be giving her this last puzzle to distract her from her imminent death.