Mourningbird (Empire of Masks Book 3)

by Brock Deskins

  “Bitch, I swear to Brontes, if you hit me with one of those balls, I’m going to kick your ass from here to Blindside!”

  Surri smiled. “You’re going to have to come down here if you want to try.”

  Another ball levitated from the floor, borne upon conjured wind and went flying. Kiera tried to dodge it but it struck her shoulder a glancing blow. She teetered, her arms windmilling wildly for balance. With a defiant snarl, Kiera threw herself down toward the next pylon, narrowly avoiding another throw. The balls came flying in faster.

  Less than halfway down, one of the missiles struck her square in the face at the apex of her next jump. She cried out, the impact ruining her concentration and trajectory. Kiera completely missed her landing and plummeted. A gust of wind erupted from the floor, slowing her fall to a painful but survivable landing.

  The Thuumian leaned over Kiera as she groaned and fought to catch her breath. “Still feeling awesome?”

  Kiera scowled up at the woman. “You just can’t stand letting me have even the tiniest of triumphs, can you?”

  “No, I will make you earn every one of them.”

  Kiera tried to kick her from where she lay. “Windy bitch. Can I go to bed now?”

  Conner entered the room before Surri could answer. “Ah, there you are. How goes the training?”

  “Well, she hasn’t killed me yet, in spite of her best efforts, so there’s that,” Kiera replied.

  Conner ignored her and looked at Surri.

  “Surprisingly well,” she said. “She is quick at learning her forms and made it up and down the plum blossom poles without falling…until I threw balls at her.”

  “Yay me,” Kiera moaned from the floor, her face still pressed against the mat.

  Conner asked, “Can you read?”

  Kiera sat up. “I told you I can.”

  He dropped a book by her knees. “Read that to me.”

  Kiera huffed, picked up the book, and opened it. She squinted her eyes and scrunched up her face. “I didn’t say I could read every word!”

  “That’s what I thought.” He dropped another book next to her. “You will read this every night before bed.”

  She picked it up and opened it. “This is a kid’s book!”

  “Yes it is. I had bought it to read to my daughter for when she became old enough to understand. It should suffice for you until you can read at something approaching an adult level.”

  “I just hope I find it as thrilling as she did,” Kiera replied, her voice thick with sarcasm.

  Conner’s eyelids drooped. “I wouldn’t know. We never got the chance.” He turned on his heel and stalked away.

  “Geez, why is he so bent out of shape about a book?”

  “It’s not about the book, you little dolt,” Surri hissed. “Do your forms, read your book, and go to bed.”

  “You aren’t staying to do the forms?”

  “I think you can manage on your own. After all, you’re awesome.”

  Kiera watched her instructor follow after Conner. “Moody bunch.”

  She set the book on the floor and began going through the routines Surri had shown her earlier. Kiera kept an image of the Thuumian fixed in her mind, mimicked the motions, and, on occasion, added in something of her own where she thought it would suit her style.

  When she finished the routine, she picked up the book, sat against the wall, and propped it open on her knees. It was a storybook about a girl who was captured by nomads and raised as a slave. She was willful, stubborn, and disobedient, so her master punished her by heaping more and more work upon her, determined to break her spirit. But the harder he worked her, the stronger she became.

  Kiera stumbled over every third word, each time becoming frustrated to the point of wanting to toss the book down and punch something. Like the girl in the story, Kiera refused to give up and allow Conner or Surri the satisfaction of defeating her. She wanted to prove to them that she was capable.

  Why it mattered so much to her she could not say. Part of her thought it was pride, but a quieter voice inside her insisted it was something else. She wanted them to accept her, to see that their money, nice home, and education was a matter of circumstance, not superiority.

  Kiera kept reading beyond her mandated time until her eyes closed of their own accord and she leaned her head back against the wall. A dull boom jolted her from her reverie. She looked around but heard nothing more. Dismissing the sound as something innocuous, she lumbered up the stairs to her room and collapsed onto the soft bed.

  CHAPTER 16

  Bertram picked his way through the still smoldering wreckage of what little remained of Velaroth’s flagship. He and his uncle had been informed of its destruction within an hour of its demise, but the chief inquisitor had ordered the naval mooring yard sealed off and waited until daylight to investigate. Stumbling around in the dark would not have helped his investigation, nor would it bring back the lives of those lost.

  He held a device in his hands and waved it over the wreckage. Small bits of mage glass glowed or dimmed as he moved it. Commandant Reto Vanos made his way to Bertram’s side.

  “Any idea what caused it?”

  “I know precisely what caused it,” Bertram replied. “Someone infiltrated the powder magazine and blew it up. The question is their method of combustion. I’m getting strong traces of residual power. Have we found the airship’s heart stone yet?”

  Reto nodded. “That’s what I came to tell you. My men located the heart three blocks from here. It went crashing through the roof of a potter’s shop and landed in a block of clay.”

  Bertram’s head snapped up and he looked at the commandant. “So it’s intact?”

  “Mostly. There’s a few chips in it, and the whole thing is wrought with fractures. It won’t be any good for anything but cutting down into smaller stones, but it’s more or less in one piece.”

  “Then what I’m seeing here is not the result of a shattered heart stone.”

  “Personal pieces of arcanist tech?”

  Bertram shook his head. “The residual energy is too high to be that, unless someone owned a very expensive, highly illegal piece of techno gear. Same with the mage glass lamps used in the magazine. They wouldn’t give off this kind of energy, especially after being destroyed.”

  A gendarme shouted out, “Inquisitor, I think we found something!”

  Both men turned and walked over to the sergeant who stood holding a blackened timber. He used his eyes to point at something sticking out of the wood. Bertram used a small knife to whittle away the surrounding material so as not to mar the piece of metal.

  Liberating it from its entrapment, he gently cleaned the soot off of what appeared to be a gold letter opener but with a much shorter blade. The inquisitor spat upon it and rubbed it with his shirttail to reveal the techno-scribings etched along its warped surface.

  “What is it?” Reto asked.

  “It looks like an arcanist device; you can see a bit of the stone’s setting still intact, but I don’t recognize the markings.”

  “It’s rather small. Could it have done this?”

  “It doesn’t take much to create enough heat to ignite the powder. The question is how did someone get into the magazine to use it? Most of the crew was on leave, but the vessel was guarded for this very reason. I have a feeling the who of the matter is less important than the why of it. What could possibly be their gain?”

  “Criminals?” Reto offered.

  “Not unless they were trying to steal the powder and set it off by accident. We’ll have to account for the cannons, but I expect us to recover them all.”

  “Commandant, Inquisitor,” a gendarme called out as he pushed a man ahead of him. “This one says he saw who attacked the airship.”

  The man was clearly a drunkard. The stench of cheap booze wafting from his pores was of such strength it overpowered his extraordinary lack of hygiene. He stood on unsteady legs as he performed a poor imitation of a soldier’s salute.
>
  “You saw what happened here?” Bertram asked.

  “Aye, I did. Was a man and a woman. Walked right up the ramp without so much as a how do you do? afore they started killin’.”

  “You’re sure there were just the two of them?”

  The man’s head bobbed up and down. “Aye, just the two.”

  “And the soldiers tried to stop them?”

  “Sure, sure. They shot, stabbed, and hacked the fellow who went first, but he didn’t pay no never mind to none of it. Just kept on stabbing away. Only the soldiers died. He didn’t, not for a while. Not until the woman disappeared on deck. I think maybe she went below. Can’t say as I was on the ground over there.” He pointed to a spot a few yards away. “And then I was over there after the ship blew apart. Dang near blasted me sober.”

  Reto looked into the man’s bloodshot eyes. “You’re sure you saw a man and woman? Your right eye looks a bit milky.”

  The drunkard winked the faulty orb closed and grinned. “I looked at ’em with my good one. I’m pretty sure that one was a man. He was wrapped up with a hood and mask.”

  Bertram’s head snapped up and locked in place. “A mask you say?” He tapped his mask. “A highborn mask like mine?”

  “Naw, nothing fancy. Just a strip of cloth.”

  “Did you see anything else?”

  “Naw. Just the two walking onto the ship, killing some men, then it blew all to the Tormented Plane and me halfway across the mooring yard.”

  Bertram jerked his head for the gendarme to take the man away.

  “Do you believe him?” Reto asked.

  “I think quite highly of myself, but taking on an airship, even one lightly manned, with just one other, a woman at that, would not make much sense unless I was suicidal.”

  “Seems to be the case, intended or not.”

  “What I have to focus on now is determining if this is in any way connected with my unexpected salvation at the hands of an unknown group that clearly has an interest in seeing me succeed my uncle. If it is, I expect we will start hearing some people of importance questioning his ability to rule either Velaroth or command the fleet or both. We’ll have to wait and see what people say and who says it.”

  Reto shifted nervously. “Ah, about that…the attack. That was one of the reasons I came here myself. I did not hear anything regarding a duel or my nephew’s untimely demise. Have you two sorted that out then?”

  Bertram let out a long breath. “Perhaps. I made the effort. The rest is up to Darynn, but I will leave you with the same warning I gave him. Cross me again, give me the slightest reason, and I will kill you. For now, I have enough to deal with as inquisitor. I would rather not assume your position as well.”

  Reto ducked his head. “Fair enough. Just…be careful. There are others who may not accept such accords.”

  “You mean Sahma Adele?” Bertram smiled behind his mask at Reto’s startled look. “Yes, I know she is behind it. It was my initial assumption. Only Darynn’s involvement took me by surprise.”

  “What will you do to her?”

  “Nothing…yet. She would be wise to accept this latest defeat and put the memory of her son’s death to rest. Since you like passing on information so much, you might want to inform her of that.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “Ho, the airship!” Langdon called out, his hands cupped around his mouth.

  A moment later, Wesley’s head appeared over the side. “Hey, Langdon. Hold on and I’ll lower the ramp.”

  Wesley struggled to slide the ramp in place even with the crank and pulley system attached to it, but he got it lowered. It shook and bounced as Langdon plodded his way up.

  “Damn, what happened to you?” Langdon asked once he was on deck and saw the multi-hued bruises marring Wesley’s face.

  “Fred’s people worked me over. They didn’t say they were Fred’s, but you know how it is.”

  “Yeah, that sucks. I guess work is out of the question for a while.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t plan on leaving the airship anytime soon, so it’s for the best.”

  “Is that the reason for the new security?” Langdon asked with a jerk of his head toward the outer perimeter.

  “Yeah. A group of men attacked a few nights back, and Kiera showed up with them. They’ve been hanging around ever since.”

  “I’m not sure they’re very good at their job. It wasn’t hard for me to talk my way past them.”

  Wesley shrugged. “They probably figured after what happened to the last group that you weren’t much of a threat by yourself.”

  Langdon frowned. “I feel like I should be insulted.”

  “Don’t. If you had seen what happened…”

  “What did happen?”

  Wesley took a deep breath. “Just some stuff. Speaking of being alone, where’s Iggy and Micah?”

  “They’re on home guard for a while. Rafferty has me watching Fred’s place on account of the weird stuff going on there.”

  “What kind of weird stuff?”

  “People coming and going. Things like strange noises that make entire buildings shake. Is Kiera around? I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to her since our meeting with Nimat.”

  “Naw, I haven’t seen her in days. She got some kind of job with steady pay—” he jutted his chin over the rail “—and some fringe benefits.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Not a clue. She wouldn’t say.”

  A look of revulsion crossed Langdon’s face. “She’s not doing…what you do, is she?”

  Wesley laughed. “Kiera, let someone touch her? Yeah right. It will snow in Vulcrad before that ever happens.”

  One side of Langdon’s lips pressed together and curled upward. “Yeah, tell me about it. Whoever she’s working for has access to muscle. Did she sign on with Marina’s crew? Rafferty might take it as an insult since he’s been offering her a position for a while now.”

  Wesley shrugged. “I don’t think so, but it’s possible, I guess. I really don’t know what she’s doing and for whom.”

  Langdon frowned and let out a long breath. “Well, if you see her, tell her I stopped by.”

  “Will do.”

  ***

  Kiera blocked another of Cleary’s sword strokes. While mending well thanks to the extraordinarily expensive healing draught made from gasified, pulverized mage glass and condensing it into a liquid, his shoulder still troubled him a great deal. Even though he was able to prevent his student from taking the offensive, he could not break through her defense to win their sparring match.

  Both were sweating profusely and breathing heavily as they parted and circled one another. Cleary held the arm, whose shoulder was savaged by a musket ball, tightly against his chest. Between his injury and fighting with his off hand, Kiera made for a challenging opponent and likely would have defeated him by now if not for their following dueling rules. This lesson was about swordplay, not simply beating the other by any means necessary.

  “You know, you’re lucky your chest is so flat,” Cleary said between breaths. “You don’t have a woman’s bosom to get in the way.”

  “I’m as much a woman as anyone,” Kiera snapped.

  “And that big ass of yours probably helps with your center of gravity. Makes it harder to knock you over.”

  Kiera lunged forward, swinging her baton with all of her strength. “The only big ass in this room is in front of me!”

  Cleary intercepted the wild swing and managed to trap the weapon between his sword and body. He reached his injured arm up and pinched her left breast. “Look at that. It’s like picking limes at the market. Not particularly good ones at that.”

  Kiera broke away and hacked at him with wild abandon. “Keep your gross hands off me, you gimpy old pervert!”

  Cleary grinned as he backpedaled, deflecting the tactless blows with ease. He waited for the opening he knew was coming and swept Kiera’s feet out from under her. She landed hard on her back and tried to get up, but Clea
ry pressed a foot against her chest and touched his sword to her neck.

  “If you think an enemy won’t use your sex against you, you’re a fool,” he said as Kiera glared up at him with hate-filled eyes. “Never lose your temper. Lose your temper and you lose the fight. Make your foe lose theirs. Get in their head and force them to make a mistake. Don’t allow them into yours.”

  Kiera forced herself to let go of her seething anger, shoved his foot and sword aside, and rolled to her feet. “Fine, I get it.”

  “Do you? Because if you don’t, your propensity for losing your temper is going to get you in a lot of trouble.”

  “I said I get it!”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Cleary replied with a chuckle.

  Conner entered the training room and asked, “How’s everything going?”

  “Great, if you like being felt up by perverted old men before getting knocked on your ass,” Kiera said before Cleary could answer.

  “At least you have something soft to land on,” Cleary replied.

  Kiera lashed out with her baton in a backhanded blow aimed for his hip, but Cleary saw the attack coming, interposed his sword between the baton and his body, moved his right leg behind Kiera’s, and pushed her over.

  “Look, she practically bounced back up,” he said.

  Kiera sprang back to her feet and felt her face flush as she realized her swift recovery probably did make it look as if she had bounced.

  Conner smiled and asked, “Are you done with her for a while?”

  Cleary bobbed his head. “Yeah, I think she’s got enough to think about for today. Besides, my shoulder is really throbbing now. I’ll go see to dinner.”

  Conner turned to Kiera. “Do you know how to dance?”

  “I know how to wind dance,” Kiera replied, and started going through some of the forms Surri had taught her.

  “I mean proper dancing.”

  “Why would I need to know how to dance? I thought I was supposed to be hunting down criminals.”

  “You are also a lady now, and ladies need to know how to dance. We’ll start with the waltz. It’s the most fashionable these days.” He instructed Kiera on her hand and foot placement and guided her through the basic steps as he spoke. “Your masks are done, at least your proper mask and a few others. Eventually, you will have a wide assortment from which to choose.”