“Thank you, that is super!” Tern said. “I like your hair!” She headed inside with Desidora trailing in her wake.
“You’re . . . very enthusiastic,” Desidora said.
Still smiling and without looking back, Tern said, “Kail gets angry. I get very chipper. Nobody wants to say no to someone who’s cheerfulling at them.”
“Cheerfulling isn’t a word.”
“It is in Rossle-Nesef,” Tern said, and as Desidora glanced over, added, “Yeah, that’s right, no little purple she’s lying light. That was me being dead serious. Good morning!” she chirped at the matronly woman behind the counter, who wore lapitect robes like Tern’s and glared down at the alchemist through spectacles not unlike the ones Tern herself was wearing. “I was told that I should bring you my badge from Heaven’s Spire, and you would make it work here?”
“That’s not how it works,” the woman at the counter said, glaring.
“Oh my wow, nobody told me that wasn’t how it worked?” said Tern, turning it into a question. “Um, I guess if you wanted, you could contact the Heaven’s Spire Lapitemperum and tell them that I don’t have the right access to scan for thaumaturgic leakage due to improperly calibrated matrix enhancements like I did in Ros-Oanki, and that the Voyancy report proving the safety record of lapitect practices won’t make it into the proposal for enhanced crystal production facilities on the East Bank as a result?”
If the counter lady wanted to do that, she could. Tern wasn’t sure why she would, given that none of it was true, but it remained an option, and thus not a lie.
“First this Mister Lively running all his checks, and now this.” The counter lady glared over Tern’s head, then sighed. “You have a badge?”
“I totally do!” Tern fished it out. “Thank you so much, I am so sorry for causing you trouble, and is there like a different thing I should do next time so that it’s easier for you?”
“It’s fine.” The counter lady squinted through her spectacles as she held Tern’s badge next to a pane of crystal that hummed for a moment before chiming and turning green. “Here you go.”
“Thanks again!” Tern took her badge back. “I really love your glasses!”
With Desidora behind her, Tern headed up the stairs, her badge pinging happily as she crossed into the secure area.
“I’m still a little offended that cheerfulling is a word,” Desidora said. “Who are you?”
“Is this a trick question?” At the top of the stairs, Tern went left and headed down a long, cold hallway whose floor clicked beneath her heels.
“I’m used to the safecracker and alchemist version of Tern,” Desidora said.
“Says the woman who goes between dating advice and wrenching the souls of the unliving into dread service.”
“True,” Desidora said, smiling. “And how is Hessler these days?”
“Still worried about protecting me. I’m working on it.”
“Good. Now, I can move between love priestess and death priestess. I have never seen you become this—”
“Person who talks like a wealthy merchant’s nice but basically clueless daughter?”
“I would not have said it like that,” Desidora said. A purple flare of light glimmered over her head for a moment, and other men and women in the hallway stopped and looked at them. “Well, not precisely like that,” Desidora amended, and looked over her head again. This time, no purple radiance interrupted her, and the other lapitects all went back to what they were doing.
“Being a guildsman’s daughter isn’t like being a noble,” Tern said. “I mean, far as I understand, the nobles expect their kids to keep ruling and bringing power to the family and all that, but also, there’s this kind of loyalty to the Republic, like they have this heritage they have to honor, you know?”
“All right,” Desidora said.
Tern turned at an intersection, smiled and waved a little at an older man who looked confused but waved back as Tern went by, and said, “Yeah, we don’t have that. The guilds are a couple hundred years old, and the families know how quickly money comes and goes. What matters is making money and taking power back from the nobles. So by the second or third year of dancing with boys at guildsman parties, every girl has to look at herself and make a choice. Either you’re willing to handle the money and the nasty guild politics, and you sit down at the suf-gesuf table and get dealt into the family business, or you’re not willing to do it, and then you still end up at the suf-gesuf table, but as a card instead of a player. Or you look at all that and go, holy crap, screw this, and you run.”
“I keep looking over your head,” Desidora said, “hoping to see a flare of purple light.”
“You see why I don’t like coming back to Rossle-Nesef?” Tern said irately. “And you know the worst part? There’s this tiny part of you that every once in a while thinks, why didn’t you stay? You had the brains. You might not be pretty enough to be make a trophy wife, but you would have been good at the business, and your parents might actually talk to you.”
After a moment of silence, Desidora said, “I think you’d be a perfectly lovely trophy wife.”
Tern forced a laugh, then looked back and blushed when she saw that there was no purple light over Desidora’s head. “Shut up.”
They turned a corner, walked down a hallway, and nearly bumped into a man a little older than Tern as he left his office. He had the looks of a guildsman, the face that said wealth if not ancestry had dealt him a good hand growing up.
“I don’t recognize you,” he said, smiling as he stepped out to block their way down the hallway. “Can I help you find something?”
“No, thank you, we’re good!” Tern said cheerily.
“I’m not sure,” the man said, leaning in a little. “Two lovely ladies walking around up here might be a little lost. Why don’t you let me show you how to get where you’re going?”
“We’re really fine,” Desidora said, smiling politely.
“Come on,” said the man, leaning in some more, “I think you should come with me.” He looked up over his head and smiled. “See? No purple light. Just being honest.”
“Awww.” Tern lifted a hand and twirled her hair through a finger. “No.”
With her other hand, she triggered her cufflink and put a sleep dart into the man’s throat.
“Wow,” said Desidora.
“Could you just take my word for it that, as somebody who grew up here, I am positive it was going to get creepy?”
“As a love priestess, I can confirm that it was already creepy.” As the man staggered, surprised and offended, Desidora gently lowered him back into his office. “Sleep well.” Desidora shut the door as he collapsed. “Do we have a new plan?”
“It’s basically the same plan as before, but faster,” Tern said.
“Right.” Desidora sighed, flipped back hair that was suddenly raven black, and said, “I hope the boys are having an easier time.”
When the airship had plowed its way across the port, trailed by screaming and shouting and a few distant explosions, Kail crawled over to Dairy, who was shaking his head groggily. “Up and at ’em, kid.” Hessler was already awake, moving carefully toward them, and Kail’s mother was clinging to the railing.
Kail spared a quick look for the monsters. The troll, in her unconscious state, looked like a bunch of ropes falling out of a sack. There was no sign of the scorpion.
“Can you fly the airship?” Dairy asked, his eyes wide as the airship crashed into the port wall, bucked, and then made a bunch of crunching noises along the hull as it slid over.
“The airship is about an hour from getting shot down,” Kail said. “We’re walking.” He grabbed a rope, tied it off, and flung it over the side. “Dairy, you get my mother. Hessler, you need a hand?”
“I can manage,” Hessler shouted back.
“Good man.” Kail watched Dairy carefully hoist Kail’s mother over his shoulders. “You got her, kid?”
“She’s not too heavy, Mist
er Kail!”
Coming from anyone else, that remark would have required Kail to throw a punch, but Dairy was Dairy, and also Dairy was helping, so Kail gritted his teeth and followed Dairy over the railing.
The rope swung crazily as Kail half climbed, half slid down. Luckily, the airship hadn’t yet gained altitude after crashing over the wall, and it banged against a temple at a good time to slow it down enough for Kail to brace against the wall and drop the rest of the way. He landed in the middle of the Ros-Oanki market square, rolled, and got up next to Dairy, who was helping Kail’s mother back to her feet. A moment later, Hessler bounced off a fruit wagon, came down on a table, and landed improbably on his feet.
“Right. Mom.” Kail took her arm.
He had planned to pull her out of the market square, but in fact did not move her at all. Instead, he found himself staring into his mother’s face.
“Binjamet,” she said, “I want you to be safe,” and she looked scared.
“Oh, damn it, Mom.” Kail hugged her.
“You have these bad people after you, and you are dealing with all these people who can do these different things.” Her arms were tight enough to make his eyes water. “I need my boy to come home.”
“I will, Mom, I promise.” He eventually extricated himself. “For now, though, you need to stay safe.”
“You don’t need to worry about your mother.” She grabbed his shoulder as he tried to pull away, and hit him with the direct eye contact again. “I will go stay with a friend.” She smiled sassily. “You know there are plenty of nice men who love it when I sleep over.”
Kail looked at Dairy, who was blushing brightly. “Mom—”
She laughed. “So you don’t have to worry about me. You go do whatever your Captain Loch needs you to do, and you come back alive and safe, and you tell Loch that if you don’t, she and I are going to have words.”
“Yes, Mom, I’ll tell her.”
His mother looked at him critically. “You look better than last time I saw you, though. Have you gotten a girl?”
Kail coughed. “Mom, this really isn’t—”
“Oh, sweet Tasheveth, it’s a white girl.” Kail’s mother shook her head. “Well, we were all young once, and times are changing. You bring her home next time.”
She walked off into the crowd with the confidence of a woman old enough not to care about anyone looking at her.
“Not a word,” Kail said to Dairy and Hessler.
“Sorry, Mister Kail.”
“Come on. We’ve got business.” Kail led the way from the market square. In theory, the crowd watched them go, but with alarms and sirens blaring, it was easy enough for them to get lost in the crowd.
They turned a corner, and Kail pointed at an alley. “That way.”
“What now?” Dairy asked. “Your mother is safe. Shouldn’t we get back to—”
“Wait.” Kail raised a hand. “Don’t say anything else.”
Dairy, looking confused and a little hurt, followed him in, with Hessler close behind.
“Okay,” Kail said when the three of them were safely in the alley. He turned to Hessler, drew his dagger, and said, “Drop the act and tell me where the real Hessler is.”
Thirteen
HESSLER AWOKE IN a land of wonder.
Hessler had never believed in the concept of lands of wonder. The Elflands were sometimes described as such, but they were simply very leafy and much more reliant upon nature magic than the Republic. The homes of powerful fairy creatures were said to carry that distinction, but given how fairy creatures often disrupted the minds of humans, it was more likely that visitors simply had the feeling instilled in them magically, regardless of whether the area actually merited such an emotional response.
Staring across the vast golden expanse, drenched in purple-and-blue clouds and with streaks of glittering green stars across the horizon, Hessler gazed with a wonder that was fully earned.
After a moment, it struck him to wonder what he was lying on, and he looked down to see absolutely nothing beneath him. This resulted in a moment of flailing panic and spinning in space before he decided that wherever he was, the rules of gravity did not seem to apply, so he was not actually falling.
“Obviously a magical realm of some sort,” Hessler muttered, “and simple deductive reasoning should determine which, and how to get back.” He spun himself around again, on purpose this time, and took in variations in the color of the vast realm that could have been distant rolling hills.
The realm of the daemons was a possibility, but Hessler’s studies had led him to believe that world was chaotic and filled with blazing formless energy. Being in the daemon realm without protective wards was thought to be instantly fatal.
“Not daemons, then.” Hessler squinted at the hills, which were lighter in color, more of a pink that shimmered like oil on water, sending tiny scintillating rainbows across its surface. “Nobody was entirely sure that the ancients even had a realm until this whole mess started, so it’s possible, but . . .”
The rainbows reminded him of something. At first he considered the fairy creatures, but Ululenia’s horn had always shone brilliantly, and this was softer. It lit the cliff but also occluded it somehow, in a way that Hessler hadn’t seen since—
“That’s an extremely good human,” came a voice from behind him.
Hessler turned. A man hung in the empty golden air. His features were fine and angular, and hard to make out beyond that, as they were also lit by the same shimmering radiance that had covered the hills, leaving his skin a shadow by comparison. He was naked and had the right number of arms and legs, but they bent and wiggled bonelessly, and the arms ended in vague fingerless lumps.
“This is the realm of the Glimmering Folk,” Hessler said.
“Oh, you’re an actual human,” said the man, and Hessler saw a little flicker of light trail back from a cord attached to the man, a cord that stretched all the way to the radiance of the rolling hills. “How delightful. I haven’t tried one in ages.”
“Oh dear,” Hessler said, and the rolling hills uncoiled into a multitude of tentacles and came toward him.
Ululenia reached past the daemon slowly taking Jyelle’s shape, grabbed the book in the hidden alcove behind the painting, tossed it to Loch, and, over the blaring alarms, shouted, “Indomitable, Little One, go!”
Loch caught the book, turned, and ran from the room.
“Will Ululenia be safe?” Icy called behind her.
“Jyelle wants me. I’m the one who fed her to the daemon.” Loch turned a corner, nearly ran into a servant, saw that it was a young woman in a hand-me-down cleaning outfit, and turned the punch she’d half started into a shoulder brush that got the girl out of the way harmlessly.
They sprinted down the hallway. It ended in a dining hall featuring a massive stained-oak table, an impressive chandelier of glowing crystal, and a large number of guards.
The alarm was still squealing, and the guards already had blades drawn. They turned as Loch and Icy came into the room.
“Fair warning,” Loch called, “there’s gonna be a big angry daemon in here in short order. You may want to focus on that.” The guards ran forward, yelling, and Loch tossed the book to Icy. “Worth a shot.”
She caught a raised blade with the hook of her walking stick, slammed the guard into the table, and went to work.
“What on earth do you mean?” the illusion of Hessler asked Kail, and Kail flipped his dagger through the air. It flew through the illusion of Hessler’s head and bounced off the wall of the alley behind him.
“Like Hessler would slide down a rope without hurting himself somehow,” Kail said, “or pass up the chance to say something awkward around my mother. Dairy, go low.”
Dairy grabbed at Hessler’s ankles and caught onto something. With a flash of light and a sudden burning smell, Hessler disappeared. In his place was the scorpion creature, the bulbous nodes on its back glowing and pulsing as it writhed in Dairy’s grip.
<
br /> Kail grabbed the stinger and slammed it against the wall before it caught Dairy’s shoulder. “You got any more tricks, now’s your chance, you spiky little asshole. Because I would love for you to try something. Where’s Hessler?”
“Wizard,” the scorpion said. Its voice sounded like it was being piped through a tube, and Kail realized it was coming from the thing’s tail. “Illusionist, shadows.” It was hard to tell, but it sounded like the thing was satisfied with itself. “Shadowlands. Glimmering Folk home. Appropriate.”
“You sent Hessler to the land of the Glimmering Folk?” Dairy’s grip tightened. “Bring him back!”
The scorpion made a noise that might have been a grunt or a sigh. “Torture. Yes. Expected. Thieves. Enemies of ancients.”
Kail glared at what he thought might be the thing’s eyes, still holding tight to the stinger. “Thieves, yes. Enemies of the ancients, yes. And you serve them, even though you were made by the Glimmering Folk.”
“Glimmering Folk, evil,” said the scorpion. “Service. Redemption.”
“You know, Mister Scorpion—” said Dairy.
“It’s not a Mister, kid! Gedesar’s sake, I’m a Mister!”
“I was made by the ancients, I think,” Dairy went on, undeterred. “I don’t know whether they made me completely or just put the prophecy on me when I was a baby, but I fought the Champion of Dusk for them. And when I was done, I wanted to prove that I was more than just a prophecy. I joined the Knights of Gedesar to fight monsters and help people. But it didn’t work. They did bad things. They hurt innocent people. Evil or good isn’t who you came from or who you work for, Mister Scorpion. It’s what you do. That’s all it ever is.”
“So, no,” Kail said grimly, “no torture. The very first thing my boss, the lady you’re hunting, taught me in the scouts was: fight the enemy, not their people. That means no innocents and no torture. I care about my friend, and I want him back, but I’d rather leave here empty-handed than bloody-handed.”
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