“Well, they had been conducting airship test-fire exercises across the border,” the griffon said, hunching back from the dragon’s fire, “so it wasn’t entirely unprovoked.”
The manticore pounced and began banging the griffon’s head on the ground, to the delight of the crowd. “It was a vicious attack that cost Republic soldiers their lives.”
“It wasn’t even the Imperial army!” the griffon sputtered, kicking itself free. “It was some vigilante Imperial group, the Order of the Still Valley!”
“Where is this going?” Tern asked, and then as she looked at Icy, added, “and also where is he going?”
Icy was making his way through the crowd, heading for the puppeteer’s stage.
“Then let’s have the members of this Order of the Still Valley handed over into custody!” the manticore bellowed. It leaped at the griffon once more, but stopped as the dragon slapped a paw over its tail.
“Strong words,” the dragon roared to the crowd, with fire belching from its mouth again, “but worth bringing up in this time of peace. If the Order’s leader, the man who commanded the massacre, were brought into custody instead, that might avert the arrest of the entire Order.”
Icy shouldered his way through the crowd. “That is enough.”
“Icy, what’s going on?” Tern asked, following after him with Hessler in tow.
“And who is the vicious warrior responsible for slaughtering so many of our soldiers during peacetime?” the manticore growled.
“As I recall,” the griffon said, flapping its own wings and driving the manticore back, “it was Master Unstoppable Deferential Fist.”
“Man, Imperials and their names,” Tern muttered. “I mean, Indomitable Courteous Fist is pretty bad, but Unstoppable Deferential Fist is . . . actually . . . synonymous.”
Icy vaulted onto the stage. “Stop this performance.”
“Oh,” Tern said quietly.
Icy strode to the side of the puppeteer’s stage and flung back the curtain. “I asked you to stop this performance.”
The puppets went limp, and the crowd muttered as the puppeteer stepped out.
He was a middle-aged man, balding, wearing the simple dark clothes of a master puppeteer.
He also wore a crimson band on his right arm.
“Confirmed contact, Mister Slant,” the puppeteer said, and his band began chiming in a signal for all to hear as he raised it at Icy.
Naria had sent the guards away, leaving her and Loch alone in the throne room.
She stepped down from the dais. Her rich-orange gown shimmered in the light of the glowlamps, and whatever impractically high-heeled shoes she wore under the garment clicked with each step.
“Come and have a kahva, Isa,” she said, and began walking.
Loch fell into step beside her. Even with the heels, Naria only came up to Loch’s ear. “Are you sure, Naria? You come down from the throne, how am I going to remember that you’re the one in charge?”
Naria didn’t look over. Her crystal lenses wrapped around the sides of her eyes, snaking into the frames that rested over her ears. “I think I preferred it when you called me baroness.”
“I preferred it when you weren’t killing people for the man who killed our parents,” Loch said.
Naria’s pace quickened, little click-click-clicks on the stone coming faster. “I didn’t know.”
“You’re not an idiot, Naria,” Loch said evenly, with no heat. “You didn’t want to know.”
Now Naria did look over. Her hair was done in an intricate series of tiny looping braids, and the gems in her tresses tinkled at the fast movement. “When I discovered the truth, I corrected the situation.”
“Corrected it with a knife to Silestin’s throat, as I recall.”
Naria stepped into a hallway, with Loch following. There were still no servants or guards. “If you remember that, you may also remember that my actions then saved your life.”
“And covered your tracks,” Loch added, coming back to Naria’s side, “leaving you free to take over Lochenville as an upstanding citizen.”
“Is that why you’re so angry?” Naria asked, and smiled thinly. Even in mockery, the expression made her lips curve sweetly in a way that always made men want to dance for her. “That I stole the barony that was rightfully yours? Has the barony done poorly under my care, Isa? Are the people suffering?” At Loch’s stony silence, Naria laughed again. “Don’t be shy, Isa. I know that my big sister would have looked at the town as she came in, and Isafesira de Lochenville was always ready to pass judgment.”
Loch took a slow breath in through her nose. “You’ve done well.”
Naria raised an eyebrow. “But part of you still believes you could have done better.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Perhaps you’d be baroness today if you hadn’t run off to join the army,” Naria added. “You were so eager to fight. What if you’d fought here against the men who killed mother and father and left me alone and blinded? Do you think you might have saved them?” She took the crystal lenses from her face, and Loch saw the ugly scars across her dead white eyes. Naria didn’t stop walking, though. Both she and Loch could walk the manor from memory. “Do you think I might be looking at my sister face-to-face, instead of through this damned magic?”
Loch chuckled, and Naria started, then shoved the lenses back onto her face as she turned a corner. Loch asked, “Does the damsel-in-distress act work for the nobles like it did on all the boys?” Naria glared, possibly the first honest expression Loch had seen on her that day, and Loch added, “After you put a knife in Silestin’s throat, you left me hanging over a mile-long drop with a broken rib. I could’ve used a hand.”
Naria stopped at a large double door. Loch remembered the small sitting room inside, where her father and mother had shared drinks and gossip with old friends. “I knew you’d be fine, Isa. You were always the strong one. You were the fighter, the survivor. The one who could do everything on her own. I’m not like you.”
She gestured politely, and Loch stepped to the doors.
They opened before her. Baron Westteich stood inside, with three black-coated paladins flanking him.
Quietly, Naria said, “I have to make compromises.”
Sixteen
CAPTAIN THELENEA WAS sitting in her cabin reading and drinking kahva when she heard the sound of booted feet on the gangplank. They carried the rushed sound of running, and she was up in a flash, one hand casually checking the blade at her hip.
When she opened the door, Irrethelathlialann stood there, his face grim. His blade was drawn, and he watched the sky, not her.
“What happened?” she asked.
He looked back and seemed to catch himself. His pale-green skin was flushed with effort. “Stress reaction resulting in brief hyperawareness and imminent exhaustion,” he said, and she saw the look in his eyes that no human would understand, the way they tracked the light. He had been around crystals, and they had weakened his soul. “Sorry,” he said, and took several deep breaths. “Presence of crystal technology, discomfiting but temporary. New information suggesting identity of those responsible for the attack on the Dragon.”
She cursed quietly. “Who?”
He smiled bitterly, and when he spoke again, his soul had returned, unblemished by the touch of magic. “Your fears were well founded. He was taken down by someone attempting to gain favor with the ancients. Who else knew that you were bringing Loch here?”
Thelenea frowned. “No one, and my crew have flown with me for years.”
“Are you certain?” Irrethelathlialann asked urgently. “Check your messenger spore.”
She was turning to do it, caught by his urgency, when the insult of the command struck her, and she remembered Irrethelathlialann giving commands during the card tournament she had hosted, the grave offense and scandal of it. For one second, she fought the alarm, telling herself that it was because he traveled outside the Elflands so often, that he had lost
his way.
Then the alarm took over, years of trusting her instincts, and her hand went to her blade as she turned back to him.
His own blade slid across her throat as she turned.
“I am sorry,” he said, and as she clutched at her throat, he grabbed her shoulder and put the blade through her heart.
The small sitting room held Westteich and three paladins in their black coats. In Loch’s mind, she thought of them as Left, Right, and Center. Center was next to Westteich, Right stood in front of a bookshelf, and Left stood behind a table.
“Isafesira de Lochenville,” Westteich said with a smug smile, “what a pl—”
She came into the room at a run, and the smug paladins fumbled with their bands as she was suddenly in their midst.
She lunged at Westteich with a leap that drove her forearm into his throat and her knee into his crotch and slammed him into the back wall. As he crumpled, she shoved him into Center, sending both men sprawling.
She leaped at Right as he brought his band up to fire, knocking his arm wide. A flare of crimson energy flashed out past her and slammed into Left. She heard him grunt as he hit the far wall.
She had Right’s arm and momentum, and she went for the break, but Right saw it coming and tucked his arm back to take the blow on the forearm. It left him open, and Loch put a fist into his throat, slammed the heel of her palm into his temple, and then smashed his head into the bookshelf as he reeled.
Center was up, band coming up to fire as he shoved Westteich aside, and Loch dove at him and got her left arm up to slap his shot wide. Crimson energy flashed past her, and she thought it hit Left again, but didn’t have time to look, because her desperate lunge had left her off balance. She tossed a jab at Center’s head, but he caught it with a boxer’s guard and countered with a jab that jolted its way down her spine even as she leaned in to take it on the forehead instead of the nose.
As she staggered, he came in with a low right hook that hit with bruising force even as she caught it on her arm, and then a high right that she ducked under. She felt the kick coming and tried to take it on the hip rather than the gut, but it still hit with crushing power that drove her to her knees.
Center’s fists rained down, once, then twice, and Loch kept her guard up against the battering storm, arms high to protect her head. She felt him shift again, saw his knee coming in to smash her face, and this time caught the blow, smothered it, and shoved his leg aside. As he wavered, off balance for an instant, she drove her fist into his crotch.
Center staggered. Loch grabbed his shoulder and hauled down as she punched up. She felt bone under the heel of her palm and heard that little click as his jaw snapped shut from the blow, and Center went down bonelessly as Loch spun.
Left was halfway back to his feet, leaning on the card table. Loch stepped forward and kicked the table, driving it into him and him into the wall. She heard ribs crack and saw his face turn ashen as he hung, pinned to the wall.
She stepped past the table and put him out with a clean blow to the temple.
“See, Westteich,” she said, still breathing hard, to the groaning man, “what you had was an ambush, and the thing about ambushing someone is that you don’t talk to them first.”
He was on his hands and knees, and it wouldn’t be fair to kick him, but the ancients had bands that shot blasts of energy, and Loch wasn’t entirely sure Westteich didn’t have one, so she kicked him once across the jaw to make sure he stayed down.
Then Loch turned back to the hallway.
It was empty, with no sign of Naria.
Loch raised her fists. “Naria, last time you came at me, I took you down and broke your lenses. You want a rematch, take your best shot, but I’m not leaving without that fancy crystal airship you used as First Blade.”
The words hung in the air for a moment, and Loch felt the slow ache in her arms and hip, as well as at the base of her skull where the jab had rattled her.
The air shimmered, and Naria appeared, crouched where she had been standing before.
“You came here for my wing?” Naria smiled bitterly. “Of course you did. You would only show up if you wanted something.”
Loch lowered her fists. “I had dangerous people after me. I didn’t want to bring that home.”
“And then you needed something,” Naria said, “and you did.” She looked at the fallen ancients and Westteich. “They knew you were coming. They threatened me and my people unless I helped them, all because you wanted my wing.”
Loch shook her head. “You’d be a dangerous woman, Naria, if you had the guts to take shots at anyone besides me.”
Naria’s mouth twisted into angry words that she swallowed instead of saying. She reached into a hidden pocket of her fine orange gown and drew out a glossy black crystal no larger than Loch’s palm. “The field past the water garden,” she said. “The key will bring it down from the sky and make it visible.”
She tossed Loch the key.
“Never come back here.”
“Deal.”
Loch stepped out of the sitting room. She brushed Naria’s shoulder as she walked by.
Naria didn’t turn as Loch walked away.
There were worse places to wait for Loch to fight things out with her sister, Kail decided, than on a comfortable bench in the Lochenville estate’s water garden with a beautiful woman beside him.
The beautiful woman was a death priestess, and that still threw him off from time to time, but the good thing about working for Loch was that he’d learned that there were lots of things worse than death priestesses.
That was also the bad thing about working for Loch, Kail decided, and sighed, looking at the white-and-purple flowers floating on the lily pads.
“What are you thinking?” Desidora asked, leaning into him a little. She didn’t curl her arm around his. Something about it, someone doing anything close to grappling with him, made his mind go to that dark little corner where Archvoyant Silestin’s magic had wrapped around his soul and turned him into a helpless puppet.
Some women would have gotten angry when he tensed up and pulled away, taken it as an insult or a sign that he didn’t care. Desidora was a love priestess, though, at least when she didn’t have her death powers turned on to make zombies, and she had a pretty good idea of how people worked.
So she leaned into him instead of curling her arm around his.
He put his arm around her waist. “The usual,” he said, and she nodded, her auburn hair brushing against his cheek. Her hair smelled warm and mysterious, at least when it was red instead of pitch black. “Silestin was bad, and he came after us hard, but it didn’t hit us where we lived.”
“I’m glad your mother is safe.”
“I think I saved the ancients from her more than the other way around,” Kail said, and grinned. “My mom will take anybody who gets up in her face.”
Desidora shuddered, and at first Kail thought she was sad, and then cold.
After a minute, he realized that she was trying to hold in a laugh.
“Diz. Diz?”
“You,” she gasped, still trying not to laugh, “you say all these things about people’s mothers! And then you say that about yours, and I’m not supposed to think anything?”
Kail sat back and fixed Desidora with a stare. “Diz, you’re not thinking rude things about my mom.”
Her eyes wide and innocent and maybe watering a bit from laughter, she nodded. “I would never do that.”
“My mother is a nice respectable lady,” Kail said firmly, “and—no, damn it, don’t start laughing again!”
The damn water clock emptied a great wave of water behind them, and Kail jumped and swore, and Desidora leaned over, giggling hysterically.
And then Tahla staggered out of the manor, one hand pressed to her side and leg dragging behind her, and shouted, “Run!”
A crimson blast of energy slammed into her from behind, and she sailed down the stairs, hit the marble stones of the yard below hard, and
didn’t move.
“Byn-kodar’s hell,” Kail muttered.
“Kun-kabynalti osu fuir’is!” came a cry from the manor, and beside Kail, Desidora went cold, literally.
“You can say that again,” she said as her hair went black and her skin went pale.
Ghylspwr came out of the manor in the grip of former Archvoyant Bertram, with a pair of paladins flanking him. Technically the ancients had also enslaved the nobles who had put on the paladin bands, but the nobles had on some level been trying to seize power, and Kail could see his way to letting that lie.
Bertram . . . well, he was Learned, and he was old money, and he was probably not less corrupt than most of the voyants, but he hadn’t been aiming for war when Kail had seen him up on Heaven’s Spire, locked in place with tendrils of crystal jabbed into his fingers. He’d been a man trying to do the right thing, his body and mind shackled by magic.
“Can you break Ghyl’s hold on Bertram?” Kail asked as he got to his feet.
Desidora flung out a hand as Ghylspwr and the paladins leaped down the stairs and came at them. Bertram flinched, reeling in place, and then recovered and kept coming.
“Shielded,” Desidora hissed. “But are they all shielded?” She raised both hands this time, and something in her stance told Kail that she wasn’t trying to free the nobles from their paladin bands.
Both of the paladins paused as Desidora’s magic hit.
Then they smiled, raised their arms, and unleashed blasts of crimson light.
Kail saw it coming and dove from the little platform, rolling as he landed on a wooden bridge. He heard the other blast hit Desidora, who splashed into the water behind him.
“The death priestess,” one of the paladins called out. “See how she twists the very essence of magic with her unholy power?”
“If only we had wards that could prevent her from draining the life from us as she would some pathetic sack of meat,” said the other. “Ah, wait. We do. Mister Lively sends his regards.” He turned to Kail, who hadn’t stopped running, and raised his band again. “Which one is this?”
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