“It’s the only proof Inanina had Eresha killed.”
Ceinwyn nodded. “I figured that much. It’s also proof you and Tyson spied on the Divine Court.”
“She killed Eresha and got away with it.”
“Good.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I’m glad she’s dead. Aren’t you?”
“Well . . . yeah, kinda.”
Ceinwyn glanced away again, still not smiling. “You want some truth? Eresha killed my family to try to restart the war, King Henry. Inanina finally succeeding in her plans makes me warm inside, it makes me . . . last night was the first night I’ve gone to sleep without knowing my parent’s killer was walking around in a new shell each day. I couldn’t be happier with what happened. How’s that for truth?”
“Annie said it was Weres,” I stuttered.
A hint of a future smile. “Anne doesn’t know everything.”
“Inanina still tried to kill me three fucking times.”
“And I beseeched the Mancy to keep you safe for the last week. You survived. No vampire will care about an attempted murder of a human and if I threatened war every time you got in trouble it would never cease.”
“It also shows who actually killed Eresha.”
“Mordecai Root?” Ceinwyn asked, surprising the hell out of me.
“You said Nii-Vah—”
Ceinwyn gave a cold bark. “I don’t need Nii-Vah to tell me Root will do anything to become the next Dean of the Institution or that Inanina seeks to control the Learning Council. I know what he is, I know we’re both up for the same position. Don’t worry about me, King Henry, I can handle him without proof of his misdeeds.”
I stared at the flashdrive some more. I came to her with a magic bean and she slapped it down point by point. “Fine . . . destroy it then. But I can’t go back to what we were. Either we have to open all the walls or . . .”
“What is it you expect from me?” I made to open my mouth, but she waved it shut. “Oh yes, truth.”
“Don’t mock me!”
“You sound like a little child! Tell me about sex and child-birth and politics and religion and all adult things, Mummy, or I shall hold my breath and hate you!”
I growled, pissed. “Tell me about what I can really do with the Mancy, no half games. Tell me about all the Divines. Tell me about different Realms and Dragons and World-Breakers.”
The fun of it collapsed in her face. “Did Anne tell you about all that as well?”
“No, she didn’t. It’s all guesses and theories and shadows and it’s making me tired, Ceinwyn.”
She looked into my eyes. Those dirt eyes. “You’re still too young. You’re not ready. Be a child for a little longer, King Henry.”
“Can’t, Ceinwyn. You say I’m not ready?” I smashed a fist into my chest. “Make me ready. You want to be partners? Train me. Conscript me. Let me be all that I can be or some shit. I ain’t going back to the strings, Ceinwyn. I’m cutting them all. I’m done with it. We’re equals or we’re nothing.”
How sad she looked as a trio of aero-slices destroyed the flashdrive. “Hate me then, but I’m saving your life. You aren’t ready to be my equal yet, King Henry. You want to be on your own? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re a teenager now, maybe it is time for you to try to run away from home. Try your shop without me for a time, but remember I’ll bail you out when you need me.”
I was never good with adults. I’d always liked Ceinwyn because I thought she was treating me like one, but apparently there were even limits for Auntie Badass. Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe she cared about me so much she couldn’t think of me as a tool any longer, maybe she was trying to protect me.
I don’t know.
I can’t tell you what’s in Ceinwyn head.
That’s the problem.
One minute she’s helping me and the next she’s restraining me.
I couldn’t deal with that any longer.
I couldn’t fight Paine and Vega and Inanina while Ceinwyn was over my shoulder playing with strings.
It wasn’t a matter of war, like she thought. I was surrounded by monsters and fighting was the only way to survive.
So I ripped out those strings and threw them at her feet.
Done.
As free as I’d ever been.
Time to stop relying on the authority figures.
Time to start relying on the allies I make for myself.
Maybe one day Ceinwyn will be one.
But she wasn’t now.
I made to stalk out of the room, but I couldn’t do it. I turned back around at the door and gave her one more chance. “Tell you what, I’ll give you one last fucking chance, Ceinwyn, how ‘bout that? Sound fair? Sounds fucking fair to me. You answer one fucking question, ONE fucking question, and I won’t close out your loan. I might stay pissed at you for years, but I won’t hate you like I do right now for being so damn condescending. How ‘bout that, Ceinwyn Dale? Can you do that? One question and one real answer for our partnership trying to cure Anima Madness to continue. Just one answer, Last True Dale. Can’t you give me that?”
Still she didn’t smile. “It depends on the question.”
I stared into those smiling eyes. Beautiful blue things that they were, playful and caring and eyes I trusted once upon a time. I asked her, “What’s a Maximus?”
She shook her head at me, sad. “You’re not ready. I’m saving your life.”
“Now we’re just repeating ourselves,” I snarled at her. “Bye Ceinwyn.”
I didn’t leave the room fast enough to not hear the crying behind me.
But at least I left fast enough that she didn’t see the tears in my eyes.
Pocket
Full
Of
Sunshine
Sky-Island 1827-E Sample
Hey, fans of mine! I thought you might like a sneak peek at the long mentioned “Rockets,” a steampunk novel I’ve been working on for awhile now when not giving 100% of my attention to one King Henry Price. “Rockets” is actually called Sky-Island 1827-E and it’s going to be a wild ride, out sometime later this year. Please remember it’s still a work in progress and subject to change and all that stuff. Here’s a blurb and sample chapter, hope you enjoy.
1.
After a year’s worth of days and nights living with a telescope pressed against his right eye, Captain Benjen Rahjain had developed a callus in the shape of a perfect circle. It helped his embarrassment that every other man in the observatory had the same affliction, the whole lot of them like stage players mocking Rustanni bankers and their gold-rimmed monocles.
They had attempted any number of remedies: grease, oil, wine, citrus juices; one of the prettier ensigns had even tried a stopper of virgin’s menstrual blood that he purchased from a rather shabbily dressed Path Seer.
There was no hope.
The circle callus had become an emblem for the whole of the 13th Sky Watcher Company. The more rough the circle, the more proof your dedication to keeping an eye on the skies, waiting and watching for sign of rocket fume or rocket burn. Or rocket anything. Rocket broken or rocket loom, rocket token or rocket boom . . .
As captain of the company, Rahjain was in charge of the enterprise, all two-hundred and fifty men along with it. A damn fine group of men! Engineers, soldiers, telescopes. The Sky Watcher’s area of expertise. He’d delegated as much as he could, but still found he never had enough time to his days, especially the days when his turn at the telescopes came upon him.
I am a man who craves the more glorious parts of war and yet I find my only enemy is the boredom of an empty sky!
Rahjain moved his head back a few inches from his eye-piece. He pulled out a flask of oil from inside his jacket pocket, carefully avoiding any piece of the telescope, and rubbed it around his right eye. Whether it worked or not, he felt he had to try something. A man battling against his fate till the last.
His other hand reached to his side, flipping open a waitin
g chest of material needed to service the telescope. Removing a thin metal tube that ended in a rubber ball, he put the tube near the lens and pressed on the ball, blowing away any lingering dust. He made one last check to confirm the lens was clean and then finally lumbered out of his cushioned chair.
“Replacement,” Rahjain muttered, loud enough for one of the men waiting at the on-duty couch to put down a periodical newssheet, gulp a tin cup’s worth of coffee, and stand up as well.
“Captain,” the man said. Ensign Agasaad, Rahjain recalled through what they had named Telescope’s Fog.
When he’d been at university, Rahjain had explored every nook and cranny of the Capital in his off days. Once, he’d stumbled upon an opium den, so suffused with the drug that the very air made you drowsy. He left without sampling the drug, but even being in proximity had him stumbling down the middle of the street. Telescope’s Fog was similar in effect.
Rahjain was a man of thirty-two now; he’d also swum cold-water at university, rowed eight-man for a pair of years, and had even practiced gentleman’s caneplay to impress the ladies. Brought up in a Named family, riding a horse, hunting birds with a blundergun, and wild game with a sharpgun had been considered a necessity of station. He was an active man accustomed to active days and, if he did manage to impress the ladies with the caneplay, active nights.
In his thirty-two years, he never felt as worse than he did in those first few minutes newly away from the telescope. His neck felt stiff to move in any direction and his knees screamed with every step. Four hours every other day of intense concentration, a piece of sky and nothing else in all of the Levels. Even him, even the captain, almost half the company marked themselves as an observer, but still they had no one to waste in keeping the telescopes active.
I had my choice. Either front. Any service. I could have commanded a landship or led a squadron of interceptors. I could have been a colonel with a whole regiment of soldiers at my back, fought alongside both the White Vicars and Black Paladins against the Clockers—flesh to steel. Glorious, glorious war!
Yet he’d ended up here. The most Path-forsaken outpost on the whole planet, three square sky-miles of rock so close to the Axis-Point that even the Colonials wouldn’t plant a flag to form an island-nation. Where a soldier of the Democratic League wouldn’t be expected within ten-thousand sky-miles of!
Some days, Rahjain felt like a warhorse left in the barn.
Rahjain stumbled to the duty couch, stretched his body out full height, then lowered himself to a paper-covered table. “Any sightings?” he asked the waiting men, both ensigns.
The company had become so inoculated against proper Army structure that neither saluted him, neither even looked away from their tasks—one working on a plate of peppered salt beef and potatoes and the other reading through a magazine on two-month-old caneplay matches from a Second Level colony. “Only one, sir. Lieutenant Sedanan already reported it to the fourth floor; Third Level vectors. Interceptors shouldn’t have trouble taking them before they reach their targets.”
Rahjain nodded, though neither bothered to see it. Reaching for the always present coffee jar, he swirled the liquid about. No more than a mouthful’s worth was left, so he just downed it from the jar. Along with Army structure, Named manners had been quick to disappear. Not that I ever followed them to my family’s satisfaction! “One of you go refill the jar, I’m heading outside to lift the Fog.”
One rocket sighting for a whole afternoon. Very odd. Usually they saw five or six. There was always the possibility that they would miss them, especially during the day, but never so many. Maybe the Clockers are finally running out?
Clockers.
Cheating bastards . . . turncoats, cowards.
Rahjain exited the observatory, heading down the staircase of their tower. The whole structure was made of metal—steel beams, tin roofs, with aluminum walls. There wasn’t a step that didn’t clang. Other than the duty couch it was all metal: the railing, the tables, the chairs. Made in Homelands factories and then reassembled out here in the wilderness. The 13th had been forced to put up with a whole sister company of engineers their first months on the sky-island, as their home was readied for habitation one bolt at a time.
Rahjain had been excited then. The whole thing had seemed adventurous and he supposed it still was at times. They were explorers of a sort, living where few dared tread. All alone in the wilderness . . . Some of Rahjain’s fondest memories were of the wilderness . . . of course, some of Rahjain’s other fondest memories were of four-poster beds, but he hadn’t seen one of those in a year!
Living inside a tin-can, not so different from landshipping after all, is it? Rahjain asked himself.
The fourth floor was marked by tables and tack-boards, all of them filled with maps, slide-rules, and mathematical equipment that Rahjain hadn’t a clue to work. Men often called him a force of nature, a natural outdoorsman, and many other fine qualities he was proud to be known for, but mathematician wasn’t one of them. All the vector work and equations that the men on the fourth floor went through to track where rockets would land was as mysterious to him as the Path. He nodded at four men who looked bored, waiting for a rocket sign to snap into action. On the return nods, Rahjain kept on going down the tower.
The third floor held the bunks for the telescope operators, not enough room for a single bed per man. Instead each bed had a duo of trunks nearby where the men kept their belongings. A third of the operators were generally sleeping at any time. Bunks were chosen first-come first-serve, those unlucky enough to not get one having to hitch up a hammock wherever they could find free space.
Not every man in the company slept there, of course. They had a barracks set up for the support units and the platoon of infantry assigned to the Sky Watchers. Some of the higher officers had their own rooms near the observatory, little metal cubes usually shared between two or three men. Rahjain was the only man on the sky-island with a proper apartment. Unless one counts the Paladin’s shanty . . .
It was always dark on the third floor. Apartment or not, I’ve strung up a hammock myself on many a night.
There wasn’t even a window, only a single oil lantern near the stairway door. The lack of electric-lighting was only further proof of just how far from the civilization of the Homelands the 13th found itself. Even Colonial islands so small they barely fit a town and surrounding farmland manage to have light-bulbs and a generator nowadays, perhaps not from a huge coal-eater, but at least a wind-cranker.
Rahjain would have shaken his head, but his neck hurt too much, instead he continued down to the second floor.
“Boss!” a voice called above him, echoing down the stairs.
Rahjain’s feet stopped. Damn the Path . . .
“Boss!” came the call again, sure enough from the observatory. Ensign Jarkrick leaned over the railing above, eyes searching the twisting steps until he locked onto his captain’s hand against the railing. “Boss, that you?”
Rahjain turned around, let out a long sigh, and started back up the steps. “It’s me,” he grumbled.
“You have to see this, boss,” Jarkrick called a third time, excitement mixing with confusion.
“Ensign, might I remind you that we’re in the Army and I have a rank? A rank given to me personally by a general? Pulled it out of a box and pinned the stars right to my chest. Whole company was standing at attention? Recall the moment?” Clang, clang, clang, went Rahjain’s boots on the steps again, up and up, his legs screeching, his knees popping. Could have been on said general’s staff, could have liaisoned with the Ivory Sanctuary or the Ebony Citadel over battle plans, but no . . . I let Nessia talk me away from the quick glory and all for duty, on the false hope of a Vicar’s sight that one day I might be rewarded with more glory than has ever been foisted on any man living or dead . . .
“Sorry, Captain,” Jarkrick apologized as Rahjain set foot once again among the telescopes.
A few minutes and the scene had changed dramatically.
Every man huddled around the single telescope Rahjain had worked earlier. The coffee jar, the couch, the periodicals, and papers were abandoned. So were the other three telescopes . . .
Maybe I need to start caning them.
Five men stood hunched together, black and white uniforms having seen better days—days when they had been washed and cleaned by servants—they traded the telescope’s eye-piece back and forth. Every time a man gave it up, he either frowned or shook his head or grabbed his hair.
“What’s the problem?” Rahjain growled. I should be on the ground floor right now. Ceric should be handing me a cup of fresh coffee. The part of Rahjain craving caffeine could already smell it . . . “Telescope malfunctioning? Lens need changing?”
“No, sir,” Lieutenant Sedanan reported. “We’re not sure, sir.”
Tall, red-haired, Sedanan was in command of all aspects of the company relating to the observatory and the observers; furthermore, if Rahjain ever keeled over from dysentery—there being a depressing lack of Clockers shooting at him on the sky-island—Sedanan would be the one to replace him. Sedanan was also one of the few men from a Named family at the outpost, though a much lesser Named family than the Rahjains. Still . . . young, intelligent, smart enough to marry a wealthy widow at the first chance offered, he wasn’t the type of officer to have a lost look on his face.
“Rocket sign?”
“We don’t think so, sir.” The other men nodded agreement.
“What about the other telescopes, rocket sign on them?” Rahjain asked, waving at the hanging eye-pieces.
The four extra men didn’t need any other reprimand, the three who were supposed to be at the telescopes returned to them. Maybe not the cane then, just normal shame. He motioned at Sedanan to move out of the chair and took the place for himself yet again. Out came the steel tube, a puff of air, and then his eye pushed in against the telescope.
“Where?” he barked.
“Third quadrant, it’s dialed in,” guided Sedanan.
Not moving anything, Rahjain let his eye focus and defocus until he found what he thought they were worked up about. “A dot . . .”
The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny (The King Henry Tapes) Page 39