by Tammy Salyer
Roi’s honey-colored eyes looked sympathetically into hers, and Mylla sensed he had glimpsed her thought in the Mentalios lenses. “Vaka Aster is a Verity, Mylla. Why should she intervene? We, ‘we’ being people, are our own race. We must rely on our own selves. If we let our maker mold our entire journey throughout eternity, then what good to ourselves are we?”
She leaned back, taking in his words. Eventually she decided: “That sounds like an excuse.”
“That’s all I can offer you as an answer,” he responded. “As for the cycle, we Knights have learned to stay on the fringes, to stay true to our duty to the world—”
“You mean to Vaka Aster and the vessel.”
“Which represent the world. We keep more than just passing kingdoms secure. We keep existence secure. That is a noble cause, even if commoners don’t, or can’t, grasp it.”
She wanted to, it was a part of her nature, but Mylla couldn’t find any reason to be contrary this time. There were no chinks in the armor of his level-headed reasoning to disagree with.
He went on, “Our duty to the world must be our only concern. Eisa has made her peace with that. Eventually you will too. You’ll see it’s the way it has to be.”
“But we aren’t always on the fringes. We maintain Vigil Tower. We share knowledge, tools, and so many other things with them that the common Vinnrics wouldn’t have otherwise. Why not all of them?” she asked.
“You know the answer to that.”
Of course she did. After understanding and seeing from Roi’s memory how swiftly and decisively commoners could turn on them, it was no mystery. What defenses would the Knights, and therefore the vessel, have if they granted access to all of their wystic tools? If—or when—the cycle he spoke of again turned the people against the Knights, fleets of ships like the Vigilance, crewed by armies of commoners, against a handful of them would lead to a total extermination of the Order. And who but they had such unwavering devotion to the vessel? Who but they had the unbroken line of history and comprehension that created such devotion, and the understanding of what would happen if the vessel were threatened? Only the Knights could claim this.
She asked, “But we assist at the Conservatum. Why do we bother at all?”
Roi stood and carried the dishes to the washing area. “The Order must be replenished by a very specific type of person, those with great minds and great resilience, and recruiting them is the Conservatum’s primary purpose. Through it, we do what we can to keep the goals of the people and the Knights aligned. And, ultimately, being in league with the doings of the Conservatum fills our turns. It is our only meaningful reprieve from duty.”
She grew quiet as he rinsed the cups, seeing the role of the Knights, and the role she played, in a new way. His footsteps as he paced toward the far door grabbed her attention. “Roi, one more question, if I may. In your memory just now, there was a third Knight. I didn’t recognize him. Who was he?”
“His name is Griggory Dondrin, the oldest of the Knights.” He smiled, a bit wistfully. “You’d have liked him, Mylla. He was always curious and sometimes a bit reckless, like you, with a taste for wandering. He was always more of a philosopher than a fighter, and a good friend.”
“What happened to him?”
The smile dissolved, and Roi looked to the floor. “I will tell you if I ever learn. It’s been seven hundred turns since anyone has seen Griggory.”
“Did he abandon his oath?”
He reached the open door and stood in the arch. Without giving her an answer, he said, “Your mind is unsettled, and it’s late. Your path in the last few days has been all sharp rock and hard climbing. Get some rest before your watch. This is just a day, and like all days it will pass.”
Chapter 29
Ulfric spent a couple of hours describing to Bardgrim the rudiments of a Verity cage and how it would stop Lífs from ending Himmingaze—despite the fact that he now knew there was no Verity to stop. The Scrylle had indeed been in Griggory’s possession, for some time, and what he’d recorded in it was truly surprising and troubling. But not Ulfric’s current concern, and Bardgrim didn’t need to know it. It was more convenient for Ulfric to spin tales to get Bardgrim to cooperate than to explain there was no hope for his realm. As long as Bardgrim believed what he wanted him to believe, the Himmingazian would help him get the Scrylle and escape.
“So, we get out of our holding cells, get the Scrylle and Fenestros, retrieve the rest of the Verity stones, then create some kind of cage that will entrap the Creatress, and then you’ll head home? I have the plan right?” Bardgrim was asking.
Ulfric could see Bardgrim was already beyond dubious, but, wisely, was choosing to play along with his charade. To fulfill his own goals, the Himmingazian needed Ulfric’s help. And because their priorities started with the same need—get away from the Glisternauts—Bardgrim was planning to cooperate. At least for now. Ulfric sensed they both expected nothing short of a double-cross from the other. Which of them achieved that first would be the surprise.
His own list of priorities was simple: getting back to Vinnr and, if Symvalline and Isemay had truly been lost, permanently caging Vaka Aster. Then, all that would be left to achieve in his life would be to do the same to Balavad. He would hunt the Verity with all the tenaciousness and skill his many hundreds of turns of service had instilled in him.
A Glisternaut delivered food in the midst of his and Bardgrim’s discussion, and Ulfric realized he was somewhat spent. Though much of his vitality had been drained from him while summoning Vaka Aster back to Vinnr and then cage her, to his surprise, he didn’t feel as weak as he might have expected. Still, hunger prompted him to dig into the strange food, not caring if it might be poisonous or inedible to his foreign composition. When he asked what it was, Jaemus gave him a finicky “Never Sea surprise” in response, and proceeded to pick less enthusiastically at his own tray.
As a man of Ivoryss, where the majority of people lived seaside and mostly subsisted on the sea’s bounty, Ulfric’s appetite for seafood spanned a wide selection. His favorite for centuries had been pit-smoked chelbiefin shark. Even though the Feast of Five Seasons celebration was the most common time to fix the delicacy, Ulfric had built a pit to smoke it any time the desire struck in the yards inside Vigil Tower’s walls. But this . . .“food” of the Himmingazian’ tasted like weeds boiled in seawater, though the consistency and density reminded him of a sawdust cake. However, it didn’t kill him, and after several drafts of fresh water—which at least tasted close enough the Vinnric water—to clear as much of the flavor from his mouth as he could, he felt somewhat revived in flesh if not in heart. It was enough.
During the conversation, Bardgrim, to his credit, rarely interrupted and never gainsaid a word of Ulfric’s. Whether this was just to humor him or more a matter of trying to, as the Himmingazian had put it, take Ulfric’s theory into consideration until he found the truth for himself, he didn’t know. And didn’t care. Ulfric needed cooperation more than he needed a commoner’s embrace of facts that may be too profound for him to even grasp, in the end. This was the reason acolytes studied for countless, sometimes tedious, turns at the Conservatum before being chosen to be and then ordained a Knight. Many truths, particularly those concerning the makers, did not come easily to the human mind without time to reflect and put it all into a comprehensible order.
Near the end of his account, Bardgrim inquired, “Two things I have to know. Tell me why you’re holding that lens over your eye, and what in the Never Sea’s many monsters were those flying bugs? Where did they come from?”
Out of the wonders the Himmingazian had just learned, these were his questions? Ulfric supposed he could take a turn at humoring him. “On my voyage through the celestial rift between realities, something happened to my vision. I can’t see normally now without looking through my Mentalios. The ‘bugs,’ as you call them, must have come with me, and when they appeared on the island, I was able to use their eyes to expand my own sight.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Like a bruhawk ally.” He looked for a sign of comprehension from Bardgrim. Nothing. “You haven’t got bruhawks, I’m guessing. Put simply, I can see using the dragørflies’ eyes.”
“You can? . . . Okay, that’s a trick I have to learn.”
What he decided not to share was that, even now, he could still do it when he dropped the Mentalios. He had finally recognized that the rustling he’d heard upon first awakening aboard this ship was coming from the dragørflies themselves, who were hiding in the crevices of the craft like stowaways waiting to be called back into service. Had Vaka Aster sent them through the celestial well to serve him? If so, for what purpose? Was his Verity present as well but had not revealed herself? Too many questions, and regardless, he did not want the dragørflies near him, skulking like a snake in his head and bearing witness to any of his plans—if that were even possible.
Besides, he didn’t need to know why the dragørflies were here to take advantage of their presence, and during the lull in the conversation while he and Bardgrim had eaten, he’d sent them on a hunt for the Scrylle and Fenestros. As they slipped on quiet wings throughout the capacious ship, they fed the layout and directions to his mind. He now knew the inside of this craft as well as he knew the inside of the Vigilance.
Handy, that.
“The last question for you, Aldinhuus, is how you’re going to spring us. These holding cells are no joke, but your confidence makes me wonder what other tricks you have up your sleeve.”
In lieu of telling him, Ulfric responded with a demonstration. Now fed and rested, he held up a hand to silence Bardgrim and summon the klinkí stones. Though he could not see where they’d been taken, he could feel their wystic resonance, attuned to his own, nonetheless. Latching on to them using the Mentalios lens, he pulled them toward him along the ship’s passages, the dragørflies still acting as his eyes while he used his new understanding of the layout to guide them.
It took very little time for the stones to reach them. At his command, they punched neat holes through the hatch separating the holding cells from the corridor beyond—eliciting a surprised breath from Bardgrim—then Ulfric directed one into each of the locking mechanisms in the cell doors. As he let the remainder hover, he concentrated on turning the wystic spark in the two embedded in the locks into burning energy, slowly melting them. In moments, he and Bardgrim heard soft chinks, and the doors shifted on their hinges, open at last.
Wonder bathed Bardgrim’s words as he asked, “Where do I get—”
The sound of running boots from the hallway cut him off, though Ulfric had expected them. He pushed past his cell door and stood in the foyer, klinkí stones lingering above his open palm, which was drawn back in readiness to lob them at whoever entered.
“No!” Bardgrim slammed past his own door and placed himself between the stones and the hatch. “I won’t help you if you harm any one of them. I told you. I swear by . . . by the Creatress.”
Ulfric clenched his teeth against a curse. “We may have no other choice.”
“Yes, we do. We can choose to surrender and try to convince the Crest Council later to let me try my plans with the Fenestrii—and all that other stuff you said. But if you kill someone, you’ll be executed. Your only choice will be how: be either drowned or turned into a living lightning rod.”
While Jaemus rambled, the hatch fell open and three Glisternauts blocked it. They were all dressed similarly to Bardgrim in one-piece full-bodied uniforms with high collars that rose to cover their chins and lower parts of their ears. They differed by color and the addition or subtraction of minor ornaments.
One was dressed singularly, the captain Bardgrim had called Cote. He eyed the two escapees and said, “How did you . . . doesn’t matter. Jaemus—Engineer Bardgrim—you and your conspirator must know there’s nowhere to go from here but into the storm. Even if you could, which you know you can’t, we’d just find you again, and things will go even worse with the Council than they already will.”
With his back toward Ulfric, Bardgrim spoke up. “It was a mistake, Cote. Aldinhuus isn’t quite right in the head, true, but if you’ll just listen to erfff—”
Under other circumstances, the sound the engineer made as Ulfric’s free arm tightened around his throat in a chokehold would have been funny. But today was not a day for laughter. Immediately, the three Glisternauts leaned toward Ulfric as if to pounce, but he dissuaded them with a demonstration of the stones’ abilities. Before any of them even knew a reaction would be necessary, the lightning-fast projectiles smashed their shelksies into useless baubles dangling from their wrists, and left each of them staring into the blue heart of a klinkí stone hovering just before their eyes.
“Don’t struggle, Bardgrim,” Ulfric muttered. Then louder: “You people of Himmingaze can be forgiven your ignorance, but try to stop me from fulfilling what I must do, and not only you but Bardgrim also will suffer the ultimate consequence.” The calm in his voice carried an unignorable promise. With a nod toward the right-flanking Glisternaut, Ulfric continued, “You, retrieve the Scrylle and Fenestros you took from Bardgrim’s craft. If you’re not back before I’ve counted to fifty, your captain will be the first to fall.”
The Glisternaut said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The metal scepter and the silver sphere that were on the common room table in the Octopod,” Bardgrim blurted.
The Glisternaut looked to her captain, who nodded permission, and she sped off. As they waited, Ulfric hoped Bardgrim was smart enough not to make any reference to their deal. His choice to use him as a bargaining chip—and be the first to double-cross the other—was in part to spare the Himmingazian any more suspicion than he was already victim of, warranted or not. Ulfric had chosen not to inform him of the plan for the simple reason that an authentic reaction was always more believable than even a well-acted false one.
“So much for goodwill,” Bardgrim said. He’d wrapped his hands around Ulfric’s forearm, tugging to no effect, though Ulfric didn’t squeeze harder than was necessary to keep him still. “I thought you were better than this, Master Knight. Where’s that nobility you spoke of now?”
Ulfric merely repeated, “Don’t struggle and you’ll be fine.”
Pulling Bardgrim along, he moved closer to the hatch guarded by the Glisternauts, who obliged with a step backward. They were cautious, but confident, a combination that on any other day Ulfric would have approved of. Today, their duty was in his way, and he would do what he had to overcome it. Bardgrim may not be willing to make sacrifices for his goals, but Ulfric was a man of will, and each moment that passed between him and the vengeance he sought only deepened his resolve. He had nothing to lose now, not even honor. What had fealty to duty done for him?
The captain spoke. “Stranger, what you’ve done, what you’re doing, will not go unpunished. If you cause Engineer Bardgrim any harm, I promise you, I will deliver that punishment personally. You still have a chance to reconsider your actions. You can’t get off the ship, and even if you could, we’re far from any Himmingaze city. There’s nowhere to go but into the Never Sea, and you know as well as I what creatures lurk there and how much they’d enjoy a change in their usual diet.”
In point of fact, Ulfric did not know what monsters lurked there, though he understood these people still believed he was from their realm. Nevertheless, he could guess. “You’d thank me and escort me to my destination, Captain, if you knew what gift I will soon bestow on Himmingaze.”
The leader looked to Bardgrim, who was finding Ulfric’s grip growing tighter around his throat with every tug or twist he made, and said, “I’m having more than a little trouble understanding why you wanted me to speak to this madman, Jaemus, and it certainly hasn’t seemed to benefit you any.”
Bardgrim replied with a strangled, “Chrrrk.”
To Ulfric’s sight, the corona of color around the captain shifted as he spoke, from a light or
ange to a feverish crimson, his emotions made visible. His glimmering sea-green eyes never left Ulfric’s own. It was obvious to him, if not to Bardgrim, that the captain’s feelings for the engineer ran deep. In an insight more prescient than his usual understanding of human nature, he could see that the captain’s quarrel with Bardgrim was not based on anger but fear for his partner’s choice to pursue heretical means to solving their world’s issues, and the consequences that would be laid on him.
And because of his new view through his dragørfly allies’ eyes, he now witnessed the Glisternaut sent to retrieve the artifacts as she flew along the ship’s corridors. “Ah, blargin’ rot,” he grunted. “She’s sent out the alarm.”
Chapter 30
Mylla didn’t want to rest, couldn’t have if she tried. How could she, knowing the world outside was falling apart, and with its passing so would the man she loved? She paced the now-empty hold, feeling drained and miserable yet restless. It didn’t take long for her to recognize the unfamiliar emotion riding her back like a mountain intent on crushing her: helplessness.
Her thoughts returned to Asteryss City again and again, worrying it like a loose tooth, and she imagined what would be occurring there. Brun had ordered the city’s desertion and led the Marines to seafaring ships docked under the cliff on which Vigil Tower stood. A cove cut deep into the rock hid the city’s last-chance ships in case of the need for a stealthy sea voyage, usually reached by bringing dories and rowboats out of the nearby southern coastal town of Gethbrond. But there was another way, down among the catacombs, and Brun had known of it. Thank Vaka Aster, Brun had known of it. At least that one revealed secret of the Knights could benefit the people of Asteryss.