The False Knight of the Motorway

by Arden Ellis

  The thought was enough to make Wright feel ill with pain. "I'm still coming."

  Kai hesitated. There was a fierce intensity in her eyes that Wright thought was the beginning of an even longer argument. But then Kai looked away and released Wright's shoulders with a cold chuckle. "Of course you are," Kai said. "You always were the self-sacrificing type."

  Wright opened her mouth to deny it—then shut it just as quickly as Kai dropped to her knees in front of her. Her fingers were on the buckles of Wright's greaves before she could think to swat them away. "What are you doing?"

  Kai tilted her head to fix Wright with an exasperated expression. "Helping you with your armor. Or would you rather risk losing your footing under its weight, and drowning in three feet of water?"

  She had a point. Even without her breastplate or right pauldron, in her weakened state the remaining pieces could easily drag her down. But when Kai leaned forward and set to the buckles again, Wright caught her wrist in a firm grasp. "I don't need you to do that."

  "Oh?" Slowly, Kai began to pull her wrist away, forcing Wright to tense her arm. The flare of pain was like a spear skewered through her shoulder. With a sharp hiss, Wright let her go. Kai raised an eyebrow up at her, waiting. "Just say the word, ser. I'll gladly stand by and let your pride be the death of you."

  "You're one to speak of pride, Kai," Wright said through clenched teeth, yet slowly relaxed against the tree trunk behind her as Kai knelt to the straps. She removed her greaves with deft fingers, making short work of the buckles. Wright watched her work in spite of herself, a strange flicker in the pit of her stomach at the sight of Kai kneeling before her. When Kai's gaze darted up and caught Wright staring, a wry smile touched her lips. For once, she made no jokes. Wright looked away as Kai finished with her armor, and then they could wait no longer.

  The water was icy from the very first step, the sun scarcely risen behind a low bank of gray clouds; Wright's teeth chattered as the waves rose to mid-thigh.

  "Keep your eyes on the currents," Silva said sharply. "Look for darkness, strange colors—"

  "I know what the gods-damned curse looks like," Kai said through teeth gritted against the cold. Wright scanned the water around them, but it was all she could do not to be bowled over by the pain and the tug of the waves. They sloshed past the bare posts of the old wooden pier, crusted with barnacles where it wasn't slick with rot. No curse rose to meet them. The wreck of the ship loomed over them, its pale flank stained by time.

  "How do you know the whole wreck isn't cursed?" Silva asked Preston.

  Preston's eyes were riveted on the ship, his jaw set. "We don't. But we can't turn back now."

  A metal ladder descended from the side of the ship, rust eating through its joints. Silva made her way up it first, nimble and light, knocking loose the rungs that were too far gone to take any more weight. The rest of the party followed. Kai took the rear as Wright clambered one-handed onto the deck of the ship. She almost craned her head back to ask if Kai planned to catch her, but pain made her head swim and she didn't cherish the idea of putting Kai's reflexes to the test. Clenching her injured arm to her chest, she swallowed the pain and finished the climb.

  There were no immediate signs of contagion on the deck. If the curse had been here, wind and rain and time had cleansed it long ago. Broken wood, dried seaweed, and the decaying body of a gull all had been blown against the far railing. A single door set in the ship's cabin before them was sealed behind a rusting wheel. If the ship carried the curse it would linger within, gestating in the dark.

  Preston stepped up to it with something approaching reverence, while even Silva lingered back. He glanced over his shoulder at his flagging companions and offered a smile. In the dim light, the lines around his eyes seemed to cut deep into the flesh. "Stay back."

  "Preston, wait," Kai called sharply, but he had already laid his hand on the wheel. He gave it a sharp tug, red flakes of rust drifting to the tilted deck; with a grating cry of tortured metal, the door was ready to be opened.

  From a safe distance away, Wright could see the tremor between his shoulders, his head bowed. "I've spent my life working towards this moment," he said quietly. "This is where everything changes."

  Preston drew in a final steadying breath—and yanked the door wide open.

  A cloud of pale gas rushed out with a monstrous hiss, enveloping Preston whole. Silva shouted in warning, and Kai's arm flung out across Wright's chest, the only thing stopping her from rushing in after him. "Preston!" she shouted, tugging against Kai in vain; in seconds Preston would be dead.

  A thin shape staggered free from the gas, Preston's arms thrashing in front of his face and his teeth bared in a horrible grimace—which, a moment later, Wright recognized as laughter.

  "It's alright," he said, fanning the rest of the fumes away from his face. "Just a harmless build-up of moisture. There's no curse inside."

  With a sigh of relief, Wright realized it must be true. There was no seeping darkness spreading over the deck. Preston was healthy and hale, his eyes bright with exhilaration. He was already unslinging his pack, and hastily removing a lantern. He lit it with shaking hands, peering into the darkness in the open door.

  Silva stepped closer to the door to run her fingers around the edge of the door. "No curse," she agreed. "This door hasn't been opened since the gods abandoned it."

  "Doesn't mean it's safe," Kai said. "We take it slow, scouting every room until we're sure—oh, for gods' sakes!"

  Without so much as a pause Preston had raised his lantern and stepped into the darkness, a tiny light bobbing down, and then out of sight.

  "Damn him," Kai growled, and hurried after his flickering lantern. Wright tried to share an apprehensive glance with Silva, but the sellsword was already lighting a lamp of her own. There was nothing left to do but follow.

  Beyond the doorway, the air smelled thick with dust and something musky and foul that made Wright's hand clap over her mouth on impulse. Stairs led down from the door, looming below like a cramped grave. Kai was already on her way down; Silva stopped at Wright's back, her own lantern raised to light the way. Wright took a shallow breath of stale air, and began the descent.

  The walls of the staircase crowded in close around her—lower down the air began to smell fouler, wetter. Wright moved with her good hand pressed to the wall beside her as the staircase wound around, eventually opening on a hallway. The stairway twisted past the open doorway, winding deeper into the ship; the slosh of water sounded from the darkness far below.

  There were no windows to let in the dim light; only rows of doors with wheels rather than handles, long since rusted shut. At the end of the short hall a single portal stood open in the gloom. The only source of illumination was Silva's lantern, hanging still in the shadows behind her, and the flicker coming from beyond the door.

  "Over here." Preston's voice drifted back to them from the far chamber. He spoke as softly as if they were on sacred ground. Swallowing drily, Wright moved down the narrow hallway to the final door at the end. She stooped beneath the low edge of the door, her hand brushing the flaking paint; and then she was inside.

  Counters of metal stretched along the walls, with a single long table in the center of the room covered in a veil of dust. Preston stood at the far end, with Kai lingering nervously behind. "This was their lab," he said in the same hushed tones. He did not turn to look at them; he was digging through yellowed folders filled with moldy paper, his hands as gentle as if the pages were alive.

  Silva held her light over the center table as she walked, very slowly. The guttering lamplight glinted off a row of flat glass cylinders lined up down the center of the table. Each was only a finger's breath tall, grimy with dust, and no larger than the palm of Wright's hand. Slowly, Wright leaned in to peer past the dingy glass.

  Beneath the coating of dust, something reached out to her.

  Wright leapt backwards, heart pounding in her throat; she instantly recognized the oily swirls of cont
amination beneath the glass, stirred back to life by her presence. Only a layer of reinforced glass stood between her and certain death.

  "My gods" Kai whispered. "They're cursed."

  Every container on the table moved with the familiar dark iridescence of the curse; but all were unlike anything Wright had seen. In some it sloshed like liquid; in others it was a solid mass, curving and arcing beneath the glass into crystalline shapes. Some appeared to be empty. Wright still would not have opened them for all the coin in the realms.

  "New strains of the curse," Preston called from his place at the far end of the room, the crumpling of paper punctuating his words. "Safe behind the glass. Still, I would not touch them." The three companions exchanged a glance. They didn't need to be told twice.

  Wright couldn't pull her eyes away—a cold sweat prickled on her palms. She had almost forgotten Kenilworth's final charge to her, alone in the throne room with her lord's eyes boring into her own. Now, his words came crashing back to her. This was the power he had spoken of; a weapon crafted by the gods themselves. Her fingernails dug into the meat of her hands. She did not reach out. Not yet.

  Silva stepped forward, raising her lantern to inspect the far corners of the room. "No bodies."

  "'We used up the last of our rations this morning'," Preston said. It was only as he turned around with his eyes fixed on a crumbling piece of paper that Wright realized he was reading from it. "'Now that Sergeant Harris has succumbed to her illness, Major Winston is insisting we must seek out a more sustainable position. I have attempted to explain the crucial importance of our work here, but after months without results my team has lost their credibility in the eyes of our protectors. Parts of the ship are still taking on water; the time has come to strike out for the shore, and all the risks therein. In the months since the initial release of K314, we have lived a relatively sheltered life. I admit, I am apprehensive of what we will find in the world we left behind. But even the major assures us that, after securing a new source of renewable food and fresh water, we will come back to the ship and finish what we started.

  "'Our work will remain here, to be completed on our return. There is nowhere else it can truly be safe.'"

  He glanced up, the lantern-light catching in his dark eyes. "This was their final log entry." He turned around and set it on a stack of its fellows, then immediately picked it up again. "But there must be more," he muttered to himself, flipping once more through the stack of logs. His actions began to grow more frantic. Discarded papers fluttered to the floor. She saw his hands were trembling. "They must have come back, and taken things in a hurry—we need to search the rest of the ship—there must be some clue, something I'm missing—"

  Wright reached out to lay a hand on the side of his arm. "Preston?"

  He jumped at her touch. When he met her eyes, his look was filled with a despair that cut right through Wright's chest. He looked older and frailer than she had ever seen him as he ran his hands over his close-cropped hair, settling over the brand. "These papers," he said, his voice uneven. "I can't... there doesn't seem to be—" He stopped himself, swallowing hard. He looked away. "Our information suggested their work was near completion. I thought that surely, in the time that had passed... even before they had died, they must have discovered a Counteragent." He tossed the paper down and covered his face with his hands. "There's nothing here."

  "Then what's all this?" Kai demanded, gesturing at the glass receptacles around them.

  Preston stared at them blankly. "Failed experiments. New strains of the curse, but just as toxic. There's no cure here—just poison."

  Kai turned away. Wright caught a glimpse of bitter disappointment on her face, saw it still in the tightness of her shoulders. "Well, then. I suppose we're done here."

  So much for Kai's claims of having no hope at all. It seemed cruel for her tenuous faith to be rewarded with nothing but failure. Wright herself could only feel numb. She watched as Kai silently ducked out of the room and ascended the stairs with heavy steps, disappearing into the darkness.

  Silva stepped up to Preston's side and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Surely there must be something," she said, her voice fiercer than Wright had ever heard it. "Whether or not they succeeded, these people remain our best chance."

  Preston braced his hands on the metal counter, staring blankly down at the papers before him. "I don't know," he whispered. "If they could not discover a cure, what hope do we have?"

  "You said yourself that they were not gods. Their knowledge was greater, yes, but that knowledge is right here in front of us!" Silva seized a piece of paper and shoved it in Preston's direction. "You have studied the curse all your life. Are you so ready to throw all your work away simply because others could not finish it for you?"

  Wright found herself staring at Silva with scarcely concealed amazement. The old sellsword had spoken with more hope than even Wright could muster. When Preston's eyes lifted, the haze had dissipated. There was a spark of defiance in them now—anger, and determination. Slowly, he accepted the paper from her hand, and stared down at it without seeing. "I—"

  Whatever Preston had been about to say was cut off by sound of footsteps pounding back down the stairs. Kai appeared in the doorway a moment later, tripping over the raised threshold in her haste. "We have a problem."

  Reluctantly, Wright turned away from Silva and Preston. "What kind of problem?"

  In the next second, the low call of a hunting horn echoed down the stairwell. If reinforcements had not yet made a beeline for their position, they would arrive in moments. Kai glanced over her shoulder apprehensively. "That kind of problem. Tintagel's men have followed our trail; it won't take them too long to realize we're on the ship."

  At once Wright moved to action, stepping forward to clasp Preston's arm. Her heart pounded in her chest. "Then we are out of time. Start gathering up all that you will need, alchemist." Her eyes darted to the dark shapes on the table, the new breeds of curse within.

  Preston shook her free, staring around him at the hundreds of papers he had not yet had a chance to read. "There's too much!" he cried. "Just one lost paper could contain the key to finishing their research. I need time to catch up on all their work, to find where they left off—"

  "Time is the one thing we don't have," Kai said. She began thoughtlessly shoving papers into her open bag. With a snarl, Preston lunged forward to seize them from her hands. "Stop! You'll damage them!"

  "I'm not going to be slaughtered by Tintagel's men for the sake of some damp paper, alchemist—"

  "This damp paper contains the last remaining knowledge we might use to save the world—"

  The sound of their argument rose in the narrow confines of the room. Neither noticed as Wright turned away, her eyes settling back on the glass cages on the center table, the darkness swirling within. Her heart pounded in her chest. If she could not bring Kenilworth the counteragent, a new strain of the curse was the next best thing. She would not fail him again.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Preston stood with his shoulders squared, his knuckles white where they gripped his staff. He and Kai were glaring into each other's eyes with no thought for anything else. "Flee if you must. I'm staying here."

  "Oh, you cannot be serious—"

  "We will never get this chance again!" As Preston's voice rose, Wright turned back to the table. No one would need to know. "I am the only one here who stands a real chance at finishing their work."

  "The only thing you stand a chance at doing is starving to death."

  "Then at least I will die knowing I did all I could!"

  Slowly, Wright unslung her knapsack from her good shoulder so that it hung open before her. She reached for the first of the disks; for a moment it stuck within its holder before it came free in her hand with a clink. The substances inside of it swirled like leaves in an autumn gale.

  "Ser Wright."

  Silva's voice cut through the argument around her, sharp enough to silence Preston and Kai at once. W
right froze, all their eyes shifting to her and the incriminating glass container in her hand. She turned to face them.

  Preston's eyes were the widest of all. "What are you doing?"

  It took a great deal of effort to marshal her expression into cold confidence. "Surely you did not plan to leave such valuable relics behind," she said calmly. "There are bound to be others in your order eager to study them. At the very least, they will be of some passing interest to my lord."

  "Are you mad?" he said, his voice too loud in the silent lab. "We cannot remove them."

  "I'm inclined to agree with the alchemist," Silva said. In comparison, her voice was deadly quiet.

  "If you cannot decipher their secrets here, perhaps with your equipment at the keep—"

  Preston cut her off with a sharp gesture, his eyes harder than she had ever seen them. "Do you have any idea how dangerous those samples are?"

  "Too dangerous to leave lying around."

  Preston shook his head slowly. "If one curse couldn't end the world, three or four new varieties would certainly finish the job. That is what you're holding in the palm of your hand."

  "Lord Kenilworth will keep them safe—"

  A harsh laugh cut her off. Where Preston's expression was disbelieving and Silva's unreadable, Kai… Kai's face might have been etched from cold stone, her arms crossed over her chest. She stared at Wright as if she saw straight through to the center of Wright's being and found it despicable. Wright's jaw tightened. As if Kai had any right to judge.

  All the swagger was gone from Kai's movement. She slid forward like a knife from its sheath. "Is that truly what you believe, ser?" Kai said quietly. "That your lord would be content merely to sit on a stockpile of the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen?

  Wright's hand clenched involuntarily around the glass receptacle. Her wound was like a dull, constant drumbeat throbbing in her shoulder. "Are you all willing to leave with nothing?" she said, her eyes scanning from face to face in the semidarkness. "This could be the answer—the answer to peace and war. A cure for the curse, and a weapon to ensure the chaos of the past never comes to be again. It would never even need to be used."