Dragon Road

by Joseph Brassey

  The others stared at her in shocked silence. “Elias couldn’t have made that mark,” she said. “He has been with my crew nonstop since the night of the Grand Ball. Whoever put that symbol there did it to frame him. To bog us down in another fight that just distracts from finding and dealing with our real enemies. So I’m not playing the game. I have everything I’m going to get from this corpse. Let them find it as it is, and obsess over meaningless shit.”

  “Our laws,” Viltas breathed.

  “I’m not from here,” Aimee said, looking Viltas in the eye. “And with Harkon gone, Elysium’s crew are my people. Nobody is imprisoning them, jailing them, laying any bunk accusations at their feet. And if Yaresh tries?” The white hot anger surged inside her. “He’ll find out why Harkon Bright chose me as his apprentice.”

  Then she turned. “We’re going. Let them find the body and come to their own conclusions.”

  They were climbing the ramp up into the hold of Elysium when Elias spoke to her. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

  “No,” Aimee shook her head. “I shouldn’t have waited as long as I did to do it. Rachim and Viltas both got a good look at that symbol, and Vallus too.” She ran an irritated hand through her hair. “In the name of all the gods, Elias, why did you tell them the truth about yourself?”

  That caught him slightly off balance. “The accusations were coming,” he said. “I needed to make sure that none of you were caught unprepared.”

  Oh, that was rich. “The time for that warning would’ve been in the privacy of this ship, amongst the crew, first, not in front of three of our biggest allies who now have every reason to doubt our sincerity!”

  “And you think destroying evidence in their full view will help with that?” Elias’s temper finally appeared. She saw a flash of anger deep in the green eyes. “You had no right,” he snapped. “No right to presume to shield me from–”

  “From what?” Aimee cut him off, stepped directly into his personal space. “From an accusation over something you didn’t do? Please, by all means, tell me how it would help us at all to have you tied up in some sort of mock trial while our enemies laugh at us and the ship goes to hell? What possible purpose could that serve?” The man that had emerged from the ashes of Lord Azrael had proven intriguing, kind, and altogether different from what she had expected a month ago, but a fire was blazing in Aimee’s chest. Right now this obnoxious virtue streak was infuriating.

  “You don’t know–” he started again.

  “Oh, do not go there with me,” Aimee cut him off again, face flushed, voice raised. “Do not presume to give me that same stupid speech I’ve gotten every day since I was a girl. I know damned well exactly what I’m doing, and you will not give me a paternalistic lecture on–”

  “YOU DON’T KNOW THAT I DIDN’T DO IT!” Elias thundered.

  Silence. Slowly, Aimee became aware that the crew of Elysium – sans Vant, who still helped in the metadrive chamber below – were standing around, watching the two of them in careful, alarmed silence. It took her half a minute to recover her voice.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she started.

  “I’m not,” Elias said, and mingled with the anger there was a deep pain. “I’ve been having those visions for weeks. In the heart of the metadrive chamber that thing nearly took control of me. The closer it came to it, the less awareness I had of what was happening around me. You don’t know that it hasn’t taken control of my mind once before already.”

  Silence, again. “You’ve been with me the whole time,” Aimee said.

  “You were unconscious for a day,” Elias said.

  “You waited by my side,” she retorted. “Your arm was in a fucking sling.”

  “Did the others keep continuous eyes on me?” Elias asked, and now his eyes swept the room, pained. Fearful. “Can any of you guarantee that at no point during my vigil I slipped out? I’m quiet as hell, when I want to be. And I don’t remember the whole of that time. I slept for a good chunk of it.”

  Aimee was silent. Her mouth opened once or twice to object. A more reasonable response refused to manifest, so at last she fell back on what she felt on a fundamental level to be true: “I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.”

  Elias looked down, and when he looked back at her there was a maddening frustration on his face mixed with something else. “Dammit, Aimee,” he swore.

  “You couldn’t have done it,” another voice, female, said, and Aimee – and every other person in the room – turned to find themselves staring at the person who hated Elias most: Vlana. “Bjorn and I kept a rotating watch over the ways in and out of the villa for the entire time Aimee was unconscious. We didn’t know what might be coming, so we were very thorough.”

  The quartermaster folded her arms across her chest and fixed Elias with a level stare. “I don’t like you. I think you’ll bring death and horror to this ship, one day… but you never left Aimee’s room. Wouldn’t. After she woke up, one of us was with you straight through from then till now. You didn’t do it.”

  Then she paused, and looked at Aimee. “Now can someone tell me what he didn’t do? All I know is he’d have had to leave the ship for it, and that categorically did not happen.”

  “Pentus is dead,” Aimee said. “Murdered by the Faceless. I’m certain of it. He burned the symbol of the Eternal Order into the corpse’s chest – Elias believes he did this to frame him for it, and then he told them about himself.”

  She stepped away from him, and gestured at the space between them in emphatic, futile fury.

  “Well,” Clutch said. “That was… not smart.”

  “Then Aimee burned the symbol off the corpse’s chest,” Elias countered.

  “Aaaaaaand it got worse,” the pilot sighed.

  Bjorn pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, muttering, “It’s like there are two of him. Two Harkons.”

  “Alright, alright,” Clutch said, holding up her hands to forestall further argument, “let’s take a step back and recoup. First, the power’s back on, clearly, so the trip below was a success?”

  “The cult destroyed a subsidiary metadrive core,” Aimee said with a nod. “Vant managed to reroute power to reduce the strain on the remaining ones. It restored functionality to a lot of the ship, and it’ll hold for a while, but Iseult’s engines aren’t going to be as strong as they were before. He’s still down there, doing everything he can, then he’ll rejoin us.”

  “That’s my genius brother,” Vlana said with a quiet, fierce warmth.

  “We’ve redone our math,” Clutch said. “We’re definitely in the Tempest Crescent… and it looks like, from what one of Rachim’s people said, Tristan is too. From what I hear, though, they’re even worse off than we are. A small supply ship has already been sent over to make contact, but I guess communications from that way are garbled and don’t make much sense.”

  “Lord Yaresh is still trying to bring order to the upper levels,” Vlana said, crossing her arms with a sigh. “Talk to enough servants and you get a pretty clear picture. The working people on the top levels are scared to death. The sort of language our Lord of the Muster is using is all purges, and death-to-the-filth-from-below. Most of them have families there. They’re terrified.”

  And all that rage would soon be vented at – more than likely – one of their own. “Alright,” Aimee said, organizing her thoughts. “Here’s where we are: Yaresh hasn’t made his move yet. Vant is down below in the chamber, and Belit’s second-in-command Hakat is leading the chamber’s defense. Belit herself is going to take the ‘investigation’ of Pentus’s death into her own hands, since as commander of the Red Guard, she can argue that it should fall under her purview. As for us…” She took a deep breath. The way they all looked at her, she was in command, a thought that terrified her.

  “We have a few priorities: we need to make sure Elysium is ready to fly at a moment’s notice. We need to start figuring out what the hell happened to Hark. We need sleep,�
�� she took a deep breath, “and I need to figure out what he was studying right before he vanished. Is that sufficient directions?”

  One by one they nodded. “Relax,” Clutch said with a smile as she walked past. “We’ve been at this long enough. We know our jobs.”

  “I’ll do a top to bottom sweep,” Vlana said, picking up her tools and signaling to Bjorn, “then it’s crash time. Don’t burn the oil too long, any of us. Rest is gonna count for a lot in the next few days.”

  Bjorn was the last to leave, and when he stood beside them he paused. “He’d be proud,” was all he said.

  “Thank you,” Aimee said, smiling her best. “But don’t talk about him in the past tense. We’re going to find him. I know it.”

  Entertaining the alternative wasn’t possible for her right now. She waited for a few moments as the footsteps receded into the distance. Then it was only her, Elias, and a whole lot of awkward silence.

  “Aimee–” he started.

  “Don’t,” she cut him off. “I’m still mad at you.”

  He stared at her, then objection settled into a look of resignation. That somehow only made her angrier, and before she knew it, the words were pouring out of her like blood from a wound. “How could you do that? What in the abyss is wrong with you?”

  A pause followed. Then Elias simply said, “I was trying to warn you, trying to protect you. I didn’t think–”

  “No,” she said, and the pain in her own voice was tangible, burning. “Clearly you didn’t. Elias, step back and consider the bigger picture: we are surrounded by enemies. There’s a necromancer at large and a cult down below, and right now? They’re winning. You do nobody any good rotting in a cell, and I can’t have your self-destructive guilt threatening to take you out of the picture, do you understand?”

  “Shortly before he vanished,” Elias continued, “Harkon spoke to me… he asked me to protect you all, to–”

  “You can’t protect us if you’re dead!” It was coming out of her now, full force. Her eyes were wet, her voice was cracking. Her fists clenched by her side. “You’re an ace up our sleeve, a fucking member of this crew, and we can’t have you taking yourself out of play, do you understand me?” She was shouting. “Dammit, Elias Leblanc, I need–” The words caught in her throat and she corrected herself. “We need you!”

  Elias stood there, a wreck of a person, then nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. Then, “I feel responsible.”

  “You shouldn’t,” she started to say. “This has nothing to do with–”

  “I’m not talking about my time as Azrael,” he cut her off quietly. “A few days ago, I met with Pentus in some other aristocrat’s private garden. I didn’t know when I agreed to meet that it was with him. I thought, when I went, that it might have presented some new opportunity for us. Instead he needled me, having clearly heard rumors as to my abilities and past. He wanted me to ally with him. I refused, and walked away.”

  He looked down, then back up at her. “And now he is dead.”

  Aimee strove to wrap her mind about all of the implications of this. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I thought – naively –” Elias answered “–that my departure was the end of it. As for the conversation, there was no need to burden you all with it. Harkon’s position demanded neutrality.”

  Aimee hated to admit that with all her anger, but it wasn’t wrong. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for his death,” she said. “Listen to your own advice. Don’t carry his weight. Let it go.”

  She was one to talk. The dead engineer still hung heavy at the back of her thoughts. When this was done, she imagined a good, solid cry was coming.

  But for her words, she was rewarded with a sad, rueful smile from the man across from her. “Yet here we are,” he said.

  In the honesty was a pain she recognized. “Here we are,” she agreed.

  It seemed to take her an eternity to walk the length of the ship to Harkon’s cabin. Longer, it felt like, to bring herself to open the door and step inside. The private room of the mage who meddled was part study, part bedroom, part place of experimentation. Atlases were everywhere, and a small collection of books had been left out on the bed, presumably what he’d been reading before the Grand Ball. There, on an open page, she saw a strange diagram, and next to it scrawled the words “Soul,” and “Bind.” A separate book showed what appeared to be an organic crystal of some sort.

  Aimee took a deep breath, and held back the tears. There would be time later. She didn’t tell herself when that would be. No false optimism could guide her actions now. She would not cry yet. She would not collapse into a fit of painful wallowing.

  She would get to the bottom of this mess, solve the problem, and bring the monsters behind it down.

  Pushing back her exhaustion, Aimee pulled up a chair before the books Harkon had been studying before he vanished.

  “Alright, teacher,” she murmured. “Show me what you found…”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ash and Blood

  Elias Leblanc dreamed terrible dreams. Pentus’s corpse was slowly torn apart on the council table, remade as a nail-covered rack whose chains creaked and groaned in tune with the sounds of crunching bones. In the distance, the miserable echo of the specter loomed, wearing his own, empty-eyed face as a rictus mask of snarling flesh. He swept his sword at shadows that mocked and fled and danced, ever out of reach. Every time he spun or turned, the light cast by Oath of Aurum made new shadows that gnawed at his limbs and staggered his steps.

  At the last, he stood upon a vast plane of dust and ash, and turning, beheld the ruins of a vast city of impossible beauty laid low. It was filled with the sounds of clamor, of ringing blades and crackling magic. His senses hummed, pulling him towards the noise, and with every footstep that took him nearer, the sounds grew more distinct.

  He was nearly at the gates, when a high-pitched scream of a thousand voices tore outward, ripping through his mind. From the heart of the ruin, a beam of white light shot mournfully into the sky. A sword pierced a heart. The storm roared at the edge of perception, and pale roses grew from a white chalice.

  Silence. The simple warmth of a familiar cottage. His mother sat in an armchair, humming a familiar melody that made his heart ache. He raised his eyes to ones so like his own, and she smiled.

  “My dear boy,” he heard her say. “You need to wake up.”

  BANG.

  His eyes opened. He lay on his back upon the hardwood floor of his cabin, bedclothes in a sweaty tangle about himself. His breath came in a slow rhythm, and the melody still played through his head.

  And gods, everything hurt.

  BANG. This time he started at the sound – a knock, hard, on his door – and staggered to his feet. “Elias!” the voice was Bjorn’s. “Up! Gotta get to the Council Hall!”

  That brought him immediately to consciousness, sharp and focused, if not articulate. “Mmm up!” he reflexively shouted back. “Gotta pants. Boots. Sword.”

  Silence followed, then Bjorn answered, “Whatever you need to do, kid.”

  Elias swore under his breath and started pulling on his clothes. Definitely not articulate.

  By the time he arrived in Rachim’s foyer, the others were all assembled, looking bleary-eyed and tired. Aimee had both hands folded over a mug, and despite the generally put-together appearance she projected, the hint of tiredness at the corners of her eyes told Elias that she’d barely slept last night.

  “Alright, someone bring me up to speed?” Elias asked.

  “Yaresh has called an emergency council meeting,” Aimee said. “He tried to keep us out, but Rachim brought the hammer down, so we’re going, but we have to do it now.”

  “And it’s show-of-force time,” Bjorn said. The big warrior was fully armed now, with his two-handed sword across his back. “There will be lots of armsmen there. The man is dangerously unstable, and looking to force the process.”

  “I didn’t want it to come to this,�
� Rachim agreed, “but I’m bringing my armsmen, too, and Viltas. Belit will hold her ground as custodian of the investigation into Pentus’s death, and one of hers holds the metadrive chamber. We’re well positioned, we just… don’t know exactly what the madman is going to do yet.”

  “I need all hands for this,” Aimee said, finishing off her mug, then sweeping her blue eyes around the assembled. “Is everyone ready?”

  A series of nods. Elias tightened his sword belt and followed. He’d gone to bed sincerely fearing accusations of murder in the morning, but now there wasn’t even time in which to feel any fear. His hand grasped Oath of Aurum’s hilt. A familiar warmth flared in response.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  The doorway to the hall was ringed by Yaresh’s security forces in their finery. The clouds shielded the sun outside the windows, and a cold, damp gray filled the heavens immediately about Iseult. As Elias beheld the wall of shock-spears, the head of their number stepped forward to address Rachim. “You dare bring armsmen to this council function?” he snarled.

  “My men are here to counter your own,” Rachim snapped back. He wore his armor this time, and despite his stooped, limping stature, commanded a presence that made the gilded officer pause.

  “Lord Yaresh has commanded me to secure this hallowed building against any roughness, rioting, or factional uproar.” Finding his courage, he added, “You were host to Harkon Bright, moderator of the deliberations over the elections to captaincy, but I do not see him.”

  “Harkon is among the missing in the aftermath of the portal storm,” Aimee said, stepping forward. “As his apprentice and second, I am empowered to act in his stead.”

  Elias’s eyebrows raised. Bold. The armsman looked down his nose at the blonde sorceress about whom many rumors had spread. Elias couldn’t help but notice the hint of reservation on the man’s face. Somewhere between fear and respect.

  “You are Aimee de Laurent,” he said. “Many from the Grand Ball owe you their lives. Our gratitude is beyond measure, but that does not entitle you to dictate terms to this council.”