Dragon Road

by Joseph Brassey

  “No magic sword,” the dead thing snarled, “no victory for the little wretch. I wonder what I can do with your corpse?”

  “There’s so much more to me than you know,” Elias said. No more bystanders to worry about now. He wrestled his hands free, slammed them into the dead thing’s chest with all his strength. Magic flared beneath his fingers. Detonated upwards. The thing screamed and released him. Elias rolled, snatched up his sword, and split the monstrosity from crotch to neck.

  He vaulted back over the wall in time to watch as Aimee’s shield spell collapsed. But Viltas and Vallus were behind her, and five of the remaining armsmen.

  The two of the dead that had set upon them were burnt, charred-out husks, and something was happening to the sorceress. Her hands trailed wisps of smoke, and a furious expression was on her face. The spell, he thought. Harkon taught her a new spell.

  The moment the shield collapsed, Aimee’s limbs swept through gestures of wind, flame, and frost, slammed into a focus point, and blasted a beam of iridescent light straight through the center of the foremost of the dead. It burned like tissue paper, as did the one behind. The remaining five charged forward. Elias hurtled into their midst. The world was light and shearing steel. Steam and falling rain. Claws, blades, leering eyes and ripping limbs filled his senses. He was hit. Repeatedly. His piecemeal armor was knocked loose. He felt something cut his face. Focus on me! his mind screamed. Focus on me!

  Blood and burnt flesh fell like ash and rain.

  He twisted as the last two tried to slip past. They blurred ahead of him at his companions. Elias chased. The remaining armsmen barred their way. The dead charged through them, lunged at Aimee, Vallus, and Viltas. Aimee’s hands flashed. The spell shot out again as Elias launched himself at the other. The first exploded in a shower of ash and blood. Elias hewed at the second. The sword traced a shearing white line across his vision. It was just a hair faster. He heard it roaring Viltas’s name. A shape moved in front of it. Vallus screamed, “FATHER!”

  The sword cut through the dead thing, and it burned away. Overbalanced, Elias rolled. His shoulder slammed painfully down and he tumble-fell, bouncing across the stones of the street, landing on his back. The breath left him. His head struck something hard. The world grew indistinct and fuzzy.

  Screams brought him back. He rolled. Blood in his eyes. His fingers tingled. Concussion. He knew the signs. He had to move. He snatched the enchanted sword from the ground. The heat of its blade had burnt away the blood that had stained it. It took him a moment to focus, and his vision finally landed on the source of the sound. Elias’s heart froze, and his mouth dried. No. Too late. Not fast enough.

  Viltas was on his knees in the street, Aimee immediately opposite the lord shipman. The screams came from the old man, cradling his son in his arms. Vallus’s breath came in choking gasps, and across his chest, a horrible, bleeding gash had opened him up.

  “Vallus,” Viltas sobbed. Each time he screamed, the sound hit Elias like another blow to the head. Everything was gray and red. Thunder rolled in the distance, and the rain poured ceaselessly from a weeping sky.

  “Vallus!”

  “VALLUS!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Blind and the True

  The spell Harkon taught her – Radiance – to use against the dead had worked, but Aimee felt numb. Her footsteps carried her down the interior hall of Viltas’s humbler dwelling. She stopped just short of the common area where the others were waiting, and leaned against the cool wood panels of the wall. Dimly, she was aware of the intricate patterns on the walls – swirls of ivy and lightning, intermingled and faded across the pitted, scarred surface. Despite being a prominent hero to many on Iseult, and an officer aristocrat of some positioning, Viltas didn’t put much of his resources into enriching himself. Hephus. Her uncle. Countless dead at Port Providence. Possibly her teacher – no, she wouldn’t think it – the list of dead weighing on her conscience was only growing.

  Slowly, she made herself turn the corner. Viltas waited in his main foyer. He looked as if he’d lived a hundred years in a day. She ignored the others for a moment, making herself focus only on him.

  Then she took a deep breath and said, “He will live.”

  Viltas breathed out, closed his eyes, and wept. Aimee felt her own eyes wetting, and let the relieved smile come. Today, at least, she’d managed to save one.

  The next sign of relief she heard came from Belit. The commander of the Red Guard stood just behind the lord shipman, her hand in a viselike grip on his own. Her face relaxed visibly at the news, and she breathed out. “Thank you, Aimee de Laurent,” she said. “How is he?”

  Aimee folded her arms and leaned a tired shoulder against the wall. “Well, that’s the other side of things,” she said slowly. “The chirurgeon you called was able to work quickly enough for me to apply the healing spell… but the trauma was immense. If I had to guess, I wouldn’t expect him to be awake again for at least a day. If you want him to make a full recovery, you won’t let him get out of bed for a week. Minimum.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Viltas shook his head. “Alive. Able to fully recover. These are the things that matter. I owe you a debt that cannot possibly be repaid.”

  “Can I see him?” Belit asked.

  “Of course,” Aimee said with a nod. “The chirurgeon still watches over him, and he’s not awake, but you can sit with him. It might be good for him, honestly.”

  The tall swordswoman walked past her, after giving Viltas’s hand a squeeze. “Thank you,” she said again, as she passed Aimee, then her footsteps receded down the hallway behind them. Aimee allowed herself to become more aware of other people in the room. Bjorn had been summoned back, and Clutch had come with him. The old warrior still wore the armor he’d donned when they went to the Council Hall, and the pilot looked ready to take one of her long knives straight to someone’s throat. Both were comforting sights.

  Elias stood by the window, his head heavily bandaged. The black knight stared out into the rain as if by doing so he might freeze each drop. She’d done what she could for his injuries, but he needed rest. There was no substitute.

  Before she could say anything, Viltas said, “This would have all been different, if Amut had only had legitimate children of his own.”

  Aimee looked up, drawn from her concern for her friend. It struck her that it had never occurred to her to ask as to the family of the late captain. “Had he no family?” she asked. “I was not aware that the captaincy could pass from parent to child.”

  “Not by default,” the lord shipman said with a shake of his head. “But he was a good man. He’d have been a good father, and might have raised a suitable candidate to follow in his footsteps. But the only woman he ever loved was some downleveler girl. The officer aristocracy would never have had it, and when she died… it changed him. He became ever more set on reform, after that. Bettering their lives, chipping away at the privileges of his fellow officers. He slowed inexplicably, the past few years, but he might have succeeded, if he only had more time.”

  Viltas ran a hand through his graying hair and shook his head. “It’s a sorry sight for folk like you to see, I’m sure. We were heroes, once. Now the rest of my old companions are dead, and here I am, trapped by the very social system I fought to reform.” His voice turned bitter. “Waiting for my failures to kill me.”

  Aimee crossed her arms, reflected on the books she’d obsessively studied since Harkon vanished. The texts over which her teacher had pored, prior to his disappearance. One page on a tome concerning the nature of necromancy stood out in her mind, and the theoretical horrors of which it was capable.

  “Before he disappeared,” Aimee said, “my teacher was researching the lore around necromancy, and what a practitioner such as this Faceless might have been capable of. What I’m about to say doesn’t leave this room… but I don’t think he hides among the downlevelers. I think he hides among your peers: the officer aristocrats.”

&nbs
p; Viltas looked up at her, his tired eyes intent and thoughtful. “Do you?”

  “He knew,” Elias said. He stared out the window as he spoke, frowning at the rainstorm.

  “I don’t understand,” Viltas said.

  “When the Faceless spoke through his assassins,” Elias said, “he called me Fallen Angel. Only three people on this ship know the significance of those words, and one of them is dead.”

  “You can’t think that Belit–” Aimee began.

  “I don’t,” Elias shook his head. “I’ve spent endless hours working closely with her. If she was any sort of mage I’d have smelled it.”

  “You can do that?” Viltas asked.

  “Not always,” the black knight answered. “But suppressing that sort of power into invisibility is… hard. The longer you’re around someone doing it, the greater the chance they’ll slip up.”

  “I had no idea,” Viltas said. “But I don’t know much about the Eternal Order.”

  “Most don’t,” Aimee covered quickly.

  “Then I shall pry no further,” the lord shipman said. “I should’ve said this in the hall when we stared at Pentus’s corpse, so I’ll say it now: you have more than proven your quality to me, over and over. Your secrets are your own.”

  A knock echoed at the door, abrupt, jarring. Viltas rose, waving off the armsman that emerged into the room at the sound. “Back to your post,” he said simply. “I’m not so frail and afraid that I can’t open my own door.”

  “You need to head back to Elysium,” Aimee said to Elias after Viltas had left the room. “I patched up your head, but it’s still going to take rest before you’re fieldworthy again.”

  “It feels fine,” Elias said, still not turning. “I’ve fought through worse. I’m durable.”

  “No, lad,” Bjorn said, “you’re young. And a demon is no longer force-patching your skull every time something cracks it. Those wounds’ll add up before long. Listen to her, or I’ll haul you back myself.”

  The black knight turned, and looked between the two of them. “You’d have to leave her without a bodyguard.”

  “Excuse you,” Clutch said. “You forgetting that I put an axe through undead skulls myself just a few days ago? Don’t sweat it, pretty boy. I’m not going anywhere.”

  A half second later, Viltas reemerged, and beside him was a young woman Aimee hadn’t seen before – tanned, with wiry, dark hair bound up in an intricate series of knots at the back of her head, and dressed in midnight blue. It took her a second to mark the starlight symbol of the astronomers at her collar.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Viltas said, “but this is First Lieutenant Haysha of the astronomers. She’s come to speak with you, Aimee.”

  Haysha didn’t waste a moment. “Miss Laurent,” she said. “Forgive my intrusion, but I come on behalf of my liege, Countess Diara. She wants to speak with you immediately.”

  Bjorn did – in fact – insist on bringing Elias back to Elysium, so it was in Clutch’s company that Aimee made her way towards the ivory-tinted dome where the astronomers worked under Diara’s ceaseless supervision. They walked through the lingering after-drizzle of the passing squall. The streets were soaked, and Aimee had her hood up.

  “My liege is grateful for your agreement,” Haysha said as they walked. “She likewise wishes to convey her admiration for your work, both here, and in Port Providence. Rumors travel swiftly, and your teacher was not shy about his praise.”

  “Did she spare any for the daring, legendary pilot of Elysium, by any chance?” Clutch asked, giving the astronomer a sideways glance of obvious interest. “I’m asking for a friend.”

  Haysha shot Clutch an amused – not disinterested – glance in return. “She didn’t, but I’ve heard stories, and appreciate the legends.”

  Aimee let out a small laugh. “You’re shameless,” she said.

  “When you’ve seen the things I’ve seen,” Clutch answered, “living in the moment is the only thing that makes any sort of sense.”

  Stepping into the dome was a jarring experience. Enchantments upon the ceiling high over their heads recast the space above them as a vast view of the night sky, with a thousand constellations. Aimee paused, momentarily arrested by the panorama. She’d seen similar star-maps – they had one in the academy back in Havensreach – but she’d never witnessed one this big. She racked her brain, trying to call to mind the names: they were far from her home, and the positions were all different. Still, she thought she recognized the Pillar and the Hatchet. Far to the aerial north was the Wheelwright of Stars and his grand chariot.

  Out of the corner of her eye she watched Clutch throw a salute in its direction. At the questioning glance that followed, the pilot said, “All pilots salute the Wheelwright, Aimee. Gotta give credit to the ones who came before.”

  Up ahead, in the center of the dome, a control station crowned the rise of a cylindrical dais climbed by a set of milk-pale stairs. Its top was broad and flat, and dozens of astronomers moved here and there, chatting irritably as they examined old parchment maps, comparing them to the heavens. There was a general air of unease as the trio approached – even panic.

  “What’s got them all worked up?” Clutch asked, though something in her tone implied that she had suspicions.

  “My liege will explain better than I can,” Haysha said. “But in brief, we are losing our ability to properly read the constellations.”

  That brought Aimee’s head swiveling from its observation of the platform to staring at Haysha as they walked. “What?”

  “As I said,” the astronomer answered, “my liege can explain better.”

  And there at the top of the stairs was Diara. She had yet to change from the uniform she’d donned for the aouncil meeting. The Countess of Astronomers stood over a central table that contained a vast atlas more detailed than any Aimee had ever seen – and more ancient, by the look of it. The older woman’s eyes settled on her, and she gave Haysha a nod, before the other astronomer went back to her duties, sparing a small, coy smile for Clutch.

  “Aimee de Laurent,” Diara said. “I had hoped we might get to speak under better circumstances. Thank you for heeding my request. I know it appears… irregular.”

  The risk the countess took of delegitimizing her efforts towards the captaincy was not lost on Aimee. The council already distrusted the woman. If she was perceived as attempting to sway the moderator…

  “These are clearly irregular times,” Aimee answered.

  “This has nothing to do with the captaincy,” Diara answered. “Save by small proxy. I understand you have been looking into Captain Amut’s murder, and I have heard that mere hours ago you were attacked by more of those monsters in the street.”

  “Both correct,” Aimee said. “Rumors travel fast. We did not yet report what happened.”

  “Risky,” the countess said with a shake of her head. “If those things can reach the upper levels, then–”

  “I believe they originated on the upper levels, with respect,” Aimee countered. “The belief that their master lurks among the downlevelers is a preposterous idea that only Yaresh believes. There are no secret passageways or quick byways near Viltas’s residence. These things came from up here this time.”

  “Nonetheless, he will not wait, once word reaches him,” Diara warned. “But that is not why I called you. For what it is worth, I believe you, because Yaresh was correct: Pentus and I argued less than an hour before he was killed. On the night of the portal storm. And ever since we came to this wretched Tempest Crescent, our ability to read the divinatory signs has diminished. Today it has dropped precipitously, and I fear that I know why.”

  At this, the countess gestured at a place at the edge of her vast parchment map. Aimee followed the movement to where it stopped at what seemed almost a barrier of clouds drawn onto the page. “The storm dropped us much deeper into the crescent than we at first suspected,” Diara continued. “I estimate we are less than three days’ straight flight from the wal
l of the maelstrom.”

  The Axiom’s warning flashed through Aimee’s mind, and she recalled the vision. “What did you and Pentus argue about?” she asked. “Forgive my prying, but if that information can be used to dispel dangerous rumors, I would have you tell me.”

  Diara paused, assessed Aimee with a carefully neutral face, then sighed. “He came to me, raving like a lunatic, hours after the portal storm ended. I have known Pentus at least passingly since he first came to power as duke of the midlevels. He has always been eccentric, but this was… beyond madness. He claimed to have gone down to his fief after the clamor started, to assure himself that everything was in order. Then his words degenerated into nonsensical talk of secret rooms, and a man encased in crystal. He screamed about a corpse-throne and a black book, then he begged me to use my influence to immediately turn the ship around.”

  Corpse-thrones. Black books. Familiar motifs, at least, but it was the man encased in crystal that stuck in her head, calling to mind a page in one of her teacher’s books. A spell she couldn’t quite remember the name of. Hephus’s last words echoed in her head. Beneath.

  Where was Pentus’s estate in comparison to the metadrive chamber?

  “And you couldn’t,” Aimee said, urging Diara to continue.

  “Even if I had that influence, no. Tristan has been falling deeper towards the storm since we arrived. The wheelhouse will not see our sister ship abandoned, and they are still trying to reestablish contact.”

  Aimee ran her hands through her hair. This was maddening. Every time she thought she understood who was in control of the ship, it seemed to change dramatically. “So, absent a captain,” she said, “the ship is functionally ruled by the wheelhouse, while the council argues about who should be captain next, and each of these damned lord-officer-whatevers conducts their duties and their affairs as they see fit with no oversight?”