The Last Lies of Ardor Benn

by Tyler Whitesides

  “How sure are you that this isn’t a trap?” Mohdek asked in Trothian.

  “Come on, Moh,” she replied in his language. “It was Ardor Benn.”

  “Yes,” he said, tone markedly unenthusiastic. “The famous Ardor Benn. Known criminal and ruse artist.”

  “Apparently, he’s reformed,” she replied. “He said he’s a Holy Isle now.”

  “And I’m a Lander nobleman,” he remarked, less a joke than a cutting statement made to prove a point. “We should have met on more neutral ground. He’s had hours to get ready for us.”

  “He had to round up his friends,” she explained. “And I had to round up you.” Mohdek’s fajumar had been cut a little short, but his blue skin was still glistening smooth.

  “Are we going aboard, or not?” Lomaya asked, tired of being excluded from their many conversations in Trothian.

  “See,” Nemery said to Mohdek, switching to Landerian. “I’m not the only one who trusts him.”

  “I don’t know about trusting him,” said Lomaya. “But he knew too much about my professor and his secret work. If he isn’t an ally, then he’s a lingering part of that group I was telling you about.”

  “The Realm,” said Nemery.

  “Which means he might know Garifus Floc,” Mohdek pointed out.

  “Fine,” Nemery said. “You two are welcome to stay on the docks, but I’m going to talk to him. The Ardor Benn I knew might have been a criminal, but he was a good person.”

  “And how much have you changed in the last four years?” asked Mohdek. She didn’t answer. “Is it not reasonable to think that he might have, as well?”

  “Of course,” she said. “And it sounds like it’s been for the better.” Without waiting for her companions to deliberate any further, Nemery headed up the ramp.

  “Nemery Baggish?” She was greeted by a woman with a shaved head and a handful of glittering jewels in both of her ears. Tattoos of curling flames spread up her arms and neck.

  “I go by Salafan,” Nemery said.

  “And I go by Your Highness, but nobody calls me that,” said the woman. “Captain Torgeston Dodset.” She reached out for an introductory shake, her hand in a fingerless leather glove.

  “I’m here to see Ardor Benn,” Nemery explained, aware that Mohdek and Lomaya had come up behind her.

  “He’s expecting you.” The captain pointed to a door beneath the quarterdeck. “I’m loaning you my cabin for this meeting. Make sure Ard doesn’t move my favorite chair.”

  “You’re not joining us?” Nemery asked.

  Captain Dodset shook her head. “I’ve got a very specific set of skills. Traipsing across Pekal is not one of them.” She ran her hand along the ship’s rail. “I’ll keep the Stern Wake ready to run in case you all come back.”

  In case?

  With a nod, Nemery moved past the woman, leading the way across the deck. She didn’t like the harbor, let alone boarding a ship. It felt too much like leaving Pekal.

  At the door to the cabin, Nemery glanced at Mohdek one last time, giving him a chance for a final rebuttal. He must have known that she’d shut him down regardless of what he said, because he kept his mouth closed, merely acknowledging her with a resigned shrug.

  Nemery knocked.

  There was a quiet stretch, when the only thing she heard was the beat of her own heart. It really hadn’t slowed since she’d seen Ardor Benn in Burdal’s Provisions. After all these years, imagining what it would be like to reunite, but realizing its absolute improbability, she felt enlivened and a little bit frightened.

  So many old memories had awakened at the sight of his face. Memories of the girl she’d been on that first terrifying trip to Pekal. The validation she’d felt from her obsessive study of dragon books, and her hard work studying with a Master Caller. Ardor Benn had been the first person to see her true potential, and now she felt tremendous pressure not to let him down.

  The door opened, and there he was, waving the three of them inside. She saw Raekon Dorrel first, sitting on a chair with his huge arms resting on the edge of a square table. Raek had been the one who’d actually hired her for that ill-fated job all those years ago. Nemery hadn’t trusted him the same way she had Ardor. He’d seemed rougher, more Settled. Strangely, she didn’t feel the same judgment toward him now. After hunting poachers for so many cycles, she knew what a real villain looked like. And it wasn’t Raek.

  Quarrah Khai was seated beside him, and Nemery smiled at the sight of her. She remembered Ardor kissing Quarrah outside the Caller hut four years ago. He had been unsure about their future then, but the fact that she was here now must have meant things had worked out between them.

  As Ardor swung the cabin door closed, Nemery turned, spotting a new figure standing against the wall. She let out an involuntary yelp, drawing an arrow from her quiver and clumsily pulling the bow off her shoulder.

  It was a Glassmind.

  The woman stood so tall that she was hunched to avoid bumping her cowled glass head on the cabin ceiling. Even with the dark cloak, she was easy to recognize with that pale blue-and-gold skin and those red eyes shining through the dim room.

  “It’s all right.” Ardor reached out, placing a hand on her bow. “She’s with us.” Nemery tried to relax, but she noticed that Mohdek didn’t lower his sword.

  “Prime Isless Gloristar,” Ard introduced, “meet my friend Nemery Baggish.”

  “Prime Isless…” Nemery started. But her awestruck rambling was nipped in the bud as the tall Glassmind woman moved across the room in three long strides.

  “Homeland afar,” Gloristar whispered, fiery eyes piercing over Nemery’s shoulder. “Lomaya Vans?”

  Nemery glanced back at her companion, who looked paler than ever, staring up at the Glassmind. Finally, she bowed her head in respect.

  Gloristar reached out, fingers gently touching the young woman’s chin and lifting her gaze. “Portsend Wal would raise a prayer to the Homeland to see you safe and well. He worried about you until his final breath. You, and San—”

  “Oh,” Ardor cut in. “So you two already know each other?”

  Behind the table, Raek rose abruptly, chair sliding out behind him. “I know her, too,” he said.

  “I met you once,” Raek continued to Lomaya. “Not sure if you remember.”

  “I remember.” Lomaya seemed much less enthused to see Raekon Dorrel. In fact, if the touch of a Glassmind hadn’t sent Lomaya running, Raek’s attention nearly did.

  “Well, this is turning out to be quite the reunion, isn’t it?” Ardor clapped his hands together contentedly.

  Raek was massaging his sternum in a peculiar way and Nemery could see something bulging beneath his sleeveless shirt. Perhaps a pendant on a necklace, or something?

  “The Prime Isless is right,” Raek continued to Lomaya. “There was a time when old Portsend thought he’d lost you. Keeping you safe was what drove him on. He spoke of you and San often.” Raek tilted his head curiously. “Where have you been?”

  “Perhaps a great place to start,” Ardor said, gesturing for Nemery and her companions to take a seat at the table next to Quarrah. Nemery remembered the thief to be a quiet one, rarely speaking unless it was necessary.

  A good balance for Ardor Benn, she thought. Like Moh and me.

  “When Professor Wal sent us away,” began Lomaya, seating herself across from Raek, “San and I fled to northern Talumon. We knew the formulas for six types of liquid Grit, and we knew the source material for the seventh. When the war ended, we got ahold of some digested, powdered dragon tooth and began our own experiments.”

  “You didn’t go back to the college?” Raek asked.

  Lomaya shook her head. “We’d heard that Professor Wal had been killed. And we didn’t know who to trust in Beripent. The Realm…” She trailed off, and Nemery could see the fear on her face. For a group Nemery had never heard of, this Realm had really shaken up a lot of people.

  “About a half a year ago,” Lomaya continue
d, “San and I had a breakthrough. We’d been successful in creating a detonation cloud with the dragon tooth solution, but we didn’t know what it did. After literally hundreds of tests on mammals, we decided to vary the experimentation, using birds, reptiles, and amphibians. The cloud had no measurable effect on a mature frog, but when we tested it on a tadpole—”

  “It immediately turned into a frog,” Raek finished. “The professor’s tests reached a similar conclusion.”

  “But we knew there had to be a better application for this Transformation Grit,” she said.

  “Transformation Grit?” Ardor cut in. “Portsend called it Metamorphosis Grit.”

  “Don’t think it matters which name you call it,” Quarrah said.

  “I just want us all to be on the same page,” replied Ardor defensively. “We should decide which one to call it.”

  “She can call it what she wants,” Quarrah pressed. “We’re all smart enough to track this conversation.”

  Yep. Nemery grinned. Only a couple in love could argue like that.

  “How did you figure out the Moonsickness connection to the Grit?” Raek asked Lomaya.

  “I’m afraid we can’t take credit for that,” Lomaya said softly. “A few cycles back, San and I were trying to put together more details about Professor Wal’s death. We’d heard it somehow involved the Prime Isless.” She glanced at Gloristar, still standing beside the table. “But reports about what had happened to you were as numerous as the stars. Eventually, our search led us to a religious cult—a group of zealots that had splintered from Wayfarism over one particular point.” Her gaze was fixed on Gloristar. “You.”

  “Me?” whispered the Glassmind. The complexity and resonance of her voice sent a chill down Nemery’s spine.

  “They called themselves the Glassmind cult,” continued Lomaya. “Their leader is a man named Garifus Floc, Faceless in the Realm, and a former palace Regulator who claims he saw you after your transformation.”

  “That’s probable,” Ardor said. “There were half a dozen Reggies in the throne room that night.”

  “Well, the Prime Isless made an impact on this one,” said Lomaya. “He promptly left the Regulation and dedicated himself to finding out exactly what had happened to you. By the time San and I crossed his path, Garifus knew that you had been Moonsick, and that someone had transformed you using unknown Grit. The cultists were crazy. Garifus was sending the most devout up to Pekal, telling them that if they believed, they could change like Gloristar.”

  Quarrah suddenly sat forward. “How long had these groups been going up?”

  “Several cycles,” Lomaya answered.

  “I stole one of them.”

  “What?” Ardor and Raek cried in unison.

  “That’s what I was doing the night I found the note in the broken vase,” Quarrah explained. “Lord Dulith had hired me to steal a Moonsick person. He’d claimed to have a cure, which had interested me enough to do the job. But it was just a cover.”

  “Then why did he want a Bloodeye?” Ardor asked.

  “Revenge,” answered Quarrah.

  Nemery shuddered. She didn’t understand exactly what Quarrah was saying, but it reminded her how demented “civilized” people could be. They put on airs in their fancy manors, or common neighborhoods, but people in the city were every bit as savage as the animals on Pekal.

  “And you told Garifus about the Transformation Grit?” Gloristar asked.

  “Not directly,” said Lomaya. “Some of his followers had just come back from Pekal. They were chained up, their minds lost to Moonsickness. When we saw them, San and I asked if we could try to save them. That got Garifus’s attention.”

  “Did it work?” Nemery asked.

  Lomaya shook her head. “They were too far gone—into the final stage. But by that point, Garifus was intrigued by us. He held us hostage, demanding that we improve our Grit formula and try again. We explained that we couldn’t alter the Grit, but perhaps if we had a fresher specimen…”

  Lomaya didn’t seem excited to finish the story, so Nemery took over.

  “We rescued Lomaya at the summit, but nine of them had already transformed. One of them didn’t want to play by Garifus’s rules, so they killed him without lifting a finger.”

  “What?” said Ardor. “How?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “It was like they could read each other’s thoughts. When they didn’t like what this guy was thinking, they just shattered his head. Tell them what you saw, Moh.”

  Clearly uncomfortable by the sudden attention, Mohdek shifted his feet where he’d been standing behind Nemery’s chair.

  “My eyes saw what Nemery describes,” he began, his nerves making his accent more pronounced than ever. “Their skulls began to glow, and a network of energy connected their minds. I don’t know how to describe it. It was like…”

  “Like seeing thoughts,” finished Gloristar. “My mind was once connected to another. I felt him try to break me as you have described.” She turned to Lomaya. “In your time with Garifus Floc, did he ever mention the name Centrum?”

  Lomaya wrinkled her forehead in thought. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “We believe Centrum is the first Glassmind of this new generation,” explained Ardor. “He’s planning to change civilization as we know it.”

  “Then Garifus will get along great with him,” Lomaya said. “He’s a dangerous man. And now that he’s transformed…”

  “We don’t know where the Glassminds are now,” Nemery said. “They were moving down the mountain faster than anyone I’ve seen, and we were happy to let some distance come between us. We lost their tracks when we came out the bottom of Stormflood Gap. But we don’t think they passed through New Vantage.”

  “Right,” said Ardor. “We’ve been here for two days and I’m sure we would’ve heard from Ednes Holcatch if eight giant people with red glass heads came within ten miles of this town.”

  “Then, where did they go?” Quarrah asked.

  “Garifus will go back to Beripent,” said Lomaya. “The cult makes their headquarters on the eastern outskirts of the city. Are you familiar with Winter Barracks?”

  “It was a reserve during the war,” said Raek. “Termain bunked injured Archkingdom soldiers there until they recovered enough to go back to their deaths. Doesn’t that property belong to the queen?”

  “Garifus Floc purchased it from the crown about a year ago,” explained Lomaya.

  “The guy must be rich,” said Ardor.

  She shook her head. “His followers pooled the money. Garifus promised it would be a safe place for the gathering of the Glassminds.”

  “In other words,” said Ardor, “when his followers came back in the violent throes of Moonsickness, there would be a secure site to lock them up.”

  “But everything’s going to change when they see Garifus and the others transformed,” continued Lomaya. “He’ll rally as many as will follow him back to Pekal’s summit to undergo the change themselves. That’s why I have to get to Beripent. Quick as I can.”

  “To face Garifus?” Raek cried. “Gloristar took a lighthouse to the head and sank to the bottom of the InterIsland Waters for two years, and she’s here to tell us about it. I don’t think these Glassminds are people you want to mess with.”

  “Trust me, we know,” Nemery said.

  “He has San,” Lomaya whispered. “And Garifus claims that his new form has given him understanding of the formula for Transformation Grit.”

  “That’s true,” said Gloristar. “As an Othian, we can absorb detonation clouds and gain a perfect knowledge of their composition.”

  “That’s why I have to go now,” said Lomaya. “If Garifus tried to kill me after he learned the formula, I can only imagine he’ll do the same to San.”

  “Then we better get going,” said Raek, rising to his feet again.

  “You’re… coming with me?” Lomaya whispered.

  Raek nodded his bald head. “It’s what t
he professor would have wanted.”

  At Nemery’s side, Lomaya let out a sudden sob of gratitude, muttering her thanks in tones of disbelief.

  “Hold on. Hold on!” Ardor looked at his partner, injury on his face. “What about the job, Raek?”

  Raek pointed at Prime Isless Gloristar. “She’s got a perfect knowledge of Grit… And she’s got muscles. As long as you have her, I’d say I’m redundant.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t need you,” Ardor cried.

  “Oh, I know you need me,” said Raek. “You can barely find your way from Tofar’s Salts to the apartment without me. But I think you’ve got things covered here. We can rescue San and keep an eye on these crazy cultists until you get back. Besides, I was planning to head back early anyway…”

  “But not until after we get the dragon,” said Ardor.

  “Dragon?” Nemery asked. “What dragon?”

  “Wait,” Quarrah jumped in. “Why was Raek going to leave early?”

  “I have to take care of some business in Beripent,” he answered.

  “What business?” Quarrah asked.

  Ardor and Raek shared a glance. “He’s talking about the clocks,” said Ardor.

  “Clocks?” she repeated suspiciously.

  “I thought we’d take a page out of the Realm’s book,” he explained. “To free the dragon.”

  “Free what dragon?” Nemery asked, her frustration mounting.

  Ardor held up a finger, as though indicating that he’d heard her question and wasn’t ignoring her.

  “It’s the best way to make sure she goes free before the next Moon Passing so she doesn’t get sick,” Ardor continued to Quarrah. “Raek’s going to rig up enough of those chainspring mantel clocks to detonate at a certain hour. It’ll blow the shackles off our beast and she’ll be free to fly home.”

  “And that’s not the only reason I was going home early,” Raek said.

  “It’s not?” Quarrah asked.

  “It’s not?” Ardor repeated.

  “Well, somebody’s got to contact Hedge and tell him to go check out the goods in Helizon,” explained Raek.

  “Oh, of course,” said Ardor. “That goes without saying.”