by Andrew Post
Gorett turned in his seat. And with every ounce of courage Pitka Gorett had left, he unfastened the straps and threw himself across. He’d fire the missile but aim it so it went harmlessly askew—into space or into the sea.
“Gorett. The hell are you doing?” Dreck shouted. He drew his gun. “I won’t warn you a second time.”
Pitka! Mother Worm raged. Stop! You can be a king again. Feared, worshipped, lauded in story and song.
I’ll be known as an awful man, he responded, still reaching, fumbling and scraping and stretching for the launch button, but I refuse to die before doing one thing right.
CHAPTER 23
Words and Steel
Clyde led the group up the walk to the front doors of the chateau, locking up once all were in. Despite everything going on outside, it felt good to be here. Since Mr. Wilkshire’s funeral, Clyde and Nevele hadn’t changed a thing. The tile in the entryway, the fireplaces, the illustrious paneling running throughout the first and second floors—none of it.
“Nice place,” Höwerglaz said.
A brittle female voice called down from the second-floor staircase railing: “Know now, you dogs, I won’t hesitate to put you down if required! I’m armed. Abundantly.”
“It’s us, Miss Selby,” Clyde shouted.
With visible relief, Miss Selby came winding down the staircase’s brass twist, wrinkled face rosy—evidence she’d been crying. “Oh, oh.” She threw her arms around Clyde and Nevele, squeezing them tight. “Where have you two been? I’ve been so worried.” The scolding ended upon her noticing how bloody, burned, and ragged they all were. “I thought for sure . . .” A fragile hand covered her lips. “Oh, my dears. You’re all so . . .”
“We’re all right,” Clyde said, hands on her shoulders. “But why didn’t you leave with the others?”
She straightened. “Dearie, I’ve been booted from this house once, and I don’t intend to ever suffer such again.” She’d been sent to the refugee camps. Her watery eyes lingered on Aksel. “You’re familiar. Were you there, in the camp, last year?”
“I was.”
She smiled. “You made it.”
Aksel nodded weakly. “Mostly.”
She turned to Flam. “Besides, our head security officer said to stay indoors, so I did.”
Aksel paced into the music room. “Got a clean view here.”
Everyone moved into the next room, peeking through the gauzy curtains past the gardens, toward the edge of the platter. There, hovering over the bay in the near distance, was the Magic Carpet.
The glass bubble at its front allowed sight of the two men piloting the thing. They were slapping and punching one another. It took a moment for Clyde to recognize the one in the copilot’s seat, especially since, he now realized, he’d never seen Pitka Gorett in the flesh. Compared to his picture, he now wore a long beard and was remarkably thinner. He was reaching for something on Dreck’s side, pawing wildly, seemingly not caring at all that the pirate captain was beating him, bloodying his nose.
“Did their partnership sour, you suppose?” Nevele snorted.
“They’re distracted. That’s the important thing,” Flam said. “Let’s use that.” The Mouflon moved out of the music room, through the kitchen, to the back doors, and out into the gardens. He lifted his rifle, fired.
“Stay inside, Miss Selby,” Clyde said over the gunfire.
She was as reluctant to let him go as always.
Flam, Aksel, and Nevele, in a row, fired together.
Dreck shoved Gorett away, took the controls in his hands. He turned the Magic Carpet and returned fire.
Clyde pulled Aksel back into cover as the hedges were mowed apart by the salvo.
The house behind them absorbed many of the shots, the pale stone cracking apart, the back windows of the kitchen and dining room shattering. Shredded plant stems and petals and seedpods rained on them. The smell of spent gunpowder mixed with that of freshly-manicured lawn in a heady, incongruous bouquet.
Flam moved out from his cover behind a raised cement planter, fired, and moved between Aksel and Nevele. He handed them some spare ammunition before kneeling
to reload.
“That thing’s shield”—Aksel panted, ducking in as Dreck opened fire again—“keeps knocking everything away.”
While Dreck reduced a row of rose bushes to a flurry of petals, Nevele took the opportunity. Clyde saw it this time, a snaggle of lightning deadening her bullets’ velocity.
Aksel’s Odium radio crackled. “Clear off, boys. I’m taking it down.” Then another voice: “No! You can’t!”
“We’ve got to do something. He’s going to fire the missile,” Clyde shouted. Peeking over the planter, he saw Gorett again throwing himself onto Dreck.
The Magic Carpet made a sudden sideways leap through the air. This, for Dreck, was apparently the final straw. Using his scattergun stock, he cracked it over Gorett’s head. Gorett immediately slumped unconscious in his seat, tongue lolling.
Dreck, free from distraction now, took the joysticks—thumb poised.
Clyde snatched the radio from Aksel’s hand. “Dreck. Stop. Please. Let’s talk about this.”
Höwerglaz tried grabbing Clyde to drag him back down. “What’re you doin’?”
Clyde spun free and walked the garden pavers, one arm raised in what could be read only as a request for a ceasefire.
Nevele rushed out to him. She paused when she realized not a single Odium ship was firing. It was silent as a Sunday morning.
She stayed beside him, facing the ship.
Dreck pulled up his goggles, shook his head, smiling.
Clyde tried again. “Please just come down. Send someone to talk face-to-face.”
Dreck eyed them a moment, chewing his lip, then turned in his seat. Cupping a hand over his headset mic, he conferred with someone behind him, his voice not coming through the radio.
From behind Nevele and Clyde, Höwerglaz, crouching in cover, called, “Yer juss gonna try an’ talk sense into them? After all they’ve done to your city? After what Gorett, their new buddy, did? He had your father killed; your friend Mr. Wilkshire. Ya juss gonna forgive all that?”
Clyde, hands staying up, answered Höwerglaz. “My revenge means nothing right now, compared to what the city will lose if we continue to fight. We’ve been bested, Ernest. I can admit that.”
Dreck finished speaking to his men, faced forward, chewing his lip again. His shoulders rose, then fell. He unwrapped his fingers from around his mic. “You in cahoots with the queen?”
Clyde raised the radio. “What queen?”
Dreck, framed in his glass bubble, said, “Answers that, I suppose. All right, we’ll land, have a chat. But one of your Patrol fires a shot, we’ll let loose. Understand?”
“Okay.” Clyde looked over his shoulder and shouted to Flam, “Tell the guardsmen to stand down. No one’s to fire.”
Flam repeated the request on his own radio.
Clyde faced the Magic Carpet again. “We’ll meet you in the town square. This is a ceasefire for negotiations. We won’t fire on you if you don’t fire on us. You and I, alone.”
Dreck issued a crisp, if entirely sarcastic, salute.
They picked their way back to the square, passing the hellish landscape Geyser had become in just a handful of hours. More than once, Miss Selby cried out as they passed a dead body or one of her friends’ homes burning to its foundation. Clyde and Nevele walked on either side, arms around her, letting her cry. Right then, Clyde would’ve liked to do the same, really.
They entered through the back of Margaret’s Mends. Miraculously, it appeared untouched by the attack. Not even a cracked windowpane.
Clyde drew aside the blinds, looking out on the ravaged town square. The Praise to Her had gone from a haggard bird to brand-new to what it was now, a blackened husk. Dreck stood beside it, as if lamenting the starship, tugging the rope he’d descended from the Magic Carpet so it’d be drawn back up. Sticking to his word, sur
prisingly, he was unaccompanied. Apparently the pirate had just as much doubt in Clyde, for his ships remained hovering nearby, bomb bay doors open and ready to bring him back up.
Dreck checked his watch, scanning the square.
“I’m going alone,” Clyde said.
“What?” Nevele said. “No way.”
“Please. Let me try. This is my job. He came out alone, and I should do the same. As a courtesy.”
Höwerglaz had taken a seat behind the counter, where Nevele normally sat when waiting away slow days. He grunted a little laugh, chin resting on a tattooed fist. “Courtesy. That’s hilarious. They’re pirates.”
Rohm, apparently having had enough, left the proximity of Höwerglaz on the shop countertop to scamper up Nevele’s arm and sit on her shoulder.
Höwerglaz shrugged at the mouse’s display of disdain. He thrust a finger Clyde’s way. “Look here. This ain’t what I wanted. I wanted a bang, not a whimper. Something excitin’. And here yer juss gonna raise the white flag? Which, come to think, ya’d actually stand in well for. Pale as surrender.”
With balled fists, Flam stepped forward. “Say that again.”
But Clyde moved in first. “What, doesn’t this interest you, someone trying to save their city with words?”
“Yer absolutely right, it doesn’t interest me,” Höwerglaz said. Languidly, he reached toward one of Nevele’s mannequins, and the plaster and papier mâché figure creaked, shriveled like a raisin. Höwerglaz went from thirtysomething to about Clyde’s age, then younger, his voice doing the same as he continued, ratcheting incrementally in pitch, “But go on ahead, give it a whirl, see what good it gets ya. Juss know, when it blows up in yer face, don’t come cryin’.”
Grinding his teeth, Clyde turned to Nevele, Flam, and Aksel. “Keep him in here. They can’t know we have him.”
Before leaving, Clyde took Nevele in his arms, kissed her on the lips. It took effort to look away from her, to turn toward the door, unable to say the words letting her know how much he cared for her.
He had to rely on his words now, just different ones. Clyde exited, closed the door behind him, the little bell jingling, and began his lonely march into the square.
Geyser by twilight. The scant remaining street lamps clicked on, blue-white halos in the hanging smoke.
Dreck Javelin noticed him and waved a greeting.
Clyde’s heart hammered. His boots, still coated in Lakebed dust, impacted the cobblestones, making him feel as if he’d break apart at any time. Dreck remained where he was, under his hovering ships’ careful watch. He was sweaty, still dressed for colder climes, in furs and leather.
Clyde stopped a few paces short. “Thank you for agreeing to this,” he said, having to speak loudly to be heard over the idling ships.
“Not a problem.” Dreck nodded toward Clyde’s side. “Nice stabby stick, by the way. Is that Commencement? I thought your pop had it turned into a gun.”
“I had it turned back into a sword.”
Dreck squinted. “Funny thing to do, but whatever suits your fancy.”
Above them, the Magic Carpet’s hatch was open. Clyde had easy view inside. There it was—the missile—big as an auto, hanging by clawlike clamps. They’d given it a paint job, a sharp-toothed maw, and burning red eyes.
Dreck must’ve noticing him looking. “And that’d be my stabby stick, aye, although it’s got a wee bit more oomph than yours. Not to compare.”
Clyde dropped his gaze from the terrifying sight of the missile to look Dreck in his merry, bloodshot eyes. “Is there any way we can work something out here? Can we allow you to take the wendal stone but leave the city standing?”
“What, with picks and shovels and all that?” Dreck guffawed. “It’d take years. And I’m sure within minutes of us headin’ in, you’d collapse the whole thing behind us.”
“I wouldn’t,” Clyde said sincerely. “If it meant saving Geyser, I’d let you take it. Even if your men had to live on the island, work right alongside our own miners, I’d let you have it.” Clyde noticed a second ship had its bottom hatch open as well, and inside was an enormous spool of metal rope, like a giant squid’s coiled tentacle, a waiting spearhead of a drill bristling with spikes and cutting implements, ready.
“Forgive my bluntness, but I’m not the patient sort. Unless you can give me the coordinates for an even bigger deposit somewhere, we’re gonna have this one.” Dreck stamped on the cobblestone, as if the city were nothing but a stubborn lock on a treasure chest. “And don’t even try being all humble, telling me it’s not that big.”
“But have you seen the deposit with your own eyes? And did you consider the source of those stories?”
Dreck’s eyelids went half-mast. “I know Gorett’s a shite, but he wouldn’t lie about something like this.”
“Would you be willing to trade Gorett for the deposit?” Clyde said. Please, anything. Might even be a bonus, since it seemed Gorett and Dreck weren’t getting along, given their squabble earlier. Nothing would please Clyde more than being able to appoint Gorett a cell in the palace’s dungeon. Maybe even the one Gorett had caged Vidurkis Mallencroix in for years like a caged attack dog. Or like Gorett had done to Nevele. It’d be fitting, if nothing else.
“Eh. No, thanks. I’ve something set aside for him,” Dreck said.
“You can’t make weavers,” Clyde said.
Dreck tried to hide his shock. “Who spilled the beans? It was Proboscis, wasn’t it? Where is he, anyway?”
“Dead.”
“By your hand?” Dreck glanced at Commencement again. “You must’ve caught him off guard. For a man missing a nose, he could sniff out danger like nobody I ever knew.”
“No, it wasn’t me, but it doesn’t matter. We know your plan. How isn’t important. And even if it were possible to create new weavers, you still don’t have Höwerglaz.”
“And you’d know that how, exactly?” Dreck leaned forward, head cocked. “He could be right up there in my ship above our heads, taking a snooze alongside Gorett, for all you know. So the only way you can say I don’t have Höwerglaz with such conviction is that you do.”
Splendid negotiating, really, Clyde scolded himself. “I—”
“Let’s take a time-out here. I’m being a bad guest. So. When you suggested talking this over, you came out here carrying your little pick stick along. Were you going to talk, then if that didn’t work, strike me down—or try to?”
“No, I brought it only because I’m Clyde Pyne, steward of Geyser, and Commencement is to remain with—”
Dreck waved a hand until Clyde shut up. “Stop. Drop the pomp and circumstance. No, you were doing just as I heard your father always did: waltz out onto the battlefield, try and pound some sense into people with a whole lot of talk and a daunting vocabulary, and if that didn’t work, really smash sense into them in the traditional way. With that.” He cocked an eyebrow toward the gaudy green blade. “But really, just doing so—coming out here armed at all, even with that letter opener, speaks more about you than anything. It shows you doubt. Doubt your negotiation skills, doubt me ever possibly being open-minded, but most of all doubt solving anything whatsoever with talk.”
“You’re armed.” Clyde nodded at his holstered scattergun.
“We’re not talking about me right now.” Dreck cleared his throat. “Peril is a stage when we don’t put masks on but instead take them off. And as much as you stand by being a traditionalist—clearly, since you’re carrying a damn sword—you have that same niggling fear your father had, that remaining resolutely analog yourself can’t make everything else revert that way. Eventually, you’ll have to give in, get your hands dirty like the rest of us.
“Like me, in particular, during the Territorial Skirmish. When the Unified Kingdoms of Adeshka, Geyser, and Nessapolis took on big, bad Embaclawe. Pointed ourselves west, toward those who wanted to come here and claim this land as their own, dragging taxation and all that shite along with them. But, unlike us, they’d lo
ng ago adapted to the modern age: black powder, steam power, and eventually electricity and plasma—all that wizardry so mind-boggling to us cavemen. We squeaked by only because of numbers, not weaponry, mind you. But next time, they would win. We’d clash again. They’d adapt to us, and we would to them. Your pa, stubborn as he was, eventually came around to toting a gun instead of a blade. Sure tried to stick to the old ways, quaint as they were, but he learned. Once you get shite on your shoes, might as well stop watching where you’re treading.” Dreck’s gaze drifted over Clyde’s shoulder.
“All right, it’s official, I’m bored out of my wits,” a voice called out.
Spinning around, Clyde gaped.
Höwerglaz, shuffling up with hands raised, announced, “Go ahead. Take me. Maybe y’all can keep mah eyes open.”
“What are you doing?” Clyde shouted.
Behind him, Nevele, Aksel, and Flam were reaching out from the front door of Margaret’s Mends for Höwerglaz, but he was already too far out.
Dreck stepped around Clyde, training his scattergun on the boy boldly approaching. Finally, understanding crossed the pirate’s face. “Are you—?”
“This is just Emer, a boy we found in the city,” Clyde tried. “He’s a bit strange, likes to make pranks. Why don’t you go back with the others, Emer?”
“Because you bore the ever-lovin’ crap out of me,” Höwerglaz said, shoving Clyde away. “I told ya, didn’t I? I wanted action, and this, far as I see, is about the only way to prod ya into doin’ any.”
Dreck pulled the ageless weaver to him, tucking the scattergun against Höwerglaz’s chest. He smiled Clyde’s way smugly. The boy looked wholly unbothered by being there, under Dreck’s arm, or having a gun barrel pressed to his ribs. “Looks like I was right,” Dreck said. “But apparently any speech you laid on him wasn’t too convincing. Came out here on his own.”
“Ernest. Why?” Clyde said.
“I done warned ya, didn’t I?” Höwerglaz said. “You gonna have to act eventually.”
“But there’s . . . there’s got to be another way.” Clyde stepped forward, thumbing his blade.