Five Magic Spindles: A Collection of Sleeping Beauty Stories

by Rachel Kovaciny

  The med scanner showed only minor concussion, so when she could walk without dizziness, she returned to the main room and turned on the comms. She needed to rescue Auren, and she’d never do it alone. But who to call? The police would lock her up as a tomb robber, and she couldn’t go crawling back to Keffer.

  The comm screen beeped and flashed. Keffer was calling. Tanza answered and kept her face neutral.

  “Morning, charit,” Keffer chirped. “Had a change of heart?”

  “Auren’s gone,” Tanza said, her voice dull but underscored with menace. “Taken by Cornerstone.”

  “Then you’re available. Excellent. Got my eye on a nice tomb in the southern hemisphere.”

  The truth trickled into Tanza’s recently concussed mind. “You told them,” she growled. “You sold Auren to Cornerstone like he was a piece of machinery, you nameless child of . . .”

  Keffer shrugged, untouched by her slanders against his heritage. “Since I couldn’t give them the spindle, thought I’d give them their beloved prince instead.”

  “People will find out you sold him, Keffer. And you’re going to wish for death.”

  “So what if people know? Cornerstone won’t hurt him. They’re into that virtue stuff and that frilly old aristocracy; he’ll feel right at home.”

  “No, he won’t. He hates what Cornerstone does, and they’ll kill him for it.”

  “If his philosophy gets him killed, that’s his problem. You should be glad I got him out of your hair.”

  “Glad?” she choked. “Glad he’s dead?” She moved her hand to cut the call, but a thought stopped her. “Who’d you sell him to?” she demanded. “Who’s your contact in Cornerstone?”

  “Someone with enough money to make it worthwhile.”

  Cornerstone had a patron. That was why the attacks had increased in recent months. This patron had a lot of money to burn and a distrust of humans . . . and security recorders that offered a closer look at Auren’s face.

  Tanza said, “Berimac. You sold him to Berimac.”

  Keffer smirked. “He’s a paranoid freak, but he has money to spare, and he loves your prince. He’ll take good care of him.”

  Tanza remembered Berimac ordering his guards to beat Auren just for standing too near his gate. “I doubt that,” she said.

  She cut off the call and paced the room as anger, guilt, and despair smothered her attempts to plan. She had failed Auren. He’d trusted and defended her despite her crimes, and she had delivered him to death. If she hadn’t raged about the spindle . . . if she had hidden Auren from Keffer . . . if she were anything better than a depraved criminal . . . Auren wouldn’t be the prisoner of a faction of crazed zealots.

  Yet he was a prisoner, and Tanza had to change that. But how? She had no time, no money, no help, no resources, and no idea where Auren was. She ransacked the apartment, gathering items at random—her program scanner, the comms, her syringes of tephan pain medication—but couldn’t formulate a coherent plan.

  Then inspiration struck. She rushed to the bedroom, dove for her pack, and scratched at a hidden pocket to uncover a small pink cylinder. The power cell was all that remained from Auren’s tomb, and she had no reason to hide it now that she’d cut ties with Keffer.

  Tanza told the power cell, “Little beauty, I believe you’re supposed to buy me a hovercar.”

  She knew where to find Auren. Berimac would want to see his merchandise in person. Cornerstone would take Auren to a dark old building surrounded by plants that hid an ancient man who should have rotted long ago.

  Tanza had one last tomb to rob.

  Chapter 11

  TANZA PEERED THROUGH THE fence at Berimac’s unnatural greenery. Just enough daylight remained for her to see the house—and for the security recorders to see her. Her black clothing and Cornerstone armbands would mask her once she was inside the house, but she didn’t want to hide just yet.

  She pressed a gloved hand to the fence, and brilliant strands of energy streamed away. A neuroblock field—just what she’d expected. Seconds later the alarms sounded, and two guards approached her, one from each side. Right on schedule.

  Tanza unfolded a small metal cylinder into a blade surrounded by blue energy. The guards—second-rate muscle accustomed to guarding one reclusive old man whom no one cared about—hesitated. Safety measures kept the blade from cutting flesh, but it made an intimidating weapon, since few people recognized the tool.

  Tanza lunged toward the first guard, and he stumbled headfirst into the neuroblock field. His limbs seized and he fell, eyes open and body paralyzed.

  The second guard saw this and used the black box on his belt to drop the neuroblock field. So Tanza struck his skull with the side of the blade. He fell down senseless, but the blow shattered the blade.

  Tanza knelt by the fragments, mind racing. She’d planned to bring that intimidating blade inside the house. She’d have to improvise.

  After pocketing the handle, Tanza stole the larger guard’s control box, used it to lower the other three energy barriers around the fence, then climbed the net of energy filament and dropped into the gardens.

  After the chilly atmosphere of the autumn twilight, the heat and humidity from Berimac’s micro-climate generator felt like an oven. Sweat droplets sprouted on Tanza’s forehead and dampened her long-sleeved black garments. Fortunately her research had shown her how to manipulate the climate to her advantage.

  She pulled a sparkstick from her pocket and attached a newly purchased smoke-patch to its side. She snapped the stick and tossed it into the driest plant in sight—a squat Jem bush just beginning to go to seed. Then she crouched behind a tree, sheltered her head with her arms, and waited.

  The sparkstick kindled the smoke-patch, and thick gray smoke spilled through the entire back garden. The micro-climate generator responded to the simulated fire, and dark rainclouds blotted out the remaining sunlight before bursting into thick sheets of rain. Tanza ran in a haphazard pattern toward the house, knowing that not even a Berimac recorder could see her through the smoke and simulated storm. After a minute the sparkstick was drenched and the rainclouds disappeared, but Tanza had already reached a back entrance.

  With the guard’s control box she undid the electronic locks and alarms, and her lock-picker’s tools made quick work of the three mechanical locks. She slipped inside an abandoned pantry then plunged into the hallway and moved inward. Cornerstone wouldn’t keep Auren anywhere near windows or external doors.

  As Tanza neared a large door in the center of the first floor, she heard a voice that sent shivers through her core.

  “Find her,” Berimac demanded in the same tones he’d used to make his guards beat Auren. “The thief’s on the property. Find her before she finds the prince.”

  Five armed Cornerstone fighters streamed toward the open door, and Tanza scrambled up a staircase to avoid them. She emerged in a hall and saw three Cornerstone fighters at the other end. They’d discover her the moment they turned their heads.

  Tanza dove into an open doorway and shut it noiselessly. Down the hall, unfamiliar voices argued about the proper search pattern, showing no signs of leaving. She was trapped.

  Her hiding place was a large balcony overlooking an elegant room with a glass ceiling and a wide, sparkling floor. Once this room would have been the center of a glittering party; now it held only three people: Denfor Berimac, grotesque with anger and wearing a gaudy old-fashioned suit; a familiar sharp-faced woman in Cornerstone black . . . and a still figure in white who looked more like a prince than ever.

  Tanza hid in a corner of the balcony behind a sprawling sofa, peering through the railing at Auren as she assessed her options of escape.

  Berimac gestured imperiously at the Cornerstone woman. “Convince him, Novi.”

  Novi stepped toward Auren, her voice as sharp as her face. “Lirishan, you must retreat to a more secure location.”

  Auren stepped back, now directly under the balcony. “You mean a tighter prison.”
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  Novi put a hand on his shoulder. “We did not kidnap you. We rescued you.”

  Auren shrugged away her touch. “With armed men in the middle of the night? From the woman who saved me from a hundred years of sleep and did all in her power to help me?”

  Berimac looked as though he wished he’d held back a few more men to handle the prince. “From a known criminal whose crimes endangered you as you traveled with her. Cornerstone only wants to help you reclaim your kingdom.”

  “Cornerstone wants to kill innocent people,” Auren said flatly.

  Novi growled, “You haven’t seen Arateph, the way the humans control our world and take everything for themselves. They destroy our culture and demolish virtue.”

  “I’ve seen enough, and I hate it too. But this is not the way to change it.”

  Novi stared. “What other way is there? For virtue to thrive, evil must be punished. You of all people should know that. Petrior—good that conquers evil. Kaibreth—the firm hand that brings justice.”

  Auren said, “You love my virtue names, but you forget the one I chose for myself: Marenith—mercy.”

  The name meant far more than that. This was mercy as gentle as a whisper and as devastating as lightning, mercy that forgave the unforgivable. After a childhood plagued by an enemy’s curse, Auren should have wanted revenge. Yet he’d chosen unconditional forgiveness as the virtue to define his adult life.

  Tanza marveled at the name. Novi sneered at it. “That’s not virtue, that’s weakness. Allowing evil to thrive in others.”

  Auren said, “So you slaughter those you find lacking. Destroy them so you don’t have to teach them a better way. That is evil, and no matter how long you keep me here, I will not condone it.”

  In the dark, heavy silence that followed, Tanza heard the fighters outside her balcony disperse, but before she could escape, Berimac’s answer froze her in place.

  His voice sounded like the walls of a tomb. “Novi,” he said, “we’ve made a mistake. If this is Prince Auren, we have no use for him. He’d be more of a danger than a help to our cause.”

  Novi nodded. A spindle point flashed in the light of the newly risen moons.

  Tanza had waited too long. Unlike the rebels of a century ago, Cornerstone would kill the virtue prince quickly with a single, sustained pulse of energy. She couldn’t fight her way out the door and down the stairs in time to stop them.

  So Tanza leapt. She vaulted over the balcony and fell upon Novi. Bones crunched—some of them Tanza’s. Novi screamed, and the spindle point stuck in Tanza’s right side. Novi twitched a finger and the spindle buzzed, only for a moment.

  To Tanza it was an eternity of agony. Pain ripped through her core as the energy ripped through her organs. But Tanza’s pain-shredded mind had the animal instinct of away, and she rolled off the spindle point.

  Auren snatched the spindle from Novi’s hand and knocked her unconscious before she could move again. The spindle’s energy had burned Tanza’s bloodstains off its skewer.

  Tanza’s lungs spasmed ineffectually as waves of pain scraped through her core. When she finally inhaled, the pain exploded like a bomb and she struggled to remain conscious. Each breath was agony, but she forced her lungs to take in air.

  To keep her mind from her suffering, Tanza calculated her chances of survival, drawing from her knowledge of spindles. A spindle strike lasting twenty to thirty seconds was immediately fatal. This strike had lasted three seconds at most. Her organs were damaged, but she would survive if she stayed still and reached a healing bed within a few hours.

  Auren was trapped in a Cornerstone stronghold. Staying still was not an option.

  The pain receded as adrenaline kicked in. Tanza could breathe without feeling as if her chest contained a million shards of glass. She even raised herself on her hands and knees and looked around the room.

  Auren knelt over Tanza, white as death. “Tanza!” he cried. “Did she stab you?”

  Tanza shook her head, and Auren’s expression wavered between relief and disbelief.

  Behind Auren’s back, Berimac put in a comms earpiece.

  Tanza pointed a shaking finger at Berimac and rasped to Auren, “Stop him.”

  Auren looked back and jumped to his feet, pointing the spindle at the old man. “Don’t call them back,” he said. “I’m armed.”

  Berimac’s lip curled as he positioned the earpiece. “The virtue prince would gut an unarmed old man?”

  Tanza knew Auren wouldn’t, but he did a good job of pretending. “I think virtue’s on my side,” he said.

  With that, he lunged, and Berimac’s shaky legs collapsed. Auren hit him with the spindle handle, and he dropped senseless.

  Auren returned to Tanza’s side. “Can you move?”

  Tanza wanted to never move again, but Auren would never escape without her. She patted the pockets of her outfit until she found an unbroken syringe of tephan pain medication. The medication wouldn’t last long against these injuries, but it might last long enough for them to escape the house.

  She brushed the vein sensor over her left elbow. When she found a vein, she administered the dose before her hand could shake. In a few moments the pain disappeared under warm, hazy numbness, and Tanza staggered to her feet. “Now I can,” she gasped.

  Auren glanced from the balcony to Tanza’s landing place, obviously calculating what sort of injuries the fall could have produced. Perhaps he believed this the only source of her injuries. Her black outfit hid the bloodstain from the spindle wound.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she rasped.

  “I could carry you,” he said.

  Auren couldn’t fight Cornerstone and carry her at the same time. Tanza scowled and walked past him with firm steps, leaving him no choice but to follow.

  Moving as quickly as she could while the medication remained effective, Tanza led Auren through the halls. Not wanting to risk a fight unless absolutely necessary, she and Auren changed routes or ducked out of sight every time they neared a Cornerstone fighter, but eventually they escaped their labyrinthine path and reached the front door.

  They peered out a window. Three Cornerstone fighters followed a search pattern in the front gardens.

  “Any plans?” Auren asked.

  Pain smoldered beneath the fading effects of the pain medication, but Tanza ignored it as she pulled out the control box she’d stolen from the guard. She activated the alarm furthest from the front door. The Cornerstone fighters raced toward the sound, leaving the front garden open. Tanza and Auren reached the gate; but as Tanza opened it, a fighter standing near the right side of the house spotted them, alerted his comrades, and gave chase.

  Tanza and Auren slipped into the street, dodging traffic to hide their path. Outside Berimac’s phony paradise the night air was cold, and a scattering of snowflakes floated down. Tanza led Auren blindly down alleys, not knowing whether she led him toward or away from the waiting hovercar. They reached a business district and lost their pursuers amid the crowds seeking restaurants and entertainment for the evening, but Tanza didn’t dare stop running despite the pain that grew sharper by the step.

  The medication’s last effects faded, and the pain returned, stronger than it had been in Berimac’s ballroom. This pain was like nothing Tanza had ever before experienced, so harsh that it had color and taste and temperature, with the spindle wound burning like the sun in the center. And this was a minor blow compared to Auren’s spindle strike! How had Auren endured? How had he lived through that much pain?

  Tanza stumbled a few more steps and collapsed upon a trash heap at the end of an alley.

  Auren knelt beside her, his breathing harsh and fast. “Tanza!” he gasped, then saw the small dark stain on her right side. “The spindle stabbed you!”

  Tanza coughed, and blood bubbled in her throat. “I know.”

  Auren’s expression filled with guilt. He sounded on the verge of tears as he rambled, “I feared as much, but I let myself be
lieve . . .” He tore off one of Tanza’s armbands and held it over the spindle wound. His other hand felt for her racing pulse. “I didn’t think it possible. How did you walk after a spindle strike?”

  Tanza couldn’t answer. Her quick, shallow breaths sent shards of glass scraping through her chest.

  Auren’s face, looming large in Tanza’s foggy vision, hardened into a mix of sorrow and anger. “You should have told me!” A drop of moisture landed on Tanza’s cheekbone, a snowflake that burned. “You’ve killed yourself for a man who should have died a century ago! What were you thinking?”

  Tanza mouthed her one word of defense: “Irimitha.”

  Auren went white.

  Then, fighting panic, he leapt to his feet and dashed to the end of the alley. There he almost collided with a young tephan woman in a pink coat and caught her by the arm. “You!” he demanded. “Do you have a communicator?”

  The scene seemed distant and faded, like a decayed chronovid of Prince Auren.

  Wide-eyed, the woman nodded, touching an earpiece.

  “Call a hospital!” Auren ordered. “This woman’s dying!”

  The woman obeyed, hands shaking. Her earpiece blinked red, a face appeared on her hand-held screen, and she stammered, “Verith Med? I . . . someone needs help . . . on the eighth thoroughfare, in the restaurant district . . . I don’t know who, he just stopped me! She looks pretty bad.” The woman broke into sobs. “I don’t know!”

  Frustrated, Auren seized the screen and put in the earpiece. “This is Prince Auren Lucrit Corigrat Verinen Kaibreth Petrior Moritain Marenith, and Tanza’s dying of a spindle wound!”

  Tanza heard the woman gasp, and Auren continued to shout through the comms, but the world grew too dark to see. The pain melted away, and her hands went cold. She fell into a deep sleep.

  Chapter 12

  TANZA WOKE IN WHITE and gold. Gold sunlight streamed onto white hospital walls. Gold energy glowed around the white sheets of a healing bed. A nurse in a golden hospital uniform looked up from her adjustment of the healing bed’s settings.