by Tammy Salyer
“There are other wells throughout Vinnr, Mallich,” Ulfric said. “But I truly believe we won’t need to use them.”
“And if Balavad returns? He may come to reclaim his artifacts.” Or seek revenge, Roibeard sent through the Mentalios. The words were so loud and sharp that Jaemus nearly flinched. “And we also have the Himmingazians to think of. They are as much in danger as the vessel. Outside of these walls, they are foreigners. But keeping them here makes them prisoners,” he finished.
Jaemus was quite clear about what Roibeard was getting at. After what had happened here when the last foreigners from another world arrived, the people of Vinnr would likely consider the Himmingazians a threat. And it wasn’t as if they could blend in. The hue of their skin was impossible to miss among the Vinnrics. “It would probably be best to send us home, then, right?” he said.
Roi said, “If we could. But we don’t have Vaka Aster’s Scrylle. We can’t open a starpath well without it.”
Jaemus looked to Ulfric, who gave him a short nod that he didn’t think any of the others caught. Did that mean he would ask Vaka Aster to send them home, or didn’t it? Jaemus had as much trouble reading the Knight now as he had back in Himmingaze. But he did sense that the man wanted their recent conversation in the yard to remain between the two of them. Obliging, mostly out of curiosity, he averred, “You’re saying we Himmingazians are stuck here, then?”
Stave clapped a hand that was like a shovel head on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, novice. We’ll keep you safe, we will. That is, until you can take care of yourself and your kin.” Jaemus caught the look Roibeard threw Stave, and the nod Stave returned. Then he said, “Wait right here,” rose, and left the meeting hall.
To no one in particular, Jaemus said, “I don’t know what that was about, but I really, really hope I’m going to like it.”
“You’re one of us now, Himmingazian, whether you have yet accepted it or not.” Roibeard’s hand went to his long beard and pulled at it thoughtfully. “You’re marked, chosen by Vaka Aster to be one of her protectors. It’s an unusual manner of becoming ordained, maybe even unprecedented.” He looked to Safran.
I’ve never read of it happening before, she sent. All Knights since before the War of Rivening have risen through the Conservatum and chosen this path for themselves.
Aren’t I the fortunate one, Jaemus thought, keeping his misgivings to himself—he hoped. They clearly thought the “choice” thrust upon him honorable, but he sensed in them—perhaps through his own intuition, perhaps through the Mentalios lens link they now shared—an undercurrent of…something else. Doubt? Disbelief? Or were those just his own feelings? It was all a bit much.
Stave was already returning, pacing across the meeting hall carrying a sword like Mylla’s in an ornate scabbard made of a gleaming metal that seemed to catch every light in the room and amplify it. He reached Jaemus and said, “Up with you. ’Gazian, are you ready to wield a real sword?”
“Come again?” Jaemus stuttered.
Stave wasn’t about to win an award for patience. “A battle sword. Think you can fight with one yet, do you?”
“…Er, not so much. But I’m rather wicked with a torque wrench.”
Because he’d said “torque wrench” in Himm, unable in his nervousness to think up a comparable word in Elder Veros, Stave appeared confused. “Is that a weapon?”
“If your enemy is a stubborn bolt, then definitely.”
The Knight stared at him hard for a moment, then broke into a wide grin. Slamming his free hand on Jaemus’s shoulder again, he said, “You’re ready for this, you are, even if you don’t think it.”
Unable to think of a polite way to refuse, Jaemus stood, and Stave began affixing the scabbard around his waist. When he was done, he stood back and eyed Jaemus critically.
Safran sent: Draw it, Jaemus. It’s called Winter’s Bite and was hallowed by Vaka Aster in the Dastrart Age. It is the weapon of a Knight Corporealis, and only we who have been gifted a Verity’s spark may wield one. But caution, the power of your spark combined with its own is enough to destroy a vessel. Use it in service to our Verity. You are a protector now.
Her coal-black eyes were hard as she held his, brooking no hesitation. He wanted nothing to do with the weapon and was about to say so when Stave reached into an inner pocket of his vest and pulled out a small object.
“And this, too,” he said simply, and pushed the object into Jaemus’s hand.
The geodesic chunk of crystal was the color of a leaden sea. “Is it…?” he breathed, then could say no more.
“Aye, you know what that is, you do,” Stave said. “Your own klinkí stone. Your first. Once you master that, then you’ll collect more. The better at wielding it you get and the stronger and more concentrated your own Verity spark grows, the more you can manage at once. After we’re done here, I’ll teach you how to attune it to your spark.”
“Will this ‘tuning’ involve me getting bruised, bloodied, or broken?” he said.
“Only if you want it to. Itching for some more training in the yard, are you?”
“Not just yet,” he mumbled. Despite himself, Jaemus felt himself beaming so wide the corners of his lips seemed to reach his ears. Unwilling to wait for Stave’s directions, he focused his thoughts into the stone, willing it to rise from his palm. It came alight before his eyes, the crystal’s heart pulsing a deeper blue. Tiny inscriptions, almost too small for the eye to read, flared on its surface. Elder Veros runes. The same that comprised the writings on the Scrylle maps he’d looked at.
“Born to this, you were, Jae. There’s no doubt. Not a one,” Stave crooned in his rough voice.
After another second, Jaemus swore he felt the stone almost move. Hypnotized by what he was doing, he suddenly grew self-conscious. What did the other Knights think of his childish wonder? He realized he didn’t care. He had his own kinky stone!—though, he supposed, he should start calling it by its true nomenclature.
Now try Winter’s Bite, Safran urged.
He closed his palm around the stone, feeling its heat reach all the way to his wrist. “Really, the sword is lovely, but I’m just not sure I’ll ever be up for swinging one around and dicing people up into so much stew meat.”
“You must—” Stave began.
Let him be, love, Safran cut in. He will know when it is time. He must choose for himself what he wants.
Grumbling, the stout Knight looked at Roibeard. “What have you got to say about it, Roi?”
Roibeard thought before he spoke, as he always did. Jaemus was still learning to keep his own mouth in check when talking with the quiet Knight, quashing his tendency to fill silences with sound, regardless of the need, or lack of need, for it.
“He came by this path differently from the rest of us. Safran is correct. We can’t make this choice for you, Bardgrim. It’s yours alone.”
Jaemus sighed and began to unbuckle the scabbard.
“No,” Roibeard said. “At least wear it for a bit, get used to its feel. We won’t force anything on you, but meet us in the middle, if you would.” Using the Mentalios, he said: A time may come when we’ll need you, when Vaka Aster will need you. Or when Ulfric will. But I promise, if that time comes, the choice will still be your own to make.
But Jaemus knew better, and he knew Roibeard and the other Knights did too. He’d shown the kind of choice he would make the first time he’d jumped between Vaka Aster and her enemy. And would have died for it, if not for the Verity’s intervention, or “ordination,” as the Knights called it. It seemed his choices tended to lead to consequences that even death was too simple for. Not for the first time, he wondered what in the worlds he had gotten himself into.
Momentarily overwhelmed at these realizations, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to be in his room with Cote, curled up in his arms and trying to forget these last few days. Even having a klinkí stone of his own did little to reduce the weight he felt bearing down on him. Just get through this meeting, J
ae, he told himself. Then talk Ulfric into getting Vaka Aster to send us home. That has to be the best thing for everyone. It has to be.
Roibeard’s leonine eyes were lingering on Jaemus, making him feel as if his thoughts may not have been as private as he wanted.
Then Ulfric rose. “Tomorrow at High Halls, Safran and I attend Beatte’s summons to Aster Keep.” To Jaemus, he sent: If I can impose on you one last time, Bardgrim, please stay until then. You may not wish to fight with a sword, but your intellect is a greater contribution. We—I—could use your insight afterward.
Jaemus sighed. It wasn’t fair for the man to appeal to Jaemus’s ego—or, weakness, however one wanted to think of it—to get him to consent.
One thing about it though. It worked.
Chapter Twelve
After the meeting with the Knights, Ulfric pushed Jaemus out the door in order to confer more closely with Safran about the coming meeting at Aster Keep. To occupy himself, Jaemus had wandered down an unexplored hallway that, by no coincidence, was as far from the training yard as he could get.
And he’d found something quite marvelous. The Stallari had been busy.
A door that had previously been locked now hung ajar. Sidestepping his better judgment, he went in and found a chamber stuffed with—simply everything his curious mind could wish for. Tools, machines, glassworks, devices, and sundry scaffolds and storage chests, all stacked, standing, hanging, and balanced from floor to ceiling. The sheer volume of objects was so massive that Jaemus could easily believe it had taken lifetimes to collect and create them. It was as if he’d entered his own glorious dreams and been handed access to treasures that surpassed them.
The “being handed access” part was, however, subjective. He had a sense that the Knights would probably disapprove of a stranger rifling through their belongings. Jaemus had little trouble disregarding this inconvenience, however, justifying the intrusion to himself with, Ulfric owes me a set of goggles and the ’Gazians a couple of ships anyway. I’ll just…poke about a little.
Intellectual and inventive types are alike in many ways, no matter their walk of life, ilk, or age, and Jaemus didn’t have to stretch his mind to guess this space belonged to Ulfric. The Knight had spoken some about his gadget-mindedness, and passing comments from the other Knights had given Jaemus a sense that Ulfric was, at heart, a tinkerer and experimenter—a bit like himself, actually.
As he thought over the current twist in circumstances, he browsed. But the items he discovered quickly overcame his attention, and soon he suspected he understood what a few of the incomplete projects were intended to be. One in particular caught his eye. A set of wings, sized in such a way he could see they were clearly intended to be worn by a person. And based on the rigging and devices attached to them, he was fairly certain they weren’t meant to be simply decorative.
If I could figure this out, he thought, I may not need permission to leave the tower. I can just jump out a window and take a look for—
The door opened a crack. He flinched, knowing he was caught, and thought about making a run for it, but it was already too late.
To his relief, it was Cote who came in and closed the door quietly behind him after spotting Jaemus. “The training yard was empty, but the tall pale one said he saw you come this way.”
Jaemus breathed a sigh of relief. “Just restless energy.”
“As usual.” Coming up beside him, Cote closed his arms affectionately around Jaemus’s waist. “How did it go today?”
He turned and grasped Cote’s cheeks between his palms, brushing each of his eyes with a light kiss, then returned his focus to the winged contraption. “I was attacked by a mad beast with an ax, then warned that this world might want to kill us, then given a new sword and a stone I could pierce metal with using only my mind. So, like most days, I would say.”
He sighed, knowing Cote would never settle for his attempt at lightheartedness. His lifemate’s interest was genuine, and not only because he worried about Jaemus but because of how Jaemus had become the de facto representative for them all.
He went on. “In all honesty, I’m not convinced they’ve chosen the right man for the, er, honor of becoming one of them.”
Cote sat on a nearby crate and leaned back against a worktable, stretching his long legs out before him. He looked tired, which didn’t surprise Jaemus. His tossing and turning the last two nights would have kept Jaemus awake if he hadn’t been anyway. Oddly, he felt less urge to sleep than was normal, which contributed to his wandering about, a side effect of his newly acquired Verity spark. I’m powered like an engine now, he thought. But what replenishes the engine when its energy is used up? Fascinating…
Cote said, “As I understand it, it wasn’t the Knights who ‘chose’ you, if you want to apply that word to the situation, but rather their…Verity did.”
The way he almost swallowed the word before he could say it showed how little used to the situation Cote had grown. In Himmingaze, the old Verity worship and even speaking about the myth with anything but dismissal was outlawed as both foolish and a threat to their necessarily ordered and structured lives, lives dictated by rules of logic and the predictability of numbers and technology. Lives dedicated to survival and an escape from their doomed watery world.
As Jaemus considered Cote’s statement, he lightly brushed the back of Cote’s hand. The coldness of it surprised him, despite the warm breeze blowing in from the ocean outside. (And how marvelous was its aquamarine color! So deep and crystalline, nothing like the inky waters of the Never Sea. You could even see fish swimming in it! Fleeches would have no chance at a sneak attack in the Vinnrics’ waters.)
“Chosen or forced into,” he finally said. “It doesn’t seem to matter when the chooser is some kind of mix of stars and unfathomables.”
Cote smirked. “Unfathomables?”
“I’m an engineer, I make things, and that includes words. And it appears I’m not all that different than our host.” He let go of Cote’s hands and waved around the filled room, indicating its chaos of stacks and shelves.
“Vaka Aster?” Cote asked.
“No, I mean yes, that too, I suppose. Verities are the makers of everything, the Knights say. But I don’t mean Starbright the Shiny. Rather Ulfric. I think these are his inventions.”
Cote looked around, doing his best to appear to admire the morass of items as much as Jaemus did. “You told me they live dozens of lifetimes, right? I suppose that would give the brusque one time to make all these.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
Their conversation trailed off comfortably, Jaemus deep in his thoughts as he let his hands explore the set of wings. Flying with one’s own wing set, now that was something else. The little tingle of excitement this thought gave him faded quickly as deeper, heavier thoughts took hold. Is this it, Jae? Is this the way to save the Himmingazians? Instead of flying to the stars, we can fly through them, in a manner of speaking, to this new world? Instead of engineering and technology, should we Himmingazians rely on wysticism and celestial sprites to transport us to a world full of strangers with quirky habits and customs, where we might settle down and escape the Glister Cloud and the destruction it brings?
After this afternoon’s meeting with the Knights, it seemed the answer to this question was a profound no. The Knights had agreed there could be no trusting this kingdom’s leader, Arch Keeper Beatte, leaving him to wonder at exactly what kind of person they were dealing with and why a world with such a big external problem, namely Balavad, would be so bent on creating unnecessary internal ones. It was nothing like Himmingaze, where every system, city, and group were collectively focused on one goal: to leave. Here, the world was their sanctuary, yet they seemed unable to appreciate it.
Lastly, the fact that the ’Gazians could not expect the Vinnrics to welcome them with open arms, even if the Knights would, troubled him more. And Jaemus did not want to be a prisoner here.
He turned away from the wings and
sighed. “Cote, I’ve spoken to Ulfric, and when he’s free today, he’s going to ask their Vaka Aster to send us home. I should probably get the shiny one to remove this stardust endowment I’ve been given too.”
“No,” Cote said in a subdued version of his commander’s tone, catching Jaemus by surprise. Cote’s sea-green eyes—the most beautiful Jaemus had ever seen and half the reason he’d first pursued the Glisternaut—gleamed thoughtfully before he spoke again. “You may be the only one who can fix this, Jae, though I’m not completely certain what ‘this’ is. You’re closer to these Knights, and to this Verity, than the rest of us.”
Jaemus clasped his hands together tightly. “Fix it? See, that’s the problem. I don’t know how to fix it. Does that mean staying or leaving? Does that mean carving a neat little statue and asking the Creatress nicely to put Himmingaze to rights? Does it mean fighting battles with foreigners from other realms? I don’t understand anything, Cote, and it’s starting to make me…grumpy.”
Cote spoke in his cryptic voice, the one that always made Jaemus want to pinch him. “Figuring it out isn’t going to be easy, is it?”
After a pause, he heaved another sigh. “The Knights held a meeting this afternoon. They’re concerned about how the people here will react to the Himmingazians. They were just at war with other-worlders, which makes them less trusting of new people like us, even though we’re obviously not here to fight with them. And I for one don’t want to stay here if it means one of the locals stabs me or any of the Glisternauts the first time they see us. So if the Knights can send us home, that seems the best less uncomfortable option.”
“Going home isn’t what we should be talking about,” Cote said. “You know as well as I that staying or going isn’t the heart of our problems. It’s what’s becoming of Himmingaze. And your ‘stardust endowment’ might be what’s needed to intervene in some way. Perhaps you have the chance to reverse the Glister Cloud’s encroachment through this…what is the word the Vinnrics use? ‘Wysticism’? Anyway, this phenomenon of our old myths-turned-truths.”