Distant Star

by Joe Ducie

  Emily rolled her eyes. “Declan Hale, heartbreaker.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Declan Dances

  I let myself back into the shop after kissing Emily on the cheek and promising to meet her at Paddy’s around seven.

  I kept my wits about me as I moved through the stacks, mindful that I had left the shop unguarded for the best part of an hour. Anyone or anything could be waiting to tear out my throat through my ass—

  “And just what in hell were you thinking?” Marcus said, sitting in the window alcove with his arms resting on his knees. He looked furious.

  “Pardon me?”

  “You are not pardoned, Hale.” The immense ex-Knight hauled himself up, knocked over his favorite champagne flute, and advanced toward me with clenched fists.

  I held my ground. There were perhaps five people in the world that I would never raise a hand against. Marcus was two of them, despite what my dead self had alleged those few short nights ago.

  “She was here, I know she was. I can taste her on the air, Declan. Like a battery on my tongue. She has a Will that is hard to forget, no?”

  I often forgot that Marc and Clare had been more than Knights before my exile. “Oh, yes. Faraday sent her to investigate the Renegade attack. She—”

  “You went diving. What in the seven hells were you thinking?”

  It also paid well to remember that Marc was most sensitive to ripples of Will and cords of power use. When he said taste, he meant it. He could taste an invocation—smell the spell. Helluva talent. “I was thinking that I tire of this exile, Marc. That I hadn’t seen Clare in five years, and she was like a breath of fresh air. Broken quill, she was lovely.”

  “You are out, Declan. The both of us are forgotten Forgetfuls—”

  “We’re gone but nowhere near forgotten.”

  He exhaled and relaxed his mighty fists. “You handed in your badge and your gun and walked away. To get mixed up in that again…”

  “You wouldn’t go back, if you could?”

  He sat down with the slowness of an old man. “The Knights would never take me. I’m too stained by your shadow.”

  “Heh. What shadow?” I reached behind the counter and retrieved a bottle of Glenfiddich 15. “Come on now, let’s have a sip and talk about what we’re going to do. The Renegades will try again, and the Knights’ renewed interest will mean trouble—for Sophie, and I suppose Ethan, as well—for which we’re not quite ready.”

  Marcus took a long swig from the bottle. A drop of the amber liquid ran down his chin and blotted his collar. “Faraday will never rescind your exile. If you are even considering returning to Forget, to Ascension City, then you must overthrow him. But you do that at the cost of his peace with the Renegades. The one certainty in all this mess, the one unbreakable surety amidst the chaos and the maelstrom, is this: The Renegades would sooner see the world in ashes than you on the Dragon Throne.”

  He spoke the truth, but I’d be damned if the bastards thought they could get away with attacking me here.

  “Let me say it again,” said Marcus “You. Are. Out.”

  “I thought that for awhile, yeah. But now, Marc, now. It feels like… well… like the situation is how it was five years ago. War or something like it. I don’t think I was ever out, not really—just benched. If anything, I’m deeper than I’ve ever been. Sing it true, pal.”

  Marcus threw up his hands. “Unbelievable. Just stay away. Don’t go back. What’s the worst that can happen? You have to fend off an attack once every five years?”

  “Or, you know, I could end up dead on the floor of this shop inside a week.” I shook my head. “But it’s not just about going back, Marc… I walk down the street and see kids on their smartphones, sipping mocha-frappe-vodka energy drinks, or whatever the hell those things are, and I’m… I’m angry at all of them, at all the stupid ignorant people. They don’t know what I’ve done for them—what Tal did for them. The only reason they’re alive and not enslaved or worse is because of her sacrifice. They don’t know. They can’t know. I hate them.”

  “You are going to get someone killed. You know that.”

  “What’s one more when my tally runs into the millions already?”

  Marc had no answer.

  *~*~*~*

  Emily and I had dinner that night at Paddy’s Pub, which was hustling, bustling, busy, and dizzy. Under the hot lights and cool air-conditioning vents, we sat at a table for two amidst the storms of laughter, song, and an altogether good time.

  I had the steak, medium rare with pepper sauce. Emily chose the gnocchi, which I thought a rather brave offering for an Irish pub. The scotch was fine. Emily only allowed herself lemonade, given her condition, but that did not stop her from dancing.

  After dinner, I watched her from a seat at the bar. She was the heart of the dance floor, and the live band, a group of old men singing ditties of the old country, kept in time with her. She moved with such grace, such subtle, timeless fervor, that every eye in the pub was drawn to her: a passionate queen in a little black dress, adorned with a silver crown of admiration.

  After several songs, she remembered me, and sought me out at the bar. Emily giggled, her hair wild and eyes alight with the fire and the music—the noise. She sat down in my lap and kissed my stubbly cheek. “Dance with me, Declan Hale.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She swatted my chest. “Are you going to sit there all night sipping that disgusting stuff while I get swept off my feet by all these handsome gentlemen?”

  “Whoa. Hold on. Scotch is lovely.” I took a healthy swig of liquid gold. “I don’t dance. Never learned how, I’m afraid.”

  Emily laughed, the sound like water over pebbles, and kicked her heels into the air. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought she was one glass shy of the bottle. “You can dance, but you don’t want to.”

  “I’m telling you. Two left feet. I could shuffle and shrug my shoulders and that’s about it.”

  “That’s not the truth.”

  “On my life.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “No, never on your life. Declan, are you happy?”

  I finished two fingers’ worth of scotch between heartbeats. “I think so.”

  The music grew subtle and meandering. I imagined forest sprites flickering in the night. “Do you know what I think?” she asked.

  “I think you’re going to tell me whether—”

  “I think you’re so blinded by some past misery that you spend all day in that stuffy bookshop, drinking yourself stupid so you can write your novel and shut out the real world. You always look so sad, even when you’re smiling. Especially when you’re smiling.” Emily ran her finger down the bridge of my nose and tut-tutted. “Let me ask again, in reverse. Are you sad, Declan?”

  “I’m not drowning in happiness.”

  “What would make you happy?”

  I didn’t know. Who the hell did? Certainly not the face in the mirror. “Fish and chips a hundred years from now.”

  “What?” Emily sighed. “That’s something else you do. You say the strangest things, and your words are always so careful and… and proper. I think you’re trying very hard not to cry.”

  Visions of Tal being torn asunder, her soul and essence scattered into a machination of such brutal turmoil that even now the Story Thread still hadn’t recovered, danced in my head. The Degradation. Our ultimate solution to the Renegade threat.

  She was the girl I couldn’t have.

  “Shut up and dance with me, Emily Grace.”

  *~*~*~*

  Emily walked me home that night, her bare feet silent against the cobblestones, her arm linked in mine and her weight leaning against me. I held her shoes in my free hand.

  “You’re a man, so you don’t know how good it feels to take your heels off at the end of a long night of dancing. Whether through crunchy leaves or soft sand at the beach, walking barefoot is one of the best feelings in the wor
ld.”

  “You dance well. No one in that bar could take their eyes off you.”

  Emily smiled her secret smile. “You can’t dance at all.”

  “Told you. I shuffled a bit.”

  “Oh, come on, now. You were—are—charming, Declan. And if you can be bothered to shave, you’re even nice to look at. I think you abuse that—abuse the trust of the women in your life. Charm, good looks and eyes that look as if the world is about to end. What woman could resist?”

  “Heh, plenty.”

  Back in Riverwood Plaza, we stopped for frozen bananas dipped in warm caramel and almond pieces. The vendor, Mathias, even gave me one of his dead wife’s flowers for Emily, but I don’t think he remembered why they were on his cart, and I didn’t remind him.

  A lily in hand, Emily and I sat on the rim of the fountain in the heart of the courtyard, my shop just dark windows across the way. Not one part of me was eager to get back to the scotch and typewriter. “Thank you for tonight, Emily. I forget sometimes, how simple it can be. Music, dancing…”

  “You’re welcome, Declan. I had fun. Anything that gets you away from all those books.”

  “I was just thinking that. But you don’t like my books?”

  “Too stuffy in the shop. I don’t know how you breathe in there all day long.”

  “Well, I may be closed for a few days in the next week or so. Business trip.”

  Emily blinked. “Oh? Are you flying away? Off to see some exotic woman in some far-off land?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I am both impressed and jealous. Here I was thinking I had you all to myself.”

  “Oh, you’ve never thought that.” I laughed, and gently wiped a drop of caramel from Emily’s lip with my thumb.

  “So where are you going?”

  “Some place far off and exotic.”

  “Really, now.”

  That night, after Emily hugged me goodnight in the doorway of my shop and drove home—as was proper—I lay awake in bed thinking deep thoughts. About life and love and all that was in between. Sing it true, songbird.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Nightmare’s Reach

  I didn’t open the shop the next morning. Nor did I spend any of the short hours after dawn in front of my typewriter.

  Instead, I sat with the remnants of a fine Pinot Noir in hand, and thought through my next move in a game that I still did not know how to play. I didn’t even know against whom I was playing. Faraday, certainly, and perhaps the Renegade King. A copy of Nightmare’s Reach—the same I had used to hide my body only four short days ago—sat unopened on the counter, next to the antiquated cash register.

  True to my word, and my exile, I had only dived once since leaving the Knights and setting up shop in Western Australia, of all places. My dive had occurred two days ago, with Clare. Stashing my surprise corpse didn’t count as proper diving, as I’d stayed tethered to this world and had just sent the body across the Void.

  I needed to examine that body a little closer. I had questions that needed answers, which I wouldn’t find if I sat around the shop in the dark. If I was to be believed, I had a little over four, maybe five, days before I found myself bleeding to death.

  I took a long draw on the wine, tapped the rim of the bottle against my teeth, and decided to settle the matter. Nightmare’s Reach felt about as light as a brick when I picked it up and flicked quickly through the pages. The passage I was after was on page one-hundred-forty seven:

  …burnt orange light bled over the peaks of the snow-capped mountains to the west and a blanket of bruised purple sky shone with early stars to the east. Below that sky, Dremer sat in rumination of his fate. The ruins of Avalon smoldered with the heat of the Forsworn war machines. He remembered wondering if stone could burn. He didn’t wonder anymore. The Reach was alight…

  The passage was as good a place as any to dive into the story because it was close to where I’d hidden my body but far enough away to approach with some caution. I still had no idea what had killed me, or why, only that the violence happened at some point in my near-future. The concept was hard to wrap my head around, but caution seemed warranted, nonetheless.

  Still, I hesitated just a moment longer. Marcus would come with me, if I asked him, and for that matter, so would Clare. No. I dismissed the idea of involving anyone else. For now. Afterwards, we would see.

  I imposed my Will on the pages, and the words shone with Void light. The way between worlds shuddered and swallowed me whole. My shop disappeared with nary a whisper.

  I stood in ankle-deep ash, right in the heart of Reach City. The air was cool, stagnant, and tense, as if waiting for something to happen. A book printed in Will afforded access to these lands of make-belief-made-real, but never into the story itself as it was written. Why would it? A story written down had already happened. We had the world after the tale, and this particular world I had ruined.

  Once upon a time, I had given a speech here about victory and freedom—sugar and spice and all things nice, boss—and fighting the good fight. My words had gone on to bury about eight million people.

  Here, the penultimate battle of the Tome Wars had been fought.

  Here, I had killed a king and toppled an empire.

  Here, Tal had conceived of the Degradation to seal away what we discovered in Atlantis. And from here we’d made the deadly race to the Lost City—madmen and demons chasing the two of us across Forget along the edge of the Void—and the end of the war. Oh, Tal, how fast we ran.

  The Reach was a modern metropolis by True Earth standards. Before the best of my good intentions, the city had been vibrant and busy, but appeared desolate now from where I stood. Twisted and ruined husks of scorched cars lined the sidewalks, listing like broken fence posts under the weight of all the ash and rubble. Lifeless skyscrapers clawed at the dark clouds overhead, with piles of filth and bone swept into the doorways. Fire had ravaged most of the city, yet I could still make out small details, such as advertisements on the billboards.

  Scattered all about the square were dusty books, remnants of the Tome Wars, spines broken and pages ragged. The stories were blank, spent, and small sparks of silver light danced about the broken worlds. A massacre in more than one sense had happened here, all those years ago.

  No matter, after all said and done. I turned away.

  Pools of starlight flooded the cusps of the tangled, thorny white roses growing where there should be no roses. The flowers had pushed up through the cracks in the warped roads, and thick, ropy green vines clung to the devastation. I thought them beautiful. Almost.

  “You touch one Roseblade…” I muttered, and with a snarl ripped the nearest rose from the ground by its stem. The thorns pierced my palm and tore at my fingers. Drops of blood stained the petals crimson.

  Clenching my fist around the blasted rose, I stepped lightly through the ash fall, each pace echoing down deserted city streets, and made my way across town to the safe house. The walk was long and lonely, through nothing remarkable. Everything was covered in grime and looked the same.

  The small apartment was no different. In the story of Nightmare’s Reach the place had been home to the protagonist’s family who’d been stolen in the night by secret police for crimes against the corrupt state. In my story, the safe house had been a place to hide, to form unspeakable plans, and to fall in love, of all things, or the beginnings of love—of desire made real.

  I’d hidden my body in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

  The stairs creaked under my weight, and plumes of dust danced in small clouds around my feet.

  “First one to fall in love loses. Ready, set…” I cupped Tal’s cheek and kissed her lips. “Go.”

  Scratched into the paneled wall above the staircase was a bit of Tal’s handiwork: our names enclosed within a crooked heart.

  Silly girl. Silly, beautiful girl.

  I didn’t quite dare touch those splintered names. Call me a coward, but touching them didn’t feel right
after what had happened. We were nineteen. Young and in love. That old story. Carving the heart in the wall had been a hopelessly childish thing to do. But then, hadn’t we been hopeless children? Hadn’t we believed we could make a difference? End a war? Love each other forever?

  “Two out of three ain’t bad,” I muttered.

  Looking back, I knew we’d understood next to nothing about love, and when we first kissed and spent our night together, bleeding and bruised in this very room, lust, not love, drove us. Love came later, only a day later, when I watched her die.

  In our special room upstairs, an old mattress sagged on a broken bed frame which hugged the wall. The shattered window looked out at ruin. Thick white rose bushes, again where no rose bushes should be, grew up through the floorboards here, as well. Thorny vines and pure, untouched white petals brought back memories of Atlantis, of crystal swords, and of the end of the world.

  Beneath all that, marring the dust and the wreckage, spread a crimson stain that could only be blood. The stain didn’t look fresh, but then, it didn’t look old. I guessed it had been created a few days ago, at most.

  My body had been here, where I’d sent it, and the roses had grown after my body had gone. In between now and then someone had stolen my beautiful corpse.

  Damn. The flowers were strange, but not entirely unexpected back here in the realms of Forget, given my sordid past and connection to certain lost powers. Keep it simple, stupid.

  The roses were a sign from the past. Another sign, if another was needed after my death and Jeff Brade’s attack. Trouble, and in our road, boss. At least the presence of the abundant bushes made my next move clear.

  I would travel deeper into Forget.

  Back to Ascension City.

  But first I had to return to True Earth, to prepare.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hunting the Transdimensional Whale