‘I saved you,’ Zeke said meekly. ‘Don’t you remember? The Stitched Witch would have killed you if I hadn’t stopped her.’
‘I never would have been her prisoner in the first place if it wasn’t for you!’ Joss stabbed his finger at Zeke’s chest, and Zeke held up his hands as if in surrender.
‘I admit I did the wrong thing. But in my defence, we weren’t friends when Thrall offered me his deal. I didn’t even know you.’
‘Thrall made me the exact same offer. And Drake. And Hero. And the only person who accepted it was you! The only person who smiled to our faces and stabbed us all in the back was you! You could have thrown his offer in his face at any time, but you never did. Not until the last possible second, when it was obvious he was never going to be able to pay up on whatever false promises he made you that cost you your soul. And yet you have the gall to think you’re in the position to forgive me for something?’
Zeke was hanging his head now, unable to meet Joss’s gaze. He looked like a little boy being scolded for misbehaving, his bottom lip pushed out, his hands scrunched tight. ‘I never said that.’
‘No. You said you hold no grudges. Which means you think I did something wrong. Something I should feel guilty about.’
Zeke forced himself to look up, revealing the hot tears shimmering in his eyes. ‘You abandoned me, Joss,’ he said. ‘You left me stranded with no way home.’
‘You destroyed your own jet-cycle in a moment of stupid, stubborn bravado. You stole Pietro while were we sleeping. You opened up the Ghost City to Thrall and his minions, you tried and failed to kill the Questing Bird’s unborn offspring. And then you shot me with your pulse rifle! So yes. I left you behind. And yes, I felt bad about it at the time. I wondered if I was doing the right thing. But the fact is, you revealed yourself as someone unworthy of trust, Zeke. Unworthy of friendship.’
‘Unworthy of forgiveness?’ Zeke asked. ‘What about that?’
Only now did Joss waver. But just for a second. ‘Forgiveness isn’t something you can buy, Zeke. It’s not something you get if you just say the right words and mime all the right feelings. Forgiveness is something you earn.’
Zeke moved to speak, his mouth hanging open as he searched for words that wouldn’t come.
‘Best of luck getting that hunk of junk to fly again,’ Joss said. ‘Fat lot of good it’ll do you.’ He didn’t wait for a response, pushing past the Sooty Jenkins illumigram on his way out the door as a grimy kid arrived with his hands full of soup bowls.
‘Stew’s here,’ he heard the lad say from inside the workshop. ‘Who was that?’
‘Just … just someone I used to know,’ Zeke replied, sounding as distant as the moon.
Joss slammed the door shut behind him.
CHAPTER TEN
A LINGERING CURSE
TOO agitated to sleep, Joss prowled the grounds of Blade’s Edge Acres in search of Hero. He looked for her in the gardens, among the battlements, up and down the stairwells. Climbing to the spot where Lord Haven’s pyre had blazed only hours earlier, he found it cleared away and empty. But for all the concern he felt for her, he couldn’t keep himself from stewing on his confrontation with Zeke.
It kept playing over and over in his head like an illuminator stuck on a loop, with Zeke’s look of confusion and resentment floating stubbornly before him. Why did it matter so much to him what Zeke said or did? He’d given up any prospect of friendship back in Vaal, had done everything he could to shut him out of his thoughts and feelings. Yet here was the golden boy, trying to make peace. And being a presumptuous brat about it. As ever.
The night wore on with no sign of Hero. And even though his mind was still racing, Joss’s body was fatigued. His feet aching with every step, he traced his way back to the den he shared with the others. He’d hoped he might find them gathered around the fireplace, Hero included, happy to talk through everything that plagued him. But obviously it was later than he’d realised, with all the chamber doors shut but his. Shuffling into his room, he pulled off his boots, fell into his bed, and slept.
It was still dark when he was woken by a calamitous noise. The blaring alarm sounded like it was coming from the den, throbbing through the thick wood of Joss’s chamber door. Grabbing his swordbelt, he unsheathed the Champion’s Blade and charged out of his room. If this was a call to arms, he wouldn’t go unprepared.
Instead, he found the mechanoid from last night in the centre of the room, a big brass horn protruding from the narrow casing it had for a head. Gathered around it were Joss’s brethren, looking similarly shocked and dishevelled. Scanning each of them, the mek cut the siren and folded the horn back into its discreetly placed compartment.
‘Good morning, Bladebound. Your presence has been requested in the training yard. This unit is to wait while you all prepare for the day and will then escort you there.’ The mek shifted its weight and applied the brakes to its one large wheel. ‘You have five minutes before the alarm is sounded again,’ it concluded. To underscore its threat, it started ticking with every passing second.
The Bladebound shared a round of bewildered glances, then rushed to get ready. Joss could hardly believe that the moment he’d been waiting for was really here. He was so sure Lord Haven’s death would have delayed the start of their training by days, if not weeks. But it seemed Blade’s Edge Acres was determined to take the tragedy in its stride. Joss threw on his riding gear as fast as he could and quickly inspected himself in the mirror on the inside of the cupboard door.
Everything looked to be in order and up to code, though what really caught Joss’s attention was the sight of his mother’s journal and Qorza’s Scryer, both of them reflected back at him from beside the washbasin. Spinning around, he grabbed both items and did what a lifetime of growing up in shared dormitories had ingrained in him; he searched for somewhere to hide them. A loose stone on the wall behind his bed proved ideal, and he jammed the journal and the metal disc behind it.
‘Joss?’ came a voice from behind him. ‘Are you ready?’
He spun around to see Edgar staring at him from the doorway.
‘What were you doing?’ the young steward asked, craning his neck to see.
‘Nothing,’ Joss replied, perhaps a little too quickly. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
Hustling back to the den, they joined Drake and Hero just in time to keep the alarm from wailing again.
‘Please follow closely,’ the mechanoid said, snapping back into its mobile configuration and leading the way out the door. The prentices were quick to fall in line, their footsteps echoing down the corridor. Edgar looked too absorbed in surveying their surroundings to still be wondering what he’d found Joss in the middle of doing, so Joss turned his attention to Hero.
‘Where did you go last night? I spent half the evening looking for you,’ he asked her, only for her to glare at him.
‘Really? It appeared to me that you were too busy visiting the forge for much else.’
Joss blanched at the comment, so distracted by how she could possibly know about his visit to Zeke that he nearly walked into a wall as they rounded a corner.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Drake, and Hero sighed.
‘Nothing. I’m – I’m just being …’ she blew a strand of hair from her face. ‘I’m not myself right now, is all. I’m sorry, Joss.’
As stunned as he’d been by Hero’s first comment, Joss was downright flummoxed at her apology, given that he knew her to be as headstrong as a pachycephalosaur and just as proud. He muttered for her not to worry about it as they made their way down several flights of spiralling stairs and out onto the ground floor. Here they found a long, arched passageway leading to a sunny yard, where a silhouetted figure came shambling towards them. He had a saddle slung over one shoulder, his long white hair backlit and glowing.
‘Rowan?’ Hero asked with surprise, and a friendly face came into clear focus.
‘Ah! Hero lass! And her stalwart brethren, I see.’
‘Hello, Mr Cloudshadow,’ said Drake, with Joss and Edgar quickly echoing him.
‘Please, lads; call me Rowan,’ the old fieldserv replied, shifting the weight of the saddle on his shoulder as he stopped before them.
‘What are you doing, Rowan?’ Hero asked.
‘Eh? I’m sorry, lass, yeh’ll need to speak up.’ He tapped the device attached to his ear. ‘Cursed contraption is acting up again.’
Hero repeated herself, louder this time. Rowan nodded.
‘Pack o’ sabretooths got loose from one of the outer pens and cut a bloody path through the local wildlife on their way to freedom,’ he said. ‘I’ve been tasked with helping to bring ’em all back. First thing was to retrieve a saddle from the ’smith before we mount up and ride out.’
Drake shot a curious glance at his brethren. ‘Could that have something to do with the pterosaur we ran across?’ he asked.
Hero shook her head. ‘That didn’t look like the handiwork of any sabretooth I’ve ever known …’
‘What’s this yer saying?’ asked Rowan.
‘On our ride to the fortress yesterday we happened past a butchered carcass, stripped of its skin but with no meat taken,’ Hero explained. ‘We were rushing for Lord Haven’s wake, otherwise we might have stopped for a closer look. But I can’t imagine any animal was responsible. There were no tooth- or claw-marks that I could see, even from that distance, and the way the body was just abandoned out in the open, it …’
A haunted look swept across Rowan’s face, like the shadow of an eclipse.
‘What?’ asked Hero, confused.
‘It’s nothing, it’s just – nothing.’ Rowan stopped, then looked over each shoulder to check that nobody was listening. ‘Hero girl, make me a promise. While I’m gone, yeh’ll hold your tongue on anything to do with this. It’s not safe to speak of it this openly. Not with so many new and unfamiliar faces skulking around the fortress. And not with the air of suspicion that’s been circulating ever since Lord Haven’s demise …’
‘Suspicion?’ Hero asked.
‘Never mind that,’ Rowan said, waving her off. ‘We can discuss it later.’
‘But you keep saying all these things, like Blade’s Edge Acres having changed and trust being in short supply. I’d hoped we’d be able to talk about what you mean …’
‘And we will. But in the meantime, just keep yer head down and focus on yer training. And when I get back we can have that talk, I promise. Ye know where to find me. Ye ken?’
Hero gave a single, sober nod.
‘Very good,’ said Rowan, the light finding his face again as he straightened his back. ‘Well, I’m away. Best of luck to yeh all. I’ll be cheering yeh on, if only in spirit.’
‘Thanks, Rowan,’ Hero mumbled, looking troubled as she watched him disappear down the opposite end of the passageway.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Joss.
‘He looked like someone threatened to drown his best mount,’ Edgar said.
‘Prentices,’ the mechanoid interjected, having taken up a position at the sunny end of the passageway. ‘Any further delay will result in tardiness.’
‘We’ll have to ask him when he’s back. Whenever that may be …’ Hero muttered as she and the others followed the mek out into the daylight, only to find themselves on the fringe of an immense walled field. Joss realised it was the same yard he’d passed through on his way to the forge, with a large stretch of grass curving around the central fortress, worn thin in the spots where countless generations of prentices and paladeros had trained and worked and sweated.
A small group of fieldservs were doing exactly that now, working alongside a couple of prentices to move the hadrosaurs Joss had seen last night from one pen to another, and shooting a mouthful of medicine into each animal’s gaping maw as it passed.
Joss saw no familiar faces among their ranks. No Lynch, no Brute or Newt. And no Zeke. He supposed that if his former riding mate was anywhere, he was most likely working in the forge. But the forge’s windows were dark, with no sign of motion from within. Joss felt relieved, yet strangely disappointed, and as he wrestled with that odd brew of emotion he marched on with his brethren to a small set of stables that sat just beyond the forge. The grass here wore the deepest and meanest of bald spots, standing at the centre of which was an imposing figure: the new lord of Blade’s Edge Acres.
Rayner was dressed just as immaculately as he had been the day before, with Joss noting that he had substituted his previous set of leathers for a whole new, perfectly tailored suit. Unlike the riding gear provided to Joss, Rayner’s was unsoiled by so much as a single day’s travel.
The paladero standing to his lordship’s left, however, was outfitted in gear that looked to have protected its wearer through all manner of tempests, blizzards and sandstorms. He was taller than Lord Rayner. Taller even than Joss had estimated when he’d spotted him in the Great Hall.
He had a lithe frame that belied his height, with a song sword strapped to his back and a freshly shaved skull crowned with a halo of morning sunshine. He looked remarkably young, especially for a skyborne paladero with lodestar ranking. Joss wondered what someone of Sur Blaek’s status was doing here in the training yard with them. Then he quickly hoped he wasn’t wrong in his guess.
‘Ah. Awake, I see,’ said Lord Rayner to the prentices while patting the mechanoid on its thin shoulder as it trundled past. ‘Clockwise once again proves himself worthy of his name.’
‘Thank you, sur,’ the mek replied, stopping to perform a highly articulated bow.
‘Thank you, “my lord”,’ Rayner said with a wag of his finger.
‘Yes, my lord.’ The mechanoid, Clockwise, straightened, then assumed its position beside a row of three bulky objects, each of which was hidden beneath a heavy wet-weather tarp.
Folding his hands behind his back, Lord Rayner slowly circled Joss and his brethren. He eyed them critically with every stride, inspecting the polish of their boots and the buckling of their belts.
‘Until recently, your training would have fallen to me. But as I’m sure you can appreciate, circumstances have changed. Instead, it will be Sur Blaek to whom you’ll be reporting.’
Joss could hardly believe his luck. The idea of having Lord Rayner as their instructor had filled him with a sense of wary hesitation, the same as being offered a free mug of sarsaparilla by a pox-ridden reprobate. To have Sur Blaek appointed in his place was a miraculous windfall.
His lordship continued, ‘I thought it only proper to be present in handing you over to him. I trust you’ll treat him with the same respect and deference as you would myself. In fact, consider him to be acting in my stead in all matters.’ Lord Rayner drew to a stop in front of Hero. ‘And expect no preferential treatment, no matter where you happen to hail from; the days of Lord Haven playing special favourites are over.’
Rayner fixed Hero with cold eyes and a mirthless smile, though she refused to give any hint of how she felt in being singled out in such a critical manner. He lingered there with his cruel smirk frozen on his face, then drew back to address the group.
‘May calm winds carry you to fine fortune,’ he said, shooting Hero one last icy look. ‘You’ll need their charity if you’re to prevail.’
And with that, the lord of Blade’s Edge Acres marched towards the passageway the prentices had entered from, where Joss could now see Captain Kardos waiting. Together they disappeared into the shadows, Lord Rayner’s words lingering behind him like a curse.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A FLYING START
SUR Blaek waited until Rayner was well and truly gone before spinning around to address his new charges with a wry smile. ‘Well, with that fine bit of encouragement to inspire you all – what say we get started? You, boy,’ he pointed at Edgar. ‘You’re the steward, I assume?’
‘Yes, sur.’ Edgar nodded vigorously.
‘Does the steward have a name?’
‘Yes, sur. Edgar, sur.’
�
�Run and fetch three sets of mounting steps from the stable over there, Edgar, as well as three practice blades. Quick as you can, thank you.’
Edgar broke into such a frenzied sprint that Joss almost expected him to leave behind a cloud shaped in his likeness.
‘Now that Lord Rayner has made the introductions, I’ll simply add that our objective here is a modest one. And it won’t involve making skyborne paladeros out of you. It takes years of hard graft and dedication to earn this bit of tin,’ Sur Blaek said, tapping the medal on his chest. ‘Our goal will be to have you riding high in the saddle of the wildest breed of thunder lizard known to King or commoner. And let’s not aim past the mark here; Hero has a distinct advantage, having already racked up – how many hours is it, Hero?’
‘Twenty, Sur Blaek,’ Hero said.
Sur Blaek whistled in admiration. ‘Twenty! Near on a full day of wild blue yonder already under her belt. I take it back; we may yet make her skyborne after all. But you two – have either of you flown before?’
Joss and Drake looked first at each other, then at Sur Blaek.
‘No, sur,’ they both said, shaking their heads.
‘Not unless standing on the roof of Tower Town counts,’ added Joss.
Sur Blaek’s eyes flashed with amusement. ‘Sadly it does not,’ he said, striding to a control panel with conduits that ran towards the three tarps. ‘Lucky for you, we cater for novices here at Blade’s Edge. Clockwise, unveil the rigs!’
‘Yes, sur,’ the mechanoid chirped, taking hold of one tarp and whipping the heavy material aside to reveal a copper contraption that vaguely resembled a pterosaur. It was mounted on a coil in the centre of a massive gimbal, which would allow it to spin and rotate in just about any direction. Bridled and saddled, the metal lizard-bird looked well-equipped to take to the wind and fly – if only it had a pair of wings.
A tap of a button from Sur Blaek at the control panel soon fixed that. A pair of canvas wings slashed out of each copper pterosaur’s riveted torso, springing open with whiplash speed.
The Edge of the World Page 6