Pocket Full of Tinder

by Jill Archer

  Luckily, however, I was stronger than I’d been last semester, and I had the benefit of Fara’s spells. Besides, how long could it take to fly to the top of Mount Occasus? A few minutes at most? I’d be fine.

  But trying to shape the damn thing proved more difficult than I’d hoped. Five attempts later, Fara was long gone. On her way to find Yannu and round up help.

  For what seemed like the hundredth time, I looked up at the Magna Fax. There was still no sign of light or life at the top of Mount Occasus, which was good. We could still pull this off. If only I could focus.

  Tenacity came out to watch and instead of being a distraction, she became my center. I cast off my growing fears and concentrated on how Tenacity hadn’t let her lack of proper schooling stand in the way of becoming who she wanted to be.

  She simply did it.

  What was it she’d said earlier?

  I believe in the teachings of Joshua, so the demons call me ‘Angel.’

  Well, I believed I could shape a drakon big enough to fly so the demons could call me… whatever the hell they wanted. The only thing I cared about was doing it.

  My sixth attempt roared to life. She literally tipped her head back and bellowed fire upon her birth. Tenacity jumped up from where she’d been sitting and stumbled backward as Megaptera (I had to call her something!) turned her red eyes toward us.

  She was terrifyingly beautiful, especially when she stretched her wings and I realized they were perfect. That’s what I want for Ari, I thought. I want Nightshade to mend his broken wing and make it perfect again.

  But first things first.

  I took a running start and leapt onto Megaptera’s back. Effortlessly, I found my seat and gave Tenacity a jaunty wave as Megaptera rose gracefully into the sky—

  Ha! It didn’t actually happen like that.

  Tenacity ended up having to give me a leg up. She beamed when I told her that her old-fashioned, unensorcelled boost was worth ten of Fara’s fancy spells. I climbed up and clumsily wedged myself in between Megaptera’s lance-like horns, furiously hoping I wouldn’t be thrown off if she toggled them forward for battle. I guessed, since they were made from my magic, I could dissolve them if they became a problem, but that made me wonder what else I might not be anticipating.

  Enough, I scolded myself. I’d wasted enough time. I probably could have hiked to the top of Mount Occasus by now. I focused on one remaining thought – up! Megaptera’s haunches tensed and then, a moment later, she launched herself into the sky.

  20

  MEGAPTERA

  Flying a fiery drakon shaped from my own magic was the most amazing thing I’d ever experienced – bar none. I’d climbed to the top of some very high places, stood at the top of other high spaces… Mountains and skyscrapers, bridges and bell towers… I’d ridden in fast cabs, bouncing boats, even on the back of a barghest. But none of it compared to this. This was height and speed the likes of which I couldn’t have ever imagined. The moment Megaptera took to the sky, my body soared, my stomach dropped, and my perspective of the world changed forever.

  Everything shrank and expanded at the same time. Rockthorn Gorge’s buildings became smaller as my view opened up. Behind me, the town and its landmarks became model-sized. The river Acheron grew longer as Mount Occasus loomed larger. Wind whipped across my face, stuffed my lungs, and tangled my hair. The air – the sky – seemed laced with something special, a palpable bliss that was more than magical. For one wild moment, I knew I could escape everyone who had ever tried to control me: my father, the Council, St. Luck’s… even Ari.

  How had he resisted the urge to scoop me up and fly off with me?

  Maybe he’d been holding out for this – the day when we could fly off together, as equals.

  But the view that tempted me was the view that tethered me. Up here, I felt as if I could see the future – Ari’s and mine and the tiny town of Rockthorn Gorge’s. In the shadow of Mount Occasus, the settlement looked small and vulnerable.

  Live free or die? I couldn’t afford to do either.

  The flight to the top of Mount Occasus was both regrettably and thankfully short. If it weren’t for Displodo’s threat and the limits of my magic, I could have stayed in the sky forever. As it was, however, I made it to the base of the guard tower with a decent reservoir of magic to draw upon.

  Why hadn’t I thought to bring a blade? Firing a pepperbox made from metal might be less risky than firing one made from magic, but how good would my aim be? I’d never fired a real gun in my life.

  Too late for regrets. I gritted my teeth and concentrated on descending.

  Ari’s expression was inscrutable. He stood watching me wrestle with Megaptera, attempting, for the first time, to manage speed, lift, wind direction, and a relatively small landing area. Riding a beast shaped from my own magic was both good and bad. Megaptera was fully within my control – but I had no idea how to fly. I was winging it.

  I snorted at my own dumb pun and tried not to overthink my landing. I came in too high and too fast. My signature zinged as I realized the very real danger of falling over the cliff. If I lost my focus and Megaptera sputtered and went out, there was little chance I’d be able to reshape her before I died. Would Ari be able to catch me?

  He reached up and I bent over and grabbed his hand. He yanked me from my seat and I fell, crashing to the ground next to him. My shoulder crunched painfully and the wind was knocked out of me. Megaptera dissolved in a downpour of ash and soot. I rolled over, wheezing, trying to catch my breath while expanding my signature.

  The only other waning magic users I felt were Ari and two bunyips at the bottom of the via ferrata. Their signatures were faint but they buzzed with astonishment while Ari’s nearer and stronger one pulsed with delight… and not a small amount of turmoil. I stood up quickly, not wanting Ari to suspect how much shaping Megaptera had taxed me, and tested my shoulder.

  How ironic would it be if I’d broken my left arm? No steel blade, no Angel healer…

  It wasn’t broken, though. I stared at Ari while windmilling my arm. He was dressed in borrowed clothes. Presumably he’d checked in with whoever was below and one of them had lent him some gear. I knew we should discuss Displodo first and that I should ask him what he’d learned from the bunyips below, but I couldn’t help grinning.

  “So… whadya think?” I asked, motioning to the now-empty sky.

  Ari struggled for a moment, his emotions at war with one another. Finally, admiration won out. He smiled and shook his head. “That… that was incredible. I knew you could do it, but… just… don’t fly so high again until you know what you’re doing. You, ah…well… You looked like you were riding a winged bull in a maelstrom.”

  My jaw dropped. True or not, what right did Ari have to criticize my flying?! He was the one who looked like—

  But then he grinned and I laughed and for one single moment it was just us on a windy mountain we’d both flown to the top of. Sunset was hours away, and that strange, foreboding, orange-turning-blue, fiery kisses, bared hearts, and impending gloom-of-night feeling I’d had the last time we were here felt far off.

  “Who’s at the bottom?” I asked.

  “Oleg and Igor. They were patrolling the base when I flew over.”

  I acknowledged with a nod, but I’d be lying if I said I remembered which bunyips they were. The retainers did not go out of their way to distinguish themselves – they were all big, brutish, and tank-like.

  Ari and I reconnoitered the mountaintop plaza. We patrolled its perimeter, peeked over the sides of the mountain, and expanded our signatures as far as the horizon, or at least that’s what it felt like. Vaguely, I felt a contingent of signatures marching our way, but the mass felt like retainers – a bunch of bunyips and a few other demon species I didn’t immediately recognize. Their magic seethed with expectation, but it was a battle response I was used to.

  Rumbling thunder and a rogue wind gust told me a storm was on its way. That made me uneasy. Storms alway
s seemed to presage something terrible. An electric web of light flared in the clouds above one of the western ridges.

  “Ari…” I said slowly, turning around, “Did you check inside the tower?” I glanced up at the Magna Fax, which poked out from the tower’s crenelated battlement.

  “No,” he answered quietly, “but I can’t feel anyone in it, and how would they have gotten up here without either Oleg or Igor seeing or sensing them?”

  I pursed my lips but was careful to keep my signature steady.

  “Displodo might not even be a demon,” I reminded Ari. “On the other hand, if it’s Acheron, he wouldn’t have to use the via ferrata.” He could slither up the side of the mountain.

  “You still think Acheron might be Displodo?” Ari didn’t bother to hide his skepticism.

  We walked toward the guard tower. I shrugged. “Acheron hates the Memento Mori dam project, and I think he’d do almost anything to stop it. He threatened the Council. He threatened me—”

  “He did? When?”

  I filled Ari in on my meeting with Acheron. With everything that had happened last night and this morning, I hadn’t had a chance. But Ari was more interested in Acheron’s alleged claim than his alleged threat.

  “Acheron isn’t Displodo, Noon. He respects the law. He respects the Council. He… respects you.”

  I gave Ari an incredulous look. “Sure he does.” I laughed. “Want to know how I tried to control him yesterday? I shaped a fiery ring and put it right through his nose. Not that it worked.”

  Beside me, Ari made a strangled noise in his throat. Alarmed, I turned toward him. But no one was attacking him; he just looked dumbfounded. “Noon, you—?”

  Ari made some other unintelligible noise. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing or horrified. I finally grabbed his arm and put my finger to my lips. We were standing in front of the guard tower. I shaped a sword and pulled the door open. Ari stepped inside, peered up, and then motioned to me.

  Inside was a spiral staircase with no handrails, lit only by the meager light from arrow slits in the wall and our swords. We kept our weapons bright as we crept in and up. Boots silent, breath held, we climbed toward the top. I didn’t count them, but there had to be as many steps in the tower as there were days in a year. And a year is how long it seemed to take to reach the top. The tower was beginning to feel like a giant mausoleum by the time I reached the last step and emerged onto the roof.

  There, crouched in between two merlons, was the Magna Fax. I knew it was only a weapon – a tool, neither inherently good nor bad – yet it seemed an evil thing.

  How could anyone build something so powerful and expect it to serve only as a deterrent?

  At least one small part of Obadiah Zeffre must have wanted to see his creation put to use, which made me worry anew about his descendent, Nephemiah. How much of the town’s original engineer’s hubris had been passed down? How much of his zealousness?

  The view from the top of the tower was spectacular, but the line of retainers making their way along the trail to the base of the mountain gave us no time to appreciate it. I shielded my eyes from the setting sun and squinted at the approaching figures.

  “Can you tell who’s coming from their signatures?” I asked Ari.

  “Feels like Kalchoek… Pestis and Malphia… and one more I don’t recognize.”

  Well, at least Ari had confirmed my first impression – that there wasn’t a pack of rogares on their way to meet us. But Kalchoek? And Pestis and Malphia? Ugh. I didn’t know who would be worse to work with – any one of them or the unfamiliar demon.

  “Could the stranger be Vannis?” Hidebehinds could cloak their signatures; maybe they could camouflage them too.

  But Ari shook his head. “Doubtful.”

  I didn’t voice the obvious next question: Could it be Displodo?

  After a brief debate, we decided to split up. I agreed to climb back down to the plaza and meet up with Rat Boy, Fly Girl, and my melee nemesis while Ari stayed up top to guard the Magna Fax.

  On the way down, I considered our suspects:

  ACHERON: He wanted the Memento Mori dam project stopped and he wasn’t above using dramatically unorthodox means to achieve his goal (he’d threatened the Council and assaulted me… albeit, I’d assaulted him first). He was in possession of an ancient book (possibly an altered forgery of a lost or stolen original?), which he claimed gave him Luck-granted rights over this area. He was also at the rotunda mere hours before Displodo stole the Magna Fax’s matchbook.

  ZEFFRE: Descended from the engineer who originally built the Magna Fax for the very purpose of drastically reducing the town’s reliance on demon lords. He was also the foreman of the Memento Mori dam project, which meant he had unrestricted access to the viaduct and building site. And he was Ari’s uncle. Other members of Ari’s adoptive family (ahem, his mother, Joy) possessed a wickedly fierce independent streak. It wasn’t too hard to imagine that Zeffre might be hiding one as well. Maybe he valued his independence over other people’s lives.

  MALPHIA: Where to start? Her magic was more than destructive. It felt like a blight on the world. She fought as if her personal mission was to stamp out every bit of light or love, past, present, or future. She’d not only beaten me in my first melee, she’d almost killed me. And she’d continued to taunt me ever since. That said, she was a fan of dark, lonely things – of suffocation and inexistence, not fiery explosions.

  CLIODNA: She hated me… and everyone else. Because she was incapable of love. She’d all but admitted she valued people no more than dolls or puppets. And when she toyed with you, poison was the least of your concerns. Still… my conflicts with her were personal. And Cliodna had a lot to lose if the Memento Mori dam project was stopped and the town’s ties with New Babylon broken. Most of her miners and artisans would be out of work. Their adoration for her would quickly turn to antagonism.

  YANNU: It was true that, after an altogether justified “testing” phase, Ari’s Captain of the Guard had seemed to accept me. And yet… I couldn’t quite bring myself to cross him off the list. It wasn’t (necessarily) that he could have cared less whether I lived or died; it was that he was a bunyip, more than half the ranks were bunyips, and his history in the gorge was longer than Ari’s. I had a feeling Yannu had seen himself as Potomus’ successor… But would Yannu go as far as destroying town infrastructure, killing residents, and murdering patrons to pursue his ambition?

  SOMEONE ELSE: …

  I was beginning to contemplate that last amorphous suspect when I reached the bottom stair. Mulling over my list would have to wait. I pushed open the tower door and found Kalchoek, Pestis, and Malphia waiting for me. Pestis’ mouth was closed, so thankfully there wasn’t yet a swarm of flies overhead. Her glistening face and lidless eyes stared back at me as I brought the trio up to speed.

  “No sign of Displodo?” Malphia asked. I shook my head. Unless he’s you… She smirked. “You looked like you were going to save him the trouble of killing you earlier.”

  I gathered she was referring to Megaptera and ignored her barb.

  “Who’s below with Oleg and Igor?”

  “Ungvar.”

  “Where’s Yannu?”

  “On his way with more retainers.”

  I realized then just how isolated and alone I was. Not just on top of Mount Occasus, but in Rockthorn Gorge. Three months of working here and I still trusted only three people – Ari, Fara, and Tenacity.

  “Guess who finally had to pick me for her team?” Malphia chortled and then turned her back on me. Pestis just stared, silent and unblinking, creepy and quiet. Her signature reminded me of dying things. Of decay and rot. Malphia’s signature was worse, though. If Pestis felt like death, then Malphia felt like the one-two punch of a living hell followed by The End. And Kalchoek? He just felt oil-slick and dirty, as always.

  Keeping my signature open so that I could try and sense the presence of another waning magic user was difficult and unnerving. The weather didn�
��t help. The incoming storm made the surrounding green of the mountains look darker than midnight. At least at midnight there were twinkling stars and the potential for dreams.

  The blackness in the mountains expanded as the increasing gloom prematurely extinguished the fading sun. There were no last rays of yellow-gold hope. The mountain peaks were suddenly the color of tension and fear – a roiling stew of nihility steaming with ash-colored clouds and electric light.

  I descended a set of stairs to one of the smaller levels of the plaza. The effects of the others’ signatures were less pronounced down here, but my sense of emptiness and unease remained. By the time the rain started, I felt as brittle as a burnt butterfly wing. It occurred to me that Displodo’s cartoon hadn’t stated a deadline. There was no ticking clock. We’d rushed here to stop him, but he might not come. He could wait five days, five years, or even fifty to use the matchbook he’d stolen.

  How long would we be able to triple guard the Magna Fax with guards at the base of the mountain, top, and tower?

  A few days more, I thought, ascending the steps and heading back toward the tower to complete my circuit. That’s all. Just until we think of a different plan. Some way to lure Displodo out of hiding. Or a way to convince the residents of Rockthorn Gorge that it was time to dismantle the Magna Fax...

  Something crackled when I took my next step. But when I looked down, there was nothing. I raised my foot and peered at the sole of my boot. There, smashed in the middle of it, was a fly.

  Had I just killed one of Pestis’ flies?

  I grimaced and waited for a telltale sign of irritation to flash in her signature, but I felt nothing. In fact, I couldn’t feel her at all anymore, which might have been comforting had my gaze not skipped ahead to the ground in front of me.

  It was covered with flies – dead ones.

  My signature zinged and I rushed forward, shaping a sword as I ran. Fiery heat exploded in my palm and quickly morphed into a solid, warm, familiar shape. I gripped the hilt of my sword as I raced up a few more steps, rounded a corner, and ran across the largest section of the plaza. Pestis was lying on the ground in front of the tower.