by Ren Cummins
“Of course!” Kari smiled. “I trade with them all the time.”
“Have they ever met Rom?” Ian asked her.
“I don’t think so…. I usually go there myself on my way to the college. Why?”
Cousins grimaced. “One of those two works for the Queen – the woman who rules the city inside the wall - - - he was looking for Rom.”
“The other could well be a partner,” Ian added.
“For Rom?” she asked. “Why?”
Ian fastened the buttons on his jacket. “They didn’t know why, they were just following orders.” He turned to Cousins. “Take Kari back, I will try to track them down.”
Cousins slid forward on the narrow seat. “Hop on,” he said. “And hold on; this thing has quite a kick to it.”
She did as he instructed, wrapping her arms around his waist. He turned a small silver key which set the motor to a shivering start; it set off a low hum, indicating that it was on. He turned a lever on the body of the vehicle and lifted his feet as it began to move forward. Gripping a lever on the right grip of the handlebars, it lurched forward suddenly, generating a surprised squeak from Kari. In moments, the two of them vanished around a far corner.
Ian shook his head. He and Goya had read and re-read the prophecies, and he knew the events were already occurring around them; they’d only hoped the children would have more time to grow before the responsibilities foretold would be thrust upon them.
He drew out a card from his inner pocket and placed it against his forehead. Pinching it between his fingers, it snapped into action, dissolving into a puff of ash. Ahead of him on the street, he could make out two faint pairs of footprints, glowing magically to his eyes.
He broke into a run, wishing for a moment that he had his former abilities as a Sheharid; he could cover ground so much faster that way, and his teleportation skills would not work here, as he did not know their destination. He followed the trails around a corner and then another; after the fourth block, he could see them ahead of him. They turned and saw him as well, and began to run.
“Damn it,” he said under his breath. He ran as fast as he could, then, desperate to gain enough ground to entangle them, stun them, whatever he could do once they were in range of his spells. He saw them turn another corner, several blocks past the market square. He had no choice but to follow them. By the time he’d rounded the corner, however, they were gone. The footprints were faint, so he could still follow those – but after another block, the footprints split up. He swore again. Shrugging, he chose one of the paths at random and ran again.
After another two blocks, he caught sight of the man he was chasing, who noticed Ian and turned the first available corner. Another two turns followed in rapid succession; the man was clearly trying to lose him and unaware that he was being tracked magically. Eventually, the footsteps joined the other pair, and Ian smiled to himself.
The two tracks led him to a small shop – a vendor in parts and mechanical supplies. This certainly matched with what Kari had said. It made sense to him; as agents of the Queen, they would have needed to blend in and acquire information without being overtly suspicious. He paused at the door, overcome by the strange sense that he was being observed. He looked to his left, but could see no one. Shaking his head at this unusual fit of nerves, he turned back to the door, pushed it open and walked in.
Inside, it was comfortably lit, but seemed empty.
“Hello?” he called, deciding to take a less offensive route and perhaps ease their concerns about him. “Are you still open?”
There was no answer. He saw a door behind the main counter, and stepped around the counter and listened at the door. Hearing no sounds, he pulled the door open and stepped inside.
Shelves and free standing machinery were everywhere, granting very limited visibility. The door closed behind him, cutting off additional light. He pulled a card from his pocket and snapped it between his fingers, generating a small ball of luminescence. He turned to the right and began to walk around one of the stacks of pipes and gears, when he heard a sound behind him.
Spinning around, he saw only a twirl of red hair and a face, half-concealed by a white mask.
“Now we’re even,” she said, her voice followed by a small snap of a trigger and a flare of white flame. To Ian, the room spun, and a cold fire erupted in his chest, spreading out quickly to engulf his hands and feet in a shiver of pain, throwing him back against the floor. The ball of light fluttered and vanished, unable to remain supported by the dwindling consciousness of the once-immortal Sheharid Is’iin.
Ian tried to speak, but he could not find the breath to move his lips. Around his eyes, the darkness began to fade, dissolving into a dark violet light. The gem, he realized. His grip failed on the world of life and laughter. Beneath him, the ground gave way, and his body fell – far, far below the soaring of his spirit – and away from the land of the living.
Chapter 17: Fire In the Sky
Molla spat. “I’ll leave that for you two to dispose of,” she told the agents. “But first, report in. Tell the Queen what you’ve learned, and tell her I’ll confirm it.”
Marcos blanched. “So that was really the girl she wanted us to find? That’s the target?”
“The one with the pet animal; the one who jumps across entire buildings, yes.”
Marcos and Jondal made their way towards the back of the storeroom where they had secreted their communications system; an aethernet voicetube that led directly to the Chamberlain of the Queen himself.
“And tell her this, as well,” Molla added, sneering at Ian’s body. “Tell her that the girl has two friends: one is a smith. The other may well be a seer.”
“But how is that – “ Marcos began.
“Just do it!” Molla ordered. She smiled contentedly as the two men sprang to follow her instructions. Their message was short and to the point. The answer came in only a few moments. They asked for it to be repeated, and, afterwards, looked over at Molla with dread.
“What does that mean?” Marcos asked her.
She looked out the window – she could already feel the faint vibrations in the ground as the great cannons on the Wall were being raised and activated. In moments, they would be aimed and fired.
“It means the Queen has decided that there is no longer a need for this scrap of life outside the Wall,” she said simply.
Both men ran towards her. “We’re going to be destroyed?” they asked.
Molla laughed, leading them back out the doors and onto the street. “Don’t be fools. The Surge Cannons cannot be fired straight down – and even if they could, the explosions might impact the Wall at such a short range.”
“Do you know what the Queen intends, then?”
Molla nodded. At that moment, the darkness of night was split wide open by twin trails of flame that began from high up on the wall – two objects hurled from the unseen cannons and launched themselves like scars of fire, concealing the stars with their bright tails of glowing smoke.
The two objects blazed across the sky with low roars, shocking many of the citizens of Oldtown-Against-The-Wall from their sleep to peer terrified out their windows and follow the tracks of the strange objects until they disappeared into the far horizon, beyond the closest traces of the wild.
“You should pack up, boys,” Molla said. “This town is about to receive a few hundred unwanted visitors.” She holstered her pistols. “On second thought, don’t worry about the body,” she advised. “There’s soon enough not going to be anyone left here to mourn him, anyway.”
She nodded to them both and walked off into the darkness. Marcos and Jondal looked briefly at each other before running back inside to pack what little belongings they needed.
Unaware of the impending and unseen threat, the townspeople returned to their beds, curious to share their theories in the morning with their neighbors.
* * * * *
Rom had found the creature only a few dozen feet outside the defensive b
arrier around the town – it had been a smaller beast, mostly feral. It had come from many miles into the wild, infected by some sort of disease that had all but killed it quite some time ago.
It was smaller than Yu, but very fast, in spite of its general physical condition. Even so, they had been able to put it down without a great deal of effort.
Mulligan examined the body, and pointed to the animal’s teeth and claws. “It would have spread the disease here and there,” he explained. “I can’t tell exactly how the disease might have affected people, but I’m very certain it would have been very, very bad.”
Twin jets of flame sped across the sky above them at that moment, interrupting the conversation. Yu squinted his eyes against the glare of the flame’s light.
“What is that?” he asked.
Rom and Mulligan shook their heads. “I don’t know,” she answered. “It looks like something’s flying from the wall.” She followed the direction of the two projectiles with her eyes. “But whatever they are, they’re not going to land anywhere near here.”
Mulligan stretched his wings nervously. “I don’t feel good about this, Rom.”
Eventually, the two lines faded into the distance, leaving only a faint smell of oxidization and sulfur in the air. They watched the horizon for a small time longer, finally turning to go back to the shop for the night. Behind them, unnoticed, the sky at the horizon shone dimly like a second sunset for several moments before it, too, faded again to unbroken night.
When Rom and Mully climbed the stairs to their room, Kari was waiting for them.
“Cousins said he was going to go back to his ‘people’ and see what he could find out about the men from the parts store,” she explained. “Ian hasn’t come back, but he’ll probably return or go home when he’s done with them.”
Something was still distracting Rom – still troubling her – though she couldn’t put her finger on just what it was. But it was late and she was tired, so she assumed that to be the cause. She cleaned up and changed to nightclothes, and went to bed. Her eyes kept coming back to the window, however, and she continued to watch the night sky until sleep at last overcame her.
* * * * *
Rom awoke with a start. She gently knuckled her temples, trying to filter out the remnants of sleep from her mind. It had been a restless night, filled with flashes of fear and pain, fragments of conversations she was now having difficulty remembering. Something felt…wrong.
She dressed and descended the stairs, realized it was still some time before dawn, although there seemed to be a larger-than-usual number of people on the streets outside. Briseida was in the doorway, talking to a pair of constables from the Defense Guild; when they left, her face was pale; her eyes limned with red.
“What is it?” she asked.
Before she could answer, there was a flash of movement behind Briseida, outside the front doors. Cousins hopped from his vehicle and practically threw himself inside; just avoiding being swept up in the flashing talons of some sort of flying predator – it flapped its huge ragged wings and vanished from view. Rom grimaced with a wave of discomfort in her stomach. She could feel it now… and it wasn’t alone.
Cousins turned from the door, breathless and panting. “They’re everywhere this morning,” he said. “There’ve been more than a dozen sightings so far – the agricultural guild can’t even step out into the fields, they say they’re coming in droves.”
Rom frowned, scratched Mully’s head. He felt anxious, too, judging by the tension she could feel from him in his claws on her shoulder. A door upstairs opened, then slammed shut. Kari took the stairs at a near run, two or three at a time. She was clutching a small vial in her hand as she turned the corner into the shop.
“There’s some kind of emergency,” she said, holding up the faintly glowing vial. “All the smiths have been called in.”
A few of the people who’d previously been gathering in the streets ran past. Briseida started to leave, but Rom caught her by the arm. “What is going on?” she asked her again.
It took the young woman two tries to finally make the words come from her suddenly dry throat. “It’s Ian,” she said. “He’s…dead.”
Chapter 18: Preparations for War
She told them all she knew – all that the constables had told her – that the Defense guild had been directed to a resale shop near the market a few hours before; there, they discovered Ian’s body, having taken a fatal wound to the chest by some sort of projectile.
“I need to go tell Goya,” Briseida said vacantly. She left the three children there in the store as she walked away, slowly ascending the back stairs.
The Diviners employed by the Defense Guild were never terribly accurate; the most they could accomplish in watching over a town of this size was to detect the more emphatic of capital crimes, and often detected them only after the fact. Cousins was beginning to understand the technical limitations of prognostication; it was like trying to follow every drop of rain from the clouds at once – a single drop could be relatively tracked, but being aware of each individual droplet was next to impossible. For something as abhorrent as murder, however, these artificial collisions with the expected flow of life appeared like sparks of light among the downpour to the trained seers of the Defense Guild.
Ian’s body had been taken to the Defense Guild’s research division as per protocol, but in lieu of any next of kin, Goya and Briseida’s names were suggested as people who knew him better than anyone. There were a few suspects, and the defense guild was attempting to track them down and investigate the particulars.
Cousins gripped the edge of the table. “It had to be those two men from the shop,” he said. “Your parts dealers,” he said to Kari.
“But they’re nice men,” Kari protested, her eyes welling up. “Though, maybe they do know something, I guess.”
Rom looked to the other two. Her hand found its way to her bracelet, called out her Crook. When she spoke, her voice sounded strange, as if didn’t belong to her. “I’m gonna go ask them.”
“No,” Cousins protested. “I’ll talk to a few people I know, they can beat it out of them just as effectively.”
Baring her teeth in the feral parody of a smile, Rom countered, “But I’ll ask so nice.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“For them, you mean.”
“Shut up!” Kari screamed. Their brief debate was ended as Kari dropped to the floor, her shoulders trembling in anticipation of sobs which had not yet fully found their voice, and Rom quickly set the staff aside and knelt beside her friend. She held one hand to Kari’s shoulder, uncertain otherwise what to do. Kari responded by throwing her arms around her and breaking into tears.
For her own part, Rom didn’t know how to react, beyond feeling conflicted on how to feel. Having seen the world of the spirits, she suspected that Ian was now fighting on the side of Force, Inertia and Memory to push back Artifice’s influence. And if he were indeed there, she might someday be able to visit him, as well; so this degree of logic wrestled with the simple yet profound sense of anguish that she felt at his absence. To have been deprived of any sense of family for her entire life, only to learn of her closest almost-relative only months before losing them again: she felt like her ability to understand her own life was several steps behind the things that kept happening to her.
She wished she was back on the landing of the Orphanage, staring out into the dream of flying. At least then, she still had her dreams.
“You two stay here, I’m going,” Cousins said flatly. “I can get around fast enough on my Runabout.”
Rom looked up, realizing distantly that her own cheeks were covered in tears. She could see his eyes, dark and rimmed in red. “No, I said I’ll go.” Kari clutched her more tightly.
“She needs you here, Rom. You don’t need me for this.”
Kari turned her head and reached out with one hand. “No, Cousins, don’t go, please!” she cried.
A deep fire raged
inside Rom, hearing the frantic quality in Kari’s voice. She was distantly aware, somehow, that it was wrong for these emotions to be thrust upon children; though resilient to a tremendous degree, such pain required a depth of experience to which they were ill-prepared. Her mind sorted this and other factors, filtering away her own personal sense of loss and replacing it with a yearning for reprisal. Compared to the crisp and shattering agony, it began to feel more like a simple dullness, a distant ache.
Rom tried to stand up, but Kari clung to her. “Let me go, Kari, I have to go take care of this.” Kari’s sobs simply grew in intensity.
“Children, hush.”
Goya’s soft voice cut through the other sounds of the small shop. She stood in the doorway, one hand upon Briseida’s shoulder, the other tightly gripping her cane. The two women slowly made their way across the room, while Goya continued to speak. “Cousins, stay; Rom as well. You may well have much to do, but there are some things you must know before you engage upon your tasks.”
Cousins opened his mouth to protest, but she held up her cane to silence him. “No, my boy, you will hear me out.”
Briseida led her to stand near Kari and Rom, and Goya leaned forward and lowered her hand from Briseida’s shoulder to the top of Kari’s head.
“Stand, Kari.” She waited a few moments and repeated the request. Eventually, Kari’s sobs slowed and she reluctantly pulled away from Rom to look up at Goya. Rom’s heart felt as if it were breaking again at seeing the torment so plainly on her friend’s face.
“Why – why did…?”
Goya shook her head slowly, realizing it would be some time before Kari could adequately form the question for which she so desperately wanted an answer. “We cannot ask why, dear,” she whispered. “There is no why.”
Addressing the others as well, she raised her voice slightly. “Children, I beg your forgiveness in that Ian and I knew that this day would one day come. We had hoped there might have been more time to prepare you, but…”