by Tish Thawer
Theodore nodded and leaned forward.
“Hold it steady,” I said as I docked the pipe. Once it was stable, I pulled the small lever hidden behind one of the mortared bricks. It clicked and sent the gears turning, which caused the small piston to slide into the top of the ward. I nodded in satisfaction as the plates slowly spread out.
“Looks good,” Charlotte said. The last segment of the plate expanded, and the ward glowed. Something crashed inside the saloon. Loud enough I could hear through the wall, and large enough I could feel it in the bricks as I slid everything back together.
“Sounds like we may have surprised some fae inside the saloon,” Betsy said.
“Let’s move,” Charlotte said. “If that’s what happened, we don’t need to be out here when they come to investigate.”
We shifted the barrel back, and Charlotte kicked at the dirt to hide the signs that anyone had moved it. We hurried to the east and rounded the corner of the block before I heard raised voices behind us.
“Get onto the street,” Charlotte said. We crossed over the square, and it was a straight shot to the meeting hall.
We were halfway across the square before anyone really noticed us.
“I’m sure that’s them,” someone said from behind us.
“They look busy,” someone else said. “Let’s just leave them alone.”
I glanced back and saw some of our recent customers. Charlotte caught me looking, and our entire group slowed down. She turned to face whatever was behind us, her hand sliding toward her vambrace.
I gave a tiny shake of my head, and her hand fell away.
“Oh, we didn’t mean to bother you,” the woman behind us said.
“We just wanted to thank you for the beautiful puzzle box,” the man said.
“It’s no trouble, dears,” Charlotte said. “We’re just looking for one of our friends, and I am afraid we don’t have much time to talk. But I appreciate you telling us. It was very kind of you.”
“Of course,” the man said. “Thank you again.”
I inclined my head as we parted ways. “What was their name again?”
“You are terrible with names, Gregory,” Charlotte said.
“Almost as bad as Theodore,” Betsy said. “That was Lawrence and his wife, Christine. Come now. We must hurry.”
Apparently our hurried manner was enough to turn away the usually polite townsfolk. The crunch of gravel in the center of the town square gave way to a patch of grass. Our footsteps fell quiet until we reached the next street, and the meeting hall.
The core of the building was simple enough, but that wasn’t my focus. That wasn’t our goal. On either side of the squat building rose the framing of a beautiful expansion. By the time they had the meeting hall completed, it would rival some of the nicest buildings I’d seen in my travels.
“Come,” I said, “to the left. Down the alley, and we’re nearly there.”
The alley was a narrow thing, not so much due to its own nature, but due to the fact they had stacked lumber and various building supplies all along it. Once we cleared the edge, and the walls were open, we stepped into the skeleton of the new construction.
Once we were on the north side of the meeting hall, we were in the shadow of what many called Mount Alexa. Something about the woods on the north side of the town always unsettled me. It was an odd thing, as technically the woods where my still resided was in the Northwoods, but it was nothing like that looming form of Mount Alexa. Perhaps it was Orna, ever keeping a watchful eye. Or perhaps it was something more ominous, something we mortals couldn’t understand, and maybe never would.
We wove between the precisely cut wooden supports of the new expansion. It wasn’t the wood that interested me. It was the massive iron beams they’d used as the main supports. It gave me pause, knowing that a building that would harbor fae intermittently would be partially constructed of iron. Perhaps it had been intentional? I couldn’t say, but it would work for my purposes.
“Here,” I said, kneeling down near the center of the rear construction. The middle of the iron column had what appeared to be a welded plate over it. But that wasn’t it at all. While I had made the cuts at the conservatory, I’d recruited Theodore to prepare the installation at the meeting hall.
Our packs thumped down onto the hardened earth beneath the black iron. Theodore opened his pack and pulled out the last of the wards. This one was different. Much as we’d customized the others to fit the bronze pipework in the conservatory and the brass piston we’d installed in the saloon, this one was a darker affair. The post was nearly solid iron, while the plate that hosted the wards was an alloy.
I placed a magnet in the center of the welded plate. The response was instant. I could hear the bolt retract as the magnet pulled on the levers behind the plate. It was delicate work, getting the gears in the proper ratio that a simple magnet could undo the bolts, but Theodore had proven his skill.
I pulled the plate off with ease. Charlotte took it out of my hand while Theodore reached into the void. He settled the bottom of the post onto a slightly raised bolt. It fit squarely in the socket on the base of the ward, and one hard push locked the top of it into place. I slid one long locking pin from the front through the back before reaching behind the assembly and bending the pin down.
“You’re sure that’s enough to hold it?” Theodore asked.
I fished around in the pocket on my vest and pulled out the last of our new vessels. “I suppose we’ll know in a second.”
I pulled the spring-loaded panel to the side on the post before sliding the vessel inside. I let the panel snap closed, and a moment later the plate sprang into action. Each segment locked into the one before it until it fully formed the ward and started to glow.
“So far, so good,” Charlotte said.
“Why do you always have to say that?” I asked. “Every time.”
“Oh, come now,” Charlotte said. “Put your silly superstitions to rest. Nothing bad has happened since we retired.”
“Retired from being a pirate?” Theodore muttered.
I stared at the ward. And waited.
And waited.
“I don’t sense the wards connecting,” Betsy said.
“Every. Time,” I said as I looked up at Charlotte.
“Check it again,” Theodore said. “Is it in right?”
I gave him a flat look.
“We need to get back to the conservatory,” Betsy said, wringing her hands. “Driscoll was there earlier.”
I cursed. “What if he got to the ward?”
Charlotte bit her lip and shook her head. “No, he can’t touch it.”
“We need to get back there,” Betsy said. “Now.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, willing myself to calm down. She was right. We needed to get back to the conservatory and see what had been compromised. There couldn’t be another explanation, unless the wards themselves had failed, and I couldn’t afford that kind of doubt.
I gave one sharp nod and hopped up to my feet. “Grab your bags. We’re going.”
Chapter 15
Theodore tied the flap of his backpack off and slung it over his shoulder. I followed suit, the sweat on my palms causing the leather to grow slick beneath my grasp.
We hurried out the back of the meeting hall construction, hurdling supplies and ducking through the various supports of the new construction.
Once we were out on the road behind it, more of a dirt path really, I started to notice more of the sounds in the city. In the distance you could just barely hear the falls crashing, and I realized it wasn’t so much the sounds of the city I was hearing, but the lack of sound.
We hurried east until we reached the edge of the meeting hall, and then we cut south. Charlotte took the lead, as she had always been the lookout when we were on the seas. While my vision had grown worse with age, to the point that I could barely get around without some sort of glasses, she could still spot prey at two hundred yards.
“What’s going on?” I asked, my gaze flashing from Betsy back to Charlotte.
“They’re waiting for us,” Betsy said. “They’ve already masked the area from the locals. But this is beyond Driscoll’s skill. I can still hear you, and you can still hear me. The discipline it would take to make a cloak like this so precise is astounding.”
“You’re not making me feel much better, girl,” Charlotte said. She pulled a lever on the side of her vambrace, releasing the safety on the bolt thrower she now had mounted to it.
I unhooked the strap that was loosely holding the harmonica pistol against my chest. It would be a quick draw and easy aim, and I only hoped it would be fast enough.
We closed on the front of the inn, skirting around its grand façade. We stayed to the west of the building, hugging the wide porch and the turret that rose three stories above us. I glanced up at one of the brick chimneys that crowned the roof, and could’ve sworn I saw movement.
“Something’s above us,” I said.
Charlotte nodded, and I suspected she was the only one who had heard me. Once we cleared the side of the inn, the conservatory came into view.
“You’ll not keep me from my prey, mortal,” Driscoll said. His glare was icy enough to physically cut someone. If he’d been human, I would’ve said he looked cocky. But most fae I’d encountered over the years weren’t the overconfident type. They generally knew what advantage they had, and how to leverage it.
“You here alone?” I asked.
“Only I stand before you,” Driscoll said.
I’d once heard a tale that the fae told lies through truth, and I’d seen it and heard it with my own ears more than once. I turned my body slightly toward the inn and drew the harmonica pistol in one swift motion. The trigger clicked back, and the hammer dropped. The boom that followed would be enough to draw a crowd if the fae weren’t masking everything we were doing.
But that hadn’t been my point.
The shadow on the roof danced away from the bullet, and while I was quite sure no fae could move so fast as to dodge a bullet, the rapid motion of the blur certainly gave that impression. But I watched in satisfaction as one of the tiles beneath its foot slipped, and Cathal came tumbling down to the edge of the roof. With one violent swipe of his hand, he broke through the edge of the inn and grasped the hole he’d just created to keep from falling.
Cathal wasn’t so slender as Driscoll. His chest was broader and tapered into a muscled waist. He looked down at me and snarled.
“What sorcery have you?” he shouted down. “No mortal can see us.”
I let a small smile crawl over my face. I raised the aether magnifier away from the goggle over my left eye. “Apparently humans can do more than you know.”
The faerie narrowed his eyes, released his grip, and thumped gracefully onto the earth not twenty feet from the barrel of my gun. “Can your lens protect you from a sword in your gut?”
Charlotte moved out to my right. It was a standard formation we’d used more than once when our ship had been boarded on the seas. I didn’t care how good of a sailor you were, there was always a faster pirate, a stealthier ship, and you had to trust someone at your back.
Theodore had been a brawler before Betsy knocked some sense into him. He worked hard, but he’d also made a serious effort at screwing up his life. But it was the side of him that tended toward violence I hoped he’d brought today.
“Brothers,” Betsy said. “Leave this place in peace.”
“Halfbreed,” Driscoll snarled. “Do not spew your talk of peace with me. These people have invaded our lands, people who are wanted by the very courts that govern us.”
“He is my mate,” Betsy said, stepping closer to Theodore. “You cannot strike him down, without breaking the very bonds of the fae. If you would strike at him, you strike at me.”
“You speak of the old laws,” Cathal said. “But you are a halfbreed. You have lived your entire life in the shadow of the mortals. You have no comprehension of what you speak.”
“So be it,” Betsy said. She drew a slender blade from each sleeve of her loose-fitting gown. “Leave now, or you will not leave this place alive.”
“Fool.”
“Found him,” Theodore said. “Tree line to the east. Looks like a bow.”
“What?” Driscoll said, his gaze turning to the trees.
Driscoll was almost as fast to turn as Charlotte was to draw the aether gun. The fae had never seen something like that, of that I had little doubt. The dim glow of the aether brightened as Charlotte pulled the mechanism below the barrel back in full. The fae in the woods had to have been a hundred yards away, no easy shot. But the bolt of magic that the aether gun threw had no concern for the wind in the air, or the friction of the barrel, or the head that it destroyed.
I couldn’t hear the fae fall, but I could see the gore, and the collapse of the ruined body.
“You know not what you’ve done,” Driscoll snarled as he drew his sword.
“Exterminating the bilge rats,” Charlotte growled.
I expected him to talk more—that’s usually how it went with the immortals. They fixated on spewing nonsense as they went about eviscerating their enemies. Driscoll had apparently spoken enough words. He moved like lightning, diving back into the webwork of the conservatory and dodging between the brass supports.
The other fae kept his gaze fixated on Charlotte’s gun. I wasn’t sure if he was tracking the barrel in order to make sure he didn’t get his own head blown off, or if he was just lusting after the damned thing.
“How long?” I shouted.
“Less than half,” Charlotte said.
I cursed under my breath. From what Charlotte was saying, the aether gun wouldn’t be ready to fire for another minute at least. If I was being honest with myself, the two remaining fae could kill us all in that time. But they didn’t know we couldn’t fire again yet. They just thought we were half-crazed mortals. And that we could use to our advantage.
I pressed the plate on my vambrace, and the teardrop-shaped shield erupted on the back of my arm. It was one of the hardest alloys I’d ever seen, and Charlotte and I had put it up against gunfire and swords and a hundred different weapons. But here, faced with a half-mad fae, I worried just how much it could stop.
I sidestepped to the right, keeping the harmonica pistol leveled roughly between Cathal and Driscoll. They both kept the relaxed stance, which was both infuriating and intimidating. Charlotte and Theodore moved with me. I hadn’t spent much time training Theodore on the finer points of strategic combat, and that was a fact I regretted in that moment.
“Theodore, don’t!” Betsy shouted.
But Theodore was already moving, closing the distance between him and Cathal. A slow smile lifted the corners of Cathal’s lips. I cursed, shifted my aim for Cathal, and fired. The harmonica pistol boomed, and the clip moved one more slot toward being empty. The bullet ricocheted into the air, hitting an invisible force not two inches from Cathal’s shoulder. The faerie snarled and brought a rapid left uppercut into Theodore’s ribs.
I didn’t have to hear the crack to know something had broken. Theodore stumbled forward, aiming a clumsy left-handed blow at Cathal’s face. The faerie reared back to strike again, but Theodore smacked the button on his vambrace, and a shield much like mine exploded around his arm. Except unlike mine, the boy had added some very nasty blades to the edge, the longest of which cut into the collarbone of the fae. Cathal roared in pain and spun away.
Driscoll’s calm façade fractured, and he moved into action. Betsy broke formation, skirting past me and whispering in my ear, “Fix the ward.”
She shoved off me, sending me stumbling toward Charlotte, and closer to the pipes where we’d installed the ward.
Charlotte aimed her wrist and cl
icked the button on her vambrace. Three bolts shot out, two finding nothing but air, but the third cutting into Driscoll’s sleeve. The faerie doubled over, his smug expression completely overcome by the pain of the iron. He ripped his shirt sleeve off as he threw the projectile to the ground. In a motion so quick I could barely follow, the faerie tossed a throwing dagger at Charlotte. She barely had her arm up in time to stop the blade with her own flesh, but instead the razor-sharp projectile sank into the mechanism on her vambrace. There’d be no more bolts flying from that.
Betsy took the opportunity to aim a swift kick at Driscoll’s head while Theodore wrestled with Cathal. Cathal grabbed Theodore and threw him to the ground, sending a cloud of dust and gravel into the air. I didn’t know much how much more the boy could take, his pained screech cutting into my ears. I’d been hit like that before, and I didn’t get back up.
I hurried around Charlotte and slid to a stop before the pipes.
I could see almost immediately what Driscoll had done. He hadn’t damaged the ward so much as taken its power source away. The compartment that held the vessel was cracked open and was nowhere to be found. “Fire the gun and throw it to me!”
Charlotte didn’t hesitate. She took a shot at Cathal as he raised a sword to bring an end to Theodore, who now lay on the ground, struggling to breathe through his broken ribs. The aether gun fired, and a hole appeared in Cathal’s torso. The faerie stumbled backward and collapsed against the inn. It wasn’t an instant kill. He was still a threat.
Betsy’s sword clanged against Driscoll’s, and her words reverberated through my mind. Fix the ward.
Charlotte hurled the aether gun at me. I caught it and popped the cylinder out of the side, fumbling to get the vessel out of it as quickly as possible. It felt as though the motion took forever, as Driscoll landed a blow against Betsy and sent her tumbling to the ground beside Theodore. Charlotte pulled the throwing knife out of her vambrace and hurled it at Driscoll.
The thump of blade on flesh was sickening. The lack of expression on Driscoll’s face was terrifying.
I finally slid the vessel out of the cylinder and slammed it home in the ward. The plate glowed, and for a moment, my breath left me as a force I didn’t fully understand burst through the area.