It was a sad tale, but remarkably Sain had grown strong and resilient from it. Through it all he had never broken. Daylen was right about the kid; he certainly had some balls.
“Do you think we’ll get to see it?” Sain asked, referring to the Lumatorium.
“You don’t need my permission; I’m not your keeper.”
“No, I’m your prisoner.”
“Not after we dock.”
Sain didn’t reply and Daylen turned his head to see frustration on Sain’s face.
“I thought you’d be jumping for joy.”
“It’s not that.”
Daylen looked back to the city and thought about what Sain meant. “Yeah, it can be hard to find your way in the world, but you’ll figure it out. The truth is you’re a resourceful kid and could do well in life if you make the right decisions.”
“Don’t call me a kid,” he said scathingly. “We’re the same age.”
“Trust me, you’re a kid.”
Silence hung for a moment before Sain said anything. “I want to come with you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Kid, if you knew who I really was, you would want to get as far away from me as possible, if you didn’t want to kill me first.”
Sain seemed to be studying Daylen. “Who are you?”
“I can’t tell you, but if you stay with me, you’d just get in the way. You need to live your own life, Sain.”
“What do you expect me to do, get a job in a port or work in some factory? Screw that! Apart from getting stuck with Blackheart, there was one good thing about my life: I was free.”
“And you’d think you would be free with me?”
Sain shook his head. “But without you I’ll be stuck in Highdawn just like I was stuck in Raidaway.”
“Then it’s a good thing you’ll have a skyship.”
“What?”
“Blackheart’s ship—it’s yours. I’m keeping the Maraven, but you can have most of the loot we loaded up from the den. You’ve picked up how to pilot well enough. Do whatever you want, go wherever you want to go.”
“I… But…”
“You’re welcome.”
“You’re really giving me the loot?” the boy asked, his eyes wide.
“A tenth of what’s there is more than I’ll need for years. The rest is yours.”
“But that’s enough to buy, like, three mansions.”
“More like twelve. I suppose you’re going to live a very nice life. Don’t be stupid with it, okay? Once we’re docked, organize a secure transfer of the money into a bank through the skyport office.”
Sain’s mouth hung open and he stared into nothing. Eventually he turned and walked from the helm, finding a seat on the long bench that had been built along the siding of the ship. There he sat in stunned silence for a good while.
Daylen smiled to himself.
This must be a dream, Sain thought to himself. Nothing like this happens to me. How can Daylen give me a whole skyship and a fortune on top of that?
Sain looked to Daylen at the helm. The man could act like a right bastard, but Sain had come to see what the Bringer had been talking about. Acting like an unfeeling bastard was all show to hide his true feelings from others. Maybe the act was to protect those feelings.
Sain looked down to his hands. Whenever speaking to Daylen or even thinking of him, he couldn’t help but see Daylen as older. Like, way older. It was the way Daylen acted, the way he spoke and carried himself. Like he had seen everything and knew everything. Nothing could faze him. How in the Light did a person become like that? It was impressive, though Sain would never tell Daylen that, or how much he secretly wanted to be like him.
And now he’s made me rich! Nearly all of Blackheart’s loot… Blackheart had been boasting that he was close to retiring, that he could live like a king for the rest of his life.
Sain didn’t know what he should do with it, apart from going back to get his mother and buying her a nice place, probably in Highdawn. Wow, what was that going to be like? His mum, in Highdawn! Sain laughed. Well, at least she wouldn’t have to be a whore anymore.
Someone’s shadow moved across his line of sight.
Sain glanced up and saw one of the girls Daylen had saved standing before him. He had noticed her before—she was hard to miss, considering the girl was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Deep-blue hair with crimson streaks running through it, a perfect face, and alluring curves. She wore a white dress that was a little worse for wear under a long fur-lined flight jacket.
“Hi. My name is Sharra.”
“Ahhh…I’m Sain.”
Daylen hadn’t let Sain even be close to any of the girls, but that was when he hadn’t trusted him. Things were far better between them now.
Sharra took off her coat and sat on the bench next to Sain. “I’ve been trying to figure out how you fit in with all of this.”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out my whole life.”
Sharra smiled at that. Why did that make her smile?
“I mean with Daylen and the Lightbringer. The first time I saw you was after we had been rescued. You were tied up and Daylen really didn’t seem to like you. But now you seem to be friends.”
“I guess maybe we are friends. If what he says is true, then he’s done really good by me. Better than I deserve.”
“Will you be going with him?”
“No, he doesn’t want me around. I don’t know what I’ll be doing…but I guess I’ll have a lot of options. Why do you want to know?”
“It’s just that I’m alone, too,” Sharra said, shrugging, which caused the shoulder of her dress to fall down over her arm, revealing a slender neck and the sensuous lines that led to her breasts.
Whoa, she just put her hand on my thigh, Sain thought in alarm. It was really close to something that was reacting the only way it knew how.
“Could you follow me?” Sharra said with a smile, nodding to the cabin door. “I’d like to show you something.”
“Ahhh…sure,” Sain said, feeling too stunned to process anything.
Sharra stood and walked to the door, looking back over her bare shoulder at Sain and smiling sheepishly.
Sain followed, wondering what under the Light this beautiful girl could want from him. Whatever it was, he was keen to find out.
Daylen was guiding the ship to line up with a few other skyships toward a registry station at the border of the city’s shield. Before them were four small fancy structures that had been built atop darkstone foundations and were floating in place as solidly as if they were on the ground. Spaced out from one another by generous distances, the stations had been placed at the side of openings in the city’s shield. The left sides of the buildings had long hallways extending out with box-like rooms on their ends. The small square rooms—supported by darkstone, of course—were called tollbooths. They were made to stretch out to skyship decks where they could receive the entry tax.
The registry station to which Daylen was aligning the Maraven had a much smaller and age-worn skyship called a dory docked next to it. Clearly that was how the tollman had gotten to the station in the first place.
Ahrek climbed the stairs to the main helm where he joined Daylen’s side.
“It feels as though we’re about to complete a grand adventure,” Ahrek said.
“If that’s how you want to see it.”
“How do you see it?”
“That we’re not done. We still need to figure out what the Dawnists are up to and stop whatever they’re planning. After that, I’m thinking to end the sex trafficking trade that exists in the city.”
“Noble goals, though not small in the least.”
“Are you going to be sticking around?”
“Of course. The Light sent me to you for a reason, and if that’s to help you stop the criminal activities of the Dawnists as well as the sex trafficking trade, I shall see it done.”
“And what if y
ou didn’t want to?”
“But I do.”
“Would you be picking a fight with the Dawnists if you hadn’t met me?”
“Probably not, but I want to do what the Light directs me to.”
“And as a result you really don’t have any free will.”
Ahrek raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Daylen said, “I’ve learned enough from my own mistakes to know that I need to do what the Light wants, but that doesn’t mean I don’t resent it for that. Sometimes I just want to tell the Light to bugger off.”
Ahrek stifled a concerned groan at Daylen’s blasphemy. “But you’ve clearly learned that it’s always better for you in the long run to obey.”
“Yeah,” Daylen said with a sneer.
“And in relation to your first point, nothing is forcing me to obey the Light. I choose to obey.”
“No, you’re coerced to obey because of the implied consequences.”
“Really? Would I be struck down by the Light if I left and never saw you again?”
“No, but you would be punished eventually. Trust me, when the Light calls a man to answer for his crimes, it makes him pay in every degree.”
“I agree, but justice is most often held in store for the afterlife. If the Light punished men for their every crime and directly rewarded them for their good deeds the moment after they were done, no man would ever sin. And where would free will be then? That, Daylen, is true coercion, and we must realize that in life evil men will often get away with being evil and good men will still suffer. Yet every one of man’s actions is seen by the Light, and they’ll be held accountable for them once they are dead.”
“Yeah, I know all that. My point is that, even knowing that…it still bothers me. I still find it hard to swallow my pride and heed the Light, and you’re just annoying as anything for how easy you make it look.”
“I never said I found it easy.”
“No, but you show it.”
“Daylen,” Ahrek said with a heavy sigh, “I honestly wish I’d never become a Lightbringer.”
Daylen’s eyes went wide. “What?”
Suddenly, Daylen saw that the man was struggling with some clearly powerful emotions as he tried to hold back tears. “I only gave up my life to serve others after losing my family… I had nothing left. It was either that or die. Being who I am, doing what I do, has never been easy.”
Realization hit Daylen with profound significance. Ahrek wasn’t an easygoing man of perfect selflessness. Oh, he was selfless of course, but he found life difficult. Maybe even as much as Daylen himself, and he knew why. No man should ever have to suffer the loss of his wife and children.
Daylen lowered his eyes. “You’re an amazing man, Ahrek.”
“No,” Ahrek said, his self-control having returned, “I’m just a man.”
They stood in silence as the Maraven moved the rest of the way through the queue. Daylen eased the ship under the tollbooth and then brought it up so the tollbooth rested half a meter above deck.
A suited middle-aged man wearing a cravat and tricorne hat sat inside the booth. “Two ships, the second in tow. Are you claiming…?” He trailed off, his mouth opening wide. “Oh, blessed Light, you’re him!”
Daylen rolled his eyes. “The milkman?”
“N-no,” he stuttered. “The one that’s been talked about in the papers. The son of the Conqueror, the one who stopped all those crimes in Treremain.”
Light, so he had been recognized when he was leaping about in Treremain, or else a reporter had figured it out. “You must be mistaking me for someone else,” Daylen said.
The tollman pulled out a paper and held up the front page. Daylen’s face had been printed on it, a perfect likeness. They must have been working from the countless paintings there were of his older self. The headline read: A New Hero.
How could they be regarding him a hero? All he had done was stop a few thieves, rapists, and murderers… Okay, that might have done the job, but he certainly didn’t deserve the recognition. It’s not like he had risked his life. Any regular soldier was a hundred times the hero he was.
“No, it’s you,” the tollman insisted, “it has to be. The papers say you’ve got some new type of power, seeing as you aren’t an Archknight or Lightbringer.”
Daylen looked to Ahrek, who said, “The secret’s out now.”
“Not really,” Daylen said, relieved that people hadn’t figured out he bore the same powers as the knights.
This also raised a significant problem. He had attracted so much attention that somebody must have already dug into his past far enough to find that there were no records of him. Forging new ones that magically appeared after it had been discovered that they didn’t exist would just create more suspicion.
“Light damn it all!” Daylen said. He had arrived at the capital too late. He had failed. Now he would just have to see how things turned out. He needed to change his story at the very least. Maybe his father, Dayless, had destroyed the records before they had been sent to the capital, making sure there was no way anyone could trace it back to him and discover who he was.
Daylen turned to the tollman. “Are you going to do your job or not?”
“Oh, of course… The ship in tow. Are you claiming the right of salvage on it?”
“On both ships, actually,” Daylen said. “This is the Maraven. We bought passage on her from Treremain to Highdawn, but were attacked by pirates. The crew were all killed”—Daylen didn’t mention by who—“but the Lightbringer and I were able to defeat the pirates in the end.”
The tollman’s mouth was hanging open.
“Powers,” Daylen said, pointing to the paper resting in the Tollbooth. “In taking the ships and inspecting the cargo on this trader, we found these girls.” Daylen pointed to the girls on the foredeck. “They had been locked away and destined to be sold on the sex trafficking market. They’ve all been kidnapped and need to be returned to their families. They can also bear witness to the crimes of the Maraven’s crew and our actions in fighting off the pirates. The second ship is the Bloodrunner, which belonged to the pirate captain Blackheart. We killed him, too. Oh, and found a few of his captives. The Class-A illegal activities conducted on both ships void all ownership rights. We’ll alert the authorities once we find port to sort out all the legalities.”
The tollman’s face was an image of amazement. “You killed Captain Blackheart?”
“I can grab his head, if you’d like?”
“No… That won’t be necessary, though you will need to show it to the authorities.”
“That’s why I kept it.”
“You really are a hero.”
“No, currently I’d say I’m an adequate human being, and then only barely.”
“But…”
“The entry tax? We need to get the girls to their families.”
“I… Ah, yes. And you said the ship is the Maraven. Yes, that makes sense.”
“What makes sense?”
“Oh, slip of the mind,” the tollman said, chuckling nervously. “It makes sense because the ship is the Maraven, so you wouldn’t exactly call it by another name.”
Daylen handed him a leather envelope containing the ship’s registration. Daylen had found it in the captain’s quarters.
The tollman took it with a shaking hand, and saw that Daylen noticed. He cleared his throat while inspecting the registration.
He was certainly nervous, but Daylen was a bit of a celebrity, it appeared, and he did just claim he had defeated one of the most notorious pirates of the skies while towing proof in the form of the scoundrel’s own ship. Perhaps the tollman was just intimidated.
The tollman handed back the registration “Typically the tax would be two hundred for both ships, but I can understand that you might not have the money on hand.”
“Well, we weren’t exactly expecting to have claim over two skyships, but I can pay regardless.” He took out a crown, handing it over.
The tollman nodded, taking the coin. “Very well,” he said, but then he paused briefly. “Um, to save you searching out the authorities once you land, I…uh… I could alert the Border Patrol to escort you in… I mean, you are a hero, after all! Towing the Bloodrunner, too. This will mean you skip the queue waiting on the port’s traffic controllers ahead.”
Daylen’s brow rose. “Sure, that’s very generous of you.”
“Oh, it’s my pleasure, sir. Just don’t mind the siren you’ll hear or the patrol vessel that comes in. Do exactly as they say, because the patrol won’t know why I’ve flagged you for an escort. That could mean I suspected you for smuggling illegal goods or have seen you as a threat. You can sort everything out once you land.”
“Thanks.”
“Good day.”
Daylen walked back to the helm, pulling a lever to move the ship on.
Sure enough, soon after leaving the station, an alert sounded.
A patrol ship in the distance responded and flew close.
Daylen waved to it as it flew up beside them, to let them know their escort was expected.
Like all military ships, it had a steel rammer built at its tip with side portholes to launch warheads and any other darkstone-powered projectile.
“They’re going to recognize you,” Ahrek said, “and I’m sure they’re going to have as many questions as the authorities in Treremain did.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So whatever you need to do here in the capital should be put off. I suggest you let them take you in, Daylen. Running from them will only create suspicion.”
Daylen sighed. If he was lucky, the local authorities might not have looked into his past, or at least not seen the significance of the missing records. The best course of action was to play along for now.
“You’re right,” Daylen said. “It’s time to turn myself in. They won’t be able to hold me for long, and once I’m done with them we can get to those other loose ends.”
“Meaning the Dawnists and sex traffickers?”
“Yep, and I’m sure our meeting is going to be… engaging, to say the least.”
Shadow of the Conqueror Page 34