NIghtbird (Empire of Masks Book 2)

by Brock Deskins

  “Damn it all to the Tormented Plane!” Kiera cried.

  She grabbed a vase from a stand, hurled it at the man reloading his musket, and threw herself over the rail after it. The man raised his musket with both hands to protect his face, and the vase shattered against the weapon in a spray of clay shards.

  Kiera came in just over the musket, wrapped her legs around his neck, and rode him to the floor. She planted her hands on his face and pushed off, driving his head against the polished stone, and tucked into a roll. The man’s metal helmet struck with a clang and skittered across the floor.

  Casting a glance up at the balcony, she dived away, narrowly avoiding the musket ball that shattered the marble tile. Kiera stretched out as she lunged for a large piece of fallen jewelry. Another musket shot struck the jeweled bangle and sent it sliding away and nearly took off the tip of her middle finger.

  “You morons!” Kiera shouted at the men on the balcony. “The powder you’re shooting off is worth more than I stole!”

  The guards leveled their reloaded muskets once more, and Kiera lunged for the doorway, scooping up a ring and a bracelet from the floor in her hasty departure. Two musket shots struck the doorframe in quick succession, powdering her face with plaster dust as they tore through the wall.

  Kiera raced through the foyer, flung the door open, and ran straight into two gendarmes waiting just a few yards from the door. Pulling her weighted baton from her belt, she hurled the weapon without breaking stride. The rod tumbled end over end and struck one of the gendarmes between the eyes.

  The second man scrambled backward with a terrified look on his face as he met the girl’s charge and stared into her furious eyes. Kiera sprang into the air, narrowly avoiding impaling herself on the wavering bayonet, and kicked the young gendarme in the chest with both feet.

  Kiera and the gendarme both went crashing to the ground. Kiera saw her baton lying next to the felled man beside her, grabbed it, and began beating him on the head. The baton clanged against the metal helmet like a child banging pans. She kicked the man’s helmet off and walloped him hard enough to stun him before getting back to her feet.

  “H-hold there!”

  Kiera turned back and found the gendarme she had initially brained standing on shaky legs. He fumbled for the whistle at his belt and brought it to his lips. Kiera stomped toward him, a scowl creasing her brow. She kicked him in the groin and sent the whistle falling from his sputtering lips. A small shove was all it took to push him over, where he lay grasping himself and moaning.

  Shouts from inside the house forced Kiera to pick up a shuffling jog. The street lay nearby, just beyond the wall surrounding the manor. Duke Rastus Velarius’ estate was the only one in the city to sport anything resembling expansive grounds, so escaping into the city was simple once she cleared the wall.

  Some of the wealthiest citizens had started buying up large tracts of property just outside of the highborn district where most lived, tearing down several poorer houses and erecting grand mansions that could accommodate nice gardens, but that was a recent development and only a few were finished and occupied.

  Velaroth was a huge city. The cataclysm, insurrection, famine, and disease had wiped out nearly three quarters of its population, creating large, derelict sections of the once grand city that were up for grabs to whoever could afford it and possessed the strength of arms to keep it.

  Squatters had claimed much of the abandoned homes, stores, and buildings after the fall, but with the return of a properly functioning government and prosperity, it suddenly became the people’s property, but not the ones who had been living in the structures for generations. It belonged to the city and the city belonged to Duke Rastus Velarius.

  Those who came into wealth bought the property from him. People who did not have coin were escorted to “free settlements” by the gendarmes. It was only free because it had taken the brunt of the cataclysm’s fury and no one wanted it. Like everything else in the city, it was free in name only.

  The underlord claimed to own everything not contracted by the government or the wealthy and powerful, and she protected her property and criminal fiefdom through brutal measures. It was a kingdom within a kingdom, and everyone who mattered seemed fine with it.

  Since all of the free settlements were near the wall and the city grew more prosperous as one approached the center, Kiera had a long walk ahead of her. She removed the few pieces of loot still rattling inside the sundered pouch on her belt to a pocket inside her shirt as she skulked from shadow to shadow, avoiding the gendarme patrols and other nightbirds like her.

  Kiera had nearly reached the inner wall separating the highborn from the middle- and lower-class filth when three shapes emerged from the darkness to block her path.

  “Whatcha doing out so late and in this neck of the wastes?” the one flanked by two notably larger bodies asked.

  Kiera paused, placed the voice, and made to push past them. “Piss off, Langdon, I’ve had a bad night.”

  Langdon and his two cohorts, Iggy and Micah, refused to budge. Kiera knew the three goons from Wayward House. They had left not long before her, Russel, and Wesley had due to their coming of age. They had gotten lucky and signed on with Rafferty Valentin, leader of one of the largest and most powerful gangs in the city.

  “I hate to pile on whatever bad luck you’re having, but you know how this works. You’re poaching in our territory,” Langdon said.

  Kiera stopped a few paces away. “What am I supposed to do? The people in my territory are as poor as I am, and you know tributes are due tomorrow.”

  “Right, tributes Rafferty owes Nimat just the same as you and everyone else. Just give us a cut of what you got like you’re supposed to and everything is fine.”

  Kiera jammed her hand into her hidden pocket and flung a ring at Langdon’s feet. “There’s your damn cut. Can I go now?”

  Langdon struck a match, lit a cigarette hanging from his lips, and plucked the ring from the ground. “Come on, Kiera. We all know you are better than this.”

  She ripped the pouch from her belt, shoved her hand inside, and stuck her fingers through the two large holes in it. “Yeah, I was until I almost took a musket ball in the back and lost it all over the floor!”

  Langdon looked at the bag and frowned. “But this barely covers the working fee. Then there’s the…”

  “The what, Langdon?” Kiera demanded.

  “You know…the punitive fee…for not having permission and all. We caught you poaching.”

  “Well that’s all I have.” Kiera sauntered toward him, emphasizing the waggle in her hips. “What do you want to do, Langdon, search me? Do you want to run your hands up and down my body, probing my nooks and crannies for hidden loot? Is that what you want to do?”

  Langdon swallowed the lump in his throat and felt sweat beading on his brow. “Well…it is my job, and…we gotta earn our keep with Rafferty so he can…can pay Nimat her tribute tomorrow too.”

  Kiera touched a finger to Langdon’s chest with her left hand. “Well, I guess we gotta do what we gotta do.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Just like Remus, right?”

  Langdon raised his hands and tried to take a step back. “Whoa, no, Kiera, not like—”

  Kiera’s baton flashed up and struck Langdon a powerful blow to the groin. “Well, we ain’t gonna be doing that!”

  Langdon choked back the vomit trying to erupt from his stomach and fell to the ground with a plaintive moan.

  “Oh, right in the giggle berries!” Iggy crowed. “I saw that coming from a mile away. Didn’t you, Micah?”

  Micah nodded to his twin brother. “Yep. Tyler the Blind would have seen that one coming. I guess Langdon missed the tell on account of all the blood leaving his head”

  “Bugger off, the both of you,” Langdon mewled.

  Kiera stepped over Langdon’s body and stomped toward the hole in the wall.

  Langdon raised a hand and gasped out, “I’ll put your poaching fee on your acc
ount.”

  “You do that!” Kiera called back.

  Her blood boiling once more, Kiera stormed through the merchant sector with barely a modicum of caution, hoping her fierce glare and determined stride would keep anyone from looking at her as a possible mark. It was usually sufficient and it held true this night. She finally reached the area Nimat leased to her and sighed. It was a big property for an independent and someone as young as her, but it was a dump. Not just because it was run-down and poor. There were many places like that in the city. It was literally a dump.

  Looking out over the city wall, she could see the busted-off mainmast of her home backlit by the night sky. The derelict airship rested atop a small mountain of rock cleared away from other sections of the outer ring during reconstruction. They could have gotten a better location for what they were paying, but Russel had locked himself in one of the airship’s cabins and refused to leave until she and Wesley had signed the contract.

  The airship had probably once been a grand little boat in its day, but a century of disuse had left it in ruins. It was a hundred feet long and boasted several cabins and a sizable hull. Built on a scow design, like almost all airships, its flat bottom allowed it to set down on the ground without requiring a massive cradle. Not that it would ever fly again.

  Russel did not work, at least not the kind that paid the rent. However, he had kept himself busy fixing up the airship bit by bit over the past two years until it had become an almost decent place to live. If it weren’t for the fact that it sat in the most destitute section of the outer ring, she might consider it a fair bargain.

  With little to nothing to steal in their area, that left them having to either pay to work in someone else’s territory or poach and risk getting caught and fined, beaten, or even worse. She was lucky that Langdon had something of a crush on her and that it was him and not Rafferty or any of his other goons who had caught her. Otherwise, it could have been a lot worse.

  Exhausted and suffering pain from a myriad of bruises and scrapes, she retired to her room near the bow of the vessel, dropped her ill-gotten gains on her nightstand, and collapsed onto the rickety cot that served as her bed. She took a moment to pray that Wesley had fared much better than she had tonight. Otherwise, tomorrow was going to be even worse.

  ***

  A small hidden panel slid open, slow and silent so as not to wake the room’s notoriously light sleeper. Russel could see the gleaming jewelry on Kiera’s nightstand bathed in the moonlight streaming through the cabin’s porthole. He stuck his arm through the hole in the wall but could not quite reach where the loot rested on the nightstand. The arm retracted and vanished with its owner.

  Moments later, a metal, mechanical appendage appeared in its place and reached out toward the small table and its bounty. Russel wore the contraption like a gauntlet, but instead of just covering his hand like a metal glove, it increased his reach by some fifty percent. Hovering over his prize, Russel made a fist, closing the metal fingers around the jewelry.

  With his prize in hand, his real one, Russel closed the hidden opening in the wall and retreated to the aft of the ship where he made his home. Kiera was going to be mad. She would yell, call him names, and threaten to do bad things to him, but he knew she wouldn’t act on them.

  He did not want to make her mad, but Kiera was as quick to anger as a horned devil with a sore tooth, but he knew she cared about him and Wesley, she just showed it in her own way. She would forgive him as she always did, but not until she vented her anger like an over-pressurized boiler. He needed the gold more than she did. He had to save them. Only he could do that. Had to be safe. Had to fly before they came. Even if he could talk, Russel could not say who was coming, when, or why. He just knew. Had to fly.

  Once inside his workshop located in one of several rooms excavated from the ruins of the building upon which the airship rested, he stoked the fire in his small stove. Plucking out the useless gems from the jewelry, he set the gold in a crucible and placed it in his stove. While Russel waited for the gold to melt, he checked on one of his many apparatuses.

  The contraption sat on a table against one wall. A small box inscribed with strange geometric symbols with a large piece of mage glass cradled inside it sat at one end. Copper wires led from the box to a pair of glass cylinders connected at the base by a pipe and filled with water, which rested at the other end. One of the cylinders had a copper tube attached to the top, which led to a large metal canister.

  Russel unscrewed the larger cylinder from the tube and attached it to another pipe that led to an even bigger tank. He sat at a pair of pedals that worked a large pump and forced the gas out of the smaller canister and into the bigger one as he had done countless times before.

  Russel finished pumping and retrieved the crucible from the stove with metal tongs and set about making gold wire. It never ceased to amaze him how much wonderful wire he was able to get out of just a small bit of useless ornamentation.

  He crept back into the bowels of the airship, using a small lantern to light the way. Russel adjusted the magnifying lenses attached to the padded leather hat hiding his mop of straw-colored hair and muffling his ears, and began inlaying the complex engravings carved in the hull with the gold wire.

  It was a laborious task, but Russel found solace in the tedious work as he tapped the wire into the reliefs with a tiny hammer and various punches. He caressed his newest work after laying the last strand of gold. “Gotta fly,” he whispered, looking around furtively to make sure no one had heard him.

  CHAPTER 2

  Music and merriment filled the ballroom as dozens of couples danced and cavorted, showing off the latest fashions and wearing celebratory half masks, which allowed them to enjoy the party offerings without being hampered by the standard full mask. It was the biannual naval academy officer graduation celebration. The graduation ceremony was the most prestigious and anticipated gala in the country, rivaling even those of royal weddings or funerals.

  Since the naval academy resided in Velaroth, the gala was held on Duke Rastus Velarius’ estate. While the instructors, officers, and airship crews came from all four cities, the Academy’s location in Velaroth gave Duke Rastus significant influence over the navy. Only Duchess Esmerelda Dushane of Nibbenar rivaled his authority by claiming the majority of airship pilots and arcanists.

  Rastus enjoyed even greater prestige at this year’s celebration due to his nephew, Bertram, being the honors graduate. It was not unusual for Velaroth to lay claim to the best of the graduating class, but not only was Bertram Rastus’ nephew, he had achieved the highest marks and honors in the naval academy’s history, and by an impressive margin.

  Rastus danced with Esmerelda. His wife had died years ago from the dust-borne illness that often plagued the people of Eidolan, and Esmerelda’s husband was home in Nibbenar. Rastus spun Esmerelda and caught her in his arms.

  Esmerelda released a ladylike squeal of excitement and sought out her daughter with her eyes. “I see Bertram is as excellent at dancing as he is everything else.”

  Rastus followed her gaze as he turned them about the dance floor. “Yes, he and Lysse seem to be getting on quite well, and for some time if I hear correctly. I will have to keep an eye on their relationship. Such a joining would put you and your family in a powerful position.”

  Esmerelda slapped Rastus’ shoulder playfully. “Forget politics and let them be young and in love, if just for one night. Such a union could have enormous benefits for both our cities.”

  “I don’t think Krysten and Zibaran would be as supportive of such an arrangement.”

  “There is no arrangement. He is a handsome man and she is a beautiful woman. It is as natural as anything in this world.”

  “What, if anything, in this world is natural?”

  “You worry too much, Rastus.”

  “I have had much to worry about.”

  Esmerelda’s smile faltered. “Indeed you have. His mother would have been so proud of what he ha
s become. For him to have never known his mother or father is one of the cruelest things this world has done to anyone. Losing her and your wife like that, I can see how you might feel that it and everyone in it are against you.”

  The mention of his late wife and sister, lost to the same illness just a year apart, brought fresh pain to his heart. “At least I have an excuse for coming to the party alone. What’s yours?”

  Esmerelda waved her hand. “Byron hates airship travel and is as boring as unbuttered toast. I like to enjoy myself at parties and find I am able to do so far better when he isn’t around. Besides, a man like you has no reason for being unaccompanied. It has been far too long since Diana passed away. You should have remarried long ago, if not for love then for your city. You are still virile enough to produce an heir of your own.”

  “You are assuming that I am not the one to blame for being childless. No, I loved Diana too much to even try to fake another marriage. Bertram is as much a son as I need. He will succeed where I have failed in all things, including continuing my lineage.”

  “Don’t be so gloomy. It’s a night of festivity. Come, toast the honor graduate. I have a gift for him.”

  Rastus raised an eyebrow. “An early wedding present, perhaps?”

  Esmerelda stroked the cheek of his porcelain mask with her finger and smiled as she stepped away. “One can never know.”

  Zibaran Cienne pulled his wife through the dispersing crowd as they shuffled off the dance floor and returned to mingling. “Rastus.”

  Rastus turned. “Zibaran, Sahma Safia. I hope you are enjoying yourselves.”

  “How could we not. The gala is so jubilant even the dead are likely dancing tonight,” the Duke of Vulcrad said, nearly sloshing his drink onto his foot.

  Safia pinched the back of his arm and frowned.

  “Oh, right. My apologies, Rastus. Very insensitive of me.”