by Raymond Cain
The remaining construct swung at Flynn, scoring a blow to his shoulder before he could back out of range. The hit spun him around and he continued with the momentum, delivering a slashing attack across the golem’s abdomen. The golem folded backward and slowly began reshaping itself. After a few minutes, his watery adversaries were repaired and once again ready for combat.
“Halt,” Flynn said, and the water golems paused in mid-swing. Their arms dropped to their sides and they remained motionless.
The sound of applause startled Flynn and he turned to see Kylara in the doorway. He was about to say something but the words died in his mouth when he saw her. She wasn’t the unkempt, wild-looking warrior he saw yesterday. Instead, she was beautiful. Her wild, red hair was pulled back into a braid, revealing smooth skin and striking green eyes. As usual, he had a hard time ignoring the way her leather armor clung tight to her athletic figure.
“Impressive,” Kylara said. “Most impressive.”
Flynn felt like saying the same thing. “Thanks.”
“The golems, I mean,” she clarified. “Not you. You fight like an angry baby swinging a rattle. I can’t believe you let one of those lumbering constructs hit you.”
Any thoughts about her beauty were swept away. “So, you’ve come to patronize then? I’ll have you know that before we started using aquazite, I was the top student in my class at the Citadel.”
Kylara approached the water golem and dragged her fingers through its torso in an almost seductive fashion. “Says a lot about your classmates.”
“Perhaps you can show me how it’s done then,” he said, disliking her more and more by the minute. “There’s plenty of weapons along the walls to choose from.”
Kylara laughed. “Instruct you? Teaching you swordplay wouldn’t be instruction, it would be babysitting.”
“Prove it. Grab a weapon and let’s go.”
“I’d love to, but Tasker has asked me to run an errand.”
Flynn raised an eyebrow. “So you’re running away from a fight to be his errand-girl now? The two of you are so cute.”
Kylara smiled, and Flynn’s gaze unconsciously lowered to her lips. They seemed almost too red to be natural, and he wondered if she put coloring on them.
“Actually, what I’m getting is for me, not him.”
She was being intentionally vague but Flynn wasn’t going to take the bait. He decided to steer the conversation to an area that was uncomfortable for her. “So let me guess—you were the best fighter in Deepstone I suppose?”
Kylara laughed. “Goodness no. There were twenty thousand people living in Deepstone—half of them warriors—and I wasn’t even close to being the best warrior.”
Flynn nodded. It was the first shred of humility he’d heard from her.
“I was second best.”
Flynn rolled his eyes. So much for humility. “Perhaps I should thaw out Gideon and ask him if that’s true.”
“You could,” Kylara said, tilting her head to one side as though considering the suggestion. “But you’d be dead seconds later.”
“I’m not so sure,” Flynn said, “Because I’d tell him that I’m taking him to see you. I have a feeling he’d be more than happy to return with me in order to meet you again.”
A cold silence filled the room. Kylara’s eyes narrowed, her teeth clenched, and her hands dropped down and rested on the staves secured against her thighs. Her face tightened as she spoke. “If you knew what he did, what he was capable of. . .”
“But I don’t, because you won’t tell me,” Flynn said, not backing down. “And even if you did, I would only be hearing your version of the events. I’m sure his version would be very different.”
Kylara released her weapons but she kept her fists clenched. “Fine,” she said. “You win. I’ll give you what you want.”
Flynn eyebrows shot up. He wasn’t expecting that response. “You’ll tell me what happened between you two?”
“No,” she said, walking up to him and bringing her hand up to gingerly stroke the swollen side of his face. “I’ll train you. Mostly so I can see how you look when both sides of your face match.”
Flynn slapped her hand away. “Like I said, let’s go. I’m ready right now.” He knew he had little chance against the gifted warrior, but he was not one to back down from a challenge.
“Not now,” she replied. “Errands to run. A city to explore. You know how it is.”
“Then go away. Come back when you aren’t wasting my time.”
Kylara sniffed derisively and headed for the door. She walked with a confident gait and her hide armor hugged every contour as though it was tight clothing. He pried his eyes off her curves and turned his attention to combat. Flynn spent the next twenty minutes fighting the two golems, pretending all the while that he was battling a pair of Kylaras. The thought of her angered him, and drove him to smash the golems harder and harder. At one point, he took on three at once and defeated them without taking a single hit.
“Halt,” Flynn said, returning the golems to a neutral state. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and spoke between deep breaths. “That woman should not be set loose on Seahaven.”
Flynn tossed the practice sword in the weapon rack and stripped off his padded armor. He rushed out of the Battle Room and took the hidden lift down to Tasker’s laboratory. As usual, Tasker was at one of the worktables. Next to him were a score of crystal-tipped bolts, the kind capable of freezing water on impact.
“What did you send her to do?” Flynn said.
Tasker looked up at him with a crystalline helm on his head. The watery arms sprouting from it held a magnifying glass, a grinding tool, and a scraper. For the first time in many days, his face was clean shaven.
“She needed clothes, so I sent her to the Marketplace. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“Oh, I’m sure she will be,” Flynn said through clenched teeth. “It’s everyone else I’m worried about. Have you forgotten that she tried to kill us yesterday?”
“Because she woke up to see us aiming weapons at her. She’s shopping for clothes, Flynn. Not destroying our civilization.”
“She’s a warrior from a dangerous time. She doesn’t know how to act in civilized society. She needs. . .” He paused, searching for the right words. So many seemed to fit—supervision, monitoring, a punch in the face. . . “Direction.”
“I think you’re overreacting.”
Flynn paced back and forth a few times and wondered if perhaps his brother was right. “I’m going to check on her.”
Chapter Eleven
A pair of spear-wielding water golems stepped aside as Flynn stormed for the exit. He took the lift up to the next higher level, plunged through a servant golem that didn’t get out of his way fast enough, and was soon bursting out the main doors of his home.
The translucent blue dome over Seahaven, an impenetrable barrier of water enriched with aquazite, illuminated the city with its pale blue glow. Directly above Flynn, a jellyfish shined bright red as it skimmed along the outer edge of the dome. It dragged its glowing tentacles along the surface, briefly tracing thin lines of purple in the blue barrier. A school of angelfish, dark blue fish with glowing white rings, avoided the deadly tentacles as they swam by. The creatures were beautiful, but his thoughts were focused on Kylara.
The streets were filled with extravagantly dressed people that sauntered along, and he quickly slipped past them and headed for The Lift. The air was filled with the sounds of laughing children sliding down waterslides and bouncing on watery cushions. Garbage golems scoured the white cobblestones with oversized hands and feet, absorbing what little dust they could from the already clean streets. Elegant white stone buildings towered over him, their walls decorated with shifting vines of water, but he paid them no mind.
The Lift was arriving as he reached the short water bridge connecting Uppercity to the platform. He crossed the bridge, creating tiny ripples in its surface as he walked, and wrapped h
is hands around the top rail of water encircling the platform. He leaned heavily against the three liquid rails, bulging them outward slightly, and scanned the city below for signs of Kylara. There weren’t any redheads in sight.
After the platform descended, the railings retracted and Flynn stepped out onto Lowercity’s red cobblestone streets. Carvings of marine creatures were etched into the stone buildings, and the flowery smell of Uppercity was replaced by the salty scent of the ocean and the subtle scents of homecooked meals. He navigated through a throng of women sporting seagrass and seashell clothing, and men dressed in kelp breeches and kempcloth shirts.
A dark-haired teenage girl ran up to a nearby blonde girl about the same age. “You aren’t going to believe this,” she said to her friend. “But I just saw a red-headed girl scale her way down the cliffs and march off toward the Marketplace.”
“You’re right,” the blonde replied. “I don’t believe it. Why would anyone do that instead of taking The Lift?”
“I don’t know but I swear it just happened.”
“Mmmhmm,” the blonde replied in a disbelieving tone.
Flynn turned around to face the cliffs, his face wrinkled in disbelief. Kylara made a one-hundred-foot vertical descent? And she was still ahead of him? At least she shouldn’t be too far away.
The Waterway sped along before him and he wasted no time hopping from ice chunk to ice chunk across the canal. The crude stone structures of the Marketplace lay ahead and the scents of pastries filled the air. The sounds of a blacksmith’s hammer, the grinding wheel of a stonecutter, and the murmur of customers combined into a symphony of activity and commerce.
Unsure of where to go in the Marketplace, Flynn headed off in a random direction. He passed between a bakery and an herbalist shop and enjoyed the contrasting scents of baked goods and spices. A few steps more and the scents of mackerel, crab, and lobster wafted from the fishmonger’s store.
A pair of ruffians lay on the ground, bruised and bleeding. At first, Flynn guessed they were fighting each other until one got to his feet and helped his friend do the same. “What happened to you guys?”
One of the men cast his eyes downward, as though embarrassed. The other man pressed one side of his nose closed and blew a blood clot out of his other nostril. His left eye was darkening. “Well, there was this red-headed girl in a sexy leather outfit, and she didn’t take too kindly to the way we complimented her looks.”
“Or to our invitation to spend time with us,” the other man added.
Flynn rolled his eyes. “Which way did she go?”
The ruffians pointed toward the center of the Marketplace and Flynn headed off in the direction indicated. Before long, he found a man dressed in dark inkcloth clothing, unconscious on the street. His lip was bleeding and his left eye was swollen shut.
Flynn crouched down and shook the bleeding man.
The slow, shuffling steps of an old person approached from behind and a cane tapped Flynn on the shoulder. He turned and saw a charming woman in her eighties with a face lined with experience and wisdom. She wore a flowery kempcloth dress and her salt and pepper eyebrows furrowed as she spoke. “That man is a pickpocket,” she explained. “You see, there was a young red-headed girl and. . .”
“Yeah, I know,” Flynn said with a sigh. “Which way did she go?”
The old woman pointed with her cane and Flynn was off and running. In time, he came across a stone shop with a wooden sign that read “Magda’s Fabrics.” Pictures of a dress and surcoat were carved beneath. A familiar voice rang out from within and Flynn peeked inside.
“None of these suit me,” Kylara said to a bedraggled-looking shopkeeper with frizzy black hair. “They impede movement and provide no defensive benefit at all.”
The frizzy-haired woman—Flynn assumed she was Magda—stood next to Kylara with arms full of rejected clothing and a look of exasperation on her face. “Well, what kind of clothing does suit you?” she said, glancing indignantly at Kylara’s armor.
The scornful look on Magda’s face did not go unnoticed and Kylara squared her shoulders. “This is magekiller armor, skin from one of the rarest and deadliest creatures lurking in the tunnels below the ocean floor. The creature is highly sought after because it’s impervious to magic and I tracked it in the tunnels for three days before I finally caught up to it. To preserve the skin, I had to render it unconscious and skin it alive, a nearly impossible task for such a dangerous beast. Once the skin was removed, I spent the next few days treating it with salt and acid, all the while defending it and myself from wandering monsters that were lured by the scent. Once the skin was prepared, I hired a master leatherworker with diamond-edged tools to craft it into armor for me.”
Magda had a blank look on her face. “I don’t think we have anything like that here.”
Flynn laughed and Kylara spun around, her hands reaching for something at her waist that wasn’t there. He noticed she didn’t have her staves with her.
“Oh,” she said in an emotionless tone. “It’s you.”
“I’m excited to see you as well, Kylara,” Flynn said, politically. “I hope you’re having a pleasant shopping experience.”
Kylara scowled at him and removed an inkskin outfit from the rejection pile. She entered a dressing closet and closed the curtain behind her. There were some grunting sounds on the other side as she removed her armor. The curtain hung down to her calves and Flynn was intrigued when her armor dropped around her ankles.
“I’m not trained for shopping,” Kylara said from the other side of the curtain.
Flynn forced his eyes away from her shapely calves and spoke in a conversational tone. “On the way here, I noticed a few people that were beaten up.”
“Oh?” Kylara replied, innocently. “What happened to them?”
“A red-haired girl did it, so I’m told. Wearing black armor.”
“Really?” Kylara said, and the gap under the curtain revealed she was pulling on a pair of inkskin leggings. “I’ll keep an eye out for her.”
“I hear she’s really ugly, too,” Flynn added, smiling.
“Is she now?” Kylara said, yanking open the curtain.
Flynn’s jaw dropped. The leathery outfit hugged Kylara’s contours like the skin of a snake. Diagonal slashes along her legs and torso revealed toned legs, curved hips, and the sides of perfectly-shaped breasts. A V-neck on the front traveled all the way down to her navel. Flynn tore his eyes away from her stunning figure and forced them upward to make eye contact. Her bright green eyes stared at him knowingly and he hated himself for his brief lapse of self-control.
“On second thought, Magda,” Kylara said, “I think this one will do fine after all.”
Magda squished her eyebrows together in confusion. “But, you said you would never be caught dead wearing. . .”
“Shut-up-I-know-what-I-said,” Kylara replied, her words mashed together so closely that the sentence sounded like a single word. She removed a few gold coins from an inkskin coinpurse and handed them to Magda. Kylara returned to the dressing closet for her things and when she bent over to collect her armor, Flynn turned away, exhaling loudly.
The two of them left the shop and headed down the street toward another clothing shop. The wares from a row of vendors that set up stands along the street created an unusual mix of aromas in the air. The fish vendor, pie vendor, and spices vendor all stared longingly at Kylara as she walked by. The meat vendor, a portly woman wearing a bloody apron, glared at her.
A familiar face headed toward them. Lycia Clutchfeather was wearing a yellow dress and, as usual, her blonde hair was immaculately styled into a complex array of braids. She carried two inkskin-bound books with covers bearing the tower emblem of the Sorcery Academy. An aquazite wand poked out from between the pages of one of the books.
“Hello, Flynn,” Lycia said, pleasantly. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Kylara,” Flynn replied. “Kylara, this is Lycia Clu…”
“Just �
��Lycia’ is fine,” Lycia replied, cutting him off. She looked bewildered and there was a tremor in her hands and voice. “There’s no need for formalities among friends.”
“Ooookay,” Flynn replied, awkwardly.
Kylara held out her hand and, after some hesitation, Lycia shook it. Kylara turned Lycia’s hand over and admired the red crystal ring she wore.
“That’s a beautiful ring,” Kylara said. “The symbol on it is familiar to me—a hand clutching two feathers. Hmmm, your family name is Clutchfeather, is it not?”
Lycia gulped. “Yes. Yes, it is. My name, I mean. As for the ring, it’s nothing special. Just a worthless old heirloom.”
“Of course it is,” Kylara replied, skeptically.
“Well, I should probably go,” Lycia replied, yanking her hand free. “It was nice meeting you, Kylara.”
Flynn didn’t know what happened between them but there was definitely something going on. Lycia appeared as though she recognized Kylara but, unless she was five hundred years older than she looked, that was impossible.
Once Lycia hurried away, Flynn turned to Kylara. “What was that all about?”
“What was what all about?”
Flynn tilted his head and gave her a don’t-treat-me-like-I’m-an-idiot look. “You know what I mean.”
Kylara sighed. “The Clutchfeathers were the largest and most powerful family in Deepstone. They were also more cruel than anyone else in the city. They took it upon themselves to remove the history books from the city library and replace them with their own version. Naturally, those histories portrayed their family in the most positive light. They also wrote at length about Gideon and I, describing us as heartless killers.”
“I can see why that would make you angry. What was so special about her ring?”
Kylara shifted uncomfortably and avoided his gaze. “All I can tell you, Flynn, is that there is more to that girl than you think there is.”