“It was not enough.” The princess waved the healer away. “All the soldiers, all your monks, and she still vandalizes the temple, injures dozens, and escapes unscathed.”
“She also defeated you and stole the Nine-Ringed Dragon,” Gentle Thunder said. His deep voice was softer than Shenziencis expected, as though he was afraid he would break something if he spoke too harshly. His impertinence was also surprising, although he had protected her since childhood and taught her to fight, so perhaps he had gained the right to address her so in private.
“Yes, I recall that,” the princess said, glaring at her guardian.
“Good,” he said in the same calm tone, unperturbed by her anger. “If you did not, I would have the healers examine your head, Veil.”
Princess Veiled Lightning sat again and folded her arms, her hands disappearing into the voluminous sleeves of her rich violet dress. Shenziencis looked at her. She was close, very close, but still required a push.
“The Nine-Ringed Dragon is but an object,” Shenziencis said, picking her words carefully. “Like the Butterfly Gong or one of the vases the Republic woman smashed. The loss of such things may damage our pride, Your Highness, but only if we allow it.”
The princess shot her a dirty look, and Shenziencis made sure her smile stayed inside as the princess spoke. “Isafesira de Lochenville is the Empire’s only hope of avoiding war with the Republic. If she goes free, thousands will die.”
“What are you saying, Veil?” Gentle Thunder asked.
Princess Veiled Lightning raised her hand, and energy crackled between her curled fingers. “We must go after her.”
Shenziencis heard the righteous anger in the princess’s voice, and the hurt pride under it, just as she had hoped. She did smile now, and bowed low. “Your Highness, I would be honored to assist.”
Loch did not resist as a Republic soldier stripped her sword away. Another came forward with the manacles.
“This was supposed to be a nice clean handover,” the garrison commander said, sighing. “Ambassador Threvein said he had it handled with the Empire.”
“Why, though?” Loch asked.
The garrison commander shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am. That’s above my pay grade.”
Loch nodded. “No hard feelings.”
“Arrogant apple, babbling brook, creeping cat?” the soldier holding her asked, and then tipped over bonelessly.
“It’s about time,” Kail muttered as he punched one soldier, ducked away from an attempt to tackle him, and took down a second with an uppercut.
“Dawdling duckling, excellent eggshells,” added the soldier holding Loch’s sword. She took it back from him as he toppled over as well.
“Mind-magic!” the garrison commander barked. “Warding charms, now!”
One of the soldiers drew his blade, and Loch stepped in and spun her sword near his face. The blade’s rings rattled, and the red scarf flapped across his field of vision, blinding him long enough for Loch to chop down hard on his sword-hand. He stumbled back, said, “Fondling fern,” and fell over.
Ululenia had shifted into what Loch thought of as her normal form—a slight, pale woman with ash-blond hair and a shining rainbow horn upon her brow. She stared at a soldier rushing toward her, and her horn flared. “Gullible goat,” he said, passing out at her feet.
“Still going with the same mind-muddle trick?” Kail asked, elbowing a soldier in the face.
“How many times did you suggest that you gently embraced the mothers of the Imperial soldiers?” Ululenia asked, shifting into a snow white dove as another soldier lunged at her.
“Just . . . one?” Kail said, grabbing a sword from a fallen soldier and parrying another attack. “Although technically, I think I insulted the princess’s mother.”
“That would be the empress, Kail.” Loch advanced on the garrison commander, blade ready. “Nobody has died yet,” she said to him. “Let us walk out of here.”
“Not going to happen.” Around the commander’s neck, just above the line of his ringmail, a pale green crystal glittered on a chain. “Your fairy friend can’t get all my men, and my orders are clear.”
“Again, no hard feelings,” Loch said, and brandished her sword, putting it through an impressive spin. The garrison commander was so busy looking at it that he didn’t notice Icy approaching until he somersaulted between them, rose to his feet, snapped the crystal charm from the chain around the commander’s neck, and rolled away as the garrison commander slashed down at him. “Ululenia?” she said.
“No matter where you run, you’ll never escape,” the commander said as Ululenia’s horn flared. “The Republic will . . . humming honeysuckle.” With a final glare, he dropped to his knees and then collapsed completely.
“Thank you, Icy.” Loch looked at the garrison. More soldiers were already running their way.
Icy held the crystal charm up and crushed it with a snap of his fingers. “I judged that you did not wish to kill any Republic soldiers.”
“You judged correctly. Kail, how have those piloting lessons been going?”
“Let’s find out, Captain.” Kail was already jogging toward the airship tethered in the docking field.
The airship’s great balloon was still inflated, since it would have been prohibitively expensive to dismiss the wind-daemon inside only to summon it again later. Under the balloon, the main body of the ship was a wooden teardrop, flat on the bottom so that it rested gently on the ground. It had four sailwings for steering, and a lower deck with bunks and a small cargo hold.
Because it had been used for flights close to Imperial territory, it also carried a single flamecannon on its bow, mounted on a heavy platform that could be adjusted to fire either ahead or at the ground below.
Kail hopped up, found the main control panel near the back of the airship, and began pressing buttons and pushing levers with confidence. “Just be a minute.”
“Consider haste,” Icy said, vaulting over the side and onto the main deck.
“Fleet as the deer,” Ululenia added as she climbed up as well. “The soldiers number many, and coaxing even one mind to befuddlement is an effort.”
“Fine, fine. Anybody else want to bother me while I’m flying an airship without an instructor for the first time?” Kail pulled a few levers, and without looking up got Loch’s attention. “Hey, so I knew about Icy, but Ululenia caught me by surprise.”
“Last-minute addition,” Loch said, chopping through the mooring tether with a clean slash of her blade. She pulled herself up onto the airship’s main deck as it rocked and began to rise.
“We got any more hiding around here, waiting to come help? What about Dairy?” Kail glanced over at Ululenia. “I thought he’d be with you.”
“I do not wish to discuss it,” Ululenia said, and looked down at the approaching soldiers. Her horn flared, and the grass around their boots twisted and twined. The few in front fell over, and the second rank tripped over them.
“Wait, is this because you only like virgins?” Kail asked, adjusting a dial and pressing more buttons. “You didn’t leave Dairy after you—”
“I do not wish to discuss it,” Ululenia said, shooting Kail a glare. “Perchance fly the ship?”
“Fine, fine. I’m just saying . . .” Kail caught Ululenia’s look. “Nothing. I’m just saying nothing. And flying the ship. Perchancishly.”
The sailwings flexed, and as the wind-daemon inside the balloon strained against its cage, the airship rose up into the sky. One of the soldiers fired a bolt that bounced uselessly off the magically protected balloon, and then they were out of range, shouting in frustration as Loch looked down at them from the sky.
“Steering, steering . . .”—Kail pulled a lever, and the airship rocked—“. . . is clearly something other than that. Oh, here we go.” He pulled another lever, and the airship evened out, then turne
d slowly in place as it continued to rise. “Destination, Captain?”
“Heaven’s Spire,” Loch said, spinning her sword absently. The rings rattled with the movement. Maybe that was what the damned things were for—to sound pretty. Just like the scarf on the hilt—if it wasn’t there to wipe up blood or distract people—was apparently supposed to look good.
“You will uncover the truth,” Icy said beside her.
“The Empire doesn’t have access to as much raw iron as the Republic, right?” She held the sword up. “Maybe the rings are for blocking. They get dinged up, you replace them instead of having to forge a whole new sword.”
Icy smiled. “Sadly, my training was only with my body, or I would know more about the intricacies of the ringed broadsword. The Nine-Ringed Dragon is far superior to the cavalry saber you once owned, however.”
“Actually, I stole that one, too.”
“Ah.” Icy blinked. “Have you considered purchasing a weapon legitimately?”
“Someone I’m fighting usually has one I like.” Loch grinned, then sighed, looking back up the Iceford to where the Temple of Butterflies sat nestled between the mountains. “Seems like I run into bad luck every time I fight my way through that temple.”
“You were here before, when Silestin sent you behind Imperial lines.”
“Yeah. Me, Kail, Uribin . . . you remember Uribin? He owns the restaurant we met up at last time?”
Kail looked over. “He made that incredibly good catfish the captain and I ate while you had a plate of steamed vegetables.”
“The vegetables were also very good,” Icy said politely. “And Jyelle? Was she here as well?”
“Nah,” Kail said while Loch ducked her head. “Captain had already kicked her out of the unit for going after Imperial civilians. Jyelle made it back into the Republic on her own.”
“She brought a grudge,” Icy said, which was putting it mildly, given that Jyelle had kept trying to kill Loch right up to the point when a wind-daemon had eaten her. “And given what occurred at the Temple of Butterflies, it would seem she is not the only one who wishes you ill.”
“Loch tends to be memorable,” Kail said.
Loch glanced over. “Speaking of memory, is there any chance you might actually apply those piloting lessons you’ve been taking before all the guards wake up?”
With Kail’s sometimes-lurching steering, the airship soared toward Heaven’s Spire and, hopefully, Loch’s answers.
Pesyr Plaza was an open-air shopping and dining center in the business district of Heaven’s Spire. Named for the god of craftsman and artificiers, the plaza was located near many of the buildings where lapitects and wizards kept Heaven’s Spire floating properly over the Republic. Around the edges of the plaza, restaurants served professionals taking long lunches, kahva-houses kept the mages awake after a long night of study, and shops sold the latest magical trinkets to people with too much disposable income.
In the middle of the plaza, a great statue of Pesyr himself stood in the middle of a fountain, his hammer striking the anvil with which he had forged all the wonders of the world. Glowing red crystals sprayed from the anvil every few seconds, as though Pesyr was striking sparks.
Tern, a mousey young woman wearing thick spectacles and the lavender robes of a lapitect, paused by the fountain, dipped her hand into the water and fished out one of the crystals. It glowed in her palm like a burning coal, but felt no warmer than any stone she might pluck from the dirt.
“Salt crystal with a colored light charm,” Hessler said. He was a tall, thin man in black wizard’s robes fringed with silver. “It would have been significantly less expensive to create illusionary sparks, but because long-lasting illusions are difficult to maintain, most artificers are prejudiced against using them.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Tern, as the crystal slowly dissolved in her hand.
“In fact, look at the scaling on the inside of the fountain from taking in that much salt. I don’t imagine the civil engineers enjoy filtering all that salt, and if this gets into the drinking water . . .”
“Mm-hmm.” Tern tossed what was left of the crystal back into the water, where it winked out and disappeared.
“You have to imagine that in a plaza where the people who keep this entire city aloft work, someone could come up with a design that . . . you wanted a gift, didn’t you?”
“It’s fine,” said Tern.
“I asked,” Hessler said. “I asked if we should do gifts to mark seeing each other for three months, and you said no.”
“I said not to worry about it unless you thought of something,” Tern corrected.
“Okay, but by implication, then, unless there was something that you really wanted, I wasn’t supposed to worry, and since you haven’t talked about really wanting anything, I had assumed we weren’t doing gifts.”
“It’s fine,” said Tern through gritted teeth. “Let’s just get lunch.”
“I think we need to discuss this logically,” Hessler said, doing that little squint he did while trying to make a point. Tern usually found it cute. Usually. “In a relationship between equals, I think that if you actually expect a gift, it’s fair to state that instead of passive-aggressively leaving it as something where—”
“Can we not talk about this?” Tern asked. She fished into her robes and dug out a small cluster of multicolored crystals linked through a lattice of silver wire. “Here, I got this for you, because I listen to you and care about things that interest you, and I thought an attunable thaumaturgic capacitor might be something you’d have fun with.” She shoved it ungraciously into his hand.
Or rather, through his hand.
Hessler blinked as Tern’s hand passed through his body. Tern waved her hand back and forth, and Hessler flickered and vanished.
“I suspected that given how much you like physical contact during our walks,” came a voice from behind Tern, “it wouldn’t last long.”
Tern spun, and there was Hessler, presumably the real one and not an illusion.
He was holding a bouquet of red roses.
“They’re live-cut by elven gardeners,” he said, “so they can be potted instead of drying out and dying. It doesn’t really matter, since roses don’t produce anything useful, like fruit, but the woman at the shop said that getting you something like a pumpkin would send the wrong—”
“Hessler, shut up and kiss me.”
He shut up and kissed her. He was solid this time.
“Now,” he said, smiling, “what do you want for lunch?”
“Pasta?” Tern asked.
“Pasta it is.” Hessler took her arm. “And if I could see the thaumaturgic capacitor, that would be . . . Oh, yes, this is just what I . . . is this the model with ablative memory shielding, or is . . . no, this is lovely.”
Tern let him talk. As they headed for the pasta place, she saw a crowd gathered at the edge of the plaza. They were looking at a small boxed stage, where puppets danced and capered against a black velvet backdrop. “Isn’t it early for the puppeteers to be out?” Tern asked, reasonably certain that Hessler was fussing with his new toy instead of listening to her. As they got closer to the stage, she could hear what the puppets were saying.
“. . . Not sure why defensive measures on Heaven’s Spire are any business of the Empire’s,” the manticore puppet was shouting as it chased the griffon around the stage.
“Heaven’s Spire caused a great deal of damage with that accidental magical blast,” the griffon called back, trying to pounce on the manticore, “and if the Republic were to turn that into a weapon . . . well, you wouldn’t want your next-door neighbor to walk around with a drawn sword all the time, would you?”
“I’d love it!” The manticore was now being shaken by the tail. “Makes both our houses safer! I wouldn’t worry about it at all, because I’m not planning to attack my neighbor, so
I ask again, why is the Empire so worried about Heaven’s Spire being able to defend itself?”
“They’re still trying to claim it was an accident.” Tern shook her head.
“The political elite are unlikely to admit that the leader of the Republic tried to weaponize Heaven’s Spire.” Hessler frowned. “I’m frankly more concerned about turning this into a debate about war with the Empire.”
“The manticore wants to turn everything into a debate a war with the Empire,” Tern said.
“You know that the manticore doesn’t actually have opinions of its own—even beyond being made of felt, it’s just a mouthpiece for the Learned Party’s political messaging . . .” Hessler caught the look Tern was giving him. “Of course you know that. Right.”
“It’s getting serious,” Tern said as the manticore flared its wings and bounced on top of the griffon to the laughter of the crowd. “Loch and Pyvic talked about it last week at lunch. Loch was going on that mission to talk the Imperials down? Icy went with her.” Tern grimaced.
“I don’t think there’s any cause for concern,” Hessler said, seeing her look.
“No, I wasn’t worried about them. I mean, no more than usual. I . . .” She paused when Hessler glanced down at his hip pocket in irritation. “What’s wrong?”
“Message crystal. It can wait. I’m on lunch hour.” Hessler put an arm around Tern’s shoulder. “I would rather spend time with you.”
Tern suspected that their mutual friend Desidora, a love priestess of Tasheveth, was coaching Hessler on the basics of relationships. She made a mental note to send her a nice card.
“Anyway, what were you worried about?” Hessler added after a moment, as the manticore and the griffon took to the skies, still shouting their talking points each other.
“Heaven’s Spire shot a big blast of energy down at the ground, right?” Despite her annoyance at the puppet show, Tern had actually been thinking about this for most of the morning.
“Well, technically, it created an energy gradient between the crystals on the underside of the city and the ground, causing an arc—”
The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) Page 3