“Commander!” his lieutenant shouted, and Seventh Tiger looked over at her frightened face.
It was only then that he looked up at the city.
Though the flamecannons still spat fire up into the starlit sky, the underside of the city had gone jet black. The sudden darkness was blinding after the brilliant red light of moments ago.
“Keep firing!” he called to his men. “Do not relent!”
He blinked, cursing himself as a fool for opening both eyes to the glare and losing what night vision he had, and tried to will the afterimages away from the night sky before him. It seemed to him that the crystals beneath Heaven’s Spire were glowing again, violet, as they had before. Or perhaps they were lighter this time, closer to a pale blue, or even . . .
When the crystals blazed white and his men called out in alarm and shielded their eyes, Garrison Commander Seventh Tiger nodded.
The light of a thousand suns blossomed in the sky overhead.
Someone had taught the children how to swing that sword, Seven Tiger thought, and wished his own children well as the blazing radiance thundered down upon his garrison.
Captain Nystin stood at the railing, his hands gripping the wood hard enough to bruise the flesh of his palms.
He had tried to jump earlier. Shenziencis hadn’t liked that.
His thoughts were still his own, and as he watched the light blossom in the sky off to the north, he realized what it signified almost immediately.
Shenziencis did as well. “Heaven’s Spire is not far from my temple,” she said, lips curling sweetly into a smile. She rested in a perfectly circular coil on the deck, her human head twisted to watch the flare of magic in the distance. Corpses had brought her food and drink from time to time as they had traveled. A glowing gem was set into the golden human flesh at the throat, just above the start of the glossy emerald scales. The gem shone in all the colors of the rainbow. When Nystin found his freedom, he would go for the gem first.
“Wasteful action,” the Imperial whose name Nystin didn’t know said. He didn’t move from the control console where he had stood for the past several hours, making the minute adjustments necessary to keep the airship on course. “The grounding arc requires several hours between uses.”
Shenziencis chuckled. “So you are not infallible after all. Rest easy, ancient. I believe your plan can accommodate a delay of a few hours.”
The man didn’t move. He wasn’t controlled like Nystin was—the naga deferred to him—but his body language was too stiff. Maybe he was a golem under all that armor. Maybe he was something even worse than the naga, some kind of daemon riding that poor corpse or a necromancer speaking through the body while he himself was huddled safe in a crypt somewhere.
“What was your plan?” the man asked, and Shenziencis flinched, a little twitch of her tail that Nystin filed away for later.
“I thought the political tension would give me a chance to recover the elven manuscript,” she said. “I was able to read it once, long ago, but I have grown more adept in the centuries since. I thought that if I could recover it, I could uncover more clearly the time of your people’s return to this world.”
“And prevent it,” the man said.
Shenziencis flinched again. “I wish only to live. I hoped that I might serve you well, and in learning when you would grace this world with your presence again—”
“Stop.” The man’s voice suggested that he would have raised a hand to calm her, but he remained stock still. The corpses walking the deck had formed around Shenziencis, poised to defend her. “You were a worthy adversary, Queen of the Cold River. Do not demean yourself by lying.”
Shenziencis glared, though the corpses around her shuffled back to their normal positions. Nystin tried to move. The muscles of his back and stomach strained, but his arms and legs remained locked. Still, she was weaker when distracted. Another note to file away.
“Of course I wished to prevent it,” the naga said, rising up on her coils to face the man. “I was born from the magic that leaked out of the Temple of Butterflies. Over centuries of careful, patient work, I grew from the legendary guardian of an old ancient ruin into an oracle whose wisdom was sought by the Emperor himself. I had servants who would fight and die at my command, even without my magic to use their words upon them! I had a life!” The gem at her throat blazed. “And then one of your Hunter golems attacked my temple. It called me a waste of magic, an accident that had no business existing.” Her coils twisted and twined, hypnotic in their agitation. “It took hundreds of my servants, the living and the dead, to break your golem, and when it was done, even as it died, my life was over.” Her face twisted into something monstrous inhuman as she snarled. “The Queen of the Cold River faded to a distant memory, so that no golems would come hunting for her. The oracle respected across the empire was replaced by a simple attendant, and everything I had worked for, I cast away to hide.”
“You used the Hunter golem’s body,” the man said.
“It seemed appropriate. I am a wasteful error of your magic, after all.” Shenziencis smiled venomously. “Why should I not steal a body to hide in as well?” The coils beneath her head twisted in an approximation of a shrug. “I wished to live, and I have had centuries to learn patience, to be less than I seem. I suspect you have learned much the same, Arikayurichi.”
“Iry kahyur’isti,” the man said. “That was my original . . . name is the wrong word, but my purpose.”
“‘We will rule,’” Shenziencis said. “And the Imperials who spoke the language of the ancients heard, and thought only that you spoke of them.”
“The Bringer of Order,” the man said, “to a world lost to chaos, and waste, and other distasteful things . . . like you.” At his words, Shenziencis narrowed her eyes. “You are leakage from our magic, an inefficient waste of resources. Your magic twists the words of the living and the bodies of the dead.” The man raised his ax, and turned the head to face her, and Shenziencis flinched, the corpses around her coming to readiness again. “But that does not invalidate your right to exist.”
“Meaning?” Shenziencis did not take her eyes off the ax. Not the man, Nystin noted, but the ax. They were at the corner of his vision, and he had not been given leave to turn, but he could still make it out.
“When we return, adjustments will be necessary on both sides,” the man said, lowering his ax to his side. “When we deployed the Hunter golems, we never imagined the complexity creatures such as you could attain. Serve me honestly, and I will see to it that you live . . . and, if you wish, the other creatures like you—provided they are willing to serve.”
Shenziencis went still. She raised an eyebrow at the man. “Is this part of your plan? You wish to comfort me so that I do not see my death coming, when Heaven’s Spire reaches the Temple of Butterflies?”
The man chuckled at that. “The blast will destroy much of the Empire and the Republic,” he said. “The human deaths it will cause are necessary for my people to return. Yours is not. Be at peace, Queen of the Cold River.”
And while Nystin doubted Shenziencis fully believed him, he could feel that some part of her was at peace, surprised and touched. She had spent centuries believing that the people responsible for the magic that created her thought her a monster whose existence was a monstrosity. Now, for the first time, she felt that she belonged.
In some part of whatever the naga had instead of a heart, something small and tender blossomed.
Nystin knew this because, for one moment, he felt the control slip.
He had practiced the maneuver for the past several hours. His right hand went to the dagger at his boot, even as he pivoted and kicked off the railing with his other leg, stiff muscles wobbly but still strong enough.
She turned, and her mouth opened, and Nystin slammed a backhand across her face, the shock of impact enough to stop the words that would lock his muscles
. He hooked fingers under her nose and wrenched her head back, baring her throat and the glowing rainbow gem. He brought the silver dagger down on the source of the fairy creature’s power.
The haft of a magical ax cracked across his wrist, and the silver dagger fell to the deck.
“Your resolve is admirable,” it said, and Nystin realized that the voice was coming from the ax itself even as emerald coils wrapped around him, “but she is mine, now. She will live.”
“Stop,” the naga hissed, and Nystin froze, his muscles cramping at the shock.
“You are mine as well,” the ax said to Nystin, “so you will also live.”
Shenziencis glared at Nystin, then looked to the ax and nodded shortly.
“Although,” the ax added, “after what she does to you, that may not be to your advantage.”
Shenziencis smiled.
The blasts of fire from the ground below hadn’t gone unnoticed on Heaven’s Spire, and when the great surge of blinding light had blasted down from the city to destroy the Imperial garrison below, the people of Heaven’s Spire had taken to the streets.
Groups of wealthy merchants and lesser nobility packed the well-lit shopping plazas, chanting and waving signs. Glowlamps were torn from their casings and used as makeshift torches, waved to lead the crowd from the markets to the temples, and then from the temples to the palaces.
Everyone in the city that night was shouting, fighting, demanding answers.
This made it somewhat difficult for Captain Pyvic to get to the archvoyant’s palace.
“Justicar business!” he bellowed, pushing through the crowd elbow-first. “One side!” A big red-faced man shoved into him, and he shoved back, clearing a few more feet for himself.
“War’s gonna be over by the time we get there!” Kail shouted from behind him.
“Thank you, Kail!” Pyvic saw a man in the crowd pull a knife, shoved forward, and punched the man behind the ear. The man went down in the crowd. “A shame you never wanted to join the justicars, with that keen deductive int—” He broke off as another wave of people crashed into him.
Then the ground heaved beneath his feet as a massive boom sent everyone to their knees.
Desidora raised Ghylspwr back into the air dramatically, the only person still standing. “I am a priestess of the gods and a wielder of a weapon of the ancients,” she cried, “and I cannot save you until you get out of my way!”
“Besyn larveth’is!” Ghylspwr boomed over her head, and then slammed back down.
Every window on the block shattered, and glowlamps popped and went dark as the ground sang like a beaten drum. The crowd fell back, and Desidora raised Ghylspwr again, looked down the street, and started walking.
Pyvic and Kail fell in behind her as the crowd parted.
“I liked how you neglected to say who you were a priestess of,” Kail said.
“Shut up, Kail.” Desidora had Ghylspwr raised before her, and the street had miraculously cleared before them.
“Because with the hammer, I’d’ve been thinking at least Esa-jolar. Maybe even Io-fergajar . . . except that you’re wearing a dress.”
“Shut up, Kail.”
“I didn’t see you clearing a path,” Pyvic said to Kail.
“You think I’m being sarcastic? That was some great lying there! It wouldn’t even have set off a verifier ward! I wish Icy were here to learn from this!”
“Sadly, he broke his leg saving us after you got your airship destroyed,” Pyvic said without missing a beat.
“That hurts, Justicar. That wounds me.”
“Yes, Pyvic, show some respect,” Desidora added. “Her name was Iofegemet.”
Pyvic stifled a laugh, and then they turned the corner, and the archvoyant’s palace stood before them. The great front lawn was lit by golden glowlamps, and hedges trimmed to look like dragons and manticores loomed large in the shadows. A great fountain spat streams of water that were bolstered with illusory light to create a falling display in all the colors of the rainbow.
It all sat safe behind high walls and wrought-iron gates protected with warding magic.
“How did all of you break into the palace last time?” Pyvic asked as they approached the front gate.
“Tern used a grappling line,” Desidora said. “Ululenia turned into a fish and swam up through the water pipes.”
“I think Icy just held his breath,” Kail added.
“I’m not sure we have time for any of those options at the moment,” Pyvic said.
“I agree.” Desidora had not stopped walking toward the gate, which sat closed and locked, doubtlessly secured by warding magic. “Ghylspwr?”
“Kutesosh gajair’is!”
Her blow blasted the gate clean off its hinges. It flew across the lawn, took the head off a marble statue of a peasant girl, and smashed into the fountain.
“Direct approach it is,” Kail said as warding alarms began shrieking all across the lawn. Guards poured out of the great palace itself, the faster human versions and the slower but much larger security golems behind them.
“I am Justicar Captain Pyvic, here on a matter of Republic security!” he shouted, throwing his shoulders back and stepping past Desidora as guards raced toward them, silhouettes against the brilliant glow of the palace behind them. “The entire city of Heaven’s Spire is in immediate danger!”
“Of course it is,” came a familiar voice from one of the guards, “which is why the justicars have been here the entire time.”
“Justicar Derenky.” Pyvic nodded, squinting into the darkness as Derenky came forward, smirking. “Report.”
“Report?” Derenky laughed as guards closed in around Pyvic and the others. “We’re at war, Captain, and some of us had to stay here and deal with matters of Republic security instead of chasing our girlfriend the thief into the Elflands.”
“If Heaven’s Spire uses its energy blast on the Temple of Butterflies,” Desidora said, “the resulting explosion will destroy a quarter of the Empire and a third of the Republic.”
Pyvic had the exquisite satisfaction of watching Derenky actually shut his damn mouth.
“The temple’s an old artifact of the ancients, too,” he said into the sudden silence around them. “You know how dangerous it can be to bang artifacts of the ancients against each other.” He raised his voice, picking out the justicars among the palace guards by posture and stance, since most of them were still just silhouettes. “The whole thing is a setup by someone who wants both nations to destroy each other. I picked up that information while chasing my girlfriend the thief into the Elflands.” He smiled at Derenky, showing some teeth. Another justicar stepped out of the shadows into the light, and Pyvic nodded at the heavyset female form. “Jyrre?”
“Captain.” She nodded, her dark face pinched but calm. “I think I know where the weapon’s being controlled.”
“What?” Derenky shouted.
“Archvoyant Bertram ordered us to stay quiet about it, but I saw something in the rear garden.” She grimaced. “It’s a large column of crystal they had brought in special not long ago. We haven’t been allowed near it.”
“What are you talking about?” Derenky said. “I’ve been out back. I haven’t seen a damned thing!”
“Damn it, Derenky!” Jyrre glared. “Everyone knows you want the captain’s job. Are you going to risk the life of the Republic for it?”
The guards and the other justicars were silent. The security golems, finally catching up, clanked to a halt and surveyed the crowd, evidently waiting for orders.
“Show me,” Pyvic said to Jyrre, and she nodded and started up one of the garden paths. Pyvic fell into step beside her, with guards and golems following. “And I’ll need a spare blade.”
“Misplaced your last one?” Derenky asked, as one of the palace guard handed Pyvic a fresh blade.
&nb
sp; “Yes, Derenky. That’s precisely how it happened. Well deduced. Who controls the golems?”
“We do,” Derenky answered. “Archvoyant Bertram gave me direct control when he brought the justicars in to provide additional security to the palace.”
“Good.” Pyvic looked at the palace, sheathed in light from the glowlamps on the walls. They were approaching a lit courtyard surrounded by marble statues. “Any other additions to palace security?”
“Military units,” Jyrre said. “Haven’t been able to get anything out of them.”
“The Knights of Gedesar,” Derenky said, smiling at Jyrre. “If you look carefully at their armor, you’d have noted the blacked-out insignia . . . and the fact that it’s yvkefer-alloy armor would also be a clue for any competent justicar.”
“Sorry,” Jyrre said tightly. “Suppose I’ve been a little distracted with the war on.” She gestured ahead, past the courtyard. “Should be just through here, Captain.”
“What, the ambush?” Pyvic asked, and stopped.
So did everyone else.
“Captain?” Jyrre asked.
“The ambush,” Pyvic said, “that you’re going to lead me into with the Knights of Gedesar.” He smiled at Jyrre. “You’ve always been smarter than Derenky, Justicar, and you’ve got more experience with fairy-creature crimes than anyone else on the squad. There’s no way he’d make them while you missed them, unless you were lying because you’re their inside source.”
“Those guys always were a little too good at tracking us down,” Kail said.
Jyrre stepped back slowly. “Captain . . .”
“Tell me something, Derenky,” Pyvic said, “do you want my job?”
Derenky smiled thinly. “Desperately, sir.”
The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) Page 35