“What’s up?” she asked, moving toward him across the straw strewn stones. Her gait was a little awkward. Just yesterday, Matthew had brought her some armored guards for her legs made of chain mail and leather. They weren’t quite the same as hockey pads, but she was becoming accustomed to them quicker than she’d expected.
Marcom turned to face her. His expression was grim.
“I’m takin’ a few men out into the city today,” he said without preamble. “There’s been word that some strangers who might be part of…well, it don’t matter really. Damn troublemakers. Point is, we have to go poke around quietly for a bit and see what we see. Shouldn’t be no trouble…not yet anyway. I’m goin’ to take you along so you can start to see how we do things.”
Emily felt a burst of excitement. “Really?” she asked, hardly able to disguise her enthusiasm. She’d been at Seven Skies for nearly two weeks without a glimpse of the world beyond its walls. Maybe seeing more of the place—or time—she’d landed in would give her a better sense of how, or why, she was here. If nothing else, it was bound to be interesting.
“Yeah. Take your sword and bow. You’re going to stay close to me the whole time, understood? There’ll be a stir when folks realize there’s a woman in the guard. Hasn’t ever been, least ways as far as I know it. It’ll be good to get the local folk used to seein’ you with the rest of the guard. Especially if…” He snapped his mouth shut and merely watched her as she strapped her bow across her back and shouldered a quiver of arrows. Her sword clanked rhythmically against the new chain mail at her thigh as she moved.
“Especially if what?” she asked, looking at him curiously. His censoring of himself was unusual. He had a tendency to speak his mind and propriety be damned.
Marcom sighed. “Especially if there’s to be trouble soon. I don’t know there is, mind, but if it’s true that some of the…I don’t know, militants I guess you’d call them…if it’s true they’ve come into town…well, it isn’t a good sign, anyway.” He looked her up and down. “You ready?”
Emily nodded.
He pulled a small copper disk from a pocket in his jerkin and moved to stand in front of her.
“You’ll need to wear this,” he said. “To make it clear. Hold still now.” He fiddled with the chain mail at her shoulder, just above her left breast. She looked down as he stepped away and saw that the thin, copper disk was now attached to her armor like a badge. The guards’ insignia, a sword being broken in two over a large rock, was embossed on it in exquisite detail. Seeing it made her feel strange, as if two distinct emotions were at war inside her. She felt pride, much as she had when donning her jersey for the wolves. Behind that feeling, far away but undeniable, was a sense of something unpleasant. Was it shame?
“Come on, then,” Marcom grunted, and he started from the room.
She shook her head, pushing aside the sensation, and followed as he led her down through the tower. She should be pleased that Marcom had given her the badge. He’d been nothing but kind to her, if a tough and demanding teacher. Though she would not have been able to articulate exactly how, Marcom reminded her of coach Anders. She’d learned a great deal from Marcom in the last few days, and she was proud to be marked as one of his guards.
The stairs turned another corner and emptied out into an enormous set of stables built into the base of the tower. Stalls were arrayed in a row along one wall, and the air was thick with the smell of equestrian flesh and hay.
Three horses were saddled and being tended to by guards in similar gear to her own. The men straightened as they approached. They saluted Marcom but eyed Emily with unease that bordered on disdain.
“This here’s William,” Marcom said, indicating the taller and grayer of the two men tending the horses. He had the grizzled look of a sailor who’d spent a hard life at sea. He nodded to her curtly before returning his attention to his horse.
“He’ll be riding out with us. And this…” Marcom inclined his head toward the other, “…is Corbbmacc. He minds the stables and the horses.”
Corbbmacc nodded at her indifferently. He was hardly older than she was. His hair fell around his face in loose waves, and she could see the chain mail of his armor ripple as the muscle beneath it moved. He could’ve been a movie star, she thought. Certainly, Casey would’ve been acting like an idiot around him if he’d strode into the halls of Lindsey High. Judging by his cool demeanor, though, she’d be wasting her time.
“Where the deuce is Dalivan?” Marcom asked. “I told him to…ah, there.”
Emily turned to follow his gaze. A large man was carefully leading a horse out of one of the stalls, his back to them, but Emily thought there was something familiar about the way he held himself. Then he turned, and she took an involuntary step backward.
Long blonde hair framed a face that was disfigured by a scar running across one cheek and over the bridge of a badly crooked nose.
Well, now she knew the name of the man who had fetched her and the other girls from the boat.
For the space of three seconds, their eyes locked. She saw surprise register in his, which quickly melted away to cold calculation.
“What’s she doin’ here?” Dalivan rumbled.
“She’s a member of the guard, same as you. And she’s here on my orders, same as you,” Marcom said, placing a hand on Emily’s shoulder.
“Member of the guard my ass,” Dalivan spat. “She’s an apprentice. Brought her in from the dock myself.”
“She’s not an apprentice now, Dalivan. Get on your horse and close your mouth before you fall in.”
With one more dark look in Dalivan’s direction, Marcom steered Emily toward one of the horses. It was a beautiful creature with a gray coat the deep color of a sky that threatens snow. Marcom patted it, and the horse nuzzled him amiably with its nose. “What’s this one’s name, Corbbmacc?”
“That’s Storm,” Corbbmacc responded, and Emily jumped. The boy had moved silently behind them and now stood at her elbow, admiring the horse with obvious affection. “She’s a gentle one, like you wanted.” His voice was gruff but oddly musical, and Emily had a sudden but extremely vivid image of Casey feigning a swoon. She tried not to grin, but some measure of her amusement must have shown through, because Corbbmacc gave her a disgusted look and turned away.
Before she could think of anything to say, Marcom looked sideways at her and went on. “Don’t know if you’ve ridden before, so I thought we’d start you off easy. Plenty of time for Corbbmacc to teach you the finer points later.”
“No, I haven’t,” she said, staring up at the horse with some trepidation. She was used to carrying her own weight. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.” Images of Storm running off into the sunset with Emily helplessly waving her arms over her head at Marcom as she dwindled to a dot on the horizon flashed through her mind. This seriously did not sound like a good idea at all.
“You’ll be fine,” Marcom said. “C’mon, I’ll show you all you need for now.”
He helped her up into the saddle and handed her the reins. Over the next few minutes, he showed her a few basic means of controlling the mare, until Emily’s head was spinning. Good as Corbbmacc’s word, though, Storm was gentle and obediently did as she was asked.
“We won’t be going anywhere in a hurry,” Marcom assured her. “Just stay close to me and you’ll be fine.”
She gulped and tried to relax as Marcom, William, and Dalivan mounted their own steeds. Marcom guided his alongside hers, gave her another reassuring smile, then turned in his saddle to look at Corbbmacc.
“All right, lad. Let’s get this done.”
Corbbmacc strode over to what Emily had taken to be little more than an expanse of bare wall. He pressed his palm against a stone at its far end, and a grinding sound rumbled through the room. The wall before them split apart, retracting into itself on either side. This was far more impressive than the sliding doors she’d seen going in and out of the other towers.
Bright sunlight flo
oded the room through what was now a wide archway, and Marcom got his horse moving forward. Emily mimicked his movements, squeezing her own horse with her ankles and trying hard to remember all that he’d told her. With a gentle flick of her ears, Storm carried her sedately out into the street.
The early morning bustle of the city enveloped her on all sides. Dalivan and William fell back a pace to flank her, and Marcom steered his horse easily through the press of people, pack animals, and coaches that filled the streets. So many bodies, and all with somewhere to go.
Most of the citizens seemed perfectly ordinary. Men hurried past in fine clothes or armor like her own. Women in gossamer gowns or plain dresses pushed through the multitude, some with babies in their arms or nestled in slings around their necks. Children darted here and there with the speed and grace of wild things. Outside a tavern, a pair of men clad as sailors swayed with their arms around each other’s shoulders and sang a bawdy song in unharmonious drunken bliss.
Most of the buildings she could see were stone, but as they moved away from Seven Skies, wood and something like adobe began to dominate the architecture. Some were clearly shops or other places of business, while the purpose of others remained a mystery. Smoke billowed from chimneys of taverns and eateries, and the streets thundered with ceaseless babble.
Now and then, though, Emily caught glimpses of things that were distinctly not ordinary. A figure in a black cloak stood in the doorway of a tiny shack at the end of one narrow lane. As they passed, he raised his hooded head to look at her, and Emily’s eyes locked with the empty sockets of a dry and discolored skull. Something moved within their depths, and she remembered the green spider that had made a nest inside one of the skulls of the two-headed cat. She shuddered.
With a jolt of surprise, she saw Marcom turn suddenly down a wider thoroughfare. She tugged on her reins, frantic to keep Storm behind him. She needn’t have worried, though. Storm followed Marcom’s steed with gentle dignity, only flicking her ears at Emily’s efforts as if to say, “Don’t worry, babe. I got this.”
They passed between larger structures that towered overhead, but the greater breadth of the street made it seem less crowded than the smaller lanes nearer the shore. Emily looked up, overwhelmed by the size and strangeness of the city.
A woman in a leather jerkin and britches leapt from a balcony almost directly overhead, some fifty feet above the cobbled street. Emily had just opened her mouth to shout a warning to Marcom, sure the woman was going to die in a bloody heap, when a pair of translucent insectile wings unfolded from the woman’s back, fully six feet long. They glistened like panes of stained glass in the sunlight, and she glided gracefully down to the street, landing with a soft thud as her boots gently hit the cobbles, not three feet to Emily’s left.
The woman’s wings folded with a dry skittering sound, and she flashed Emily a smile from a perfectly ordinary, even beautiful face before turning away. There were long, delicate antennae protruding from the back of her neck. They waved gently from side to side in the still morning air.
Marcom pulled back on his reins, stopping before a somewhat smaller building at the end of the next block. It had been haphazardly constructed from a variety of random materials with, apparently, utter disregard for aesthetics. A long wooden deck stretched across its front, bordered with the kind of hitching rail often depicted outside saloons in old western movies. A combination of large, polished gray stones and the adobe-like bricks comprised the walls of the first level, giving way to bare wood beams for the rest of the structure.
A weather-beaten metal sign hung from a rusting chain above the battered batwing doors. “Stay Inn,” it said in orange letters, painted over something red and white that had faded to a dull pink with the passage of years. Emily’s stomach gave an uneasy squirm. She’d recognize that shape anywhere. Behind the fresh paint was the unmistakable logo of Coca-Cola.
An elderly man rocked in a chair on the deck, holding a mug between his bony, gnarled hands. He watched impassively as Marcom and the other guards dismounted. Emily slid awkwardly from her own saddle.
“Mornin’,” Marcom called as he and Dalivan began to tie their horses to the rail. William stepped away for a moment, scanning the street and the passersby.
“Mornin’,” the man replied. His voice was high and reedy, but his eyes were sharp. Their pale blue almost matched his ancient, faded shirt and worn jeans.
Marcom motioned to them, and Emily and the others followed as he mounted the steps to the deck.
“What news is there from Seven Skies, Captain?” the man asked, sipping from his mug. His eyes flicked toward Emily with apparent surprise before returning to meet Marcom’s gaze once again.
“Quiet,” Marcom answered, leaning against the rail and glancing casually down the street.
“Can’t be too quiet, I shouldn’t think, not if you’ve taken to drafting…” the man trailed off, his gaze lingering on Emily again. She shifted uncomfortably. She could almost feel his eyes crawling over her.
“Just takin’ out our newest recruit on a tour of the city,” Marcom said smoothly, nodding toward Emily, as if it were perfectly normal for her to be there. He met the man’s gaze, drawing it mercifully away from its scrutiny of her.
The old man frowned, seemed to be about to say something else, then apparently thought better of it.
“Well, fine day for it, anyhow. There’s breakfast and coffee inside if you’ll have it,” he said instead. “Jimmy’s in the kitchen. If he balks, tell him I said he’s to give you whatever you want.”
Marcom nodded. He turned and strode into the inn, and Emily and the others followed in his wake.
A blast of hot, stuffy air enveloped her as she stepped inside, and she found herself in a kind of tavern. The first floor of the inn was made up almost entirely of a wide open room crowded with small tables. A long bar of polished wood ran along the back wall, and staircases wound upward from either end. The place was packed. Men, women, and children sat at tables, eating and carrying on spirited conversations. The smell of food caused Emily’s stomach to cramp with hunger, though she’d eaten her daily ration of porridge only a couple of hours earlier.
Marcom weaved through the maze of tables to the bar, took an empty seat, then motioned that she should take the one beside him. As she hoisted herself clumsily onto the high stool, Dalivan slid easily into the empty spot on her left, eyeing the scantily clad young woman wiping down a table across the room with interest. William took the place to Marcom’s right, and the barkeep, who looked younger than Emily was herself, moved slowly down the length of the bar toward them.
He nodded at Dalivan, who didn’t see him, then paused in surprise when he saw Emily. His eyebrows shot up into the dirty blonde hair across his forehead. He opened his mouth, but Marcom spoke first.
“Jimmy is it, then?” he asked. The lad turned quickly to face him, a hand going up to brush the hair out of his eyes.
“Yes sir.”
“Eggs, ham, coffee. For all of us,” Marcom said, indicating the others. Jimmy nodded, gave a little salute that struck Emily as looking rather ridiculous, then hurried away.
Eggs! Ham! Coffee! Never had three words sounded so good to her ears. After two weeks of tea and porridge, Emily had nearly forgotten what real food tasted like. And coffee! Oh heavenly black liquid gold of the gods…
Emily stared raptly at Jimmy’s back as he worked over a fire at the far end of the bar. Her mouth was watering already. Had she ever been so hungry? She definitely did not feel like she’d just eaten.
Marcom nudged her arm, breaking into her fantasies of high cholesterol and caffeinated bliss. She looked over to see he’d swiveled around to face the room at large.
He leaned toward her and spoke in a low voice. “Turn ’round and just take everything in. Try not to look like you’re lookin’.”
Emily did as he asked, scanning the crowd for anyone that looked like they might be “troublemakers”, as Marcom had called them. Everyone
seemed harmless enough. She turned on her stool, leaning her back against the bar and trying to look bored. Now she felt ridiculous. Acting had definitely not been in the job description when Marcom had started her training.
She let her mind wander as her gaze moved across the crowd.
The sign out front made sense, she supposed. If she was right and she was in some far flung future, there were bound to be remnants of the world she’d known everywhere. It wasn’t any different than the dictionary or the Oz book she’d found in the library at Seven Skies. But finding a book that made you think you were in the future and seeing a Coca-Cola billboard that looked a thousand years old were very different things somehow.
Her eyes fell on a robed and hooded man sitting alone in the far corner of the room. As he raised a flask to his lips, she caught the faint sheen of sunlight on greenish scales. She looked away. Even if there was someone—or something—suspicious in the crowd, how the hell was she supposed to know? So much of what she’d seen, in or out of Seven Skies, was frankly insane.
A flicker of motion caught her eye, and she glanced down just in time to see Dalivan dive to the floor and snatch up a black and yellow beetle the size of an average house cat. It skittered and twitched in his fist, and he stood straight, examining his prize with supreme detachment. He caught Emily staring and grinned malevolently at her.
“What’s the matter? Is our new little guardswoman afraid of a bug?” he shoved the loathsome thing toward her face, and she found herself staring into a pair of multifaceted eyes the size of dimes. She saw miniaturized versions of her own green eyes reflected in their depths. Revulsion wormed its way through her, but she set her jaw and willed herself not to flinch.
“Get rid of that, you fuckin’ idiot,” Marcom said. His voice was low, calm, and almost entirely devoid of emotion. Dalivan took a step back but did not drop the beetle.
“What?” he growled. “Can’t test the steel of the little girl playin’ dress up, but I’m supposed to trust my life to her if there’s trouble?”
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