“Owen,” Nolan said. “How long have people been here?”
“That was something we always wondered, but then Marie went to work on the problem, and the evidence trickled in over the years.” He let his finger hover over a point far to the west, just past the end of the Starway. “It is there,” he said, moving to the center. He framed a large semi-circle drawn in the high mountains, nodding. “It started in that range.” Stepping to the right edge, he held a finger over the eastern end of the Starway, just before the massive channel of the world river. “The story continues here, where the People of the Clock hold sway. That place in the mountains? It’s a crash site. The numbers on either end of the Starway?”
“Are they cities?” Nolan asked.
Owen smiled, shook his head, and released a long, drawn out sigh. “The crash site is a sublight ship, and those aren’t cities, Nolan. On either end of the Starway is an AI. I think.”
“Are you shitting me? How big is the wreck?” Nolan blurted.
“How did it survive?” Avina asked.
Owen shrugged. “The same way we all did. Luck, maybe, or skill. That AI is a better pilot than any human ever could be, that’s for certain. It’s a hundred thousand tons of hardened alloy, and somehow, it survived.”
“Do you know who the AI is?” Avina asked.
“That’s the tricky part. Yes, I do, but I have never managed to make contact because there’s no global network. Marie and I verified the ship the best we could, but we were already old by then. No way we were going two thousand klicks overland to see a hull that may or may not be intact,” Owen said.
Nolan stared at the map, thinking. “Do you have a copy of this map?”
“I copied it immediately,” Cherry said. “It’s a massive amount of data, even though it’s handwritten. This civilization is far older than we thought, Nolan. Ask him if he’s got it pinned down.”
“How long ago?” Nolan asked.
Owen tapped at something on his wrist. “You want a copy, and you want to know when the ship came down, right?”
“I’ll need to know if we’re going to survive here. You’ve done well for yourself, Owen. No one will ever challenge that. But this cave? It’s not enough for us. We won’t let people be used,” Nolan said.
“Four thousand, eight hundred, and ninety-three years. That’s how old,” Owen said, then tapped his wrist. A dark band of material gleamed, then an image hovered above his wrist. A holograph, and it was something Nolan recognized at once: the map. Owen looked at the watch wistfully, then took it off and handed it over. “Take it. Build something out of this world, Nolan. It’s the only thing to do, not just wait here to die with me.”
“I—thanks,” Nolan said, protest dying on his lips as he saw Owen’s face grow sadder with each passing second. The watch adjusted itself with a quiet snick. It was Nolan’s.
“What will you do first?” Owen asked.
“We build over there, past your cave. Your new job will entail—” Nolan said, but Owen interrupted him.
“New job? Hell, I don’t have any job. Marie is gone. I’m old. Let me be, Nolan. That’s the best thing you can do for my bones. Let them be,” Owen said.
“Sorry, can’t do that,” Avina said. “We’re not letting a century of experience lie down and die. We need you, Owen. The kids do too.”
“I don’t know about . . . you know, kids,” Owen finished sourly.
“That’s a lousy reason to give up. Kids are useful,” Nolan said.
“How so?” Owen said, suspicious.
“They can bring you a beer when you’re in a comfortable chair,” Nolan said, grinning broadly.
Owen rubbed his neck, a slow smile spreading over his face. “They might be useful at that.”
Avina took his weathered hand in hers. “Grandad Owen, welcome aboard. Now point us to the high ground and let’s get to work.”
“It’s just that way, and you’ll want to take a gun,” he said.
“Why?” Nolan asked, touching his sidearm.
“Not everything up here is as charming as me,” Owen said.
Surety
East
Just when Keen thought no more boats could fit in the canal, more would slide in like ducklings, rubbing against each other with jocular cries from their pilots as the merchants stood, wares in hand displayed for the crowds and the air ringing with their calls. Fish, cloth, spices, and blackbrew, served steaming in tightly woven frond cups, all measured and sold without the pilot slowing in order to maintain momentum and cherished position among the maddening horde.
There were blademen and toolmakers and even a portable cobbler whose hands worked in a blur to drive bright nails into the soles of shoes before he could pass out of throwing distance, spinning the shoe with élan even as he reached to pluck the next customer’s sandal from the air without breaking rhythm. He smiled and shouted thanks around a mouthful of nails, spitting one into his waiting hand with the ease born of years.
In the boat next to his, a small woman held up tame seabirds, their long bills chittering with nervous energy as they disgorged wiggling fish into her palm on command. “Three for a handful! Live and kicking, you’ll find no fresher than Diver and Rip can deliver, so you won’t!”
Stopping for a sale, she yielded to a bizarre craft overfilled by eggs of all colors, speckled and yellow and blue and round, no two alike and seeming to shift with the rocking motion of the long, narrow rookery of unknown creatures. “Ready to hatch! Live births only, or your coins returned,” cried a man wearing armbands and little more, skin a deep red and marred by tiny scars all over his rangy body. Whatever he was selling had left their calling cards all over him, but his smile was broad and his fingers intact.
“What is that thing?” asked Whisper. The man’s boat was an enormous shell, turned up and painted in a riot of swirling colors.
“Turtle. Families fight over them, only found every three years during the Molt of No Moons. Quite rare and virtually impossible to break or sink.” Keen examined the craft as it slid past, awash in gaudy paint that resolved into an unending poem in the spidery script of Marwai.
“What a city. Every time I’m here, I see something I did not think possible.”
“Including a moment’s peace. I can’t even hear myself, let alone anyone else for all these merchants. Hope they leave with the sun,” Keen muttered. He preferred clean, open places, and Marwai was anything but. He stiffened at a flash of motion near the tailor’s open window, but it was only a curtain caught up in the freshening breeze. With evening on the approach, the wind would switch directions to carry warm air inland, like a giant bellows that never took a day’s rest.
“I’ll never understand why someone can waste their life on cloth,” Whisper complained.
In answer, Keen let his eyes linger over her forgettable gray cloak, trousers, and lack of shoes. “Not everyone chooses to dress like a trapper who regards fashion as an affront to life.”
“It’s not an affront, It’s a waste.” She wiggled her toes, which were pink from the sun. “Like shoes. I much prefer life without shoes.”
“And color.” He sniffed. For a man of the plains, he had strident sensibilities about clothing.
“Are you suggesting that preening dandy is somehow more reasonable than I? Think carefully before you answer.” She began tossing a knife from hand to hand, making the blade flash before sliding it into one of her unseen pockets. She hated fussy clothing but loved pockets. They were useful. In that regard, he agreed. Around them, patrons gave her a wider berth, moving like fish skirting the great ocean hunters when their bellies were empty and danger stained the water.
They were in their third hour of the day’s hunt, ten feet above the canal in an open-air market, sipping fruit juice mixed with salt and lemon in the local fashion. Their view aligned perfectly with the tailor’s front porch, close enough that Whisper could make a throw in the event she chose to kill from a distance.
She disliked the varia
bles of such an attempt, as did Keen. Knives were meant for holding, not throwing, so they waited, and watched, and waited some more until the brilliant sun began to leave, its work done for the day.
Whisper flicked a lemon rind at him, a devilish grin at her lips. “You were going to insult me about my sense of style, I believe?”
Keen let his eyes flicker back to the store front, where their target was busy spending his ill-gotten gains on clothes he would never get to enjoy. “Not at all. But your willful ignorance of anything modern is troubling. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were demonstrating the characteristics of those dreadful desert monks who howl at the moons and flog themselves.”
She only grinned, a crescent of small white teeth that vanished after a fugitive instant. Around them, Marwai began to slow its frenetic pace as the sun went down in a scarlet tumble behind the Clockstones. To the south, the vast deltas spread out under the last light of day, their low presence in the river little more than a dark smudge. Keen took note of a storm, far out and to the east, bolts of lightning plunging into the ocean with flickering regularity. He preferred the river, despite its dangers. At least there was land close enough to see, even if it was possible to die mere feet from shore.
Unlike sailors who chose to go off cable into the unknown depths beyond the deltas, he had no immediate wish to die, which was always a possibility given his choice of professions. But the truth of it was with Whisper at his back, there were few real threats to his life or hers. His main concern had always been getting paid, and that was no issue in this case. With a probing thumb, he verified the coins warming in his pocket, their bright presence a death sentence for Gessin, who made the simple mistake of assuming the river could do his job for him.
He would not have the opportunity to fail again.
The tailor’s shop was like every other store on the winding canal, with the addition of an imperious sign declaring that Kan-tu needlework was second to none in the kingdom and looking elsewhere for such quality was akin to holding back the river with a chamber pot. Both Whisper and Keen were of a mind to agree, given the elegant whorls of metal forming the sign, which was kept free of rust and oiled to a mirror shine.
Held aloft by bamboo stilts, Kan-tu’s shop was a wooden oval with two stories where the family would live and work. Large openings let air flow through, and Keen could only conclude the tailor was of some repute given the metal shields folded away, ready to close the store up for a storm blowing in off the deltas. Metal work was expensive, and Keen revised his opinion of Gessin for patronizing such a place.
Perhaps, Keen mused, if they were of a like size he would try to avoid harming any new clothing the boy wore, especially given the appalling condition of his current garments. They had been hunting Gessin for three hard days in Marwai, and the dusty streets were broken only by ripe tropical canals, none of which left him anywhere near clean enough for his tastes.
“I hope we do match, at that,” he muttered.
“The clothes? Or as a couple? I’m told he’s handsome, but—” Whisper teased.
“My heart belongs only to you. And your amazing work with the blade, of course,” Keen added, blowing her a kiss without allowing his gaze to falter. Wasting such quality seemed peevish in the extreme, and Whisper was notorious for being practical, which in turn seemed to have rubbed off on Keen over the years.
“Star,” Whisper said with a glance upward. The night began to advance in earnest, a rusty smudge that grew darker with each passing second.
“Soon,” he agreed. They worked best at night when in a city, even though crowds gave them anonymity.
Kan-tu’s door swung open to frame Gessin, backlit and draped in a fine linen suit that gleamed with silver chasing. He shook the tailor’s hand before stepping onto the porch, feet clad in fine sandals of an exotic skin. He cut a dashing figure, strutting toward the open deck end while hailing a lagging water taxi with an imperious gesture.
Keen never saw the knife, but Whisper did. The blade took Gessin high in the throat, a beautiful throw of such precision that the two killers fell into a moment of sheer marvel at the skill of it all. The cloaked boatman never slowed as Gessin’s corpse hit the water with a liquid crash, fine clothes now stained by blood, salt, and all that Marwai had to offer.
“It appears we were late,” Keen remarked, nodding with respect to the man as he dipped an oar and turned his boat into a side canal. As he rounded the corner, he waved to the pair, not a taunt but in acknowledgement of their presence. I see you, said the wave, and as Gessin’s body vanished in the darkening water, Whisper flipped her own blade around in frustration.
“We were paid in advance, you know.” Keen watched after the killer, making a note of his lean frame and utter silence.
“Not the point,” she ground out. “I don’t like surprises.”
“And I don’t like competition,” he said into the gloom. Below them, the tide turned, and Gessin began his journey out to sea. Standing, Keen began to disrobe, stripping the shirt from his muscular frame. “Hold this, if you please.”
“Take the bag,” she said.
He clutched a thick piece of leather filled with fibrous down and wrapped firmly in his knobby fingers, and then he dove a clean arc into the canal with the merest splash. After a long moment, he broke the surface, surprising the next boat in the channel, a flat-bottomed affair teetering with cured bamboo and a cursing pilot. The man was unlucky, as he made eye contact with Keen. Then the pilot made a fatal error, staring at the dripping scabbard in the assassin’s hand, its tough leather cradling the blade Keen had lifted from Gessin’s corpse in a nerve-wracking moment under the surface. Even though Keen had complete confidence in his abilities, he was stunned that the recovery went so well. He’d found Gessin, then the dagger’s pommel, and then slid the scabbard over the terrifying blade in a matter of seconds. And now, he was staring as the pilot pushed his boat past, muttering a curse at the bobbing killer.
“My apologies,” Keen offered, piercing the hull with a slim blade, it’s metal shearing through the tough wood without pause. His efforts were unseen, the boat plying onward but now taking in water through the vicious puncture. Keen whistled low at the effects of their employer’s weapon.
“Certainly lives up to the name. Did you hear that?” he called up to Whisper while treading water.
“No, nothing.”
“Exactly.” After verifying the dagger was still firmly wrapped in down and shredded fabric, he held up a hand to Whisper. “Help me up. We need to be rid of this thing.”
She peered down into the water, eyes narrowed in the direction of the killer’s boat. “We need more than that. We need answers.”
Above them, the small drone’s camera whirred. Images were taken. Sounds, recorded. Then it moved off, unseen, and unheard. Much like Whisper and Keen.
Chapter Eight
Nolan
Owen didn’t know everything, but he came pretty damned close.
“For building material that’s tough and easy to find, you want chimegrass. It grows tall and strong, and it’s hollow. When you cut it, the knife goes right through, but when it dries—” Owen snapped his fingers, smiling. “Nothing short of an industrial laser can cut it. You can run cable and pipe through the center and build something permanent, not at risk of blowing over in the fall storms.”
“They’re bad?” Nolan asked.
“Like nothing you can imagine, and there isn’t anything to stop them for a thousand klicks.” Owen stretched out his legs, grunting with the effort. They were all outside in the afternoon sun, drinking from canteens and eating various foods Owen provided. The children, now fed, were adjusting quickly to the idea of a new home. For the adults, it was going to take a bit longer.
Owen pointed west. “The Shakedowns. Mountains so high you’ll break your neck looking at them. The storms funnel up from the ocean, get pushed up inside, and rage across the prairie like an avenging god. Happens once or twice a year, but
the storms eventually give out. If they’re big enough, they’ll even make it here. That’s just one of the reasons we—I mean, Marie and I—were in the cave. Too damned hard for a pair of people to build something complicated, only to have it torn away by a storm. Or worse.”
“What’s worse than a storm? Or invaders?” Avina asked, then narrowed her eyes at the horizon. “Fires?”
“You guessed it,” Owen said. “Scorchers, and none too easy to avoid with the restless winds. The animals can get out of the way, but we couldn’t. So—” He tilted his head toward the cave again, as if its many purposes were obvious. They were.
“So high ground, chimegrass, some kind of firebreak or water source, and a defense intended to make someone pay for every single inch,” Nolan said. “We can do that.”
“We can?” Tilde asked. Her brow was creased with worry.
“We can, and we will. It’s not a choice, Tilde. It’s survival, for now and the seasons after. We’re not going to build something just so we can be easy pickings later. I thought your place was secure. You’d done everything possible, and look what happened.” Nolan patted the air so they all knew he meant no insult. They had done well, but the People of the Clock were too many and too driven. The group would have to plan ahead for making them lose their fighting will, and there was only one way to make that happen.
Arrange to kill as many of them as possible, and take the fight to them.
“Avina? You’re with me. Crowe, we’ll be gone overnight at the longest. If we don’t come back, you all know what to do,” Nolan said.
“Actually, I don’t,” Crowe said. “What do you mean?”
Nolan shrugged. “Find the high ground. Build. Live. And then someday, fight.”
Crowe and Tilde nodded as the children ate and talked in bright tones of relief.
“You’re armed, I take it?” Owen asked.
Lost Kingdom: Book 1 in the Lost Kingdom Series Page 12