Greyblade

by Andrew Hindle

  “It’s one of the little-known benefits of being an old monster,” Gabriel replied. “Helps soothe the sting when the young monsters call us names. Mehapmiamariel.”

  Frogsalt didn’t rise to this challenge, but her anger didn’t diminish. “Phil is absolutely inconsolable about the position you manipulated him into,” she said. “Between the duties you taught him and the role he thought you wanted him to play. He never would have reported to the Archangelic court if you hadn’t made it wink-wink crystal clear that you needed someone to leak the information and win the court’s trust back again, then you still treated it like it was a betrayal.”

  “Mac made his choice,” Gabriel said firmly.

  “Yes, he did,” Frogsalt snapped. “He’s agreed to swear the oath and stand guard at the doors of Karl’s prison. Just so he won’t look like a traitor. And that was your plan all along, because you couldn’t be certain simple admiration was enough to get him to do what you wanted.”

  “Not a prison,” Gabriel said. “A tomb.”

  “Damn you, Gabriel,” Frogsalt whispered.

  “Probably,” he sighed.

  Angel and Archangel stood and waited while night gathered outside the windows. Ignored by the mortals milling through the dock, they didn’t speak again until the transport from Amazônia Capital arrived sometime after midnight and the visitors bound for the Sprawling Adelbairn alien quarter were finally processed sometime around two o’clock.

  Greyblade, looking as naked as a creature in full plate armour could look without his sword, strode out into the arrivals hall and stopped, poised, visored helmet turning from side to side. Gabriel stepped forward and let himself sink down into the mortal psychological range. Greyblade headed towards him smoothly, not faltering when Frogsalt also manifested.

  “Gabriel,” he said, and then turned to Frogsalt and inclined his helm.

  “Mehapmiamariel,” Frogsalt introduced herself. Then, after almost an entire second’s inner struggle, added, “my friends call me Frogsalt.”

  “Then I shall call you Mehapmiamariel,” Greyblade said, “until you instruct me otherwise,” he turned his visor towards the windows. “Although I feel compelled to add that there is a ticking clock on that,” he added. Gabriel waved an arm towards the exit, and fell into step alongside the Knight as he strode in that direction. “What’s our status?”

  “Everything’s ready,” Gabriel said. “Galatine is on the edge of a nervous breakdown. And I don’t mean the near edge.”

  “Everyone is prepared,” Frogsalt said. “Everyone who needed to be put in place has been put in place. Now we’re just waiting for the black-robed, lightning-fingered star of the show.”

  “He’ll be here,” Greyblade said.

  “I hope so,” Frogsalt said. They stepped out into the clammy darkness and she spread her wings. “See you in Vanning, Gabriel,” she said.

  “She wasn’t happy,” Greyblade said, as Frogsalt vanished into the sky with a whump of wings and air.

  “No,” Gabriel said, “and that’s pretty jarring if you know her.”

  “How about you?” Greyblade asked. “I only ask in case I have to walk to Vanning. Is the entrance still under the Drake’s nightclub?”

  “They’d sealed it up, but yes – we’ve reopened it for one night only,” Gabriel said, and glanced at Greyblade. “Did anyone tell you what happened to her?” he asked. “The Drake?”

  “Blacknettle mentioned that she was mistreated,” Greyblade said. “And that she went into hiding after you broke her out,” they didn’t ride to Gabriel’s apartment this time, but Osrai had misappropriated another autonomobile for them to take to the club. Discretion hardly seemed to matter at this point. Greyblade stopped at the open car door. “I’m glad you got her out,” he said, the hesitation in his voice as odd as the anger had been in Frogsalt’s. “I suppose I could say I wish you’d done it sooner … but more than anything I wish it hadn’t been necessary in the first place.”

  “It’d be nice if none of this was necessary,” Gabriel agreed. They climbed into the car. “Wouldn’t it, Greyblade?” he pressed. Greyblade didn’t answer. “It is necessary, isn’t it?”

  “Look out the window, Gabriel,” Greyblade finally replied. “Remember your plan? Remember your grand dream of humanity emerging triumphant and glorious from beneath the veil, giving the great old powers of the Corporation the finger, and flying away in a brilliant, impossible horde? Look around. This is what humanity has become. This is your dream’s end.”

  “What about your dream?” Gabriel demanded wearily. “What about the waves of people, fleeing and trampling and killing one another?”

  “I’m looking out the same window you are,” Greyblade replied.

  “And what about all the data you dug up from the Institute? The Damorak rituals and cultural signatures? Your files? The clues pointing at Karl?” Gabriel found himself, his voice raw, asking the questions he’d told himself he’d never ask. “How much of that was real, and how much was a manipulative fabrication?”

  “I told you,” Greyblade said firmly, “I didn’t lie.”

  “But you still managed to not tell me everything.”

  “Expecting to be told everything is delusional.”

  “Maybe so,” Gabriel sat for a time, studying the Burning Knight. Of course, there was little his eyes could tell him. “Did you find it?” he asked.

  “Find what?”

  “Your reason for coming back here? Your mission? Your overall soldier quest mojo? You told me before they deported you–”

  “I know what I told you. I’m just impressed you remember,” Greyblade said. “It was ten years ago. I’m used to organics with memories like sieves.”

  “Memories are meant to be like sieves. Sieves keep the important shit and let the slop drain away.”

  “I suppose so,” Greyblade acknowledged. They rode in silence for a short time. “I found it,” the Burning Knight said. “I’d never really lost it in the first place.”

  “Was it the friends you made along the way?” Gabriel inquired.

  Greyblade paused. “Mygon’s scroat,” he growled in disgust. “Do you know, I think it actually was?” they both chuckled hollowly. “If you’d known how much of the Earth’s condition could be laid at the humans’ feet rather than those of Karl the Bloody-Handed or whoever else, you would have given up on humanity before we even started,” Greyblade went on.

  “You’re damn right I would!” Gabriel snapped. “How much denial do you think I’m in about humans?”

  “Somewhere between industrial and biblical levels,” Greyblade replied, then went on in a softer tone, “but it doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”

  They continued in silence, finally pulling up a couple of blocks from the club.

  Gabriel tried not to notice the palpable hostility of the little crowd outside The Drake. Most of them weren’t actively angry, after all, since they had no real idea what was happening around them – in fact, they couldn’t even see him. But word had spread about the Angels causing trouble, and the authorities increasing their raids, and about the alien in the golden suit – for all he’d been gone these last ten years – being right in the centre of it all. Things had gone from bad to worse in Dumblertown, and the crowd knew on a mob level that they were looking at an insider, if not an instigator. And his oddly difficult-to-focus-on companion.

  Now. The ones who knew about the Drake, and what had actually happened … they were angry.

  Sister Bazinard, on the door as always, stepped aside and lifted the velvet rope for them. Her eyes were dark and unreadable as she studied first Gabriel, then Greyblade, the blackened fingers of her mage-hand curling and uncurling slowly.

  “Let’s hope you’re worth it,” she said, quietly enough that Gabriel was pretty sure only he and the Burning Knight heard her.

  “Let’s hope,” Greyblade echoed.

  They descended into the tunnels, which were dank and dusty and cold in the Drake’s absence. Th
ey didn’t talk anymore, and by half-past three in the morning they were in the familiar sub-sewers and maintenance rooms of Vanning. Ludi met them at the entrance.

  “Well this is familiar,” Greyblade said.

  Ludi didn’t look amused. “Sir Greyblade,” she said. “We’re all just about ready at our end. How’s yours coming along?”

  “Ready and waiting,” Greyblade said.

  “How was your trip Beyond the Walls?” she asked, half-turning to wave them up the last stairway.

  “Longer than I hoped,” Greyblade said. “About as long as I was told it would take by the experts.”

  She led them to the surface, and through the deserted pre-dawn streets to the TrollCage Storage warehouse. Galatine Gazmouth, looking drawn and pale, met them at the door. Cara-Magna Áqui, looking about as crisp and neat and straight-backed as always, was standing at the head of the nearest aisle. The looming shapes of the four Ogres stood behind her. The Ogres were out of their suits, the not-unpleasant but definitely-insistent smell of their thawing bodies filling the front of the warehouse.

  “Morning,” Gabriel greeted them all.

  “Hopefully not,” Frogsalt slipped from the top of a neighbouring stack of crates and drifted delicately to the floor.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Greyblade said, his voice still abnormally diffident. Big Thundering Bjørn knuckled forward swiftly and lowered his huge shaggy head, snuffling at the gleaming figure and occasionally clanging his tusks against armour. “Hey, Biggie. Long time no see.”

  “Tin Can Man,” Big Thundering Bjørn rumbled in affectionate acknowledgement.

  Gabriel found himself surprised, again, at the persistence of the Ogres’ memories in this one particular case. They’d lived in the warehouse on a permanent basis with the human TrollCagers for a significant portion of the humans’ lives, and still regularly forgot who they were. Greyblade had been gone for a decade – and before his last visit, even longer – and they remembered him every time.

  “Doing alright?” Greyblade asked.

  “I’se not going,” Big Thundering Bjørn said, sounding oddly disconsolate.

  Greyblade tilted his helm. “Going where?”

  “They drew lots,” Gabriel explained. “To accompany you. If you want to tell them they can’t, that’s up to you,” he added, raising a forestalling hand as Greyblade’s visor swung towards him, “but don’t expect us to try to stop them.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Greyblade said. “It’ll be nice to have some company.”

  “Pete and Hungry won,” Ludi added. Her voice was positively stony, and she crossed to one of the other Ogres and reached up to scratch the underside of his massive jaw, heedless of the fragrant damp.

  “We told them they’d almost certainly die,” Magna told him. “They didn’t seem to care. Hungry said something about meeting their friends if they died, but they don’t actually seem to remember the other Ogres.”

  “Biggie and Tuesday are gutted,” Ludi added accusingly.

  “There’s … a lot I would have liked to ask you,” Galatine broke the uncomfortable silence after this, “about your trip and the Godfangs. Did you really … ?”

  “We really found them,” Greyblade confirmed. “I’m opening an exchange file with your computer upstairs, I can dump the entire trip’s-worth of data and footage and cross-references. You can go over it in first-hand detail after I’m gone,” the silence after this pronouncement was even less comfortable than the previous one, and Greyblade seemed aware of it. “Where are the other Angels?” he asked.

  “Flying to their places,” Gabriel said. “Frogsalt and I are going to be stationed relatively nearby, but we all need to be at set points on the network when this goes down.”

  “You’re running out of night to fly through.”

  “Let us worry about that,” Gabriel replied.

  “Alright,” Greyblade allowed. “Where’s your brother? He had something of mine.”

  “We have it,” Galatine had already turned and was fast-walking down the aisle. The rest of the group followed him at a surreal casual stroll, like a group of workers going to lunch. Gabriel watched them, Angel and humans and Ogres meandering through a warehouse at what might prove to be the end of the world. “He left it with us, along with, uh…”

  “Along with the part you so wickedly demanded he brutalise his beautiful ship by removing,” Gabriel finished dryly.

  “Mutilate, was the word I believe he used,” Magna added.

  “Not inaccurate,” Greyblade said, “but it was important. Did you figure out the connection?”

  “Yes,” Galatine said, and led them into the kitchen. The Ogres shuffled to a halt outside, and Galatine lifted Greyblade’s sword from the table. The simple weapon was more or less unchanged, except for its hilt, which was now adorned with a truly tacky statuette of the Pinian First Disciple in clear pale blue crystal.

  “Wow,” Greyblade muttered as he took the sword and hefted it gingerly. “There I was sort of hoping you’d be able to take the sculpture apart and just integrate the Tear of the Caretaker into the sword pommel somehow.”

  “I wasn’t about to start taking a Sorontethian Wellspring apart,” Galatine said with a nervous laugh. “I’m not completely insane. Plus I had quite a lot of other stuff to do.”

  “Fair enough. Just as well none of my Knights are here to see this, though,” Greyblade turned the sword backwards and forwards, disapproval radiating from his armour. Then he turned back to Galatine. “And it will work?”

  “It will successfully drain off the scream energy and store it for harmless use,” Galatine said, and laughed again. “Like if we ever want to relative-jump Earth back into the middle of the Four Realms, something like that. It dumps all its power at once and when it’s taken all the scream it’s going to have a ton, and without the rest of the Fhaste engine to take care of it…” he looked around at his silent audience. “That is, it’s not really ‘scream’ in the same sense as the guns,” he said, as if any of them had been about to ask, “but we – I sort of decided to keep using the term. It’s … kind of satisfying in this case.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Greyblade acknowledged.

  “Anyway, it’s an insanely big capacitor, if you can even call it a capacitor,” Galatine went on. “I don’t know what they made it so oversized for.”

  “They did everything big and fancy in the Fhaste ships,” Greyblade said. “I assume the replacement field generator we gave him worked.”

  “Yes,” Frogsalt said, “aside from the wailing and gnashing of teeth as we were installing it.”

  “And the relative field generation for Earth?” Greyblade asked. “All within the specifications laid out by the Godfangs?”

  Galatine nodded. “Most of it was the platforms and Osrai, tweaking the power feed and redistribution through the system. No organic interference at all. We’ll be using the guns, basically, like a set of parallel power cells,” he made an obscure pantomime with his hands. “Technically the whole lot is going into unreality and then dropping Earth back out at the point where we want it, leaving the souls behind to go to wherever they go. That’s the simple version, anyway.”

  “Simple version has always been fine with me,” Greyblade sheathed the sword, then seemed to notice the other object on the kitchen table for the first time. “Hello, Jank.”

  “Sir Greyblade of the Ladyhawk,” Jank said. “They have not killed Me yet.”

  “I can see that,” Greyblade said. “I also see that You’ve had a promotion of sorts. From the power differential crossing the Boundary, I assume?”

  “So I am led to believe,” Jank said.

  Galatine cleared his throat. “We … wanted to be as ready as possible before live-testing the system,” he explained. “And also to let you and Çrom say goodbye to Jank. If that was something you wanted to do.”

  “Of course it is,” Greyblade said. “When will you start the live test?”

  Galatine ran
shaky fingers through his hair. “We’re ready to begin transporting the fountains into their locations,” he said nervously. “Once they’re in place and we initiate the system, they can be moved around and it won’t make a difference…”

  “What if they’re destroyed?” Greyblade asked.

  “Well … as long as they’re not all destroyed before the bleed-out is complete, it should be fine,” Galatine replied, very obviously feeling his way through the answer more or less blind.

  “And if they are?”

  “Then this whole thing will probably fail,” Galatine replied, much more certainly, “and the cheesecake will fly. And Earth will almost certainly be destroyed.”

  “We’re storing a couple of the fountains here for safekeeping,” Magna said, “and a lot of them are going to be beamed to really obscure places around the world so the chances of them all being found is … well, it’s more likely the seals will be found and destroyed, to be honest.”

  Greyblade looked at Gabriel.

  “We’ll take care of ourselves,” Gabriel said.

  “What happens if they get found and destroyed?” Greyblade asked nevertheless, with a jerk of his spine-crested helmet towards Gabriel and Frogsalt.

  “Cheesecake,” Galatine reiterated. “But once we make the relative jump and the human souls are all dumped and vented, there won’t be any weapons left on Earth that are even capable of killing an Angel. Or whatever–” he hesitated.

  “Whatever this whole process turns us into,” Gabriel said for the unhappy human, letting the minor embellishment pass. He knew, because Galatine had told him, that some living guns might slip the net. Galatine hadn’t been able to orchestrate the dump so that all the various human-derivative souls were vented. But there would only be a couple, and there would be no new guns.

  Greyblade seemed to be aware of at least part of this risk. “And to stop them just recreating the weapons?” he asked.

  “We’re ready with the nolovirus,” Galatine said. “Osrai will disseminate it before we jump. Obviously. Actually, it’s already started preparing the way for it. It’ll wipe out the data and reset the clock. We can’t stop someone from starting all over again from scratch with them, but … well, I won’t be helping this time.”