by C J Timms
I chose to go it alone.
I didn’t want anyone to think me weak.’
Sterling was interrupted by another student betting against Gale, two hundred to one. The student left, and Hotaru just stared ahead for a while.
‘When I think back, when I think about what I could have done to stop Hotaru burning out. What I would give to go back to that moment, to seize history by the short and curlies together...’ Bella shook her head. She watched Gale taking position across from the House Laurels team. Those Hydrokites looked deadly. He couldn’t blame Swan for doing what he had done.
Bella held out a signed note. ‘Put everything I have on Gale to win.’
Sterling shook his head. ‘But your exam fees, the cost of rent. They’ll boot you from the program.’
Bella stared out at the field. ‘Maybe. Just a feeling.’
Sterling took down her details. At the odds she had recorded, if Gale did win, Bella was a made woman.
‘He’s not good at asking for help you know, Gale acts like he has everything planned out, but he could use a hand.’ Bella shook herself and stood up again. ‘I’m going to sit with Titus. Look after yourself, Sterling. You seem to be good at it.’
Sterling shook his head. He couldn’t stop everyone from burning out. Sterling needed to look after himself. He couldn’t help others if he burnt himself out. He couldn’t change history if he fell.
He would not be another forgotten Secondus.
His thongs were falling apart at the edges, Titus thought. They were good reliable thongs, and he’d had them all year. Well worn in thongs, with the grooves of his feet fitting like a glove, well, a foot glove. He’d patched the underside with glue every time it came apart. The front was finally falling off, the underlayer hanging like a dog’s panting tongue. He didn’t know if superglue was enough to fix this. He’d grown attached to these thongs, he’d trusted them. Of all days to finally fail him.
Seated to his left, the Bookwyrm was unusually quiet. Shackleton hunched beside her. The three of them sat alone in the Lighthouse section of the stadium.
In the House Solvent crowd, a disturbance slowly pushed towards them.
‘Hrmmmm yes pardon me…excuse me…hrrrmmm….yes suck in that gut…’ Bursar Gibraltar had the students shrinking back in their seats. Then he pushed out of House Solvent and slammed into the seat beside Titus. ‘Hrrmmm…yes…excellent view from here. I thought you were playing today Master Mangrove, aren’t you meant to be a Lighthouse member.’
Titus shrugged. ‘I thought a lot of things that were wrong.’
Gibraltar raised one rocky eyebrow with a crack and dislodged shale from his brow.
‘What…Hrmm…afraid these puny chicken wings are too weak.’ Gibraltar granite-hard finger poked Titus in the biceps.
‘Oyyy…Titus said. ‘No, a man is strong.’
‘Hrrmmmmm….Gibraltar said. ‘You know I was looking forward to seeing you face Adam. I always thought you could take him. After all you once arm-wrestled Shane Warne in Boggabrai pub.’
‘That’s right, I could take him if I wanted to, I just don’t want to.’ Titus looked back at his thongs. The bloody things were coming apart. Maybe some gaffer tape would help.
‘You know…hrmmm…. I thought you had a chance of winning. I paid my way into the university by making lots of money. I don’t make poor investments…and I bet on you.’
‘You backed the wrong horse Prof.’ Titus gestured to the battlefield where House Laurels stood proud.
‘I understand, hrmmmm if he loses then you won’t be able to pay rent. You’ll be out on your arse.’ Gibraltar rumbled.
‘He broke rule number one.’ Titus snapped, fiddling with his broken thongs.
‘Master Mangrove I have seen the clothes you wear every day. I watched you wear thongs to a black-tie formal dinner. I saw you wear a flannie to your first clinical exam. I endured your combination of blue singlet and tie at my class. I have watched your sense of fashion persist despite everyone’s advice to the contrary. So I know, without a doubt…‘ Gibraltar poked a rocky finger into Titus’s chest.
‘…You know rules are made to be broken.’
‘Frak,’ Gale cursed. Five to one. Including the best student in the school. Adam had said it was beneath him, why had he changed his mind? Why was he taking part now?
Alisdair winked at Gale. ‘Yip’s doing well in our brig. At least he’s moved up in the world. The brig’s a step up from the Lighthouse. Him and that piece of slag.’
Gale clenched his fists. A faint buzzing filled his ears, and he shook his head, trying to clear them. Wisps of ghostly voices trickled in from everywhere and nowhere. Fragments of sentences swum through his head. ‘Soft my love…Steel your heart…Down in the Devil’s Reef…’
He rubbed his bloodshot eyes. Was he cracking under pressure?
Then he saw the bruise coming up on Alisdair’s left cheek. Alisdair had tried to conceal it with makeup, but the sign of Swan’s punch showed through. He felt the earbuds fixed to his ear from Yip. He adjusted Titus’s flannie. He held the Hydroplaner that Swan had built him. Sterling had…well…he hadn’t helped out at all, frakking bum. Gale flipped him the bird in the stands.
He stood alone, but his friends were still helping him.
Put on a show, Gale thought. Gale walked across the platform to stare at Alisdair and pulled Deep script to him. He let the cerulean blue light dance across his skin and the tang of Salt course through the air. He paused a foot away from Alisdair, getting right up in his face.
‘You keep saying that I can’t be trusted. You say that I’m a curse, a demon from the deepest trench with the Reef’s own luck. You’ve frakked me over all year because you think I’m a monster. Well, you’ve hunted the beast, you’ve backed it into a corner with no options left. So I want you to think real hard about one question.
What if you were right?’
Alisdair blanched.
Gale then turned to go. Adam grabbed Gale by the shoulder. Adam’s heavy gaze seemed uncertain, and something odd flickered behind Adam's eyes.
Doubt, this was the first time he’d ever seen Adam with doubt.
‘Gale, can you sense something off?’
Gale slowly shook his head, Adam let go of his shoulder.
‘This is not even sport, mop this up Alisdair.’ Adam leapt high onto the platforms around the battlefield. He settled on the highest. He folded his arms and looked down on the battlefield, the soft golden light of Celesta Firma rolling off him.
Gale took his starting position, wisps of the strange ethereal voice floated in and out, whispering in his ear. Almost like water stuck in his canals. ‘Sing soft, my love, with whispered voice and let the angels weep. The rocks are soft, and the shore is calm down in the Devil’s Reef.’
The song rose in intensity, Gale reached up to the communicator and turned up the filter. The song faded away. Gale took a position at the edge of the battlefield, across from the other five. The frisbee waited atop the goal sphere. The water was deep blue, disturbed by faint choppy waves building from a bitter wind that blew in off the sea. The roar of the crowd rose in a cresting wave. He was the deepborn, the trenchwalker, the sirenson.
He’d tricked them into betting everything on a battle on his home turf. This was his court, and everyone else was just a tourist. They feared the Deep, and it was time to remind them why.
Game on.
The whistle blew. Don’t think, just act.
‘Pancakes,’ Gale yelled, ‘Fetch.’
Pancakes dived into the water. Gale fired up the Hydroplaner and threw the spinning disc, the spar, in front of him, connected by a blue cord of script. The crackling blue sail unfurled from the spar, and the wind caught it. A board of blue script appeared between his feet. He surged into the battlefield, pulled along by the sail.
Pancakes burst from the water around the sphere and rocketed upwards, seizing the frisbee. Gale launched off a massive jet of water and Pancakes shot the frisbe
e towards him. Gale snagged the frisbee from the seahound and streaked past the stunned members of House Laurels. He carved through the water to the outside of the field.
‘Alright, one-shot, just get it in the red target, and you win.’ Gale said to himself. He visualised the tiny target on the sphere that was an auto-win.
‘Frakking get him,’ Alisdair screamed.
The House Laurels team scrambled to intercept. Evan and Shiv came at him, leaping off-ramps in the water and swooping down. Gale rolled and flipped himself underneath the water in a barrel roll before bursting back to the surface.
The Hydrokites couldn’t fly, more like gliding. They also weren’t designed to go underwater. They were different from Gale's Hydroplaner, which made use of his natural ease in the water. Had Swan done that deliberately?
Brock, the wall of muscle, came crashing down towards him. He was a Locomotyr user, and Gale had to avoid his force blasts. Holding the frisbee in one hand and the hydro-sails in the other Gale yelled out. ‘Pancakes, shake hands.’
The seahound shot out of the water grappling with Brock. The bodybuilding giant crashed into the water where Pancakes released him before darting off.
It took the Hydrokites time to get back up and running. The Hydrokites were slow to start from a crashed position. Adam remained unmoving high above them, leaving only Alisdair in front of Gale. Gale remembered the bar from the start of the year. No more cronies. A year of training and now he had a legal excuse to get back at Alisdair.
Gale zoomed along the waterline, amping up the speed and sighted the red target. Alisdair matched his movements, keeping in between them, buying time till his teammates could recover.
‘Pancakes. Shake.’
Pancakes shot from the water on a column of raging surf. Alisdair threw up his hands in defence, but Pancakes was too fast. He’d trained all year for this. He’d earned this in blood and sweat and tears. He'd earned it in dozens of after-hours shifts.
Gale launched from a ramp upwards to the goal-sphere. He held out the frisbee aiming for the red target, and he’d timed it perfectly.
Then, he saw a face looking upwards from the water.
It was Ash.
Gale’s chest tightened. His shot went wide, just clinking off the edge of the red target. Ash darted back into the depths of the harbour.
Purple heat beams erupted from Alisdair. Alisdair blasted Pancakes away and snagged the frisbee. Alisdair leapt from the sphere, racing back towards the outer edge.
Frak, Ash was here.
The Blood Knight was here.
Sterling watched Gale miss a magnificent shot by inches. Would he have missed if he wasn’t run down from all those extra shifts? Minutes and inches, the currency of a smith’s life. Gale swept back and forth over an area under the sphere. Had he lost something or was he cracking under pressure?
‘Come on, Gale.’ Sterling whispered. He looked up at Adam high overhead, unmoving, gold glinting off him. Too good to get involved. Wanker.
A rocky palm slammed down two hundred gold on the Sterling’s ledger. Bursar Gibraltar loomed over him, the head of House Solvent.
‘I understand hrrrmmmm, you are one of our newest students.’
‘Yes sir,’ Sterling said.
‘Hrmmmmm….I would like to make a bet.’
‘Well, I can only offer you the standard odds I’m afraid, even as the head of the house.’ Sterling said. ‘It's two hundred to one, not a great return.’
‘Hrmmmm you mistake me…I’m betting on Knott. Hmmm, you are one of the few aware of Knott’s little wager with me. You might say that I’m going all in.
He could use a little help, though, that boy could change history.’ Gibraltar stared at Sterling with the weight of a rockslide.
Sterling took the coins keeping his eyes down, ‘Can’t change history unless you are part of it.’
Gale swung his Hydroplanar back across the area where he’d seen Ash. It couldn’t have been her? And yet she’d been sneaking into restricted areas all year. What was she doing here? She was the Blood Knight, what was she after. Was she still using him to get the King Tide’s curse
He saw a flicker of blue light, a tiny microfracture in the harbour.
A fracture? This close to the university?
He had to seal it. They’d think he caused it. They’d cause him to forfeit the match. Never mind what might come through and cock up his plan.
‘Focus, Gale,’ yelled a voice from the sidelines. It was Bella, now sitting beside Titus and the Bookwyrm.
Gale snapped back to attention, eyeing off the field. Evan, Shiv and Brock were all back on their feet. They flocked towards Alisdair and passed the outer perimeter. He had to defend the goal line.
Gale zipped past the reality fracture and wrenched on it with his Deep script. It zipped shut, and he felt his lungs tighten, fixing reality still took a lot out of him. He still didn’t know how he did that without a nail or tools. Pancakes appeared beside him, and something flowed between them. The tightness in his chest improved. Pancakes cocked his head awaiting commands.
‘Pancakes, stay.’
Pancakes shot upwards to sit atop the red target. As long as they didn’t score a red goal, the match was still on. There were nine other major goals on the sphere though and dozens of minor goals. Goals that he and Pancakes just couldn’t cover.
The frisbee shot into one of them.
10 - 0
The frisbee clanged out from underneath the Sphere, and Shiv zoomed in to grab it. Gale clenched his fists.
He dodged a heat blast from Alisdair. Brock kept throwing locomotive blasts at Pancakes, keeping him scattered. Evan and Shiv returned from the perimeter, circling the sphere.
Gale tried to track them, barely dodging heat blasts. He matched Shiv slice the frisbee towards a minor goal. Gale cut towards it then took a purple heatwave to the arm. Frak that burns. His arm blistered from the biceps down and he rolled under the water.
The frisbee slipped through again.
20-0
He had to keep Pancakes concentrated on the red goal, that was the game-ender. He couldn’t cover the other nine, though.
Then he saw a flash of blue near the water line, saw another microfracture. Ash sat nearby in the waterline, staring up at the match. Her face was pale, strained, like a weir barely holding something back.
Frak, thought Gale and he dived downwards clapping his hands together and slamming closed the micro-fracture. Ash darted away again.
The frisbee flew by overhead. They were going for the red goal, and he was too far down to stop them.
Sterling exchanged another receipt. He wrote down the odds in his book and placed the gold away in the House Solvent store box. He adjusted the odds to three hundred to one.
Gale was not doing well. A silent figure on Sterling’s shoulder bore into him with her eyes. A figure he knew only he could see.
‘It’s for his sake. He needs to learn to put value to his time, and he needs to learn the value of money.’ Sterling muttered.
Calumny stood on his shoulder. Calumny wiped something off her boot on his new Solvent outfit. Mucous? She didn’t answer.
Sterling shrugged, trying to dislodge her. ‘Just doing good without valuing himself will burn him out. It's fine to do good, but he needs to learn to make sure he gets paid to do it.’
Silence. House Laurels scored another point, and Sterling notched it down in the match ledger. 50 - 0.
‘I’m doing him a favour really.’ Sterling said.
‘He will burn out without you to help him.’ Calumny whispered from his shoulder, staring out at the battlefield. ‘You were meant to rise, to become the hero. That is how I found you; that is what you wanted.’
‘I want to be a part of history, and for that, I have to be here. Once I’ve become a fracturesmith, I can change the world. Once I’ve got power, then I can change the system.’ Sterling said.
‘Siegfried understood.’ Calumny said. ‘Our kind was never abou
t words or grand symbols. We believed in action. Infection must be purged, and cancer cut out. We believed that the knife in the dark was necessary. Debating it just wastes time.’
‘Siegfried?’ Sterling asked, ‘What do you know of my uncle? He was another failed Secondus lost to the annals of history.’
Calumny turned to look at him, one eye still hidden by her fringe. ‘You always talk about wanting to do more than write history. Well, history is unfolding in front of you. What are you doing?’
Calumny vanished
Sterling looked down at his notes, the record of bets and wagers for House Solvent. The stands around him vacant, alone in a crowd of his new allies. He was documenting the course of history.
Sterling clenched his fist.
‘Ah frak, and this is a new suit.’
Brock blasted Pancakes away from the red goal with a locomotive clap. Pancakes scattered into the water. Shiv and Evan cut off Gale as Alisdair lined up the frisbee. Gale knocked them away with a wave, but they’d done their job and slowed him down.
The Frisbee flew towards the red goal, and Gale couldn’t get there. This was it. He had failed.
A dark blur snagged the frisbee from the air and leapt from the sphere. The figure, blurred, skidding across the water towards Gale. Sterling, clad in suit and tie, without a mount, darted along the water’s surface. Sterling slid to a halt and held up the frisbee.
‘So, who do I see about a flannie?’ Sterling said.
Gale punched him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll kill you later, for now, how about a fastball special?’
Sterling grinned as Alisdair and his cronies looped back around. Sterling hunched down, crouching on the water’s surface. Gale slammed his palms together, and water erupted from the harbour in a whipping tendril. It grabbed Sterling and slung him across the water, shooting past Alisdair’s stunned expression. Gale used the residual energy of the whip to slam into the House Laurel’s team, scattering them.
His chest got heavy, and he lost the column of water. He hacked up phlegm and fell to his knees as Sterling skimmed over the surface of the water, using script to skip like a rock across a pond. Sterling slid over the outer ring and turned around. If they could get a frisbee shot into the red target, then they would win automatically. One shot. That was all that separated them from greatness.