by D M Wozniak
“Tracking him is why you are, um, here?”
I shake my head. “Killing him is.”
Reddles raises his voice. “No. We must take this voider-effulgent alive, and transport him back to the citadel. Based on what you said, the king will want to question him, personally. We stay out of the details.” He fingers his star medal. “I only wish we knew how to identify and apprehend him without further destruction to the city.”
“This is ridiculous,” I say, turning away in frustration.
A shattering sound and yelling comes from the temple ruins.
Colu is throwing rocks at the stained-glass windows, while Blythe is yelling at him to stop.
Reddles frowns. “What is that fool doing?”
I ignore his question, turning back to Reddles and addressing both him and Mander. “You two should already know who this effulgent is. He’s been under your nose this entire time!”
I start counting with my fingers. “One, he’s a voider. Two, he is known to use dynamic voidance to blur his face from others. Three, he’s an effulgent. Four, he’s used goat clippings like the actors do here on stage to wear some type of disguise. Five, he’ll have been seen with Marine.”
“Your wife?” Reddles says.
I ignore his question and point south, as if I could see the bay from where I stand. “Narrow it down! Find out who has been out there on those ships.”
“It is, um, a fine idea, Dem.”
The commander’s eyes dart back and forth, focused on nothing, and then he lifts his head slightly, opening his mouth as if he has just remembered something.
“There is a problem,” he says.
“What?”
“Gaining control of the voidstone is my primary objective. From the king himself. From what you say, this traitor’s goal is the same.”
“That’s true. The traitor is using the king.”
The commander leans back. “Master voider, do you know what you are implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m full out declaring it. The young king is being manipulated.”
The commander extends a hand and begins whispering. “Keep your voice down! If you are questioning His Majesty’s competence, this is treasonous talk.”
“It is not treason to state the truth.”
He shakes his head. “We are not having this conversation,” he says forcefully.
I look away in frustrated understanding. This is precisely the type of self-preservation that has enabled Reddles to rise through the ranks. He is savvy. There’s a soft and slimy politician underneath all of those hard medals.
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s just stick to the facts. How do you get your orders?”
“I send a carrier squad to the citadel weekly, via Xi Bay Road. It is less risky than by the wing. That is now how I receive all of my orders, and how I communicate my status back to His Majesty.”
I nod. “So the king mentioned the stone in one of his letters.”
“Correct.”
“When?”
Reddles pauses. “About a month ago.”
“What else did it say?”
Reddles looks to Mander. “Up until then, my orders were to secure the bay. When we gained control of it and pushed the Xian navy out, the focus changed. The letter instructed me to coordinate my efforts with the submaster. The way it was written eluded to him already knowing of its presence. But Mander may have received letters from the king that I was not privy to.”
I turn to Mander.
“Is this true?” I ask him.
“Yes, Dem,” he nods nervously. “I have known about the stone for a very long time. Since shortly after Andrej X passed on.”
I narrow my eyes without taking them off of my submaster. “You knew about it for five years?”
“Nearly. Um, yes.”
I take a step closer, and have the urge to grab onto his clean clothes with my dirty hands. “How could you keep something like this from me?”
He looks at the ground between us while keeping a finger on the bridge of his glasses. “I, um, could not divulge it, Dem. His majesty specifically, um. Specifically said not to tell you. He was very clear on that. Very clear. He knew, um. Knew of our closeness.”
I raise my voice almost to a shout. “Why would he keep something like that from me? I’m the master voider! I’m the one person in the kingdom who should know!”
“I do not know. It is not my place to question, um. To challenge His Majesty’s orders.”
“What happened years ago is of little relevance now,” the commander says levelly.
“Yes, it is,” I say, turning to him. “Because, if you want to identify this traitor, you must follow the stone. He was the one who knew about it first.”
There’s a moment of silence as the thought sinks in.
“Dem, um, how do you know this?”
Because the enervated told Blythe, that’s how.
There’s no way that I am going to divulge the full truth to these men. At least not now. So I simply shake my head. “I just do.”
Another shattering sound echoes out in the square.
Faraway, Colu raises both of his hands above in head in drunken victory. Directly behind him is an eastern alleyway—his body is a silhouette against the beginning of the sunrise.
I shake my head.
I was going to ask Colu to watch Chimeline and Blythe while I leave to meet Marine. To take them somewhere safe, until I return.
But he’s in no condition to help.
“I need to ask you both a favor,” I ask.
“Um, certainly.”
“Name it,” Reddles adds.
“Look after my three friends.” I subtly gesture to the ruins with my thumb. “For a few fullbells.”
Mander positions his glasses, gazing into the distance. “They are your, um, friends? They look like, um, trouble.”
“It’s a long story. But, yes, they are.”
He shrugs his meager shoulders. “I can take them to my estate, Dem. If that is, um, satisfactory?”
I nod. “That’s fine. But don’t tell anyone.”
I glance at Reddles and he nods.
“As you wish.”
I give Mander a pat on the shoulder, and he jumps in place.
“I’ll see you soon.”
“Where are you, um, going? To the Union?”
I’ve already turned to leave, but I stop and look back at the pair over my shoulder. “Not quite.”
Mander furrows his brow as I walk away.
I pass by the soldiers and the three remaining wagons.
Blythe sees me coming, and runs to meet me before I reach the rubble.
“The one-eyed helmsman is mad drunk,” he says, out of breath. “He stole wine from the park.”
“I know.”
“He’s destroying the temple!”
I turn to him and briefly place a hand on his shoulder, trying to quell his anger. “Listen to me. I want you to go with Mander. You, Colu, and Chimeline.”
He lowers his voice. “Why? Are we in danger?”
Chimeline walks up briskly to my side, curious as to what we’re talking about, so I repeat myself.
“You’re not coming with us?”
I shake my head. “I have somewhere I need to go, but I’ll be back by midday.”
“Can I go with you?” she asks.
“The safest place for you right now is with Blythe and Colu, at Mander’s estate,” I say.
“The safest place for me is by your side.”
“Is this more vengeance, master voider?” Blythe asks. “Now that you have spoken with those two, you know where the enervated is—”
“No,” I say, alternating my gaze between each of them. “To both of you, the answer is no.” I turn to Blythe. “I’m not going after him—at least, not yet.” And then softly to Chimeline, “And you’re not coming with me.”
A creaking sound nearby draws my attention. Colu is talking to himself while lying down on one of
the benches again. An orange falls out of his hand and rolls across the stone ground, coming to a rest against a pile of debris.
“Why not?” Chimeline asks, her voice innocent.
“Because,” I say, “this is something I have to do on my own.”
She nods once, her eyes glassy in the torchlight. But I feel that in some way I have upset her. That with my non-answer, she thinks that I still don’t trust her.
So I stuff my hand into my pocket, dig out Marine’s note, and hand it to her.
Despite the approaching sunrise, it’s still so dark that she needs to take it in her hands and bring it right up to her face. Her nose scrunches up before she realizes who wrote it, and consequently where I’m headed. Then her face becomes placid, devoid of any emotion whatsoever.
“I am happy for you, master voider,” she says. “You have found what you were looking for.”
Then she hands me back the note.
I sigh in frustration, as my attention is drawn by the sound of the remaining wagons pulling away. I turn and watch Reddles shouting orders to his men, while Mander looks upwards at the brightening sky, as if imagining how it once looked with the bell tower standing there.
I leave Blythe and Chimeline’s side and walk around the remaining half-wall of the temple, over shattered glass and strewn blocks of stone. Within a few breaths I am behind the sanctuary, out of sight. A slender alleyway in the shadows leads south.
But I hesitate.
Through a tall and narrow opening in the wall, where a stained-glass window used to be, I see Chimeline. Past the benches and torn ceiling, she walks away from Blythe and sits alone on a pile of rubble under early morning stars. Her back is to me.
In the shadows, I feel torn in two directions. One is down the alley to Temberlain’s Ashes. The other is to stay here.
Am I running to my past or to my future?
In the end, I choose to slip away.
Temberlain’s Ashes
The waterfront lies only ten blocks from the crumbled square. I don’t even have to ask for directions. I keep the rising sun to the left of me, and each step I take is in decline.
Soon I reach the beach.
As white sand swallows the gray cobbled stones, I look in both directions underneath endless rows of palms. To my surprise, scores of fishermen are present, despite the early fullbell. They mend their linen nets and stretch them out in the sand. At first, I assume that they are preparing for a day of work, but then realize that it’s possible they’ve been out to sea all night, and only now is their work done.
They all ignore me.
Taking off my boots, I carry them in my hand and walk down the length of the beach until I reach the closest pier.
Small fishing boats line up so closely that they’re almost touching. The waves hitting the hulls make a gentle slapping sound. This is punctuated by the exertion of men hoisting wicker barrels full of fish out of their ships and carrying them down the pier, their loads dripping as they go. None of them speak to each other, which is probably a testament to their exhaustion.
A wrinkled, shirtless man in a floppy hat sits in a flat-bottomed row boat at the end of the pier. It’s so small that it doesn’t even have a mast.
As I approach him, he looks up from his work. Despite his age, he has strong hands. Half of his fingers are wrapped in white tape. He’s fishing a line through a hook.
For a moment, his eyes narrow as he scrutinizes me, and then he seems to laugh to himself, dropping his gaze and continuing to work on the hook.
“Is this boat for hire?” I ask.
“Been out all night, landy.”
I wait in silence, but he doesn’t say anything else.
“I need someone to ferry me into the bay.”
Again, silence.
When I take out three gold coins from my pocket, he suddenly looks up again.
“Ain’t going to no ring.”
“What ring?”
He points a white-taped finger to the south. “No gold worth that trouble.”
I peer into the darkness and see it.
The barricade.
Silhouettes of the three-masted ships are barely discernible against the misty gray horizon. It’s the same formation I saw from the bell tower.
“I’m not headed there,” I say.
“Then where, landy? Know you’re an arcanist, so if not ring, then what?”
“Have you heard of Temberlain’s Ashes?”
He hesitates, and then nods.
“That all you got? Three gold?”
“No,” I answer. “This is for you to ferry me there. I’m going to need you to wait for me, and then I’ll give you another seven when we’re safely back to shore.”
He smiles, revealing more gaps then teeth.
“Hop the bow, landy.”
For a long time, the fisherman rows in silence, and I am content to simply be an idle passenger. I sit in the front, up high due the angle of the boat hitting the water. The only sounds are his oars cutting into the sea, and the dripping water as he pulls them back out, time and time again. I’m facing backwards, looking down at the fisherman, and behind him, the receding shoreline. It’s come alive with lanterns in the small windows of the buildings that rise into the hilly, gray-pink distance. Above them, more palm trees dangle over rooftops, but the tallest thing, by far, is the bell tower. It rings five times.
It seems this effulgency temple was spared destruction from both the empowered's wrath and the war
The beautiful city is waking up, but in some respects, its occupants are still asleep. They have no idea of what is happening in their midst.
Turning in place, I look at something far more menacing and distant, and decide to pry.
“Tell me about the ring of ships,” I say.
“What’s to know?”
“Why are they there?” I ask. I feign ignorance, since I don’t want to influence his answer.
“Heard about underwater stone. Black arcanists trying raise it. Not supposed go near.”
“Why are they trying to raise it?”
“In Blackscar.”
“Blackscar?”
“Trench, landy.”
The trench.
For what seems like a quarterbell, I am lost in my own thoughts again. What the fisherman says makes sense. If the Axiondrive is somehow in the trench underneath Xi Bay, that would explain why nobody had discovered it before. Countless voiders have explored the trench throughout history. Many have died trying to reach its bottom.
Until the voider-effulgent came along.
The shoreline becomes distant as the sun engulfs the morning sky in reds, pinks and oranges, giving way to a soft blue. It is almost cloudless.
“Another hot one,” the man says, looking at the sky with me.
A short time later, the fisherman sets both oars inside of the boat, spraying my legs and unworn boots with water, and for a moment we sit in silence, as our small boat rocks gently in the waves.
I look around. Another small rowboat bobs in the water about fifty feet away. Its insides are painted white, and a rope on its edge descends into the water. Besides that, only the open sea surrounds us. The barricade looks as distant here as it did from the shore.
“Meeting someone?” the fisherman asks, motioning toward the empty white boat.
I nod.
“You arcanists strange sort. You be gone long?”
“A fullbell at the most.”
“Fullbell?” he says, spitting over the side. He looks to the east and nods.
He turns in his seat and picks up an anchor that looks like a rusted, over-sized cowbell, and drops it over the edge with a groan. With a splash, the coil of rope at his feet starts to disappear.
Dropping his tan hat over his eyes, he then lies crosswise on his seat, his legs dangling over the side. In one of his taped hands is one of the gold coins I gave him. He twirls it over his fingers.
I look sideways and down at the dark waters, and then at the vo
idstone hanging around my neck.
Guilt consumes me. I need to use it in order to meet Marine. I need to use them.
The worst part about it is that I am not about to save a life. I’m not about to kill the empowered—only identify him.
I hope that this is enough for them.
Turning to the misty horizon, I briefly survey the white rowboat floating there, fifty feet away. The paint inside is not as fresh as I thought—it’s peeling in places, leaving darkened, rotting wood underneath.
Swallowing my shame, I grab the voidstone, creating the first of two membranes of dynamic voidance as I jump off the edge of the boat and into Xi Bay. The transparent sphere is slightly larger than my body—ten feet in diameter—and it is centered on me. The ambient sound of the waves hitting the boat becomes muted.
Not a drop of water touches me.
When the light of the morning sky turns a glowing shade of blue, I add the second sphere of weight.
An anchor, dragging me down into blackness.
The water is murky here.
It almost seems like a different place from the one I knew. Above the water’s surface, the sun barely stretches over the horizon, reducing the light below. When I was last here, the sun was high up in the sky and everything below was turquoise and clear. I could see for miles.
It’s hard to believe that five years have passed.
A weak light guides me. A shimmering, golden-yellow cloud. Like someone holding a lantern in a dense fog.
As I descend in the sphere, my heart tightens.
I can’t help feeling I should be more excited. From the moment Marine’s letter dropped from my hands onto my bedchamber floor, I have been searching for her. From the stain of black pitch to the secret laboratory by the riverbank. From the dizzying heights of the airship to the muddy cages in Fiscarlo. I have taken so many steps to get here.
But I don’t feel like I’ve arrived. I feel homeless. I am a husband without a wife. A voider without voidance. A teacher without students. And this rendezvous is not going to change any of that.
It’s getting darker.
Past a coral reef and field of sea life either unaware of or untroubled by my presence, the massive stern of the Xian galleon wreck soon rises before me. It tilts on the seabed. Its three stories of arched windows and elaborate wooden railings stacked on top of one another resembles the facade of a tall building perilously close to tipping.