The King of the Skies

by Robert J. Crane

  “I agree with Mira,” said Heidi.

  Carson’s face fell. “Heidi …”

  “She’s right. Burnton stole from us just yesterday.”

  “It doesn’t mean it’s right to do the same back! We should lead by example, not ‘an eye for an eye,’ or whatever. If he won the second key fair and square—”

  “He faked me out,” I cut over, whirling back to Carson. My eyes were wide, I could tell, my eyebrows arched high on my forehead. Probably looked like I was on the verge of a meltdown, a Mira that none of my friends had ever seen like this. I fought to keep it under control—but still the words came with spite, like I wanted to drill them into every dissenting inch of Carson’s brain, and who cared if I turned it into a pile of grey mush in the process. “All right? I was down there, and fighting, and I scored a hit—and he used it to cheat me. He pretended like he was giving up, and then pushed me over the edge. So that’s twice Burnton has stolen from me.”

  Maybe not strictly true … but they didn’t know that.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to placate Carson. “I still don’t agree.”

  “Well, I’ve heard what you think. You made it perfectly clear by calling me Borrick back in Biristall. I didn’t need to hear it again. Some of us only need telling once.”

  He frowned again. “What does that mean?”

  I shrugged. “Dunno. Don’t much care.” To the others: “Anyone else want to chime in? Heidi, I know where you stand. Bub? Got an issue with me after that apparently disgusting display?”

  Bub hesitated.

  Damn it. I knew his response already.

  “Among orcs,” he began, slow, “we believe in honor above all else.”

  “I’m certain you do,” I said flatly.

  “I have worked, previously, with Mr. Borrick. He was … not honorable, I would say. Not dishonorable either … but he lacked honor.”

  “And me?” I asked, folding my arms.

  “Our kind would not consider your actions with the Burnton to be honorable.”

  “He stole from me!” I shouted, and the cry echoed around the library, caught in the spaces between aisles and amplified. All at once the space felt cavernous. Even with Heidi on my side, it was difficult not to feel alone in it.

  “Yes,” said Bub carefully. “But you are better than him. I thought …?” His tone rose, like it was a question, but one he was asking himself, not me, or anyone else in the loose circle we had formed.

  “I am better,” I said—but there was a shake in my voice, one I couldn’t quite tamp down.

  Burbondrer peered at me, assessing.

  “I do not think you are,” he said.

  There was no malice in his words, but they stung. I felt like I’d taken a punch to the chest, one that forced all the air out of me in one gust I could not immediately replenish.

  Burbondrer lumbered around us and away.

  I looked down at the crypt key in my hand. It was the first time I’d really taken it in, honestly, so focused had I been on first getting out of Biristall before Burnton could pursue, and then making our way back from Cardiff in a stunned sort of silence that just went on and on.

  It was an ugly thing, metal and tan, unlike any I’d ever laid eyes on. Its surface was smooth, but appeared grainy. A pair of wings crossed behind a head that was half face and half skull, its eye closed and lips pursed. This formed the bow of the key. The other end was a bar maybe four inches long, a series of prongs jutting out at its tip. They ended abruptly and I realized, looking it over, this was not a second key after all, but half of one. The first key, briefly held by Carson but now in Burnton’s custody, was the other half. Only interconnected would they grant access to Brynn Overson’s crypt.

  Thoughts roiled. I could go, meet Burnton there, and hope for the best, the way we’d run into Borrick in our pursuit of the Chalice Gloria and the Tide of Ages.

  But then I really would feel like Borrick, like Carson said I was.

  I was justified, wasn’t I? Burnton had stolen our prize yesterday. He’d outdone my feint with Decidian’s Spear with a much better, more effective one of his own that saw me not even close to snatching a victory from him.

  So why did I feel like such a loser right now?

  I am better, I had said.

  Bub’s words seemed to echo, accusing me over and over: I do not think you are.

  “No,” I ceded sadly. “I guess not. I’m not a better person … and I’m not a better Seeker either.”

  Heidi began, “Mira—”

  I shook my head, closed my eyes. “Maybe I never was. Maybe I’m just … just a person who wanted something bad enough that I … I’ve pushed myself to do things I should have never done. Things like treading on someone else who’s beating me to it.”

  That couldn’t be true. I couldn’t believe that. Could I? Seriously?

  I warred back and forth. It didn’t seem right. Burnton had stolen from me. He had stolen the first key! There was no escaping that!

  Carson said I should’ve been better; should’ve led by example.

  But this quest …

  I shook my head, clasping the crypt key tight. If it hadn’t been made of metal, I might have ground it into dust.

  “I need to think,” I said. “I’m going out.”

  “Where?” Heidi asked.

  “Tortilla.”

  “Can I come?” Clay asked. “I need to speak with you in private.”

  I looked at him—and a new realization hit me, one that brought a forlorn smile to my lips.

  “I’m sorry, but no. I think … I think I just really like the burritos.”

  Clay looked baffled, but I turned my back and returned to the wall offering passage to London. I cut through it, leaving him, and everyone else, behind.

  16

  Question: where do you turn when you don’t really have anyone to turn to?

  I don’t know how I’d have answered a couple of months ago, but I can say that it most definitely would not have been the person I called once I’d been served and taken my usual table upstairs in Tortilla—Emmanuel Brand, older brother and partially reformed, self-aggrandizing dirtbag.

  We’d exchanged mobile phone numbers after parting ways again in the aftermath of Carson’s quest into Ostiagard. I dialed it now, although only after I’d spent a few minutes pushing rice around my plate.

  I kind of hoped he wouldn’t pick up. Times like this, I came back to what had been my core tenet since leaving home: I could do this by myself. I didn’t need anyone else to help me. And that was true. Much as I loved my friends—even when they weren’t seeing very straight—I was more than capable of getting through my life without assistance. Emotional support? This Brand did not require any.

  A ring cut off halfway through. My brother’s voice filled the line: “Hey, Meer. What’s happening?” Background noise undercut his voice, like people were talking somewhere close-ish by.

  At Tortilla, someone shouted downstairs.

  “Party going on there?” Manny laughed.

  “Hi,” I said with just a hint of trepidation. Humble and apologetic the last time I saw him or not, it was hard to forget years of pomposity and the kind of smarminess that I longed to eviscerate with a punch to end all punches—the kind of pomp and self-directed flattery that was alive and well in Tyran Burnton.

  “What’s going on in your neck of the woods?”

  “Nothing much,” I lied. “Just, you know, having a burrito.”

  “Ah, Tortilla. Party for one then?”

  “Not just me. I have dozens of friends, and we all love rice.”

  Emmanuel barked a laugh.

  “How are things with you?” I asked.

  “Same as usual,” said Emmanuel, but he didn’t elaborate the way he might’ve in the past, playing up the latest achievement in his storied career. “Enjoying a spot of downtime at the moment, as it happens, which I don’t need to tell you is a rare thing. How’s my buddy Carson getting on?”

>   “Good,” I said. “He’s … good.”

  “And Heidi? She still ticking over?”

  “Heidi hasn’t changed,” I answered.

  Emmanuel laughed. “I won’t ask exactly what you mean by that. How’s your orc medic? Don’t tell me he’s had to patch you up recently, and that’s why you’re calling. You’re not missing an arm or something, are you?” His tone was humorous, but when I hesitated, he came back suddenly serious. “You’re not missing a limb. Please don’t tell me you are. Meer?”

  “All my body parts are accounted for,” I said.

  “Good. Geez. That wouldn’t have been an easy one to explain to Mum and Dad and Millie.”

  “Did you just say ‘geez’?”

  “What? Oh, yeah, I guess so. Your American buddy said that a lot, didn’t he? Reckon it rubbed off on me a bit. Hey, is he there? I’d like to say hello.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Oh. Well, pass on a hello to him. And the others. Not, I suppose, that they’re very interested in hearing from me either way.” He sounded maybe a little disappointed at that, as he said it, but I didn’t correct him. Building him back up into a black hole of arrogance was not something I ever wished to do, even with a simple, polite white lie about my friends’ interest in Emmanuel (Carson notwithstanding).

  There was a short quiet. I filled it by taking a few small slivers of rice onto my fork, and pressing them past my lips.

  “Mum and Dad have been asking about you,” said Emmanuel after a while. “And Millie.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I answered a little bit—”

  “How? What did you say?”

  “Relax,” said Emmanuel warily. “Nothing that would lead them to you. Just that I’d seen you and that … that you were doing well.”

  “Okay then.”

  I almost wanted to ask how they were, what they’d said, how they’d reacted to the news, the looks on their faces … but the nagging voice of my mother, doting over me in that passive-aggressive, backhanded way of hers, floated back up to me and the urge died.

  More quiet.

  It was Emmanuel who broke it again: “What is it, Meer?”

  “I’m just … worried, I guess. Thoughtful.”

  When I didn’t expand on that, Emmanuel prompted, “About?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I lied, and shrugged, even though he could not see me. My eyes bored through the window and out in the direction of the Strand. We were well and truly into evening now, the sun just beginning to dip. I reckoned another hour of decent light was left in this day. Fast-forward another month from now, and it’d be dark at this time.

  “You don’t know?” Emmanuel asked. “I don’t believe that. My little sister always knows what she thinks, and she’s not shy about sharing.” He said it teasingly, and I had a flash of feeling that this was what an actual sibling relationship felt like. “Come on, Meer. You didn’t call me for nothing. What do you want to talk about?”

  I bit my lip. This was … difficult.

  “I’m just … wondering, I guess …” Damn, why were these words so hard to pass through my lips? “Or struggling, maybe, with … the right thing to do.”

  “Okay …”

  “I don’t know whether I’ve done something bad, or—or it’s justified—because it’s like, it’s—it’s kind of—”

  I was stuttering through this, and no amount of lying to myself would convince me otherwise.

  “Rewind a step,” said Emmanuel. “Get your thoughts back in order, and tell me all about it. Right now you’re about as easy to follow as a bow-legged spasmer.”

  “A—a what?” A giggle threatened, in spite of everything else. “Did you just make that up?”

  “No! You’ve never run into a bow-legged spasmer?”

  “That’s not a real thing.”

  “It is,” Emmanuel laughed.

  “What’s it look like then?”

  “A juddery idiot,” said Emmanuel, to a chuckle from me. “I’ll take you to see one sometime; I know where there’s a forest full of the things.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said.

  “Good, because they’re a right treat. Now, go on: your problem. What’s happened?”

  I took a breath, letting my brain get everything back into line. That done, I tried again.

  “I’m on a quest,” I said, “and in the first phase, I ran into someone else who’s pursuing it too.”

  “Who?” Emmanuel asked, then, “No, wait, questions at the end. Carry on, Meer.”

  “My friends and I managed to actually get the prize in the first phase—but he zapped me unconscious and held me hostage, and we had to give it up in exchange for my safe release.”

  Emmanuel whistled. “Low.”

  “Today, we went on phase two, where this other Seeker—” This wannabe nobody, I actually almost said “—managed to get the drop on me and claim prize number two. And I didn’t think that was very fair.”

  I trailed off. There was more to come, clearly; Emmanuel said, after a moment, “So what did you do?”

  “I may have hit him with something hard and stolen the prize myself.”

  Emmanuel laughed, loud and hearty. “That is priceless. So did you make off with it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and fingered the key. I’d tucked it safely in the pocket of my jeans. Oversized and unwieldy, it stuck out a good few inches—and these were deeper pockets that your run-of-the-mill Hollisters.

  “Well, that’s something. I guess you don’t know if it’s good or not, but it’s something. Now, what exactly is it you’re wondering? If you were in the right here? If you should have—”

  Emmanuel’s next words turned into a buzzing drone in my ear that I did not take in—because, I realized as I stared out of the window, someone was staring back through it at me. Many someones. Arrayed on the street, striding up the Strand—

  Burnton led his crew.

  “Oh no,” I croaked.

  “No? Meer, what’s—?”

  I hung up on Emmanuel, purely on impulse. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do yet, but I couldn’t juggle my phone and a phone call with my brother.

  No, I was sure what I was going to do. I needed to run. Tortilla was full of normal, non-Seeker people who would be utterly baffled by what was going on. And if it turned into a sword/spear fight, well, all the tables in here left a little something to be desired. After all: I was not a natural with Decidian’s Spear, as Burnton said, though I hated, hated, hated to admit it.

  I rose automatically, rice and beans forgotten. Down the stairs I hurried, drawing a couple of glances, though not the curious kind; just passers-by taking a sidelong look at the face going in the opposite direction. I wouldn’t be drawing stares just yet—but once I was beyond those doors, and out on the street …

  I needed to get as far away from my hideout as possible. The Chalice Gloria was in there. I had made a mistake by bringing the crypt key, and maybe I’d pay for that—though not if I could help it—but I would not lead Burnton’s men directly to the source of all my research, or the Cup of Glory. That was mine, and staying mine.

  I pushed out of the front doors to Tortilla—

  “Knave!” cried someone—Barnes, I thought—

  They were coming from the left.

  My hideout was on the right—the very place I didn’t want to lead them.

  On the other hand, also to the right was Trafalgar Square.

  Screw it. I broke into a sprint, passing the cut-through to my library and hurtling onward.

  “After her!” Burnton bellowed—

  They ran, feet hammering against the pavement.

  I took hard, deep breaths. Adrenaline would push me for now, but it could only last so long. And funnily enough, despite fleeing madly time and time again, most often from the Order of Apdau, I never grew accustomed to it. Usain Bolt, this Seeker was not. And anyway, distance was key here, not a hundred-meter-sprint. Safety was not just up the road.


  Safety was … I didn’t know where, yet. But I’d find it.

  “Give us the key,” Burnton called to me, “and we’ll leave you unharmed!”

  “You shouldn’t be harming a young lady like me anyway!” I shouted back.

  “You oughtn’t fire projectiles at an adversary’s rear when he is unaware. You’ve not carved a very honorable path for yourself, have you?”

  I brayed laughter. “Who’re you to talk about honor? You’re chasing a seventeen-year-old girl through the streets of London with a gang of armed men! You are going to be all over Crimewatch before this week is out—the London police will have a field day!”

  “Now you’re just making up nonsense words again!” Burnton shouted.

  Where to head them off?

  Our head-to-heads with the Order of Apdau, often as not, occurred in parks and greens.

  But today, why not change things up?

  Trafalgar Square was about a half-mile away down the road. It wasn’t the ideal place to do battle—nowhere public was, which was one of the other problems with duking it out in Tortilla—but it was as good a target as any, and once I got there, if I hadn’t lost my pursuers, I could regroup and try to figure out where to go next.

  Still, if I could lose them earlier, or at least put some extra distance between us, it would definitely help.

  London buses ran generally on time, but there were a lot of them, and delays were inevitable. Unluckily for the passengers waiting down street, but luckily for me, two buses were trundling slowly down the road, one after the another.

  I timed my leap from the street into the road and darted between the massive red vehicles.

  The driver of the second bus slammed on the brakes and laid on the horn with a fat fist. He shouted something at me through the window, a doubtlessly colorful expression that would have done Heidi proud.

  Then I was past and on the other street, hurtling along, ducking between people left and right. They stopped and stared, or shouted; “Watch it!” from one woman, some swear words from an older gentleman in an out-of-season coat.