The King of the Skies

by Robert J. Crane

I swallowed, then voiced the fear I hadn’t wanted to give volume to: “No one has sold me out or anything. It’s just … an exchange of information, or rumors, or something.”

  “Possibly,” said Emmanuel.

  He added no more, exchanging only a look with me. Because “possibly” was not “definitely”—and so there was a chance that my trust had been betrayed.

  I swallowed hard again, failing to dislodge a lump in my throat.

  “However he’s here,” Emmanuel went on, “for now, he’s dealt with. How long that’ll last, on the other hand, I couldn’t say.”

  “Is Clay still here?” I asked Carson and Heidi.

  “I’m here,” he piped up from somewhere behind the shelves. He strolled into view a moment later, looking somewhat awkward. Glancing between me and Emmanuel, his mouth tugged sideways in an uneasy smile that looked much more like a grimace. “Figured I’d stay out of the way while you, you know … didn’t want to talk.”

  Something about the way he’d hidden in the corner like that, away from my gaze, away from our conversation, didn’t sit well with me.

  The possibility that someone had betrayed me floated back across my consciousness, stark and terrifying, and I was suddenly filled with certainty.

  I strode across the library to Clay, stopping close—close enough that his face, looming above mine, almost filled my field of vision. I wanted to see every little quirk and quiver of muscle when I asked him this next question.

  “How do you know Burnton’s men’s movements?”

  “He’s been—”

  “Did you lead him here?” I demanded, jabbing him hard in the chest.

  Clay jerked back, mouth dropping into an outraged O.

  “Of course not!”

  “So why’s he here now? In London? Walking down this very street where I’ve kept my hideout for all these months? Did you tell him about it after you left last night?”

  “No! I don’t know why he’s out there, or how he heard you’d be in London.”

  “How’d he even know I’d be on Earth, Clay?”

  “I don’t know, Mira,” he said, quiet and yet perfectly audible in the silent expanse of my library. “I have no idea how Burnton knew you’d be on Earth, or that he could find you in London, even on this very street. But I had nothing to do with any of that.”

  “How’d you know his movements so well?”

  “Have you heard him talk? Burnton’s head is jammed so far up his own arse that he’s in danger of falling out of his own mouth again. He brags, Mira. ‘The King of the Skies’; that’s the name he gave to himself, and he bandies it about so that it’s becomes his legend. He’s been talking up the Overson crypt for months now.”

  “If that’s true, why didn’t he go after it sooner?”

  “I don’t know,” Clay answered, and he gave a little shake of the head, almost to himself, that tipped the scales in my chest from disbelief to begrudgingly thinking that maybe, just maybe, what he said was true. “Not everyone lucks into a library full of journals from olden-day Seekers halfway back to the Wayfarers.”

  “I didn’t luck into this,” I spluttered defensively.

  “Well, however you found it, not every Seeker has that to hand. You won’t find another library like this in the universe, with every answer you could ever want at your fingertips if you just invest the time. You landed the jackpot here, the fruits of someone else’s labor.”

  If he was trying to dig himself out of that hole, he was failing to do it, and miserably. “The quests we’ve won come down to the fruits of my labor,” I said hotly. “I completed those challenges.”

  “Forgotten about us again, have you?” Heidi asked with lilting sarcasm.

  “No,” I retorted over my shoulder.

  Clay sighed. “I’m not saying you did no work in your quests. But someone collected these journals over the course of many years, forming this … this quest hub—”

  “Like World of Warcraft,” Carson said.

  “—and you have access to vast troves of information that most Seekers don’t. You must see that. You found the Chalice Gloria, as well as the keys granting access to it, in just months, when other Seekers have spent lifetimes searching. And some of that came from your parents’ resources, I know that—but this library was not entirely useless to you in that process. Another case in point: Carson uncovered the lost treasures of Ostiagard. You think just anyone could do that?”

  Clay was sucking the wind out from under my wings, diminishing my achievements to little more than luck and riding on someone else’s coattails.

  Worse still, I had a feeling he was right.

  “What’s your point?” I grumbled.

  “My point is that, just yesterday, with the right knowledge, Carson was able to locate Biristall as the next point along this quest yesterday in just a few hours. Burnton, or his crew, would’ve spent months on research before being able to set out. So he had plenty of time to talk himself up while he worked it out …”

  “And ample opportunity to brag to anyone listening when it came time for his quest to begin,” I finished grimly.

  “Exactly,” Clay said with a nod. “You see now?”

  Yeah, I saw.

  “I’m not betraying you, Mira.”

  He looked hurt.

  The feeling of being a total arse grew stronger.

  “Damn it,” I whispered under my breath.

  “It still doesn’t explain how this Burnton knew to come here,” said Emmanuel. “You got any suggestions, mate?”

  “It’s Clay,” he said.

  “Clay.” Manny crossed to us and shook hands. Like me, he kept a close eye on Clay’s features, leaning in and locking eyes perhaps a little more fiercely than he might’ve if he truly did not suspect him. “Emmanuel Brand, obviously.”

  “Bighead,” Heidi muttered.

  “Because of the resemblance,” Emmanuel said, pointing from his face to mine. “Not tooting my own horn here.” To Clay: “Any ideas?”

  Clay shook his head. “None that I’d care to entertain.”

  “You move in Seeker circles, obviously.”

  “Yeah,” said Clay.

  “Has there been whispering about Mira? Rumors that might have led Burnton here?”

  “Seekers talk,” said Clay.

  “Meaning?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard people talking about Mira—and, yes, it’s known she’s here in London.”

  My stomach sank. “Great.”

  “Meer,” said Emmanuel, turning my way, “mind if I talk with you in private for a bit?”

  “Okay,” I said, and let him lead me to the sitting room off to the right of the fireplace. I resisted a glance back over my shoulder as we went. It had been, after all, less than an hour since I had declined Clay a secluded word of his own.

  Shutting the door between us and the rest of my library, I sank down into one of the plush seats around the dark coffee table. Littered with books cast off by Carson at one time or another, it sparkled with a handful of trinkets we’d kept, gemstones mostly. The Necklace of the Regent Adjunct lay coiled where I’d left it last night, lost in thought and about a hundred refracted copies of my face in its dangling jewel.

  Emmanuel had already taken a seat. Folding one leg over the other, he leaned forward, steepling his fingers.

  “Please don’t go all therapist on me,” I said.

  He smiled, dropping his hands. “I can’t promise that.”

  I groaned. “Please?”

  “Meer, what is it you want from being a Seeker?”

  “Glory,” I answered immediately. “Don’t we all?”

  “Some,” Emmanuel ceded, “though there are plenty more run-of-the-mill thrillseekers out there who do it for the buzz. Historians too; I’ve met many in my travels, wanting to catalogue the history of all the worlds accessible to us.”

  “Glory,” I said. “That’s what I want. I want fame and to be recognized and have people talk about me in every land where Seeke
rs are known.”

  Emmanuel crooked a smile, dimpling one cheek. “Candid and to the point, if a little vain.”

  I opened my mouth to object, or shoot back something just as scathing—who was Emmanuel to call me vain, the way he posed and preened and—

  “Before you explode with fury,” Emmanuel cut across, “I’m not judging. I know what you’re thinking: I’m hardly one to talk. And you’re right.”

  “Good,” I said sniffily.

  “Let’s talk about glory,” Emmanuel said. “How do you think you get it?”

  “By winning challenges no one else has before.”

  “And you do that by …?”

  “Working out puzzles, beating the odds.” I shrugged. “Just winning. Isn’t that the game for us?”

  “And if you don’t win? What then?”

  I began to answer, but—I had nothing. Because losing—losing was not something I was willing to do.

  I thought back to our hunt for the Tide of Ages. We’d failed in the second stage of that quest—but one early win, and the thorough defeat of Borrick and his orcs the month before, had been enough to carry us forward to the final battle and snatch victory there.

  This time, however, we’d had no real victories. That first one had been ripped away from us, and today had gone even worse.

  And so, cornered, I had lashed out.

  “I stole the second key from him,” I answered. “But Burnton stole the first—”

  “And that was very cutthroat of him.” Emmanuel leaned toward me again. “Do you want to be cutthroat, Mira?”

  “He deserved it. He zapped me and wouldn’t let me go unless my friends gave in to his command.”

  “True,” Emmanuel said, “which makes him cutthroat. But what did that get him?”

  “His just desserts.”

  “You retaliated. And the same will happen to you—first with Burnton, as we’ve seen this afternoon—but then again and again. Being cutthroat might feel justified to you right now—and hell, I’d be exactly the same if I were in your shoes. But it’s not going to get you fame and glory. All you’ll get are hollow victories and a slew of enemies ready to cut you down at a moment’s notice.”

  I stewed on that. Unlearning resentment for my brother had been a challenge, one I hadn’t really needed to face since parting ways with him after our stint in Pharo and Ostiagard. Now, a rebellious part of me dug its heels in and said that Manny could not be correct on this …

  But he was. I felt it. The crypt key in my pocket, which I’d looked at exactly once, had brought me no triumphant swell. Nor had I felt it, even for a second, on leaving Biristall—not even when I snatched the thing out of the air and kicked off from Burnton.

  Yes, I’d won, on terms just as unfair as Burnton’s first victory. No, I did not feel good about it, much as I wanted to.

  And I really, really wanted to.

  “He stole from me first,” I said, low.

  “He’s a pirate. It goes without saying that their ethics are shady.”

  He was right about that. If there was a Seeker equivalent of “nice guys,” it would be Burnton and his crew: gentlemanly when it suited them, skeevy and malicious when things didn’t go their way.

  “Your ethics aren’t,” Emmanuel finished. “Or they shouldn’t be, I think. But it’s up to you. I’m not Mum, and I’m not Dad; I won’t tell you what to do, how to live your life. The decision is yours as to whether you follow in their footsteps—or if you make your own way.”

  “Aren’t you going to finish that with ‘by doing what’s right’?” I asked.

  A crooked smile graced Emmanuel’s face again. “That’s subjective. If you choose cutthroat, pirate tactics, that’s because you believe it’s right.”

  “And you?”

  “I think you have a complicated issue to wrap your head around.”

  “That’s it?” I said. “That’s the full summation of your thoughts?”

  That grin quirked higher. “No.”

  He did not elaborate. Pursing my lips at him, I lapsed into thoughtful quiet, looking into the dancing refractions in the Necklace of the Regent Adjunct again, mulling it over.

  Finally …

  “I need to talk to the team,” I said, and rose.

  “Made your mind up?”

  “Mm,” I confirmed, stepping past and for the door.

  Emmanuel followed. “And?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Carson and Heidi had remained in the library, at a table. So did Clay. Possibly he’d figured that skulking out of sight wasn’t the wisest of decisions. Better to stave off further questions than do … whatever it was he was doing back there.

  “Where’s Bub?” I asked.

  “Hello to you too,” said Heidi.

  “Still here,” said Carson. He put down his book. “I can go get him …?”

  “Please.”

  Carson pushed his chair out and jogged in the direction of Bub’s living quarters—a room up a flight of stairs that I did not care to look in, and not only for privacy reasons. There was something about orcs that suggested “untidy and smelly” to me—possibly due to the fact that a nasty scent had gradually infected the hideout during the orc’s first weeks here, until a quiet word from Carson to Bub had led to Heidi’s shower gel and shampoo mysteriously running out far more quickly than usual.

  “He’s not your clockwork butler,” Heidi said crossly. “You want Bub, go get him yourself.”

  I folded my arms and waited.

  Clay regarded me with a wary look. I was surprised he was still here, to be honest; if it were me, I’d have beat a hasty retreat not long after our return from Biristall. Still waiting for his private word, I assumed.

  Carson returned with a lumbering Bub, who looked slightly befuddled at being summoned.

  “Right,” said Heidi, “the crew is assembled. What’s the big meeting for?”

  “I want to go to Harsterra,” I said.

  The million-world clock above me rearranged. A soft tone—every world had one, several chimes overlaid to produce a kind of aural fingerprint—played to announce that Harsterra’s meteorological information was being relayed.

  “That’s the planet where people drive airships, right?” said Carson. “The one where the surface is shrouded in murderous gas?”

  “Burnton’s world,” said Heidi, “and yes, that’s right. Why would we go there, exactly?”

  “Because I want to repay Burnton’s little sojourn,” I answered—

  “I want to visit his airship.”

  20

  “Tell me everything you know about Burnton’s ship,” I demanded of Clay.

  His eyebrows twitched in surprise. “Everything?”

  “The lot.” I’d sat opposite on the table. Elbows planted, I leaned toward him, watching his face very intently. “Every little detail that Burnton has spouted off to anyone, I want to know.”

  “Um, where to start. Okay. It’s called the Velocity. Burnton kitted the thing out with eight overclocked engines, last I heard, built from compressed steel and a specially fashioned carapace to inject fuel more efficiently—”

  “Okay, maybe not every little detail. Forget the technical stuff,” I said. That was all mumbo-jumbo, as far as I could see, the kind of detail that’d excite an engineering geek, but had absolutely no bearing on what I was about to do. “Where does he fly?”

  It turned out Harsterra was complicated to explain. Without land masses, and a constantly churning thick atmosphere of bruised orange cloud, it was difficult to orient by anything visually. A series of “continents” had been kind of calculated using latitude and longitude, spread in uneven jags across the globe.

  The million-world clock showed them, and where Burnton was locally originated: the P’ote-Nihe, slightly south of the equator.

  Locating the Velocity on a world the size of Neptune would not be easy, especially without solid cut-through points. But …

  “If he’s come via London, he mus
t’ve exited via London,” said Clay. “Which means he’s probably still parked.”

  “Know of a cut-through that might take us there?” I asked.

  Clay screwed up his face. “There is a cut-through to Harsterra. But without a solid surface, it’s shifting. You’d have to hope the Velocity is still in position.”

  “Do we think that’s likely?” Emmanuel asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “They know I’m in London and they need the second key. He can’t make a push for Overson’s crypt before getting it since it’d be pointless. So they’ll be back.”

  “Question is, how soon?” Heidi asked.

  “Burnton and his men like to move quickly,” said Clay, “at least once they have the information they need. He’s been at this game for barely any time at all, but he and his crew have been hitting it hard, knocking out quests like they’re going out of business.”

  “Man doesn’t want a break, huh?” Emmanuel said.

  “If you give yourself a name like ‘the King of the Skies,’ you have to do what you can to live up to that. Especially in Seeker circles. How many of us in history have actually come away with any real, lasting glory? I can’t count many. Brynn Overson stands out, but I couldn’t tell you who any of the Wayfarers were. Clerics like Decidian, or assassins like Feruiduin, they’re remembered because of the objects associated with them, but for the majority of the highest achievers, give it seventy, a hundred years past their death, and who really knows who they were anymore? If Burnton wants his name and title to last, he hasn’t got any choice but to go all-out.”

  “Hmm,” I said, glancing at Emmanuel. He looked slightly perturbed. Catching my eye, though, he flashed a grin, pretending like the thought of a very short-lived legend lost to the sands of time was not at all troubling.

  “So if he wants another shot, he’ll be back soon,” I said.

  “I’d think so,” Clay replied. “No later than tomorrow. And even that might not be soon enough. I mean, as far as Burnton knows, you might be about to leave London at any moment. If I were him, I think I’d want to take another shot just as soon as I felt it was safe to do so.”

  “Which is just as soon as they think you and your crew have gone,” I said to Emmanuel.