Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (16 page)

Xia emerged from her medbay and gasped when she saw Gael. "We need to get him out of there. What happened?"

"He had been taking Deep," Maeve said.

With Xia's help, she managed to pull the unconscious man from the closet and carry him to the medbay. His limbs were tightly contorted, knotted up like rope. Xia peeled back Gael's eyelids and shined a penlight across his dilated pupil.

"Can you wake him?" Maeve asked.

"You say he's been taking Deep, right?" Xia went to the computer attached to the wall and slid her fingers across the keyboard. "Deoxyhexabromine, street name
Deep
or
Deepblack
. Yes, I can wake him up."

She unlocked one of the cabinets and withdrew an air needle. Muttering to herself, the Ixthian selected a vial of something yellow as butter. She added a few drops of a thicker blue substance and shook the vial. The whole thing turned a bright orange as the chemicals reacted inside. Xia slid it into her air injector and pressed into the inside of Gael's elbow. Within seconds, his arms and legs began to uncurl. Dellan held Gael's bony hand and he whispered something into his friend's ear. Gael's eyes finally fluttered open. One of them was dim and cloudy, but the other fixed on Maeve. He struggled to rise, but Xia pushed him gently down again.

"Relax," she said. Gael looked up at the Ixthian with fear and no comprehension.

"Anlae,"
Maeve repeated in Arcadian. Gael didn't speak Aver, either.
"Dellan asked us for help. He is worried about you."

Gael's eye flicked to Dellan. There was a mixture of anger and gratitude there. Dellan ducked his head and would only look at Maeve.
"Dellan worries too much,"
he said. Gael's voice was roughened by too much sleep.
"I am fine, Your Majesty."

"You are taking Deep to forget."
Maeve took Gael's hand and tried to summon some sort of queenly bearing. This was just like giving one of her speeches.
"We have all lost so much. The Arcadians can only fly forward from that together. That cannot be done from the darkness of a closet or the deeper dark of a drugged haze. Dellan is here. I am here. Fly with us, not away."

"You are my queen,"
Gael said. There was respect in his voice, but disbelief, too. He did not think Maeve understood any of it.

"I have taken more White and drunk more narcohol than the most dedicated human inebriate,"
she told the other Arcadian.
"There is so much pain that I would forget, Gael. That I would cut out of my own life and flesh if I but had a blade sharp enough. I know the skies you fly now."

Gael swallowed hard. He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded slowly.
"Yes, my queen,"
he said.

"Do you have more of it?"
Dellan asked.
"Of the Deep?"

The other Arcadian man's jaw clenched, but he nodded again.
"It is in the closet where I slept, wrapped up in the rags. What will you do with it?"

"We will destroy it,"
Maeve said.
"No one here needs it anymore."

Gael drew a deep, shuddering breath and visibly steeled himself.
"Yes,"
he agreed.
"Destroy it before I beg for more."

"Moments are but grains of sand. Life is the beach and truth is the blue ocean dancing across them."

– Titania Cavainna (234 PA)

A'lanu did not survive to see Stray. She was an old woman, too old and sick to fly anymore. She fell down the stairs into the hold, shattering her left hip, shoulder and both wings. Xia did all she could for A'lanu, but the old fairy woman's immune system was too ravaged by age and exposure to alien diseases to recover.

It was dangerously unsanitary to leave her body on the Blue Phoenix. Xia and Panna wrapped A'lanu in a white sheet and scarves donated by the other Arcadians. She should have been buried with a circlet of birch on her head, but there was no wood on the Blue Phoenix. Panna did her best with a dried somato vine around the white-shrouded temples.

At Ferris' insistence, Maeve bade A'lanu farewell and safe flight into Aes' golden embrace. Maeve had to stop every few words to wipe her eyes. It was a short and awkward speech, but no one complained. When it was over, Gripper placed A'lanu's body in the airlock. With a little instruction, Duke Ferris released the outer door. The cold vacuum took A'lanu away. Within seconds, she was just another white spot against the stars. A moment later, she was gone.

________

The Blue Phoenix entered the Bannon system three days after A'lanu's funeral. Everyone onboard was hungry, but according to Xia, more or less in good health considering the long and cramped flight.

Duaal called down from the cockpit to Maeve on the internal system. "We should be on Stray in a couple of hours," he said. "Where do you want me to land?"

"Gharib," Maeve told him.

Panna and Ferris were nearby. They always were these days. Panna looked up from a datadex in her hands. "Gharib?" she repeated. "Where you destroyed Gavriel's cathedral?"

"Yes," Maeve admitted. "But also a city we know, police we can rely on to be unhelpful and where we can find Xyn. We are out of phenno now, after all."

"Gharib it is, Queen Maeve," Duaal said only slightly mockingly. "I'll have you on the ground by noon, local time."

The young Hyzaari captain was true to his word. The Blue Phoenix shook as it landed and ruddy red sunlight streamed in through the windows. The Arcadians all crowded into the cargo bay, muttering and murmuring. Maeve stood at the top of the stairs with Logan and Duaal. Gripper looked up at her from the airlock. When Maeve nodded, he lowered the cargo ramp. A storm of white wings burst from the Blue Phoenix, thirty fairies kept too long away from the sky and eager to fly again. They filled the dingy orange sky like a flock of birds, wheeling and circling over the ship.

"Now what?" Duaal looked at Maeve.

"Why are you asking me?"

"You are the queen," said Logan.

In case she had forgotten. Maeve resisted the childish urge to stick out her tongue. "I am not sure. What do we need first?"

"We're on the western edge of Gharib, in the landing crescent," Duaal said. "Not far from where we were last time, actually. We don't have the color for landing fees, though. It'll go unnoticed for a while, but someone will come demanding their money eventually."

Maeve climbed over the catwalk railing and glided down to the blanket-strewn floor of the hold. Everything stank of sweat. Logan and Duaal came down the stairs to meet her. Panna and Xia were with Gripper next to the airlock. Duke Ferris stood on the lowered ramp, stretching his wings out but he had not joined the other fairies in the sky. He squinted out over the sandy red landing field. Maeve could just make out the humped bulk of another hauler, one much larger than the Phoenix. But it was late winter on Stray, the windy season, and any more detail was obscured by blasts of red grit.

Duke Ferris came back inside, shaking a fine coat of rust-colored sand from his wings. "Is the whole world like this?" he asked. "Covered in sand?"

"Mostly," said Gripper. "There's some ice at the poles and some farmable land around the equator, but the rest of Stray is all sandy desert."

The duke looked speculative, but then turned to Maeve and dipped his wings. He was not a young man and Maeve wondered if all the bowing hurt. Would he stop if his queen asked him to? Or was tradition even more important than royalty?

"There are Arcadians here, a'shae," he said. "Panna has told me as much. You will want to speak to them, of course."

"Of course," Maeve agreed sullenly. The urge to spare Duke Ferris bow-related wing pain passed.

"We will find them, Your Highness," Ferris promised.

"And bring them where?" asked Panna. She looked between Maeve and Ferris. "It can't be here. We're already out of space on the Blue Phoenix. Part of the reason we came to Stray was to make a home."

Logan had his arm around Maeve – the right one – and pulled her close. He was warm and smelled faintly of metal. He looked down at Maeve, caught her staring and smiled faintly. Logan already knew what Maeve had in mind. They had discussed it several nights before, with her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder and sweat-damp hair plastered against his bare chest.

"The site of the old Nihilist cathedral," Logan said.

Ferris did not look at the Prian. But everyone else did, mostly in confusion. "That's sick," Panna objected. "We can't go there!"

"It is not sick," argued Maeve. "It will be… cleansing. The police collected and removed all of the evidence." She avoided the word
bodies
. It did not help her case at all.

"Gavriel built a large cathedral there," Xia said in what Maeve hoped was agreement. "And had gatherings there every week or so, but nobody stopped him. Either no one owns that land or else the owner doesn't care."

"Sprite, you did a lot of research into the Gharib thing," said Gripper. "Do you know? Did anyone get mad after we crashed into the church?"

"Not that I know of," Panna told him with a shrug. Without the extra bones of her wings, it looked almost like a human gesture. "As far as I know, someone owns everything on Stray. It's got to at least belong to Channik Grale's family. That's the Lyran man who bought the whole planet."

"It's not exactly a prime location," Duaal said. "It's off the roads and outside town. I could see forgetting about it."

"I guess it's a good enough place to start," Panna concluded.

Ferris frowned at the girl. "Ours is not to question our queen."

"Please do question your queen," Maeve countered sourly. "She is very new to this and needs a great deal of help."

"It seems a wise place to begin, a'shae," said Ferris. "We will tell our people to seek you there."

With that, he stepped out into the dim red daylight, spread his wings and soared into the sky. He circled once, singing instructions and then wheeled off in the direction of Gharib. About half of the other Arcadians followed him. The rest remained, including Malla and Hannu, who landed lightly on one of the Blue Phoenix's wings. Maeve had not been able to hear Ferris' orders, but suspected that the sibling's lingering was not of their own choice.

Duaal buttoned up his long silver-trimmed coat. It was beginning to look a little threadbare, but Maeve thought better of saying anything. Duaal checked his com and slid it back into his pocket. "I'm going over to Unbreakers to see Xyn," he said. "We need phenno and any current news about what's been going on in Gharib. We're flat broke, so I'm going to have to carry that phenno back. I could use a hand. Gripper?"

"Sure, captain."

"Anyone else?" asked Duaal.

"I'll walk into town with you, but I will be helping to bring in the Arcadians," said Panna.

"Gharib isn't the nicest city in the Alliance," Xia told her. "I'll go with you."

"May I go?" Maeve asked. She had no desire to stand uselessly around the Blue Phoenix being a figurehead for the next few hours. "To Unbreakers, I mean. I would like to give my regards to Kessa and her family, if they are still here."

"I knew you had another reason for choosing Gharib," Logan said. He gave Maeve a hard, icy look. "You should have told me."

"I–" she started, but Logan stopped her with a kiss and a small, unpracticed smile.

"It's sweet," Panna said.

"I'll go with Maeve. And I'm sure our escort will follow, too." Logan jerked an illonium thumb back over his shoulder to the wing of the Blue Phoenix where Malla and Hannu stood.

"I do not need a bodyguard," Maeve said. She ruffled her wings in irritation.

"It couldn't hurt to have some eyes in the sky," Logan said. Maeve hated when her hunter agreed with Ferris, but at least on Stray, the faeries following her would not be treading on her wingtips.

Duaal waited for everyone to make their way down the cargo ramp, then raised and sealed it behind them. "Let's get this done," he said. The mage coughed and spat some red mud onto the sandy ground. "You sure know how to pick them, Maeve. Do you really want to found a new kingdom here?"

"No," she said. "But I fear we have no other choice."

________

"Is that a command, Your Highness?"

"Yes," Maeve decided. "It is."

Hannu and Malla exchanged a look and then shrugged. They took up positions to either side of the doors and Maeve turned back to Unbreakers. Duaal, Gripper and Logan waited at the door for her. Light from the multicolored holographic sign played over their skin. The shop's windows were cloudy with old static sheets that were no longer doing their job very well. Dust gathered in the curling edges.

Duaal pushed the door open and they went inside. Unbreakers was, if possible, even more cluttered than on their last visit. The already small store was full of precariously stacked boxes and crates full of parts and pieces of every known starship, from expensive Starwind and Narsus models to cheap Gallex knock-offs and generic manufacturers.