Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (19 page)

Logan frowned thoughtfully and then nodded. "I know who can get the message to Ballad. If he's willing to let me give it to him."

________

Ballad Avadain felt eyes on him. The Prian night was deep and cold. The midnight chill sliced through even the black leather of his jacket like a nanoknife. He shivered and surveyed the narrow, crooked streets of Pylos. There were Arcadians and humans below, all bundled up in coats and scarves against the cold. The season was well into summer now, but there was still sleet mixed in with the rain that spattered across Ballad's shoulders and dripped down between his feathers. But the icy shiver that ran down his spine had nothing to do with the weather. Someone was watching him.

Ballad spread his wings. He leapt from the crumbling cornice and soared into the darkness. Lamps jutted up from the cracked sidewalk, but only one in ten glowed through the clinging gray fog. He landed on the concrete and searched the street. The crowds were thinning for the night as everyone went home. Ballad stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket and found the fibersteel straps hidden there. He slid his hands through the flexible metal. The Arcadian felt a little better with them on, but still uneasy.

A shape in dark clothes stepped out of the shadows and stalked purposefully toward Ballad. It was human, broad across the shoulders but not much taller than the young Arcadian. Ballad leapt in with a pair of punches, trying to drive the interloper back. The human shuffled aside with deceptive speed, stepping into the flickering light of a streetlamp. He was Prian, but older than most Ballad had ever seen, with a heavily lined face and no hair left. The short old man stepped inside another punch and jabbed two gnarled fingers into Ballad's bicep. The Arcadian pulled back, wincing. He kicked at the Prian's knee. Fighting such an old man made Ballad more than a little uncomfortable, but the human had swiftly proven himself an able warrior.

The Prian melted back and back, forcing Ballad to reach for him. When he did, the human grabbed one wrist, twisted and yanked Ballad down to his knees on the cracked and jagged sidewalk.

"Ballad Avadain?" the man asked, not even out of breath.

"What are you doing in my part of Pylos?" Ballad writhed, but could not break the old Prian's grip. "What do you want?"

"My name is Arctan. I'm carrying a message for you."

Vorus released Ballad's wrist. The Arcadian stepped back, rubbing his wounded hand. "Arctan Vorus? It's an honor to meet you." Ballad extended his hand hesitantly. "Wish I could say this is the first time this has happened. Who is your message from?"

Vorus shook the fairy's offered hand firmly. His palm was rough and dry. "An old student of mine. He says you've already met."

Ballad grinned. "We have. What's Logan Coldhand got to tell me?"

"He says that your queen needs you, Ballad Avadain. She summons you to Stray."

"It was in a place of desolation and dust that we found ourselves."

– Ferris Verridian (234 PA)

Duaal's haste in selling the phennomethylln cost him something in profits, but the money was enough to feed the growing number of Arcadians for a while. There was even some color left over to buy some tents and pavilions to set up on the site of the old Nihilist cathedral. But before sending anyone there, Panna and Logan wanted to check the site.

This time, Panna borrowed a scarf to wear over her face. It was more of a veil, in truth, but if it would keep Stray's endless red dust out of her mouth, Panna would have worn a bag over her head. She wiped the steam from the mirror and checked her reflection. Even after so many years without them, Panna was always surprised and a little sad not to see her wings rising up from between her shoulders. She had lived more of her life without wings than with them… Did that make her less of an Arcadian? Duke Ferris seemed to think so.

There were so little of the Arcadian nobility left. That had not always been the case, of course. Those of noble blood had been evacuated from the failing White Kingdom first, leaving behind the common fairies and most of the knights to cover their hasty exits. But the same virtue that had given them the first chance to flee Arcadia had made them ill suited to their new lives as Alliance refugees. Without their riches and high glass towers, servants and knights, the nobility fell quickly into the depths of depression. Many of those not killed by coreworld diseases took their own lives.

Logan was waiting for Panna at the airlock. The Prian had not changed his wardrobe for Stray, but she didn't think that he cared very much about the local weather. But Duke Ferris was there, too, standing on the other side of the airlock with his arms tucked into long, pale sleeves. Panna inclined her head to the duke.

"Your Grace," she said. "What can we do for you?"

"He wants to come with us," Logan answered.

"You do?" Panna looked at Ferris. The old Arcadian man had his gray-streaked golden braids and pointed ears covered in a deep lavender hood. "We're only inspecting the old cathedral site, Your Grace. Just to make sure it's stable and clean enough for our use."

"Vyron is trying to find out who owns it," said Logan. "No luck yet. There's a record of the sale, but the name on it is a fake."

"Gavriel didn't own it?" Panna asked.

Logan shook his head. "He had no money. He didn't own anything."

"That does not sound unlike us," said Duke Ferris. "Let us begin."

Duaal had landed the Blue Phoenix not far from the collapsed cathedral. Logan opened the airlock and led the two Arcadians outside. It was early in the day and the dim, oversized sun squatted on the horizon. The wind had not picked up yet. Panna pulled off her scarf with a sigh and stalked out of the ship after Logan.

In the year since the Nihilist church's collapse, the desert had almost entirely reclaimed the land. If Panna had not seen images of Gavriel's black cathedral, she would have had no idea that anything had ever stood in the sifting orange sands. All that remained were red dunes and a few dark patches of tough black weeds.

"What happened to the cathedral?" Panna asked. "Did the Gharib police tear it down?"

Logan crouched on one of the small dunes and dug through the dust. He pulled a piece of twisted metal free and inspected it. "No," he said. "It's just been buried by the desert."

Duke Ferris flew to the top of a taller dune and landed to pick up a handful of fine sand. It sifted between his fingers and fell in red and orange-brown streamers to the ground. "An entire cathedral lies buried beneath us?"

Logan shrugged. "Not intact. Tiberius knocked it down with the Blue Phoenix. Without maintenance, the tunnels beneath have probably filled with sand, too. But we won't know for sure until we can get a survey densitometer out here."

"It's going to take a lot of upkeep to build anything here," Panna said. She sat down on a russet rock and sighed, feeling hopeless. "The desert is just going to bury us alive. Maybe this isn't such a good idea."

Ferris glided down to Panna and, to her surprise, smiled. "The queen does not think so," he told her. "She agrees that this remains an excellent location for our new home."

"Has she
seen
it?" Panna asked a little more sharply than she intended.

Duke Ferris noticed and his more familiar frown returned. "You should not question Queen Maeve."

Panna desperately wanted to point out that she had actually known Maeve far longer than the duke, that she had pushed Maeve toward the throne in the first place, but Ferris wasn't done.

"We discussed the decision this morning," he said. The duke brushed some sand from his sleeve. "The sands here are not a curse, but a blessing. It is not the same as that of our lost home, but I believe that we can make glass from it."

"Glass?" Panna repeated dumbly. "You mean Arcadian glass?"

"He certainly doesn't mean the kind we put in windows," Logan answered. He was rubbing some dull red-orange sand between the fingers of his right hand. "This isn't going to be the same as the kind of glass in Maeve's spear."

"Do we even have anyone who knows how to make it?" Panna asked uncertainly. She had studied everything she could find on the hard and strong Arcadian glass, including the molecular structure and chemical composition, but that didn't mean she could create it.

"I spent some time glassinging as a younger man," Ferris told them. "Only small things, sculptures and such. But both Hyra and Lorren know the songs."

"They do?" Panna asked, shaking her head. "Then why didn't I see a single piece of glass on Sunjarrah? If all they need is sand…"

The older Arcadian gave her a pitying look. If she didn't understand already, Ferris did not seem to think she could learn. Panna sighed and hoped he didn't hear her. The duke was just as bad as Xartasia, in his way. Neither of them thought much of the young fairies. Xartasia left them behind and Panna wondered if Ferris would do the same if only Maeve would let him.

Panna viciously stifled another sigh. It was an unkind thought. Ferris' idea about the glass was a good one. With all the coreworlders' extensive and impressive science, they could not reproduce Arcadian glass. It was unique to the White Kingdom. Panna knelt and ran her fingers through the red sand.

"Coldhand, how long are the profits from the phenno going to feed us?" she asked.

The Prian considered for a moment before answering. "At our current head count, with cheap food and no fuel for the Blue Phoenix, about five weeks. But if our numbers rise, that estimate is going to fall drastically."

"Queen Maeve will win the hearts of all Arcadians here on Stray," Ferris assured him confidently.

"And they'll need somewhere to live," said Panna. "So we'd better get started. Where can we get a densitometer?"

________

"Sure, we've got a densitometer," Vyron told Duaal. "It's on a survey truck. The old owner couldn't pay his repair bill and left the whole thing. I can pull it out tonight, if you want."

"Don't bother," Duaal told the Dailon man cheerfully. "Does the truck run?"

"Not very well."

"As long as we can get it over to the old cathedral site, it will do the job."

Vyron nodded and took notes on a datadex. "Are you sure you don't want a proper survey team?"

Duaal shook his head. "There isn't enough money for that," he said. "Or time. Maeve's making her first speech tomorrow night."

Unbreakers was actually busy, a dozen customers squeezing through the narrow aisles and filling baskets with bits of electronics and machinery or waiting surreptitiously for a canister of Xyn's black-market phennomethylln. Vyron leaned over the counter and asked if they needed anything, but those who acknowledged him at all did so only with grunts or waves of their hands.

"Kessa's been asking about that," Vyron said, returning his attention to Duaal. "Do you think it would be all right if we came to listen?"

Duaal hesitated. Maeve liked the little Dailon family well enough and spoke of them often, but she seemed nervous about the speech. The new fairy queen had locked herself in the Blue Phoenix mess with Panna and Duke Ferris to review every word. Duaal grinned.

"Sure," he told Vyron. "Maeve would
love
it if you and Kessa were there."

________

Maeve wondered if she was going to pass out. Her head swam and spots of color burst like miniature fireworks behind her closed eyelids. Logan held her upright like a fainting bounty mark.

"How many?" Panna asked, stunned.

"Three hundred or so," Ferris repeated.

"So many?" Maeve whispered. She was not sure if anyone heard her, of if she had spoken aloud at all.

"Sir Calathan addressed at least that many on Sunjarrah," the duke continued on. "Xartasia's numbers far surpass our own. By the time this is done, we must be able to sway thousands."

"Thousands," Maeve said. Her throat was as dry as the desert outside. "I cannot do this! I am not a politician. I am not even a knight anymore!"

"No," Ferris told her. "You are a queen of Arcadia. Your people need you."

How often had she heard those exact words from Panna? More times than she could easily count. Did her black hair really mean anything? If Cavain's blood ran so true through her veins, why did she not feel more like a queen? Should she not feel some sort of glorious righteousness? But Maeve only felt sick. She wobbled to the sink and retched, but all that came up was a thin trickle of acidic saliva. The would-be queen spat and leaned against the counter until she could stand on her own again. Maeve felt Logan, Ferris and Panna watching her. Maeve splashed some water on her face.

Her reflection was warped and indistinct in the scuffed metal of the sink's bottom. All Maeve could see was a pale oval with dark smears in the place of her eyes. It was the face of a ghost, of one long dead and set to wander the worlds without a home. Was that how the Arcadians looked to the Alliance, forlorn shrouds empty of life?

That is how we see ourselves,
Maeve thought.
That is how Xartasia sees us. However terrible her plan is, she at least gives our people a purpose.