Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (31 page)

"By that logic, she should marry Duke Ferris! And the one who
should
get to keep the dove is the hawk who fights for her!"

"That's sexist. And even if it was true, by that logic," Panna pointed out, using Ballad's own argument, "Logan still lost Maeve. He gave her up. And he was right to do so. We all make sacrifices for our people, Ballad. Maybe you'll understand that someday."

The young fairy man shot Panna a furious glare and took to the air. His takeoff kicked up a cloud of pale dust that made her cough. "I'm going to get some actual work done," Ballad shouted down to her. "You can keep watching Bherrosi, if you want to waste your time."

When Panna finally figured out an answer, Ballad was already gone.

________

"What are those?" Logan asked.

Maeve looked up from the datadex full of numbers. Her hunter stood at the window, ostensibly to watch the street far below, but his pale blue eyes fixed instead on the fairy queen at her desk. The Prian looked like some kind of monstrous giant in the delicate glass room, with his decidedly un-Arcadian features, blocky metal hand and height generally towering over everyone and everything.

"Reports from Bherrosi," she told him. "Panna tells me that they have collected and loaded over seventy tons of sand. They should be done and ready to return to Kaellisem in just two more days."

"A day early?"

Maeve's smile faltered. That meant Anthem would be back, too. Duke Ferris had kept her busy for the last week, working on the new enassui. Panna's reports had been sitting on her desk for the better part of a day. The time had gone quickly, but it was lonely. Logan was there every day, right by her side, but it was nothing like it had been before and Maeve ached to kiss him. Or just to hold his hand…

"Do you need anything, a'shae?" Verra asked from her seat in the corner.

Maeve shook her head and returned her attention to Panna's report. She still felt Logan's eyes on her but she did not look up again.

________

"We should be done by nine tomorrow morning," Panna told Anthem.

The royal consort nodded. "Good. Everyone is tired and ready to return to Kaellisem. We have all breathed much dust here. Do you think it will do any harm?"

"Probably some," Panna admitted. "I'll ask Xia about it when we get back."

She felt a little self-conscious sitting in Sir Anthem's presence, but she was exhausted. She propped her chin in her hand and stifled a yawn. The sky outside the Blue Phoenix was dark and the ship was full of the muffled sounds of singing: the evening prayer-song before sleep. The Arcadians always sang. Panna quickly found herself humming along. Anthem watched her.

"I do not know how anyone ever mistook you for human, child," he said, even managing to avoid sounding condescending when he said
child
. "You are a true daughter of Arcadia."

"Really?" Panna asked sourly. "Would you mind telling Ballad that?"

"Is there trouble with him?" Anthem asked.

Panna bit her lip and wished she wasn't so tired. Really, weighing and tallying barrels of sand wasn't that hard, but it was so
hot
. "Nothing," she muttered. "Nothing important."

That didn't seem to satisfy the knight commander. "Young Ballad is an interesting disciplinary challenge. He is fierce and dedicated to the kingdom, but has little respect for the traditions of our people."

"I can't argue with that," said Panna.

"You can," Anthem said. "But you would be wrong."

Panna blinked a few times and burst out into nervous laughter. The prince consort was teasing her. Smiling at her… Panna's cheeks went quite hot. Anthem was a handsome man. She knew that he had been a prostitute even before Ballad had said anything. Xia had discretely put the knight through a series of medical tests to ensure that he could transmit nothing dangerous to Maeve. Panna had a hard time imagining Sir Anthem on a street corner.

A sudden shout interrupted her thoughts. Panna jumped to her feet, banged her knees on the underside of the table and tried again. By the time she managed to stand and run toward the sound, Anthem was already through the door and sprinting down the cargo bay catwalk. At night, the bulky airlock doors were open to cool the overheated hold and its crowded contents of Arcadians and barrels of sand. Someone stood in the airlock. Panna thought for a moment that it was Duaal. The shape was human, as tall as the Hyzaari captain but wider of build.

The man stepped into the hold. It was a human with sunburnt red skin and a slit-eyed black hood pulled down over his face. He held a piece of pitted steel pipe in his hands. It was only a couple of feet long and hardly the most dangerous weapon she had ever seen, but that length of dented metal somehow filled Panna with an instant sense of dread. A pair of tall Dailons came in behind him, then several more whose racial marks Panna could not make out from this distance. The Arcadian diggers shied away from the intruders, whispering and humming in the same fear that churned in Panna's stomach.

"What the hells are you doing on my ship?"

It was Captain Sinnay. The young Hyzaari man pushed his way through the nervous ranks of Arcadians. The furious scowl on his dark, handsome face would have made Tiberius proud. The hooded human looked Duaal up and down, taking in the captain's lavender silk pants and black brocade vest, and swung the pipe in a short arc. The metal impacted with a loud thump against Duaal's temple and the Blue Phoenix's captain collapsed to the floor, blood oozing from the side of his head. The intruder lifted his hood enough to spit on the crumpled Duaal.

"Roodin' fairy lover," he rasped and then pointed the pipe in his hand at the Arcadians. The captain's blood shone red on the steel. "You come all the way back to Bherrosi to steal from me? You aren't going to get another chance, you little rats!"

Steal? Steal what? Panna did not have much time to wonder. Sir Anthem was already unfolding his long wings and diving from the catwalk. When had he grabbed his spear? More of Anthem's trainee knights pushed their way toward the armed coreworlders, who spread out in response, readying themselves for a fight… Panna saw more clubs emerge from desert robes and the greasy shine of several nanoblades, then a storm of wings obscured everything. The Arcadians were breaking ranks, flying up and further into the ship. They scrambled up the stairs, over the catwalk where Panna stood and past her. Feathers drifted through the air like oversized snowflakes as Panna fought to keep her feet beneath her. She clung to the railing and gasped. Below, the fairies and coreworlders came together.

"Kill no one!" Anthem commanded, even as his spear darted out.

He lunged to one side, then beat his wings once, and was somehow behind a snarling Lyran that was reaching for him with claws extended. Panna gasped when he thrust his spear but Anthem had twirled it around so that it connected, butt-first, with the back of the Lyran's head.

An Arcadian in black leapt on one of the humans. It was Ballad, the sliced leather jacket he wore even in Stray's heat making him stand out against the more colorful squires. Panna bit her lip. Only Anthem had armor… Ballad's spear thrust out more awkwardly than Anthem's, but it drove his opponent back and the kick that he delivered connected with audible force.

There were cries of pain that Panna could not distinguish as those of friend or attacker, and a few feathers floated on eddying currents as the cooling night air swirled through the hold. Some were spotted red with blood. She looked around the hold for something to do, for
some
way to help.

One of the humans stood over Duaal. The Hyzaari captain groaned and tried to push himself upright. He didn't seem to notice the shadow falling over him. Panna swore. There was nothing like a weapon up on the catwalk. All of the tools were stowed down in the hold, in the middle of the fighting, to say nothing of any real weapons. The only thing nearby was a plastic barrel someone must have set up here to get out of the way. Panna grabbed the bottom and thanked Aes it was empty. She never would have been able to lift it full. She heaved. The barrel balanced on the rail for a moment, then overbalanced and tumbled down into the hold. It didn't hit the man below directly, but it clipped his head and shoulder and knocked him sprawling to the ground.

By the time he had regained his feet, so had Duaal. The mage blinked the blood from his eyes, and then they narrowed and fixed on the other man. Duaal raised his hand, songless and silent, and sent the Bherrosi attacker flying backwards across the hold. The man struck two more of their attackers and they tumbled together into a heap on the floor. One of Anthem's squires, bleeding from her own stomach wound, retreated toward Duaal and began helping the captain up the stairs.

Panna searched for Anthem and Ballad again. There were fewer people fighting now. Anthem held his spear to the throat of a man on his knees. The wolf-eyed new squire, Syle, drove his spear deep into the back of the Lyran that Panna had seen earlier. The alien howled in pain and blood gushed from his muzzle. Anthem turned on Syle, rage blazing in his eyes, but the younger knight was already leaping and diving, graceful as a hunting bird, on another coreworlder.

Ballad's spear was on the ground, but one of the Dailons lay curled in a fetal ball at his feet, gasping and groaning while the Prian fairy traded jabbing punches with the other one. When the remaining Dailon swung a fist nearly as big as Ballad's head, Panna tried to cry out a warning, but all that came out was a strangled choking sound. Ballad slid under the blow and answered with a flurry of his own, but they did not seem to faze the bigger man at all. The black-clad young knight curled his fingers into a sort of claw and grabbed the Dailon, who shrieked far louder than Panna had managed and sank to his knees on the floor. He grabbed weakly at Ballad's hand until Anthem stalked up behind him and slid his spear under his dark blue jaw.

"Leave!" Anthem commanded.

The Dailon nodded gingerly and Ballad released him. A midnight bruise was already spreading under the skin as the coreworlder yanked the other Dailon to his feet and the two stumbled out the airlock, back into the cooling Bherrosi night. One by one, the others staggered or crawled from the Blue Phoenix.

Panna ran down the stairs as quickly as her trembling legs would carry her. Two of Anthem's knights were on the ground and did not rise. Cyrene lay still in a pool of blood, a nanoblade buried to the hilt in her throat. The other Arcadian was dead, too, the left side of his skull crushed like an eggshell. Panna sobbed and closed the knight's dull eyes. She crawled across the hold to do the same for the Lyran that Syle had killed.

Ballad grabbed the last man by his collar. It was the one in the black hood. The cloth was torn and tacky with blood, but the human wasn't wounded. The blood was not his. Ballad swept the man's feet out from under him and sent him crashing to the floor of the Blue Phoenix.

"We didn't do anything to you!" Ballad shouted. "What the hells was this?"

"One of you stole my money, you roodin' bird-back," the human growled back, angry but lacking the molten venom it once held.

"You're lying! We never went anywhere near Bherrosi. And now Cyrene and Sellesian are dead!"

Ballad yanked the hood away, making the man beneath suddenly squint in the bright cargo bay lights. Panna blinked. Their attacker had a round, friendly-looking face, with sparse brown hair and very pink cheeks. Ballad's hands trembled. Anthem put his hand on Ballad's shoulder.

"And his Lyran friend is dead," said the prince consort. "Release him, Ballad. There is no justice to be had tonight. Your brother and sister fought for their people, as they swore to do. They are with the All-Singer now."

"Can't we call the police? We can't just let this go unanswered!"

"The police of Stray are not like those of Prianus," Anthem reminded Ballad. "They will not care that our own are dead, but may punish us badly for the Lyran."

With a choked sob, Ballad threw the hood down and shoved its owner to the airlock. "Get the hells out of here!"

The human jumped to his feet and ran. Only Anthem, Syle and Ballad remained in the hold with Panna. Anthem whirled on Syle. "You killed one of them!" he sang angrily. "I ordered you to kill no one!"

"En xarri ma'anni,"
Syle answered.
They were killing us.

"Ae vae'ii si ven!"
Anthem hissed.
You will obey my orders!

"You must deserve obedience," Syle told Anthem coolly. "Ballad is right. Cyrene and Sellesian are dead."

Panna gasped. "You can't blame Sir Anthem for that!"

Syle fixed his golden eyes on Panna and bowed his head. "No. Please, Sir Anthem, forgive me. I was angry."

He had not
sounded
angry, Panna thought, but Anthem shook his head.

"Forgiven," he told Syle. "But a knight must obey orders, even if he does not agree with them. There is a time to ask questions and to argue, but in the midst of battle is not that time."

"No, it is not," agreed Syle. The yellow-eyed knight turned away and went to the bodies of his fallen comrades.

"We shouldn't stay," Panna told Anthem. "I really doubt that man will call the police, but just in case I'm wrong, we should be gone."