Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (42 page)

"I should rent a ride," Panna mused quietly to herself. She looked around the washed-out city streets surrounding her and pulled out her com. "I don't even know which way I'm going. How far are we from Yebdemi?"

Ballad shoved his way back to the curb and scanned the busy road until he located a car with a glowing green sign on top. The cab raced down the second story lane on its null-inertia field, ignoring the pedestrians three yards below. As it slowed for the next signal, Ballad leapt into the air and rapped his knuckles against one window. Panna couldn't see the driver, but the cab lurched to one side. Ballad pressed a small cenmark chip to the window and glared through the glass. There was a short shouted exchange above Panna's head and then Ballad pulled the rear door open. He planted his feet inside and held his hand down toward the sidewalk.

"The plucked driver says he can't land here. Give me your hand."

Panna reached up. Ballad grabbed it and pulled, yanking the wingless Arcadian off her feet. Panna screeched as he levered her up into the cab. It was hot inside and stank of sweat. Panna shoved Ballad, but he had already climbed in, too, and closed the door behind him.

"Knights are supposed to be chivalrous," Panna told him primly.

"Hey, you're up here," Ballad said with a shrug. He tapped the thick glass barrier between the back of the cab and the front. "Yebdemi."

The driver refused to budge until Ballad paid the entire fare up front. Even then, the white-eyed Hadrian muttered into his com the entire time. Panna didn't catch the words and wasn't sure she wanted to. Instead, she looked over at Ballad. He sat forward, uncomfortably hunched as his wings took up most of the seat with fluffy white.

"Where are you working today?" Panna asked. "Back to Dark End?"

"Yebdemi. I meant what I said, Panna. I'm not leaving you alone again."

________

Caith waited for Maeve at the fountain. The glass sculpture of Cavain stood five times taller than any Arcadian and water cascaded from his upraised hands. What was that supposed to mean? It was the nyads who lived in the water, not Cavain's own species. Was the water some metaphor for the wellspring of peace and unity that his war had won? Or maybe Maeve was reading too much into it. Perhaps the fountain was intended only to be beautiful. It was that, at least.

Maeve landed beside her brother with a clink of glass. Caith wore the white robes of a Spire Adept, but they were sashed shut with a richly embroidered scarf of Cavainna red and gold. Whatever trade princes and princesses took up, they always wore the family colors. Again, Maeve wondered why. Was the black hair not symbol enough? She shook her head to dispel the bothersome thoughts and hugged Caith tightly. When she released him, her brother frowned.

"What is wrong?" he asked. "You have been crying again."

Had she? Maeve wiped at her face with her hands, but the glass of her gauntlets absorbed nothing and succeeded only in smearing the wetness across her skin. She shook her head. "Orthain was at Morningfire Court. It is hard to… Never mind. I am fine. Tamlin and Karrian await."

With obvious reluctance, Caith flew alongside his sister toward the Illisem Waygates. Despite the early hour, the capitol city was alive with people. The streets were full of nyads with their shining cerulean skin and the delicate gills draped between their shoulders, like tiny versions of their masters' wings. There were thousands of brown-skinned and green-haired dryads, too. They tended the endless gardens of the White City, caring for the soft emerald lawns, ordered orchards and flower-dotted hedges. Dryads and nyads alike kept their heads down, focused on their work as their Arcadian overlords flew overhead.

Caith glided in close beside Maeve, his feathers brushing against her beating wings. He said nothing as they landed in the broad white-paved plaza in the city's heart. Thousands of Arcadians filled the ground and sky under the shifting shadows of King Illain's palace. The castle of glass rose on a steep green hill over them, the verdant slope crowned in a hundred glittering towers.

Maeve and Caith made their way to the foot of a steep white staircase. Another knight – his glass armor far more plain than Maeve's – gestured the young prince and princess forward, past the lines of other fairies all waiting their turn to travel through the ring of glowing Waygates. He inclined his wings to Maeve and Caith.

"Highnesses," he said respectfully. "Where are you bound?"

"Orindell," Maeve told the knight. She gestured to her brother. "We are to relieve the Tamlin openers."

The Arcadian nodded and pointed to one of the Waygates. "The falcon gate is open to A'sai, princess."

Maeve thanked the knight. She and Caith flew up the graceful white ziggurat, ignoring the tall, deep stairs that ran up the center of each face. Only dryads and nyads climbed those. They landed at the top, where another white-clad Spire Adept waited. He paused a moment and then nodded to Maeve.

"The way is clear," he announced. "Please pass through."

Maeve took Caith's hand. He did not need her help, but she ached for contact with her brother. He squeezed her fingers gently and they stepped through the Waygate. Blue light shimmered around them and then faded, leaving them alone in another ivory plaza not unlike the one they had just left. There was no Waygate here, however. The great constructs worked in only one direction and required no receiving gate. In the center of the tiled ground rose a simple glass plinth with an intricate glass heron standing on top. There were so many of these reception sites all over the White Kingdom – each one bore some mark, some symbol to differentiate it from the other so that the Spire Adepts could remember them in detail. After all, without memory, the Waygates would not function.

Maeve had been to so many of these plazas with Caith that she was sure she knew every single one in Arcadia. She turned slowly, orienting herself. It was late in the afternoon on Orindell. To one side were the blue glass domes of A'sai, glowing in the golden afternoon light. That meant Tamlin was to the northwest. She gestured to Caith with one wing.

"This way," she told him. "We can reach Tamlin in an hour if the wind is with us."

"Maeve, wait."

She lowered her wings and turned to look at her brother. "What is it? I thought you were in a hurry to reach Tamlin. You said that you would die if you could not see Karrian tonight." Maeve smiled at his youthful overstatement, but Caith did not smile back. She faltered. "I am here to ensure that you can."

"My sister, I know your parting with Sir Orthain has been painful," Caith said. He touched a gentle fingertip to Maeve's cheek. "I do miss Karrian, but I would never leave you alone with your pain."

"We want glass to break. Anything we can see right through should be fragile, shouldn't it? We prefer to think that obfuscation is stronger than transparency."

– Xia (234 PA)

Logan dismissed the knights with a wave of his new glass hand. The four Arcadians nodded and took to the air, leaving the Prian alone in the red-dusted Kaellisem street. Well, almost alone.

"Maybe you've scared the bomber off," Gripper suggested. "It's been days since any of the knights have found anything. Maybe he's gone."

Logan shook his head. He began walking down the road, hands in his pockets. The glass one felt so strange, light and cool even through the cloth of his pants. Worn servos and hinges were plainly visible through the transparent Bherrosi glass, a reinforced metal skeleton twined with wire nerves. The finger surfaces and the palm were subtly textured in minute scrollwork to make them viable gripping surfaces, just like the knights' gauntlets. Even so, Logan insisted on wearing his worn black leather half-glove over the glass. The glove was familiar, comfortable. It was a pointless sentiment, Logan knew. But it just wasn't so simple to shut down his emotions. Not anymore.

"Why would they stop?" Logan asked Gripper. "We haven't caught him. We haven't even gotten close. No, it's something else."

"Like what?" In spite of his longer legs, the Arboran had to jog to keep up with Logan.

"He's changing his tactics. The bombs we found, the one that blew up the theater… They've been effective, but homemade. Simple timers, no more complex remote detonators. That means giving us time to find them. And we have. So he's moving on to something else."

"Like what?"

Logan pondered that. Maeve –
Queen
Maeve – speculated that the theater bombing was not an attempt on her life. There were easier ways to kill her than attacking the largest gathering of Arcadians in recent history. But it was that very fact that made Maeve suspect the bomb was to shake faith in her rule, to convince the fairies that she could not keep them safe. To chase them away.

It made sense. Maeve was a clever and perceptive woman, Logan admitted with painful pride, and he had to agree with her.

Logan stopped walking and looked back down the street to the red and gold royal spire. A winged shape stood on one of the delicate balconies. Was it Maeve? He could not tell from this distance. Logan turned away.

A group of Arcadians stood clustered around one of the larger buildings of Kaellisem, a dark brown dome swirled in rusty red; the food distribution center. Few fairies had money, but Maeve had no intention of letting them go hungry. Panna had devised and created the supply infrastructure, relying on a system of ledgers and identifications to make sure that no one Arcadian took an unfair portion. There were even weekly allowances for the occasional humans or other hungry coreworlders who came to Kaellisem in desperate search of food. It built goodwill between the fairies and Alliance, Panna had argued.

Duke Ferris countered requiring at least two knights to stand guard, to keep away any dangerous alien elements and prevent thefts. Panna protested, of course. There were not enough knights to protect the sort of widespread distribution she envisioned. What Ferris wanted would require centralizing the process into a single center. That meant lines. That meant waiting and impatience. In the end, Maeve had reluctantly sided with Duke Ferris. The safety of Kaellisem's citizens
had
to come first.

So the food lines became a part of every Arcadian's routine in Kaellisem. Offerings were simple – mostly protein powders, basic grains and a few vegetables – but were still better and more generous than what they were used to since the White Kingdom's fall. Generally, spirits were high in the lines and waiting Arcadians usually used the time to catch up with their neighbors. The knights inside the dome were rarely forced to involve themselves in any of these exchanges.

Logan and Gripper had started walking again, but paused once more as they neared the glass dome. There was a group of fairies at the door, not waiting in a line but in a close pack. Logan began at once searching for some Alliance species, some human or Dailon… There had been some tensions between Vyron, Kessa and the Arcadians before everyone in Kaellisem became accustomed to the little Dailon family. This seemed nothing like those first encounters. The Arcadians had been afraid of the muscular Vyron and Kessa, so much larger than any of the fairies.

But what Logan saw in their faces now was not nervousness or even fear. It was anger. Logan signaled Gripper to stop. The Arboran did, following his friend's gaze.

"What's going on?" he asked.

Logan didn't answer. He left Gripper at a safe distance and moved quietly closer to the group. They faced each other and did not notice the Prian's approach. His understanding of the Arcadian language was growing with each day in Kaellisem, but it was still hard to catch some of the quick, hissed words.

"How could she lie to us?"
asked one woman with scars on her left cheek that looked like Lyran handiwork.
"She is our queen!"

"Maybe it is not true,"
suggested a man standing beside her. Nervously, Logan thought.

"How could one woman be
ra'ahadu?" asked another fairy.
"Even one of Cavain's daughters?"

The first woman's wings rustled impatiently.
"Someone opened the Black Gate! We
sumanni'i
they died with the rest, but what if she escaped Tamlin?"

"The queen is guilty,"
agreed a man with a bitter frown twisting his lips.
"Why else build all this? She is trying to
eru a'malla!"

"What if this is not amends? If she is gathering the survivors of her destruction to deliver to the Devourers?"

"Queen Maeve slaughtered our people. She opened the Black Gate!"
the scar-faced woman insisted, shaking her wings in rage.

Logan grabbed her by one shoulder and yanked the Arcadian around to face him. Her eyes widened and she gasped. The rest of the fairies scattered with frightened, musical cries. Feathers filled the hot air.

"Where did you hear that?" Logan snarled.

The scarred fairy squirmed in his grasp, but she was tiny and no match for the Prian's strength. "All know!" she screeched in nearly unintelligible Aver.