Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (49 page)

He closed his eyes. What… what would Tiberius say? Did it matter? The old Prian was dead. Tears stung behind Duaal's lids. But he knew. He knew what Tiberius would tell him.

That was a damned fine piece of work, boy. Stop smirking and get up to the cockpit. Do your job.

He opened his eyes and stood, clapping his hands against his thighs as he rose. "You're right," he said, ostensibly to Maeve and the rest of the Blue Phoenix crew. "I'd better get back up front. It's about time for another sub-SL check. If we're going to die horribly, then Xartasia's going to have to do it herself. Some uncharted asteroid's not doing the job for her."

Duaal made his way up the stairs, through the mess and up to the cockpit. The tiny room full of dials, monitors and control panels glowed in green, yellow and red. He paused at the pilot's seat. He could have repaired the multitude of talon gashes in the chair or the cracks in the controls left by Tiberius' frustrated fists, but he never had. He never would, Duaal realized.

He sat in the captain's old chair and checked the navigational computer. Just twelve more days and they would reach the Rynn system and the Nnyth Tower. Duaal reached for the superluminal engine controls.

________

Gripper inspected the large air filter. It wasn't just dirty, but actually broken. What was going on? What could possibly be damaging so many pieces in the ventilation system? The Blue Phoenix had picked up a couple of rats before, even a chuulo one time. The rodents chewed up wires and seals, gummed up filters with their droppings, but nothing like this. Gripper frowned.

"Hunter, can you hand me my soldering stuff?" he asked.

Logan sat on the end of the workbench. Right in the spot that Maeve liked to perch. The human reached behind him and handed Gripper a bent soldering iron and a spool of wire. Gripper took them and got to work. He felt Logan watching him.

"When's the last time you talked to Xia?" the Prian finally asked.

Gripper thought for a moment. "This morning, at breakfast. She needed me to look at the locks in the medbay. One of them was broken. You know, a lot of things are breaking on the Phoenix."

"It wasn't that long ago that you kept track of everything she did. And got in her way to give her flowers."

Gripper laughed. "Yeah."

"What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why aren't you… falling all over yourself to get her attention anymore?"

The Arboran looked up from his work and found Logan watching him intently. Those pale blue eyes were still more than a little unsettling. When they were not cold as ice, their intensity seemed to burn like the Talon laser he carried. Gripper set down the solder and leaned against the workbench.

"I guess it was watching you and Glass," he said slowly. "Everything you two have been through."

Logan's jaw set. "We demonstrated how fragile and painful love is."

"No way. Well, maybe a little." Gripper pointed at the glass-armored cybernetic hand clenched around the edge of his workbench. "Glass can be fragile and sharp, or it can be really, really strong. Yours is strong, Hunter. It is. You have to watch Glass and Spear together all the time. She's nearly died and so have you, sometimes because of each other. But you still love each other."

Gripper could hear Logan's teeth grinding and winced.

"You do," he said firmly. "I'm not dumb, Hunter. I know you don't want to, but you still love Glass. And she loves you, too, even if she can't say or do anything about it."

"What does that have to do with Xia?" asked Logan.

"It's just different. What you and Glass do for each other… You let her go, Hunter. You hated it, but when she had to become queen, you let her go to Anthem. It tortures you every single day, but you've never tried to stop them. Not like Shimmer and I have. We interfered because we're Glass' friends. And yours. But you love her, so you weren't stupid like us.

"It's not like that with me and Silver. I like her. She's pretty and smart and I want her to be proud of me. But I'm not proud
for
her like you are for Glass. You don't love Glass just because she's beautiful and makes you feel good. You love Maeve for all that she
is
, including being an Arcadian queen, even if it takes her away from you."

Logan could not seem to meet Gripper's eye. He stared at the floor instead so intently that it was a wonder the fibersteel didn't melt.

"I just don't love Silver like that," the mechanic said. "And if what you're going through is what true love is like, I think I'll happily wait until I'm a lot older to go find it."

"Wise decision," Logan spoke up at last. "But you may not get to choose."

Gripper picked up his soldering iron and got back to work fixing the filter. He had no more replacements. This one had to hold up until they reached the Tower and that was still five days away. Gripper crossed his fingers that the filter was still repairable. Xartasia and the Devourers awaited them at the Tower, along with all the Nnyth. Gripper wondered if any of them were going to live long enough to worry about the future, but he said nothing. Sometimes being a good friend meant being able to shut up.

"No one survives on honor alone."

– Anthem Calloren (234 PA)

Maeve sat alone in the dark. Well, not actually alone and it wasn't actually that dark… She heard Anthem breathing and the soft, near-silent sounds of cloth against skin as he shifted his weight. But she kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut. She did not want to look at him. If she could just pretend that he was not there, that… that…

But it was useless. She opened her eyes. Anthem sat at her desk, reading slowly over a datadex with an expression of intense concentration on his handsome face. His lips moved as he sounded out the Aver. It was rather cute, Maeve decided, but she still could not bring herself to be moved. Anthem was strong and sweet and brave and a perfect consort, but Maeve could not love him. She had tried but all she felt was an empty, painful pit where her heart should be. With every passing day, it grew harder to care if Xartasia ravaged the entire galaxy. What did it matter anymore?

Maeve went to the closet, wondering if there was some forgotten bottle of narcohol, some needle of Dark tucked away in her old clothes… There was a sound and Maeve looked back at Anthem, but he was still focused on his datadex. The noise came again, so quiet that she almost could not make it out. Not noise, but music. The soft, thrumming notes of a guitar.

Logan.

Maeve's heart sped. She could not recall the last time she had heard the Prian play. Sunjarrah? That night under the stars, on Maeve's first night as queen? She checked the time. It was late, well after midnight by the Blue Phoenix's clock. Maeve darted a glance at Anthem again, but he didn't seem to hear the music. Quietly, Maeve slipped from her quarters and into the corridor outside.

The music was louder here. Still quiet in deference to the late hour, but Maeve could make out the notes now and the strong, smooth sound of Logan's voice. She crept through the Blue Phoenix, down the hall to the hold. He sat on top of one of the plastic water barrels, the battered guitar across his lap. The sunlights over Gripper's hanging garden glittered off Logan's glass hand as he strummed. Her hunter's eyes were closed in concentration, lips forming the words he sang with precise care.

"En ai enarra,

Eru lua'vi a arna…"

Maeve knew those words. An Arcadian oathsong. She slipped over the railing and glided down into the hold. Logan heard her landing behind him and looked up, fingers frozen on the strings of his guitar.

"Do not stop," she said softly.

Logan did not look back at her. Every muscle across his back tensed at the sound of her voice. "I was just practicing… I don't know the last line. No one in Kaellisem would teach a human. I overheard the rest."

Maeve stepped closer, still behind her hunter.
"Ae lua'vi a arna delassua,"
she sang, carefully articulating the vowel-heavy Arcadian.

Logan's fingers moved along the guitar's scarred and oft-repaired neck, playing back the notes until he knew them. The sound echoed through the hold.

"En ai enarra,"
Logan sang.

"Eru lua'vi a arna,

Ae lua'vi a arna delassua."

Perfect. The song pulsed through Maeve's entire being. That cold, empty place inside her echoed with the sound of Logan's voice. Her hands were moving of their own volition, sliding around her hunter and up to his chest. She felt the hard, knotted scar over his heart through his shirt.

"Maeve…" Logan said in a thick voice. He pressed his glass hand over both of hers. "I love you. I need you. Not to have, not to myself… Just to live. I want you to know that it's enough that you were ever a part of my life. The best part. I want to give you my oathsong, even if you can never sing it back to me…"

Maeve laid her cheek against his back. Logan was trembling. She could hear his mechanical heart beating so fast. She remembered now why she fought Xartasia. How could she ever have forgotten? Maeve kissed Logan's back. His cybernetic fingers tightened convulsively over hers, beyond Logan's control. It hurt. Maeve closed her eyes. She should go back to her room, back to Anthem and her duty…

"Play it again," she told Logan. "Play the song."

Slowly, he removed his hand from hers. It fell once again to the guitar strings and he began to play the rising scale of notes. Maeve took a shuddering breath.

"To you I give my love," she sang to Logan in his own tongue.

"My heart and life,

The heart and life we share."

The last note cut off. "No, Maeve. Don't–" Logan said, voice shaking.

Maeve pulled her hunter down from his seat and around to face her. There were unshed tears in his pale eyes. "I need you," she told Logan, using his own words. "You have sung your heart to me, my hunter, and I have given mine in answer. I love you. I can love no other. You give me reason to sing and to fight on, Logan. I need you."

The guitar dropped from Logan's fingers and crashed to the fibersteel floor. He grabbed Maeve and pulled her crushingly close. Through her own tears, Maeve managed to find Logan's lips and press hers to them. Too hard… She tasted salt and blood. That was how her hunter always tasted.
Her
hunter. He was hers now, sworn by oathsong, and she was his.

Maeve grabbed at Logan's pants as his strong hands went to her shirt, tearing the fabric in his desperation. Clothes fell away and Maeve sang out in visceral relief at the sweat-slicked feel of skin on skin. Relief, need and longing churned through her. Logan lifted Maeve, held her against the wall of the hold and then that cold, empty place inside her was full of blazing love and light.

________

Syle crouched in the dirty darkness at the intersection of two large air shafts. The ventilation systems gave him access to every corner of the Blue Phoenix, as well as carrying sounds to him from all over the ship. He had been waiting and listening for weeks, stealing food and water as he needed it. But Sir Anthem was never far from his queen. Syle was good, but not good enough to fight through the paramount knight to get to her. Not unless Anthem was distracted…

Maeve's voice echoed through the airshafts, musical and sharp in her passion. Finally. Syle was beginning to wonder if Anthem's charms would ever win out against the Gray Queen's ridiculous affection for the human bounty hunter. Syle spared a small, thin smile for Anthem Calloren. He hoped that the knight was enjoying his conquest of the queen. It would be the last thing he ever knew.

Syle wormed his way through the duct. His wings ached, cramped and sore from too many days without room to stretch, but he barely noticed. It was finally time for Maeve Cavainna to die. The rest of the Blue Phoenix crew would follow her into the Nameless' embrace, but Syle had to start with the queen. She was the greatest danger to Xartasia. Syle kicked his way through another filter, dragging his spear behind him over the textured fibersteel. To judge by Maeve's ringing cries, she was in the cargo bay…

He wondered why she and Anthem were in there. Syle stopped at the vent cover. His fingernails still had not healed from prying up other such barriers all over the Blue Phoenix. Syle squinted through the mesh. He could just make out the narrow corridor that led out onto the cargo bay catwalk below. He placed his elbows against the cover and pushed. The metal squealed – not loud enough to be heard over Maeve, he was sure – and then fell to the floor. Syle slid out of the ventilation duct and dropped to the ground. He pulled his spear down and crept toward the hold. The hallway glowed dimly with blue nightlights.

"I do not think they wish to be disturbed," said a quiet voice from behind him.

Xartasia's spy and saboteur spun. Anthem Calloren stood in the dim azure light, dressed for sleep but carrying his spear. The ribbons rippled in the breeze flowing unimpeded through the open vent above him. Syle stared.