Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (56 page)

"New Hennor prison com system," said a recorded voice through the distinctive Mirran burr. "Please clearly state the number of the prisoner you would like to contact."

"One-three-seven-two-eight-eight-nine," Ferris recited slowly. He had the number written down, of course, but he did not need to look at it. The duke had memorized it long ago.

The Sunjarrah parliamentary crest remained on the screen, an emerald-green tree studded with silver stars as Ferris waited. Finally, the automated voice spoke again.

"The New Hennor penal system regrets to inform you that prisoner 137-288-9 is deceased," it said flatly. "Time of death was 11.28.234 PA, 02:52 local time. Please submit any additional questions about this inmate to Warden Junmorro. Would you like to be transferred now?"

"No."

Ferris pressed the glowing button and the screen went dark. He cried for a long time. Il'mani had just been a baby when the White Kingdom fell. Ferris remembered cradling the tiny baby to his chest as he flew. He had clutched Shae's hand, but the Devourers pulled her away with clattering, hissing black chains that sprouted hooks along their lengths even as she screamed and bled into the grass. But his wife had not screamed in pain, only for Ferris to fly, to take their daughter and get away… She had been so brave.

Il'mani was too young to remember the White Kingdom. She would never see it now, not unless Xartasia managed to reforge time. Then Ferris would stand in Aes' warm golden light again. With his family.

But the queen – the real queen – was right. The White Kingdom was dead and gone. Like his wife and his daughter. The All-Singer gave life and the Nameless took it away. Ferris loved his family and his kingdom, but they were lost to him. He could miss them – and would every day left in his life – but he could never, ever hold them again.

________

Gripper sat in the corner of the darkened engine room. There were twenty-three Arcadians staying in the hold of the Blue Phoenix. Several of them had volunteered to care for Gripper's garden. It was the least they could do, they said, in return for the honor of flying in the same ship as Queen Maeve. Gripper let them. He just didn't feel like taking care of the plants anymore.

The Arboran boy wrapped long arms around his knees and buried his face in his furry forearms. He didn't realize that there was anyone else in the engine room until feathers brushed his scarred ear. Gripper looked up as Maeve sat down beside him.

"Logan is worried about you," she said. "He told me that you did not want to talk."

Gripper wiped his nose on an oil-stained rag. "It's not his fault. Hunter just doesn't understand. He tried, though."

Out of the corner of one eye, Gripper saw Maeve smile. "I never thought that you and Logan would be friends. You two have nothing in common."

"That's not true. We both like you, Glass."

"That is not the sole basis of your friendship."

"No," Gripper agreed. "I guess not."

They sat silently for a long moment. The Blue Phoenix's engines, blissfully ignorant of everything wrong in the galaxy, churned and chugged loudly. The null-inertia field generator hummed like a huge insect, audible even through seven layers of shielding and insulation. Air rushed and rattled through ducting, through the lopsided old pyramid of the gas exchanger and then out again. The water and waste systems were a level down from here, through a hatch and down a ladder that Gripper seldom bothered with, but he heard them, too. There was the high-pitched groan of the pump seal, the one that was always breaking. Gripper must have welded it shut again a hundred times since Tiberius had hired him.

"Those things I saw down on the surface of Arborus," Gripper said slowly, "those really were Waygates. Prototypes, I guess. And that person I followed through one, to Kahl… Do you think that was Xartasia?"

"Yes," said Maeve. "I can think of no one else who might have had business on your world."

"If the sycona tree hadn't been sick, if it hadn't fallen, I never would have been there. I never would have followed her through the gate. I wouldn't be here."

Maeve chewed her lower lip and said nothing. Gripper's vision blurred with tears again. They stung on his cheeks and splashed to the stained engine room floor.

"I guess Arborus is in this galaxy," he said in a choked voice. "Maybe out on the rim somewhere. It would be a really long flight to get home, but we've been out to the Tower. Flying to Arborus probably wouldn't be too hard compared to that. But… but there's no point anymore, is there? Everyone is dead. Eaten. Just like Arcadia."

"Yes."

Gripper grabbed Maeve's tiny shoulders. How could she
stand
it? Knowing that no matter what she did, how far or fast she flew, no matter how many things she fixed or charts she looked at, there was
nothing
to go home to? Here and now… that was all Maeve had left. It was all Gripper had, too.

"And… and we're related to those monsters?" he asked.

"You are not alone," Maeve told him gently. "Xia believes that the humans are close relatives to the Devourers, too. Not direct descendants, as the Arborans are… were. But yes, life born of the same basic genetics and shaped by the same forces."

"You mean, if species like the Axials and Mirrans and Prians keep evolving, they will end up like the Devourers?" Gripper asked, horrified.

"Perhaps. Xia says that the galaxy is not the same as it was when the Devourers ruled it. And the people are different. They may breed different traits." Maeve pointed to her own chest. "The Arcadians, too, are made from many of the same genes, Xia tells me. That is why we look, to the coreworlders, more or less human. The Devourers designed us to look this way. We have probably evolved a little in the last few million years, but she suspects that we were quite recognizable to our creators. Just as they could not have failed to note the similarities between the Arborans and themselves."

Gripper wiped his eyes and stared at Maeve. "You mean that when they eat Arcadians and Arborans, they
know
they're eating their own creations and relatives?"

"On Prianus, too, when they faced the human police."

"Maeve, how can they do this?" Gripper asked desperately, shaking the little fairy woman. "How can they do this to us?"

"They are hungry. You have projected the energy needs of their nanite swarms," said Maeve. "Most life in the galaxy sprang from the seed they left behind. We all have it in ourselves to become just like the Devourers."

Gripper sobbed. Suddenly, he no longer cared why. Why the Devourers left, why they came back just to kill and consume their own descendants. Arborus… Weh-Weh… was gone. Gripper wished that Maeve could not understand, that he could just cry alone in the engine room. But she did understand. All too well. Gripper cried great hiccupping sobs into Maeve's white wings. She held him awkwardly and had no comfort to give.

________

Panna stood at the catwalk railing. Ballad was just behind her, his arms around her waist and his wings wrapped around them both. She could still see down into the hold, but her peripheral vision was full of white feathers. Panna smelled the leather of Ballad's jacket. The glass armor was an honor, he said, but too stiff and clunky to wear around the overcrowded Blue Phoenix.

She felt Ballad's warm breath against the back of her neck. "Hard to believe that in four more days, none of this may exist anymore," he said.

The Arcadians below did not seem to notice them, or at least were too busy with their own thoughts and errands to pay the knight and the wingless girl any mind. Panna brushed the back of one hand against Ballad's wing.

"We won't be here to notice anything's wrong," she said. "Neither one of us would have been born if the White Kingdom hadn't fallen."

"Maybe there would be some variation," suggested Ballad. "Both of our parents are older than the part of history that Xartasia wants to chop out, yeah?"

"Yes, but would those people be us? I would still have wings. You would never have been a knight."

"How do you know?" Ballad asked. "I'm a damned good knight."

"The best, but Avadain isn't a noble name. You don't have any house colors," Panna pointed out. "There's no way you would be a knight."

"I would still find you."

Panna laughed and turned to face the Prian fairy. "One unimportant girl somewhere in a kingdom that spanned five planets?"

"Five planets? Is that how big the old kingdom was?" Ballad asked.

Panna rolled her eyes. "I don't think your chances would be very good."

"I could do it."

"Even if you could, I wouldn't be me. If I were born at all, I wouldn't be the same woman you know. If Xartasia does this, she'll erase our whole existence. That's the point."

Ballad kissed Panna fiercely. "Fine," he growled against her lips. "So that old bitch might wipe us both out of time along with the rest of the Alliance. So what? Like you said, we won't be around to regret it. That's four days away."

She let him pull her down the corridor toward the bunks. Ballad elbowed the door controls and pulled her into the shadowed room beyond. Panna pulled him close.

"Whatever else happens," she whispered, "I'm glad I met you, Ballad Avadain."

________

Duaal sat in the cockpit. One of his legs hung over the arm of the pilot's chair. He scanned idly over the instrumentation, but everything was running smoothly. After their long flight to the Tower, the jump to Axis seemed almost… routine. How many times had he and Tiberius made this same flight? Duaal ran his hand over the worn armrest of the pilot's chair and missed the grumpy old Prian.

There was a soft knock at the cockpit door. Duaal didn't look up. "Three days," he called. "We'll be landing in three more days."

He announced their updated arrival time every morning and evening, but it didn't stop the curious Arcadians from asking. They were all counting their remaining hours, Duaal supposed. Imminent death or incarceration had odd effects on people.

"I know," said Xia from the door. "I heard you this morning."

Duaal looked up. "Sorry. I thought you were one of the fairies."

"Can I come in?"

"Sure."

The Ixthian sat down beside Duaal in the copilot's chair. It was strange to see anyone there besides Logan. Duaal giggled to himself. It was even stranger to think of being used to Logan Coldhand. But the truth was that Duaal liked having the Prian on his ship. And not just because of the view when Logan left the showers.

"What's so funny?" Xia asked.

"Nothing," answered Duaal with a wave of his hand. "Just thinking about boys. Since Maeve is back in the bunk with Logan, you don't think that Anthem would be interested, do you?"

"Anthem?" Xia repeated, blinking her colorful compound eyes. "Anthem Calloren? He doesn't seem like your type."

"Why not?"

"Anthem's a good man. He's gentle and polite. You don't usually go for that kind."

Duaal laughed again, a little louder this time. "I suppose not. But you changed my taste more than a bit," he said and then gave Xia a serious look. "Thanks for that."

She smiled and curled her short antennae. "It was my pleasure."

"I hope you mean that."

Xia nodded and then paused before speaking again. "Three more days?"

"Yeah."

She licked her lips. They shined like Arcadian glass in the multicolored superluminal starlight. "Are the other ships keeping up?"

"The O'Collin had a pump failure, but they're back on schedule. The Zhan and the Starfire are both claiming fuel issues. But I bet my nonexistent pay that they're just trying for more money. The Xol-tan is having some sort of computer problem. They're running about an hour behind."

"I wonder if that hour will get them killed or save their lives," said Xia. Her eyes were a deep, dark blue that Duaal did not often see.

"You don't need to do this," he told Xia. "You could have stayed in Kaellisem. Hells, they probably could have used your help. You're the only doctor in the whole city."

"If Xartasia pulls this off, Kaellisem will never have existed. I might not, either. There are billions of people living now that–"

Duaal looked at Xia. "But
you
don't need to do this. One Ixthian medic isn't exactly going to get CWAAF riled up and out into the field. You know that."

"I do." Xia sat back in Duaal's old seat and stared out at the rainbow stars. "I thought about staying. Kessa offered me their spare room. I almost accepted."

"Why didn't you?"

Xia turned to look at Duaal. "You're not leaving after the Arcadians get off the Blue Phoenix, are you? You're going with them to face CWAAF and fight Xartasia."

"Of course."

"Why?"

Duaal opened his mouth to answer, but could not find the words. How could he not fight? It wasn't just his own life that would be unwoven like cheap cloth, but the lives of billions. No matter how petty and selfish Duaal knew he could be, how could he just let that happen? He just couldn't.