Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (24 page)

"You've been sharing guard duties," Xia pointed out.

"Only during the day! At night, he sends me to bed like a child!"

Duaal's vision smeared with angry tears. He swiped them away before Xia could see. She took his hand again and coaxed Duaal down onto the edge of the cot where she sat.

"Tiberius just wants you to be safe," she told him gently. "Yes, he can be a little restrictive at times, but it's not out of a lack of trust. It's out of love. You're the only son he's ever known."

"If he loves me that much, doesn't he want me to grow up to be a good man?"

Xia laughed. Duaal gave her a wounded look and the Ixthian squeezed his hand gently in hers.

"You never knew your parents, so I shouldn't laugh," she said. "Of course he does, and you have. But I was one of the youngest of a very large family. I watched my mother and father go through this every time one of my brothers or sisters left home. It was hard for them. It's not rational and it's not fair, but no father really wants to see his little boy grow up. Be patient with Tiberius."

She wiped a tear from Duaal's cheek. His face still stung, but he found himself nodding at Xia. She stood and pulled the human to his feet, too.

"How's your head?" she asked.

"Better."

"Let's get something to eat," Xia suggested. "Then let's get back to the main tent. I'm eager to go find out what they found."

"Protecting yourself is the first step in protecting others."

- Braxan Arms advertisement (135 PA)

Logan Coldhand returned to the Arcadian quarter early the next morning. Once the morning fog burned away, the day was bright and clear. In spite of the oppressive chill, the sky was full of winged shapes. Those Arcadians lucky enough to have jobs went to and from work much like any other Prian citizen.

Many more had nowhere to go. They sat on rooftops and balconies, spreading their wings to warm in the sun. Even on the ground far below, Coldhand heard songs. They seemed to be prayers and filled the morning with a slow, sad sound.

Logan was familiar with the Arcadian language, but could pick out only a few words here and there, snatches of song carried on the shifting wind.
Erris
,
Aes
and
Anslin
, the fairy gods.
Alla'si
, which seemed to mean both food and drink.
Wyner'ii
meant dragons, but as far as Logan knew, even the Arcadians did not truly believe that those creatures were more than myth. It seemed instead to be a metaphorical term for all manner of hardship. And then
lae marnavae
. The Nameless, the Arcadian goddess of death and destruction.

Logan remembered Maeve's story of the cruel, deceitful Nameless. In the Nihilists' tunnels, Maeve had said that no one prayed to the Nameless, that it was forbidden by some ancient law. Perhaps by Cavain himself, for all Logan knew. But he heard her name now. Had Maeve been wrong?

Back on the Blue Phoenix, all those months ago, Maeve seemed so perversely pleased to share her people's mythology. It was a sacred tale of Arcadian creation, of their deaths, and finally of their own capacity to create life.

But the Arcadians made nothing now. Where were the fabled glass towers of the White Kingdoms? They had not built a single one anywhere in the core. There were a handful of weapons – like Maeve's glass spear – and suits of armor that had come through the Waygates, but none made since the flight from Arcadia. The fairies never even crowned a new monarch for themselves…

Who would that be?
Coldhand wondered.
Titania, that raven in white? Maeve?

Coldhand drove up one street and down the next, exploring the Arcadian quarter. In the case of Pylos, it was something like an actual quarter of the city… He had never seen so many of the golden-haired fairies before. They were everywhere, on every sidewalk and rooftop, filling every window and alleyway.

Smoke rose from crumbling chimneys and holes cut directly into the ceilings of the upper stories. Heat lamps glowed orange and yellow between the boards nailed over windows. But it was not enough. Never enough. As Coldhand drove slowly by, he could hear the sounds of crying and hoarse, sickly coughing.

He spent the entire day scanning the streets with a predator's eye. If he were to hunt these Arcadians, as the Nihilists did, where best to corner them? Like all Prian cities, Pylos was full of crooked roads built around obstacles where there was no money to remove them. The constant quakes jostled the city further askew.

Logan slowed as he drove past a shop and postal office half-sunk into a fissure. Even under the midday sun, everything inside was murky and steeped in shadows. After a moment's inspection, Coldhand could make out piles of rubble and refuse choking the hallway beyond, but little else. It would be an easy place to hide. For a human, at least. With their long wings, an Arcadian might find the close confines difficult going.

Another part of Maeve's story suddenly came back to Logan. Her people's creation myth held that the Nameless, made wingless by her creator's angry curse, went on to mother a race of her own. Like her, the Nameless' children were bound to the ground and could only stare longingly up at the heavens.

It was just a myth, of course. Coldhand believed in no gods, not the Arcadian trinity or the old Prian ones or the all-encompassing conglomerate god of the CWA Union of Light. But could the story have some basis in truth?

Logan pulled away from a crumbling curb, back out into the street, and watched other Prians drive and swerve past. With their blond hair and pale skin, his own people looked not unlike wingless Arcadians. Much larger, of course, and heavier… Could the Prians, or all humans, share a common ancestor with the Arcadians?

Coldhand stopped at a store to buy a cheap dinner of canned petrimeat stew, complete with orange cubes that were supposed to be carrots. The hunter ate mechanically, sitting on the corner and watching the street carefully. Gavriel was not a fool. If he wanted Arcadians, he would send other Arcadians – not humans – to get them. Vorus had said as much. They were going missing, but there were no fewer in the city.

Vorus told me a lot even when he only told me a little.

An aching, nauseating sensation made his small meal sit uneasily. Logan tried to ignore it.

Gavriel's looking for Arcadians.
An
Arcadian, maybe. He's killing or taking them. That's why they're vanishing. There's been no drop in the fairy population because Gavriel's here with his own.

But if they were done, they would leave, wouldn't they? That means Gavriel hasn't found what he needs. He's still searching.

Coldhand tossed the stew can into a full trashcan and climbed back onto his bike. There were no easy clues to find, no simple way to identify the Nihilists. He had not seen a single black robe all day. The Nihilists were hiding themselves too well for that. They would not wear the telltale signs of their faith in public.

Logan remembered the smell of the cultists, the stink of infection and decay. Many of them were sick, painfully dying. But so were an unsettling number of the local Arcadians. They were twig-thin creatures with no fat to keep them warm and caught ill easily in the Prian cold. Without the black robes, there was no way to tell the Nihilists and locals apart.

Coldhand's last chance was an old-fashioned stake-out, just like in his police days. He would watch from the shadows and wait for the Nihilists to strike. The work would be tedious and held no promise of success. Logan was only one man. If he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, a hundred Arcadians might be snatched out from under his beak and he would never know. He would need patience and a lot of luck.

It was late in the afternoon. The sun sank early behind the tall Kayton Mountains that surrounded the city and violet shadows stretched across Pylos, frost blooming in the deepest of them. The long twilight would come soon, and then the deep black night. The best time to hunt.

Coldhand found a narrow passage between a pair of buildings that leaned so close that their roofs created an uneven but unbroken surface. He parked his streetcycle and threw a tarpaulin over the shiny metal frame. At a glance, the dark cloth blended into the growing shadows. It would not deter any serious thieves, but most would overlook it.

If someone stole the bike, it was going to cost the bounties on five or six Nihilists to repay the rental yard. This hunt could get expensive. It already was. Coldhand would have to bring in at least fourteen Nihilist bounties to break even. More if anything went wrong.

Logan buttoned up his black wool coat and stepped out into the street. He looked no different than any other Prian. The Nihilists should not notice him at all. Their attention would be on their prey, the Arcadians.

________

Over the next days, Coldhand witnessed several crimes against the Arcadians, but none for which the Nihilists appeared responsible. There were thefts, some in the fairies' homes and others at gun- or knife-point out on the street. They had so little… Had he not grown up on Prianus himself, Logan might have wondered who could possibly be desperate enough to steal cheap patched pots and gray bouillon cubes. But there was always someone colder, hungrier and more desperate.

Some of the thieves were Prians, but almost as many were other Arcadians. Coldhand was surprised to see any of the fairies taking such an active hand in their own fates. Most of the winged aliens were as passive as water… but not as many as Logan had first thought. He remembered the Arcadian on the rooftop who supervised his first visit.

But there were no abductions or kidnappings on Coldhand's watch.

He stood at the corner of a small theater, long since closed down and flooded by silty mud washed down from the Kayton Mountains. A flock of gray-green buzzards had taken up residence in the rafters and shrilled indignantly at Coldhand's intrusion. They ruffled their striped feathers, but retreated meekly further into the darkened recesses of the rotted ceiling, unwilling to do more than scold the intruder.

The setting sun was only a distant glow behind the mountains. An evening mist rose from the street in colorless tendrils, as though some ethereal, tentacled creature stirred beneath Pylos.

Logan stepped out of the theater. He was watching the warehouse across the street, where several Arcadian families were living in makeshift tents huddled up against the remaining walls. But in the thickening fog, he did not have a good view. He needed to get closer.

Coldhand waited for a dented truck to pass and then slipped silently across the road. A supervisor's nest hung askew from a corner of the warehouse. It would be an uncomfortable place to spend the night, but Logan had endured far worse. He grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder leading up to the nest. Vorus' bruises were stiff and ached in the cold.

Something passed between Coldhand and the streetlamp. The shadow flickered over him like fog in negative. Logan whirled and whipped his Talon-9 free. An Arcadian man alighted on the sidewalk with his feet and wings splayed in a ready fighter's stance. He did not wear the gauzy scarves and skirts that seemed to have been their native dress back in the White Kingdom, or even the sorts of stained, disheveled winter clothes that were all most fairies could afford. This one dressed in dark denims and a leather jacket slit up the back over his wings. Most Arcadians – men and women alike – wore their pale hair long, but the fairy facing Coldhand now had cut it short. In the Prian fashion, actually, not unlike Logan himself.

More shapes landed behind the hunter – two more Arcadians dressed much like the first. Coldhand slid back against the crumbling wall. The fairy in the street advanced cautiously, fists balled and fingers laced through strips of flexible fibersteel that covered his knuckles in metal. Boxer's bracelets, as they were often called.

"You've been perched here for days," the Arcadian said in perfectly clear Aver.

Coldhand kept his gun trained on him, but watched the other two. They were closing, too, but more slowly than the first.

"I saw you a few nights ago outside my flat, staring." The first fairy was close enough that Coldhand could make out details. He was a small man, like the rest of his species, and young. Much younger than Maeve, Logan guessed.

"I saw you, too," the hunter said shortly. "What do you want?"

The Arcadian stopped several yards away, eyeing the Talon-9 leveled at him. "I was going to ask you that. You've been haunting these streets day and night. What do you want?"

"That's my business."

"Anything you play against me and mine is
my
business. Ballad's Boys keep this block."

The fairy boy thumped the heel of one hand against his chest proudly. The pair in Coldhand's peripheral vision nodded in agreement with this sentiment. The Arcadian's weighted words and proud, erect carriage seemed to suggest that he was the Ballad for which the gang was named. Coldhand glanced skyward, through the fog. How many others lurked nearby?

"Go away," Coldhand told them. "I'm not interested in territorial pissing matches. I'm just doing a job and then I'll be gone."

"A job? What kind of job?"