Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (35 page)

"Good afternoon, Princess Maeve," Gavriel said smoothly. "There is something I need from you. When you have given it to me, I will release you."

"Release me from my life," Maeve challenged as bravely as she could. Her handcuffs rattled against the beam as she trembled.

"Of course." Gavriel was unruffled. "But by the end, you will long for death as much as I do. Perhaps you already do."

"You will get nothing from me! Xartasia warned me of your purpose!"

"Did she?" The old Nihilist frowned. "She didn't mention that you had spoken. Interesting."

Maeve had little love for her traitorous cousin, but did not like to think that she had gotten Xartasia into trouble with the old Nihilist. He was a dangerous enemy. Maeve closed her mouth resolutely. Gavriel watched her for a long moment.

"The Waygates can open the way to any place, anything the operator remembers," he said, his reasonable tone belying his madness. "I will make the long journey to the Tamlin Waygate and with your memories, I will summon the Devourers once more."

The
Tamlin
Waygate? Then… then Gavriel knew nothing of the one above Pylos! Silently, Maeve thanked Kemmer for his ridiculous paranoia.

Gavriel must have sensed that she was thinking of something else. He sat forward in his chair. The lamplight etched every deep line, every wrinkle was black and sharp as an obsidian blade. He caught her chin in his withered fingers.

"Princess, listen to me," said Gavriel. "You and your kind have known such pain, such loss. Why should the Arcadians suffer alone? Your false gods offer no solace and no justice for the fate of the White Kingdom. But we can ensure that all the worlds of the Alliance suffer as much as you have."

"It does not matter if I agree," Maeve argued. "My memories are shameful, but they are my own. They cannot be shared."

Gavriel stood so suddenly that Maeve recoiled, striking her head once again on the support behind her. She forgot all about her hunger and thirst.

The old human held out a clenched fist toward Maeve. "I will have what I want," he told her. "I am strong now, princess. There are no secrets beyond my grasp. No spells, no songs. You will give up the memories I need!"

There could be no such spell. Rumors, yes, but… Gavriel smiled at Maeve and for a moment, she wondered if he was going to laugh at her.

"Your imagination is so limited, princess," Gavriel said. His thin white hair seemed to glow in the lamplight. "You have no idea the secrets that Xartasia has taught me."

"You… cannot take memories," Maeve repeated stubbornly. "It simply is not possible."

Gavriel opened his clenched hand and extended it toward his prisoner, palm facing up as though waiting to accept a gift. He closed his eyes and began to sing.
"S'aivarii kivva skie zha'anae estu hae'sva…"

The sound seeped through Maeve's ears, into her skull. The words were slow, dripping cold like icicles. Freezing, trying to freeze her scurrying thoughts in place, to hold them still and examine them.

"Vai'a min daekhin ja'hirae vae m'saa…"

Creeping cold. The frozen Prian air was summer-hot by comparison. Maeve ground her teeth and refused to remember. Not them, not the Devourers. But cold, yes. Cold and deadly.

Logan Coldhand.

Maeve closed her eyes and thought of the bounty hunter. The glacial blue of his eyes, the rigid set of his jaw. There was youth there, hardened too soon. And nobility deeply scarred by loss. Maeve felt Gavriel's presence in her mind, forced to see only what she did.

Gavriel stopped singing and his fingers tightened on the arms of his dusty old armchair. "I remember that man myself, princess. He destroyed the graveyard. He stole you and the child away. I remember him very well. Now show me the Tamlin Waygate, the Devourers pouring through and killing all before them."

"I will show you nothing," Maeve swore.

"Show me! I know that you long for destruction. Give me the means."

"No!"

Gavriel nodded. "Xartasia said that you would be stubborn, princess."

He gestured to Hallax. The striped Emberguard stepped into the pale circle of lamplight, knelt down and slapped Maeve hard across the mouth. Her head rocked back, smacked into the beam and then rebounded. Maeve fell forward, jerked to a sudden stop by her bound wrists and wings. She tasted blood in her mouth and spat red at Gavriel's feet.

"You think that will frighten me into giving you the memories? I do not fear you!" Maeve said.

"No, I think that it's going to take much more," Gavriel told her with a thin smile.

He took a knife from his robe. The blade was Arcadian glass and glittered in the yellow lamplight like diamond. Gavriel held it out, balanced across his palm.

"Do you remember this, princess?" he asked.

"No," said Maeve. Her voice shook. "It is just a knife. I have seen many."

"But how many have you felt? This one has tasted your blood before, twisting inside of you under the Gharib graveyard. I almost killed you with this knife, princess, and would have if Xartasia had not begged for your life."

Maeve recalled. She felt the scar every day, when she got dressed. It was a jagged line of shiny white a few inches above her navel. Even the surgical nanites could not entirely erase that mark.

"You remember," Gavriel said. "But you will remember this more."

He handed the glass knife to Hallax, who accepted it with a bow. He was going to torture her… Maeve struggled uselessly against her bonds. Her stomach was creeping up into her throat and she could not breathe, but that would not matter very much before long. The Emberguard knelt beside her. He grabbed a handful of her short black hair and jerked her head back.

"Alu'ma eru!"
she cried.
Do not do this!

"Ja'merruna,"
Gavriel answered.
I must.

He sang again as Maeve began to scream.

________

North Pylos Police Station Three was a large, blocky concrete building with its name stamped in huge, plain letters into the side. The walls were patchy gray-on-gray with painted-over graffiti.

The trucks were parked side by side in a gravel-strewn lot nearby. Duaal reluctantly followed Tiberius, Xia and Panna inside, casting one final glance back at the parking lot where Logan Coldhand and Gripper waited.

They passed through the sliding metal door into… chaos. Duaal did not know what he expected of a Prian police station, but this was not it. He was just inside the door, in a narrow concrete hallway, but it was full of people. Men and women jostled each other, pushed this way and that by hard-eyed cops. Many of them shouted threats, insults or even struggled to escape their arresting officers.

Tiberius threw an arm across Duaal's chest and jerked him to a stop as a man dressed in leather and chains crashed through a closed door. The man jumped to his feet, waving a squared length of wood that used to be the leg of a chair. People ducked and scattered, all shouting and swearing.

A blue-uniformed young woman with a patch over one eye charged through the broken door and slammed a truncheon into the man's midsection. When he doubled over, wheezing, she twisted the chair leg out of his hand and shoved him up against the wall.

"Need a hand?" Tiberius asked.

"No, I've got this," the cop said cheerfully.

She took a pair of worn handcuffs from her thick leather belt and snapped them around the man's wrists. An only slightly older man came running down the hall and she pushed her prisoner into his waiting arms.

"Get this guy into holding five," she instructed, shouting to make herself heard over the noise.

"It's full," the other cop told her.

"Six?"

"Full. There's some cells left in suicide watch."

"Good enough. But move him as soon as possible. We might need the paddeds for a real suicide." She adjusted her eyepatch and turned to face Tiberius. "Can I help you, sir?"

"Tiberius Myles. I need to talk to Captain Cerro."

"Can you tell me what about?" she asked. "Does he know you're here?"

"I have a missing girl and I need some help tracking down a chem dealer," Tiberius told her. "I called Cerro a few hours ago. He should be expecting me."

"Sure. He's on the second story. Take the stairs at the end of the hall. His office is labeled. You carrying any weapons?" the policewoman asked.

Tiberius nodded.

"You'll have to leave them up front," she said, pointing down the crowded hall to a barely visible desk. "You'll need to be searched before you can head up."

"That's fine," Tiberius answered. "I was a cop once, too. I know the routine."

The woman with the eyepatch whistled, clearly impressed that Tiberius had survived to such an age. It probably did not happen often. She waved a farewell to Tiberius, but her eyes lingered on Duaal. She may have winked at him, but with only the single eye, it was impossible to tell. Duaal winked back, just in case.

"Is it always like this?" Panna asked. She had to lean close and repeat her question.

"Pylos is a little worse than most cities," Tiberius said. "But more or less, yes."

"That's why Gavriel thought Prianus would be a good place to start up his stupid church," Duaal explained. "People here are desperate."

They shouldered their way through the crowd and up to the chest-high desk. Xia stepped around a grim-faced Prian officer dragging a frothy-mouthed Lyran down the hall toward a set of wide doors labeled HOLDING.

"Those cells are full!" Tiberius called after them.

The cop looked over his shoulder, conferred with a nearby officer, and then waved his thanks to Tiberius. The slavering Lyran suggested that this was a sign from on high to let him go, but the policeman said nothing and cuffed him to one of the steel rings embedded in the concrete wall.

"Why didn't Gavriel stay?" Panna asked. She took in the scene with wide eyes. "It seems like a good – and insane – idea."

"Because there are plenty like that guy," Duaal said, pointing to the Lyran. "But then there are people like Tiberius and Officer Eyepatch, too. The first outnumber the second, but the Prian police are just as fanatical as the Nihilists. Gavriel hates them."

"But if Coldhand is right, then he's returned to Prianus," Xia said. "Why would he do that, if it was so much trouble before?"

"I'm not sure," Duaal confessed.

Tiberius had made his way to the front desk, signed them all in and had the desk officer call up to Captain Cerro's office. When prompted, Duaal handed over the glass dagger he had bought on Stray. A cop missing all of her hair and one ear took the knife, patted them down thoroughly, then ran a sensor wand of some kind over each of the little party. When she was done, she jerked her thumb over her shoulder and told them to go upstairs.

It was quieter on the second story. This part of the station seemed to be dedicated, as far as Duaal could tell, to storing desks and cops. There were men and women in blue working on paper and datadexes or conferring at chalkboards covered in timelines, lists and printouts. Some looked up at the civilians as they emerged from the stairwell, but not recognizing them as anyone pertinent to their cases, returned to work.

Tiberius seemed to know where he was going. He led Duaal, Xia and Panna through the maze of desks with sagging tops. They matched the patched uniforms of the cops sitting behind them – old and shabby, but quite capable of performing their jobs.

They arrived at an open door with Cerro's name painted on it. The police captain stood inside, rubbing his closed eyes as he listened to someone on the phone. The frown tugging at his lips did not seem to be a result of the burn scar on his cheek.

"I… Yes. Arrange it," he said shortly. "Then put together a task force to go back in. We need to know what's going on up there."

Cerro listened a moment longer, then hung up the phone. He looked up at Tiberius and offered his hand. "Captain Myles," he greeted the older cop. "You said that there were things you needed to tell me. I don't suppose one of them is that you've found Cavainna?"

"No," Tiberius said tightly. "But we know who has her."

Cerro frowned again. "You don't sound like that's good news. What's wrong?"

"Have you heard of the Cult of Nihil?"

The police captain thought for a moment and then shook his head. "Sorry, no. I don't think so. I take it they're a problem?"

"You have no idea how bad a problem," Duaal said with a shudder.

"They're exactly what they sound like. They worship death," Tiberius explained. "Maeve made some trouble for them back on Stray, about seven or eight months ago. And now they've grabbed her."

"You're sure?" Cerro asked. "We're a long way from Stray, Captain Myles."

"They're here!" Duaal insisted. "They've been on Prianus before, in Highwind."

"Easy, kid. I'm not saying I don't believe you. I'm just saying Prianus is a long way from Stray, and Pylos is a long way from Highwind. Do you think this cult group came here expressly to kidnap Maeve Cavainna?"