The Unseen Tempest (Lords of Arcadia) (15 page)

Ater made sure not to look at Kor, because if the elf knew what he was about to do, he would have tried to stop him.

He stood, summoning his second dagger to his other hand. To the untrained eye, the next forty-eight seconds would have been a blur. First, in a fraction of a second, he threw both his blades straight ahead of him toward a tree some yards away. The impetus of his throw helped him accelerate as he dropped backward toward the ground. The double “chunk” of both daggers burying themselves in a tree’s bole yards away stopped the hunting party cold. Alert, they froze in place, seeking out the source of the noise.

Behind them, his fall utterly silent, Ater dropped headfirst toward the ground, relying on the cable around his ankles to stop his plunge when it ran out of play and went taut. Ten feet off the ground, it did just that, and Ater came to a halt behind the party, only inches from them. He was behind the sorcellerie, who had her bow drawn, ready to cast a spell at a word from the leader of the hunting party. Ater hit her hard and fast at the base of her neck at precisely the instant the cord began to retract, pulling both him and his captive up. She lost consciousness instantly, but before she could fall, Ater tightened his arms around her and they both flew upward when the cord retracted.

One moment the hunting party was five; now they were four.

The enchanted cord was ensorcelled so that the weight it carried made no matter. Whatever the burden, it would retract with enough force to pull whatever load it bore all the way back to the start of the fall, which meant the branch. Kor barely had time to look down by the time Ater popped back up with his victim. He tossed her to the elf and steadied himself back on the branch. Kor opened his mouth to ask what the hell the dark elf was doing, but Ater put a finger across his lips and nodded toward the ground.

The commotion below grew louder.

“Where did she go?”

“What in the name of Koran…?”

“The woods are cursed.”

After a quick look through the various small pockets that made up his belt, Ater summoned his blades back and tied something to the side of one dagger. He took aim in the opposite direction he had thrown before and launched this one at the ground. When it impacted, there was a slight explosion, and smoke issued from the spot where it hit. Sure enough, the spooked guards began to panic.

“Demons.”

“We’re surrounded.”

“Koran help me.”

Ater gave Kor a grin as he put his hands to his mouth and began to make a deep grumbling sound that echoed through the forest. If Kor hadn’t been watching the dark elf making the sound, he would have assumed a dragon lived nearby. Which was exactly what the hunting party thought it was. The sound of four terrified elven guards fleeing the forest was followed by Ater’s subdued laughter as he pulled his weapons back and sheathed them.

All told, it took less than a minute.

“Are you insane?” Kor asked once the hunting party was well out of earshot.

Ater paused in his revelry. “What? She’s not dead, just unconscious.”

“I don’t mean that,” Kor raged at him. “I mean jumping out of a tree with only a cord between you and a broken neck.”

Ater cocked his head, confused. “This is odd talk from a man who is supposed to kill me for vengeance.”

“Do not change the subject. You jumped out of a tree!”

Ater got right back in Kor’s face. “Yes, I did, and it is not the first time. In fact, it isn’t even the tenth time in my life I’ve done something like that. I’m trained to take a party like that out. If we’re being honest, that was harder than normal, since I couldn’t kill them. What exactly did you think Pullus and I trained to do? Sneak up behind people and stab them in the back?”

If Kor had been shocked before, the mention of his brother only made the situation worse. “You’re telling me that Pull did insane crazy things like that too? No wonder he’s dead. Hell, I’m surprised he lived as long as he did!”

He did not see the dark elf’s hand lash out and slap him across the cheek.

“Your brother was a trained operative, and one of the best I have ever seen. I’m sorry we all can’t live in a happy little cloud protected by Koran’s love, but it is a harsh world, and to survive it takes harsh measures.”

“Harsh measures? Is that a euphemism for murder?”

Ater’s hands shook with anger. “It is exactly what it sounds like. Harsh.” Without looking, he swung and hit the sorcellerie, who had been feigning unconsciousness for the past few minutes, landing a shot squarely to her jaw. She slumped back out. “You are complaining about that, and you want me to take you to Stygian? For what? So you can judge us all and declare we are all going to freeze eternally because we will be so far away from Koran’s light?”

Kor said nothing.

“Tie her up. We need to go before those idiots realize they’ve been had.”

The two men gathered their gear silently, the tension almost unbearable.

B
EFORE
I
could say anything about the Glinda bombshell, Ocell popped her beak in and asked Demain if she had a few minutes to calm a few citizens. “If you three will excuse me, I’ll be right back.” She waved her hands, and a crystal table behind us shimmered and was suddenly filled with a variety of food and drink. “Make yourself comfortable. Milo, walk with me.”

The white rabbit gave us a small bow, excusing himself before following the queen out of the room.

Leaving us alone to talk freely. “She’s lying,” Hawk said almost instantly.

“You don’t know that,” I replied, going over to the table to see what was there. I hadn’t eaten since we left Ruber’s place, and that was at least two life-threatening emergencies ago.

“No,
you
know she is lying.”

I looked back at him, confused. “I know what?”

It took a second for me to grab what he was saying from his thoughts.

“That’s a movie,” I said once I realized what he was talking about. “Just because Glinda was good in a story doesn’t mean she
is
good.”

“He’s right, Hawk,” Ruber interjected. “Though we don’t know how Kane’s people have seen the other realms, it is obvious the stories they wrote based on them are at least partially incorrect. We can’t deem if this Glinda is good or bad based on a fairy tale or a movie.”

I could sense Hawk’s thoughts reverse themselves almost instantly.

“Fine. This Glinda is to blame for what is happening to my land, and she should pay for it.”

I lost it.

“Don’t do that,” I said, snapping at him. “Do not use this as an excuse to conveniently forget your people’s crimes against the Dark. So what if some witch gave your mom the knowledge so she could steal the tree from my world? She sure didn’t mind control Titania into doing it. And no one forced your people to treat an entire class of people as lesser beings, which is why Puck was able to turn them against you. If Glinda is partly to blame, fine, but there is more than enough bad here to pass around.”

Hawk’s eyes locked with mine, and I could feel the hurricane of emotions raging in his mind. Thankfully, Ruber said nothing, which gave Hawk time to settle before he had to talk again. In those few seconds, the two of us played a game of mental chess where he tried to defend his mother’s actions, and I called shenanigans on each and every one. A fight like this could have taken almost an hour vocally, but mentally it was over as quickly as it had begun.

He exhaled a deep sigh and slumped down in his chair, defeated. “She’s still my mother,” he protested weakly. “And she doesn’t deserve to die like that.”

“No,” Demain said from the doorway, “she doesn’t.”

The queen walked in and perched on the edge of her desk, looking at us. “Titania may have stolen the world tree, but I assure you, my sister made it possible. If there is punishment to be doled out, Inmediares should be one of the first ones who gets a second helping.”

Hawk was too ashamed to say anything. He couldn’t even look up at the red queen, so it fell to me to say something.

“Can you help us stop it?” I asked her, trying not to sound too pleading.

“Me?” she asked rhetorically. “No, not by myself. My sister has too long a head start on us. We’re going to need some more help.”

Hawk looked up, and I could feel him on the verge of crying. “And who will help my people? After all we’ve done?”

Demain gave him a small smile. “I will for one, and I know at least one other who could join us.” No one said a thing since, obviously, she was waiting for someone to ask her who. I hate people who know stuff and then make you drag it out of them when you know they’re dying to share it. Finally she added, “My sister Olim might be persuaded to help. She doesn’t want Inmediares to win any more than I do.”

Ruber floated closer to the queen. “Win? Win what exactly?”

Demain ignored him.

“We will need to gather supplies before traveling to Niflgard. It is not the most hospitable of locations.”

How did I know that word? I wasn’t grabbing it from Hawk’s brain; I had actually heard it somewhere before.

“You sister lives in Niflgard?” Hawk asked, mildly shocked.

Demain laughed a little at the suggestion. “Live? No, my dear boy, she rules it.”

“Your sister defeated Jadia, the white witch?”

That was it! Niflgard was the world Hawk thought was Narnia back in the auditorium.

Demain said nothing, as if waiting for Hawk to figure out a riddle. Turns out I got to the answer before he did.

“Your sister is the white witch, isn’t she?”

She just smiled and nodded.

Crap.

F
ERRA
AND
Caerus followed Molly as she led them deeper and deeper into the workshop.

“You saw Molly do that as well, right?” Ferra asked the sapphire quietly.

Caerus paused a few seconds before asking in an equally hushed voice, “Molly do what?”

“Molly take those machines down?” The gem said nothing. “She had blades and was jumping around?” More nothing. “You had to have seen her on top of the tank.”

When the sapphire responded, it was in the universally translatable tone
it’s not that I don’t believe you, but I don’t believe you
. She asked, “Molly? Our Molly?” Ferra nodded. “Well, I was inside the knight for most of the fight so, no, I didn’t see Molly myself. Are you sure you weren’t stunned, or maybe she activated some system that looked like a clockwork girl?”

Ferra almost growled in response. “She threw a missile at your knight.”

“She did?” Now Caerus wasn’t even trying to hide her incredulous nature. “Are you positive she didn’t cause the missile to go awry instead? That sounds much more like Molly.”

Ferra stopped trying to convince the gemling, since there was simply no way to marry the thought of sweet and kind Molly being some kind of combat monster. She dropped it instead and simply vowed to watch the companion closely.

They turned and entered a huge hallway with rails built into the floor that would allow some kind of vehicles to travel on them. The ceiling was high enough to allow even the largest machine made in the workshop to travel down the hall in comfort. The rails led to two iron-cast doors embossed with the Tinker and Jones logo.

“What is this?” Caerus asked, trying not to sound impressed by the sheer size of the doors.

“Fabrication floor,” Molly explained, heading over to a small panel built into the wall. “This is where the finishing touches are placed on finished constructs. From here they either go to one of the showrooms or to the shipping floor. We can cut across this floor and see if the fabrication engines are even functioning.”

She pulled her key out and inserted it into the wall slot. There was a bone-grinding squeal of metal on metal as the doors tried to open. Ferra covered her ears as the doors slid open maybe four feet before something snapped in the walls and smoke began to issue out of the panel.

Molly pulled her key out and shook her head. “This is bad. The self-lubrication systems have failed down here, which means the housekeeping protocols have failed. I don’t know how much we can salvage.”

“If we can find even one of those war machines, it could make a difference trying to take Arcadia back,” Caerus reminded her.

“Agreed,” Molly said, putting her key away. “If we are lucky, there were some still waiting to be finalized. Even with a framework, we can cobble together something that works.”

“When you say ‘we,’ you mean ‘you,’ of course,” Ferra commented as they began to walk into the pitch-black room.

A pair of blue lenses slipped down over Molly’s eyes. “It was the polite thing to say.”

Ferra was relieved. That sounded more like her Molly. Caerus began to glow brighter as they moved past the broken doors and onto the fabrication floor.

K
OR
AND
Ater left the sorcellerie tied up on the branch and took off in the other direction.

Neither elf had said a word since their argument, and it didn’t look like either one was inclined to do so. It wasn’t until they hit the edge of the forest that Ater was forced to talk. “So we need to come to some kind of understanding before we attempt to march into Stygian.” Kor said nothing in response, so the dark elf continued. “Most dark elves are simply normal elves who have decided Koran’s way is not for them. It isn’t a wretched hive of scum and villainy; it is a city where a race of outcasts have banded together to survive.”

“Who kill,” Kor interjected.

Ater sighed and sat down on a rock. “Yes, Kor, we kill. We do not believe that every single life is a precious and sacred ball of light. We accept the fact that some lives, some souls, are just too vile and disgusting to live, so when attacked or threatened, yes, we kill.”

Kor looked Ater straight in the eyes. “And were you attacked or threatened when you decided to become an assassin?”

If the question was meant to rattle the dark elf, it failed. “Both,” he answered curtly. “I swore an oath to the Arcadian throne to defend it from enemies both foreign and domestic, and that means killing some people before they have a chance to kill others. I’m sorry that Koran’s vision isn’t encompassing enough to understand that, but there are bad people out there, and sometimes, bad people need to be killed.”