Authors: Robert
“What the
HELL
are you talking about?” The seraph looked as if she was on the verge of tears.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“No shit.” Norah turned to Mycah. “Did you understand what he just said?”
She shook her head, then considered the situation. She didn’t much care for House Keiths, but…where else could they go? It was time to face the truth. Derek would be in danger when they got to the north; he was too powerful for anyone to leave him alone, and too naive to protect himself. Kaitopolis was as good a place as any. She might as well test the waters. She took a deep breath.
“I am Mycah Orion. You’ve heard of me.”
“I know about a Lady Orion. If you’re her – but you can’t be. She’s missing an eye.”
“I was. Had a nasty scar from here to here, too.” She traced the line. “Lord Michael gave you wings. Derek, here, knows how. He fixed me.”
“Really. I suppose he made you a Kharai, too?”
“Do I look like I have wings?”
“That’s battle seraphs. Other Kharai are just strong. And tough.”
“Strong, eh?”
Shadow.
[Yes, Mycah?]
Help me do this without screwing up.
[On it!]
She glanced around, following her shadow’s directions. There was a decent sized rock only a few meters away. She walked over, picked it up, and cracked it in half between her palms.
“That strong?” She dropped one half and broke the other again, continuing until the rock could fit in her hand. “Or stronger?” She crushed the rock with her gloved fingers.
“I – fucking hell!” The seraph dropped to a knee. “I’m sorry, m’Lady. I really, really did not expect to find you, of all people,
here
. Or a…whatever you are, sir.” She nodded to Derek.
“That’s okay. Lord Michael won't complain that you were rude to me.”
Norah swallowed. “Actually, m’Lady, every one of us was told to try to find you. Lord Michael sends a message. He says he’s sorry.”
Her temper snapped. “Sorry.
Sorry
. After what he did?”
“If it helps, every one of us in the aerie were cheering you on, until Styx…None of us understood what happened.”
She restrained herself from kicking the seraph. That was the root of her frustration, wasn’t it? “I don’t know either. He was fine the day before…then he just…threw me out. Gah! I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Sorry, m’Lady. M’lord also wants to know where you are, and asks that you return to see him.”
Mycah ground her teeth. Lord Michael was the
last
person she wanted to see…but the first person that Derek should be brought to. Damn Sheralys.
“All right. Don’t tell him that he’s forgiven. Just…we will go to him. ”
“Thank you, m’Lady. Is there a way that I can help you?”
Mycah looked around. “Probably. Can you – I don’t know, can you lift one of us? Carry one, then come back for the other?”
Derek cut in. “No, she’s already almost too heavy to fly. Can’t even get off the ground without a little boost, can you?”
“No, sir.” The seraph looked glum. “We’re supposed to work out of towers, or have other kharai there to give us a hand.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Derek said. “But, tell me, how were you planning to get back in the air after talking to us?”
“There’s a technique we use, when we have the time. Jacob’s Ladder, they call it.” Norah shrugged, a gesture that also rolled through her wings from base to tip. “It’s a little rough, though, so I’ve been nesting on the Worldsedge when I’m not in camp.”
“Worldsedge. That big cliff?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Isn’t that quite a ways away?” Derek asked.
Norah nodded. “I’d hoped you were Aurolan, though. Finding him is worth the risk…and the walk.”
“Why do you think Aurolan is
here?
” Mycah said. “Nobody’s seen him in years.” Eight years and four months, by her count.
“Honestly, I think he’s dead.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. They sent me to see what’s going on down here from a safe distance, and, while I’m here, look for Aurolan – allegedly on a tip from Gepetto. I’m supposed to make contact if I find him, then bring back word – but I bet that, a month from now, everyone’s going to be talking about how I found the Ruby Knight of Redmere down here, and that he raised an army from prisoners of war, retook the city, and paved its streets with relic metal.”
Mycah raised an eyebrow. “You don’t believe in Aurolan?”
“Not quite. I believe there was a guy called Aurolan in the Coalition. I believe he was a survivor of Redmere and he founded the Outrunners, but he probably got killed long ago and someone else took the name. Probably a few dozen someone elses. One man not only surviving Raging Waters, but taking down a juggernaut
alone
? On top of all the other stories, it’s just too much. There’s probably an Aurolan down here, but he’s probably the fiftieth or something.”
“Raging Waters wasn’t that bad,” Mycah said.
“Well, the—oh, bugger, that’s right. You’re from there, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “He was there. I’ve met him. And I believe in him. If you meet him, you’ll know. He’s…well, he’s hard to describe. And it’s not important, really; if we meet him, we’ll pass on anything he has to say when we get to Kaitopolis.” Oh, she so
dearly
wanted to meet him again.
“Okay. Is there anything else you need me to tell them?”
“Not really. I don’t have much to say to Lord Michael.” She considered a moment. “You’re not the only battle seraph attached to the Coalition, are you?”
“No Ma’am.”
“Do you think we could get some more supplies?”
“Better than that. We’ve got a camp outside the ruins of Redmere. We can give you a full escort home...but you have to get down the Worldsedge.”
She nodded. “Is there any way other than the city?”
“Sorry, m’Lady. There’s really nothing that I know of. You can go east to the sea, but that’s at least two weeks’ journey with a couple other cities in the way, and I’ve heard the slopes aren’t much better. There’s a good-sized collapse halfway, but it’d still be a murderous climb down. If you can hold on here, I might be able to scramble some support, but it’d be probably three or four days before I got back, and it’d be just me and a handful of other seraphs. We wouldn’t be much help, but it’s something.”
“No. We’ve been ambushed once already; I think we’re being tracked.”
“Well. I’m afraid I don’t know what we can do.”
“You can’t help us here, and honestly, I’d say our chances of getting through the city are well above average. From there, we can probably find you if you’re visible from the air.”
“Can’t argue with you, m’Lady, but I don’t envy you. We’ll do what we can; if you get down and find us, we’ll winter in Redmere, then take you all the way to Kaitopolis under our protection.”
***
Friday, October 27, 3481.
Time: Evening.
Location: City Below, City of Talestri.
Khevalis hadn’t expected to find Vhaes’ lab standing open. It had rarely happened before, and never by accident. If the door was open, he was invited in.
He waited for a moment, testing the air once more. Fear hung heavily in the air, but there was no new blood. One more scent reached his nostrils; that of a familiar flower.
The Master was out, and both Rostok and the desolate were missing. The lab still looked freshly cleaned, but a single amaryllis flower on the workbench provided evidence that Vhaes had expected Khevalis’ presence.
He smiled in gratitude, took the flower, and set off immediately. None of his brethren looked at him twice as he carried the blossom to the City Above. The streets were quiet, and all doors were barred – not that they wouldn’t fling open in a moment if Vhaes’ seneschal demanded.
The door he was looking for was different. The building it adorned was slightly more decorated than those he’d passed on his way there. It had been grown with actual windows, embellished with glass panes and wooden shutters. And the door itself had a keyhole.
He slipped his key into the lock and slid inside. Even a taerlae, without augmentation, would have considered the building lightless. He took a moment to adjust, then picked his way through the home with utmost care.
He set out towards the stairs, then hesitated as he saw that they were covered with dust. Nobody had climbed them in weeks, at least. He paused to test the air, heart thudding in sudden fear, but there was no stink of death in the house. He waited further, trusting his senses.
His ears told him that there was one other heart beating in the house. One that creaked and groaned with every beat, but still pushed life through tired veins. He glided through the luxurious – for Talestri – home, stopping only when he reached the bedroom.
She was asleep, of course. Gray hair spilled across a feather pillow, and he felt a twinge of regret. He hadn’t seen Amaryllis in months. Perhaps he had been lying to himself, trying to cling to the hope that if he didn’t see her grow old, it wasn’t really happening.
It had been years since he’d been able to bring himself to visit her when she was awake. Fear held him back; he dreaded to see her eyes without the sparkle that had once enchanted him.
He forced himself to swallow, then placed the flower on the table next to her bed, where she would see it on awakening. She’d know he’d been there, that he would look after her until the very end.
When he reentered Vhaes’s laboratory, the master had returned. Far from the bustle that Khevalis had seen in the few times he’d been called on to assist, though, the elder rikari was sitting in his high-backed chair, brooding.
Khevalis sat down across from him. He cast down his eyes.
“Thank you.”
The master nodded briefly to acknowledge him. Khevalis took several deep breaths, pondering his next question. He couldn’t put it to words.
“She will die soon,” Vhaes said.
Khevalis flinched, but knew it was true. “How soon?”
“Maybe a year. Maybe two or three. I can feel her life fluttering, flickering…failing.”
Khevalis lowered his head, knowing that it didn’t prevent his master from sensing the tears on his face.
“Be at ease, young one. She is mortal. It is their way.”
“I could save her.” Khevalis didn’t dare look up. “Just a little bit of life. Hardly enough to miss.”
“Sometimes things need to be let be.”
“I…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I know what she means to you. I remember.” Vhaes turned to him in an unusually open manner. “Seventy years ago, next month. There have been two other Vhaes in that time. I remember all of them…all of us. What we all thought.
“Chellha was my avatar then. Only he understood. Tivas and Adelen…we did not. We came to learn, each in our time.” Vhaes smiled. “It is interesting, picking pronouns from three different perspectives when all of them are us.”
“Master.” Khevalis hesitated, then dove at the problem. “I’m afraid I didn’t understand. Don’t.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Any of it. Why she was allowed to live, or why she has to die.”
“Tired of seeking the answer on your own?”
“I haven’t figured out the first answer in seventy years, and I don’t have enough time left to figure out the second.”
“Very well. When your rival demanded her life, what gain was there?”
Khevalis shook his head. The memory still provoked him into dark rage. “Tepparan wanted me hurt. He baited Ammie into a situation where he could claim the right to kill her; that’s all he wanted.”
“And when I asked you why I should let her live? What was your only reason?”
“Because she was…is…my friend.”
Vhaes nodded. “I’ve seen dozens of such relationships since the Sundering. A human and a rikari, a taerlae and a vampire…friendships that form between common and elevated. I’ve tested them enough to know; had I allowed Tepparan to have his way, he’d have made a mediocre rikari, moving from one act of cruelty to the next until the day he finally overstepped his bounds. On that day, he would look at me as a savage oppressor for reigning him in, and he would seek to bring me down. He would probably come at me with no plan, no allies, nothing to make his defeat anything more than pathetic. He would be, in short,
boring
.
“The claws catch, though, in what I got for ruling in your favor. You had potential before; after I spared your friend, you
destroyed
Tepparan in an entirely unexpected and satisfying manner. Since then, you’ve been attentive, diligent, loyal…and one more thing. You’ve been
happy.
My investment in your happiness paid me back a hundredfold.
“More than that, the commoners look to Amaryllis as an ideal now. Her obedience and loyalty to you led her to favor. Have I answered your question well enough yet?”