“It won’t.”
“It better not.”
“It won’t.”
“Altin,” she said, looking up at him with the frustration already fading from her eyes. “Someday I hope you really will settle down with me. It’s all getting, you know, kind of exhausting.”
“I will,” he said, but he cut himself off before he could say the words “I promise” again. Promises had begun to take new meaning in his life. They were things that bound, given in earnestness and with best intent, but often undermined by unforeseeable reality. He truly did want to settle down, at least in a way that made what he chose to do less risky than running down to Murdoc Bay to play magical bodyguard for Roberto while he did business amongst a den of thieves. But it seemed that’s not what fate decreed. So he kept the promise to himself, and kissed her softly on the mouth instead. “I love you,” he said; then he ran back upstairs.
Chapter 36
D
joveeve circled warily around the wall, her knives out, one gripped for thrusting and the other held point down, its blade nearly long enough to pass her elbow. Her spear lay on the ground, under Pernie’s boot, and Pernie glared at her, crouched like an animal about to spring. She might have were Seawind not approaching her from the left.
Seawind thrust at her with his own spear, and she batted it aside with the haft of hers. She kicked gravel up at him as she did, using the distraction to snatch up the weapon she’d just taken from Djoveeve and throw it at the elf. She cast a teleport spell right after, came up behind Djoveeve, and mashed her in the back of the head with the butt of her weapon. The woman, still fast enough to defeat most anyone, wasn’t fast enough for Pernie anymore, and the blow struck with a hollow thud that sent the ancient assassin to her knees.
Seawind’s spear struck the wall in the fraction of a second after Pernie ducked, sparks glowing briefly as it did. Pernie pitched herself forward, rolling away but muttering the teleport that put her right behind Seawind again.
He teleported himself out of the space where Pernie’s spear tip was, putting himself three paces behind her, where he snatched up his weapon and hurled it again. She sprang backward, a twisting flip over the flight of his spear, and tried to kick him in the head. He vanished again as she came down. She dove for the floor the moment her feet hit the ground, knowing already that she couldn’t avoid the strike that was about to come. The sharp point of his knife pierced the leather jerkin she wore. Only a nick, though.
She spun in time to see Djoveeve throwing the spear that Seawind had thrown, and she slapped it aside with her forearm. Seawind vanished from his place in the middle of the room. Pernie flipped her spear in her hand and jammed it behind her, into the place she knew he would have gone.
Her spear shaft
thwack
ed against his as he blocked it, and she muttered the two-word teleport and jumped across the room. But he was there before her, and she only just ducked a two-handed jab with the center of his weapon’s haft that would have blunt-force bashed her in the forehead. She punched for his groin, but he was gone again, and she dove forward anyway. Djoveeve was there, anticipating it, and made to kick her in the face. Pernie flipped over on her back, grabbed Djoveeve’s ankle, and yanked, pulling the woman off balance and dropping her hard upon her back.
Pernie whipped out her little knife and leapt on the woman, but Seawind kicked her off and set her rolling across the gritty cave floor.
She teleported out of that roll as well, this time into the empty space above his head, and she fell toward him with spear tip down, intent on skewering him cranium to crotch. He vanished before she could.
Djoveeve wasn’t moving, so Pernie wheeled back looking for where Seawind went. She muttered her own illusion and became invisible, just as he surely had. She knew her illusion was gauzy in daylight, but it worked well enough in dim caves like this. She moved as silently as settling dew as she worked her way around the room.
Seawind had a knack for finding her, even down here in the caves, and she had to resist the urge to thrust blindly about with her spear.
The blow struck hard, dazing her, and it knocked her right out of her illusion spell and down to her knees. She shook her head, trying to clear it, but it was already too late. Seawind’s knife was at her throat.
“I can hear your heartbeat, little Sava. Silence is how quiet you are not to your own ears, but to those of creatures listening for you. Most creatures have better hearing than you do.”
Her head drooped, her long hair flowing like silken sunlight into the grit. She sniffled once, then a second time, then filled the cave with the sound of her crying, the echoes of a tantrum, of frustration and rage.
Seawind withdrew his knife and shook his head. “That is disappointing; I’d thought—” he began to say, but her spear butt caught him in the stomach even as she leapt away.
He laughed, actual laughter from the chest, as she crouched halfway across the room, glaring at him with animal ferocity, not the least stain of a tear striping the grit and grime upon her cheeks. “Oh, clever little creature you are,” he said. “And with a trick human females have been fooling their men with since the dawn of time.”
Djoveeve was just sitting up, rubbing her head and the back of her neck. “It seems that it works perfectly well on elves.”
“So it does.” He looked very pleased.
Djoveeve turned to Pernie and smiled warmly. “You see, child. You have the advantage of your gender, and are wise to use it when you need. But don’t lean on it too heavily. Few of your enemies will have compassionate hearts.”
“I won’t,” Pernie said, also pleased with herself, but not willing to lower her defenses.
“Your magic is still too slow,” Seawind said, right back to business. “You’re fast enough for the aging Sava’an’Lansom, but not for one who hasn’t lost a step.”
Djoveeve couldn’t hide the impact of that efficient remark, and her old shoulders drooped a little then. Pernie threw her spear at Seawind for it, and the elf only barely teleported out of the way. “You’re a mean old pointy-eared latakasokis,” she snarled at him, then went to Djoveeve and helped the woman to her feet.
“You’ve gotten very fast, little Sava,” Djoveeve said, already beyond having been confronted with her age. “But he is right about your magic. You’ve got to learn to
see
.”
Pernie turned and glared at Seawind, but looked back at her human mentor and asked, “What do you mean? I don’t have sight magic. I can’t just ‘learn’ it.”
“No, Sava. Like the sugar shrimp. Do you remember how patiently you had to see?”
Pernie nodded.
“In much the same way, you have to start watching the mana as you fight. You, as I once had to, must learn to fight with creatures whose magic comes naturally. Which means they need no words at all, not even just two. So you have to see it coming before it’s cast.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“You have to look.”
“Look at what? The mana? It’s all just waves and choppy pink stuff.”
“What were you looking at with the sugar shrimp? There was nothing to look at there either, was there? You had to look at what they weren’t. They seem to be seawater and rocks. But they aren’t. Their patterns shift, no matter how slightly, and you learned to see it. And now you must do it with the mana too. You must learn to watch the currents as you fight. You must open your mind to them even while you are in combat.”
“Well, how can I do that? I can’t watch two things at once. Seawind said as much hisself.”
“He said you can only focus on one thing at a time. But you can be aware of many things. Power comes from choosing the
right
thing to focus on at any given time. Shifting from one instant to the next.”
“I can only barely focus on two of you. How am I supposed to do that and watch the mana too? Much less look for sugar shrimp in it.”
“In time you will see. I did. It will take practice and lots of work, like anything worth knowing does, but you’ll get it in the end. But you must start. You must learn to watch for the movement of mana toward a source. The first movements of it, like the twitch of muscle or flick of the eyes that indicates the blow about to come.”
Pernie’s eyes narrowed, and it sounded like another boring thing to learn. She’d only just begun to think she might actually be able to beat both of them together, and now Djoveeve was telling her to do the impossible, to find the first movement of mana in a tempest of nothing but motion all around.
“I don’t want to,” she said, thrusting out her chin. “I’m tired of learning now.”
“You must,” Seawind said. “You’re nearly to the test. This is the last thing you will need to try the orc. It is difficult, but I will show you how.”
“I don’t care about the stupid orc,” she said. “Let him go for all I care.”
“He’s got magic, little Sava, and unlike Djoveeve and me, he will use it on you when you fight.”
“Then I will cut his throat and pull his heart out through his neck,” she said with such savagery that Seawind actually smiled again, twice in one day.
Pernie’s eyes narrowed when she saw it, and the way she cocked her head gave her the aspect of a snake about to strike. “You’ll never let me go home,” she said. “You’re just tricking me again.” She turned and stormed out, already calling to Knot to unroll himself and meet her at the mouth of the cave.
Chapter 37
I
n a time not so long ago, Black Sander would have thought the bright light he watched was a meteor, a daylight shooting star, rare and interesting but nothing more. But not now. In these times, especially here, he knew exactly what that streak of fire was, and he’d been waiting for it for quite a while.
It had been several months since the glimmering silver Earth ship had last settled down outside of Murdoc Bay, and he knew what had kept it away. He’d spent those intervening months rooting out the origins of attempts to board the ship last time it arrived. Someone had tried for it, and he’d heard about a body being found.
Of course he should have known that others would have the same ideas he had, as surely others had tried to get onto Tinpoa Base and aboard ships as well. Already there were thirty-five men in the Crown City jails at last report, eleven in Leekant, and twelve in Hast, plus the three who had been jailed in Murdoc Bay, though of course two of them had escaped and the other bribed his way free. He’d heard it was the same on the west coast as well, though he hadn’t gotten any numbers from Dae, Pompost, or Norvingtown, much less any of the smaller port cities or farming towns. Regardless, it was obvious that the Queen’s efforts to stifle attempts by the underground to reach any trade or travel arrangements with like-minded people on Earth were going splendidly for the War Queen. And those efforts had the complete cooperation of the NTA as far as all the information Black Sander could gather confirmed. When it came to locking down access, Crown City was in complete control.
Despite the time and frustration he’d put in, and the badgering from the marchioness, he was more determined than ever now. Chinks in the armor were beginning to suggest themselves, and he thought he might finally have found one that he could exploit.
If there was anything that he had learned in the time he’d spent trying to get aboard Earth spaceships, it was that they could sense magic to an increasingly large degree, and they could absolutely see right through illusions—or at least they could with their technology. In a way, that fact simplified things because it seemed to make boarding a ship a basic matter of brute force. If deception couldn’t get it done, then brawn would have to do.
He’d had a group of men waiting on standby for well over a month, and the cost of their silence, not to mention their room, board, and booze, was beginning to infuriate the marchioness. But at last, there it was, a ball of fire entering the atmosphere, and with it, finally, an opportunity for a ship that he knew for certain was headed all the way to Earth. He was going to get on it, and subtlety was no longer the goal.
He rose from his seat, tossing back the last of a warm glass of wine, its contents having sat in the sun untouched for the last hour. He strode across the boards and back into the little tavern that stood at the end of the pier. A greasy little man with a dirty apron worked behind the bar as Black Sander came through. The barkeep reached up with nervous hands and combed back the wet mess of his tar-black hair. “Seen it coming yet?” he asked. “Or need a splash more wine?”
“Send a homing lizard to Belor. Tell him to bring the rest of them. It’s time.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, a serpentine smile drawing itself tightly on lips that were stained red by wine.
Black Sander left a silver piece behind him as he passed by the bar and made his way through the sparse crowd, a murmuring bunch of criminals, the lot of them, each too well acquainted with the courtesies of their respective trades to look up at a fellow passing through. This was the End, a place for the best in Murdoc Bay, and only those who knew well the value of silence came in more than twice.
Black Sander made a point of not looking up and over his shoulder at the descent of the bright ship, now no longer a burning streak of light, but instead a blinding, starlike reflection of the sun. His black boots sounded hollowly on the pier as he made his way toward shore, and by the time he’d reached the cobblestones of the waterfront street that ran the length of the seawall, Belor was already arriving with the men.