by Joe Ducie
I liked that. It said a lot while saying nothing at all.
“What I’m getting at,” I said, “is that this place, the Academy, is built on the back of history long forgotten. What dark or wonderful secrets breed in the lost corners, hmm? Secrets upon secrets, and no one bothers to delve below the surface anymore.”
“But there’s more?” Annie asked.
“Oh yes. A whole lot more. I found the way to Atlantis here, lost for ten thousand years, and I still feel like I’ve only just scraped away the topsoil.” The work of a hundred lifetimes, to truly explore the Academy. “But let’s get back. We stick around much longer and we’ll be stuck here for a day. Believe me, there’s not a whole lot to do.”
*~*~*~*
Locating Sophie and Ethan proved to be more difficult than I’d anticipated. Perhaps because I’d been away so long, I’d forgotten how big the Academy was, and that was just on the surface of the place. Never mind the warren of underground tunnels and buildings built into the horseshoe-shaped mountain range encircling the school.
So as fourth bell tolled toward fifth, I took Annie to somewhere I did know how to find—to Edgar’s—a small pub on the river, famous for cheap ales, fine liquors, and the best steak this side of True Earth.
As planned, Vrail, Dessan, and Garner were there to meet us, already sipping at dark lagers around a table constructed of old pallets in front of a roaring fireplace. Despite the early hour, Edgar’s was doing a roaring trade—as it always had, even in the darkest days of the Tome Wars. Some believed, myself included, that although the Academy was millennia old, it had been built around this pub, which had existed since the very moment of creation.
We ordered drinks and sat sipping them quietly. It wouldn’t take too long for word to spread that I was here at Edgar’s, and that would either clear the place out or bring a mob hell-bent on melting my face, as it had done at Tia’s. I hope she’s okay, coming back from the dead...
“Ninth bell you’re due back before the Dragon Throne, eh?” Dessan said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m thinking of taking them up on their offer.” I took a big gulp of ale. “Hell, wouldn’t you? Despite all the folk that hate me round these parts, I do like being back.”
“Here, here,” Vrail said, and raised his glass.
Two shadows fell over our table, almost silhouetted against the large licks of orange flame from the monumental fireplace. “What’s all this then?” Ethan Reilly asked, his arm linked in Sophie’s. “You started without us, boss?”
Sophie giggled and sat down on my knee, giving me a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re alive. We feared the worst when the Lexicon sort of threw you from the train. But what happened to your eye? Broken quill, what happened on that train?”
“Don’t rightly know,” I said honestly, thinking of the way Annie’s eyes had changed and how Emissary’s brand had burned. Had we both had a part to play in that misfortune? “And my eye is a little... scorched under this patch. We took the long way round, but guess who I found on my way to Ascension?”
Ethan pulled over two more chairs, and Sophie sat herself down between Annie and me. “Who?”
I couldn’t help the genuine smile that spread across my face. “Tia. Tia Moreau. Very much alive and well, living in Meadow Gate these past seven years.”
Sophie’s eyes blazed, and she damn-near squealed with delight. Something on my face must have caught her eye, because she whipped her Polaroid camera up from around her neck to snap a picture. I had to blink a few times to clear the dazzle of the flash.
I made introductions for Sophie and Ethan with my Knightly guard and ordered another round of ale and some sweet potato fries for the table.
“Here, let me take a look at your eye,” Sophie said.
“I was hoping you’d ask.” I lifted the patch and exposed my light-blinded eye to the world. I could make out nothing, no dull colors or shapes, only darkness.
Sophie grimaced but pressed her hand over the wound. “The white of your eye is completely red…” She trailed away, no doubt thinking of her sister, Tal, and the Everlasting Oblivion with eyes of blood. Cool, soft Will filled Sophie’s palm, and I shivered as it sought to heal my blindness. “It’s intact, as far as I can tell. Some damage to the optic nerve. Let me see…”
A few minutes later, Sophie removed her hand. “Thank you,” I said, but half the light of the world was still missing.
“I tried my best, but eyes are funny things. It may come good. Give it a day or two to heal, maybe, and keep it covered.”
I nodded and lowered the patch.
“So how are you finding it, Detective Brie?” Ethan asked. “All of this absurdity and world-hopping? It threw me for a loop the first time.”
“Actually feels more like we’ve been bar-hopping than world-hopping,” Annie said wryly. “Let’s see. There was the university tavern, Paddy’s, McSorley’s, Tia’s, and now Edgar’s. One might think you’ve a problem, Declan.”
“I do have a problem. This drink has run dry,” I said, glaring into my empty pint glass. “Where are my refills? At least this place hasn’t blown up yet.”
Ethan snorted. “Oh, now you’ve done it. The night is yet young, Dec.”
The night wasn’t even truly born yet. Sunset was closing in at about a quarter hour before six, the clock in my head was telling me. That left three hours before I had to make a decision on whether or not I would take Faraday’s deal and try to destroy Emissary. The fight was coming either way, but did I want to come back? Yes, I truly do. Friends and enemies surrounding me once again on all sides? Was I better, alone and writing in my dusty old shop? At least on True Earth, I could put my back to the proverbial wall and defend my small patch of territory. Here, I would always be waiting for the next attack.
“So you spent the last few days sitting in on Academy courses?” I asked Ethan. “Probably old hat to you, ’Phie, but how’d you find it, mate? Put what I taught you to good use?”
“No,” he said, and chuckled. “It’s like... It’s like some of the things you taught me are way too advanced. You not only taught me how to run before I could walk but how to fly a fighter jet before I could crawl.”
I clinked our glasses together. “You’re welcome.”
He grinned. “I am grateful, Declan. Truly, I am. But I took a beginner’s class this morning in basic shield conjuration. Every kid in there was younger than ten, and they could do some things so easily. I was lost, for the most part, so the instructor nearly had a bloody heart attack when I levitated her desk.”
I nodded. “Hang in there. You’ll get it. I don’t think they’re going to let you go now they’ve got you. You have potential, Ethan, and a helluva raw talent. Faraday won’t want to lose that so easily.”
Sophie balked. “Are you saying we’re prisoners here?”
I considered and then nodded. “Bait, perhaps, to keep me from bucking too much on my brother’s line. A gentle reminder of what I have left to lose. He won’t let you leave—not until he gets what he wants from me. I’m not sure he told me everything when we spoke, but his message was five parts lemon for every part honey.”
“Well, there are worse places in Forget to be trapped,” Sophie said, snapping another Polaroid of the wonderful atmosphere in Edgar’s. The camera spat out the picture, and she tucked it into her bulging album. “What are you going to do now?”
“Back to the palace, shower and dinner, quick nap. There’s a council tonight. I’ll need my game face.”
“Be careful, you hear.” Sophie snapped the band of my eye patch just above my ear. “You know, we get you a parrot and a peg leg, and you’re away.”
“And rum. Don’t forget the rum.”
*~*~*~*
Sophie and Ethan elected to stay at the Academy until I sent word for them. I was sure my brother would use them as leverage if I didn’t agree to his terms, so best they steered clear of the upcoming meeting in about three hours. If every
thing went to buggery, I’d dash back here, and we’d use Myth to escape.
The sky had bled from dusk to the beginnings of true night as my three guards strolled just ahead of Annie and me on the road back to the Fae Palace. The heels of my shoes clicked a steady beat on the dusty cobblestone.
“Coming back here... it always brings back a kaleidoscope of colorful and offbeat memory, Annie,” I said, thinking aloud.
She shook her head. “You use a lot of words to say very little, you know that?”
I scratched my stubbly chin and sighed. “Grew up reading a lot of books. Some of the language rubbed off, I guess.”
“So what’s the problem now?”
“I’m trying to decide on our best course of action.”
Annie clenched her fists. “We came here to get help fighting Emissary. That bastard still has to answer for the people and officers he killed—and for Grey. Or have you already forgotten them?”
“Easy,” I said, my brow creasing into a small frown. “Of course I haven’t. Stopping Emissary remains my number one priority. That is why we’re here, Annie. You’ll see that tonight at ninth bell.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sirens of Decay
I had a sense of the attack before it happened.
Call it instinct. Call it a disturbance in the force.
Simply call it sheer dumb luck, but I knew as we rounded the marble pillars on the fifty-fifth floor of the Fae Palace that a group of unsavory gentlemen in body armor and facemasks would be waiting to try to end my life.
Well, I didn’t anticipate the armor and masks, but I had an inkling of the danger nonetheless. Ten years of training and two long campaigns during the Tome Wars had honed my instincts to something sharp and loud. Not even five years of sedentary exile could dull the edge on that particular knife.
Heading for the elevators after a brief visit to Dessan’s quarters so he could collect his Infernal blade, I was speaking to Garner about our time at the Academy when the attack fell. The figures moved out of the shadows surrounding the pillars in a vast commerce chamber. The sun had long since fallen below the distant mountains that bordered Ascension City, and night, paled by the city lights and the hovercraft zooming past the palace, flooded the outer balconies, affording some darkness in which to hide. The shadowy figures gave little in the way of warning, as shadowy figures are wont to do, but I was ready.
To be honest, I’d been expecting an attack all day. This was probably the last chance anyone would get for awhile.
The first of three men fired a bolt of sizzling energy, wrapped in a whirlwind of sharp icicles, at me, and I took a casual step to the side. Nice... Chaucer’s Secret Frost—not a lot of low-level Knights were given access to such powerful tomes. That told me something about my attacker. The bolt smashed into the wall and scorched the finish in the stone, and I stepped forward in one quick movement and delivered a resounding uppercut under the man’s mask. The blow rattled the teeth in my head, and he slumped even as his comrades took similar shots at me.
Those I had to dodge with a bit less finesse, hurling myself at the floor just as my Knightly guard began to react—and react they did. Working as a team, in perfect harmony, Vrail and Dessan picked off the second man while Garner distracted the third.
A string of lights burst from the tip of Dessan’s sword, which I was thankful we’d stopped to get, and Vrail raised his own to catch the crackling lightning. A web of hot energy blazed between their two blades. Together, in one well-timed and vicious sweep, they swung the net of lightning and fire at the second attacker. It caught the man around his waist and sliced cleanly through his armor, his flesh, and his spine. He fell apart.
The third attacker swooped under Garner’s initial attack and drove the hilt of a sword into his neck. Garner slumped and fell, choking, and the man ran at me with his blade held high, screaming for my head.
I drew my sword and met his strikes blow for blow. It had been some long years since I’d had need of my weapons training, but it was like riding a bike—one never really lost the knack. His blade struck mine, and a torrent of purple sparks flared along the edge of star iron striking star iron. A resounding ring echoed across the vast chamber.
Vrail struck from behind, and the man managed to fight both of us, his skill becoming troublingly apparent, until Dessan swept in from the side and drove a knife through the plate in the man’s armor. The blade pierced something vital, I’m sure, as the man screamed and a gout of hot, sticky blood burst down Dessan’s arm.
“Declan!” Annie cried.
I spun on the spot, my instincts perhaps not all that great after all, and would have taken a cruel, blackened blade to the gut myself if not for the bullet that whipped past my ear, hot and heavy, and shattered the mask of the fourth attacker, unseen until just now. Annie whimpered and clutched her gun hard—she was two for two on headshots.
The attack was over in about forty-five quick, fierce seconds. One man lay unconscious from my initial blow, and three were dead. I rubbed at my knuckles and gave Annie what I hoped was a smile full of thanks. She had saved my life—we had to stop doing that for each other. Garner, a hand to his throat, stumbled to his feet muttering curses.
“Are you okay?” I asked Annie, panting hard. My brand stung something fierce.
“Am I...? Yes, I’m fine.” She wiped away a quick tear. “What just happened?”
Vrail and Dessan tore the masks from my attackers’ faces and spent a few moments in quiet consideration. Vrail picked up the man whom I’d knocked out—moaning something incomprehensible—and blood trickled from his nose. Good.
Vrail cursed and let the man fall. “I know these men, Declan. Rather, I know their allegiance. They are loyal to Peter Drax, a member of your brother’s inner circle.”
I cleared my throat and wiped the blood from my sword on the shirt of one of the dead. “Arbiter Drax,” I said softly. “We met him. I don’t like that chap.”
Vrail grasped my shoulder. “Come, we can’t stay here. Drax is powerful, and if he was responsible for this attack, in the palace itself, then I fear it was at the behest of...”
“You can say it,” I said, as we jogged across the chamber, flittering through long shadows, toward the ornate, old elevators. Garner and Dessan remained behind to clean up the mess. “He’s not my favorite person, either.”
“Of your brother,” Vrail said with a grimace, and he called an elevator. “Of the king.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” I said.
“Your brother did this?” Annie whispered furiously. She hadn’t yet holstered her weapon. Two men in almost as many days, dead at her hand. Was this the best life I could offer people who gravitated into my bloody orbit? “Why? He wanted your help!”
“What time is it?” I asked.
Vrail removed an old, tarnished silver pocket watch from his jacket as we stepped into the elevator car. “Just before seventh bell. Declan, if you’re to make this meeting tonight, I suggest laying low.”
Agreed. “Anywhere you have in mind?”
He offered me a hesitant smile. “Someone I think you should go see,” he said, punching one of the buttons on the panel that led to a floor of the palace I knew all too well. Every Knight did as it was usually our last stop on the longest, shortest road we took.
“Oh? And who might that be?”
“Your grandfather.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
A Canvas of Stone
The World Cemetery existed in a pocket of space outside of Ascension City. It existed in a world written into existence by the first kings and queens of Forget long before the Renegades had split from the Knights and carved great, bloody swaths of the Story Thread for their own kingdoms.
Like the Academy and the Forgetful Library, a pathway through the Void was navigated at great risk, and two points of space were forced together in a binding of Will. The waygates traversed the Void within the palace, and distance between universes became abstract—all at
once infinite and within arm’s reach.
Annie held my hand as we crossed the threshold underneath the great marble arch on the one hundredth floor of the Fae Palace. Vrail kept to the side, a hand on the hilt of his rapier. In less than a moment, we went from the cool, stone floors of the palace to lush, green fields under an azure, cloudless sky.
Sunlight overhead made it daytime again, even as Ascension City fell toward night, and those fields were marred with tombstones and memorials beyond count. Centuries of war, of Knights battling the Void and the Renegades and each other, had given rise to a nation-world of headstones, near-endless fields of white-marble grave markers.
“Good god…” Annie whispered, and squeezed my hand. “Are they all graves?”
“Yes.”
“How many—” She shook her head. “Oh my, they just go on and on, don’t they?”
“The Tome Wars,” I said and then fumbled. “That is, the last century was an awfully busy time for this place.”
“Business was good,” Vrail agreed. He had gone on ahead and returned from the caretaker’s accommodation, a small cottage on a hill not a quarter mile away. He led an old man by the arm. The man wore a tattered librarian’s uniform under a worn sunhat and sported a wiry, whiskery silver beard.
Aloysius Hale, my grandfather, focused on my face and smiled—a gummy, senile smile made all the worse by his failing vision. “Whatever happened to that lovely young girl of yours, Dec?” he asked, as if I’d seen him only yesterday and five years of exile and prison did not stand between us. “The pretty one with the olive skin?”
Of all the questions to ask upon our reunion... The years on Starhold had not been kind to Old Man Hale. “You mean Tal, Grandfather?”
“Yes, that’s her. I met her once, didn’t I? In that old Library of mine.”
“You did, sir, yes.” I shook my head. “She died, I’m afraid. At the end of the Tome Wars. Don’t you remember?”
