Traveler

by Arwen Elys Dayton

  That’s what you get when you’re a Watcher, even a baby Watcher, Nott thought. You live with madmen, and then one of them stabs you to death.

  Nott was grabbed by the collar, and Geb hissed into his ear, “You made us fall, Nott. You killed Jacob.” The older boy pulled a rope from his cloak and said, “You’re going first.”

  Quin and John climbed out of the valley of the sail to its edge, where it overlapped the next sail. One of the boys had been disrupted in their mad fall, but the other five were in the valley behind them and heading their way, the wine of the disruptors preceding them.

  “Come on!” she yelled.

  They leapt from the edge of the sail down onto the neighboring one.

  “Do we cut through here?” John asked.

  “Yes!”

  They both dropped to their knees and, making their whipswords short and sharp, began sawing violently through the canvas. When they’d made a large cut, they grabbed hold together and pulled, tearing a large flap free. The loose material blew toward them in a gust of wind, and Quin found herself looking through the gap straight down hundreds of feet to Victoria Harbor below.

  “Dammit!” cursed John as he stared at the water.

  They weren’t over the Bridge itself at this spot on the canopy; they were standing on an overhang, and they couldn’t climb down.

  The piece of the canvas they’d cut was flapping wildly, striking Quin’s feet and revealing the distant harbor again and again. The view spun until she forced her eyes away. Over the lip of the sail she saw the boys coming straight at them.

  She turned to look the other way. The valley of the new sail was spread out before her, and to her right, it swept upward to a new peak.

  “Should we keep running,” she asked, “onto the next sail and the next?”

  John shook his head. “I don’t think we can beat them on foot.”

  He was right. In the open, the disruptors could catch them, and the slanted surface of the sail would work against them, deflecting disruptor sparks into their faces as they ran.

  “We have to climb quickly, then—just until we’re over the Bridge itself,” she told him. “Then we cut through again and get down inside.”

  John nodded.

  Behind them were the bobbing heads of their pursuers, rapidly climbing up out of the valley of the first sail. She and John moved diagonally, traversing the sail as they climbed. But even so, the canvas quickly became so steep that they slid backward with each step.

  “Knives!” John yelled, panting as he pulled two from his waist.

  Quin drew her own knives, and they used them like pitons, digging into the canvas and dragging themselves higher.

  The wind was stronger with every inch they moved upward. She glanced down beneath her right arm—to avoid looking directly over her shoulder, where she might catch a terrifying view of the drop to the harbor—and saw a shape fly over the lip of the sail. It was Nott, with a rope trailing from his chest, soaring spread-eagle through the air. He hit the canvas and was brought up short when the rope jerked tight around him. The boy gasped for breath, and the sounds of choking were carried on the wind.

  “You can jump!” Nott yelled when he was able to speak. “She’s right here!”

  It was so steep now that Quin was nearly hanging off her knives.

  “There’s a girder,” she called to John.

  John called back, against the wind, “I feel it.”

  “Let’s cut here!” Quin leaned into her left arm and with her right pulled her whipsword from its spot at her waist. She cracked it out and twisted her wrist, sending the oily black substance flowing around itself. The whipsword transformed into a long, wide knife. She put her wrist through another complicated series of motions, and sharp teeth bloomed along each side of the blade. “Make your sword short and jagged,” she told John.

  He was already copying her with his own whipsword. Then they attacked the canvas, sawing with abandon.

  Don’t look down, Quin thought, keeping her body tight against the surface of the sail. If she lost her balance, it would be a quick slide to the bottom, and the boys would be on her with their disruptors in a matter of seconds. They were already on the new sail, climbing toward her and John. In twenty or thirty more yards, they would be within range to fire at them.

  She and John sawed until they’d created a man-sized flap, but their cutting job had been uneven, and the canvas was still sticking in a few places.

  “We can tear the rest!” John said, his voice at a yell in the wind.

  Quin nodded, stowed her sword; then together they ripped the last threads of canvas away from the girder. A large flap snapped up from the sail, and a gust of warm air hit Quin from under the canopy. She slid beneath the canvas flap, John at her back.

  It took her eyes a moment to adjust, but when they did, she saw a network of crisscrossed trusses stretching up and away from the girder on which they were perched. Somewhere below was the top level of the Bridge, but the trusses in front of her here were so densely packed, there was no way to climb through them.

  She and John were trapped.

  Outside the flap of canvas, she could hear the disruptors. With rising distress, Quin peeked out to find the boys only twenty yards below them. She was looking directly into the barrel of a disruptor, and sparks were launching from its hundreds of holes.

  “Move back!” she yelled, shoving John.

  She pressed herself sideways beneath the canvas, into the tiny void between the steel truss work and the canopy.

  Light burst all around the flap’s edges, hissing and crackling. A dozen sparks found their way through the jagged cut and ricocheted violently between the trusses, just inches from her face, before dissipating in rainbow-colored explosions of light.

  Quin didn’t wait to see if she’d been disrupted. She gripped the blade of her knife, lifted the flap. All five attackers were spread out below. Without hesitating she chose her target and threw. Her knife planted itself in the arm of the one with the focal and the disruptor. He cried out but didn’t fall. These boys were hard to stop.

  Next to her, John threw two knives in quick succession. One grazed a boy’s shoulder, and the second one would have taken out an eye, but the boy ducked at the last moment.

  Nott swung himself toward Quin, a blade flashing in his hand.

  “Give me my helm, you stupid, thieving girl!” he yelled.

  She gripped the trusses behind her, pulled her legs up, and kicked the boy’s chest, knocking him back.

  The other disruptor fired. She and John pressed themselves sideways as a new barrage of sparks hit the canvas.

  “I don’t have any more knives,” John said.

  “I’ve got one!” Quin responded. “I’ll try to make it count!”

  The desperate fury of the fight was upon her, and she would not let herself think about the fact that they were cornered and nearly out of weapons.

  They ripped open the canvas flap. Quin threw her last knife and watched in horror as one of the dark-skinned attackers lifted his disruptor like a shield and the knife clanged off harmlessly.

  Both disruptors whined again with piercing intensity. But before they could be fired, all eyes turned. There was movement below on the sail. There was a blur of dark against the gray of the canopy. A figure was running so swiftly up the incline, it seemed to be half carried by the wind. It was the Young Dread, so light and quick she didn’t need knives to help her climb.

  She was throwing something. A round, flat object spun out from her hands, skimmed up across the surface of the sail in a black streak.

  John caught it beneath a boot. It was a shield, a metal shield, with an edge so sharp, it had carved a line in the canvas as it whirled toward them. He flipped it over, grabbed Quin, and they ducked beneath it as sparks rained onto them.

  They crouched low on the girder, the flap of canvas snapping in the wind as a new fusillade of sparks sizzled and hissed against the shield.

  A handful of s
parks bounced under the shield’s edge and knocked against the girder frantically, encircling Quin’s ankle. She swept her leg along the beam to brush them off her, and dearly hoped none had gotten to her head. Before she could take stock of herself, the disruptors were firing again.

  And then, all at once, the disruptors stopped, and all Quin could hear was wind and the noise of distant aircars.

  Shinobu returned to the Transit Bridge to discover the main roadway in turmoil. Pedestrians were running off the Bridge or milling about in nervous crowds, looking up at the canopy, which was shaking overhead in rolling waves.

  He knew at once that Quin was up there somewhere. He’d left her, and while he was gone, something bad had happened. He stared at the Bridge canopy and cursed. Then he ducked into a shadowed space between two buildings on the thoroughfare and drew out the athame. He studied the stone dagger for a long while, his fingers nervously adjusting the dials based on his limited knowledge of coordinates—hoping to figure out how to cut an anomaly to the top of the canopy. It should be possible with the athame of the Dreads.

  He glanced up as a particularly large wave passed through the Bridge roof; out on the thoroughfare, crowds gasped.

  Shinobu looked back at the athame dials desperately. Dammit, I don’t know enough to do this!

  He yanked his backpack around, drew out the focal, and shoved it onto his head. His mind joined with it almost immediately, vaulting him into its higher state of awareness. He turned the athame over and over in his hands, and as he did, he let his mind relax, he let the focal sink deeper into his thoughts. After only a few moments, he understood how the dials might be adjusted for a minute maneuver like the one he wanted to make. His fingers moved along the dials; then he turned them one after another, clicking them into place for the first jump There.

  He hit the athame against the slender lightning rod.

  In the darkness between, he adjusted the dials again, then cut a new anomaly. Through the seething doorway was the top of the canopy. He’d done it—or the focal had. He was looking out at a vertical steel rod that stuck up like a mast from the summit of one of the great sails.

  Shinobu leapt through the anomaly and grasped the steel. The wind was fierce up here, taking hold of his cloak and snapping it out behind him. The anomaly fell closed, and he surveyed the canvas beneath him.

  His heart sank. He’d chosen the wrong sail. He could see five Watchers far below on a different section of the canopy, racing madly upward. Quin wasn’t visible from this angle, but she must be just beyond his view, about to be trapped by those boys. Knives were glinting in the Watchers’ hands as they climbed.

  Aircars circled, their loudspeakers ordering the combatants to climb down immediately.

  “Dammit, dammit!”

  He was terrified for Quin. Somehow he made his thoughts relax again, let the focal do his thinking for him as he studied the athame. Almost at once he understood which coordinates to use.

  He set the dials, hit the athame against the lightning rod. Another jump There, another set of coordinates, and he’d done it. He emerged onto the pinnacle of Quin’s sail, one foot on either side of the peak.

  Below him, a flap of canvas waved in the wind. Quin was trapped there, beneath some sort of shield. The boys were firing disruptors at her over and over, and the sparks bounced off in nearly constant flashes.

  They’re going to disrupt her, or kill her, he thought, fighting off full-scale panic. How could he have left her alone so long?

  The other half of his mind gave him a very different thought: Why do you care?

  I care because it’s Quin!

  And what is Quin? Only another Seeker. She isn’t valuable except as a tool against others.

  That’s not what I believe.

  In the future we have planned, we don’t need her, the new half of his mind said.

  “We” haven’t planned anything, Shinobu thought angrily. These thoughts weren’t his. They lived inside the focal and pretended to speak with his own voice. I know who you are. You’re a killer. Of Seekers and of rats. I’m not listening to you.

  You are me, half of his mind insisted, and she isn’t important.

  Shinobu screamed as loudly as he could to drive the second voice out of his head.

  Everything the focal had shown him, everything he’d learned from Briac—all of that was to help Quin. He channeled all of his thoughts toward her.

  She’s what matters.

  He could only hope that Briac had told him the truth, and he would be able to command those boys’ attention and send them away, leaving Quin unharmed. He reached into the pocket of the cloak and fingered the smooth oval stone that fit so perfectly into his own palm. Then half sliding, half running, he plummeted down the sail toward the melee below.

  The Young Dread released the shield and watched it spin far up the canvas into John’s hands. The moment he and Quin were safely behind it, she drew her bow from her pack and let an arrow fly.

  Her bolt pierced the shoulder of the dark-skinned young man wearing a disruptor, throwing him forward into the sail. He slid downward with arms and legs scrambling for purchase.

  She was aware that she was involving herself in order to save John and Quin. While a Dread must stand apart from humanity, and from Seekers, John was her student now, in a fight that was not of his own making. He and Quin were being attacked by those boys, creatures of the Middle Dread who had, it seemed, been wreaking havoc in his name. A Dread must stand apart so that her mind was clear to judge, but the Young Dread’s mind was clear. A Dread had created those boys, and she felt no qualms about stopping them.

  She nocked another arrow at once, but the boys had stopped. They were gazing upward at something higher on the canopy. Someone was there, sliding down from the peak of the sail toward the attackers.

  Maud threw her sight and saw that it was Shinobu, using the point of his whipsword as a brake against the canvas to keep himself from careening out of control. A Seeker’s cloak billowed about his shoulders in the wind that buffeted up from the harbor below.

  He was yelling something at the boys. She threw her hearing and caught two words: “Watchers! Away!”

  The attacking boys moved toward him, turning their remaining disruptor in his direction.

  Maud lifted her bow again, but the attackers stopped moving, and so did Shinobu. She couldn’t see him now, because the boys—Watchers?—were standing in her line of sight. As she traversed across the sail to get a better view, she heard Shinobu say to them, “I don’t want you here. Go. Go!”

  When she could see him again, he was pointing down the sail and away.

  And the Watchers were leaving. Even the one with Maud’s arrow through his shoulder had staggered to his feet and was following the others in a painful retreat.

  Why would they suddenly retreat at the sight of Shinobu? she wondered.

  John and Quin had lifted the shield and were watching their attackers flee. The Young Dread found herself relieved when John’s eyes immediately sought hers. Then he and Quin shared a brief look between them, an unspoken goodbye, before Quin moved toward Shinobu and John ran toward Maud.

  “You heard me,” John said as he arrived at her side. He looked shaken, and he was massaging the wound beneath his shoulder, which must be aching after the fight, but he also looked triumphant. “You heard me in your mind,” he said.

  “I did,” she answered.

  The Young Dread observed something different in John’s gaze. He was not looking over his shoulder to see where Quin would go or what the Middle’s servant boys were doing. He’d returned to the Young Dread, and she had his full attention.

  “I’ve made my choice,” he told her. There was no need for him to say more; it was entirely clear that he had chosen to master himself and train with her.

  She rested a hand on John’s shoulder and said, “Good. We will go to the next cave from your mother’s journal now.”

  He was still out of breath from the fight and his r
un down the canopy. “No rest first?” he asked, with half a smile crossing his face.

  “Rest?” she repeated. “Now, after the heat of a fight, is the best time to train your mind.”

  Quin leaned against the face of the sail and edged her way toward Shinobu across the narrow lip of the girder protruding beneath the canvas. He was carefully making his way to her as well. He was wearing the focal, and his eyes were bright with something like terror. When they were close enough to each other, he grabbed Quin’s arms.

  “Quin, I’m sorry. I left you. When I saw the disruptors firing, I—I…”

  He looked completely shaken, and Quin guessed she must look exactly the same. The bombardment by disruptors had pushed her past her limit of endurance. He was holding her up, and she was grateful for it. Her legs weren’t quite able to hold her anymore.

  “How did you get rid of them?” she asked.

  “Oh God…I have so much to tell you.” He looked down to where the boys were now leaping back onto the first sail in a full-speed exit. Aircars were circling above the Bridge, loudspeakers ordering everyone off the canopy. “We should get out of sight.”

  They edged their way back to the flap she’d cut and ducked beneath it together.

  “I’ve got to take off the focal,” he told her.

  Shinobu put his hands to the sides of the helmet, and with what appeared to be an immense amount of difficulty, he slowly pulled it off. As if it were too hot to touch, he dropped it onto the girder and used his foot to keep it from falling. Then, grabbing his head with both hands, he collapsed against the crisscrossed steel trusses.

  “I see two of everything when I wear it,” he muttered. “Two sides to everything, and one side is so bad…”

  Quin’s leg muscles were shaking. She sank to her knees and pulled him down with her, holding him against her tightly. The jangle of aftershock from the fight ran through her body. She caught a glimpse through the rip in the canvas: far below, John and Maud were disappearing into the shadow of a neighboring sail, moving in the opposite direction from the retreating boys. She averted her eyes from the steep drop.