Aria’s last thread frayed and snapped as she nodded to my promise. I held her still form for a long moment.
The cube gave the telltale pop at the end of its charge. Not a moment later, a Freithin berserker saw me from the street. It turned to charge. I jumped to my knees and drew my staves as training took over. My bond to Selweh shifted, jade brightening to glittering emerald.
I promise, Aria.
I dodged the berserker’s charge and turned to fight. I channeled my own rage until the Freithin was a mass of bruises and broken bones on the alley floor. But it did nothing for Aria.
The next day it frosted, and the crocuses died.
CHAPTER SIX
First Sentinel
Now that he was an old man, only a few things made Wonlar truly happy anymore: savoring a cup of strong tea, scoring a victory against the tyrants, and seeing the smile of a child.
Taking a break from storms and meetings, Wonlar held court in Rova’s living room (at her insistence).
Nearly a dozen children sat, stood, and knelt around the room. They snuggled into couches, piled atop cushions, and splayed out on the brilliantly-colored carpets that Rova’s brother wove for a living. The house was far from lush, but it was large, with high ceilings and wide doors to accommodate the larger residents. The walls were painted a bright orange, the trim on the doors purple. The Freithin embraced bright colors, so long denied anything of beauty in Omez’s cages. Coming here made Wonlar feel small, like he was a child again, living in a world full of things built for giants.
It had been Rova’s idea for him to begin with visiting Freithin children in Bluetown, to tell them stories of the city’s history.
In truth, it was propaganda—proselytizing—but it was necessary. Years down the road, he might have to call on these children to lay down their lives for the city. It was essential that they know the truth of the tyrants’ crimes. The guilt of what he was doing tore at him, but the Shields had been fighting for fifty years, and the tyrants still held power.
I’ve made worse sacrifices. The weight of each life lost to the tyrants hung about his neck and shoulders, a long chain wrought of friends, allies, and innocents. The tyrants had made the city into their personal playground, laboratory, or marketplace, depending on the whim of the day.
Taking a sip of the marvelous dounmo tea, he scanned the room, leaning in to grab the attention of the nine blue-skinned children so he could continue the story. Wonlar drew their attention up with his hands as he stood tall, stretched to his limit—which was less than it had been when he was young—and said:
“And then the titan Audec, wounded from a hundred blows, fell from the battle in the heavens. He hurtled through the sky for a week, cutting through clouds, carving the Razorback Mountains with swipes of his hand as he tried to slow his fall. But it didn’t help, and so he crashed to the ground!” Wonlar dropped to the floor and slammed his hands on the carpet, making as much noise as he could and also breaking the force of impact. Their screams of delight and excitement spread a smile clear across his face.
They were alive, so full of the joy their parents gave them, kept away from the full reality of what it meant to live in Audec-Hal. They would have to learn to survive, but no one could keep him from enjoying the sound of their innocent laughter while it lasted. Rova was right to invite me over today.
“When Audec fell to earth, he was already dead, heartbroken by the war in the heavens. But when a titan dies, it’s not like you or me…” Wonlar took a controlled fall, raising a small cloud of dust from the old rug. “You fall over and you bounce back up, little things made of rubber like you are.” Wonlar sat up and stood, pausing on the way to tickle Rova’s nephew Dom under the chin. He was rewarded with a gurgle of delight.
“But Audec was a titan, fifty miles tall from the top of his head to the tip of his toes.” Wonlar touched the top of his head and then knelt down to touch his toes.
“Centuries later, people found his resting place: a crater fifty miles long, in the shape of a person.” Wonlar sat down slowly, minding his back, and lay on the floor, aping the shape of the city-crevasse. Several giggles bounced through the air at his clowning.
Being a father prepares you for so many things, most of them you’d never expect. “But all that was left of Audec were his bones.”
Wonlar picked himself back up. The children had closed ranks, tightened in to listen, their eyes wide, though most had heard the story a dozen times. “The founders had heard the stories of the titans, knew the myth of Audec’s fall. And so, they built a city in that crater. They named it Audec-Hal, in honor of the titan whose bones are here to this very day.”
Wonlar stood tall, puffing his chest out with exaggerated pride. “Audec-Hal was more prosperous than any city in the continent. We discovered new technologies faster than the Five cities of Tanno to the north, even though they enslaved their scientists to make them work harder. We welcomed people of all races, not like the Pronai-only city of wheel or the Jalvai matriarchy in Quall’s Quarry.” The parents nodded in agreement. Wonlar saw no reason to lie about this, even if he was unabashedly biased.
Wonlar paced up and down the room, turning his back on the children but raising his voice so they could hear. “Audec-Hal is the greatest, most wonderful city there is, ruled by a Senate that represented the people and protected by the benevolent City Mother, the spirit of the city itself.” Wonlar stopped and his head over his shoulder, speaking in a stage whisper. “Or it was, until the tyrants came.”
At this, the children hissed. They were a brilliant audience. They knew when to cheer, when to boo. Like all children, they loved to hear stories again and again. I must have told Selweh the story of the first Aegis a thousand times by the time he was three.
“When the tyrants came, they took the city hostage with their evil. First was Nevri, the gangster.” Wonlar tugged at a make-believe tie and rubbed together two coins. “Next came Magister Yema, the sorcerer. He stole people’s hearts and locked them away in a secret vault to make them slaves, his warlock Guard.” For Yema, he waved his fingers in the impression of a conjuring, and one of the children ducked behind his sister to hide.
“And then there was the Smiling King and the terrible Spark-storms.” Several of the older children shuddered, as well as fully half of the parents. For Wonlar and the Shields, the storms were challenging, daunting, and dangerous. For an average citizen, they were chaos and certain death dealt out without reason, without warning. “Before long, there was COBALT, the devious automaton lord.” For COBALT, Wonlar moved jerkily, mimicking the old automaton’s spasmodic motions. “And last, the cruel slaver Medai Omez.”
The children started another round of hisses. “Now, Medai’s coming wasn’t all bad. He is a tyrant, that is sure, but he also gave Audec-Hal one of its greatest gifts. What do you think that was?” Wonlar asked.
Yara Speaks, a girl of three raised her wide hand, eager to please. She’s already sharper than my knives.
Wonlar nodded, and she said, “Us!”
“That’s right.” Yara lit up at Wonlar’s approval. “He was the one who brought the Freithin to Audec-Hal. He made your parents and grandparents as slaves to work in his factories, because the Freithin are the strongest people in the world.”
Wonlar mimed flexing muscles. More laughter. “But the Shields made a machine that would break the spell that controlled the Freithin.” Wonlar crossed the room with huge tip-toes. “They snuck into Medai’s compound, and freed the Freithin!”
Applause.
“And the strongest of them joined the Shields, becoming the mighty Sapphire.” The children cheered, proud of their home-grown hero. Wonlar snuck a sideways look to Rova and saw her hide a blush. She always got shy when Wonlar or anyone else talked about her. Eight feet tall, able to take on any of the tyrant’s beasts, thugs and traps, but still she was shy. Save her brother and his family, no one there knew her second life as a Shield. To the rest, she was just Rova Remembers, and he w
as just old Man Wonlar, the Ikanollo storyteller with the funny voices.
I wish I could spend this much time in each district, speak to every child in the city. not just because he might need these children to become Shields one day, but because the sacrifices we have made deserve commemoration. If the Shields failed to stop the storms or halt the summit, these children might have to take up the fight, or at least pass on the tales so that others might do so.
“Who can tell me the name of another one of the Shields?” Wonlar asked.
“Blurry!” one of the children said.
Wonlar crossed and rubbed the boy’s head. His parents had his hair kept short, shaved like Medai had ordered of the Slaves. Wonlar wondered why: comfort for the coming summer, or were some of the habits from their slavery harder to shake than others?
“That’s right, Blurred Fists, the fastest of the Pronai. He can fight a hundred guards at once or cross a district in five minutes. But he wasn’t the first Shield called Blurred Fists. There were three more before him.” Wonlar paused for a moment and hung his head, remembering Wenlizerachi’s mother, grandfather, and great-grandmother.
I’m honored to have known each of them, counted them as friends. They each paid the greatest price for their devotion, and their children still picked up the mantle.
“Who knows another one?” Wonlar paced the room, holding his chin in mimed thoughtfulness. He watched the children think in that hilarious too-transparent way of youth.
“Aegis!” said Pavi Protects, a young girl who had just started talking since his last visit. Wonlar grinned. I’ll have to tell Selweh that his name was one of her first words. The happy thought was followed by a twinge of guilt and fear. His son still hadn’t come home. Every hour without word made it more likely he’d been hurt, captured, or worse.
Be present, old man. They don’t need to know about that, he told himself.
“Yes, Aegis, champion of the Shields. There have been five people to carry the Aegis, you know, starting with the first of Shields of Audec-Hal. No matter what happens, the shield always finds its way to another champion.”
Wonlar knelt, putting his hand on the shoulder of a girl, a friend of Dom’s. “I like to think that it’s the City Mother, struggling against Yema’s control and trying to help us however she can.”
He rose, knees creaking. “Aegis trained two of the other Shields. Which two?”
Yara raised her hand again, but Wonlar waited to see if any of the others would answer. A beat passed, and he called on Yara.
“Ghost Hands.”
“Of course, Ghost Hands! She’s been with them since the beginning, reading the minds of guards with Qava telepathy and knocking bolts out of the air with her telekinesis.”
“And who is the other one?” Wonlar asked.
“First Sentinel,” said a boy with a strong jaw and light-brown hair. He held his squirming sister, ignoring her hand as she pawed at his face.
“First Sentinel, the mastermind. He fights with gadgets and potions, knives and staves.” he waited a beat. “You know, some say that First Sentinel is strange because he doesn’t seem a likely hero. He’s not strong like Sapphire, fast like Blurred Fists, doesn’t control stones like Sabreslate. He’s just an Ikanollo like any other.” That was a lie. He had a power, granted by the Spark. But it’d brought him more pain than anything in his life and was best forgotten.
“But others say he’s the most dangerous of the all, because he fights using the most powerful weapon we can have,” Wonlar knocked the side of his head like a door. “He fights with his mind. It’s a weapon you should all learn to use, as well.”
More laughter.
When he first started visiting the children, Wonlar downplayed his own importance—it felt wrong. Rova and Bira called him on his humility, asked him to turn it into a teaching opportunity. Ever since, he’d tried to throw in a bit of humor all the same. “Who here goes to school?”
Barely half of the children of age raised their hands, then a few more when prompted by siblings and parents. Not nearly enough. I’ll have to see if I can do something about that.
“Not everyone can afford school, but Rova and I have some friends who want to make sure bright young children like you have the best chance at a good life. When I come back next week, maybe I’ll have some good news.” Wonlar moved to the door to pick up his coat, waiting to see if the children would protest.
“One more story!” called Yara.
Wonlar turned on his heels, hiding his pleasure. “Really? You’re not tired of old Man Wonlar?”
A large girl, no more than six summers old but already four feet tall, said, “Tell Red Vixen and the Winter Lady.”
A boy named Arno Drives said, “no, tell Aegis and the Automata.”
The room burst into pleasant chaos and chatter. More children called out for their favorite tales. Toddlers slipped out of sibling’s arms and dashed across the floor. Parents shushed children and chased after squealing youths.
Wonlar drank it all in. He stored the hope and energy away in his heart as armor to protect him from the long nights, the defeats, and the despair. Without days like these, the simple dinners with Selweh … I don’t know what I’d do.
Wonlar had been visiting Rova’s once a month for three years and still hadn’t run out of new stories to interject when the popular tales grew too familiar. He had fifty years of adventures to recount, not to mention the myths and legends of six races.
If I’d known I’d become a children’s entertainer and recruiter for a revolution, I’d have taken better notes in Dr. Hansen’s class back in the Academy.
Back then, he’d been more concerned with exotic reagents and reading all the philosophy books he could to impress aria. It always seemed like she’d read everything before Wonlar even learned it existed, unless it was a book on artifice, the one science she’d never pursued.
The children settled on their request and Wonlar launched into “Aegis and the First Spark-Storm.”
“It was less than a month after the Senate building burned down in a mysterious fire.” Wonlar layered on the sarcasm to “mysterious,” since it was all but sure that she was responsible.
“I was just a young man then, studying at the academy of artifice. The first storm hit Broken Rib late afternoon on a crisp spring day. People milled back and forth, trying to get their errands done and enjoy the weather without attracting attention from Nevri’s guards.” another round of hisses filled the room.
Wonlar squatted down and lowered his voice. “It started with birds. Cawing, crying, songs, every kind of birdsong you’ve ever heard and more. It came down like a wind, sweeping through the neighborhood, and then the streets turned to mud. What color is mud?” Wonlar asked.
Pavi’s brother, Eava, said, “Brown.”
“Exactly. But do you know what color this mud was?”
Yara raised her hand, and Wonlar give her a wink. She’d heard this one before, so she launched right in. “It was green! Nasty snot green and it burned at the touch. The cobblestone streets turned into mud that might as well have been lava. People scrambled away from the burning mud, terrified.”
Wonlar stood, striking a heroic pose. “But then, Aegis arrived.” The children cheered. “He wore white and emerald, and he had with him the Aegis itself, a magical shield with incredible power. With it, he jumped in huge bounds, from windowsill to cart, staying off the street. He pulled people out of the mud, helped bandage the wounded, and led them to safety. And then, he went back in for more. The storm changed then, and everything went sideways.”
Wonlar picked up a toy ball from the floor and held it at shoulder level. “Normally, when we drop things,” he said, dropping the ball to the floor, “they fall down.” Wonlar picked up the ball and held it out again. “But things started falling sideways, slamming into walls.” Wonlar tossed the ball to the side, and it bounced off the bright orange wall leading to the kitchen.
“Aegis walked along the walls of building
s like they were floors, and rescued people hanging onto the roofs of their buildings. The sky opened up and it started raining purple cauliflower and spoiled milk.” Several children wrinkled their noses, and Wonlar continued.
Wonlar left out the truly terrifying parts, where the citizens had been transformed into boneless amoebas and spiked half-beasts, and most of all, he skipped the half-dozen that had just melted into the green mud, even though he remembered their cries as well as if it had been yesterday. A terrible thought rose up in his mind: How many people have I seen die? he pushed it back as he’d pushed back so many thoughts. Each time he went there to tell stories, he mastered his ghosts just a little more, but they did not yield easily.
“The last two people he rescued from the storm were a young Qava and her and Ikanollo friend. The Qava woman was doing her best to save them both, levitating out of the district, but she’d been hit on the head by a sideways-falling bicycle.
“[Thank you,] the Qava said, speaking in their minds.” Wonlar held both sides of his head to signal the Qava telepathy.
“Then the Ikanollo asked, ‘But who are you? Why do you carry that shield?’”
Wonlar aped the first Aegis’ voice as best he could, calm and confident. “‘call me Aegis. Will you help me tend to the injured?’ and so the Ikanollo and the Qava became First Sentinel and Ghost Hands, the first of the Shields of Audec-Hal.”
“Another!” Yara shouted, clapping.
Wonlar considered which story to tell next when the alarm bracelet vibrated on his wrist. When he was in public, he set it to shake rather than blare. Wonlar stood, gave a polite smile to the children, and then crossed the room. He looked to Rova, trying to catch her attention.
“Did yours go off?” he asked. She nodded. Pulling back his sleeve, Wonlar saw the emerald gem on his bracelet flash twice more, and then go dim. No direction indicated. What would interfere with the locator but not the base alarm?
Without the locator, all he knew was that Aegis was in fact in trouble. City Mother protect him. Wonlar gritted his teeth and looked to Sapphire. She shrugged, a tense look on her lips.
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