The trail led Naia several blocks before she detected a much larger trace of energy. She stopped in the middle of the street, her tongue licking at the air. Someone had used a powerful arcanist device. It left a lingering aura over an area several paces wide.
Her sharp eyes picked out dark spots on the cobblestones. Dropping to her hands and knees, she first sniffed then licked the stain. Blood. A trail of it led west, but the arcanstone’s scent went south. This is where the man had lost the stone. The masked man Kiera said she fought. Blindside was to the south, where Kiera lived. Had she lied about not getting the stone? If she had, she was a very good liar. Naia, nor her mahsa, were easily fooled.
“Hey, girlie, if you want something hard to lick, I got something better than the street,” a man called out from the side of the road. The laughter of several other men followed the speaker’s crude joke.
Naia ignored them and focused on the weak traces the arcanstone left behind. Unfortunately, the path took her past the drunken men who had just stumbled out of a nearby tavern. The one who had spoken grabbed her by the upper arm when she tried to slide past them.
“Hey now, where you going?” The drunkard’s eyes focused on Naia’s mop of platinum hair. “You look like a wild thing. Bet you’re wild in bed too!”
Naia’s eyes flicked from the man’s hand holding her arm to his face and she giggled.
The drunk smiled, misinterpreting her laughter. “That’s better! See, we can have fun.”
“My mahsa told me what to do to boys like you.”
The man pressed in closer, the alcohol on his breath so strong it made Naia’s eyes water. “Yeah, what’s that?”
“This.”
Naia’s knife slashed across his stomach and spilled his innards onto the ground. Her other hand came across, wielding a matching blade, and sliced open his throat.
“What the—!” one of his friends cried out, taking a step toward him and his killer. It was a fatal mistake.
Naia leapt like a furious horned devil, her hands pumping in and out, perforating a bloody line from the man’s abdomen to his neck. The two remaining men bolted in opposite directions, the girl’s insane laughter helping to drive their flight.
One of the men ran south, the direction she needed to go, so she chose him as her prey. The terrified man whipped his head around in search of the killer. He breathed a sigh of relief when he failed to see anyone chasing him, but his reprieve was short-lived.
He caught a flicker of movement across the rooftop just over his right shoulder. The man darted down a narrow cleft between buildings off to his left then made another right and second left within the pitch-black maze. He hunkered down in a patch of darkness so devoid of light he could not see the wall he pressed his back against. The man clamped a hand over his nose and mouth in an effort to stifle the sound of his heavy breathing.
Naia loomed unseen directly over his head. She planted her hands flat against the roof, lifted her legs over her head in a handstand, and silently brought them down over the ledge until she was hanging by her fingertips. She dropped the short distance to the ground without making a sound. Naia channeled a tiny bit of power from her bracelet, just enough to make the stones cast her face in a ghostly light.
She smiled as the man slowly turned his head and his terrified eyes met hers. “Boo!”
The man screamed, the pitch so high that anyone within earshot might have mistaken it for a woman’s cry. He bolted from his hiding spot, but Naia’s knife whipped out and cut the tendon at the back of his left ankle.
He cried out again as he fell, rolled onto his back, and tried to scramble away. Naia crept toward him in a crouch before dropping onto her hands and knees and crawling up his legs and over his body.
“Please, please, I didn’t mean no harm!” he cried. “I swear I didn’t!”
Naia’s eyes bore into his as she raised one knife toward his face. “Bawk, bawk,” she clucked, tapping the tip of his nose with her bloodied blade and painting it red.
She left the man lying in the street weeping, her manic giggles hanging in the air. Naia reached Blindside and kept running. She was just able to detect the scent of the arcanstone’s passage even though she doubted that she needed it. She knew where it was, or at least had been. There was little doubt. She liked the chicken girl. It was a shame she was probably going to have to kill her.
Naia raced down the dark streets like a hound after fleeing game. She paid little heed to stealth, but no one tried to interfere with her. A fortunate thing for them. She used the power of her arcanstones to give her the power to leap the chasms between rooftops and lend additional speed to her legs. It was a substantial drain on the stones’ energy stores, but she preferred haste over conservation as she relied more on her fighting skills than magic.
She entered the large section of Blindside that was little more than small mountains of rubble from which many people scrounged bricks to construct homes and buildings. As she suspected, the dwindling ethereal scent led straight to the derelict airship Kiera called home.
Naia slinked around the base of the huge mound upon which the airship rested, sniffing and licking at the air and sometimes the stones themselves. The trail did not go up to the airship but into the mesa of crumbled stone. She slid her hands across the rocks, seeking out the faintest residual auras.
She soon found what she was looking for. A loose stone, its lack of dust showing that it was frequently handled. She lifted the brick from its recess and found a lever hidden behind it. A section of stone, which was nothing more than a veneer, swung inward when she pulled the switch.
Naia studied the dark tunnel for a moment before stepping inside. The hum, clank, and hiss of unseen machinery reached her ears as she navigated the rough passage supported by a number of wood, stone, and metal braces. She passed a few chambers that appeared to be excavated rooms from the remnants of the building above and buried by time. They now rested beneath the surface, filled with tools, machinery, and mysterious apparatuses.
Naia stopped, cocked an ear, and followed a familiar, but out-of-place sound. She located the source of the soft clucking in another room where she found a chicken snuggled upon a nest of straw and strips of cloth. Naia squealed with delight, darted across the room, and knelt down until she was almost nose to beak with the chicken.
“Hello, bawk bawk. Do you have any yummy eggs for me?” Naia asked as she slid a hand between the nest and downy feathers, relishing the warmth radiating from the bird.
Her fingers found the prize, and she pulled it out amidst the chicken’s soft protests. She poked a hole in each end of the egg and sucked out the slimy innards. Naia then cast the empty shell to the floor and turned toward the sharp click of a musket’s hammer being cocked.
Russel stood in the doorway, his six-barreled pistol trained on the intruder. ”Step away from the chicken,” he signed with his free hand.
Naia stared at the short boy and his strange hat and began to laugh. “You are funny-looking!”
Russel tried to back away when she began walking toward him, but she darted forward and snatched the gun from his hand.
“What is this? Is it a gun?” she asked as she closed one eye and stared down each of the barrels. “I have never seen a gun like this. Did you make it?” Naia shoved the pistol back into his hands, grabbed his hat, and plunked it down onto her head. “Why do you wear this funny hat?” She manipulated the thick lenses and leaned forward and back, making Russel’s head swell and shrink, laughing all the while.
“Give me back my hat!”
Naia stopped laughing and looked at the boy through the eye not obscured by the lenses. “Why don’t you talk?” She took off the hat and stuffed it back onto Russel’s head. She reached out as Russel tried to adjust the hat and stuck a finger into his mouth. “Do you not have a tongue?”
Russel slapped at her invasive hand, turned his head, and spat the taste of her finger from his mouth.
“Nope. You have a tongue. I hav
e a tongue too,” Naia said, sticking it out to show she was not lying. “Are you deaf? Is that why you don’t talk?” Naia waved her hands about and twiddled her fingers. “I can sign too.”
“I’m not deaf.”
“My mahsa does not like it when I talk. Is that why you sign? Are you not allowed to talk either?”
“Talking is hard. Hands better.”
“I’m glad you are not deaf. I don’t get to talk very often. I like your chicken. I don’t have a chicken. I did name some skitter lizards and rats. I live below the ground too. It is like this, but I do not have so many things, and Mahsa does not let me have any lights. You have lights. I like them, but I don’t need them. I have very good eyes, see.”
Naia leaned in close, letting her eye fill the lens in front of Russel’s face.
Russel backed away until his back struck the wall. “What do you want? No one is allowed down here.”
Naia crouched down and tapped him on the nose. “You are naughty. You stole Mahsa’s stone. Where is it?” She straightened up and began stalking from room to room. “I should be able to taste it, but you have hidden it.”
“You need to leave!” Russel futilely signed as he stormed after the intruder. “This is the kingdom of Russel. I’m Russel. You can’t be here.”
Naia stopped in what appeared to be the central chamber and hub of Russel’s tiny empire. Tools, wire, and a vast assortment of parts lay scattered across several tables. Diagrams and drawings of techno-scribings covered almost every available inch of wall space. She went to one wall, pressed her body against its hard surface, and began caressing it with her hands and the side of her face like a human eraser on a chalkboard.
“I know it is here. Where did you hide it, naughty boy?”
Russel had had enough of the intruder. He stormed up behind her and reached out with his gloved hand, his finger extended. Naia spun, clamped a hand around his wrist with a vice-like grip, and sniffed at the small metal stud at the tip of the glove.
“What is this?” Naia ran her nose along his arm, her eyes noting the techno-scribing along the glove’s extended cuff, picking out the techno-device’s magical scent. “Buzz, buzz. You were going to shock me. Naughty boy!”
Russel let out a strangled cry as Naia tightened her grip and sent pain shooting up his arm.
“Let him go!” Ashlea shouted, projecting her image from one of the room’s mage glass lamps.
Naia hurled Russel’s arm away, drew her knives, and launched herself at the ethereal girl, slashing wildly at her insubstantial form.
“You cannot hurt me, you stupid savage.”
Naia stepped away from Ashlea and looked at Russel. “How do you have a ghost?”
“She’s not a ghost.”
Naia leaned toward Ashlea’s incorporeal form and sniffed. “Ah, you are why Mahsa wants her stone so badly. You are the stone.”
Ashlea floated away and put herself between Russel and the strange girl. “Just go away, you animal. You cannot have me. I am for a greater purpose, one that may decide the fate of this empire.”
Naia narrowed her eyes at Ashlea and turned them on Russel. “What fate does your ghost speak of?”
“I am not a ghost!”
Naia pointed one of her knives at the ethereal girl. “Shut up, ghost, or I will find a way to make you bleed!”
“Evil creatures are coming,” Russel answered. “One is here already and wants the stone. He can’t have it. You can’t have it. It is for me. My stone. My duty to stop them.”
Naia continued to stare at Russel like a predator examining its helpless prey, cocking her head from side to side as she decided the best way to devour it. “I like you, naughty boy with the funny hat. You will be my boyfriend, so I will not tell Mahsa you took her stone.”
“What? I’m not—” Russel’s hands flashed in panic.
“This is what I decided!” She glared at Ashlea, pointing her knife at her and slowly twisted the blade as if she were boring a hole in her. “And you, you I don’t like. I will find a way to make you bleed.”
***
Something tickled Kiera’s nose, like the tiny feet of a pesky insect, intruding into her dreams and rousing her. She slapped at the annoyance with a groggy hand and opened her eyes, fully prepared to go to battle with the bug that dared disturb her sleep.
Naia’s face loomed over her as she squatted near Kiera’s head, a lock of her unkempt hair pinched between two fingers and brushing the tip of the sleeping girl’s nose.
“Bawk, bawk.”
Kiera rolled away, her heart racing and pumping blood and adrenaline throughout her body. “What the shit?” she screamed, crouching near one wall, ready to fight for her life.
“You are a naughty chicken girl. You have Mahsa’s stone. You lied to her. Shame, shame, chicken girl.”
“What? No, I…wait, Mahsa’s stone? Nimat is Mahsa? You’re Nimat’s daughter? Well, that explains a lot.” Kiera shook her head, dislodging the tiny remaining fragments of sleep from her mind. “I didn’t lie. I don’t have your stupid arcanstone.”
“But the funny boy does, and I know you know he does.”
“How do you know Russel has it?”
Naia tapped her nose with one finger. “I sniffed it out.”
“What now?” Kiera asked, fighting to control the trembling in her voice.
“Hmm, I am supposed to tell Mahsa, but you did not tell her I talked.” Naia moved in a blur, crossing the room in the blink of an eye, pressing a knife to the soft skin of Kiera’s throat. “And you will keep our secret, because we are friends, yes?”
“You bet. Best friends. Friends who keep each other’s secrets and don’t kill each other.”
Naia’s smile showed her perfect white teeth. “You are funny, chicken girl. Russel is funny too.”
“Oh yeah, he’s hilarious.”
“He has a chicken.”
“Who doesn’t love a guy with a chicken?”
“That is why he is my boyfriend, so I cannot tell Mahsa he has her stone.”
“No, you—wait, what?” Kiera asked, shaking her head. “Uh, does Russel know about this relationship?”
Naia shrugged. “He did not look happy, but this is what I have decided.”
“Well, I think you two make a great couple,” Kiera said then whispered, “because you two are both completely insane.”
Naia glared at Kiera a moment before she burst out laughing. She continued her maniacal cackling as she ran from the room and disappeared into the night.
***
“You do not have my stone,” Nimat said as Naia entered her bedroom.
Naia dropped to her knees and stared at the floor. “No, Mahsa. I followed its trace to where Kiera fought the man, just as she said. The trail led to an airship, but it was not on board.”
Nimat tapped a delicate finger against her chin. “Perhaps someone took it aboard a different airship and the one you searched occupied its cradle after it departed,” she mused, assuming that Naia was referring to the mooring yard.
“I do not know, Mahsa.”
“I wanted my stone back, but this prospect is better than the Necrophage getting it. I will have to send word to the other cities to inform me should anyone try to sell it. You failed your mission, daughter, but your news brings me a little comfort.”
Naia smiled at the floor. “Thank you, Mahsa.”
CHAPTER 9
Kiera perched atop their airship’s broken mainmast, refusing to allow herself to sleep, and kept a vigilant watch over her junkyard fiefdom. Just as dawn began to color the horizon, she spotted a dark form moving amidst the piles of rubble. Her eyes snapped open, and the fog cleared from her sleep-deprived mind. She scurried down the mainmast, took up a position behind it, and held a baton and the grappling gun at the ready.
“Hey, can someone lower the ramp?” Wesley called up.
Kiera holstered her weapons with a relieved sigh, crossed the deck, and heaved the gangway over the side. Wesley’s slow
, unsteady footsteps preceded him up the gangway. Kiera’s heart leapt when she noted his battered face.
“I hope she paid extra for that,” Kiera quipped.
“Wasn’t the customer,” he replied as he trudged past on the way to his room.
“What in the Tormented Plane happened to you?”
Wesley lit a pipe packed with dream weed he took from a drawer and eased himself down onto his bed. “Ah, that’s better,” he moaned, his words coming out in a billow of thick smoke.
“Wesley, what happened?”
“I became a damn hero that’s what happened. Saved Duke Rastus from being murdered in a tavern.”
“Rammox shit. Rastus is not going to frequent some tavern, and if he did, he would have bodyguards.”
“He was in disguise. He does that from time to time. I’ve talked to him at least three times like that. Says it’s the only way he can really know what the people are feeling.”
“Cut the crap.”
“OK, maybe it wasn’t Rastus, but I did save someone from a mugging. There were these three thugs about to rob this rich guy—”
“Give me a break. You moped around for a week after killing the skitter lizard that was chewing holes in your good trousers.”
“It was two guys—”
“Wesley!”
Wesley took another deep drag from his pipe and exhaled the smoke in a long sigh. “I got rolled. They took my money, drugs, beat the crap out of me, and deliberately ruined my clothes.”
“Fred’s people?”
“They didn’t say, but most likely.”
“They can’t do that! Nimat said no debt collections or retributions until this thing with her arcanstone and whoever was trying to steal it gets sorted out.”
“Right, because Fred always plays by the rules…”
“Are you OK?”
“I’ll live. You know me, I can take a beating, but I won’t be making any appointments for a while, and I lost a good amount of the drugs I was supposed to sell.”
Kiera paced the room and kicked the wall several times. “That sonofabitch!”
“Where are you going?” Wesley asked as Kiera stormed toward the door.
Mourningbird (Empire of Masks Book 3) Page 8
