After slamming the door to their tiny hotel room, Tanza found enough breath for a tirade. She locked the door and pushed Auren toward the center of the room. “What is wrong with you? Why did you follow me?”
The hint of anger in Auren’s expression took Tanza by surprise. “I saw you leave the hotel.”
“You couldn’t wait for half an hour?”
He paced between the beds. “When I woke and found you’d left, for a moment . . .” He ran a hand over his face then pierced Tanza with his gaze. “What was I supposed to think? How could I know you planned to return? Why didn’t you say something?”
All of Tanza’s anger at Auren turned to hatred for herself. She hadn’t thought . . . hadn’t even considered what it would look like to him if he woke up alone. All she’d cared about was secrecy. She hadn’t even left a note.
These thoughts deflated her pride, and she sank heavily onto her bed. “I didn’t want you to know,” she said.
Auren sat across from her on his own bed, and some of his anger faded. “You were on Keffer’s errand, weren’t you? That package . . .”
“He wouldn’t let me take you to Alogath unless I made some deliveries for him.”
“Deliveries? Are there more?”
She couldn’t bear to tell him about the green box hidden in her pack. One delivery was crime enough in Auren’s eyes. She couldn’t reveal that their entire trip was a delivery route.
Since she didn’t need to deliver the package until after she and Auren parted ways, it wasn’t technically a lie when she said, “No. That was the last one.”
“Then our trip to Alogath will have no more surprise sunrise excursions?”
Tanza stared at him. His words were casual, even friendly, with none of the anger or judgment she’d expected. “You still want to travel with me?”
“What’s done is done,” he said. “I don’t approve, but you threw yourself into a fight to save me, and I’m not likely to find that kind of help elsewhere.”
Tanza didn’t point out that he wouldn’t have needed the help if he’d traveled with anyone else. Instead, she asked, “Where did the virtue prince learn to fight? You flattened that guard.”
Auren gathered stray supplies near the bed and brought them to his pack. “I had a call for my assassination broadcast globally when I was a week old. I know how to defend myself.”
“Glad to hear it,” Tanza said, pulling her pack from the closet. “I don’t think Berimac plans to hunt us, but I won’t relax until we’re out of the city.”
“Berimac?” Auren asked. “As in the lumiscopes? He must have been a child the last time I saw him.”
“I don’t think he’s that old,” Tanza said.
“He could be,” Auren said. “I remember a young Berimac child at a palace function.” He grimaced at the memory. “Beastly creature. Bruised my knees. This Berimac seems much the same.”
“He just likes his privacy,” Tanza said. “And his flowers. That’s all that was in the package, you know. Flowers. Not weapons or drugs or anything. Just a swampblossom. You’re not supposed to plant them outside the reserves, but it doesn’t do any harm. Probably has a better chance of survival in that garden of his . . .”
Auren chuckled. “Tanza, you don’t need to justify yourself to me.”
Yet she always felt that she had to. She’d robbed dozens of tombs without a sting of conscience. Now one prince with a list of virtue names made her feel guilty for delivering a flower to an old man. If she were smart, she’d leave Prince Auren here.
Instead, she brought him and the luggage to the car, and within the hour they continued on their journey to Alogath. She’d grown good at making bad decisions.
Chapter 7
AMID THE PICTURESQUE BEAUTY of the hill country—soaring rises covered in autumn purple, majestic cliffs of rock—Tanza scowled down at the High Runner’s engine. The steep inclines had overwhelmed the car; this was the seventeenth breakdown since leaving Verith two days ago.
“That’s it,” Tanza said, throwing aside a wrench. “Needs four parts that haven’t been made since the revolution. Can’t be fixed.”
Auren agreed, so they eased the car off the road and into the ditch.
As Tanza shoved all the supplies into their packs, two hovercars zipped overhead, and Tanza barely held back a frustrated scream. If Keffer had just let her use the hovercar, this trip would have ended two days ago. Hovercars were still too expensive for everyday transport, but Keffer could have spared the cost of fuel to spare Tanza’s sanity. But no, that would have required generosity, and now Tanza was stuck in the middle of nowhere with an injured ankle, an ancient prince, and no transportation.
Not even Auren’s power cell would get her a hovercar now, Tanza reflected as she yanked the packs from the car. Even if she dared to cross Keffer, she wouldn’t find a power-cell buyer or a hovercar dealer until Alogath.
She slammed the cover over the storage area and held out a pack to Auren. “Time to start walking.”
Auren pointed to a small smudge near a forest on the horizon. “I think I see a town.”
Tanza hefted her pack over her shoulder with a sigh. “At least it’s downhill.”
Against stiff autumn winds they plodded toward the smudge, which resolved, after an hour of walking, into a collection of buildings on the edge of a forest. The gathering of houses and shops could barely be called a town, but it sat on a silver ribbon of magna-track and boasted a small stone building that proved to be a flash-transit station.
“Flash-transit; that’s something,” Tanza said as she and Auren crossed a grassy town square. She tucked a few wind-battered curls back behind her head. “The fare will cost me three months’ rent, but we’ll reach Alogath by nightfall.”
“Flash-transit?” Auren asked.
After four days of ground-car travel, Tanza had forgotten how little Auren knew of modern transportation. “Think of rail-caravans,” she explained, “but four times as fast and carrying three times the passengers.”
Auren’s face twisted as he stared at the track, evidently attempting to visualize this mode of transport. “Sounds uncomfortable.”
“It’s . . . not bad,” Tanza replied. “It’s fast, anyway.”
Long-distance railways in Auren’s time had been designed for comfort, not efficiency. Even basic fares received plush seats, elaborately decorated surroundings, and wide views of the countryside. Tanza thought she’d have preferred such inefficient transport to the cramped, windowless metal casing of flash-transit.
The tiny gray-brick transit station had silver roof panels and wide windows of colored glass—an outdated building of entirely tephan design. The Coalition hadn’t bothered to build a new station for such a rural area; Tanza was surprised they’d built a flash-transit line through here at all. The only update was an ancient security column—probably taken second-hand from a larger station—installed in place of a boarding-pass desk in a deep nook in the outside wall of the station’s waiting area.
Tanza led Auren up cracked stone steps and into the sheltered nook that held the security column. A circular metal desk formed the bottom portion of the column, and two-foot-thick plastiglass formed its upper half and ceiling, which stood at roof height. The column’s entrance door was warped and rusted, and the interior was just large enough for a computer, a scattering of office supplies, and an ancient tephan woman.
“Branch line’s being repaired,” the woman drawled through the communication grate. “Cornerstone strike.”
Tanza wasn’t surprised. For the last few months the infostreams had been filled with reports of Cornerstone strikes between Verith and Roshen. Cornerstone hated technology introduced by humans, and the flash-transit lines were among the easiest public targets.
The old woman said, “First shuttle runs tomorrow.”
Tanza pressed for more details about travel times, prices, and security. The station employee researched each question on an ancient computer so slow that Tanza considered
giving up and walking to Alogath. Eventually Tanza paid a fee to reserve two seats, but when she turned around, Auren was gone.
She clambered down the stairs in a panic and found a town square transformed. A colorful, bustling city had sprouted in the space between the transit station and a row of businesses at the far end of the wide, grassy square. Tephans had made mountains of wood in the center of the square and rings of rocks on the sides. Male tephans assembled a stage on the far end while old women strung instruments, and another group had just started assembling a row of booths near the train station entrance.
Tanza peered at the sky and saw the shadowy shapes of three moons overlapping each other. Of course! Moon-cross! Tanza knew little about the traditional celebration; the harvest festival had died out in most parts of Arateph, but smaller towns held onto the customs. Tanza could easily imagine Auren rushing toward the familiar sights on the same wild impulse that made him charge deathtails and trust thieves.
She located him in the branches of a tree at the square’s far end and reached him just as he dropped to the ground. “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “Climbing trees! I thought something had happened to you.”
“Sorry,” Auren said, his smile unharmed by the scolding. “I couldn’t resist. I had to catch it.” With a lopsided, childlike grin that Tanza had last seen on chronovids of a five-year-old crown prince, Auren presented a huge hat made of thin, textured fabrics of red and blue-green shot through with gold and silver. The outer edges of its brim brushed his shoulders.
Tanza shielded her eyes before the colors blinded her. “What do you call that monstrosity?”
“It’s a hat!” Auren said, and set it on his head. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
Tanza wanted to curl up and die. The fashions of the last century included everything but taste. “No,” she moaned. “Why would you want it?”
His hands left the brim of the hat and spread wide. “To win the game, of course!”
Tanza’s opinion of the prince’s fashion sense improved slightly. “It’s a game?” she asked.
Auren froze. “You’ve never joined the hat hunt? What sort of moon-cross do you celebrate?”
“None. I grew up in the city.”
“As did I . . .” he said, his confused tone inviting further explanation.
Tanza hated to destroy another part of his world. “It’s not an important festival. The Coalition doesn’t recognize it, and tephans don’t mark it. I mean . . . I know when it happens, but I haven’t seen a celebration since I was four, and I don’t remember much of that.”
His face fell. “No moon-cross.”
“Except in primitive country towns.”
He stood motionless and blank as he considered this. Then, as if a switch flipped, he burst into a blinding grin as he grasped her hands between his. “Tanza,” he said, “you are going to love tonight.” He removed the hat and placed it on her head. “We start, as all the best things do, with a hat.” With that, he led her toward the heart of the festival.
Apparently the hat hunt was a moon-cross tradition. The hat’s comically wide brim was made to catch the autumn winds. Once it was knocked from a head, anyone could chase the hat and claim it until the wind took it again. Whoever held the hat at sundown claimed victory. At first only children played, but as adults escaped the workday they joined the chase, and the hat and the hunt wove wildly around the festival grounds.
Tanza didn’t play long. Her ankle wounds ached, so she kept watch over the packs. She preferred to watch Auren play. He dove, tumbled, ran, and climbed with all the energy one would hope a man to have after a century of sleep. He trained children in the finer points of hunting, learned local ground-rules from town elders, and was more at ease than Tanza had ever seen him, even in chronovids. History showed Prince Auren as the golden child, the last hope of Arateph, the man of virtue in a house of decadence. It had never shown him laughing.
At sundown a twelve-year-old girl claimed victory, but Auren showed no disappointment as he stood with Tanza to watch the bonfire lighting. The pile of wood and dry stalks blazed into a mountain of flame, and then the real festival started. Torches from the main fire lit smaller fires around the festival grounds. Jugglers tossed flaming knives, dancers spun fire in sun-bright arcs, and shadow puppets gave life to heroes and monsters of legend.
Meat pies, root vegetables, and sticky sweets flowed from sellers’ stalls and generous hands. As Tanza and Auren stood among the stands near the transit station, wearing their packs and sipping at syrupy drinks, a withered old lady gave Tanza a fireblossom from her garden. Caught up in the spirit of the festival, Tanza blew off the petals, which exploded in ribbons of light. Bits of the glow caught in her hair. Auren’s joy gave his face its own glow.
Tanza glanced at the station and at its ancient employee still at her desk inside the security column. “I’m glad we had to wait,” she told Auren.
As the words left her mouth, music blared from an open second-story window in the station. The recording was poor, but Tanza recognized the bracing chords and soaring melody.
Auren smiled. “The kingdom anthem.”
But Tanza’s limbs went cold. That song stood for only one thing these days . . .
She seized Auren’s hand and ran. He gave a cry of protest and tried to tug free, but she gripped him harder and gasped, “Cornerstone! The building’s being bombed!”
Frantic crowds raced away from the station. Everyone had heard of attacks like this. The building would explode at the song’s end, and only a scant few bars remained.
Hatred of Cornerstone flared through Tanza. Hundreds of innocents filled the square tonight; most nights, she doubted the whole town contained more than a hundred people. Cornerstone would endanger lives and destroy a tephan festival just to prevent a flash-transit line from running. If Tanza weren’t so terrified, she’d have been sick.
The crowd surged around Tanza, dozens of people terrified past all sense. Auren scooped up a little girl who’d been lost in the chaos and scanned the crowd for her parents.
A dissonant, multi-layered tephan shriek sounded from the transit station. Tanza whirled around to see the desk attendant battering the door of the security column with weak and withered fists. The latch of the column’s warped door had jammed, trapping the woman.
In that moment a veil dropped over Tanza. Her emotions disappeared; sound muted. A glassy stillness focused her thoughts on the facts. She had the skills to break open the door and the necessary tools in her pocket. The woman would die if she didn’t act.
Tanza dropped her pack at Auren’s feet and sprinted toward the station.
Auren started to follow before he remembered the child in his arms. Then he scooped up the extra pack with one hand, settled the screaming child on his hip, and ran the other direction.
By the way the door rattled, Tanza knew the woman had disabled the electronic security. Tanza only needed to break the physical barriers. She barely heard the chaos as she pulled out a metal file and jammed it beneath the door latch. She pressed against the file with one hand and pulled up and out on the door handle with the other hand. With a shrieking scrape of metal, the door flew open.
The old woman cried out in wordless relief and panic. Tanza dug her nails into the woman’s shoulder and pulled her out. Half-carrying the old woman, she raced away from the station as the last notes of the kingdom anthem sounded.
The train station erupted in fire and smoke. The explosion drowned out the screams of the crowd. Falling chunks of stone left craters only inches behind Tanza and the woman. Had they been a second slower, they both would have died.
Shaking—and coming to a slow realization of the danger she’d just escaped—Tanza fell to her knees, and the woman fell beside her.
Auren ducked and wove toward them against the current of panicked festival-goers, his face white and his eyes wild. “Tanza!” he shouted as he struggled to bring the heavy packs through the crowd. He jumped over someone’s leg and twis
ted out of someone else’s path, then crouched at her side. “Are you hurt?”
Tanza rose unsteadily to her feet. “I’m fine.”
Auren knelt beside the old woman. “Are you hurt, morikah?”
Tanza hadn’t heard that honorific—which indicated great respect and friendliness toward an unfamiliar older woman—since she was a child. At the moment she could barely remember how to speak Common Tephan, and Auren was constructing obscure terms in the naming tongue.
“No,” the woman rasped, her expression that of a frightened child. Tanza reeled under the sudden realization that Auren was decades older than this ancient woman.
She also realized Auren’s arms were empty and asked, “The little girl?”
“Found her parents,” Auren replied. He helped the old woman to her feet and asked her, “Is your family at the festival, morikah?”
As if in response, two young tephan women burst through the crowd and embraced the old woman. “Grandmother!” the taller one cried, apparently too modern to make it a proper naming-tongue title.
As the family members shared their relief and fear, a thousand facts flooded into Tanza’s mind, and she snapped back into action. The explosion was over, but the danger hadn’t passed.
She took one of the packs from Auren, grabbed his hand, and dragged him away. “We have to leave.”
“What?” Auren asked, looking back at the woman and her granddaughters. “What about them? Is Cornerstone coming to slaughter?”
“They’ll be fine,” Tanza said. “Cornerstone gave warning. This was a statement, not a cleansing.” Certain that the chaos covered their voices, she told Auren, “The med and fire teams are coming. Their scanners might have access to your voice print. Worse, they might suspect something about ‘Arthur’s’ identity card, and you don’t want to be caught with fake papers after a Cornerstone attack. We’ll go through the woods and catch a train in the next town.”
Auren nodded, face stoic, as he shouldered his pack. “Very well.”
In the confusion, no one noticed two strangers slipping out of the town square, and they traveled through the forest by the light of crossed moons.
Five Magic Spindles: A Collection of Sleeping Beauty Stories Page 37
