by O. J. Lowe
The descent was starting. They were falling through the air and would hit the ground shortly, lost amidst the mountains. The entity within was fading, the vessel had expired. Gone. Self-sacrifice. The entity could appreciate that. The right thing over the easy thing. A sacrifice to make sure what had been found was lost again, it could not be forced into the wrong hands. The entity had been born only to die again, did not know right from wrong, only that they were words that had meant something to the vessel from whose conscious it had been birthed from. To the entity, they meant nothing. The importance behind them had been stressed, it could appreciate how important life was to these pitiful fleeting monkeys.
The first explosions ripped across the bow as the hull of the ship met mountain peak, not a soul remained alive aboard. All the entity could do was honour those final wishes. Nobody would find the Forever Cycle. Not until one worthy came. The entity knew that day would eventually come, couldn’t fight fate. Until that moment, this location would remain hidden. Wherever the Aerius fell, it would lay, undisturbed until the time for revelation. It hoped the vessel knew peace, wherever he had gone. Those were not the mysteries for the Kjarn. Those were the times beyond. All was connected and yet connections were not all that mattered.
“Farewell, Adrian of Battleby,” the entity said through the vessel’s own lips. Any words of power were gone. Lost. The power had faded and with it, any urge the entity had to go on. The vessel hit the ground, rolled with the ship as it fell into the mountain, deep into the crevices and the gaps between peaks.
For a few long moments, commotion. Then nothing but silence, the Aerius came to rest against the base of the nearest peak, all the energy of movement lost to it. The hull cut a distressed figure, broken grey against the backdrop of white. As if nothing had happened, the snow continued to come down and down, their flakes kissing the shattered hull.
Now.
They’d searched every inch of this thrice-damned ship, finally found the cabin in question. The thought they’d never find it had crossed her mind, made her question her motives, wonder if this was all just a foolish errand. Doubt was the greatest enemy you could have. Once you ceased to believe, questioning yourself followed, and should you start doing that, you might find uncomfortable answers. She’d decided her own answers so long ago, to weaken now would be disastrous. She’d tried so hard, come so far and the end was near. She could feel it. She could almost taste the potential success. The Forever Cycle had to be on this ship somewhere, they’d searched the hold and almost all the passenger cabins, she’d picked this one as the next. The manifesto had left little clues, only how the inhabitant had been a late arrival who’d thrown credits at the situation and a corrupt clerk had supplied him with passage. A Battleby. A dead name now.
Her information, if it had been accurate, had suggested the only reason he’d not been removed from his position for taking bribes was only because no actual credits had changed hands. A strange story, even if the minutiae of fifty years ago were an irrelevance. She didn’t need to know how they’d wound up here, only that they had.
She pushed the door, felt it swing open under the slightest of touches. Her brow furrowed as she took in the view of the lock, it had been burned completely away by something she couldn’t explain. The wood around it had rotted partially but there was no other sign of damage. The smell of spoiled wood filled her nostrils and she wrinkled her face at the odour. There’d been damp in here at some point. Strange, the rest of the ship had suffered no such damage.
None of the other rooms had taken such a beating as this one, there’d been some strewn debris as to be expected with a crashing ship but this one looked like it had been hit by a cyclone. If it could have been dislodged or broken, it had been. The bed had been upturned, the closet doors ripped asunder and shelving laid across the shower facilities. There was a dressing table at the back torn into two pieces, neatly bisected across the middle. The rip was smooth as well, sheared clean with no ragged edges.
“What happened here?” she said aloud, not really expecting an answer, before she saw the piles of ash. They weren’t the first they’d seen across the ship either. An explanation hadn’t come to mind.
“I’d say murder,” Domis said from behind her. She hadn’t heard him enter the room, but she could sense him. She could always sense his presence, like a second shadow. Even before she’d stepped in the chamber, she could sense him. Before he’d whispered to her. Now he positively screamed, she could no more have ignored him if she’d tried. It was always good to know when her bodyguard was near. She trusted him with her life, secure in her certainty that he would never betray her. He loved her too much. His desire was to see her desires come to light. Without him and his support, she wouldn’t have made it this far and that was the undeniable truth.
“Murder,” she said. Domis knew far more about these things than she did. How many times had he killed in her name, if perhaps not with her express permission? He didn’t take words against her lightly. Her enforcer as well as perhaps her only friend. She didn’t have much time for that word and yet with Domis, it applied well to the situation more than it did to most. “Who was the aggressor though and who was the defender?”
“Does it matter?” Domis asked.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Unless you feel the urge to go rooting through their remains, it is perhaps the best policy to study the scene and work out what happened here. If the occupant had what we seek, it may be hidden somewhere within the room. If the attacker had it, then we are wasting our time. Yet it is here. I can feel it.”
Not entirely true perhaps, but she could feel something. In the same way Domis resonated with her senses, she could feel something else in the room calling to her with a low hum of energy, something drumming into the deepest, darkest corners of her being. Drumbeats in time with her heart, she felt like they were slowly starting to sync up and she wasn’t sure she liked that. If the drumbeats stopped, would her heart cease to beat with them?
Now she was being ridiculous. She shook her head, tried to clear those thoughts. She’d been aboard here for too long. The eeriness of the Aerius was starting to get to her. She didn’t scare easily. Not with what she’d seen ever since her time in the chamber. Hells, not even with what she’d done. She’d put things into motion that would make a garden-variety psychopath shit himself with fear. How many had died because of her crusade? How many would continue to die? The answers were always the same. Not enough and too many.
People were always the problem. Even the ones who wanted to help often did little more than ache their jaws over the subject, indecision and inertia winning out over desire for action. Those who had died since she’d started the project. They would still perhaps be alive if she hadn’t. But their presence wouldn’t have changed a thing. They’d had their chances and they hadn’t taken them. When they came into these kingdoms, everyone had the opportunity to leave a mark on them. Some marks were bigger than others admittedly, but a mark was a mark regardless. Too many marks were fleeting and didn’t benefit anyone other than those making the statement. Man kills woman, is imprisoned and executed, it affects his life, her life, the life of everyone who they might ever touch and not in a good way. A true waste of potential.
An old friend of her fathers, her first ever advisor as the owner of Reims had always told her that he believed everyone had but one destiny in life, all the variables inevitably pointed to one outcome. He was long dead now, but she wondered if he’d always considered her destiny to waste away at the peak of Reims, a queen of industry or to reach for even higher peaks. Might he be surprised if he saw where she stood now?
Domis did his part in the search, she saw him turn up something gleaming and silver in his hand, she dismissed it out of hand. It wasn’t what she was looking for. Even as the blade erupted into life in his hands, she gave him barely more than a cursory glance. A new toy for him to murder with. She’d seen Carson with one, that girl assassin months ago doing the same. Didn’t that fee
l like a lifetime ago, like it had happened to someone else. A different woman then. A weapon like that would give Domis a new murderous edge to his being. The Senate and Unisco had Vedo on their payroll now, Vedo entirely unlike Carson as he’d been in a hurry to point out. She could recall the scorn in his words.
“These, Mistress, are not Vedo. They are what Ruud Baxter thought the Vedo should be. Only a subtle difference in theory but it might as well be a mile.”
Maybe they’d come around, see things her way and she could bring them into the fold. Maybe. Or they could all be wiped out. Carson was in Serran, searching for another artefact for her. He was looking for students of his own, men and women powerful in the Kjarn but he’d already conceded they wouldn’t be ready for years. If it came to a war, Baxter would have the edge.
That was when she heard the voice outside, high and eerie and the commotion that came with it, her guards already giving orders to cease movements. She knew the voice, she knew the shape of the shadow she could see outside.
“Easy you shitwallocks,” the mincing voice said, she turned and saw Rocastle barging his way in past the guards, with only Domis’ glare halting him from approaching her further. His false leg thumped against the door frame. “Heh, sorry Mistress but I come bearing news from… Get the fuck away from me!” Two of the guards had come up behind him, he rounded on them. “Messenger! Don’t harass me, bitches.”
“What do you want,” Domis said, no hint of threat in his voice, just cold words hard with anger. “You were ordered to remain aboard the Eye.”
“Yes, well dearie,” Rocastle said breezily. More cheerful than anyone ever should be when talking to Domis, she thought. His fuse was short where anyone who wasn’t her was concerned. “As I already said, I bear a message for the Mistress and one that won’t wait. It’s from Premier Mazoud.”
That got her attention. “And? What does Phillipe want now?”
“War,” Rocastle said. “He said he’s ready to move on Serran.”
She felt a stab of annoyance. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Not yet. She gave the cabin one final look around, pursed up her lips in annoyance. Fucking Mazoud, determined to ruin things with his wild impetuousness. Much more of it, she might have to look at replacing him in Vazara. A tricky task and one she wouldn’t relish but if it became necessary then she would. The efforts to get him on the throne had been massive, removing him would surely be easier.
Except he still had the Suns at his beck and call and she couldn’t fight them and the rest of the kingdoms at the same time. She wondered if Mazoud knew that and was deliberately sabre-rattling. If that was the case, he was perhaps more dangerously intelligent than she gave him credit for.
“Search the room,” she said. “It’s in here somewhere. Leave nothing unturned and we will find what I need. Domis, stay here and oversee. I’m returning to the Eye.” She reached to her bodyguard, took his giant hand in both of hers. “I know you won’t fail me.”
“I will die first, Mistress,” he said.
True words indeed. She’d seen some of the wounds inflicted on her dark scoundrel. He could hurt but he couldn’t be broken. He’d suffered wounds that would have killed anyone else, had shrugged them off and kept on coming. What it would take to kill him, she did not know. That he should make such a vow to her only underlined his certainty.
“I know you will,” she said, patting his hand. “Good luck, my friend.”
“And to you, my Mistress.”
They parted, she gave Rocastle a suitably withering look. Make sure he always knew his place, lest the ideas in his head make him think himself better than he truly was. “With me, Harvey,” she said. “We’re done here.”
Chapter Sixteen. Coppinger’s Wrath.
“I will have revenge on my enemies, those who defy me will be dealt with, be it today, tomorrow or the day after. Society bears insults which must be born, but I will not let it slide forever. These kingdoms need a firm hand, one which will slap them down if they seek to rise up.”
Claudia Coppinger.
Domis had returned, one moment he wasn’t there and the next he was, a presence across her senses. She hadn’t even heard the door open, lost in her thoughts. A good thing he wasn’t an intruder wishing her harm. She spun her chair, turned to face him. She should have guessed he’d made his way back to her, she’d heard the engines and the return of his shuttle. Now he was there in front of her, Sinkins behind him and a box in his hands. The tiny and the tremendous, the mountain and the mole.
“We found it, Mistress,” he said simply, his voice little more than a throaty growl from the cold. It had been biting down there, she’d recalled. They couldn’t have brought the Aerius down in much more of an inconvenient place if they’d tried. “We found the object of your desire.”
It was more than desire, she thought as she studied the box. A lot more. It was lust and envy, a waking dream she didn’t wish to wake up from. Everything in her life had led to this moment, finding this box upon the Aerius and laying claim to the power inside it. She could feel it from where she sat, raw power resonating with her senses, throbbing with its very presence. The answers were there, she could smell them, rich and coppery, the odour of power older than she could comprehend. It was hers as well.
“Under the damn bed if you can believe it,” Sinkins said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what the hells sort of hiding place the original owner thought that was, but there it is.”
“Might have made more sense at the time,” she mused. “Could have been any number of reasons.” Why was she even contemplating this? The why was irrelevant, all that mattered was the when and the how and both times were approaching.
“We’ve found it, Mistress,” Domis rumbled. “What are our next orders?”
She said nothing, still intently focused on studying the box, running her eyes across every edge of polished mahogany. It looked new, she had to admit, perhaps a little too new. The realisation flooded through her, knowledge hitting her this wasn’t the Forever Cycle but rather the receptacle they’d chosen to hold it. Their choice had been exquisite, she pulled it towards her, fingers fiddling with the clasp. The anticipation made her heart pound inside her chest, bounce harder and faster than it had in years. Her fingers closed around the lock, pulled it aside and gasped at the sight awaiting her inside the wooden confines.
“Ah, it wasn’t us that broke it,” Sinkins pointed out quickly as she reached into the box, withdrew the bronze compass-like artefact and held it to the light, disappointment tugging at every fibre of her being. The face had been marred, a terrific crack running down the centre. She danced her fingers across the surface, felt the power flow around the stricken area but not through it. There was potency there, potential for chaos unrestrained if only she could tap it. The mysteries it could solve remained just out of reach, a lock for which she didn’t have a key and it frustrated her. Like this, it was useless to her.
“Sinkins!” she barked. “What the hells do you get paid for?” She didn’t wait for him to answer the question. “I want you to use all your contacts, anyone you might know who can do this job. I want it repaired now!”
“Mistress Coppinger,” Sinkins said, his voice servile and creeping. The sort of voice that made her want to punch him in the face. If she hadn’t gotten used to people treating her like she was an afterthought before, recent times had changed her, the trials and tribulations of life catching up with her. “It is not that simple to repair an artefact like this. Not simple at all. It is not a case of using some glue and a new lens. It is complicated machinery, from a simpler time admittedly but designed by beings whose nature we can’t even start to comprehend.”
“No excuses, Doctor. I want to hear how it can be done,” she said. “Not about why it can’t be. If that’s how you feel when faced with challenge, then perhaps it was a mistake to promote you.”
“I did examine it thoroughly on the way back here,” Sinkins said quickly, the determination to rectify his earli
er mistake plain on his face for all to see. “It appears to be all in working order.” He reached into his coat, withdrew a handful of brass that jingled as he handed them towards her. They looked like little shot glasses, she thought, the choice of beverage of the hardily inebriated. She’d never seen the attachment towards them, though she studied the bronze cups with interest. A layer of faded black hung to the bottom of some of them, she scraped at it with a fingernail, black ash came away. Something had been burned in there, long ago but burned regardless.
“Any ideas?” she said. “You’re the expert, Mister Sinkins.”
Sinkins only shrugged. “Going through my notes, going through the ones Blut left behind before his timely demise, I’m concluding that by the court of agreement, that that is indeed the Forever Cycle. Blut made a few references to it, it’s where we got our link to Mister Frewster, of course…”
She would have loved to have known how Blut had made that connection. Blut had been an information gatherer extraordinaire. Nobody had been able to touch him in that regard. His death had been a setback, she often wondered who’d struck the final blow in putting him down. Sinkins was adequate in the task. Nothing more. When she’d needed something investigating fully, research carried out to the hilt, Blut had turned coal into diamonds too many times. His mind had been a weapon like no other. He alone out of everyone she’d ever brought to this quest had found Wim Carson, her own pet Vedo. He was hers, he just didn’t realise quite how much just yet. If push came to shove, he would kill for her.
They all would. That was the truest mark of a great leader. Would your followers kill for you without you asking them to? Would they take the greatest act of theft against another human being, steal their life, upon their own initiative?
