Steampunk Hearts

by Jordan Reece

  Something growled once a path was again under their feet. He whirled around, knowing the sound of a bear well from the perindens. No bulky shape lurked through the trees or on the path, yet large shrubs shivered as something passed behind them.

  “Command it away!” Keth barked, gripping her sword.

  “I can’t! There is nothing there!” Arden exclaimed. Scooping a stick from the ground, Volos held it tightly.

  A man pushed through the shrubs. He was a wild sight to behold, long hair tied in dirty rags, filth and grizzle upon his face, a belt of rabbit skulls about his waist and feet so coated in grime that it looked like boots. Armed with a bow, he drew back an arrow. It wavered between the three of them.

  “Stand down,” Keth commanded. “We are only passing through.”

  The arrow moved to her. Volos lifted his stick and the arrow shifted to him. The man did not say a word, but his forehead was wrinkled in anger upon them. A twig snapped behind Arden and he jerked around to see what was there. The man loosed the arrow, which shot between Arden and Volos and buried itself in the trunk of a tree. They shouted, as they were standing side by side and the arrow had missed them by inches.

  Another wild man stepped out from behind a tree on the other side of the path. He also had a bow. Keth shouted, “Volos, lead us!” Then they were running madly down the path after him. The wild men were in pursuit and shooting, but the multitude of trees and shrubs were a good shield. Rarely could they get a clear shot, and never did they have it for more than a second. Arden’s heart pounded hard as he ran. Searching for animals, he shoved himself into the mind of an invisible dragon. Attack them.

  The blood quickened in the little dragon’s body. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! It soared off the branch and weaved through the trees, a burning in its gut building up higher and higher as its talons clenched and tail thrashed . . .

  Arden looked over his shoulder. The dragon couldn’t be seen, but a spurt of fire appeared out of nowhere and struck the wild man in the lead directly in his face. He neither screamed nor ducked but ran on like nothing had happened. The dragon went to the second man to blast fire, yet the result was the same. The flames burst over his face and he just charged on without reaction or a burn. Calling the dragon back, Arden ordered it to claw the man.

  He did not see what happened then, because a bear tumbled out of bushes and lunged at Keth. She shouted in fear and veered to the right, sprinting away with it on her heels and shouting for Arden to call it off. But no mind existed there for Arden to step within!

  Blankness. Like it was a figment of sword-weed toxin, but this figment was crashing into bushes and swiping out for Keth, who leaped onto a boulder, leaped again onto a bigger one, and leaped a third time into the crook of a tree. The bear circled the trunk as she climbed higher and higher, and it had no mind. That was not possible. Arden could feel minds all around him, yet not that one.

  An arrow flashed past his face. He could swear it peeled the thinnest layer of skin off the tip of his nose. It did not sting, so it was only the displaced air of a terribly close shave. Flying harmlessly into brush, it was followed by several more that went over his head, behind his back, and one that passed between his flashing legs. There were six silent wild men now darting through the trees both behind them and coming up on their right side. None were worried about the bear or even Keth. They all had their eyes on Arden and Volos, bows pointed at them and arrows whipping from quivers to be drawn back.

  Volos dropped his stick, which could do nothing for them here, and Arden sloughed his heavy pack since it was slowing him down. They ran together, weaving around trees and rocks until the tree that Keth had climbed was lost to view. The men pursued them, men that could not be injured! This was not a robbery or they would have taken Arden’s pack for their own and gone away.

  He was going to be robbed of his life before he had even gotten a chance to live it. He leaped a fallen log with Volos. Between the trees far ahead was a glint of purplish blue. They were coming up on the next brother and there was no ferry in sight. Not a steamboat, not a tram-wood, not an inn, nothing.

  “Please have some magic to save us!” Volos cried, arrows riddling a tree ahead of them and causing them to swerve behind a line of bushes that would provide cover from the men on the side.

  Arden sought out the living presences he could not see and then yanked at every dragon larger than a kitten. They exploded from the trees in an invisible rush, branches creaking and leaves raining down, as Volos and Arden made it to the shore.

  Talons curled around their arms and shoulders and they were heaved off the ground. Their weight was too much even for the dozens of dragons holding them, so they did not go high. Over the river they soared, arrows slicing through the still water beneath them. The dragons’ talons cut through their shirts. Arden looked back to the wild men, who were standing upon the shore and lowering their bows.

  Not once did they cry out to see a pair of flying men; no expression ever changed from angry. Though their clothes had small differences, their faces were almost identical. They had to belong to some strange, wild family to live in this forest, trapping bunnies and chasing out anyone who trespassed upon their land. The barkeep had been a fool to not warn Keth of this, or the bears and the conditions of the path. The soldier would no doubt have something to say upon their return to the first brother.

  By the time they approached the shore, the dragons could no longer keep them aloft. Arden’s boots were dragging in the water, but he touched down to sand before they lost their strength entirely. Volos collapsed in a heap as all of his dragons released him at once. They breathed hard from the run and their panic.

  “Are they . . . are they coming?” Volos whispered, fighting to brush his long hair out of his eyes.

  “No,” Arden said. The wild men were no longer even standing on the shore. They had disappeared into the trees, every last one of them.

  Then Arden turned to the new stretch of forest and prayed to Dagad that no wild men lived here. At first glance, everything was very normal. There was no cold wind, or movement in his peripheral vision. Three Hav blues were sitting on a branch of a tree, screeching and swatting one another with their wings. Perfectly visible, one gave off the battle to fly after an equally visible bug. There was no sword-weed anywhere.

  Volos noticed it, too. “That queerness does not reach here.”

  Then the ground fell away under Arden’s feet.

  One moment he had been standing upon the shore, water behind him and trees to the front, and now he was hanging from rock below a mountain path. The plunge fell away into a chasm full of sword-weed. Volos cried out in shock as Arden dropped, and then the tracker threw himself to the ground. Clinging to a boulder in the path, he attempted to extend his hand. But the chain did not allow him to part his hands far enough to reach Arden.

  “Throw me the key!” Volos shouted. Arden got it out and threw it upwards. It vanished over the side of the path and dirt rained down as Volos scuffled after it. Then all was silent above.

  He had left. Dagad be merciful, he had taken the key, freed himself, and left Arden here.

  Then it was west to the fishers. He wouldn’t trust anyone ever again but the animals that he could control. Arden flailed to reach a higher rock and haul himself up to the path. It pulled free under his fingers and fell down to the sword-weed. The one bearing his weight began to shift.

  Metal clinked and Volos reappeared. Arden shouted in fear and relief. “It is giving way!”

  Still their hands could not meet, and Volos dropped a cuff over the side. “Grab onto this and I will pull you.”

  There had been a shore and river . . . dragons and a bug . . . how had they gotten from there to here? Arden swiped twice for the cuff and missed, but got hold of it the third time. The rock came loose and fell. All of Arden’s weight hung from the cuff, which bit into his fingers.

  It was too much for the chain. A link snapped and the cuffs came apart.

  Arden fell, Vol
os shouting as the change in weight yanked him off the path. Then they were plummeting down to the deadly thicket of sword-weed, which was going to gore them to death before the overload of toxin had a chance to kill them first. Arden couldn’t breathe. The wind was rushing into his face with such strength that he could push out no air. His leg struck against a rock, sending an agonizing shock wave through his body, and then he was spinning down and down and down . . .

  There were no animals here to save them, and there was only one thing that Arden could do. He forced all of his power into the tracker’s mind. You feel no pain.

  “Arden, don’t!”

  You feel no pain. When they landed, Volos would not feel it as keenly.

  Colors tumbled before Arden’s eyes and turned to blackness, a dragon screeched, the hissing of air disappeared, and he crumpled to earth. It was not as painful as he had anticipated, no sword-weed slicing up his flesh, and the burning in his lungs quenched as air resumed its normal flow.

  He opened his eyes. He and Volos had fallen back to the shore where they had been originally, the wild men gone and the dragons now off their branch and hunting the bug. The cuffs were still around Volos’s wrists, and the key was in Arden’s pocket.

  This was insanity, and Arden had had enough of it. Pulling out the key, he undid the lock, unsnapped the cuffs, and heaved them into the water. Shakily, Volos said, “Was that a dream of the mountain?”

  “We could not have shared a dream.” Spying ochodi flowers growing in the shuffle beneath the dragons’ tree, Arden pulled off the thick leaves and crushed them in his fingers. Green sap oozed out and he daubed it into the raw skin on Volos’s wrists. “We will stop this chase now and go. I will take no more orders to find the princess.”

  “The princess?”

  “That is whom we have been hunting down, the king of Odri’s youngest daughter. Princess Briala is trying to escape an arranged marriage and the king wants her returned to the palace in Lighmoon. I won’t go one step further after her. She belongs to Havanath now.”

  “Do you wish to belong to the Cascades?” Crushing a leaf in his fingers, Volos touched it to Arden’s arm where a dragon’s talon had cut in so hard as to make him bleed.

  I would belong to you, Arden thought. He sent his words into the tracker’s mind, too afraid to give them voice. Then a hand came to his cheek and rested there, and Volos kissed him. Heat rushed through Arden’s body at that gentle touch of lips to his, the smell of the ochodi sap sweet between them.

  They parted at leisure. Volos tipped his forehead to rest against Arden’s and whispered, “You will never be lonely in the mountains. My mother will be your mother, my brothers your brothers, and we will fill a home with children underfoot and carved dragons and happiness, Arden. This does not have to be something you had long ago but lost forever. Just reach out and claim it with me.”

  “Yes,” Arden said, and smiled to see Volos’s beautiful smile. The dragons returned from their hunt screeching just as a pleasant breeze blew over a strong scent of shuffle. Arden and Volos got hastily to their feet. They had no pack of supplies, but Arden still had his coin pouch swollen with money, and Volos had a little in addition to his dragon scales. It would see them to the Cascades.

  The wild men were nowhere to be seen, nor were the bears, and the mountain path was gone. The animals were just as they should be. But as Arden and Volos went to the trees, they startled at sword-weed growing up between the trunks. It grew fast, going from seedling to full-grown in sheer seconds, and when they turned, it was flourishing behind them on the shore.

  “A green-growth penchant,” Arden said. “This must be the man that she is traveling with! It is a spell.”

  “It isn’t growing there,” Volos said, pointing to a pair of trees that had nothing between them but fallen leaves. “Hurry, before it sprouts!”

  They ran to the trees and passed between them. Sword-weed was coming up everywhere on the other side. Again, there was only one place left to go and they bolted for it. The forest was being consumed, the sword-weed growing so high that it loomed over Arden’s head.

  “Is this penchant pushing us away from her?” Arden panted.

  “No, he is drawing us closer to her,” Volos said, ducking as sword-weed sprouted along a branch and swung down to his head. Then they could speak no more. The plant was growing even more quickly than before, thrusting up through the soil so that they could not backtrack and twining from tree trunk to tree trunk to create a narrow path that could not be eluded by any means.

  When they stumbled into a campsite, they were greeted with the points of swords. That was it, two swords held by no one, but aimed to the chest. Arden held up his hands to show he had no weapon but the knife at his belt. Sucking in his chest as the sword inched forward, Volos addressed the empty air. “Neither of us came of our own accord on this search for you, and we are happy to go our own way and let you go yours.”

  “Do you see her?” Arden whispered, for he saw nothing.

  “I smell her,” Volos said. “She is holding out the sword to me, and her man to you.”

  Then two people were standing there, their hands upon the hilts. It was Princess Briala, her hair pulled back into a braid and her cheeks stained with blood from anger. She was wearing a traveling gown to protect her clothing. The man was dressed as finely as any gentleman, but his face was pale and sweat beaded his brow. He looked tired and ill.

  “Penchant?” Her voice heated, the princess said, “How is it my father managed to have us followed so swiftly? We never expected to see the messenger birds coming from the ferry captains. We left them only as a precaution.”

  “The king used me,” Volos said. “I am a tracker from the Cascades. I can track anyone living or dead. But my employment was under duress, as was the penchant’s.”

  The sword lowered from Arden’s chest and the man almost dropped it. The princess cried, “Sit down, Reth! Stop making images and spare your energy.”

  “You’re an illusion penchant, not a green-growth,” Arden said in realization. The sword-weed was sinking back into the earth and vanishing.

  “Yes,” wheezed the man. “Rethfello Ellonzie, Duke of Halaima of Havanath, great-nephew of the queen.” His trembling fingers went to his purse, which sagged limply from his belt. “I will give you every last coin I have-”

  Arden shook his head and the princess flared at the challenge. “Save your words about duty for I will not be dragged back to marry Cathali all to placate my father’s business interests! Live in Isle Zayre and bear the children of that gambler and whoremonger and slavetrader! Accept whatever coin we have left or be run through.”

  “Neither of these things needs to happen,” Volos said as the sword edged ever closer to him. She was so furious that she had not listened to what he had said about going their separate ways. “We share one thing in common, and that is not to be the bauble of a rich man. Let us leave. We only wish to go, Princess Bri-”

  “You will not address me as such. I have abdicated my titles and I am only Briala now. How many came with you?” she demanded.

  “Two soldiers and a squire,” Arden said as the duke took a seat on a fallen log heavily. “One soldier hurt his ankle very badly and returned to the tram-wood ferry with the squire. The second soldier is across the river believing a bear is after her.”

  “No longer,” the duke said weakly. “Act in measure, dear Briala, not in fire. If these are captive men who wish only for their freedom, then I do not believe their intent is at cross-purposes to ours.”

  She stared piercingly at Arden and Volos and then lifted away the sword. “Have they any idea of the identity of my companion?”

  “None,” Arden said. “The soldiers talked about your Hav contacts but his name was not among them.” That was curious to Arden. “I do not know how he was overlooked. They were quite thorough.”

  The duke’s posture had improved with the cessation of his skill. He wiped the sweat from his brow and said, “I am fift
ieth in line to the Hav throne, an illusion penchant of no great strength, and I came to Odri to serve only as a language tutor for a year some time ago. That is why I was overlooked. I would be considered of no import, as I was of none then, and have only been named to Halaima in the interim with the death of my older sister.”

  “Arden!” It was Keth, who was shouting from the other side of the river. Trees and bushes concealed the campsite and its inhabitants, and Arden could not see Keth in return.

  “Is she coming over on a ferry?” Volos asked in worry.

  “Arden!”

  “There is none, and we never saw the captain who should be in this area,” Briala said. “He must be delivering passengers to some other port. We had to build a tram-wood for ourselves and we sank it when we got to this shore.”

  “It practically sank itself,” the duke said in good humor. “We had to cut the horses free; it could not bear their weight.”

  “You could pay us in an illusion, if you have the strength for one more,” Arden said quickly to the duke as Keth shouted again. “We do not want to be pursued for our skills. Put an illusion on that shore of us dead by some means for the soldier to see.”

  “He does not have the strength,” Briala said.

  “I can do that much for them as our gratitude,” the duke replied, a glimmer in his blue eyes. “It’s the quick images that take it out of me, not the mostly static ones. Come, fellow penchant, tracker. Let us see if we can’t conjure something together.” Nervous about how close the soldier was despite the river, Briala moved fast around the campsite to gather their belongings.

  Leaving her behind, they slunk through the trees to the shore. Volos breathed in Keth’s scent and said, “She is walking this way along her side.”

  “Then let us go around that bend and put you two there,” the duke said. This task was amusing him. They crept around tall rocks until they had a view of a sandy nook. Then two shapes appeared half-in and half-out of the water, Arden’s hand thrown out to the trees and the lower half of Volos’s body bobbing in the small waves. They were face down.