The Far Far Better Thing

by Auston Habershaw

  Tyvian was wondering how he would explain to them whose side they should be on when one of the warlocks suddenly sprouted an arrow, poking out of his chest. Gods bless those brutal Delloran bastards, Tyvian thought, skipping just beyond the snapping jaws of another hound.

  An arrow hit Artus in the backside, making him skip-hop, and then he would have fallen but for Voth grabbing him under one arm and helping him along. Tyvian had an arrow graze his forearm, digging a long bloody groove from elbow to wrist. He clenched his teeth—almost there.

  The warlocks were getting their engine started, working runes of conjuration into the main spirit vessel. The moans and screams of the engine fiends split the night.

  Eddereon was the first to the cab, leaping aboard and finally taking the time to tear the dog off his shoulder and throw it at its fellows snapping at his heels. Artus and Voth were next, hopping onto the guard rail running along the spirit vessel.

  Tyvian heard the hoofbeats behind him, too loud to be much more than a few paces back. If they wanted to put an arrow in his back, they could, but the archer—whoever he was—was shooting instead at the cab of the spirit engine. They wanted to stop the thing from moving, and moving it was.

  Tyvian found himself running on the tracks behind the moving train, dogs on either side of him, snapping at him; the horses behind with their riders no doubt leaned forward in the saddle, waiting for the moment to strike with lance or saber. His breath burned in his lungs as he reached out to grab the end of the cargo car—missed!

  Voth was on top of the car; Tyvian caught a glimpse of blades in one hand—her throwing knives. She cocked her arm back and he half expected it to come flying at him, but instead a dog yelped to his right and then another to his left. Then she cried out—an arrow in her stomach. She crumpled into a ball, about to roll off the top of the cart.

  It was the boost the ring needed. Tyvian felt a surge of power fill him and he leapt from the tracks to the top of the cargo car in time to grab Voth by the arm and pull her up to safety. His breaths came in ragged gasps, “Adatha . . . Adatha . . . are . . . are you . . . all right . . .”

  She trembled, blood pouring between her fingers. “You better be right about this thing . . . ughh . . . making me . . . harder . . . to kill.”

  Tyvian picked her up as another arrow embedded itself into the roof of the car. He looked back to see the hunting party being called to a halt as the spirit engine picked up speed. He kissed Voth’s hair. “I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry, darling. Stay with me now. Just stay here with me.”

  Voth curled up in his arms, bent around the arrow buried in her abdomen, as the train screamed into the night.

  Chapter 25

  Walled In

  The spirit engine didn’t stop until it was in Galaspin. The warlocks were kind enough to drop them off before pulling into the berth—the last thing any of them needed was a brush with the mirror men. They slipped through the gates just before dawn and found a place to lie low.

  Eddereon knew a fellow in the city—an old mercenary friend of some sort—who let them stay in the cramped attic of his stuffy old house near the walls. Unlike Ayventry, the walls of Galaspin were no mere affectation—standing almost sixty feet high, they kept the house in shadow for the better part of the day. Tyvian always found them claustrophobic and, because of them, he never liked staying in Galaspin for long.

  The last time Tyvian had been in Galaspin for any period of time, he, Artus, Hool, and Brana had robbed the crypts beneath the Stonewatch—the Duke of Galaspin’s castle—and barely escaped with their lives. That had been three years ago, but it still felt recent enough for Tyvian to take care to hide his face when he went out into the street. Since their arrival the day before, he had seen kiosks still affixed with ancient handbills—sun-faded and forgotten—sporting a rough smudge that might have once been a picture of his face. The reward was set for five thousand gold marks.

  The thought of turning himself in for the reward was tempting. Just for the laughs—show up, insist on collecting the reward, and then contrive a way to escape with it all. With someone like Voth on his side, it was almost a lock that it would have worked.

  Voth, though, was deeply injured. Ring or no ring, it was going to take a few days for the healing poultices to do their work, and until then they were stuck here with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Voth was given use of the only bed in the attic, and so Tyvian had to sleep on the bare wooden floor, thick with dust and the dander of the big orange cat that had at some point claimed the attic as its own. The place stank of cat piss and dead mice.

  “You’re certain Rodall can’t follow us in here?” Tyvian asked, sitting by the attic’s only window and trying to wave fresh air into the narrow, stale room.

  Eddereon looked up from polishing his sword with a bladecrystal, making it supernaturally sharp. “No Delloran mercenary will be given admittance to Galaspin, I can promise you that. They’d shoot him on sight.”

  “Men have been known to wear disguises,” Tyvian countered.

  “Rodall’s metal teeth would stick out anywhere,” Eddereon said. “Calm yourself, Tyvian. We are as safe here as anywhere.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “You’re only looking for an excuse to worry.” Eddereon pointed where Voth was sleeping. “You’re actually worried about her.”

  “The woman wants to kill me and with good reason. Of course I’m worried about her.”

  Eddereon smiled and shook his head. “Not like that. You know what I mean.”

  Tyvian scowled. He was about to say something pithy when the trap door to the attic sprang up. It was Artus. “There’s an army camped outside the walls!”

  Tyvian sprang to his feet. “Sahand? Is he mad?”

  Artus shook his head. He was letting a full beard grow in and, for once in his young life, it actually was. His sandy brown mane was starting to be the youthful mirror of Eddereon’s midnight-and-silver one. “Not Sahand—some other army. Heard some people talking, saying it might be Saldor.”

  Eddereon frowned. “Saldor doesn’t have an army.”

  “I wanna go check it out,” Artus said. “You guys want to come?”

  “No,” Tyvian said, looking out the window.

  Artus looked at Eddereon. “How about you?”

  Eddereon got up, being careful to keep his head down so as not to whack it on the ceiling. “I could use a walk.”

  “What about the medicine?” Tyvian asked.

  “Oh, right—almost forgot. Here’s the medicine for the woman who wants to kill us all.” Artus tossed a paper package on the floor. “I sure hope she gets better soon, that’s for sure. I’d hate to stop sleeping with both eyes closed.”

  Tyvian might have said something nasty—Go look at your army, boy—closest you’ll ever get to leading one again—but he stopped himself. “I owe her my life, Artus. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

  “That was just the ring and you know it.”

  Tyvian blinked at the venom in Artus’s voice. “What’s eating you?”

  “You mean besides the arrow wound in my arse that still hurts like hell? I dunno, let’s see—maybe it’s the fact that you kidnapped me from my own tent. Or maybe it’s the fact that you faked your own death and abandoned me. Or maybe it’s the fact that all the time Myreon, Michelle, and I were just barely holding that whole stupid army together, you could have helped us and you didn’t!”

  “Oh, it’s that simple, is it? I just had to show up and scheme you and Myreon out of a goddamned war?” Tyvian couldn’t help but laugh. “How the hell can you, of all people, not understand that I make everything worse?”

  “Kroth take your self-pity, Reldamar,” Artus said. “You’re brilliant. You could have fixed things. You still could. You just won’t.”

  “I’m not a hero, Artus. I never should have been.”

  “You are what you chose to be. You taught me that.” Artus turned to Eddereon. “Come on—light’s fading.�
�

  They left. Tyvian was alone with Voth. He scooped the package of medicine off the floor and walked over to the bed, head tucked low to avoid the beams.

  The assassin had lost a lot of blood on the spirit engine. Were it not for the ring, she probably would have died, but she had held on faintly, clinging to Tyvian’s arms as he put pressure around the shaft of the arrow to stem the bleeding. Her eyes hadn’t opened since Eddereon had taken the arrow out here, in this attic. Her face was now ghostly white, striking a marked contrast with the scar across her face, which was a livid purple. She looked frail and delicate, like a porcelain doll. Tyvian hated seeing her this way. Hated it, he realized, in the exact same way he had hated seeing Myreon as a statue in that penitentiary garden.

  He sat on the three-legged stool next to the low bed and ripped open the paper package. It had an array of herbs for boiling into broth and a small vial of some alchemical mixture related to a bloodpatch elixir—it would help thicken the blood, add vigor to a failing constitution. So the alchemist said, anyway. Seeing how he was both dead and a wanted criminal, Tyvian was forced to rely on Eddereon’s contacts here, and the caliber of alchemist Eddereon put faith in was somewhat suspect.

  He pulled out the stopper and leaned over Voth.

  Her good eye was open a crack. “If you pour one drop of that vile stuff down my throat . . .” she whispered.

  Tyvian found himself grinning broadly. “Or what? You’ll kill me?”

  “Wh . . . where am I?” Voth tried to sit up, but quickly fell back to the thin pillow with a groan.

  Tyvian took her hand in his and rubbed it, trying to warm it up. “Galaspin. Stay still—you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “No thanks to you.” Voth tried to pull her hand back, but was too weak. Tyvian let it go anyway.

  “Thank you for saving my life back there. Those throwing knives.” He chuckled. “I thought you were going to throw them at me.”

  Voth looked at him through a half-open eye. “I was. Bloody ring wouldn’t let me.”

  Tyvian was still smiling. “Well, thank you anyway.”

  “You go straight to hell.”

  Tyvian didn’t respond, but just sat there, looking at her. It was like seeing a cat dipped in water—the grace and dignity of the woman he knew as Adatha Voth was drained away here. He could see so much more in her face, now that she was too weak to hide it. She looked . . . afraid. But of what? Not Rodall, surely.

  Wait . . . of me?

  Tyvian picked up her hand again and held it. “You don’t need to be afraid of me, Adatha.”

  “That’s a stupid thing to say,” she said. “You’re dangerous. Everyone knows how dangerous you are.”

  “But not to you. I promise.”

  She sniffed. “Promises, promises.”

  Tyvian grinned. “You know why I like you, Adatha Voth? You remind me of myself.”

  “How narcissistic of you.”

  “No, I mean it. I was just like you, once,” he said. “I was a loner, living life on the edge of disaster, a consummate professional. I did what I wanted and I went where I liked.”

  Voth rolled her good eye. “Sounds glorious.”

  Tyvian nodded. “It was, in its way. It truly was.”

  “Then Eddereon slipped the ring on you?”

  “And everything changed.” Tyvian’s smile vanished. “Everything became more complicated. More difficult. For a while there, I thought it might have been for the better, though. I felt better about things. Well, most things.”

  Voth slowly pulled his hand onto her chest and looked at the ring fused there, black and plain. “How long have you been this way?”

  Tyvian thought back. “Going on four years now. Gods, that doesn’t seem like such a long time, does it? But it seems a lifetime ago.”

  Voth looked at the ring on her own trembling hand, turning it back and forth. “I could have escaped a dozen different ways. I could have killed you and your idiot friends a hundred times over.” Her voice was bitter. “It wouldn’t let me. It was all I could muster to call in Rodall, and then it made me jump on top of that cargo car to help you. It got me shot in the stomach and now I’m stuck in some reeking attic with you, a has-been underworld kingpin and former monarch, moaning about his bloody feelings. I hate this thing, and I hate you for putting it on me.”

  Tyvian knew this kind of venom—he remembered spitting it at Eddereon in much the same way. Unlike Eddereon, though, he wasn’t sure she was wrong. He tried to put on a brave face. “It . . . it has its advantages.”

  Voth pulled the blankets up under her chin. “Not the tune you were singing over the ashes of Ayventry, Reldamar.”

  Tyvian felt a bolt of rage at that one. He threw up his hands. “What, you would have rather died, is that it? Because that was the choice you had, Adatha—the ring or death. You didn’t give me any other choice, and I’m sorry I didn’t want to kill you. I couldn’t. I admire you too much!”

  “You admired me so much you made me a slave!” Voth snarled, waving her ring hand in the air. “You took away my choices, Reldamar! My freedom! It isn’t right! I don’t care how many stupid simple platitudes that hairy oaf throws about—you and I are in chains. I won’t live that way again, you understand me? Never again!”

  Tyvian blinked. “Again? What do you mean again?”

  Tears welled in Voth’s good eye. “Nothing. Never mind. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “What happened to you, Adatha? Tell me.”

  Voth began to cry, just like she cried those nights she shared his bed. There was something . . . helpless about it. She rolled in the bed, putting her back to him. “Get out.”

  “Voth, I—”

  “Get out!” She pulled the blanket up over her head.

  Tyvian retreated and went downstairs. He borrowed some pipe tobacco from the old mercenary and lit a clay pipe by the back door, which looked out onto a narrow cobbled street with filth caked in the gutters. A couple of boys were wrestling with each other in an alley, laughing and yelling curses. He smoked as the sun set, the shadow of the wall quickly overtaking the neighborhood and plunging it into darkness. The feylamps slowly flickered to life.

  Voth was right. It was wrong to put the ring on her—perhaps even more wrong than killing her. He had no right to do it to her, no more than Eddereon had had the right to do it to him. He was sick to death of this heroism nonsense and the wretched trinket that drove him to it, over and over again. Standing there in the doorway, looking at the seedy alleys he once stalked as a smuggler, he remembered that old freedom . . . and he craved it.

  The freedom to not care. The freedom to let the world take care of itself. The freedom to turn a blind eye to injustice and terror and misery and just look out for the only person he had ever been any good at looking out for—himself.

  Where was the great crime in that? Why was he required to carry all this weight on his shoulders? Fix it, Artus said, but why him? Those boys in the alley didn’t give a damn. Neither did their parents or their parents. The world was full of people only looking out for their own interests. Why couldn’t he be one of them again? Who made it his responsibility?

  Right—his mother had done that. His mother, whose misguided attempts to save the world from the same mess she’d made in the first place resulted in her being tortured to death at this exact moment, somewhere in an impregnable fortress in a frozen wasteland. Of all the stupid nonsense, that was perhaps the most egregious.

  He tapped the spent ashes of his pipe into the gutter and retreated into the house. If it was an army from Saldor, then he knew where it was going. That meant war was coming to Dellor, and they’d be fools to walk into the middle of it. He’d be damned if he let anybody—Artus, Eddereon, Voth, whoever—walk into that mess. He’d meant that before and he for damned sure meant it now. No, they were going somewhere besides Dellor, no matter what they thought of the matter.

  He pulled Voth’s sending stone out of his pocket. It was time to give Carlo
diCarlo a call and let them know he was coming.

  And tell the old pirate exactly how Tyvian wanted to play this.

  Chapter 26

  Return to Freegate

  In the almost four years or so since Tyvian had last been in Freegate, it had gone downhill. This was saying something, since the city hadn’t exactly been on top of the hill to begin with. As the spirit engine rumbled into its berth at the edge of town, the conductor recommended all passengers cover their faces with a damp cloth before disembarking. It turned out to be good advice.

  A pillar of angry red fire dominated the sky, shooting up a thousand feet from a blazing crater that had once been Daer Trondor, based high in the mountains above the city. This, Tyvian knew, was the end state of Sahand’s last play for hegemony and, in a way, directly Tyvian’s fault. That didn’t make it any less shocking to see. When he’d left Freegate, it had been incognito and he had been recovering from some rather substantial wounds—his eyes hadn’t been on the sky. Even then, he couldn’t believe he’d missed that. It painted the entire city in an angry orange glow. Ash rained down steadily, coating everything in a gray film.

  “Gods,” Tyvian muttered, staring as he stood in the doorway of the spirit engine.

  Voth looked with him. “More of your handiwork, Reldamar? You must be so proud.”

  Artus shouldered past Tyvian. “C’mon—the sooner we get those supplies, the sooner we can be on our way out of this dump.”

  “Dump” was apt. Even if not for “the Pyre,” the city was in bad shape. The Saldorian Crash had hurt markets here. As they threaded their way through the winding streets, Tyvian saw more than a few shops shuttered up, and a few others showed signs of looting. There had been riots here, and recently. Many of the city’s iconic marketplaces were deserted or in severe disrepair—even now, in the early summer, when they should have been bustling. It gave the place a toothless, haggard look. Granted, Freegate had always been a city with rough edges beneath the glitz of naked commerce, but right now the commerce was less “naked” and more “invisible.” All that was left was the rough edges.