by Skyler Grant
CHAPTER FOUR
The walls of the passageways and cabins were blackened from the earlier fire. The Vainglory had taken a lot of damage. I was asking a lot of this ship and these people who weren't even getting anything out of it. I'd have to find some way to reward them. You'd think being a King would make that easy, it didn't.
On deck, Ashley was leaning against the mast. Great. Nearby, the corpses of the riders looked thoroughly mangled.
"I see you're up and about," I said to her.
Ashley shot me a weak smile. "Glad I'm not stabbing one of the corpses over and over again?"
"Yes, now that you mention it. What was the deal with you and the roast?"
Ashley lifted a leather-clad shoulder in a shrug. "What do you want me to say? I'm crazy. It gets too long between a kill and becomes all that I can think about."
"Well, at least that's honest," I said. More detail than I needed, if I wanted to sleep soundly at night.
"We going to dance around the issue? You know we can't do that. I mean, my insanity is fairly harmless."
I gave her my best stare, which she answered with an innocent look. Right. Honesty. "You went and murdered an unarmed Ambassador who I was trying to make peace with. We might be in a war because of you."
Ashley had the good grace to look a little ashamed. "They weren't going for it. You know they weren't going to go for it. Besides, they'd already started the war."
It was true that diplomacy didn't seem to be working and they'd begun an invasion. It didn't make what she had done right.
"Why did you want to talk about this, if you were going to say you don't have a problem?"
Ashley glanced at the door leading to below decks. "Because we both know that Walt has a bigger one. You aren't going to screw the world to death however much you try, and even I'm not badass enough with my knives to go all global threat. Walt is different."
We'd found out that Walt's head was filled with the memories from countless members of his order. Including the designs for nuclear weapons and all the military horrors of the world before the artificial intelligences had taken over, imposing peace. When mixed with Mela, a Goddess who loved to build and didn't care about who got hurt, it was a terrifying combination.
"He's working on the engines now," I said.
Ashley considered this a moment. "Good. Better that he does something to take the edge off."
"By the way, I was thinking of going celibate," I said.
It was Ashley's turn to do the staring while I shifted uncomfortably.
"Yeah. You'd pull that off. Liam, it's seriously not all about your dick. Can we get back to the real problem?"
Ouch. I couldn't exactly fire back when I had brought the subject up.
"Well, the way I see it, none of us are going insane just from the god bits floating around in our head. My hormones were out of control way before Yvera even got involved," I said.
Ashley nodded. "You tried to get in my pants, but I'm awesome. And I've always been mean."
That wasn't so. I remembered her growing up and when she was a completely different person.
"Veros brought out a lot of anger and rage in you. Because of him, you've carried that around for a long time. I think you had it in control until the dungeon," I said. A few weeks spent torturing herself in a magical prison cell couldn't be good for anyone's psyche.
Ashley clenched her jaw and gave another nod. "We don't know how Walt would have done without his dungeon stint."
"But we know the dungeon brought the part of him least under control to the fore," I said. "Those memories he's carrying around with him are too much."
"You think we can get rid of them? Maybe Gina could do it with a wish?"
"Maybe. We've played enough with wishes for the time being. Let's give him a chance to get a handle on it and if he doesn't, we'll keep our options open. For now I need to find Lea."
Ashley jerked her head towards the foredeck, "She headed back to her cabin to get some rest."
I went to Lea's cabin. In response to my knocks she cracked the door open and invited me inside. She'd stripped off her clothing. We'd been to bed together, so it wasn't as disconcerting as it might have been, but was still more of her than I was used to seeing.
Maybe this celibate thing wasn't going to work after all.
"You're being very open," I said.
"If I thought skin bothered you I'd have thrown on a robe," Lea said. "I was looking over your work."
"My work?"
Lea pointed to where she'd been hurt. "Your healing magic. It's important for what I do that my runes remain unbroken and uniform. If the healing changed any, I'd have to redo them or I couldn't count on a power I was expecting."
I'd never thought of that aspect of having magic right there on your skin. I studied the area and couldn't see any breaks in the lines.
"So how did I do?"
Lea closed her eyes and slowly her body came alight as the runes over it flared to life. She turned slowly in front of a mirror. "Good, as far as I can tell. Everything seems to be holding a charge. I have to do this after every fight, when I get a chance. Expecting something to be there that isn't could get me killed."
"Being around Cobalt, you must spend a lot of time naked in front of mirrors then."
Lea shot me an amused look. "I do actually. Were you just looking to score or did you need me for something?"
"Riggs and Walt are working on the engines."
"I know. Fixed them enough. We're not in any danger of falling out of the sky anymore. Surprised you didn't ask about Cobalt. She's fine by the way, if still sleepy. Tucked her in."
That was one worry off my mind.
"They are doing the best they can, but the Vainglory is in bad shape. You know that."
Lea moved away from the mirror to grab a robe. I admired the view before she slipped it on.
"Why are you coming to me before Cobalt?"
"Because we need a plan. You spent most of the day scouting before we got attacked. Did you find anything we can make use of?"
Lea sprawled in a chair and began to sketch in the air, opening a scrying window.
"What did you have in mind? I saw a lot today."
"Some place with room for us to set down for a while and shut everything down to make repairs. Bonus points, if it has some supplies we can steal."
Lea nodded slowly. "I may have something. I didn't check it out too much earlier. It wasn't an immediate threat and we weren't really looking for a retreat."
The view in the window zoomed. It revealed a large clearing in the forest, and a few structures visible in the treetops surrounding it.
"What is it?" I asked.
Lea's fingers continued to move with blinding speed as the views zoomed and flickered around. "From what I can tell, it's a shipyard for one of those airships of theirs. Balloon material, shot for their cannons, tools."
"Manned?" I asked. We weren't exactly in shape for a fight.
"That's the bad part," Lea said. "I'm guessing they left a few staff in case any ships had to come back for repairs. The guard presence doesn't look that bad, but there is one."
"What are we dealing with?" I couldn't see much. Not surprisingly, she always got far more information from these things than I did.
"Two griffons and their riders. Somewhere around a dozen Elves. Engineers, probably, but that doesn't mean they won't defend the base."
That was more of a fight than I was looking for right now, but we didn't have a lot of choice.
"We could try dropping in Ashley and letting her clear out some of the guards," I said.
"You sure you want to leave her in a place like that with knives in her hands right now?" Lea asked.
"She seems to be doing better. Killing helps."
"That's healthy."
Yeah. Well. That was the way the world was working lately. I gave her a shrug. "It is what it is."
Lea gave me a sympathetic look. "It's the same way with the boss sometime
s. If she goes too long without a war, she gets all twitchy and starts taking stupid risks."
"I thought that was just her day-to-day life."
"Even riskier than the ones you’ve seen her take. It gets really crazy."
"Did you join up with her before or after Riggs? I know he used to be a god. He told me."
Lea laughed. "God of hafts. The dick jokes that have been made. Your nose doesn't seem to be broken, so I'm guessing you didn't make one."
"I didn't even think of it or I probably would have. He can't even reach my nose though," I said.
"He'd break your kneecaps and then break your nose," Lea said seriously. "He takes the whole thing very seriously. It was after—I came from here actually, although well before she decided to play Queen."
"Here as in the kingdom of the Elves?"
"The Crucible Shard. Although home isn't actually all that far from here. Oh—and there is another problem with your plan."
Way to change the subject. "Yes?"
"The airship that's following us," Lea said. "It kind of lost track of us, but it hasn't gone back to the rest of the fleet. We try to set down at that base and alarms will go off."
"And that airship will come running."
Lea nodded.
"Does the base have any defenses that we could take over?"
"Not that I've seen. Usually if you want to attack something in the sky you use either another airship or a battle mage. We'll be grounded and we don't have a combat magic specialist."
"Walt might be able to help. He's not in his right head lately, but he is making some pretty clever devices," I said.
Lea shook her head slowly. "You don't want to do that."
"What?"
"Just listen to the seer and take some things I say as being absolute truths. You don't want to get that man building things like that. You can let him build nonviolent toys—you need him to be building nonviolent toys—but you don't want him playing with the nasty scary things."
"Fair enough," I said, letting out a sigh. "I should probably go track down Cobalt."
Lea stood and let her robe drop. "Later. We won't be in a place to do anything until morning anyways and the boys need time to fix the engine."
"I'm kind of trying to go without," I said.
Lea stepped forward and leaned in to press her lips against mine. I melted into it a bit. Her hand reached out to grab mine and tugged me towards the bed.
She said, "I know. And you aren't going to be able to. Take another seer bit of wisdom, there are some very scary women out there you should not be crawling into bed with. I'm not one of them and you were incredibly sexy jumping off the ship to come after me today."
That was one of my good moments. I felt torn, but I knew I wasn't going to win this battle. I didn't want to. And at least this was one I could afford to lose. I'd have to pick my victories.
CHAPTER FIVE
The night with Lea was a pleasantly normal one. They usually were. With some of the women in my life things always seemed to be more complicated. Elsora was dangerous in ways I still hadn't fully figured out and was always plotting something. Cobalt was simply terrifying, and now that she was with my child things had gotten tangled in a way that would complicate the rest of my life. Lea was a friend with benefits. Sometimes that's the most valuable person in the world.
Considerably saner and more myself the next morning, I went to find Cobalt. She was also looking a lot happier today, back at her place on the bridge.
"You seem in a good mood," I said to her.
"Nothing like Elvish battle magic to make sure you actually get a good night’s sleep," Cobalt said brightly. "Of course, I'm going to kill a whole lot of them for what they did to my ship."
"She's hot when she talks about killing elves," Yvera said in my head.
Great. Murderous impulses got my Goddess hot and bothered. This wasn't really a surprise given they kind of did the same thing to me.
"Lea found us a base to hit where we can do some repairs," I said.
"She already told me. I know, you're wondering how, when you beat her out of bed this morning. You, however, have not mastered the ability to waggle your fingers and talk to me," Cobalt said. "We're already closing in. We're going to try to lurch our way in and make ourselves look more damaged than we are."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. "We don't have to do much acting."
"I've had Riggs move a pair of cannons to behind the damage to the hull. The patchwork repair job should be visible even from a distance," Cobalt explained.
"You're hoping they come check it out," I said.
"It will blow up all that fine repair work, but we're about to do a better job of it anyways," Cobalt said. "We take out the flyers and then we hit the ground. You, Ashley, and Maria can take out the base defenders while the rest of us tend to repairs."
I was used to having Walt with me, but it made sense that he help with fixing up the ship. "There are going to be supplies I don't know what to do with, once we are out there."
"We'll have Lea look through things and I can fetch back anything that is important."
"Surprised you don't want to go along," I said.
"The Vainglory is going to be on the ground and vulnerable. I'm not leaving my ship behind just to break a few skulls."
She did love this ship.
Minutes passed as the Vainglory drew closer to the base and Cobalt sent the message for everyone to be ready and to stay indoors. Lea joined us on the bridge and I flashed her a smile that she returned.
"We want to look as abandoned as possible," Cobalt said. "The riders get any sense this is an attack they'll be more cautious."
"Think they'll know what happened?"
"We damaged several of their ships," Cobalt said with a nod. "I can't imagine the base here didn't get some sort of message about one of them needing to return for supplies. Hopefully that will work in our favor and they'll have such things out."
Lea opened up a scrying portal and made rapid gestures as she searched for the scouts. There they were.
Two griffons were approaching the ship and playing it safe. They circled us at a distance, then did a sweep of the deck. The riders flew close enough to exchange words between themselves. Then they were moving towards us and getting a closer look at what had happened.
It wasn't hard to see the signs of battle. After the events of yesterday we still had corpses on the deck and we rocked back and forth unsteadily as we moved through the sky.
The riders scoped out the back of the ship, trying to get a determination of the state of the engines, then worked their way towards the patched section of hull. They were no fools, staying well clear of the cannon ports.
Lea gestured sharply and said, "They're in place."
Riggs got the message and a moment later the cannons roared. The ship shook as the patch on the hull exploded outward.
The reaction was all I might have hoped for. At close range the exploding hull fragments acted like a shotgun hitting the riders and what fell out of the sky wasn't going to be a threat to anyone.
"Great job everyone," Cobalt said.
My stomach felt like it was rising out of the top of my head as we began a steep descent.
"We were never actually meant to land, so this is going to be bumpy," Lea told me. "You'll probably want to grab on to something."
I could do that. I braced myself against the doorway as we came in close to the ground and Riggs killed the engines. We fell the last few feet in tooth-jarring collision that echoed throughout the entire ship and we lurched awkwardly to one side.
"We're down. I've got deck defense and supply gathering. Lea, you're scrying. Riggs and Walt are on repair duty. Everyone else get out there and kill us some defenders," Cobalt said.
I joined Ashley and Maria on deck and together we made our way off the ship. The air was scented of wood and moss. The area where we had set down was an empty field, but nearby pathways made of timber led up to structures in the trees.<
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I thought we might find ourselves in combat at once, but so far there was nothing.
"They are patient. Sitting in their web and waiting for the prey to come to them," Maria said
"If these guys are engineers, they'll be trying to fight smarter and not harder," Ashley said, looking up into the trees.
A magical flare went up from one of the structures, arching high into the sky and detonating in a series of pulsing red lights that lingered.
I squinted at the brightness. "I guess that's their way of calling for reinforcements."
Ashley moved forward towards the pathway. "Saves us from searching blind. We know where they are at least. I'll make my move when you do."
Ashley's outline faded away as she engaged her stealth.
I drew Intemperance, readied my shield and advanced, Maria coming up behind me.
"So how have you been?" I said to ease the tension. I hadn't really talked to Maria since she came back. Mostly I'd just been getting slapped by her.
"I have seen the world. Much of it tried to kill me, that which did not declared its need for order and sought my guidance and rule," Maria said. "It has been confusing."
I imagine so.
The wooden planks beneath our feet didn't even creak as we walked over them, they were so perfectly fitted. The first structure we came to was one of the largest in the trees. It was filled with cloth and large sections of curved wood that looked specifically made for airships.
"Supplies," I said. "Good. The others won't have far to carry anything they need."
"Do you have any regard for me at all?" Maria asked.
This was not the time and place for this conversation. Maybe I should have talked to her while we’re on the ship.
"You've been waiting for this moment to bring this up?"
"Things have been moving quickly," Maria said. "We have not had a moment until now. Answer me."
Time hadn't made her tone any less regal and demanding. If anything, it had gained a bit more. Maria and her mother could not be less alike.
"I didn't know that she was your mother at first," I said, turning to look at her. "We'd almost died aboard the ship we were on and the Vainglory swooped in and saved us. My blood was pumping and she doesn't wear much... compared to normal people. Stuff happened."
