“Get to the point,” Heidi said through gritted teeth. “Storm Garfunkel, remember?”
That sobered Burnton. He glanced back toward the opening leading back to the Velocity’s upper deck—fuzzing, now, although it kept resolidifying, I assume where the Velocity corrected its positioning to keep the gateway open.
“Right. Yes. Well—would you happen to know if there is anything in this world that might’ve been left here by ancient ones?” Burnton asked. “An object of power, perhaps, or a key …?”
Voices squabbled.
“One at a time, please,” Tyran barked, suddenly without patience.
“Well,” said a voice, and I saw, down on the street level, one of the tiny people step forward out of the throng to address us, “there is the Apex.”
“The Apex?”
“The structure in the center of our cities,” said the little voice. “It bears the body of a Great and Mighty One like yourselves, with a green polished eye! But alas, it is many miles from here.”
Tyran stood on tiptoes, casting a look in the direction of the hill he’d clambered. “You mean that tall thing, like a climbing frame, past the dam? A hundred meters or so that way?”
“Many miles,” Heidi scoffed.
Carson frowned. “A hundred meters is many miles if you’re the size of an ant.”
“Come on,” said Tyran. Snapping off a cheerful grin to the little people of the city, he said, “Thank you for your assistance, little ones! The great Tyran Burnton, GOLDEN KING OF THE SKIES, appreciates everything you have done for us.”
There was another chorus of well wishes, mostly “Good lucks” and “Travel well” and a smattering of “Return to us, O Great Ones!” I was fairly sure, as Carson began an awkward climb up the hillside, that I heard a sob and a squeak of, “My do-o-og!” But that was probably just imagination—a shared imagination, by the look of Carson’s suddenly reddening face.
Climbing the hill wasn’t easy. It should have been, because at its peak it wasn’t much taller than two of me stacked, but the steep rise was a struggle to mount. Like Tyran before me, I found myself clutching at tufts of grass to tug myself up—all with the voices of the ant people behind us to cheer us on. On the one hand, it kind of heartened me. On the other, I was painfully aware that should one of these tufts come unearthed, and I tumbled down the small hillside and back into the city … well, it wouldn’t be a happy day for the tiny people living here, nosirree.
Tyran was up the rise first, mainly as a result of his frenetic scrabbling. Heidi was first to follow, me and Borrick both in third—Carson and Bub were tied for last place, Carson struggling for purchase and looking more like he was hugging the ground than scaling it, and Bub similarly vexed by his armor, which was getting in the way.
Burnton wiped sweat from his brow.
“That’s the Apex?” asked Heidi.
“It appears to be so.”
My head passed the top of the rise as Burnton was setting off.
More cities protruded from between the hills, connected by roadways on bridges. Houses were nestled into the hills too, mostly around the cities themselves but also in smaller clusters throughout the hillsides, tiny little villages. It was incredibly cute, actually, and surely a model-train enthusiast’s idea of heaven.
A dam held back a vast river about forty meters away, the water on the other side of it high. Beyond that, reaching skyward, very much like a climbing frame, was a cylindrical structure, maybe fifty meters tall and a meter wide. Bars crisscrossed it, providing an uneven, human-scaled ladder to the top—where a toadlike, dwarfish statue sat, a gleaming green eye peering out at the land below.
“That’s the key?” Borrick asked.
“Sounds like it,” I said.
“Piece of cake,” said Burnton, clapping his hands together. He set off at a powerful stride—and then he stopped dead in his tracks. Eyebrows lowering, causing the divot in his cheek to become deeper and more shadowed as his face screwed up, he said, “Over there—who is that?”
Coming at the Apex at a march of their own was someone else. This far distant, it was nigh impossible to make them out, except that they were a black silhouette—at least to my eyes.
Borrick said, “Oh no.”
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head, frowning. “That’s my father.”
13
We all met at the bottom of the Apex, where three pole struts were embedded into the earth. None of the ant people’s roadways came this way—whatever this vast monument meant to them, whatever meaning for it they’d developed over the generations of their tiny society, the people of this world gave it a wide berth, coming no closer with a bridge or road or village than thirty meters of the structure.
“Well, well,” said Heidi as the seven of us all came together. “A family reunion—how quaint.”
Preston Borrick did not smile. Casting a distasteful look at his son, his lip curled. “Alain.” Then, glancing disgustedly over the lot of us, he said, “This is the company you’re keeping now then, is it?” His eyes bypassed Bub and Heidi, caught a moment on Carson, and then finally found Tyran Burnton.
“Good day to you,” said Tyran, stepping forward and extending a hand. “Tyran Burnton, the King of the Skies—ahem, sorry—the Golden King of the Skies.” His face broke with a too-bright, winning smile.
Preston hadn’t moved.
When it was clear Preston was not going to shake, Tyran lowered his hand. He cleared his throat. “And you, sir, are …?”
“Tyran,” said Borrick, “meet my father, Preston.”
Preston’s nostrils flared.
I surveyed him. Last I’d seen him had been just a short time before Manny cut through to the broken world that had swallowed him these past fifty-one days—little more than an hour and a half before, I thought. Then, he’d been banished for the final stage of Professor Erbridge’s quest, teleported away by the Antecessors because he had not succeeded in winning a key to become one of the final three COMPETITORS.
Back then, I’d been quite cheered at the thought of the two generations of Borricks meeting again after the final challenge was over. Daddy Borrick unhappy with his son, frustrated because for all his lifetime’s achievements he’d been simply thrust out by the Antecessors, unable to even witness the final challenge in the Superbia Balteum quest? Hah!
Of course, plenty had changed since then, particularly these past couple of weeks. I’d come to feel kind of sorry for Alain. I mean, I knew exactly what he’d been through with his own father—worse, even. Mine didn’t support me—Alain’s father did, whilst at the same time wore his disdain for his son on his sleeve.
“Preston Borrick, eh,” said Burnton, scrutinizing. “Haven’t heard of you.”
Another flare of the nostrils. “I could say much the same of you.” His gaze again flickered over our larger group. “All of you.”
“Snore,” said Heidi.
“What are you doing here, Borrick?” I asked.
His eyes slid over me, the way a snake’s flickered over a rodent. “Mira Brand,” he said. “I see the death of your brother hasn’t dissuaded you from Seeking. Forgive me, but that does seem to be awfully cold, does it not?”
“Reports of my brother’s death were greatly exaggerated,” I said.
“Hmph. Well, we’ll see.” Casting the rest of us one final look, Preston said to his son, “You’ve fallen far, to be fraternizing with this riffraff.”
“Excuse me?” said Burnton. “Riffraff? I’ll have you know that I—”
Preston made a cutting motion with his hand. “I am talking to my son.”
“You dare speak to the King of the—”
“It’s fine, Tyran,” said Alain. Swallowing, he met his father’s gaze eye to steely eye. “I have nothing to say to you. And I suggest you leave this place, before the six of us make a mockery of you.”
Preston’s eyes flashed. For a moment, as father glared at son, I thought Preston would raise his
hand and slap Alain across the face.
Instead he said, in a velvety whisper, “What would your mother say, if she heard you speaking to me like that, hmm?”
Alain swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “We’re fortunate she can’t hear then, aren’t we.”
The impasse was a perilous one. I could see this going only one way—the elder Borrick reaching into his jacket to reveal a blade, and sinking it into his son’s stomach, before any of the rest of us could do a thing about it. That would happen, surely—they warred with their eyes, beneath the Apex, a rage like none other building upon Preston’s face, Alain staring back with barely veiled—hatred, I thought. A strong, powerful emotion—but I believed it coursed through him, could feel its heat emanating as it pulsed through his veins.
I spoke up before my nightmare vision came true. “I’ll ask you again, Preston. What are you doing here?”
He glanced to me, and then up the length of the Apex’s height. “The same as you, I daresay.”
“What do you want with the Spoon of Abundance?” asked Heidi. “The Borrick family coffers running low in the modern age of Brand?”
“You insolent little—”
“If I may,” said Burnton, stepping back into the fray. “Regrettably, my sights are set on this particular quest. And though I do enjoy a good challenge, I’d rather like to not make a fool out of you on this one—on account of your son being present, of course.” Smiling once more that very white, gleaming grin, he extended a hand to shake—a well done, better luck next time sort of thing.
Preston eyed it, sneer undisguised.
He looked older since I’d last seen him, I thought. He’d already been in his early sixties, I figured, although his dark hair had fared better than the somewhat younger Burnton’s—I was pretty certain it wasn’t a dye job anyway, like Burnton’s suddenly pepper-no-salt look. But since last I saw him, it was as though his age had finally caught up to him. There were lines on his face where previously there had been few. Fatigue, or something like it, lingered in the corners of his eyes. And none of that said anything of the way he carried himself. Before, he’d at least retained an appearance of being collected and proper, deserving of the station he had acquired in life—like the impromptu speech he gave at the beginning of Professor Erbridge’s quest, or the way he regathered his wits so quickly when finally he was knocked out of the race.
Now he was firing on all cylinders without regard for any of us, as though in the past seven weeks and change he’d gone from an esteemed Seeker to a crochety old man.
Something had happened.
Had it been Alain’s departure from the household?
“What do you say, old chap?” said Burnton. “Leave this one to the professionals, hmm?”
Preston met Burnton’s eyes, his gaze cold.
“I think not.”
And he reached into his jacket—
Something shaped very much like a gun came out—
“Duck!” someone shouted—
I dove, the younger Borrick flinging himself on top of me—
A BOOM!
It was followed, a fraction of a second later, by an even louder explosion, some way behind us.
I fought out of Alain’s grip. One hand grappled blindly for Decidian’s Spear, on my belt—though it would be no good against firearms, no good at all—while the other scrabbled for purchase. Finding it, I rolled—my friends were down—shot?—and saw—
Half the distance toward a city lying toward the east, where the Apex’s shadow was beginning to stretch, lay the dam—or rather, lay what was left of the dam. A hole had been blown into it. Bricks—tiny ones, but bricks nonetheless—had been scattered in all directions. Chunks of it, the largest of which was probably not much bigger than a rugby ball, tumbled down the side of the dam and splashed into water—water that was now flowing out and down the river bed in a great surging wave, enough to knock a regular-sized person off their feet—
I stared in horror as—
The first of the little villages was set maybe five meters from the dam. The waters surged out over the matchbox houses—and it tore them down, ripping them from tiny moorings—and cast them into tumultuous waters.
14
“We have to do something!” I cried.
“Do what?” Heidi asked.
I looked around desperately—
“Bub,” I said, alighting on him. “Can you block the dam while we find something to roll in front? Like a boulder or something?”
He nodded. “Yes, Miss Brand.” And he bounded off, in the direction of the cascade of water.
“Mr. Borrick!” Burnton roared. “Get down from there!”
In the ensuing confusion he’d sown, Preston had leapt onto the bottommost rungs of the Apex. Now scaling it, he’d already clambered a full ten feet above where the rest of us half-lay, half-stumbled to our feet, scattered except for Bub.
“You cheating old man!” Alain shouted up at him. “Can’t win on your own merits, so you resort to dirty tricks like that!”
“I’ve tired of your disrespect, boy,” Preston called back down, without slowing his pace. I had to give it to him—for a man past middle-aged—all these Seekers, starting families late in the name of pointless achievement—he was doing a damned fast job of clambering up the Apex.
Burnton launched himself at the bottom rungs, and began to climb. “Mira! Up here, please!”
I hesitated, torn, between the Apex and Daddy Borrick on one side, and the ruptured dam on the other, spilling a river full of water that would rip apart the villages and towns and roadways, flood the cities nestled into these hills—and drown countless of the tiny people who lived here.
“MIRA!” Burnton boomed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is more important.” And I sprinted off, heading in Bub’s direction to block the dam.
“MIRA! GET BACK HERE!”
“Hah!” Preston boomed. “Abandoned by your posse of hangers-on—some king you are, old chap.”
Burnton swore, a mixture of familiar profanities, and I guessed a couple of his own Harsterran ones mixed in. He was going to be absolutely furious with me later, whatever the outcome of this.
It didn’t matter. My eyes were open now—all the stuff, like that green-white ball at the top of the Apex, and the jeweled spoon it inevitably led to? It was pointless. People mattered—and right now, unless we did something about the dam Daddy Borrick had blown a hole in, a whole lot of little people here were going to die—a whole lot more than probably already had died as the waters spilled over their houses.
A bridge over the river was suddenly overspilled by the deluge. Cars were thrust off—I heard shrieks—
“Someone!” I called, already past it—
“On it,” said Carson. Throwing his manbag down, he pelted into high gear, across the hill, leaping from this to the next one so he wouldn’t need to scale the damned thing again—
He threw himself into the water, grabbing out for the tiny cars being dragged past.
I took my own flying leaps, over one hill and onto the next. A roadway crossed one of those gaps, and I sailed across it, bringing my legs extra high so I didn’t plow through it and do more damage on top of what I was fighting to prevent—
Bub had reached the dam. He fought to wedge his body into the space where the water spilled out from. And he mostly succeeded—but those damned barbs sticking out every which way from his armor made it impossible to press himself right against the edges of the hole. He gripped the top of the dam with massive green hands, either side of the cleft cut in the wall, and pulled himself as close in as possible—
Water still flowed out, jetting from the sides of him instead.
“Take your damned armor off,” I called.
“But it’s not proper—”
“Pretend you’re in the shower!” I said.
“Pretend you’re nicking my shampoo again!” Heidi put in from behind.
Bub looked uncertain. But wi
th the water still gouting out around him, his attempt to block it was clearly not even half successful. So, after a final moment of consternation, he wrenched himself away from the dam, unbuckled his armor, and flung it aside.
He was buck naked underneath.
“Whoa,” I cried, jerking sideways and thrusting a hand out in front of my face to block it.
“WHY AREN’T YOU WEARING ANYTHING?” That was Heidi.
“My underthings were in the wash today!”
“AND YOU ONLY HAVE ONE SET?”
“No,” said Bub, sounding half-offended, half-assaulted—which I truly, deeply understood in the moment I’d had to wrench my eyes away from his snot-colored backside.
“THEN WHERE ARE THE OTHERS?”
“I save them all to wash in one load,” said Bub. “It’s not very energy-efficient to do a small load, you know.”
I dared a glance. Bub had pressed himself against the gap cleaved in the dam. His back was to us—and thank goodness for that. Clutching tight to what remained of the dam, he’d arrested the flow to little more than a trickle around his sides.
The deluge diminished. The main wave continued its cascade along the river’s length. But it was splitting apart now, being divided between other tributaries. The worst of the damage had been right here, I suspected, the village and the roadway Carson had saved cars from. If not for Bub, though, that city we’d first come from … it would be like New York in The Day After Tomorrow.
“We need something to block it,” said Borrick. “Something besides a naked orc, I mean.”
“Anyone see any boulders on their way over here?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said Borrick.
I glanced toward the Apex. Tyran was about halfway up. Preston led him, by a few feet. To his credit—which I didn’t want to give; credit given to a Borrick was evidently something I struggled with; maybe it was a genetic factor they possessed?—Preston was scaling it with far more ease than Burnton, who looked a little bit like a tipsy monkey, bungling his way up the frame.
The Gang of Legend Page 10
