And then he hit the ground hard, scattering white pearls all around with his rib-cracking landing. His hands were clenched around something. He opened eyes that had shut in response to the fall.
But there was no one else there. Just a top hat clutched in his hands.
He scrambled up, scattering pearls all around him.
Spun.
Looking, looking, ready.
Liandari stood with her sword out and her jaw hanging slack like she’d been stunned. She closed her mouth with a sudden click of her jaw. Etienne and Anglarok were frozen in place, identical looks of shock on their faces and weapons held ready with no foe in sight.
“He vanished,” Liandari breathed. “You went to grab him, and he vanished.”
“And what about the woman who bleeds pearls?” Anglarok asked quietly.
“Queen Mer,” Tamerlan gasped. He turned the hat around in his hands, staring at it as his heart sank. They’d been so close. So very close. He had the Legend’s hat. “Her avatar is dead.”
“They can be killed,” Etienne said with a sound of horror – or was that hope? – in his voice. His eyes met Tamerlan’s. They’d seen another avatar before – Deathless Pirate’s. But that was all the way back in Xin.
“Mer’s Spit!” Anglarok looked shaken, his dark face pale in the lantern light.
Liandari was muttering what sounded like a prayer. Her eyes were closed as her fingers tapped out a pattern on her other forearm. She’d sheathed her sword and her expression as pained – her face tattoos dark in the moonlight – as if they somehow were more significant now.
“We can set a trap for him,” Tamerlan said to Etienne. He was trying to stay calm. Trying not to throw up with nerves and withdrawal. Everything in him wanted to smoke again – to call a Legend to help while he still could. Before they were all gone.
Call us! That was Lila Cherrylocks. Trust us!
“We just have to guess where he’ll be next,” Tamerlan said, swallowing down bile. The Harbingers looked like someone had killed their nearest relatives and the power of their emotions washed over him like waves of sound, reverberating in the echo chambers of his mind where the Legends screamed for release.
Etienne was quiet for a long moment, staring at the broken avatar lying in the sea of pearls at their feet.
“The Catacombs of Choan,” he said at long last.
“Catacombs?”
Etienne met Tamerlan’s gaze, hope and fear warring in their depths.
“They were long known as the haunt of Maid Chaos. Her devotees still go there on pilgrimage. It’s the nearest place belonging to a Legend that I can think of.”
“But will her avatar be there?” Tamerlan wondered aloud. In truth, he didn’t want to go there. He shivered at the horrific memories that flooded over him at the thought of Maid Chaos. The horrors she had wrought with his body – the people she had killed. He swallowed.
Etienne was shaking his head. “How would I know? I didn’t know that the Grandfather’s avatar was in that clock in H’yi. Didn’t know about your pirate friend until we saw him through the glass. Didn’t know about this shell. I don’t think it’s been opened since it was sealed. Or these pearls wouldn’t be here anymore.”
Tamerlan looked around him. He hadn’t thought of that. But Etienne was right. No one would have left such a fortune behind – even if the island was said to be cursed.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “We have to hurry. I don’t know how he left here, but if he can jump to another place as well as another time, he might be there already.”
“It’s not a trap if you don’t get there first,” Anglarok spoke, his words heavy. “And it’s definitely not a trap if you have no way to catch the one you’re trapping.”
“We have a way, if Tamerlan will use it,” Etienne said quietly.
“It didn’t work. I tried but it didn’t work,” Tamerlan admitted. His face felt hot. “Do you have a better idea?”
Exhaustion filled him like water in a bottle. He didn’t have any idea. Didn’t have any books to read to get ideas from. He was just responding now, no longer initiating. He ran a hand over a weary brow. What else could they do? They could chase. They could try.
But what if the next Legend refused to use the Eye for him? He didn’t know how to use it without them.
The only thing he didn’t dare do was give up.
“We’ll sail to Choan,” Etienne said firmly. “And by the time we get there, you’ll figure out how to make that necklace work.”
“And the blockade?” Tamerlan asked wearily.
“That’s Liandari and Anglarok’s job – to get us through.”
Liandari’s eyes snapped open at her name, as if they’d shocked her out of her prayer.
“Enough talk,” she said. “The worst is over. The Queen is desolated. We will bury her properly in these pearls and sail. And pray our souls are cleansed by salt and scoured by wind and somehow saved.”
“Let it be this day,” Anglarok agreed.
Tamerlan was silent. But he followed the others as they laid the ghostly, broken avatar in the center of the shell and covered her in pearls. It seemed like something a person might do in a dream – not something anyone would do in reality. But then again, who hunted down ancient Legends come back to life? Who made allies of enemies and fought wars to save the world?
His heart was heavy as they took to the sailing boat. While Etienne and the others prepared to sail, he found the bow of the boat and curled up in the “v” where they prow cut through the water and examined Abelmeyer’s Eye. It was still the same as the day he’d found it. The fire hadn’t harmed it. But then why hadn’t Abelmeyer used it? Was it broken? Had they lost their chance? Nothing made any sense. He had the tool, but no way to use it. He let the darkness of despair wash over him until sleep stole him blessedly away.
22: Scent of Gold
Marielle
She found him as he slept, his eyelashes lying across his innocent-seeming face. Ghostly figures formed a ring around him, trying to hold her back, trying to prevent any contact. But she was not governed by them. She’d learned that, finally. Time and place had no hold on her. She slipped between them, to his side.
“Tamerlan?” she said gently, leaning in close to his sleeping form. She lay a spirit hand on his shoulder.
He muttered in his sleep, brow furrowing. And then his scent was there – swirling through her mind with intoxicating sweetness. Warm honey and golden light, cinnamon and tarragon, hot butter, and heat that made her want to open herself to him.
“Tam, can you hear me?”
He looked up at her – still asleep, but awake at the same time, meeting her in his dream. She almost melted at the pleased look in his blue eyes. Was she crazy? Hadn’t she been certain she should avoid him at any cost? And yet, after seeing everything – after learning him so well, she couldn’t hold herself back.
She needed to get a grip. She’d come to warn him, nothing else.
“Beware of the Legends, Tamerlan. All is not as it seems.”
“Marielle? Is that really you?” he tried to sit up, but his body didn’t respond – couldn’t since he was still asleep.
She lay down on the ship deck beside him so he could look into her eyes. It felt so intimate – as if they were sharing a secret.
“Tamerlan, you have to watch out for the Legends.”
“I’m going to get you out of the clock, Marielle. I promise.” The tortured expression on his face nearly broke her.
He was trying to reach for her. She saw his hand twitch wildly as his sleeping mind tried to force his body to work.
“That’s not important,” Marielle said gently. “What’s important is that you listen. You have to stay away from the Legends, Tamerlan. Whatever the cost. They want to destroy you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Marielle. I should have saved you. I shouldn’t have chosen to bring down the dragon.”
He wasn’t hearing her. He was too obsessed with
taking care of other people. And wasn’t that how he’d been his whole life? She shoved gentleness aside, making her voice firmer.
“You did the right thing. The just thing. But this isn’t over, Tamerlan, and if you aren’t careful, they’ll use you. They’ve been using people all along.”
“I shouldn’t have left you in the clock.”
Couldn’t he hear her? It was almost as if he was speaking to her without hearing her words. Frustration filled her as she tried harder. Could he at least see her?
“Please, Tamerlan!”
“Shouldn’t have left you, sweet Marielle.”
His eyelids were drifting closed.
She clenched her jaw in frustration.
“Please, please listen! Stay away from the Legends!”
His eyes closed. She reached out to touch him and was shoved roughly away by a woman with swirling, ghostly red hair.
“He’s ours, little Watch Officer. Go play law someplace else!”
She lunged for the other woman, but something caught her from behind pulling her back just before the woman with the red hair planted a fist right in her mouth. Her mind swirled, her vision darkened, until all she felt were blows.
They had him in their grasp. He was their tool, their plaything. And they had to be stopped.
She leapt to a different time.
23: Orange War
Tamerlan
He woke with a start, his hands grasping for someone who wasn’t there.
Marielle.
Had she really been in his dreams? He’d felt her there – felt her as if she had really been present. He must be going mad.
In the back of his mind, someone was laughing. He didn’t even know who.
“Are you awake, Tamerlan?” a quiet voice asked.
Tell him yes.
“Yes,” Tamerlan muttered.
“Stay low,” Etienne said.
Ask him if you are close to the next avatar yet.
“Are we close to the next avatar?”
Why was he doing what they told him?
“No,” Etienne said. “Look up – but look up carefully.”
They were sailing into Choan, their deck loaded with oranges. Etienne must have met a barge along the way and filled the boat with their cargo. Why hadn’t Tamerlan woken up for that? He must have been more tired than he realized. He wished he could remember what Marielle had been trying to tell him. She’d been so beautiful – so pure – like a fresh wind blowing through a muggy city.
They weren’t alone.
Mist rose off the canals and the river as they slid into the first lock of the Chaon canals. It wisped up in ghostly flickers around dozens of other orange-laden boats. In the greyness before dawn, something flickered on one of the barge decks like bright metal catching the light inside the heap of oranges. Maybe someone was hitching a ride like they were with this cargo. Maybe other sailors had stowed away among the round fruit.
People gathered solemnly along the canals, receiving oranges from the barges and loading them silently into barrows or carts. It was as if the citizenry were haunting their own city. One woman’s eyes were dead as she took her wheelbarrow and started off. Another man’s face was drawn as he went through the motions of checking a manifest list against the contents of the barge.
Why participate in the celebration at all if they felt so grim?
Tamerlan had never been fond of the Orange Wars reenactment on Autumgale. Despite the toothsome scents that wafted from the open windows of people’s homes – ciders and baked gourds with cinnamon, stewed fish and cakes of crab – despite that, there was violence to come. It would be mock violence. Not many people died from being hit by an orange – but still violence. He usually tried to find a quiet corner and stay hidden with a book until the Wars were over and the sticky streets calmed. Something under Tamerlan’s skin crawled at the thought of that violence today.
Their boat shoved through the canals toward the Alchemist District of Choan.
“A strange thing, this celebration of yours,” Anglarok said from his perch beside Tamerlan. His eyes were on the orange barges, studying them. “Your Lord Mythos says that every year, the people here reenact the Orange Wars and every year it becomes more and more about the fun of throwing oranges and winning territory from your neighbors to brag about and less and less about remembering the thousands of people who died long ago in the real civil wars.”
“It’s true,” Tamerlan said, staying low like Etienne had asked, but easing himself into a ready crouch, checking his weapons and kit as he got ready to leap from the ship. He put the chain of Abelmeyer’s Eye back over his head, tucking it into his shirt. The ruby had given up none of its secrets. All he could hope for now was a miracle. That or outright incapacitating Grandfather Timeless.
“He says that in one of them – the last one if the stories are true – enemies hid on a boat of oranges and infiltrated the cities. That brave act was the catalyst for this celebration – the reason that so many oranges flood into the Dragonblood Cities every year and the reason that you throw oranges in your mock fights.”
“Yes,” Tamerlan said. His sword and knife were ready. He was ready. When they got to the catacombs, he wouldn’t let the Grandfather slip away this time.
“He says the mock fighting will begin at dawn.”
“Any moment now,” Tamerlan agreed.
“Strange that they don’t check the barges for more than oranges.”
It was strange. Tamerlan’s brow began to furrow at the thought. IT reminded him of something. Something hidden. Hadn’t Marielle been saying something about that?
She was never here. That was only a dream.
But even still ...
“And will these people be ready to fight real enemies, or is it all a game?” Anglarok asked. There was a knowing spark in his eye. Tamerlan tried to pull his mind back to the conversation. Did Anglarok know something that Tamerlan didn’t?
“It’s a game. A violent game, but only a game,” he tried to be reassuring. “We’ll be doing the real fighting in the catacombs.”
“Etienne says those are under the Alchemist District. He says they can only be accessed through the Embalmer’s Guild.”
“It’s news to me,” Tamerlan said. “I had no idea there were catacombs here. You’d think they would flood.”
“You would think so. They must use effective pumps,” Anglarok said, his eyes still on the barge. “Is that it?”
He pointed to a large white building along the canal with a black tile roof that seemed too large for it. Round windows speckled the building like a black and white goat on a ridge. A large sign over the main doors read, Embalmers’ Guild of Choan City.
“Seems to be,” Tamerlan said, his eyes on a patrol of the City Watch as they marched along the canal between their boat and the guild. They were so precise. So certain of themselves. Marielle would be like that if Summernight had never happened. Or she’d be with these Harbingers if she hadn’t ended up in the clock.
He should be looking for Jhinn, too. He was here somewhere, waiting for them. And he had the rest of the Spice. If Tamerlan kept smoking the rolls he had in his sleeve, he would need that soon. He was down to ten rolls. That wouldn’t get him far if he needed to keep calling the Legends.
He felt nervous just thinking that. As if he’d already decided to call them. But that Bridge hadn’t been crossed.
Yet.
There was a strange movement in the barge beside them. The oranges were tumbling from the deck into the canal and bobbing on top of the water. What -?
Anglarok sprang to his feet before Tamerlan could clamber up to his. Liandari rushed to the front of the boat, leaning on the railing and peering up the canal.
The first golden ray of dawn lit the edges of the buildings, washing over tile roofs like a blessing from the heavens. Something glinted in the dawn light on the nearest orange barge. Hadn’t he noticed a gleam there before?
A roar of voices filled the streets of
Choan as dawn broke and people poured from their houses, unleashing waves of thrown oranges at each other. Like the tide let loose it all happened at once. Yells of triumph and cries of pain filled the air.
An orange sailed through the air toward their boat and Anglarok speared it casually with his harpoon, pulling the fruit off the end of the blade and peeling it enough to take a juicy bite.
“A waste of good fruit.”
Their boat bumped up against the edge of the canal and Tamerlan wavered a little.
In the boats. They’re in the boats. One of the voices of the Legends broke out from the mass of them talking over each other. The boats!
He glanced at the nearby barge. Oranges were falling off the side still, dropping in the canal to bob in the water there. But that was no surprise in this chaos. The street above was crowded as Etienne leapt from their sailboat to the canal edge and began to pull the boat in by its rope.
“We have to hurry!” he called over the chaos. “This is only going to get worse!”
Moments ago, Tamerlan would have never guessed that so many people were waiting to break out of their houses, but now the canal rim was packed. One man tried to dodge a flung orange and lost his footing, falling with a curse into the canal water and bobbing below the dark surface with bright oranges all around him. There was a laugh from his opponent above – barely audible over the cacophony of voices above. Someone shouted a cheerful cry, but it wasn’t all goodwill above them. More than one eye sparkled with malice as an orange was flung to hit a man from behind.
Juice – sticky and fragrant – was already spilling from the edge of the street into the canal as Liandari and Anglarok disembarked, joining Etienne on the shore.
“We have to get to the catacombs!” Etienne yelled over the roar of voices. An orange hit the wall beside him, splattering against the rocks and sending a mist of juice over him.
He scowled and Tamerlan barely bit back a laugh. Etienne could use being hit by a few oranges. The man had such a high opinion of himself.
Bridge of Legends- The Complete Series Page 53
