The King of the Skies

by Robert J. Crane

  I reached behind me for the line launcher—

  A fae had snagged it.

  “That’s mine!” I shouted, trying to push it aside one-handedly.

  It wasn’t happening.

  Ungh. “Fine.”

  I grabbed the compass from my belt instead, consulting its face. A fence, and blue skies, and just the hint of a washing line, still, so no wind, but loaded with clothes.

  Civilization. It would do for now. We’d figure out the rest later.

  Tugging the umbrella shut, I shoved it into a pocket. One hand on the talisman hanging at my neck, I pointed at the trunk this platform was built around, and swiped.

  An opening split, white-edged and shimmering, filled with exploding colors that put the flamingo pink of this forest to shame. It widened in an instant, enough for me and my human buddies to fit through; in another half-second the opening would wide enough for Burbondrer to get through too.

  “Through!” I ordered, already running—

  Heidi and Carson were closer. They gave one last swing each, then surged for it, disappearing through the gap.

  Please don’t follow, I willed the fae, dancing through behind them. I had a glimpse of Burbondrer making his way behind me, looking as harried as I’d ever seen him by the swarm of wings. Then I was swallowed by color, whizzing through it—

  And then out again, landing heavily in someone’s garden out the back of their shed, under early afternoon sun.

  I dodged sideways instinctively, the way Carson and Heidi both had already. Out came Burbondrer, and I waved the gateway shut behind him. No fae on his tail, thank goodness.

  I looked at them—and they looked back at me, panting. Carson was doubled over, bracing himself with hands on his knees. Sweat licked his skin, and it was faintly red with blood. His shirt was stained too, holes poked it in all over, crimson smeared around each of them where they’d got bites in. It looked much the same color as his new sweater, actually, which might well have been bloodstained too, hanging at his waist limply, trickles of claret running into it.

  “Ohh,” he moaned, lifting one sleeve sadly. It was frayed with holes. “I’ve only had it a week …”

  Heidi hadn’t fared much better. Her hair was out of place, a rarity—and she was glaring at me as she took deep, open-mouthed breaths, flicking Feruiduin’s Cutlass down to its glamoured form again.

  That glare was not a rarity.

  “Oof,” I huffed. “That went … well?”

  3

  GPS told us we’d ended up in Southwark, which was handy, since we could use our railcards to travel back from the Underground station to my hideout. More funny looks, at all of us this time, and I thought the attendants wouldn’t actually permit us through; we looked like we’d been in a fight, all of us bloodied, except for Burbondrer whose skin was too thick for the fae to do much damage. But then, he was objectionable for other reasons. Like, y’know, the fact he was a mythical creature sprung from the world of Tolkien and had armor covered in bony spines. Also he took up two seats on the tube. Luckily it wasn’t rush hour.

  It was only when we cut through beside Tortilla to my hideout (adorned, remember, by my swanky million-world clock), that anyone spoke.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Heidi hissed as she stepped through behind me and Burbondrer.

  I turned, eyebrows knitted. “What?”

  Carson came through the gateway under the sign on the wall, the word LONDON printed on it in neat scrawl. He looked exhausted. His jumper had fallen from his waist sometime on our trudge between tube stations and hung limply over his manbag. Even that looked on the verge of slipping away from him.

  He was about five seconds from turning into a puddle, is what I’m saying.

  “I repeat: have you, Mira Brand, lost your mind?” After a second: “Well? Have you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That whole thing back there,” she said, jabbing backward in the direction of the closed gateway, almost punching Carson in the ribs.

  “London?”

  “The temple we just visited,” she answered, and her voice was flattening, just like her eyebrows, drawn down low on her forehead.

  “Well, it was really the treetops …”

  She threw her hands up. “Your head gets deeper every day, Brand.” To Carson: “Come on, let’s clean you up.” She led him around me. He limped behind—how long had he been limping?—and didn’t meet my eyes.

  Burbondrer waited with his usual perplexed expression at the other side of the library. He lingered as Heidi and Carson filed past … and then I followed, casting my million-world clock a fond look as its surface shifted and shifted above me, filling most of the ceiling above the tall bookcases.

  Note to self: read more books, learn about more worlds, and then quiz this amazing thing some more.

  They headed for the bathroom, and I trotted to catch up.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked when I had.

  “You’re arrogant,” Heidi said bluntly.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You are. Carson, here.” She patted the seat of the toilet, lid closed.

  A small first aid kit lay on the sink. It used to live in the cabinet underneath, after we figured it made sense to get one—or four. Now one always stayed within reach, packed with gauze and bandages and disposable gloves and a whole bunch of other stuff I’d come to be very acquainted with these past months.

  She unzipped it, fishing around. “Shirt off. I’ll wash these up.”

  “Thanks,” Carson said wearily, unbuttoning.

  He was a state. Probably the worst of us. The puncture wounds were many, and a crust of blood coated them, dried around the edges but still oozing in places.

  He saw my eyes raking over his bloodied torso. “It’s okay,” he mumbled.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, because it felt like the right thing to say, rather than actually being sorry. I mean, we’d all taken hits over this past four months, and worse ones. It just came with the job. No one’s fault. Had he seen the state of my fingers? “But, hey … we got this at least.” And I fished out the Necklace of the Regent Adjunct, letting its pretty, fat pink gemstone swing pendulously.

  “You got it,” Heidi said. “We did exactly nothing but act as bait for the fae that weren’t busy attacking you.”

  “Thank you?”

  She fixed me with a hard glare for a second, before turning away to damp a cloth under the hot water tap.

  “We didn’t need to be there, but you brought us along. And then you forgot all the warnings, ignored Carson when he tried to remind you to replace something heavy on the podium—”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “I did fail on the Indiana Jones, didn’t I?”

  “—and to top it all off, you seriously considered making the four of us ride your stupid rope gun—”

  “Line launcher,” I corrected.

  “—to the forest fl—I don’t care what it’s called! Carson, hold still.”

  “Sorry,” he wheezed and tried not to flinch as Heidi daubed his ribcage.

  “You’re Icarus, Mira,” Heidi looked flatly at me again, “getting too close to the sun in your hubris.”

  “How? I can’t fly. I use the line launcher,” I said, “but that’s not flying. I have flown, kind of, using a null gravity spell—but then that’s a bit more like swimming, really …”

  Heidi’s eyebrow twitched.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you go get a burrito and think about what happened.”

  I shrugged. “All right. Don’t mind if I do.” And off I went, leaving Heidi to stew in her own bitter juices.

  First call, though, was the kitchen, because I needed to wash up. I dealt with my hands and forearms, the blood staining the water red as it sluiced off of me. I wiped the sink down afterward with a disinfecting cloth—another of our fancy purchases since coming into our tasty stack of moolah—and then put the Necklace of the Regent Adju
nct aside and made my way out, calling a goodbye to Burbondrer, wherever he’d squirreled himself away—if even he still remained in the hideout. He came and went so irregularly, it was impossible ever to know.

  I’m sure there are places besides Tortilla in London that do burritos, but Tortilla, right next to the cut-through point for my hideout, beats them all.

  I joined the queue, humming idly. I ordered the usual: a chicken burrito, large (used to be medium, but I can pay for the finer things in life now), with added guacamole.

  While I waited, I pondered Heidi’s little … not outburst in the bathroom; I couldn’t call it that, she was past those explosions now, much calmer in the way she handled her disagreements. Let’s call it the talking-to she tried to give me. Tried. Because there was nothing particularly valid about her criticism. We were adventurers, Seekers! Running into danger was part and parcel of the jobs we undertook in this world we’d chosen to live in.

  And we had chosen it. If any of us had been forced, like Chinese kids into sweatshops, then sure, I would have all the sympathy in my heart for the injuries we’d sustained today—over the past few months, in fact. But we had chosen to sew footballs for seventeen pence a day in squalid conditions, damn it.

  Not the most fitting comparison, to be sure, but I was thinking of Heidi, and this was one of the things she’d got a bee into her bonnet about earlier this summer. (And rightfully so, just in case you start spouting lies like, “Mira Brand, seeker extraordinaire, supports child labor.” That would be totally at home on the cover of the tabloids.)

  Burrito in hand, I headed upstairs for my usual spot. Heidi was wrong, and that was the end of it. In a couple of hours she would calm down. And if Carson was irritated at me too? Well, I’d remind him of just what he put me through on our quest for the lost treasure of Ostiagard. Pretending to be kidnapped by my big-headed big brother, all in the name of “having a laugh.” Ridiculous.

  I was getting my due at last. What did a few scrapes matter? My name finally meant something to people, after my parents had tried to keep my down for so long, to stamp out this little dream of mine. I’d run away, and I was achieving what I set out to do. And Carson and Heidi were along on the ride with me! It wasn’t as if their names had been forgotten in lieu of my achievements. Case in point again: the lost treasure of Ostiagard. The name Carson Yates was famous throughout that city now. Word I’d heard suggested the Ostiagardans were planning a thirty-foot-tall statue of their bespectacled hero, among other upcoming investments, now that they had ample capital.

  Up the top of the stairs, I swept the room for a place to sit. There were plenty of empty seats this time of day, now that the lunch rush was past.

  I moved in the direction of my usual table by the windows where I could look out and people watch in the direction of the Strand—and then I saw him, a table back: a blond man with slightly shaggy hair man. He was Carson’s age and Carson’s height, but blessed with model-like good looks that far outshone Carson’s. (Uh … no offense, buddy.)

  Clayton Price.

  He was bowed over something, an empty plate pushed aside with just a smear of green and a speck of diced tomato left upon it. Utensils were neatly put together atop his napkin, slightly crumpled, but otherwise also very neat.

  Secondary details, Mira. You are getting distracted. Just check out that fine—

  He looked up, and my quickly beating heart changed things up by skipping a beat instead.

  “Mira,” he said, eyes widening.

  “Hey,” I said, resuming my walk, cool and casual like, as if he hadn’t definitely seen me stalled out and staring at him at the top of the stairs like a starstruck stalker. My foot wobbled and I almost tripped. I yelped, but caught myself.

  “Come over here,” he said. A note of urgency lingered in his voice, cutting through the idle chatter filling the top level of the restaurant.

  He hadn’t smiled at me yet. That made me sad, because oh, how I enjoyed that smile. It was all white and square and regular, the sort of grin I bet dentists dream of.

  Geez. Get a hold of yourself, Brand. Can you imagine what Heidi would say if she could hear these inner thoughts of yours?

  I joined him at his table, as instructed—like I hadn’t been going to anyway—and put on my best smile. “Hi, Clay,” I said. I gave my voice just a hint of breathiness—consciously, I swear it, not my body just giving away how he seemed to make even my lungs quiver.

  Before I could ask how he was doing, Clay leaned across the table, across the tablet computer he’d been bowed over, a dinky little iPad mini, and he said, “We have to go on the next stage of the quest immediately.” His tone was urgent, his expression serious, his gaze boring into mine.

  It was a side to Clay I hadn’t seen.

  And I liked it, liked seeing just how intense he seemed to be right now … but I was also hopelessly confused.

  “What quest?” I asked, frowning. “We’re not on one right now.”

  “The one that comes after the Chalice Gloria,” he said.

  My heart skipped again, and more than one beat. There are times when I’d like to believe that I’m difficult to read, that if I ever wanted to hang up my Seeker coat and become a professional cards player, my poker face would get me through it all. Right now, though, it was patently clear just how incorrect I was. I could feel the color draining out of my face, and I’m sure he could see it.

  “How … how did you …?” I had never told anyone, not one soul, that the Chalice Gloria was the first part of a secondary quest I’d been stealthily chipping away at after hours these past months.

  “Someone else is pursuing it, Mira,” Clay went on, oblivious to the question I’d wanted to ask.

  He leaned closer, and his eyes were wild, begging me to listen.

  “Someone else is pursuing it right now.”

  4

  My burrito was abandoned. A slightly younger Mira, by … oh, three months or so, would’ve been truly gutted at this, and lamented it on a perpetually half-empty stomach for days. This Mira was eating better, and the loss of £7 or whatever was a drop in the ocean compared to my vast stash of coup. Even accounting for some questionable exchange rate fluctuations at Benson’s, I could lose it quite happily.

  What I could not lose was the next part of this quest. So Clay and I fell into step, leaving Tortilla behind, heading for the stretch of wall where I could cut through to my hideout.

  “Who is looking for it?” I asked.

  Clay frowned, lips pulling sideways, another somewhat alien expression which would be very attractive to me if only I weren’t so stressed about someone threatening to snatch my next glorious achievements out from under my feet.

  “The King of the Skies,” he answered tensely. “Who else?”

  Err … “Who is that?”

  He cast me a sideways look, like he expected me to know. “Tyran Burnton.”

  I looked blankly back.

  He wasn’t mean about it. “He’s a pirate,” he explained, “over Harsterra, with an—”

  “Hold up.” We were at the cut-through point. Not a lot of foot traffic here at this time, which was awkward, but I gave a surreptitious glance around and figured we’d be quick.

  “Through here,” I told him, and cut a gateway, gripping my talisman in my free hand. It opened, glowing white and warbling all the while, like heat from the desert disfiguring the horizon.

  He passed through without question, and I followed, casting one momentary backward glance. Hadn’t taken proper precautions, I thought, but it was too late now. If we were seen, we were seen; nothing I could do about it now, and I had bigger concerns.

  Clay was another worry. Now that I was passing through the kaleidoscopic rainbow of dancing light, I remembered that I hadn’t okayed this with anyone.

  A more rational thought extinguished the fires of that worry. What did it matter? Clay could be trusted; he’d helped us from the beginning. My dirtbag brother had been much more questionable, and I�
�d allowed him in—though admittedly only after a rare show of the humility I hadn’t known he possessed. Still wasn’t sure that he did, truth be told; I’d wondered over the months since then what was show and what was more of his manipulation. But my parents hadn’t come after me, nor had he, and the small collection of treasures we wanted to keep remained intact, here in the library. So maybe I was just a cynic.

  I landed after Clay. He was glancing around distractedly, but with none of the extreme interest that I’d seen from the rest of my crew when they first came across the library. Even the million-world clock seemed of little interest to Clay; I saw his eyes flicker to its multifaceted, refractive surface once before setting upon me again.

  “As I was saying, Tyran Burnton is a pirate local to Harsterra, one of the worlds that connects tangentially to London.”

  Mental note: Harsterra. Check it out on the clock later. Preferably when Clay is around, just in case it actually does impress him.

  “They call him the King of the Skies because he travels by airship,” he went on as I led him down the library’s central aisle. “The world doesn’t have a solid surface—”

  “Like Neptune?”

  That was not me, but Carson. He was sitting at one table with Heidi, playing cards.

  “Yeah,” said Heidi, looking over her cards at us with an expression I couldn’t read. “Harsterra’s ‘surface’ is like Neptune’s.” To me, she asked: “Why’s Clayton here?”

  “Hey, team,” said Clay, raising an amiable hand. Carson returned it; Heidi regarded him coolly before settling her gaze on me again.

  I shrugged. “He just is.”

  “Uh huh.” She didn’t believe me.

  “So who’re we talking about?” Carson asked. “I heard the stuff about the world, Hearts—”

  “Harsterra,” Clay corrected. He pulled up a seat on the next table over, and I joined him, crossing one leg over the other and commencing today’s game of Avoid Heidi’s Gaze. (It was a game I’d become pretty good at, just FYI. Practice makes perfect and all that.)