“Why don’t they do anything?” I demanded, swiping again, figuring that maybe if I could get Burnton distracted, talking while we were sparring instead of filling the empty spaces where he gave me breathing room to reset before coming in for another blow, that maybe I could catch him unawares and end this swiftly. “You’re hardly getting your coin’s worth, paying men to stand around and watch you.”
“I like the audience,” said Burnton. “Plus it helps them. They pick up pointers from a seasoned professional. Not that they aren’t all professionals, of course, but …” Blade clashed on spear again, then he danced backward and whirled in a balletic spin. “They’re not me,” he finished with a grin.
“Lucky them,” I said with a grimace.
“You were never this unkind when you were at home,” said my mother. “I knew this world would change you, and it has, oh, it has …”
I resisted the urge to tell my mum to piss off and aimed another swing at Burnton’s neck. He rose to meet it with his sword, and I swung toward his knee. He jerked to follow, but then I forked up again at the last second.
He leapt backward, hissing.
The spear had sliced through his shirt. The material hung, lank, exposing a tanned, hairy midriff, three ribs countable.
He gently lifted it with one hand, looking at it hanging there across his fingers. He looked … not flabbergasted exactly, but there was an undercurrent of shock running through his features now, dropping the smile from his face.
I couldn’t help but stare too. Because, in spite of myself, in spite of my confidence and certainty that I would come out on top with this, I kind of couldn’t believe I’d actually got him.
“Well now. You got me. And that surprises me,” Burnton said, still looking down at his ripped shirt. “I’ve been fighting all my life, you know. Since I was old enough to hold a sword, in fact—which, let’s be fair, and no offense meant to you, missy, but we can’t say the same about you and that spear of yours, can we?”
I pursed my lips. “I got you anyway.”
“Yes. You did. You bested me.” He spoke slowly, sounding resigned … and a thrill grew in my chest. I had beaten Burnton, and by his own strange rules and weirdly, sort of gentlemanly way of doing battle … maybe this was victory, that one rip in his shirt. This was the concession that I was, truly, the better Seeker.
He looked down at the torn fabric laying in his hand.
Then he lunged for me.
I was too late to block. His feint worked perfectly. He struck out with both palms, slapping me hard in the shoulders before I could even hope to bring Decidian’s Spear around—
I tumbled backward—and fell over the edge of the platform.
He leered over the edge. “Unfortunately, missy … you weren’t good enough.” And with a last smile, he turned back to his men and disappeared out of sight.
“You cheat!” I roared.
“Not a cheat,” he said, voice drifting away as the platform receded above me. “Just helping you find your edge. Once you find an adversary who’s not me, you’ll wipe the floor with them, if you put to practice these lessons I’ve given you.” His head reappeared over the edge, taking stock momentarily of where I now floated. He was closer to the hexagon’s center than our fight had been—closer to the second crypt key.
I landed heavily on an asteroid, a good fifty meters separating us … which, even if I kicked off with all my might, was nowhere near enough to stand a chance at intercepting Burnton and making off with the prize.
And just in case I had any hope of that lingering, Burnton disappeared … then, a moment later, the bubble enclosing the central pedestal vanished.
The pirates cheered.
“What an impressive show,” my mother’s voice cooed from a hundred worms, wriggling around the proceedings. “I would be so proud if he were my son.”
I resisted two things: the urge to gag as they praised Burnton and his crew … and the urge to cry as he and his pirate crew kicked off from the platform and toward the top of the arena again, crypt key number two in hand—leaving another failure for me.
13
I allowed myself a moment of feeling like my world was crashing down around me. But just one: because as long as Burnton and his men were in this arena, here in Biristall, or indeed anywhere in any world, I would not rest until that crypt key was in its rightful hands: mine.
“You—thieving—arsehole!” I roared, and kicked off with all my might.
I sailed over the gap fast. The platform loomed quickly, widening and overspilling my field of vision. I’d gone more or less straight down, so I flew up in the empty space toward the walkway Burnton and I had scuffled on. Reaching forward as it went past, I gripped the edge and thrust down, adding another burst of momentum into my speeding pursuit.
But the pirates were already through, navigating the dense debris field enclosing our final battle site.
“Come back here!” I screamed. “You hear me? Come back and fight like men!”
If Burnton, or any of his men, replied, I did not hear it.
Blood pulsed through me hotly. My pulse in my temples were a roaring throb, double-timing as I crossed the space—
I slammed into an asteroid, hard.
“Be careful!” a mum-worm cried.
I jabbed blindly with Decidian’s Spear in the vague direction I thought the voice had come from, and leapt to the next spinning boulder after Burnton.
The field of rock we had plowed through was thick, packed so full it was almost like a zero-G equivalent to the final approach in yesterday’s arena. I leapt through with as much agility as I could muster (which was not a lot, given the impact at the bottom of the hexagon, plus the scrapes on the way down, pains from yesterday—oh, and did I mention the residual ache from having my whole body zapped by a skeevy, underhanded cheater stealing my win?)
“Why chase him?” came my mother’s drone. “You’re hurt. This life isn’t working for you. Why don’t you just come home to me? Let me and your father look after you. That’s all we ever tried to do, you know …”
“Piss off,” I grumbled.
The thick field of rock around the middle arena thinned enough to grant me views of the vistas beyond the larger arena. A tumble of boulders gave away the direction Burnton and his crew were leaving, if their fleeing bodies leaping across the space somehow didn’t.
My stomach dropped.
They were so far away.
Well, I would have to close that distance.
I put every bit of power I could into my leaps, not caring about how hard I slammed the boulders. They flew with me, sheer power forcing them out of their spin and directing me after Burnton …
Yet as I leapt, and the distance closed, I realized I couldn’t quite catch up. They’d get back to their entrance/exit before I got there, more than comfortably.
I couldn’t get them.
I couldn’t get the crypt key back.
No.
This was not happening.
“Almost there, chaps,” Burnton called jovially to his men, distant. He didn’t look back to check their progress—
So he was unaware I was following.
Which would be useful to me if I could actually catch him!
I took another flying leap. A smaller rock spun into my path, chipped fragments drifting behind it. I braced against it, letting it bounce off my arm. It smarted, but then I was past, on course to land … still far too distant from Burnton, and still without a hope of taking back what was rightfully mine.
But then, I realized, like a light bulb had suddenly gone off:
I didn’t need to catch up.
“Oh, Mira,” my mother moaned. “Those aren’t good thoughts you’re having. I do wish you wouldn’t …”
“Go haunt Burnton’s head and stroke his ego some more,” I shot back. “I’m done hearing from you, you annoying old witch.”
“Oh, what has this world done to you? I wish you hadn’t left … remember how I’d
sing you songs? Why can’t we just go back there …?”
I put on a fresh burst of speed, closing the distance as far as I could. I had to be near enough for this to work that it would, you know, work, but not so far that I couldn’t swoop in fast enough and make out of there.
“Sorry, friends,” Burnton called over the way to my companions. All of them were arrayed in the wall cavity, at least everyone except Carson. He was a bit farther back, knees to his chest and head in his hands as he fought off the desire to vomit. “This one, it seems, is another win for Tyran Burnton, THE KING OF THE SKIES! Do tell your friends and people you meet about me, hm?”
“The only thing they’re going to be telling people,” I muttered, “is how you lost.”
And with that, I gripped tight onto the small boulder underfoot, maybe thirty inches round. Bringing the line launcher to bear, I fired toward Burnton, past him. The arrow sailed, silvery rope flowing after it, perfectly straight …
It flew by Burnton’s oversized chin and stupid hair and horrible ego, sinking into one of the larger floating rocks maybe thirty feet beyond, one with more than enough mass to stay comfortably put as, for example, another rock was dragged toward it by a fancy rope-shooting tool that may or may not have been the fifth (sixth? Clay made counting confusing) member of my team.
The anchoring point had already landed hard, embedding itself into the rock at my feet.
I slapped the line launcher’s reel-in button—and let go.
The elvish rope was wound in at a furious pace—and as it did, the asteroid disappeared out from under me, jetting toward Burnton. It flew with the force of the meteor that had wiped out the dinosaurs—and it was centered right on the back of Burnton’s thick, utterly oblivious head.
He preened, unaware of the boulder hurtling at him from behind, or the arrow line it was anchored on—and just as unaware of me, kicking off from another rock and surging through the arena in its wake, arms extended, face set in a grim line—
Clay saw me first, and he turned, tracing the silver line. “Mira—?”
Burnton heard. He twisted—
His eyes flashed with terror, and he contorted to shift himself clear—but it came too late, and though the boulder didn’t cave in his skull like I had sorely hoped, it did smash him hard in the shoulder.
The crypt key burst out of his grip, spinning on its long axis—
“No!” he cried—
Then I was there. Snapping it up in one hand, I slammed headlong into Burnton’s body.
He clawed for me—
But I elbowed him hard in the nose, planted my feet somewhere that elicited a pained shriek, and kicked off, back in the direction of my own entrance and, now, victorious exit, only stopping once on the way: to snatch up the line launcher and clip it to my belt.
“Bad form!” yelled a pirate—Barnes, maybe, though I supposed it could have been just about any of the cut-out army that Burnton commanded.
“That was not fair at all!” cried my mother in turn. “You give that back!”
“Life is unfair!” I shouted back—and landed hard among my friends, who ducked aside at the last second, faces stupefied and eyes wide at me. Gravity kicked in as I passed the threshold between this alcove and the arena, and I fell heavily, stumbling a little.
“Mira,” Clay began, “are you—?”
“Fine,” I said, swiping at my forehead. Something wet was trickling down it, had been for some time without my realizing, because the edges had gone crusty. Blood, I thought distantly—and then I was moving past, sidestepping Bub and his barbed armor, passing Carson, who slumped, looking almost as green as our orc friend. “Now let’s get out of here.”
They came with me, their movements stilted at first, then faster as they hurried to keep pace with me.
I shot one last look over my shoulder. The alcove was filling with mum-worms, pushing through, awful bodies glistening.
But through a gap left between them, I met Burnton’s gaze for one long second.
His grin was gone.
In its place was a grimace of fury.
14
“We’re Borrick,” Carson said. More whined, really, not a tone I particularly wanted to hear. A “Well done, Mira,” would’ve been greatly appreciated after everything I’d been through.
“Shut it and keep up,” said Heidi. She was lagging almost as far back as Carson, presumably to keep him on track. “We need to get out of here.”
“You just … you stole that from him,” said Carson. “And he won it.”
“Just like he stole the key from us yesterday,” I replied. “You need to keep up in more ways than one, Yates.”
That silenced him. Later, I might feel a stab of guilt over it. Unlikely, though. Burnton, for all his talk of fair play in our exchange of swords and spear in the last arena, had cheated me, taking the first key after we had won it. It was only fair that I did the same back with the second.
“Mira,” Bub began—
“Just be quiet,” I said. “Please. I want to get out of here. We can talk about this when we’re home, okay?”
Bub obeyed.
The air was tense—and not just because of what had happened. No one spoke, not even one word to congratulate my victory.
This was a victory, damn it. They should be excited. Instead, the atmosphere was strained.
“Such a terribly low move,” a mum-worm complained at me. They were wriggling along in the air alongside us as we hurriedly navigated the curving bridges between Biristall’s half-jagged, half-smooth “land masses,” a little pack of them like the nagging equivalent of groupies. “I didn’t raise you like that.”
It’s being resourceful, I thought sourly back.
“It’s being unscrupulous and wily. I didn’t instill those values in you. It must be this awful world, these ambitions you had of being a Seeker. You weren’t good enough, honestly. I warned you. I told you the cutthroat competition would be too much for you, delicate thing that you are. I told you not to leave, I said it was no good … and did you listen? Not for one second. But I was right, oh, I was, and look what’s happened to my baby Mira girl now …”
I tried to shut the voices out. “We’re going the right direction?” I asked Clay quietly.
He consulted his tablet. “Yeah.” His voice was dull.
Another time, I’d have tried to chat longer. This was my dream, or one of them at any rate: Clay seeing me come away victorious on a grand quest.
This crowd was just ruining that feeling though.
“It’s not their fault, and don’t act like it is,” my mother’s voice chided. “They must see it too. That was a despicable thing you did back there.”
I just marched ahead, counting the steps until I was free.
However I’d felt about it earlier, in that conflicted way en route to the arena, I had come back around to the correct train of thought: if I never heard my mother’s voice again, it would be a day too soon.
15
The weather in Biristall by our cut-through still flashed on my million-world clock when we arrived at my hideout: Dry, 0% chance of precipitation.
“We’re Borrick.”
That was Carson, and those were the first two words he had spoken to me in hours—since I’d told him to shut his mouth back in Biristall, pretty much.
“Don’t give me that,” I said.
“Why not?” He quickstepped to pass me, turning to walk sideways and stare at me with a look that I figured he meant to be imploring, but which just made him look like he was on the verge of being sick. “It’s true! Borrick comes in and tries to wreck our quests, stealing things—”
“Burnton stole the first crypt key!”
“—and using dubious tactics to get his way. Now you’ve done exactly the same!”
I stopped dead in my tracks as my nostrils flared. I was close to boiling point again. “I have not done exactly the same as Borrick. Borrick was a slimy little weasel who tried to steal everything from us
by brute force, hiring as many hands as he could to do his dirty work, and ghosting me for the Tide of Ages, like some creepy stalker pseudo-fanboy.”
“No,” Carson said, “I guess you’re not like Borrick then. Because Borrick never stole anything from us once we’d claimed it.”
“Err, did you miss him trying with Feruiduin’s Cutlass and Decidian’s Spear?” I asked. “Oh yeah, I forgot: you did. You were busy getting carried away by orcs while Heidi and I got cornered and had to think on our feet to make an escape.”
It was a low blow, and a stupidly pointless one at that. I wasn’t holding on to any kind of a grudge with Carson for what had happened on the road to the Chalice Gloria. Back then he had irked me, and getting himself caught hadn’t been exactly convenient, but what was I to expect of a lanky nerd whose world had been turned upside-down less than twenty-four hours beforehand? I certainly didn’t care about it now, and nowhere near enough that it was worth throwing in his face like that.
The words cut; I could tell by the downward quirk of Carson’s lips. He opened his mouth, and took a slightly unsteady, if shallow breath.
“It’s not right to steal,” he said.
“No, it’s not,” I said hotly. “We agree on that. But when someone steals from me—like, for example, bigheaded pirates, zapping people and holding them hostage for a quest prize that someone else got first, Carson—I think it is only right to steal something back.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“No, but three lefts do.”
Carson screwed his face up. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m done arguing about this. Unless any of the rest of you want to have words about my conduct? As if I didn’t just get an earful from a bunch of bug-eyed telepathic worms?” I rounded on the others, who loomed there in the library’s central aisle like specters—specters who, looking at their faces, wanted to be anywhere but here.
The King of the Skies Page 12
