Shadowstorm (Sorcery and Science Book 6) (17 page)

Ariella looked around at the barn, where chaos ate order for breakfast. “Hard to imagine.”

Snickering, Riposte gave her a punch to the arm. It didn’t hurt. When you’d been punched by Phantoms, pain took on a whole new meaning.

“You’ve loosened up since we were in school together. Good for you.”

Ariella sidestepped before Riposte could punch her again. Just because it didn’t hurt, that didn’t mean she’d just stand there and take it.

“My ride?” she prompted.

“Ah, yes. You might want to sit down for this one.” Riposte’s eyes lit up like the ring of torches that lined the Gateway’s inner chamber. “You will be hitching a ride in this beauty.”

Ariella followed her extended arm to the airplane. Of course it was the airplane. It was always the airplane.

Riposte hadn’t stopped grinning. “Do you need me to hold your hand?”

“No. This is not my first time in a flying contraption.”

“Oh, that’s right. I’m remembering something I heard…” She snapped her fingers together. “Didn’t you crash a floating city into the Tundra?”

“Who said that?”

“Destiny,
everyone
is saying that.”

“Well, everyone is wrong. That’s not how it happened. The city lost power, but the Helleans managed to regain control before they crashed. And it wasn’t even my idea.”

Riposte mulled that over for a moment, then said, “The other version is better. Much more spectacular.”

Ariella shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat.”

“Or flies my plane?”

“Exactly.”

Laughing, Riposte climbed into the airplane. “You coming?” she called down.

Her mouth fell open when she saw Jason, who was suddenly standing beside Ariella. Wow, he moved fast.

“He’s working with us. King River’s orders,” Ariella said.

Riposte continued to stare, her usual chattiness shunned into silence.

“Are you ok?” Ariella asked her.

“Fine.” Riposte shook herself, then met Jason’s eyes. “Just don’t get any blood on my upholstery.”

“I think I can refrain from killing anyone until we land,” he said drily.

Riposte tossed them each a pair of goggles. “Ok, let’s get going. I have a date with a crash site that I still have to make tonight.”

Sometimes Riposte was funny. And other times…well, other times she was just a bit too weird. Like all Ciphers, she was good at solving puzzles. What was unusual about her was her specialty: solving technological puzzles. It was also a pretty tricky talent to develop at Rosewater, which was inside the Wilderness. She’d gotten special permission to tinker with any wreckage King River had pulled out of the Wilderness and brought back to Laelia for study. He’d always seen the need for Elitions to understand the technology they might someday have to fight. The man was a master of being prepared for every scenario.

Which was why it was so odd to see him blown over by the Selpes’ Elition project. He’d long been worried that the Selpes would try something like this. In fact, it was for that very reason that he’d sent his daughter into hiding so many years ago. So surely he’d planned for this contingency? Maybe he just hadn’t expected the Selpes to come up with something working so soon.

It was odd. A project like the Selpes’ one would take years to develop. They’d fail countless times before they succeeded, and those failures would leave traces behind. The Selpes could not silence them all. These were people they were dealing with, and people did not go down easily. And yet there had been no hints. No whispers. No victims. Not even any missing Elitions. Until now. It was almost as though the Selpes had magicked their project into existence.

Ariella shrugged off her worried thoughts, bottling them for later. One step at a time. And their first step was getting to Beechwheat aboard this accursed mechanical menace.

* * *

527AX January 12, Beechwheat

It took them under half an hour to fly to Beechwheat, the wrecked plane Riposte had glued back together convulsing the whole way there.
The flight was as turbulent as a barrage of foresights after an Enhancing Serum—and considerably less comfortable. Ariella never thought she would see the day she wished for an airship, but at least those floating blobs didn’t toss her about like a piece of driftwood on the waves of a stormy ocean.

Riposte landed the plane just outside of town, right between two granary towers. And then she just left.

“The plane’s yours for the day. Try to get it back to Laelia in one piece,” Riposte called out over the howling wind as she walked off into the forest.

How she expected them to return that plane to Laelia was a mystery. Ariella could hardly stand to sit inside the thing, let alone knew how to fly it. But her pilot apparently had better things to do right now. Whatever she was salvaging, it had better be worth it.

“Do you know how to fly a plane?” Ariella asked Jason.

“I could mind-blast it into those trees there,” he replied.

Somehow, that wasn’t very reassuring.

“Let’s just head into town,” Ariella said. If Marin agreed to help them, she would be able to fly the plane.

Ariella and Jason walked toward Beechwheat. It was colder here than in Laelia. That was thanks to the Rock Screen, a mountain range of sheer walls and icy peaks that extended across half of Sunshadow territory. The mountains blocked Beechwheat and the rest of Swarden off from the warmer winds of subtropical Elitia. Here they experienced true winter.

Ariella inhaled, and a chill took seed inside her chest. As she exhaled, a layer of tiny ice crystals formed on the scarf before her mouth, frosting her lips as she moved. She patted her hands together and pushed herself into a brisk walk down the hard trail of frozen mud. If she couldn’t convince Leonidas to fly her back to Laelia, she would freeze.

The path cut upward, bringing them face to face with a near-solid wall of pine trees. Ariella knew it was nothing more than a few rows of trees planted as a windbreaker for the town—she’d seen this all from above—but from where she now stood, it looked more like a forest without end. She squeezed through the trees, her hips sliding against the shimmery coat of ice that spread across every trunk and branch like a silvery skin. Jason was a lot bigger than she was, but he slid between the trees easily. It was as though they were spreading apart to let him pass.

Past the curtain of trees, Beechwheat waited. The town sat at the foothills of the Rock Screen, the roofs of its houses dusted with snow blown down from the mountains. A biting wind whistled down the streets, kicking up swirls of icy particles. It cut through Ariella’s winter layers as though they were made of tissue paper. Whatever effect the barrier of trees was having, it wasn’t enough.

They walked past more granaries. They loomed high overhead like giants, clearly marking Beechwheat as a farming town. She and Jason passed a few fields, but they seemed unrelated to farming. For one, their fences, made of thick wooden panels, extended two meters high. She stopped to peek through a gap between two panels and spied an array of target boards on the field. She checked the urge to draw her sword. There was no reason to believe people would start shooting at her. The fields weren’t even occupied. It must have been the off season.

Just as she’d convinced herself that no attack was imminent, a gun fired from a few fields over. It was too distant to be meant for her, but she pressed her back flat against the wooden panel fence and listened. A barrage of graphic profanities followed the gunshot.

Ariella darted past field after field until she was almost to the source of the gunfire. Jason kept pace with her, apparently unconcerned. If she’d had the power to make trees move out of her way, she wouldn’t have been worried either.

She peeked around the corner. A man dressed in an assortment of furs over thick winter clothes stood tall atop a stack of crates, a crossbow swung over his shoulder and a rifle in his mittened hands. He was pointing the gun at two figures ducked behind a frozen-over water trough. Ariella focused in on them. It was Marin and Leonidas, and they were just a few seconds away from getting themselves killed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

~
Furs ’n Spurs ~

527AX January 12, Beechwheat

UNFORTUNATELY FOR LEONIDAS, this bounty hunter was far more competent than the clown from last week. Furs ’n Spurs here was not only dressed like a wintertime cowboy—he could actually shoot. His predecessor, on the other hand, had been a complete moron. He’d managed to get himself clobbered over the head with Marin’s toolbox—not before he’d gotten out a few rounds, but long before he’d hit anything anywhere close to where Leonidas was standing.

“He’s got us pinned down,” Marin whispered, keeping her head low. Marin was sometimes crazy, but she was never stupid. He didn’t have to tell her to stay down when a competent marksman was shooting at them.

Leonidas winked at her. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“So, what should we do?”

“You’re always the one with all the ideas.”

“And you’re the spy.”

“Former spy,” he reminded her.

“It doesn’t matter. You’re used to getting shot at.”

Marin was no novice herself. She’d spent weeks dodging elite assassins, malevolent machines, and magical creatures that weren’t even supposed to exist. In just a few seconds, she would get that look in her eyes, the twinkle of a plan fading into existence. And it would no doubt involve—

“You’ll need to go out there and distract him,” she told him.

“I’m the distraction,” Leonidas said drily. “Again.” He sighed. “Why am I always the distraction?”

“You are very distracting,” Marin replied. She immediately began rummaging through her bag. With her face focused downward, he couldn’t gauge whether she was serious or merely teasing him.

A few months ago, there would have been no question in his mind. Since childhood, he and Marin had maintained a very straightforward relationship, one that involved tormenting each other as much as humanly possible. But things had grown considerably more complicated after their sabotage and escape from the Hellean floating city of Blizzard’s Point. Everything was…awkward. Yes, awkward. Maybe it had something to do with that kiss he’d given her before they’d jumped out of the city.

“Any day now, Leo,” Marin said, her words bringing him back to that icy field. “Keep his attention away from me.”

That wouldn’t be hard. The bounty hunter had, after all, come there for him.

“Go.” Marin nudged him with the toe of her fluffy pink boot. Her wardrobe consisted of blacks, whites, and browns. Leonidas hadn’t known she even owned anything pink, let alone liked the color. It was as though she’d borrowed a piece out of another woman’s closet.

“And, Leo,” she called out as he moved away.

He turned to look at her.

“Try not to get yourself killed,” she finished.

That went without saying. He nodded anyway, then continued his stalk along the uneven wall of crates beside the water trough. He paused at the edge and pressed his back to the outermost crate, tiny splinters sprinkling down as his coat scraped the rough wood surface. The bounty hunter had stopped shooting. Loaded down from top to bottom with ammunition, the man could have given Silas Thorn, the knife-wielding Elition giant, a run for his money. So, he’d not run out of bullets—not by a long shot. Rather, he was just waiting for Leonidas to do something idiotic. Like peek his head out. Just as Dr. Marin had ordered.

Sometimes, it paid to carry a two-hundred-and-fifty millimeter long pistol with attached laser sight. This was one of those times. Leonidas’s Boar Hunter was both fast and accurate, and he would need both—and then some—if he had any prayer of surviving this encounter.

He took a deep breath, then slipped around the corner just long enough to shoot a hole in the water pipe above the bounty hunter’s head. Once again tucked safely away behind the crates, Leonidas heard the gurgle of falling water and the surprised shriek of a man far too old and seasoned to have been capable of such a noise. Leonidas dashed out and made a run for the next water trough.

But the man’s shock hadn’t lasted long. A bullet whistled past Leonidas’s ear as he dove for the cover of the dilapidated trough. The years had not been kind to it, and there was hardly enough left of it to cover much of anything. And at the rate that trigger-happy hunter was shooting holes in it, it would be a wonder if it didn’t topple over within the next few seconds. Leonidas bit his lip, tucked his head, and considered his options. Since there were basically none, the process didn’t take him long.

The crackle of exploding wood and the patter of falling debris rumbled in Leonidas’s ears, and sharp splintered shards battered his head and hands. But it was not the dying song of the abused trough. It was the stack of crates that had provided the bounty hunter with the upper ground.
Had
. The stack no longer stood. It was nothing more than a pile of rickety wood chips now. Marin had come through. She stepped cautiously out from behind her trough and stared down at the pile. Leonidas came up behind her, and she nearly jumped out of her skin when he put his hand on her shoulder.

“Do you think he’s still…alive?” Marin asked, leaning forward for a closer look.

The bounty hunter was completely submerged but for a single hand. It twitched erratically.

“I believe so.” Leonidas pointed his gun at the rumbling debris. “But perhaps we should dig him out so you can try to blow him up again.”

Marin planted her hands on her hips. “Leonidas Magnarion Chase, I did no such thing.”

“Oh, but you did,” he contested, then smiled at her. “And as long as we’re on a full-name basis, Aquamarine Evelyn Graunt, I should mention that you, madam, nearly blew me up along with Hunter Cowboy there.”

She sighed. “As always, you’re exaggerating.”

“No, I’m not. The bomb zipped right past me.” Leonidas shot his hand forward, just missing his ear. “Had your aim been the slightest bit off, you would have hit me right in the head. The consequent explosion would have blown open my skull, splattering clumps of my brain all over this field.”