Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (31 page)

The fighter came in for a steep, hard landing and the canopy snapped open. A man jumped out of the cockpit and ran down the length of one wing. He landed on the ground in a spray of snow. The newcomer was not here to talk. His stance was tight, defensive, and his gun was in his hand. Duaal finally recognized him.

"Oh, my God. Captain!" Duaal shouted.

The old Prian whirled and stared at the man. "Coldhand!" he snarled.

The bounty hunter skidded to a halt. Ice flecked his hair. There was something new in his pale eyes. They looked just like Maeve's used to. Heavy and haunted, but now a sudden surprise widened them.

Tiberius dropped his radio and tore his NI gun from the holster under his arm. He sprinted the yards between them to stand in front of Duaal, Xia and Gripper. Snow drifted softly around them. The heavens did not care about the dangerous tension of the moment.

"Where's Maeve?" Tiberius shouted. "What did you do with her?"

"You? What are you doing here?" Coldhand asked. He shook his head like a man waking from a very strange dream. "An old man and a black-haired Arcadian… You and Maeve."

The archeologists watched with confusion written across both of their faces. "Who is this man?" Kemmer asked loudly. "Is he a cop?"

But no one was paying attention to him. Gripper squealed in fear and tugged on Xia's shoulder, pulling her back away from danger. Duaal stared at Logan. The hunter's pale blue eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles under them. His carriage had none of the confidence Duaal had come to expect from Logan Coldhand. This man looked like a cornered animal.

"Where did you take Maeve? How low can you fall, you honorless bastard?" Tiberius bellowed. "I'm going to have your God-damned heart out!"

His words finally seemed to sink in and Coldhand started. "Maeve… She's not here?"

"Where is she? What did you do to her?"

Kemmer shouted to make himself heard over Tiberius. "What are you doing, Myles?" He waved his hand at the Raptor. "He's here to help us!"

"I'm not a cop," Coldhand said sharply.

"He's a bounty hunter," Tiberius agreed. He waved his gun at Logan in rage. It flashed in the wan sunlight.

Coldhand watched as the old cop advanced on him. He did not recoil, but he looked far from impassive. In fact, Duaal thought Logan looked like he was going to be sick.

"I didn't do anything to Maeve," he told Tiberius. "I didn't take her. I… I haven't seen her since Gharib. What happened?"

"No. No more questions," Tiberius snarled. "You're a buzzard, Coldhand. I told you back on Stray that if I ever saw you again, I would kill you. We're ending this now."

Duaal was not quite sure what he meant by that, but doubted it could be any good for anyone. The last time Tiberius had fought the bounty hunter, he got shot. Only Coldhand's haste had saved the old man. If it came down to a duel, Logan would kill Tiberius.

And Duaal believed Logan. Why would the bounty hunter abduct Maeve and then come back to the camp? He seemed surprised to find Tiberius on the mountain and genuinely unsettled by Maeve's absence.

"Captain, wait!" Xia cried. She pulled away from Gripper and stepped in front of Tiberius, waving her hands. "You can't just shoot him! He hasn't done anything!"

"Hasn't done anything?" Tiberius shouted. He swiped the Ixthian out of his way with a thick arm. "He's a traitor! He abandoned his own people!"

Coldhand flinched visibly.

"Excuse me, I think you're overlooking something important. When this man arrived, he said something," Xen interjected mildly. He looked at Coldhand. "You were expecting someone else?"

"Yes."

Xen blinked his colorful eyes. He was not used to Logan's perfunctory answers and did not quite know what to make of them. He cleared his throat. "Well, who? Who did you think you would find?"

Coldhand was still watching Tiberius. He dropped the Talon-9 a few inches but did not put the weapon away. He did not look at Xen when he answered, but his eyes flickered over Duaal.

"Gavriel and Xartasia. I came to hunt down the Cult of Nihil."

Gavriel? The world seemed to tip under Duaal's feet. Gavriel was alive and he was here.
Here on Prianus. Why? Is he coming for me? Does he know I'm here?

"The cult of who now?" asked Xen.

"Don't you ever watch the news?" Xia asked, exasperated. "Never mind. You've always been more interested in the past than the present. I told you about Gavriel, the madman who trained Duaal. The Cult of Nihil is his church."

"They're here?" Tiberius asked. The gun was still in his hand, but down at his side now.

"The Nihilists have been taking Arcadians from Pylos," Logan said.

"What? Do… do you think they took Smoke?" Gripper asked. "Do you know where she is?"

Kemmer looked over his shoulder. Panna, Gruth and Enu-Io were still down in the mountain, but Ava, Darius and Phillip had overheard the commotion and emerged to investigate. They stood back, whispering to each other. Kemmer whistled sharply at them.

"Anything missing?" he shouted.

"Nothing that we can find," Darius called back. The three seemed reluctant to approach any closer.

Kemmer nodded and returned his attention to Coldhand. "Nothing's been stolen, it seems. Maybe your cult
did
take her."

Logan's pale eyes narrowed. "When did Maeve go missing?"

The question seemed to remind Tiberius that he was furious with the hunter. "What the hell do you care, bounty hunter? She's not worth anything to you now!"

Logan's jaw clenched and Duaal wondered what the man was biting back. Did he want to argue with Tiberius? Which was stranger? The very idea that the ice-hearted bounty hunter might care enough about anything to argue? Or that he might stop himself? Duaal waited eagerly. What could silence a man like Logan Coldhand? He wanted to know. Xia watched the mage out of the corner of one facetted red eye.

"Wait!" Gripper's concern for his missing friend must have outweighed his terror of the bounty hunter. "Freezer, can… can you help us find her?"

"We don't need his help!" Tiberius snarled.

"Yes, we do! The police haven't been able to find the guys who murdered Dannos," Gripper cried, using the dead digger's proper name. "No one is better at finding her than Freezer."

"Could you find Maeve, Coldhand?" Xia asked.

The bounty hunter stood silently in the snow for a moment before answering. "Chances are good that Gavriel has Maeve. She's made herself an enemy of the Nihilists and nothing else was taken, you said."

"But why take just Maeve?" Duaal asked. "What about me?"

"What
about
you?" Coldhand said flatly. "What do you mean to Gavriel? Does he even know you're here?"

"I don't know," Duaal admitted. His face went hot. "I don't think so."

"If Gavriel knew where you were, he would have simply taken you back rather than steal Baliend on Stray. He must not know about you," Xia said.

Duaal was not sure whether he should be relieved or insulted. Shouldn't Gavriel know? Shouldn't he
feel
that his one-time slave was near?

"Freezer, please help us find Smoke. I… I can pay you. I've got some money," Gripper said plaintively. He fished around in his pockets but only came back with a few linty pieces of wire. "Um… I do, really. Just give me a minute."

Coldhand's gaze dropped. What was wrong with him? For the first time, Duaal noticed a dark smear along the hunter's jaw. A shadow? No, it was a bruise, and a nasty one. It was a few days old, starting to go yellow around the edges. Who could have done that to Logan Coldhand?

"I don't know where the Nihilists are. I've been searching Pylos for a week and found next to nothing," Logan said. He gestured around the camp. "This was the only lead I had."

"But you
can
find Smoke, right? You always used to do it before, no matter how hard we tried to shake you!" said Gripper.

"Look, we don't have the time or money for this," Kemmer interrupted. "I'm sorry for you loss, Captain Myles. Truly, I am, but there's work we need to finish. I don't know this bounty hunter and I'm not sure I care to. If he can't help, then send him on."

"He's our best chance," said Duaal.

"We don't need him!" Tiberius brought his NI gun back up to Coldhand. "We don't! Even if he finds our dove, what do you think he's going to do then? Kill her? Drag her away? He's a traitor and we can't trust him!"

Coldhand looked between his ship and Tiberius, then holstered his Talon. "If Maeve's with the Nihilists, then we want the same thing – to find them. I'm not taking your money," he said to Gripper, "but I'll help you."

"No!" Tiberius shouted. He whistled for Orphia and charged toward Coldhand again.

Duaal grabbed him. "Captain, don't! You want to see Maeve again, don't you?"

"I…"

Xia came up next to Duaal, between Tiberius and Coldhand. "He's right, captain. Even if you hate Coldhand, you know he's good at what he does. One of the best in the galaxy. Don't let your pride get Maeve killed."

Duaal could hear Tiberius' teeth grinding. A vein throbbed in his forehead. The old man's knuckles were white as he gripped the gun in his hand. Finally, he closed his eyes and let out a long-held breath. The weapon wavered and then fell back to his side.

"You're right," he said. "By the Skylord's balls, I hate it, but you're right. If those Nihilist bastards have Maeve, we've got to get her back. But when this is over…"

Coldhand nodded in understanding and closed to a more conversational distance. He was even more tired and haggard than Duaal first supposed, and he could see the faint halos of other bruises above his collar and below his sleeves.

"You were on the radio when I landed," Logan said.

"I was calling Captain Cerro," Tiberius said. "We've been in contact since we arrived. There was a theft turned murder the morning we got here. We've been working as security."

"
And
tech support!" Gripper added.

"Do you know where Maeve was before she was taken?" asked Logan.

"Yeah. She was up there," the Arboran told him, pointing up through the gently swirling snow to an angular crag of icy stone. "Smoke was up there every night."

"Why?"

"She was guarding the ravine."

Coldhand frowned. "The ravine? Why was she watching that instead of this camp?"

"That was my job and the Captain's," Duaal said. "But Maeve had the wings, so she was up there."

The bounty hunter turned and began wading through the snow, up toward the outcropping.

"Now wait a God-damn minute," Kemmer said, interrupting again. He ran to intercept Coldhand. "I don't know you and you haven't signed the nondisclosure agreements. We can't just let you poke around up here! This is a sensitive site!"

"If Gavriel's got Maeve, we can't just leave her on her own," Duaal told the archeologist. "You have no idea what he's like."

"I'm not trying to belittle your loss, but I don't think you understand the importance of the…" Kemmer looked at the bounty hunter. "…of our discovery."

"I don't care about whatever you've got up here," Logan said. "I'll do my job and then be gone."

"That's all fine for you to say, but I don't know anything about you."

"My name is Logan Coldhand and I'm a bounty hunter. I'm going to find Maeve and I don't give two tailfeathers about the rest." He shoved Kemmer out of his way and stalked off through the snow.

Xen turned to Kemmer with his hands tucked in his sleeves. "I don't think he's going to sign anything," he said with a smirk.

"Shut up," Kemmer snapped back. "With that lot flying around looking for their lost dove, who's going to be left to protect us?"

Xen stopped smiling. Duaal and the rest of the Blue Phoenix crew ran to catch up with Coldhand.

"Any man who can torture another is himself tortured."

- Dailon idiom

"What are we looking for up here?" Gripper asked.

"Evidence," Logan and Tiberius said at the same time.

The hunter raked his eyes across the snow. The climb up to Maeve's sentry point was difficult for anyone without wings or an Arboran's climbing claws. Logan's pants were soaked in snowmelt and stuck heavily to his legs. But the snow the whole way up was uneven, churned up last night by several sets of feet and then imperfectly smoothed over by storm.

So whoever came after Maeve would have had to climb. They could not fly. That helped Logan very little… Many of the Nihilists were Arcadian, but there were plenty of others who flocked to Gavriel's tattered banner. That meant vehicles to transport them and then to move Maeve once they caught her. From here to Pylos was too long and too treacherous a journey to make on foot.

Assuming they're even in Pylos, not somewhere in the mountains…

Behind him, Duaal, Xia and Gripper shivered and watched, not sure what to do. Only Tiberius was proving himself useful, walking a careful spiral from the top of the stone and probing the snow with his feet. His boot hit something in the snow. The old cop swore in pain, but dropped to creaking knees and felt around.