Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (40 page)

Tiberius arched a bushy eyebrow. "You seemed fond enough of fairy things, even without your own wings."

"Don't misunderstand. I love my people, and our culture," Panna said. "There were many beautiful things in the White Kingdom. Can you imagine what an entire city made of glass would have looked like, Captain Myles? There's nothing like it in the core, not even on Axis. But I didn't grow up in the White Kingdom. I was born here, in the Alliance. I feel a little differently about some things than the older Arcadians do."

Tiberius frowned, not unhappy but obviously curious. "Go on."

"Take the other fairy races," Panna said. It felt good to finally talk about some of her ideas. Concealing her heritage usually meant hiding her interest in the White Kingdom.

"What about them?"

"The dryads and nyads were more or less second-class citizens in Arcadia. The race we call Arcadians used to be aerads, until Cavain conquered the White Kingdom. He gave them a new name, one to differentiate themselves from the fairies that they ruled over.

"And then there's the war itself. It's the subject of the entire Lay of Cavain, probably the most well-known piece of Arcadian lore. Most people focus on the etiquette it describes, but do you know what else it discusses? The pyrads, the fire fairies. There used to be four races of fairies, but Cavain wiped out the pyrads because they would not dissolve their own nation to join his."

Tiberius' frown deepened. "I never heard about that."

"I would be surprised if you had. That was ten thousand years ago. We live a lot longer than humans, but that's a long time even by our standards. The all-Arcadian monarchy wasn't cruel and the Arcadian knights kept everyone safe. It wasn't the worst empire in the galaxy. But what the older fairies won't tell you is that it wasn't perfect, either."

Panna turned the spear blade over and caught her reflection on the polished surface. Round ears, no wings… It seemed hypocritical to talk about her people's own history when she looked human.

"I think that's part of why we're still such a ruined culture, even a hundred years after the fall. Without the pyrads to raise hell, everything in the White Kingdom was so peaceful. And then the Devourers come out of nowhere and the survivors ran away," Panna said. "We don't know how to fight, really. Not anymore."

"Maeve always seemed to have plenty of fight in her," Tiberius objected.

"The princess is a strong woman," Panna said with a wry smile. "Some say that there's even pyrad blood in the House of Cavainna. They're the only black-haired Arcadians, you know."

"That would mean Cavain wiped out his own kind," said Tiberius.

"Yes," Panna agreed. "But it would also mean that there's still a little of the fire fairy blood left, and that Princess Cavainna has it. Maybe that's why she still fights."

"That's an interesting idea. It's total birdshit, of course, but interesting." Tiberius closed his blue eyes. "I'm not a damned Ixthian. I don't believe for a minute that genes dictate who we are. Our Maeve is strong because she's got fire in her soul, not her blood."

"She's not the only one," Panna said. "The Cavainnas may be fierce, but there were other knights in the White Kingdom. They fought and died to defend their people. There are still strong Arcadians."

Panna trailed off. She hoped that – by blood or spirit – Maeve Cavainna was strong enough to withstand whatever the Cult of Nihil did to her. Panna held the glass blade out to Tiberius. He looked at it, still stroking Orphia's feathers.

"Do you know how to fix that?" he asked.

"I think so. I've got some experience restoring artifacts. This isn't exactly the same, but if I can figure out the length, the rest shouldn't be too hard. Do you know what kind of wood the original shaft was made of?"

"No idea."

She could probably take a look at the splinters left on the blade and figure it out. If the wood originated in the White Kingdom, she would have to find the closest replacement… Panna closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. What good was fixing Maeve's spear if she could never give it back to the princess?

Still, it was something to do. Panna looked up at the huge, shimmering Waygate. And she didn't want to work on
that
thing today.

________

Xartasia would answer no more questions but waited with Maeve until dawn. She had given Maeve all the sleep that she would allow. Xartasia was gentler than her black-robed friends, but her soft wing-tip prods kept Maeve awake until Gavriel returned.

The withered Nihilist barely glanced at Xartasia as he sat down. "Go," he told her. "Hallax and I will keep our guest company now."

Xartasia bowed and departed without a word. Maeve's empty stomach twisted as Hallax stepped into the room. She clenched her teeth and fought the urge to shrink back from the Nihilists. She would not be weak before them. She would
not
… And there was nowhere to go.

"You will not torture the memories from me!" Maeve said as defiantly as she could manage.

"No, princess. I would never risk your accidental death. When you finally die, it will only be with my blessing." Gavriel gestured to Hallax, who bent down next to her and pulled back one of the fairy's tattered, blood-stained sleeves.

"There is no pain you can inflict that will break me!" Maeve hoped that was true.

Gavriel smiled. "Your cousin said that you were strong and she was right."

"Then… then what are you doing?" Maeve asked.

"I am listening to Xartasia," Gavriel said simply. "She told me not only of your strength, but of your weakness. I should not have been angry with her for speaking with you, it seems."

Maeve did not understand. Even in their sudden and terrible proximity, Maeve knew almost nothing about her cousin and suspected that Xartasia knew very little more about her. What could Xartasia have told Gavriel that could be of any use?

"You may actually enjoy this, Maeve," he said. "I understand that you have a certain fondness for chemicals. Vanora White, in particular. How convenient, since we happened to have procured some from the original tenants of this building."

Hallax held a syringe in his striped hand. Now Maeve did flinch. She kicked at him, ignoring the pain in her swollen ankle and lacerated body, but could not reach the Emberguard. He jabbed the needle into her arm and pushed down the plunger.

________

Logan sat on the wing of his Raptor, holding the foil wrapper of his breakfast in his good hand. His neck and shoulders were stiff from a night of sleeping in the fighter.

Both the Prian and Tynerion teams had extended tentative invitations to stay in the base camp, but Logan had no intention of trying to sleep in the shadow of the Waygate. The archeologists kept saying that it was an amazing discovery. That it would change everything. But every time Logan looked up at it, all he could think about was Maeve.

The snow had finally stopped and the sky was a uniform clear, bright blue. The thin air was still cold and smelled of ice. Wind tugged at Logan's hair and clothes.

It wasn't about the Nihilists anymore. This was about finding Maeve, about getting her back from Gavriel. If she was dead… Logan's cybernetic fingers screeched across the Raptor's fibersteel wing. He let the thought go no further.

One of Kemmer's trucks wheezed up the mountain and stopped on the edge of the moraine. Panna climbed out and pulled a long, straight branch from the back. It wobbled and plopped down into the frozen snow. She looked up at Coldhand, seemed to consider asking him for help, and then thought better of it and wrestled the branch up the slope alone.

What was she doing? The wingless Arcadian was almost as frustrated by their dead-end investigation into Maeve's disappearance as Logan. He jumped down from the Raptor and caught up to Panna as she tried to figure out how to get her branch down the ladder and into the ravine.

"Climb down," he instructed. "I'll hand it down to you."

Panna looked up, surprised and nervous as though he might tackle her again. "I could just drop it," she said.

"The branch is too long. It'll break."

Panna nodded slowly and began climbing down the ladder. She stopped halfway down and waited until Logan handed her the branch. She lowered the tip, then carefully dropped the other end. Logan climbed down after her.

"I'm taking this back to camp," Panna told the bounty hunter.

That was obvious, but Logan let the comment go unremarked. He simply nodded and helped Panna carry the branch down the ravine. When they pushed it the last yards and into the Waygate chamber, Logan helped Panna maneuver the bough between the tents and then lift it up onto one of the tables.

"Thank you, Coldhand," she said.

He was curious what she was up to, but Panna did not seem interested in talking as she began cutting stray twigs away from the branch. Logan lingered until it became clear that he could offer no further help and then wandered away.

He made a slow circle around the Waygate. The diggers had more or less evened out the floor of the crevasse, but it was still rough in places, icy in others. The huge Waygate shone with that ethereal glow, like lights shining up through the water.

Was that what it looked like,
Logan wondered,
just before the Devourers came through and destroyed Maeve's life, her whole world?

The Waygate's radiance pulsed and darkened as though in answer to Logan's unspoken question. A second later, the gate brightened again. Had he imagined it? Kemmer and Xen stood in the arch of the great ring, discussing something. They did not seem to have noticed any change.

By the time Logan completed his seventeenth circuit, it was midmorning. Tiberius and the rest of the Blue Phoenix crew had gathered around Panna's table. In the circle of floodlights, Duaal had not bothered to put on a shirt. Xia stood behind him with her arms around his waist and her fingers splayed against his dark skin. When Gripper saw Logan, he waved the bounty hunter over.

"We don't need his help," Tiberius grumped. The old man looked exhausted.

"No one's done much helping at all," Panna pointed out, gesturing with a small hand plane. She had finished stripping the branch of bark and was now straightening the piece of wood. A glass blade sat on the table's edge. Logan recognized it. He had faced that spear too many times to forget the long, thin angle of glittering glass.

"So, what do we do next?" Duaal asked.

"Maybe we could ask around Pylos," Gripper suggested. "Someone must have seen Maeve or the Nihilists."

"Pylos is too big for that," Duaal said. "We wouldn't even know where to begin."

"You just hate Maeve and want her to stay lost!" Gripper shouted, waving his long arms.

"Stop it, Gripper," said Xia. "That's not fair."

The Arboran's shoulders slumped, but his expression remained furious. "Isn't it?" he asked. "You never liked Maeve, Shimmer! You never liked anyone until… until now! Until Silver!"

They were arguing… again. They were angry at the Nihilists and afraid for Maeve. Each of her friends thought they had the most at stake. That they were in the greatest pain.

Logan whistled sharply and every head at the table turned toward him. So long as they thought that he did not care, then they would assume that the bounty hunter was being objective, even reasonable.

"Arguing will not get us any closer to Maeve," he said.

Tiberius gave Logan a look that might have been frustrated or grateful. "With the camp relocated down here, our job is much simpler," Tiberius said.

"Thanks for that, at least," Duaal agreed.

"That would mean we can focus on finding the princess, if only we can figure out where to look," Panna said. She measured the freshly peeled stick against the spearhead and marked the width on the wood with a pencil.

"You keep saying the princess like she's the only one," said Duaal.

Panna looked up from the spear, confusion on her face. "She's the only surviving member of the royal family, isn't she?"

"Almost. There's another princess. Xartasia," Duaal told her.

"Her name used to be Titania," Logan said. "She's Maeve's cousin."

"Titania?" Now Duaal looked confused. No, not confused, but thoughtful. "I know that name."

"You probably heard it from Maeve," Xia said.

"No, that's not it." Duaal shook his head, unable for the moment to dredge up the memory.

"I've heard Xartasia before, when I read about what happened on Stray." Panna glanced up at the Waygate. It shimmered like the inside of a shiny shell. "I assumed that it was some kind of mistake. Xartasia's not a name. It's more like an oath or insult."

Logan remembered Maeve talking about that. "It means
the dream of death.
"

"Emphasis on dream. There are eleven words for dream in Arcadian, with a variety of nuanced meanings," Panna said. The anthropologist was in her element now. "
Il'atasia
means the sort of dreams you have when you're asleep, but can also refer to something that isn't real, like an illusion or hallucination."