War of the Princes 02: Dragoon (3 page)

“
I can't believe you, Kat,” she said, upset. A finger flicked to her face to push up her glasses. “Everything my parents are putting me through, and now you're doing this to me.”

“
It's not about you,” I tried to explain.

“
Yeah, you're right!” she snapped back. Ruby was an exceptionally nice person. I hadn't seen her this angry in years. The result left me gaping. “It's never about me. Look, I know you've been through a lot, I get that. But I have been here, day after day, trying to cheer you up, trying to make you feel normal, defending you against those idiots at school who make fun of your scars. I've been here for you, but it's
never
enough! You're miserable about what happened to you, you're miserable about Rune, and you're miserable about yourself. There's no such thing as normal, Katelyn, you just have to get through it, but if you're bent on hating your life, don't drag me down with you!”

She spun away from me, stalking back the way she had come. I could tell by the pinch of her voice that she was ready to cry.

A fight with Ru, on top of everything else, was more than I could take.

We have to do what is needed of us.

Chapter 5:
Another Machine

“Who shot
your
dog?” Kyle inquired beside me.

“
That obvious?” I asked, looking up at him from my seat on the bench. I was clutching the papers and satchel in a death grip. My argument with Ruby left me wanting to scream, kick something, and apologize all at once.

“
You might want to avoid scowling. Just a suggestion,” he said with an easy, lopsided grin.

“
What happened to your shirt?” I countered, changing the subject.

He would have looked particularly great that evening, if not for a typical mishap or two. Grey slacks and a white dress shirt complemented Kyle's lean frame. Many would consider his tousled brown curls charming. The fact that his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow made him look casual, disarming. It was the horrendous
spattering of brown sludge across the front of his chest that ruined his ensemble.

“
A gift from my date,” he told me, shamelessly.

“
Sally shot you with the hose of a septic tank?” I asked, aghast.

“
What? No. Sally told me engineering was boring, so I took back the flowers I gave her and cut her loose. My date is, Loraine,” he said, standing aside with a grand sweep of his arm.

Guided by his gesture, I twisted my torso to look over the back of the bench. Near the foot of the lofty weather tower sat a five-foot-tall engine. A
rectangular copper case and glass front panel protected the rotating gears, rods and pistons. Wheels were fitted to the bottom of the case. Pinched in the doorway of the glass panel was a bouquet of bright yellow flowers.

“
I take it Loraine finds you interesting,” I smirked.

“
This is oil, for the record… and maybe a bit of ice cream too. It's not, you know,” he trailed off. “And yes, she does.”

“
What does this thing do? I mean, Loraine.”

“
I'm glad you asked! She drives herself, with some directional input from a remote control device, plays music and makes ice cream. She's making chocolate chip coffee right now.”

“
That's actually a pretty good idea,” I admitted. “That guy who pushes the cart on Market Street is creepy.”

“
I know! I just wish I didn't forget to fit her with cones. Gotta make some changes so she doesn't tear around, aggressively spitting dessert on people.”

“
I could think of worse ways of being attacked.”

“
All you need are quick reflexes, or a human shield,” he said brightly.

As much as he could always cheer me up, his positive disposition broke something down inside of me. I sighed, feeling a buildup of hurt and confusion solidifying in my chest.

“Kyle, I don't know where I fit anymore. I love Rivermarch, I love everyone here, but there's something wrong with me. I'm not the same person I was. I-I'm like a porcupine at a petting zoo. I just keep hurting people.”

“
Porcupines can be pet you know. As long as they're calm.”

“
Thanks for the handy fact, Mr. Manimal, but you're missing the point.”

“
I take you for more of an opossum. Stress makes you fall down and smell bad.”

I smacked gently at his arm and smirked against my will.
“I hate you.”

“
No, you love it,” he grinned back at me. Behind him, something caught my eye.

In the soft evening shadow of the weather tower, a dark shape
shambled near Kyle's creation. Struggling, the form pulled itself up to stand. It was a man. One of his shoulders sloped down making his left arm appear longer than the right. The evening sky and dim weather tower lights made it difficult to tell what was wrong with him. I could see his body heaving as though he had sprinted hard to get there.

“
Who's that guy by Loraine?” I asked, on alert.

“
Looks like Eddie Elm, the architect. He built the additions to the civic building,” Kyle said craning to get a better view. “Doesn't look so good.”

The man cast a paranoid look over his shoulder and cried out,
“He's coming! Don't stop me... he's coming!”

I had risen from the bench, leaving the stack of
Loring's papers on the seat. I was walking toward Eddie Elm before I realized what I was doing.

My approach yielded a better picture of the battered man. I stopped, ensuring a
ten-foot gap between us. His eyes were the first thing I noticed. They were different colors, one brown, the other silver and bloodshot. There were cuts and bruises across his face, his clothes were battered, burned and bloodstained, and his left shoulder was very obviously dislocated.

“
Don't stop me!” he echoed.

“
Easy, Eddie,” Kyle said, beside me. I couldn't stop myself from investigating but I was infinitely glad I wasn't alone. “What happened to you?”

“
We're fools. He's coming. He's coming,” the crazed man repeated, looking around frantically. “Don't stop me. It's the right thing to do. It's the only thing.”

“
We need to get you to a hospital, okay?” Kyle said, taking a cautious step forward. “Eddie, can you hear me?”

“
He can't have us.”

My nerves prickled.
“Who's coming?”

His eyes found mine and locked. I had asked the right question.

“The Prince of Shadows,” he said in a broken voice.

Now my nerves stabbed at me.
“How?” The rest of the world faded out. In my peripheral vision, there were people running up the lawn. Black carriages raced up the street toward the weather station. Kyle stood close beside me, looking around us. Later, I realized that he had noticed what was going on long before I did.

“
Kat,” Kyle said, attempting to get my attention. I ignored him.

“
I have to do it. I was the only one who escaped. I don't know what happened to the others. Maybe they got away, but no, they couldn't have. I was the strongest. I was the strongest and I barely made it,” he began to weep. “I can't take the chance that they weren't captured. If he has Paperglass, we're all ruined!”

Worst fears confirmed.

“Kat,” Kyle said more firmly.

Eddie inched
closer to Loraine, his contorted frame perfectly aligned with a leg of the weather tower. There was a thin wire tied around that leg. It ran forty feet to where Eddie stood, the end coiling in his right hand. I didn't understand its significance. I was fixated on something else.

“
Can Paperglass get home?” I asked, inching forward.

Kyle grabbed me by the shoulders,
halting my approach.

“
What are you doing? Let me go!” I said trying to wrench out of his grip.

“
No, no, no! There's no hope! No hope for us, don't you understand?” he began to shout. Eddie finally broke eye contact to look beyond me at the officers racing toward us. “I have to do it.”

Using all of his strength, Kyle yanked me back, half dragging me away.
“He knows about my mom!” I cried. My temper snapped within me and a familiar power surged, ready to aid me if I so desired. I'm ashamed to admit, for an instant, I was tempted. It just would have been so easy. I could make him let me go. But I remembered Calvin. I remembered Stakes. This was Kyle, one of my best friends. One of the people I loved most in the world. I couldn't let myself hurt him too. I gritted my teeth and forced the Spark into hibernation.

Eddie raised his
good arm. The wire went taut.

I finally traced it back to the leg of the weather tower and my face drained of color. His arms still around me, I stopped fighting Kyle and
scrambled backwards with him. There wasn't time.

Eddie's eyes met mine again.
“Forgive me.”

The wire vibrated. It was quiet. For a long moment, nothing happened. And then it did.

The steel weather tower leg screamed and burst from within, flinging deadly projectiles out in all directions. In a chain reaction, all of the other beam supports and legs began exploding. The tower buckled and tipped, seeming to hang in the air for an instant... or maybe that was my horrified perception.

Safety!

I grabbed Kyle by the arm and yanked, dragging him along behind me as I dashed to follow the Pull. “Here, here!” We skidded to a halt. He looked at me wide eyed as the tower came crashing down. I ducked reflexively, dropping to my knees, and covered my head. I couldn't see much, but I heard the screaming, the spray of metal meeting metal, concrete, and wood. I could feel the tremor beneath my feet and a quick gust of wind as the tower struck ground.

We weren't dead. I wasn't injured. Kyle straightened up first. He was okay too. Like curtains that dropped down for a scene change at a play, I drew my arms away from my face. Jagged metal shards surrounded us, plunged deep into the ground like a cruel garden. A pony dressed in carriage rigging galloped madly, terrified by the broken trace and coach tongue that dragged behind it. The tower lay across the lawn
. Trees and carriages lay crushed beneath the colossal wreckage, as did Loraine... and Eddie Elm.

The road was chaos. The air was filled with the stench of burned metal and the sounds of terrified people
crying for help. I could never have imagined this kind of destruction in Haven, but here it was.

“Gravity,” came a low voice beside Kyle. It was my dad, and there wasn't a scratch on him. Thankfully the tower hadn't fallen on the weather station. A dozen people worked inside that building every day. My dad had been spared.

I looked for the bench I had been sitting on so recently. Half of it had been smashed. Torn
contract papers tumbled lazily in the gentle evening breeze.

“What do we do now?” Kyle asked staring at the wreckage. His question rang in my ears long after he spoke the words.

Chapter 6:
Familiar Face

Sunlight speared
through the towering thunderheads, transforming the glistening sea into a vibrant medley of aquamarine and navy. Birds with sharply pointed wings and tails hung above me, soaring without moving. There was salt on the air, I could taste it.

Breakwater lay outstretched below me.
The dull green roof tiles and olive stonework were just as I had remembered. The streets still coursed with life, slow moving automobiles and horse carts. Cottages crowded the outskirts of the city, encircling the storefronts, civic buildings, schools, workshops, and the single clock tower. Tiny boats dotted the bay. Away to the left, beyond three quiet farms, was the crumbling ruin of the installment fortress. It hunched like a dark blot of disease on the otherwise healthy landscape.

From my perch on the crest of a golden grass hill, beside a lonely autumn tree, I could see it all. It was like looking into the eyes of an old friend, or just as easily, a
cruel enemy.

My heart hammered in my chest with fear and hope. I had returned to the outside. Something about it
was right. I couldn’t expect logic to explain it. The moment I sank into the dry water pool that would transport me beyond Haven's mountains, I knew I'd made the right decision by coming alone. I didn't need a team to find my mother, the agent known as Paperglass To Be. The fewer Haven citizens to be caught, the better.

A hiking bag with food, water, paper, a pen, and, of course, the officer's leather satchel, hung from my shoulders. I didn't bother with a lantern this time. I wore my pair of binocular night vision goggles around my neck. Beneath the tree, I took a quick moment to open the satchel, unstop the little bottle of liquid and put a drop in each eye. It stung and made my vision blurry for a moment, but once it cleared, my eyes were brown.

Ready as I would ever be, I took a final glance behind me at the way I'd come. A pack of dog-bodied, eel-headed Lurchers were watching me from the brush, a stone's throw away. They jostled their vaguely striped hound bodies against one another, tilting their eel heads to get a better view of me. I was safer in their company. This time, I had probably seen a hundred of the organic constructs. Intelligent and deadly, they were the one force stopping the Prince's army from finding the cave that led to Haven.

Looking back, I smiled warmly at the mountains surrounding my home. It's true, I'd struggled to fit in since I'd returned last year, but that didn't make me love my home any less. I envied the quiet lives of my people, even if I couldn't wholly relate to them anymore.

I wasn't able to say goodbye to my dad, my mom, my little brother, or my lovably dorky friend, Kyle, but I'd mailed a note apologizing to Ruby. There were no farewells on the piece of paper either. The words sounded far too grim for me to come to terms with. I simply left the few salvaged pages of Loring's contract where my dad could find them, and used one of the clay birds I'd made as a paperweight.

Mom. I'm going to find you.

The Pull nudged me toward Haven. It was taking me to the real mother in my life, my stepmom. I hadn't even seen her since dinner the night before. A pang of regret punished me for leaving my family.

Paperglass
To Be.

The code name confirmed
Loring's orders, and I felt myself wanting to walk in the direction of Breakwater.

Turning back to my view of the golden lands and the sea, I
drew in a deep breath of chilly air. After all the time I'd spent following my better judgment for the protection of my peaceful country, I was free. Just the whisper of a chance that I might see
him
again smoothed my nerves enough for me to take the first step down that hill. Love is strong enough a power to transform the most sensible person to a blindly brave fool. Okay, so I knew I was an idiot. In fact, I even understood that the odds I’d ever see him again were slim at best. That didn't stop me from running down the slope into the open arms of Breakwater.

*   *   *

I hadn't realized how wrong things were until I stepped directly into the city by the sea. It didn't seem like much at first, just a few people wearing black. Wending my way deeper into town, each shop window I passed was framed with curtains of the same color. A marketing ploy? No, the black was everywhere. Each person I walked by was clad from head to toe in the darkest of shades. Inky flags flapped in the breeze above homes, libraries and art galleries. Even the great old clock tower was swathed in bolts of the stuff. Was it a holiday I didn't know about? No one was smiling. Not in the busy market, not in the town square.

A magnificent elephant lumbered down a side street, with a farmer astride it
s back. Even the great mythical creature was tacked in black. Ebony ribbons twined down the length of its tusks. It was difficult not to stare in wonder as it went by.

I drifted from place to place, hardly
aware of how long I had wandered. Reaching the northern side of the city, I suffered a jolt. The entire district had been burned to the ground. There was no ash, just rubble, remnants of wooden frames, smashed tiles, and scorched stone foundations. I knew which fire this was. Stakes and the followers of his ruthless coup d'état had set the city on fire to distract their enemies from the battle. It was a horrible sight, keenly reminding me of the terrors I had witnessed firsthand. Here I stood, one year later, and no repairs had been made. Not a single home was restored.

Fires had broken out in Haven Valley before.
In each case, the flames were quickly doused, and groups of carpenters and volunteers made quick work of the repairs. A broken house would be rendered anew, with modern improvements.

A sickening feeling settled into my stomach. Did this explain the dark expressions of Breakwater?

The charred buildings and side streets mesmerized me. The damage was beyond extensive; it was tragic. People had died here. They must have.

The sudden pop of a rickety car engine made me jump. I was startled out of my reverie and saw a pair of men approaching me on horseback, with a third mount in tow. By their brown uniforms, night goggles, and the guns holstered on their saddles, I recognized them as Breakwater militia. Each of them wore a thick strip of black cloth, tied around their right bicep.

“Hello,” I said, hoping not to look too suspicious.

“
You are to come with us,” the lead rider told me. There was that accent again. Even considering the circumstances, I found that I loved hearing it.

“
That was fast. I take it this isn't a request,” I said drolly, hefting my packs over my shoulder.

“
Correct,” the gruff, middle-aged man agreed.

I paused, watching them suspiciously.
“You're not going to tie my wrists or throw a bag over my head or anything?”

“
Not unless you run,” said the second rider, reining up beside the first.

“
Fair enough,” I said under my breath, and hauled myself up into the saddle of the riderless bay equine. It had been a long time since I’d ridden a horse from the Outside World, and I'd forgotten how tall they were. I almost slipped from the stirrup. “May I ask where you're taking me?” If the installment fortress weren’t clearly in ruins, I would have been much more afraid.

“
Breakwater Keep,” was all they would say.

Déjà vu
.