Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (3 page)

Maeve's view was of arches and domes in a hundred sizes and colors, all covered in tile mosaics or painted with depictions of plants and animals that Maeve did not recognize. Most of the people in the doors, on the sidewalks or driving past were Mirran, all tall and long-limbed. Their green and brown stripes reminded Maeve of grass. As they were supposed to, she supposed.

A wall loomed up as the taxivan glided over the crest of a hill toward the edge of Hanjirrah. It towered over the city. Not as high as the Alliance starscraper, but the wall had probably been the tallest thing in Hanjirrah until its construction. Maeve craned her neck. She guessed that the gigantic wall encircled the whole city. Some of Hanjirrah had spread beyond the wall, but most of that was the skyport, landing fields like the one where the Blue Phoenix was now, and not many native Mirrans lived there.

The wall was old, a hundred feet thick and its patterned surface was mottled by centuries of repairs. A customs officer asked them a few questions – there were a number of substances legal on Mir that were not on most other Alliance worlds – but no one had bought any of them and the taxivan slid quickly through the checkpoint.

Unlike the relatively uniform inner surface of the great wall, Hanjirrah's towering edifice was painted with vast murals of strange serpentine creatures, all covered in impressive spines as long as Maeve was tall. Looking back over her shoulder as they drove through, she could make out the huge, dark-hued scales painted in meticulous detail. Not loving or artful, she thought, but as though perfectly depicting the great lizard was of the utmost importance to the Mirran artists. But no wall – even if the monsters painted on them came somehow to life – would be enough to keep Hanjirrah safe from Xartasia.

"What are those?" Maeve asked, pointing to the paintings. She wanted to think of something other than her cousin.

Panna's pretty face lit up. She had been an archeology and anthropology student before all this began. Even Gripper and Xia looked up, curious.

"There are similar walls around most major Mirran cities," Panna told them. "They predate the Central World Alliance by hundreds of years. Traditionally, they are to keep out wildlife, the predators that hunted primitive Mirrans for millions of years."

The taxivan was close to the skyfield now. A great, flat sea of pale green grass rippled all the way to the horizon, broken only by the angular silhouettes of grounded starships. As if to punctuate Panna's lecture, a snarling howl echoed across the landing field, just audible over voices and the distant grind of ship engines.

Gripper shifted his weight uncomfortably, making the seat creak in protest. He came from a race of herbivores, of prey, too. The Arborans lived high in the trees of their homeworld. It wasn't so different from building great walls to hide behind, Maeve supposed.

"The paintings vary by city and local mythology, but I think these big guys–" Panna twisted in her seat to point to the spined train-length monster in the mural. "–are called
sosurrians
. A sort of dragon. The pictures are supposed to scare predators away. In some stories, Mir itself is a sosurrian egg. The Mirrans say that the world will end when the great wyrm inside finally hatches. Later, in Union of Light texts, the sosurrian became one of the forms of the devil."

Ripples of pale clouds reflected the bright Mirran sunlight. Maeve squinted at the great sosurrian. Despite the hot and humid day, she shivered. Panna followed the princess' gaze, biting her lower lip.

"It
does
look a bit like a Devourer, I guess," she said. "With all the black scales and spikes and such."

Maeve nodded. Her stomach twisted until she thought she would be sick right there inside the taxivan. The Devourers were terrible enough in nightmares, as monsters of history… but they were out there, even now. And Xartasia had made some kind of alliance with them.

Ralison was an idiot, but the man was correct about one thing. Why would
any
Arcadian align themselves with the Devourers? It made no sense, but Xartasia had done just that. Summoning the aliens seemed to have been her entire purpose in allying herself with Gavriel and his Nihilists.

But why? Xartasia could not plan to use the Devourers simply to wreak destruction on an unjust galaxy. That was what Gavriel had wanted. If she wanted the same thing, why kill her one-time student at all? He would have done Xartasia's work for her.

Was it pride, then? Was her victory only worthwhile if she led the suicidal charge herself? No, Maeve did not think so. Xartasia lacked that sort of mad hubris. Something was badly broken inside her cousin, Maeve knew, but she didn't think that Princess Titania had lost her mind. No, Xartasia had some careful and probably clever plan. What it was, however, Maeve had no idea.

She did not realize that the taxi had stopped until Gripper was rocking the entire van as he squeezed out the door. Logan offered Maeve his hand. He had not said a word since leaving Ralison's office. As the tall Prian helped her down, Maeve searched his face for any sign of his thoughts, but found nothing. Logan Coldhand felt passionately and deeply – as they had both discovered – but whether he wanted to or even
could
express all of those emotions remained to be seen.

The Blue Phoenix squatted on a large concrete pad, sensor spars bristling in every direction. Many of them were bent, several broken. Gripper had repaired them as best he could, but the old freighter needed replacement parts. Parts that cost money its new young captain did not have. It was expensive enough just to keep the Blue Phoenix flying and its crew fed… A crew that no longer included Maeve, she reminded herself. She and Logan were passengers aboard Duaal's ship, dependent upon his friendship and generosity in their battle against Xartasia.

"Let's get some lunch," Duaal said as he unlocked the streaked gray airlock of the Blue Phoenix. The door thunked heavily and swung open. "Maybe we'll be smarter on a full stomach."

Xia, Gripper and Panna followed him into the ship. Maeve lingered in the pale sunlight. Logan stopped beside her, his ice-blue eyes fixed on Maeve.

"You want to talk to me," he said.

"I do," Maeve said. She could not help smiling at her hunter. Even if he was hard to gauge, Logan had no difficulty reading her. He always seemed to know what Maeve was thinking. But this time he was wrong.

"Without my bounty hunter's license, I'm not much good to you," he said slowly. "I can probably get Ralison's decision overturned, but that's going to take time. More time than we have, I think. I can't help you anymore, Maeve."

It had been a long day. A long year… and a long century before that, Maeve supposed. She was tired and had trouble following Logan's statement. When she finally did, she scowled up at her hunter.

"You think that you have failed me," Maeve translated, shocked.

"I have," Logan told her. His expression was blank. "I'm just another mouth to fill now and you don't have much money."

"And so you would… What? Remain here on Mir while I fly away?"

"If you want me to," Logan said. His tone was flat and pragmatic. "There's not much point in my staying."

How could he even think that? Maeve took both of Logan's hands in hers. The right one shook. Not much, but she felt the delicate tremor like a heartbeat against her fingers.

"You are not some tool to me," she said. "You have not served some purpose after which I would discard you!"

Logan was very still and said nothing. Maeve strained up onto the tips of her toes, stretching her wings out behind her for balance, and still could not quite reach the human's stony face.

"I am not a queen," she said, "and you are not my vassal. You are my lover and I would not be parted from you."

"But–"

"And as to the cost of your food and lodging aboard the Blue Phoenix," Maeve interrupted. She smiled at Logan. "You share my room and Duaal will gladly suffer the loss of food in exchange for keeping me busily out of his way."

Logan Coldhand actually blushed at that and lifted Maeve into his arms to give her the kiss she had been reaching for. His illonium fingers were cold against her back, even in the warm Mirran sun. Maeve shuddered with pleasure. There was no touch quite like her hunter's.

"But I… we
did
fail today," Logan said when he had breath again. "Xartasia and the Devourers are still out there."

Maeve shook her head and kissed him again. She had no answer for him, no idea what to do next.

"No kingdom is built in a day."

– Panna Sul (234 PA)

After lunch, Xia was the first to bring up Axis again. Maeve poked a blob of greenish goo around her plate and made a face. The coreworlds were full of technological marvels: engines that propelled ships between the stars faster than light and the null-inertia fields that made it possible, laser weapons that could fire thousands of shots on a single charge, cloned and – though less popular by far – cybernetic replacements for lost limbs and organs, janitorial and medical nanites that eliminated the need to clean dishes or sharpen blades, even the phennomethylln that coated the Blue Phoenix hull that allowed it to fly into a star's searing corona.

Yet the protein and vitamin paste that made up most meals on the Blue Phoenix felt and tasted like glue. Still, it was far better than nothing, Maeve supposed. She had been hungry before, starving on the streets of Hyzaar's arcologies. Maeve heaped her spoon and swallowed as quickly as she could.
Nutritious
was about the best praise she could lavish on her meal, but that was enough.

When she was finished eating, Logan helped Maeve collect the dishes and carry them to the sink. Duaal's spoon flew toward her with a thought. Gravity was apparently an easy force to manipulate with his new power. In small amounts, at least. Maeve dodged aside just in time to avoid it dripping on her wing. Logan caught the dirty little missile and dropped it into the soapy water. Maeve rolled up her sleeves and began scrubbing. The sorts of nanites that made it unnecessary to wash dishes may have been amazing, but they were also expensive and it was often Maeve's job to scrub away the congealed dinner remains. Logan smiled at her. The expression was still strange on her hunter's serious face. Clumsy, somehow.

"I believe there is still dessert," she told him.

"I'll watch you." Logan hesitated and then added: "You're sweeter than any dessert."

"You could help me with the dishes."

Logan raised his left hand. The battle-scarred illonium was flatly unreflective as a gray shadow. "It's manufactured more or less waterproof, but I've cracked the casing more than once. Not a good idea to submerge it."

Maeve was silent for a long moment, trying to figure out if Logan Coldhand was making a joke. She decided that she could not be sure and gave him a kiss instead. His lips were slightly cool to the touch, as though the cracked casing of his cybernetic hand had leaked cold metal out into his entire body.

"You could dry them," she suggested.

"I could." Logan searched around until he found a threadbare dishtowel.

Panna had been thumbing through something on a datadex – the same one she had been reading earlier that day, Maeve suspected – but now looked up with a frown. "Are you… doing dishes?" she asked.

"Sort of," Maeve admitted. "Logan was distracting me."

"I bet." But Panna was still frowning. "You shouldn't be washing things, princess."

"Why not?" Maeve asked. She hoped that Panna did not think she was unequal to the task.

Panna got up and plucked the sponge from the sideboard. "You're a princess," she said, emphasizing the title. "You're above this kind of scullery work!"

"She does it all the time," Gripper objected. He didn't look at Panna, but was eyeing Logan as though afraid the Prian might kill him with the towel he held.

"And what else is a princess supposed to do on a starship?" Maeve asked.

Panna shook her head and did not answer. Gripper fidgeted uncomfortably. Maeve took the sponge. Panna was visibly torn between wanting to keep it away and reluctance to fight with her princess. It made Maeve more than a little uncomfortable, but she could at least take a moment's advantage of Panna's indecision. Logan held out the dishtowel to Panna.

"You can dry them," he offered.

Panna sighed and took the towel. Maeve squeezed some bright green soap into the water and got to work. Tiny iridescent bubbles sifted up from the sink and landed on her skin, smelling of artificial pine.

"Our landing fees are only paid through tomorrow night," Duaal said. He smoothed down thick, curly brown hair. Ever since Prianus, he had stopped bleaching it. "Should I renew them? Or are we going somewhere?"

"What about Axis?" Xia asked. "There's got to be someone who will listen to us about the Devourers."

"We can't go there," Duaal reminded her. "We're dead there, and if we come back to life on Axis records, we're criminals, remember? We'll have to go through a trial and pay fines before we could talk to anyone."

"You don't have enough information to make your case," said Logan. He leaned against the counter next to Maeve as she scrubbed a dented pan. "We need to be able to tell them where to look and what to look for."