Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (25 page)

Ballad's Aver was very good. In fact, he spoke it with the Prian inflection, Coldhand realized. There was no trace of an Arcadian accent. Interesting though it was, Coldhand still did not feel like answering the boy's questions.

Their confrontation was drawing unwanted attention. A bent-backed old Arcadian woman perched on the edge of a crack in the warehouse wall and shouted something down to Ballad that sounded scolding. He shook his head and yelled something back. The old woman sang a sad note and vanished back inside.

"Vellania worries too much," Ballad noted. He had never taken his attention from Coldhand, but now he glared at the hunter. "She wouldn't have to worry if buzzards like you would just go away and leave us alone."

"I don't have time for this," Coldhand said. He holstered his gun – the kid was annoying, but hardly worth shooting – and headed back toward the street. He would have to find another place to wait and watch.

Ballad did not get out of the way. The Arcadian spread his wings wide so that they blocked the entire alley. "Hey, I'm not done talking to you!"

"Yes, you are."

Coldhand was much larger and shouldered his way through Ballad's feathers. The fairy boy spun and grabbed his shoulder. The other two Arcadians took to the air and dropped down in front of Logan, but kept their hands in the pockets of their leather jackets. They were cutting off his exit, but let their leader handle the rest.

Ballad grabbed Coldhand and yanked him back, intent on answers. The hunter turned into the pull and drove his right hand into a low punch. Ballad twisted to avoid the worst of it, releasing Logan and stumbled back.

The boy sucked in a gasping breath and came at Coldhand again. Not in a light, aerial leap as Logan had come to expect after a year of fighting Maeve. Ballad's stance was solid and low. His feet moved at right angles from each other, always keeping his weight centered and balanced. A Lowland fighter's stance. One of the styles that Vorus taught, one that Logan himself had spent his youth studying.

Ballad was a good fighter, but not nearly as good as Vorus. Coldhand parried aside punches that impacted hard against forearms – Ballad was using his slight weight to its best advantage – and moved in close to jam the Arcadian's strikes. Ballad had the warm-soft smell of feathers, just like Maeve. Half a year since Logan's last fight against the princess, but he remembered her scent so clearly.

Ballad brought his knee up between them and shoved to create some distance, to make his opponent reach and chase. But Logan had spent most of his boyhood being the smaller combatant. He knew the strategy well. Coldhand brought his cybernetic arm down and let Ballad's own kick slam his knee into the metal. As the boy recovered, Logan landed a solid punch against his ribs, just under his arm.

"That's a sharp hook you've got," Ballad said grudgingly. "Lowland boxer?"

Logan let the boy slide back a pace and nodded. "You've had training in it, too. Good training."

Ballad snapped out a few light, range-finding jabs. Coldhand brought up his illonium hand and parried the harder follow-up. Metal rang on metal as the fairy's fibersteel-striped knuckles hit hard against his cybernetics. Ballad uncurled his fingers and shook them out as he circled Logan, searching for a gap in the hunter's defense.

"How did you learn this?" Logan asked.

"Jocasta Lux had a palaestrum here," Ballad said. "She taught us to fight."

Coldhand remembered Jo. They had spent long years together on the mat, listening to Vorus' lectures on honor. So she had gone on to open her own school…

"
Had
a palaestrum?" Logan asked, pausing but not dropping his guard.

"Miss Lux was killed about a year ago."

"How?"

"It was a duel," Ballad answered. His fists were still up, boxer's bracelets flashing in the orange lamplight, but he was keeping his distance for the moment. "Someone tried to steal her man and it came down to hawks."

The news was unexpectedly painful. Jocasta had been a good woman. She did not deserve to die. Something must have shown in Logan's face. Ballad cocked his head curiously.

"You knew her?" he asked.

"Yes," Coldhand said shortly. "Vorus taught us both."

Now Ballad dropped his hands and a smile lit up his youthful face. "Vorus? Arctan Vorus? In Highwind?"

Coldhand nodded slowly. Where was this going? Ballad thrust his hands into his pockets and when he withdrew them, they were bare. He extended one toward Logan.

"Any student of Arctan Vorus is good with us," Ballad said seriously. "Miss Lux told us he was the best and only trained the best."

Logan stared at the young Arcadian's outthrust hand. Just like that, he offered trust to a strange man? Coldhand could not imagine such faith from anyone, much less an Arcadian in a Prian slum. Was it a trick? Logan searched Ballad's face for some sign of deception, but found none. Hesitantly, he took Ballad's offered hand – his left one. The fairy's eye widened a little when he felt cold metal against his palm, then nodded and grinned.

"Cybernetic, right? I thought you were a falconer, but it felt too solid, even for a good glove." Ballad shrugged and gestured for Coldhand to follow. "There's a pub not far from here. It's not good, but it's better than standing out here."

Logan did not move. "I have work to do tonight."

"Looking for something, right? Well, no one knows Pylos better than Ballad's Boys. We can tell you how to find whatever or whoever it is."

It was an exaggeration, Logan knew, but it was the best lead he had. He followed Ballad and his winged friends.

________

The pub was small and dark and smelled of smoke, but at least it was warm. At a table in one corner, Ballad briefly introduced his companions as An'assi and Kashan.

"My highest and sharpest," he boasted of them.

If Coldhand's unusual – and obviously assumed – name struck the fairies as odd, they made no comment. They drank their beer and listened quietly as the hunter got down to business.

"I've heard that Arcadians are going missing. What do you know about it?" Logan asked.

"About that much," Ballad told him with a shrug under his leather jacket. An angry glint in his green eyes undermined the casual gesture. "Almost a hundred are gone. I don't know where. Maybe just flew away. There have been a lot of new fairies. Might have been turf spats."

Coldhand leaned against the table. It wobbled on uneven feet. "Can you tell me where to find the new ones?"

"Sorry, I've got nothing on them," Ballad said apologetically. He hissed a short Arcadian oath. "They come and go quickly. I don't know where they're going or who they are." The boy lapsed into silence, but he chewed his lip.

Logan tapped his fingers on the tabletop. "What else?" he asked.

"I have some guesses. One guess, really."

"What is it?"

Was there something eager in Logan's voice? Desperate? Ballad gave him an odd, curious look. He seemed to be only half Coldhand's age, but looks were deceiving. Arcadians lived long lives.

"There's a camp up in the mountains," Ballad answered at last. "When we first heard about it, Kashan and I flew up there to ask about work. It's not easy to find a job, see? But no one would talk to us. There was this big crack down into the mountain that seemed to have everyone there really interested."

"What was in it?"

"No idea. There wasn't any work, so we left. I've taken a wing over a few times, in case someone changes their mind. It's all under guard these days. There's an old human guy and a black-haired woman watching over the whole thing."

"An Arcadian woman? With black hair?"

Ballad nodded. Coldhand's fingers tightened on his drink. He remembered flying over a camp in the Kayton Mountains. Was that the one? An old man and a black-haired Arcadian. Gavriel and Xartasia.

They're both alive and they're here. Hiding? Maybe trying to get underground again. Searching for something…? I'll know soon and then I can be done with all of this…

Coldhand thanked Ballad curtly and started to rise, but his curiosity finally got the better of him. He sat again. "You speak Aver better than most Arcadians. Why?"

Ballad exchanged a look with Kashan. "Most of the others insist on using the old tongue. They say Aver's an ugly language. Me, I say that it's about what you say, not how you say it."

"My dad says that there's no point in learning," Kashan said, shaking his head. "That we're all dead anyway."

"Not many of the older Arcadians want to live on Prianus, or at all," Ballad told Coldhand. "They just sing their songs and wait for something to come along and kill them. Hells, some of them do it themselves. But not all of us feel that way. I was born on Prianus. This is my home."

Coldhand had to admit that Ballad certainly talked and fought like a native. "If you're so intent on being Prian, then why stay in the Arcadian quarter?" he asked.

Ballad took a long drink, emptying his beer. He stared down into the empty glass as he answered. "We're not all ready to just give up. Sure, it's terrible what happened to the old kingdom, but it wasn't the only star in the sky. We're not dead and it's stupid to act like we are. I keep trying to convince my mother of that, but…"

"But that doesn't mean we don't try," said An'assi.

"The old ones may have given up on themselves, but we haven't given up on them. We protect them," Ballad said. He finally looked up at Coldhand and his pine-colored eyes were intent. "The Morningfire Court might be gone, but that doesn't mean there's no one willing to fight!"

"Morningfire Court?" Logan asked. He had heard the name from Maeve.

"That's where they used to train the knights back in the White Kingdom. When Miss Lux started her palaestrum here, she always told us that you didn't have to wear the glass to be a knight. She offered training to any Arcadian who wanted to learn."

The three fairies shared a moment of heavy silence for their departed teacher. Logan regarded them with a hard, heavy sensation in his chest.

Vorus would be proud. Jocasta taught them well. They're good, strong young men. Strong even for those who cannot be strong for themselves.

A painful thought followed close behind.
They've lost so much. The White Kingdom, their Morningfire Court. An entire cultural identity. Their teacher, too, and their families.

Logan clenched his metal hand in his lap. Ballad had lost much more than twenty percent, but he found a way to live on. Shame stabbed sharply at Logan. It hurt, more painful even than the Emberguard's sword. He stood and stalked out of the bar, ignoring Ballad's shouted questions.

"Never carry a sword when a knife will do."

- Malkain Brone, Mirran monarch (592 MA)

Gavriel stood beside the fire. The flames blazed and twisted like graceful golden dancers. He held his hands out, warming them. The cold stiffened his joints and his work called for precision. Gavriel rubbed his hands briskly together and smiled, feeling the sting of blood rush back into his flesh. He peered through the flames at the Arcadian sitting on the other side.

"Prianus is a world of ice," he said. "The cold of this place seeps down into the very souls of those who live here. How long have you been on Prianus?"

"For a… a long time," she answered unhelpfully.

Gavriel's smile melted away. He stepped around the makeshift concrete fire pit and lifted the fairy's chin. Her remaining eye brimmed with tears. They dripped down her pale cheek and burned like molten metal across Gavriel's cold skin.

"Your face is so young, my dear. Yet even the oldest of my kind are only children in the eyes of yours. The Arcadians are a wise and lovely race." He stroked the side of her face. "None know death so intimately as the angels of the White Kingdom. Tell me, do you remember the worlds of Arcadia?"

She sobbed. The woman wore the tatters of a hooded fleece jacket and pants of similar fabric. At least, that was Gavriel's best guess. At Gavriel's instructions, the Nihilists who had brought her were less than gentle. Broken white feathers littered the floor.

The Arcadian was not looking at Gavriel. She strained weakly against the long nails driven through her delicate wrists and into the splintered arms of the chair. Wailing in pain, she fell back against the bloody ruins of her own wings.

"Please, kill me!" she wept.

"Life is so very painful, isn't it? And death is the deep, sweet refuge. Once you reach that safety, you need never fear again."

"Then kill me, I beg."

Her Aver was quite good, but her strength was wavering. The others had lasted much longer. Gavriel sang a few soft words and gestured. A line of blood appeared across her skin, just below her delicate collarbone. The Arcadian screamed. Her cry stretched out, thinning like melting ice. Gavriel slid the spell down across her soft inner arm.

More. Gavriel sang a new song in the fairy's own language.
"Marnavae eru nai'i illithae vernae isha, xellae nai esha arae ilvae imma, shie'i junno kash."