The Forgotten City (14 page)

E
li had taken the data recorded on the day he and Silho found Golmaria and created a prototype desert-navigation program. This holographic mapping system now rotated above the control board of the
Gypsy Rose
. Eli had linked up the autopilot to the mapping system and felt the transflyer auto-correcting their flight path every few moments, following the lines of the map. He wasn’t sure if it would actually work, but if it did, it would be the first programmable navigation map of the Matadori in history. If it didn’t, they would become inextricably lost, then run out of fuel and end up as fodder for the desert hordes, if they didn’t die from exposure first.

High in the sky the suns were moving in toward their merging at the burning hour of the day. Even now, in winter, the ferocity of the heat was beyond belief.

Though he wasn’t steering the craft, Eli still kept a stranglehold on the wheel, if only to stop himself from replaying the fight-in attack footage for what would most likely be the billionth time. He’d already gone over it again and again, trying to bring into focus the blurs of flame he knew had been people, but nothing had worked. There was something about their attackers that the technology couldn’t capture. Everyone else was clear enough, though. And maybe that was why he’d kept re-watching it, even when he knew he couldn’t fix it – some irrational part of him hoped that if he watched it enough times maybe something would change – maybe Silho’s eyes wouldn’t blank out the way they had, maybe that bone-knife wouldn’t stab through the commander’s shoulder. But no matter how many times he replayed it, the footage remained the same.

He glanced at Ev’r’s backpack sitting on the passenger seat beside him. It felt like a good sign – soon she would be wearing it again. The
Gypsy Rose
tilted and corrected and Flintlock shifted her weight in the back. It was Eli’s experience that giants – all gargantuan-breeds, actually – fell asleep as soon as they stopped moving. It was the only way they could generate enough energy to shift around their mountainous bulk. But Flintlock had remained awake and alert the entire trip so far. Clearly she’d been trained against her nature – rarely a good thing. He shot a glance in the rear vision at the Corámorán and glimpsed something he’d missed before – the crest of the Menor crime family tattooed into her bruised wrists.

The Menors were part of what was known in alerion-breed tongue as
Yuna Kazo
, which translated in Urigin as “the Talented Families”. Focusing mainly on upper-class criminal activity like gem and gold heists, art forgery and political blackmail, they considered themselves to be the gentlemen of the criminal world, superior to the gangsters – but blood was blood and murder, murder as far as Eli was concerned.

“You worked for the Menors?” Eli asked Flintlock.

She looked up, uneasiness shadowing her eyes.

“It’s alright,” he told her. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. My kind – we always ask too many questions.”

Flintlock processed his words. Giants were often thought of as slow-minded, but the Corámorán were, in general, intelligent. They had large bodies, but also large brains, compared to other gargantuan-breeds who combined a much bigger size with even smaller brain mass.

“Your questions. I like them,” she eventually said. “Nobody else asks anything. Nobody else cares to ask.”

“Yes,” Eli said. “I used to have another gargantuan-breed friend, his name was Tiny. He said once that it was hard to be so big and yet feel so completely invisible.”

Flintlock’s eyes welled up with tears, “You understand,” she said softly. “I had no choice. No say.”

Eli lowered his stare so he didn’t see her tears and start crying again himself. During the early year-cycles of his military training, he’d conducted a minor study into the gargantuan-breed practice of selling their children to pay debts, as well as in general barter and trade. When done in their own communities it resulted in the majority of children still having a happy family life, but when the Corámorán Islands and the gargantuan cities of Gont and Klimt had been destroyed by tidal floods some twenty year-cycles earlier, they had all headed into Scorpia. And here they were selling their children to non-gargantuans, who used them for slave labor and other more horrible things.

Flintlock spoke again. “I belonged to Troya Menor. Guard to his lady wife. I started off nobody and worked hard. Worked up.”

Eli nodded. It was common for the giantesses to be put in charge of guarding the harems of the Talented Families. They were big enough to overcome most men, but were not usually tempted in the male way.

“His wife was Tracy Menor,” Eli said and Flintlock grimaced at the name.

Eli knew the story from there. It was a classic case of the bigger they are the harder they fall. Menor was the biggest Talented Family
Ky-puten
, or Captain, in the city until everything fell apart and their closest competition slaughtered the entire family.

Eli decided to fast-forward the conversation over that bit, since remembering was clearly painful for her.

“Afterward you went back to your own family?” he asked.

“There was nowhere else to go. No one else would hire me. I’m too small,” Flintlock said.

That made Eli laugh. “If you’re too small, I must be microscopic,” he replied. “I think you’re absolutely enormous.”

Eli had learned the hard way that most women didn’t appreciate that compliment, but it made Flintlock smile for the first time. It was a radiant smile that erased all the hard lines of her face, but after a moment the expression faltered and she said, “Please don’t send me back to them.”

Eli felt a strong sense of sadness for her. He complained a lot about his own childhood, but it was really nothing in comparison to what others went through.

“I won’t send you back. I promise,” he said.

The transflyer seized up suddenly and savagely, pinning Flintlock against the seat and smashing Eli into the steering wheel. He pushed away and stared through the windscreen. Golmaria stretched out before them, just as creepy the second time around. Eli’s wings twitched at the sight. He felt Nelly gnawing at his leg from inside the pocket. That was her way of saying
just leave it and go home.
But home, without the people he loved, was only a place with a roof and bed.

“Infrared,” he told his on-board system and a heat grid flashed up across the windscreen. They flew over the city, scanning for Ravien, but there was no sign of body-heat anywhere – not even in the cathedral. It wasn’t until they reached the outskirts of the city that the system registered something. There were huge pits all around the perimeter of Golmaria that had been dug down into underground tunnels during a time of atmospheric threat, and they’d never been filled back in. It looked from the body-heat scan as though the Ravien were now down in these holes. He slowed the craft to hover over the largest well.

“So I’m going to dump the antidote on them now,” he said to Flintlock. His voice sounded almost cheerful, but inside he was one big knot. “They might attack us …”

Flintlock straightened, readying herself.

Eli pressed the release button on the cargo hold and the new dart-vials dropped, crashing down into one of the bore-holes. At first nothing happened, and then a group of Ravien clamored out of the tunnel and writhed on the ground. They started convulsing, then shifted back to their human forms. They held the change for several moments, enough time even for one of them to stand up and look around, but then they changed back to Ravien.

It was another failure.

Extreme disappointment pressed Eli down in his seat. The confines of the transflyer suddenly felt too tight. He couldn’t breathe. He had to get out. He rapidly glided the craft away from the city and down into the desert, landing with a bump and a skid. He threw open the door and jumped down. The heat took his breath away and he staggered only a few steps from the craft before dropping to his knees. He stared out into the distant waves of heat, not seeing anything ahead of him. There was nothing to hope for. Nelly ran up to his shoulder and snuffled at his face.

Shadows fell over them, shielding them from the ferocious suns. Flintlock put a hand on Eli’s head, and Nelly moved as though she was going to bite her, but then thought better of it and scurried back to his pocket to hide.

“I need to find someone to tell me how to save my friends,” he told her. “I can – I can’t do it alone. I just —”

Eli saw a buzz of movement beside the
Gypsy Rose.
He grabbed his electrifier and aimed it at the craft as Diamond LeSwer leaped into sight, calling out, “Surprise!”

Eli only just managed to stop himself from pulling the trigger.

Diamond flew the distance between them, blonde curls bobbing, shimmering in the sunslights, and flung herself into his arms. “I missed you so much!”

Flintlock immediately peeled her off Eli and held her high in the air by her wings, like a tiny insect.

“Who are you? What is your business with Master Eli?” she demanded.

“It’s okay, Flintlock,” Eli said. “She’s … she’s …” He really didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

“Diamond LeSwer,” the imp-breed girl said. She took Flintlock’s other hand and started to do a strange midair jig. The giantess looked her up and down like she was crazy and dropped her to the sand, where she continued to dance and sing. Eli started to feel insane again, his heart beating too fast, his breath stuck in his throat. Something was very wrong with him.

“Something wrong?” Diamond said as though she’d read his mind, her face peering right into his. Her breath smelled like strawberry. “You look peakish. Are you peakish? I think you might be peakish.”

“Stop saying
peakish
,” Eli said. “I’m …”

“Hungry? Thirsty? Having a nervous breakdown? Madly in love with me?” She grinned and her eyebrows darted up and down in unison like two hyperactive question marks.

“No, none of the above. Just stop —”

“— finishing your sentences?” she said.

Eli turned and fled further into the desert, where he collapsed into a gasping, sobbing heap.

The ground trembled as Flintlock ran to him, Diamond fluttering beside her. The tiny imp-breed girl threw her arms around him and began to sing a song, actually a lullaby that he remembered from his childhood – one that had always made him feel better. Flintlock joined in the comforting, patting him on the head like a small dog, until he felt strong enough to sit up.

“
Ie’est
,” Diamond said in imp-breed. “Everything is okay. Tell me your problems and we’ll wish them away together.” Glittery streams of sweat ran down her face.

“This isn’t something a wish will help,” he told her. “My friends – one is poisoned and the others have been taken through a portal, and I can’t find anyone to help me get them back.”

“Why do you need help?” Diamond said.

“As I just said, to get them back.”

“I heard you, but you don’t need anyone to help you do that,” Diamond insisted. “You’re Eli Anklebiter. You’re famous for fixing any problem.”

Eli stared at her, taken aback by the words. “I am?”

Diamond laughed so hard she started snorting and couldn’t stop.

“You’re the foremost scientific mind in the entire city,” she managed to choke out. “And you didn’t even realize!”

“It’s true,” Flintlock said. “Your name is very well-known.”

Eli was stunned. He realized people in the military and in some scientific fields would know who he was, but he had no idea that he was
famous
to the rest of the population.

“Really?” he asked.

Diamond continued snorting and Flintlock nodded. Eli remembered the commander once saying to him when they were still kids that one day everyone would know his name. He’d laughed at the time, hysterically of course, but hearing that praise from Copernicus had made him feel as though he could do anything. And he’d started acting that way, inventing more, dreaming bigger. It had changed how he saw himself. Despite Eli’s issues, the commander had always believed in him. So had Diega and Jude – and Silho – yet here he was now running around trying to find someone to tell him what to do, when all he really needed to do was put his mind to it. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. He’d just panicked and fallen apart, maybe because a big part of him still felt as though their victory against the Skreaf had just been a massive fluke, and it was so easy to start doubting again. Enough! It was time to get himself together and start working.

Eli forced himself to stand. As he did, he caught a distant flash of the Lava Diavol Mountains, just as he had with Silho.

“Look! What’s that?” Diamond shrieked and took off toward it, flying fast.

“Wait! Come back!” Eli called, but she didn’t stop or even slow, so he was forced to fly after her, with Flintlock thundering behind them. Just as he came even with her, another zap of magics trembled the air and the mountains vanished, then reappeared directly in front of their path. He and Diamond crashed into the rocky mountainside and thudded down to the sand.

“What’s up there?” Diamond sat up, her eyes shimmering with curiosity. “There’s something glowing in one of the caves.”

“It doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t be here. We have to go,” Eli told her.

He took her hand to direct her back to the
Gypsy Rose
. She grinned at him and tried to kiss it.

Eli struggled and managed to drag himself away.

“Just come on!” he said. “I’m not playing around.”

He turned and started back to the transflyer, but when he checked over his shoulder, Diamond was not following. She was up the mountain, disappearing into one of the caves, where he could see flashes of light.

“
Lai lai
,” Eli whispered in frustration.

With the saying
curiosity killed the imp
running through his mind, he flew back and up, landing in the cave mouth. Flintlock was still in the distance, but coming fast. He waved at her, hoping she could see where he was going, and then hurried after Diamond into the cool of the cave.