The Paladin Caper (24 page)

“Refresh my memory, Hessler.” Kail hauled the flamecannon from its housing, pivoted, and aimed it straight up at the balloon overhead. “What made you start selling those illegal charms that got you kicked out of the wizard school?”

“I needed to pay for my mother’s burial,” Hessler’s voice said quietly.

“You see where I’m going with this?” Kail asked, and without waiting for an answer, he fired the flamecannon.

Without its barrier crystals in place, the balloon was defenseless. The blast ripped a hole clean through the material, and the daemon inside shrieked at an inhuman pitch.

“Least it doesn’t sound like Jyelle this time.” As mustard-yellow tentacles began to tear their way from the balloon, Kail took off his leather scout’s jacket, jogged to the nearest grappling cable, jumped over the railing, looped his jacket over the cable, and used the sleeves as makeshift handles to slide down the cable to the ground, where he plowed into a soldier and rolled in the dirt.

The soldier he’d slammed into didn’t get up. Another nearby soldier was coming at him, though. Kail turned, grabbed the man’s hands as he went for the blade at his waist, head-butted him in the face, grabbed the back of his head, and smashed his elbow into it two or three times.

He looked around quickly. Everyone else was looking at the smoke, the fire, or the wind-daemon that was shrieking and tearing its way free from the balloon.

Kail pulled his jacket back on. “Somebody get on those fires!” he shouted over the yell of the alarm. “Keep everyone back!”

Waving and gesturing like everyone else, Kail walked toward the small airship at the end of the dock. Half of the airfield was in flames by now, and that was only going to get worse with the wind-daemon free and wreaking havoc on its own. Everyone was yelling and running and waving, except by the small airship, which was now incredibly alone. The underballoon lights were on. It was powered up and prepared to depart. The gangplank was still in place, though.

“Ready when you are,” Hessler’s voice said in his ear, and Kail nodded. A moment later, the air around Kail turned blurry, and an illusion of him began running up the gangplank. Hessler had even thought of the little sound the wood made when it bent under his weight. Kail followed his own illusion up the gangplank, stepping lightly.

Unlike the warship, this airship was small and built for speed. It was about the same size as his own sadly destroyed airship,
Iofegemet
, who had sacrificed herself for the team just as everyone had been starting to acknowledge Kail’s choice of name. The bony woman that Tern had said was a troll stood at the control console, the dwarf-thing that was apparently a scorpion stood at the top of the gangplank, and the ogre stood guard over Kail’s mother, who was seated, hands and feet shackled, in the middle of the deck.

“Binjamet?” his mother cried, looking at the illusion of him who was a few steps ahead.

“No,” said the scorpion thing that looked like a dwarf, and lunged forward. “Trick.” A crystal stinger lashed out from the folds of its cloak, not parting the garment but slashing through as though
the cloak
were an illusion, and slammed into the illusion of Kail.

Kail had seen this happen before. It usually resulted in the person who punched the illusion stumbling forward off balance.

This time, the illusion flew through the air, still looking like it was standing in place, and then abruptly flickered and vanished.

Behind Kail, Hessler grunted and hit the ground, and the cloak around Kail disappeared.

“No illusions,” Kail muttered. “Got it.
Dairy!
”

He leaped up the gangplank, kicked the stinger to one side, and stomped hard on where the thing’s head ought to be. His foot went through the folds of the cloak and hit something that felt like rock or bone, and the scorpion squealed.

“Kill him,” said the bony woman, and Kail grabbed the stinger as it darted back at him, catching it on the weird glowing sac just behind the crystal tip. It flailed in his grasp, and then rocky claws clamped onto his boots, and the deck slid out from under him.

He hit the deck hard, rolled, and saw the stinger tear through the wood where he had lain. He kicked out, caught the scorpion in what was probably its face—and it
was
a scorpion now, a very large one with lumpy bits on its head and down its back that glowed softly.

“Fool,” the scorpion hissed.

“Distraction,” Kail muttered back, and
that
was when Dairy, who had come over the far railing on a stolen grappling hook, punched the troll lady hard enough to smash her through the railing and off of the airship.

“Binjamet!” his mother shouted, struggling with her chains. “Bin, be careful! It’s a trap!”

“I know, Mom!” The glowing bits on the back of the scorpion’s head pulsed, and some kind of yellowish gas oozed out. Kail rolled away, covering his face. His eyes and skin stung, and he blinked hard as he got back to his feet.

The scorpion scuttled forward, and then a brilliant flash of light slammed into it and sent it flying across the deck.

“I believe that you interact with illusions as though they are physically tangible,” Hessler said, hanging from the railing with a pale face but a raised hand, “and I thought to myself, I wonder how that works?” The scorpion got back to its many scuttling feet, and a glowing hammer materialized in the air and slammed down onto it. “As it turns out, it works very well.” Hessler raised a hand, and the hammer swept back up into the air, ready to come down again.

The ogre caught the illusionary hammer in one great hand and punched it hard with the other. The illusion popped, and Hessler staggered to one side and slammed to the deck, eyes rolling back into his head.

“No!” Dairy grabbed the ogre by the arm and pulled her around. The ogre looked surprised, but not as surprised as when Dairy punched her and sent her staggering back.

While Dairy and the ogre traded blows, Kail ran to his mother, still wiping his eyes. She shook her head. “You knew it was a trap, stupid boy! Why did you come?”

“Shut up, Mom.” He pulled
Iofecyl
from his sleeve and went to work on the locks keeping her chained to the deck.

His mother’s big face glared down at him, age lines adding to her scowl. “They said you’re a criminal again. They said—”

“Really?” One of the locks snapped open. “Really, the ogre and the scorpion and the troll lady said I was a bad person, and you’re taking their word for it?”

Something grabbed his wrist, and Kail tried to break the hold, but it was like a snake or a rope or
something
, and as he turned, he saw that it was the troll lady, her long fingers and arm stretched impossibly so that they coiled around his arm, and it did not so much hurt as it felt
wrong
, and the muscles in his arm refused to respond as he struggled.

Her other arm reached for Kail’s head.

A heavy iron shackle caught the troll in the face.

“Did I say”—Kail’s mother slammed the shackles across the troll’s knee, and the troll screeched and stumbled—“that I”—the shackles swung up and smashed into the troll’s chin, and the troll dropped to her knees—“believed them?” The shackles came down with crushing force on the back of the troll’s head, and the troll hit the deck and did not move.

Kail’s mother turned to him. “You are my son. If they want you, they come through me.”

He coughed, worked
Iofecyl
into the last lock, and snapped the shackles from her wrists. “Thanks, Mom.”

The ogre stumbled back from a blow, and she went
through
the console as Dairy shoved her, as though
she
were the illusion. Dairy slammed into the console hard, and the ogre stepped around and clapped him on the side of the head. The kid went down, crashed into the railing, and didn’t move.

Kail put himself between the ogre and his mother. “You wanted me? You got me. Let my mother go, and we do this here and now.”

“Not a murderer,” the ogre said, coming toward him with fists raised.

“No, you’re someone who goes after the families of your enemies.” Kail stood his ground. Behind him, his mother got out of the way. “You’re a monster, and I say that as somebody who’s got a dark fey
and
a death priestess on his team.” He raised his own fists, rolled out his shoulders, and snarled, “I don’t know if things like you even
have
mothers, but if they do, yours wasn’t worth my time.”

He lunged forward as the ogre roared, and his fist slammed into her and
through
her, and Kail slid through her body as though she were a curtain of cool water.

Had he not seen her do her trick with the control console, this would have surprised him.

As it was, the console had been what he was aiming for the whole time. His lunge brought him to it, and he hit three buttons and thumbed the control crystal.

The airship leaped forward, snapping its moorings. Kail stumbled, Kail’s mother stumbled, and the railing slid through the ogre as though she were nothing more than an illusion, leaving her hovering in empty space as the airship bounced off the service station wall, slammed into the top of the fence, and soared wildly through the public port, leaving a lot of yelling and screaming behind it.

Off in the distance, the ogre roared as she finally fell to the ground. Kail looked to his mother and saw that she was clinging to the chair she’d been shackled to. When she saw him looking her way, she shook her head.

“You idiot boy!” she yelled. “You are going to get yourself killed one of these days!”

“Maybe, Mom.” Kail sank back against the console. “Not today, though.”

“If you’ve got all these crazy things trying to hunt you down, Binjamet, you have more important things to do than come see your mother.” She shook her head. “I would have been fine at the Cleaners.”

“That’s the best part, Mom.” Kail grinned. “This whole bit was actually a distraction.”

Twelve

W
ESTTEICH STOOD ON
the dock at Heaven’s Spire, waiting for the airship that would bring the bait up to him.

He had arrived the night before to make preparations. The Cleaners, site of Loch’s first big public escape, had been checked and rechecked, and any prisoner Loch knew removed to another facility. The streets had been swept for charms.

Families. It always came down to families. For the strong-minded, family was a strength, a sign of good breeding and a trust that crossed generations. For the simple, it was a gap in the armor. Those who refused to see the world as it truly was could never make the hard choice to let something happen to family.

Westteich was enjoying the company of the ancients, who were in no way simple or weak of mind. Lesaguris was in fact here, still wearing his chiseled blond nobleman and smiling contentedly as he watched Westteich work. Westteich took a breath of the cool morning air and tried not to look too anxious. Mister Slant was next to him, looking around as though a little confused by the docks.

“The puppeteers have done a great job with the new information rollout,” said Mister Slant, “just a great job. It’s a little tricky balancing these crime stories with news of the Festival of Excellence, though. I’d really like to go for a more positive spin if that’s something we can manage.”

“Ideally, we capture Loch and her team,” said Westteich, “and you go back to your normal reports right away.”

Mister Slant blinked at him as though just remembering that he was there. “Yes, right, that’s certainly something we could do.”

“You know,” said Lesaguris, “it’s entirely possible that Loch and her little team of thieves will wait until Binjamet duQuaille’s mother is in custody at the Cleaners.”

Westteich smiled. “It is, my lord. But I don’t think so. And neither do you.”

“Don’t I?” Lesaguris asked, not looking over. He had his hands linked behind his back, and his black coat flared in the wind.

“You’re not the kind of man who wastes time,” Westteich said confidently. “You wouldn’t be here unless you thought, as I do, that Loch would make her move before the mother is moved to the Cleaners.”

“Fair point.” Lesaguris nodded. “Now, tell me why I think that.”

Westteich took another lungful of cool morning air and matched Lesaguris’s stance, linking his own hands behind his back. “This Loch isn’t stupid. She has a noble upbringing, an education, even a distinguished military career. But you and I have both crossed swords with her, and I think you’ve seen the same thing I did.” He grinned. “She has an impressive minute-to-minute game. Back her into a corner, and she will go right through you, no matter how she has to do it. But look at her long-term planning, and you see the wasted potential. She’s an Urujar and a woman, and she’s
angry
about it, my lord. She can’t work within the system, she can’t take the time to let the game play out, and she can’t accept the simple facts of how the world works.” Westteich shook his head. “It’s a pity, because she
could
have been so much more, if only she cared about things other than the color of her own skin.”