Clutching her arms around her, she fought to trap the fleeting warmth carried up with her from the bowels of Tashijan. The mooring tower of the Citadel thrust fifty floors into the sky, a thin spire built three millennia ago under the guidance of Warden Bellsephere. Aptly named Stormwatch, it took the humours of a hundred gods to build this one tower.
“There she is!” her companion shouted into the teeth of the wind.
Gerrod Rothkild was encased in bronze from head to toe, oblivious of the wind. He was squat of form, typical for a hill-man from Bitter Heap. But unlike his barbarous, uneducated countrymen, he was of sharp intellect and even sharper wit. Under his helmet, he bore the tattoos of fifteen disciplines, all masterfields. “That tub’d better have a skilled pilot to strike the docks in this gale.”
Kathryn watched the salt-scarred flippercraft lower out of the sea of clouds overhead. It was a wooden whale, blunt at both ends but flaring into a wide keel at the stern. At the prow, a thick window of blessed glass stared down at the mooring docks. Shadowy movement could be seen behind the glass: the ship’s frantic landing crew.
On the port and starboard sides, the score of balancing paddles battled the winds, some turning, others stationary, some extending out from the ship, others retracting. It took an experienced pilot, one ripe with air, to finesse the craft.
“He’s burning blood,” Gerrod commented.
Kathryn saw he was right. From the top of the flippercraft gouts of smoke choked into the skies from the exhaust flue, furthering the craft’s image of a flying whale. “Why does he hazard the storm? Why waste humour on such a risky landing?”
“His need must be urgent,” Gerrod answered gruffly. “And such urgency seldom heralds fair tidings.”
Kathryn suspected the same. Could the news be anything but foul, especially as of late? The sudden death of Ser Henri, the warden of Tashijan, had left a hole in the Order. And like a drain plug pulled from a tub, the warden’s vacancy had created a maelstrom of opposing factions seeking to fill it, whirling and churning the once calm waters.
And now worse tidings still: the slaying of a god. An impossible death. And tied to such a tragedy, a name from her past, a name that both stirred her and quickened a pain long since buried.
Tylar…
She shuddered and concentrated on the skies, pulling her cloak tighter about her shoulders.
Overhead, the ship foundered in the crosswinds that swept around the tower. Its bulk rocked and teetered, lowering toward the waiting mooring cradle, paddles flapping frantically. The stern planks glowed from the overworked aeroskimmers. Kathryn could imagine the mekanism’s brass pipes and mica-glass tubes shining as bright as the sun, channeling and pumping raw humour through its belly, an alchemy of blood from one of the air gods. She watched the tortuous twist of inky smoke from the stern flue.
“It’s madness,” she whispered.
Steel fingers touched her hand. “There must be a reason-” Suddenly those same fingers clamped on her wrist and tugged. “Down!”
Overhead, the ship dropped like a stone. It heeled over on one side, paddles sweeping toward the tower top. The line handlers and dockmen dove and scattered.
Kathryn and Gerrod flattened to the ground.
The flippercraft righted with a scream of wind and crack of wood as one paddle struck a parapet and shattered into splinters. The ship tilted nose first, plunging for a sure crash into the granite mooring cradle.
Then miraculously it bucked up at the last moment, and the ship’s keel slammed roughly but securely into the cradle. The jarring impact popped a few rib planks and a tracery of fractures skittered across the glass eye of the wooden whale.
Immediately the mooring crews were back on their legs, yelling into the winds, tossing ropes and tethers about the grounded flippercraft. A few cheers of appreciation rose from the workers.
Kathryn rolled back to her feet smoothly and quickly, sharing no such appreciation. “Nothing is worth such a risk of vessel and folk.”
The rear hatch of the flippercraft winched open. A single figure leaped out before the hatch even thudded against the stone. He was a swirl of darkness, a shred of shadow cast into the wind.
“I believe that would be young Perryl,” Gerrod said at Kathryn’s side.
Perryl hurried toward them. His eyes were sparks of fury, his manner full of wildness. He reached them as the first mooring line was secure-and didn’t stop.
He offered only one word as he passed: “Below.”
Caught in his wake, Kathryn’s rebuke for his reckless haste died in her throat. She and Gerrod Rothkild followed at his heels. Perryl strode to the tower door and fought the storm winds to open the way. He calmed enough to wave them through first.
Kathryn ducked past the threshold to the stairs beyond. As Gerrod followed, a spat of hail burst out of the sky, pelting stone and wood with balls of ice the size of goose eggs. Yells and shouts echoed. Perryl caught a blow to his cheek, ripping his masklin loose.
He slammed the door and turned to them. His face was deathly pale. “Tylar’s escaped… fled…”
The silence that followed was punctuated by a barrage of hail against the wooden door, sounding like the strikes of a hundred mailed fists.
Kathryn attempted to digest this information. She unpinned her masklin and shook back her cloak’s hood. She had failed to braid her hair into its usual fiery tail and finger-combed it away from her pale face. Never a beauty, she was still considered fair of feature, though nowadays a certain hard edge frosted her blue eyes. She stared stolidly at Perryl, demanding elaboration.
“A raven reached the flippercraft while I was en route,” Perryl continued. His eyes would not meet Kathryn’s, and his tongue stammered. “Against my orders, the fools attempted to execute Tylar, but he somehow called forth a daemon. Several guards were killed as he fled.”
“A daemon?” Kathryn asked.
“That is all I know. But the message was sealed with the mark of the Order. Darjon ser Hightower. The only Shadowknight to survive the slaughter.” Perryl finally met Kathryn’s eyes. “I didn’t know there were any of Meeryn’s Shadowknights still alive after the attack upon her. Our brother leads a force in pursuit. Word suggests the Black Flaggers abetted Tylar’s escape to the sea.”
Kathryn turned. “Pirates and daemons…” As she stood on the steps, time slipped backward. She had watched the man she once loved hauled in chains onto a slave barge, headed across the Deep, a knight no longer, face bared to all, an oath breaker and a murderer. Tylar’s eyes had searched for her on the river docks, but she had remained hidden in the shadows of an alley, ashamed that her own words had doomed him. But she could not lie to the court, not even if soothmancers hadn’t been present. He had to know this. Then he was dragged onto the barge, gone from sight-but not from her heart, never her heart.
“I thought him innocent,” Perryl said from the top of the stairs.
Kathryn started down the stairs. As did I once… long ago.. She cleared her throat. “Castellan Mirra must be informed of all that transpired. She awaits your attendance.” They began the long hike down to the main keep of Tashijan. Ser Henri’s old castellan had assumed the duty of governing the Citadel until this evening’s winnowing, when a new warden would be chosen by a casting of ballot stones.
Gerrod Rothkild kept pace with her down the stairs. His voice was soft, meant for only her ears. “Save judgment for now. Not all is as plain as it first appears, little Kat.”
“Then again, some is,” Kathryn answered. She had to bite back a sharper retort. She knew Gerrod sought only to comfort her. But even Gerrod, with all his mastered disciplines, could not fathom the emotion that welled through her with Perryl’s damning testimony.
It was not despair that filled her-only relief.
Though ashamed, she could not deny it. Tylar was clearly guilty, a godslayer of one of the Blessed Hundred. If he could kill a god now, then oath breaking and murder were not beyond him in the past.
Tears rose. Tylar had to be guilty. Her past words had banished him, broken him. Over these past years, the only way she had survived her betrayal was to place all her faith in the justice of the Order and the Grace of her cloak.
Tylar had to be guilty.
