Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (53 page)

"Did you speak with Titania?" The question was meant for the Nnyth… Maeve did not think she was supposed to hear Anthem ask. "As you did to us?"

"Yes."

"Has she… Does she have a new enarri?"

"She remembers you, Sir Anthem Calloren."

Anthem's wings sagged and he shook his head, confused. But without another word, he returned to the Blue Phoenix. He paused in the airlock, looking at Maeve with such pain in his dark blue eyes that Maeve could not hold his gaze. She pressed the glowing airlock controls and the door slid shut. Maeve squinted out the tiny window, but the Tower had gone entirely dark outside and she saw nothing.

And then everything blazed with blue light.

"Don't wait for weapons you need. Fight with the ones you have."

– Logan Centra (234 PA)

Ballad swooped low over the blasted ruins of the theater, scanning the blackened ground. It had been over a week since the last riots in Kaellisem and even those had been small ones, resulting in little more than a couple of bruises. But the glass hunters were still a problem. Arcadian glass remained more or less unique to Kaellisem, one city on one planet. Even the twisted, malformed shards left behind by the enassui bombing were worth something. Not much, but enough that scavengers sometimes snuck in from Gharib to hunt for loose glass. Ballad was from Prianus; he didn't resent the coreworlders for trying to earn a little color. But the sorts of people who were desperate enough to search the sands for a few lumps of glass were sometimes the same ones who might be more than happy to knife an Arcadian and it was Ballad's job to protect the citizens of Kaellisem. With Sir Anthem gone, Ballad was in command of the remaining knights.

He whistled sharply to Suvaen. The other knight wheeled with Ballad, up and around the dagger-like remains of the royal box. They flew one last circuit, but it was too hot out even for the glass hunters and Ballad led Suvaen back toward Kaellisem.

For such a dim sun, Ballad never ceased to be amazed how effectively it could bake Stray. Prianus' primary had to be three times brighter, but Ballad could not remember
ever
being warm in Pylos. But on Stray, several other knights – including Suvaen – had adopted his short haircut. The long, flowing Arcadian styles just were not practical in the hot desert. Especially in the wearable prism that was their glass armor.

A sudden wind whipped up a funnel of sand. Ballad threw his weight back, cupping his wings to come to an abrupt stop before he plunged headlong into the whipping grit. A sandstorm? Ballad went for his com to warn Panna, but the cloud of sand was too small for a storm. He waved to Suvaen and the two of them landed, pulling scarves up over their mouths. It had been weeks since any sort of attack on Kaellisem, but they had never caught the elusive bomber… Maybe this was some new sort of menace.

The sand settled, suddenly revealing the spiny shape of the Blue Phoenix squatting in the desert dust. Frost crackled along its dented fibersteel hull and steamed in the desert heat. Ballad pulled off his sunglasses and stared. Surely this was… what? A trick? The Blue Phoenix wasn't supposed to be back for another month or more. If it returned at all from the confrontation with Xartasia. And why hadn't they seen the freighter's approach? Surely Maeve would have told Panna if she was back in the Bannon system. And Panna would have told Ballad…

The cargo ramp hissed and ground, lowering to the sand. Duaal Sinnay stood at the top, his back to Ballad and Suvaen. The Hyzaari captain's hands were spread in a gesture of humility that was anything but.

"Ha!" he said. "I guess there's a
new
Waygate expert. Not even the Nnyth could have used a broken Waygate to move an entire ship halfway across the galaxy!"

Ballad had no idea what Duaal was talking about. He told Suvaen to stay put and ran up the ramp. Queen Maeve, Logan Coldhand, Anthem Calloren and the rest stood in the Blue Phoenix's hold, gathered around a large plastic crate. Other than Duaal's swaggering confidence, the air was more like that of a funeral than a celebration. Logan was the first one to catch sight of Ballad and raised his translucent glass hand in a short greeting.

"What happened?" Ballad asked. "Is it over? Did you stop Xartasia?"

"Not yet," answered Maeve. "Xartasia was not there. She is bound for Axis and we must get there before she does. I need to speak with Panna and Duke Ferris."

"Vyron and Xyn, too," Logan added. He stood next to the queen, Ballad noted, not Sir Anthem.

"Yes, sir," said Ballad and hurried away to do as he was asked.

________

A half hour later, they were gathered in the Blue Phoenix hold. Maeve would have liked to meet in her glass tower – she missed it far more than expected – but she would have been noticed moving through Kaellisem. Not yet.

Instead, Panna and Duke Ferris had joined Ballad on the ship, followed a short time later by Vyron and his family. The last to arrive was Xyn. The round Ixthian scientist waddled into the Blue Phoenix with a suspicious look on his silver face.

"You're back early," he grumped.

"We're fine, Xyn," Xia said. "Thanks for asking."

Maeve stood beside Gripper and touched his arm gently. He was not fine, but there was still work to be done. The big Arboran looked at her with red-rimmed eyes and smiled weakly. He was tired. They all were… Reluctantly, Maeve returned her attention to the council she had called. She had refused to answer Panna's many questions until everyone was assembled. There was too much to say, to do, and too little time. They had one chance.

"We must be swift," Maeve said when Xyn and Xia finished squabbling. She heard the hard, clipped tone of her own voice. "Xartasia intends to unmake all the years of history since the White Kingdom's fall. To do this, she took her Arcadians and Devourers to the Tower. The Nnyth destroyed their own hive to prevent her from taking it. Xartasia left. She goes now to the Devourers' homeworld, Axis, and will arrive in eight days."

"Hold on," said Panna. "What? Can Xartasia do that? Just delete more than a century of life?"

"The Nnyth believed so," Maeve answered. "And feared the results enough to destroy their own home and condemn themselves to a slow death."

"So what do we do about it?" Ballad asked.

"Xartasia needs to get down to the surface of Axis," said Logan. "To find a special Waygate there. We're going to fight her for it."

"How?" Ferris asked it like an accusation. "How can we challenge Xartasia with a handful of knights?"

"We get CWAAF to back us."

Now everyone was staring at Logan, Maeve included. "We spent months trying to rouse the Alliance to action," she reminded him. "With no success. They simply did not believe the threat that my cousin poses. How do you propose to convince them now?"

"By making a threat of our own," Logan answered.

Panna's eyes went wide. "Threaten the Alliance? Are you insane?"

"We take every willing Arcadian to Axis and we gather them for a fight. We make it public and we make it loud. That will
force
the Alliance to respond. Xartasia is out of the way, working in relative secret. We won't."

"CWAAF won't just let you mass an army, even a small one, on their capital planet," Duaal said, dark brow furrowed. "They'll respond in numbers."

"That's the point, isn't it?" Ballad asked, giving Logan a look of admiration. "It's a trick."

"A dangerous one," Logan said. "We want to get the Alliance ready to fight by threatening them ourselves, but we don't want to give them enough time to actually start a war with us. If we make our stand on Level One, we should have a CWAAF response within an hour. A major mobilization within three."

"We have a date for Xartasia's arrival, but no time or location," said Maeve. "We will be guessing when and where to make our stand."

"And if our guess is wrong, if we give the Alliance too much time to focus on us, Arcadians will die," Anthem added.

"Or at least spend their lives in prison," said Panna.

"But if we do not do this, you will never have been born," Maeve told the girl. She looked around the hold. "Most of you were born less than a century ago. You can let your world be cut out of time or you can die trying to save it."

"What about you?" Panna asked softly. "You and Sir Anthem and Duke Ferris? Almost half of us are older than a hundred years. Do you think they really want to risk their lives? How many of them would be just as happy to throw away the last century. It's been horrible for them. For you."

"I have made my mistakes," Maeve said. "And the losses have been staggering. But there are billions of humans, Dailons, Ixthians and Lyrans in the Alliance. Trillions of lives in the last hundred years. I cannot just let Xartasia unmake them."

"Yes, my queen," Anthem agreed, nodding.

Duke Ferris stood very still, his hands tucked into the flowing sleeves of his robes. "Xartasia would restore the White Kingdom to all its glory, a'shae. That is no small dream. Millions died at its destruction, and now even the Nnyth Tower is falling."

"Surely you cannot condemn the entire population of the Alliance for that!" Maeve gasped. For all his blustering pomposity and strict adherence to Arcadian tradition, Duke Ferris had always been loyal. It never occurred to Maeve that he might not back her now.

"My daughter is in an Alliance prison," the fairy duke said, "for no crime greater than not having a home. We left her behind on Sunjarrah, my queen. I have not forgotten. Unmaking these last hundred years would be a blessing to her."

Maeve had forgotten. She swallowed against a sudden thick, painful feeling in her throat. Duke Ferris turned on his heels and stalked to the cargo ramp, then spread his wings and leapt into the pale blue-green sky. In a moment, he was gone. Panna sighed and rubbed her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "He's been like that ever since I got back from Hadra."

"He is not wrong," Maeve said. "Not so wrong as I would like. Xartasia's plan is not quite the evil that we long suspected. But it must be stopped…"

"You're going to need a lot of Arcadians to pull this off." Vyron stood behind Kessa, his large blue hands on his wife's shoulders and large black eyes fixed on Maeve. "And you won't get their help if Kaellisem agrees with Ferris."

"Vyron's right. We'll need at least a thousand fairies if we're going to get the Alliance to take us seriously," Logan agreed. He turned to Maeve "Dove, I know you're sick of speeches, but I think you'd better give one more. We can't let the gossip get ahead of us on this one. Public sentiment is too much against us."

Maeve closed her eyes and nodded. "One more, yes. I can do this one last time."

Kessa raised the one hand that was not curled around Baliend. "What do you need us to do? Not go to Axis, I hope. I believe with all my heart in what you're doing, Maeve, but Vy and I can never go back. We went through too much to get off that planet."

"No," answered Logan. "Xyn, we have something for you."

The hunter pulled up the lid of the crate they had gathered around. Inside lay the curled, striped shape of the dead Nnyth. Xyn gasped and pressed six-fingered hands to his chest.

"A Nnyth!" he said unnecessarily. "A whole Nnyth! Not just skin like Tiberius brought me."

"This is worth something to you," Logan prompted. "And to the ship captains you supply?"

"Yes! With this, I don't have to clone phenno. I can study and recreate the actual glands that secrete the protein. No more telemetric degradation, no transcription errors. I might even be able to produce a skin layer for ships that could secrete its own phennomethylln." Xyn clasped his hands to his heart as though he was staring at a particularly adorable child.

"Ew," said Gripper.

Xia put a hand on the other Ixthian's elbow. Her eyes were a serious sapphire color. "Treat these remains respectfully, Xyn," she told him. "The Nnyth are our cousins and they gave a lot to help us."

Xyn gave her a sidelong look and seemed as though he would protest, but he only nodded shortly. "I will."

"Good," said Logan. "We need you to charter ships. Enough to get a thousand or more Arcadians to Axis within eight days. You can use whatever remains of the royal treasury–"

"About five thousand cenmarks," Panna supplied.

"Is that all?" Ballad asked, frowning.

"Glass production went down with all the riots," she said. "We're still trying to get it back up."

"–and promise whatever you need to from the profits of the phenno sales or the phenno itself," Logan continued. "Whatever it takes to get as many of the fastest ships on Stray to fly Arcadians onto Axis."

"Can't Duaal just… magic us all to Axis?" Ballad asked.

"Not unless you've got a Waygate hidden in that jacket," Duaal told him. "I can control the power, not generate it. We need ships."

Xyn's eyes turned an angry scarlet. "Look, I know we've had a good partnership, but passage for a thousand fairies…!"

"You'll be compensated," Logan promised. "Either by the Alliance or by us after this is all done."