“You dare question the Scattered Shards?”
“You know not the mark upon this girl.” The hood of the cloak drew back to reveal interlocking scales and an elongated snout. Rounded protrusions covered the crest from the nostrils to above the blue-red eyes, where it morphed into a pair of jagged stumps, as if something had been broken off. “The banalities of your church care naught for the Crystal’s needs. The Crystal is all.”
A drakken. One of the two lesser orders of the draconem.
What was a drakken doing here, in Drenth of all places? Apparently looking for her. She was proper buggered.
Odds she didn’t care for.
“Then, by law, you’re abetting a criminal,” said Bristletop in that static voice of people who thought big words made them sound validated. Didn’t matter a hardy drakken stood opposite. The other two vicars were now standing, Red with broken elbow cradled to her side, Curves holding an arm across her belly. “And, by law, are to be placed under arrest and brought back to Kalderim for questioning.”
The drakken gave Ashe a nod. A flash of silvery aether rippled along its exoscaled talons. “Now is not the time, child. They’ve found you. And they’ll send the darkness after you.”
“Who?”
“By the Pentax’s command, I ord—”
Bristletop was cut off when the massive drakken thrust out his claws; muscled, exoscaled limbs twisting as his talons moved. A groan like the gates of Drenth opening echoed within the alley, a rumbling underfoot. The vicars tensed; feet spread apart. An unearthly scream arose, like the sounds from within the void whenever Ashe burned aetheurgy. A ghastly hymn.
Then, the biggest wave of mist crashed down over the roof of the warehouse, waterfalling over the vicars, washing them backwards like they weighed nothing.
“Go!” The drakken drew upon all Four Tenets of Aether in their surroundings. Terris in stone. Ignis in candles. Aere in the wind. Aquis from shit-puddles.
“I can help.”
Bristletop’s Gauntlet of Justice glowed as he summoned a six-foot, double-bladed axe of pure aether and slammed it into the cobblestones. The mist redirected around him, swirling like a flowing river around a dam. Red and Curves did the same with their bluish-iron hand axes, nullifying the effect of the drakken’s attack to push them backward.
“In time.” The drakken threw out his claws again. A gust of Aere flung the wounded vicars away. The beastly head turned, there was blood dribbling from between the exoscales of its snout. Eerie it was, dark. “We will meet again soon. Your coming has been foreseen. The Eye has claimed you.” His gaze settled upon the bizarre bangle on her left hand. She shoved her arm behind her back. “With it, the rebirth of Eminence. Go, Godsblood. Until we meet again.”
A good thief knew when to cut and run. This was her time. So, Ashe fled into the night.
VIII
Emre
THE AIRGLIDER FLEW over the city’s tramlines until coming to a fifty-story complex nestled between much taller apartments of the southwestern seventh sector of Marketside.
Emre was ready to set foot back on stable ground as his stomach danced in knots.
Their escape had been met with gunshots from the buildings and the air. Snipers lodged on rooftops shelled the airglider with Ignis-infused bullets while the legion of gliders from Gargantua peppered them with their own gunnery, their casings leaving a wake of metal hail upon the denizens below.
It had taken hours, but they had finally ditched the Imperium craft over the sands of the deep desert, out near Drakewing Deep. Now, Emre had other business to attend as dawnbreak neared. A meeting of friends to be. Of family.
Atop the complex was a landing pad and under Wick’s deft control, the lapin brought the airglider down. Emre patted Wick on the shoulder, and the lapin glanced sidelong at him with button-sized black eyes as he spat out the airglider’s pilot box portal. “Buggerin’ Imperium cocks. They can all roast.”
“Ease, Wick, you’ll get your chance,” Emre laughed.
Sweat dribbled through the beige fur between Wick’s eyes, causing his whiskered nose to twitch irritably. “Good.”
Lapin had been gentler folk, once. Pious and affable, that was the lapin way until the Fallen had brought his Imperium into their peaceful lives. Ten years after the invasion of Drenth, the lapin homeland of Dervin was next in line for the Fallen’s domination. Nestled between Thullyr and the Voidlands, Dervin was a simple cropping of caves and warrens.
But that was torn asunder under the Fallen. And Wick had paid the price of innocence.
Finn opened the hatch and let Emre out first. The lingering heat assailed him, regardless of the small hours before the sun rose. It was going to be a hot day, unbearable even. But Emre planned to bring more heat to the Imperium. A destructive heat.
Wick hopped from the pilot-box and his furry face bristled in irritation, most likely annoyance at himself for allowing his glider to be turned into lattice.
Emre glanced at his pocketwatch. Dawnbreak was only an hour hence. He could hear Solanine’s voice over the loudspeakers at every corner, issuing warnings and spreading misinformation, as well as reminders about the dawnbreak injection of parch.
He sneered. Soon, Solanine. Soon.
Finn examined the inch-round apertures in the airglider’s hull with a sly smile. “Godsdamned, that was a close one. What do you say, Em, plan worked like a charm? Though Wick’s flying was godsdamned tight there for a moment.”
“Bugger off,” Wick snapped. “You know nothing about nothing, needle dick.” Finnus Dunleith had a way of grinding at Wick’s gears.
“I see you all made it out alive.”
Emre turned to find an elfirish woman leaning against the doorway to the single staircase that led into the belly of the complex. A bikrome from Kanja with silver hair that poured from the cowl of her sleeveless tunic, her fringe shining above the aethecite mining goggles that hid her eyes. Her pale arms were crossed, and she wore dozens of bikromi seer-sight bracelets; the gold and silver reflected the dim light.
Valeria Dunleith, Finn’s youngest sibling, if only by a decade as far as elfir age.
There are two types of elfir in the Mistlands: those from the Forest of Calibrath in the bowl between the Imperium, the Voidlands, Altreyia, and the mountainous range of the Forgemistress’ Blades and those from the tundra of Kanja. And they were as different as boots are from slippers. One’s sturdy and useful, and the other nose-sticking uppity.
Calibrathian elfir were a proud people, their hair golden or lush brown, irises the color of tree bark or newly sprouted leaves. Calm and cold, they rarely came down from their redwood villages. Canlon Carr, The Last Godsking, had been from Calibrath. Only those turning to the Divines, like Lu Har, ever left the confines of the forest without a just cause by Zenith and the rest of the Pentax.
Those of Kanja were the exact opposite, of which the Dunleiths hailed. They lived on the harsh snowlands as opposed to high in the trees. Kanjan elfir had skin so pale, it was nearly translucent, and their hair was a fine silver. Their eyes were either the darkest of black or the whitest of freshly fallen snow.
