Starfall - Rikku's Awesome(ish) NaNo

[Rikku]

... Done. =D The ending was utterly different than I thought it would be, but I'm happy anyway. Starfall. Difficult to think that it's done. That thing's the size that Demonling's first draft was. xD I am vaguely awed. Awed and terrified.

I might end up editing it so it's actually half decent at some distant point in the future when I'm really bored, but right now I'll just leave it as it is, so I can laugh at all the horrible, horrible plot flaws.

Will probably post it up here in spoiler tags so anyone who wants to can read it if they feel like it, when I have the time. Meanwhile, I shall go celebrate by watching Walk The Line, and then maybe an episode of Jonathan Creek, and happily neglect the Drama exam I have on Monday.

[Kathleen]

<3 It is very amazing to think it's done, is it not? I keep opening up my document and then going, "No, wait, I finished it. (I finished it? Really? SERIOUSLY?!)" =D

You're lucky for being able to laugh at your plot holes. Mine seem more like plot fails, and they dishearten me. xD

Post it sooooooon. I can't wait to read it. =DD

[Rikku]

It's because I don't take this seriously and don't plan to do anything with it. xD You're just more professional. Plus I like laughing at my various flaws more than is entirely sane.

Okay, yeah, posting it now. =D Right. The reason why I'm going to take this much more time-consuming way of posting this monstrous lump of text rather than emailing it to whoever expresses interest, which would be vastly more efficient, is that I'm not overly proud of it and, if any lurkers want to read it, they're welcome to. Plus, if people could pick out glaringly obvious and/or amusing spelling errors, I'd appreciate it.

... Oh, hey, and I need a cover for the CreateSpace one, so, um. If any of you artistic folks feel like doodling one of the main characters or something at some point, I would vastly appreciate it. xD *cannot draw!*

And it has, like, three beginnings. xD; Sorry.

Also! I don't think I swore much in this, and I'm going back and mild-ising it because personally I find it really jarring when there's coarse language in a story, but if anything slips past, please don't mind it. ^_^'

SPOILER: Click to show

Way, way back, when Little Squid was a young whippersnapper of a galaxy and your googol-great grandfather sat in his structurally unsound hut and grouched about this newfangled ‘wheel’ thing, Grim called a celestial meeting, a time when the stars met together and talked and basked in each other’s flame.

It is a great thing, a meeting of the stars. They met in a sector filled with loosely floating ice, the embryo of a planet. The light and the glow of them, reflected in the ice, was so terribly beautiful that it would burn out a man’s eyes, and he would be grateful, for he would have seen a meeting of the stars. O, the colours! O, the sounds! Celestial keenings, the whisper of solar winds, the blur and swirl of each star’s core, the music of the spheres, the dance of the stars! But stars are strange, and terrible, and their ways are not for mortal specks to compre –

Spoke Grim, whose voice was shadow and whose eyes were mist: “Who’s eaten all the snacks?”

The assembled stars shuffled around guiltily amidst the glinting ice, muttering amongst themselves, until, gradually, they all fell silent, and turned their celestial gazes towards the Trickster, in a way that could almost be imagined as accusing.

Spoke Reynard, indignantly: “Hey, don’t look at me. I only eat chickens.”

Spoke Greenthumb, bright and busy: “Why did you call us? I have work to attend to. Forests do not grow themselves.”

Spoke Grim: “It has come to my attention that certain of us are not acting quite as we should.”

Spoke Reynard: “It was Lady Luck, wasn’t it? I told her the cat aspect was too much, but she just had to have fur and—”

Spoke Lady Luck: “Hey, you can’t talk, you mangy excuse for a—”

Spoke Grim, calmly: “Actually, it was you.”

And Reynard said nothing.

Muttered Envy: “I knew it.”

The swirl of stars pulled back a little, leaving Reynard isolated. He scowled and crossed his solar flares.

Spoke Reynard: “Stop that. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

He paused.

Clarified Reynard: “Recently.”

Spoke Grim: “Oh yes? Then what’s this I’ve heard of riots, and rituals, and …” He narrowed his nimbus menacingly. “Worshippers.”

“Just a bit of fun,” said Reynard breezily.

Spoke Grim: “You know the laws, Trickster. You know the penalty.”

There was a touch of sadness to his crack-of-thunder voice, a tinge of regret in his swirling fires.

Reynard suddenly looked very small, there alone amongst the ice.

“Reynard,” said Grim, and his voice was the roar of planets colliding, of rocks and metals crashing together in showers of sparks. “Reynard,” said Grim, and his voice was the scream of fire, of stars burning, burning, of the molten madness at every world’s core. “Reynard,” said Grim for the third and final time, and his voice was the silence of space, the whispering nothingness of the infinite dark.

Reynard cried out in pain, his fires twisting in pain, his voice hollow with the anguish of it. He shrank to half his former size, his flames flickering and pale, no longer bright and fierce and joyous, a shrunken shadow of a star.

Spoke Grim, quietly, just to him: “I am sorry. It had to be done.”

Whispered Reynard: “It isn’t fair.”

Spoke Grim, his voice as bleak as his name: “It gets worse.” And then he raised his voice, and said: “Never again will this happen. Never again will a star meddle in the lives of those we watch over, those we are sworn to guide. I say it thus and thus it is true: Never may a star interfere directly with the lives of mortals.”

His voice held the echoing ring that a star’s did when it spoke the truth, and this was Grim’s truth, and Grim’s truth was unbreakable. The assembled stars shook with the echoes of it, and Reynard shivered and ducked down.

Spoke Grim: “So be it.”

And the stars left, dancing slowly back to their own places, to watch over their own worlds, to guide. They left Reynard there amongst the ice, too weak to move, almost too weak to burn.

And there, alone in the ice, crippled and weak, Reynard the Trickster began to smile. And then he began to laugh, and his laugh was the bright joyous wicked laugh of the swirling heart of a world.

Grim had forbidden the stars to interfere directly with the lives of mortals. Reynard was included in that, but Reynard was the Trickster, a creature of subtlety and blurred lines. Grim had forbidden the stars to interfere directly with the lives of mortals, and all that meant was that none of the other stars could be any sort of competition.

For Reynard was the Trickster.

And he had had never been the most direct of stars.


*


Seren was in freefall.

The planet arced away below her, a smooth hemisphere, shining with reflected sun’s light. It had a bluish look, and that wasn’t caused by this system’s sun. Oh, no.
If she turned her head she would see the stars.

Even without moving, she knew they were there, a sprinkling of blue-white sparks that populated the darkness, defining the ‘nite. They made it colder. More alone.
All alone, and she was falling. Falling, without a sound.

She wasn’t in space, but she was as close as you could get to it while still bound to the ground, and, at this height, there wasn’t enough air to resist you. Seren fell, in silent freefall, without a sound. Alone with the stars. Alone in the universe.

It was moments like these that she lived for, when her quiet, orderly self was stripped away and let the fierce joy of living burn through.

All alone.

Well, that couldn’t last.

As the air began to whip at her, Seren spun neatly in midair and, falling on her back, looked up at the others.

The fat blob of the transport ship hovered incongruously against the star-speckled night. And there – the small dot of a Pathfinder-in-training, leaping out of it, or, as was far more likely, being pushed. She remembered, with a touch of humour, what her first time planet-diving had been like. She’d screamed almost constantly.

Seren rolled back over and adopted the ideal freefalling position, arms and legs splayed out like some monstrously huge spider in a Pathfinder uniform, head tucked forward a little against the wind which was building up to a near-howl.

A few more moments of silence …

There was never time enough.

Seren checked her belt. It being a Pathfinder belt, this action had more significance than might be expected. And, yes, her air-bubble control was still working, glowing faintly to show that there was plenty of power still and that whichever Source was in the belt hadn’t accidentally run out. It had never happened yet, but she still felt compelled to check, mainly because, if the belt stopped working, her air-bubble would be stripped away and she’d be left gasping in the thin air. It was bad enough even with the shield the bubble provided; too cold up here, and too hot, as the planet’s gravity reeled her in and its atmosphere battled against her.

Oh, the youngling Pathfinders would be loving this.

Seren grinned, then let her face lapse back into its normal cool, controlled expression. She shifted her arms and legs slightly to catch the wind, because it was Pathfinder policy to spend in long in freefall as you can, in order to make a controlled landing. She decided what the heck, and folded her limbs close to her suit-clad body, angling said body into a dive.

The wind whipped ever faster around her. Behind her, she could hear screaming from one or all of the rookies, even as the wind whipped it away. Heh.

She slowly extended her arms again, the wind whipping against them. All of her seemed to be glowing, and oddly puffy. That was the bubble-shield at work, of course.

Once she was fully extended, she rolled over onto her back again, making sure that she didn’t move any single part of her too quickly – that could mean a broken limb or neck at this altitude. There were now five or six figures in the sky above her, keeping pace with her freefall, unlike the transport ship, which was now a rapidly shrinking blob in the distance. Most of the black figures were flailing their limbs desperately.

Seren spread out her arms and legs in what was called, somewhat oxymoronically, the ‘controlled freefall’ position, albeit upside down. The students got the hint, most of them stretching their limbs out to imitate her. The screaming was redoubled as the wind whipped at their too-quickly-stretched limbs. She looked at them with a critical eye, before nodding approvingly. Those muscles would hurt for a few weeks, but no one would be permanently hurt. It was a good lesson, this one, teaching them how easy it was to be hurt if you weren’t careful. Pathfinders always had to be careful, and Pathfinders always had to take risks. Being the best of the best meant sometimes extremely contradictory.

But it was worth it, for the freefalls alone.

She rolled back to face the planet. It was closer, now, and she couldn’t see space curving away from the orange-shaped segment of planet. Just the planet itself, getting rapidly and distinctly bigger, like a teenage boy suffering a monster growth spurt.

The worst of the heat was now, turning her air-bubble a glowing crimson. Inside it, she was aware of a faint heat, and that was all. When she judged that she’d passed the worst of it, she reached carefully for her belt and switched off the air-bubble. Instantly she was a hundred times colder, a thousand times hotter, and having difficulty breathing.

She could manage it, of course. Pathfinders were the best of the best; they didn’t know the meaning of fear. She took careful, controlled breaths, wishing that she had enough breath to spare to, say, give a manic laugh and/or scream. That was the natural reaction to the exhilaration building up inside her blood, and the acceleration building up outside of it. Though she’d already reached terminal velocity.

That planet was approaching awfully fast. And Seren was still in freefall.

She spun to check on the newbies. They were fine. The screaming was petering away, a little hesitantly. Good. They weren’t full-fledged Pathfinders yet, not like her, so they couldn’t be expected to feel no fear, but even so, not screaming was definitely a step in the right direction. The joyous laughs that she could distantly hear weren’t so promising. Manic laughter wasn’t too far from fear, and, besides, Pathfinders couldn’t let themselves feel happy in their work. Then they might get inattentive, and before they knew it, whoever they were guiding would get eaten by a noxious, grouchy crocodile the precise size of a bus. For example.

Seren wiped the vague, nominal smile from her own face, and spun back around. The ground was beneath her, an expanse of blue, looking … yes, about right. One of the reasons Pathfinders used Meridian to practice planet-diving was that it had no noticeable natural features; it was a plain planet in more sense than one. But Seren had practice, not to mention a decent chunk of natural talent. Everyone always said that she was one of the most promising Kind to graduate the Pathfinder Academy for years.

Touching a button on her belt deployed her glider. The newbies just got ‘chutes, but she, as their guide, could hardly be so helpless. The straps of the glider curled themselves around her limbs, and once they were all assigned so that they held her weight equally, there was the sharp, painful jerk of the glider opening up behind her, slowing her down so fast it felt like it was yanking her up.

She stretched her arms, and the glider, attuned to her every movement, curled smoothly to the side.

Really her every movement. If she sneezed, she’d be in some serious trouble.

She circled, and then circled a few times, and then, just for variety, circled again, the other way. All this circling was meant to show the newbies where to land – inside the circle she painted with her movements. This was why the newbies needed a guide. Otherwise, they could lose their course, which was the cardinal sin for Pathfinders, and end up a few thousand kilometres away, or even impaling themselves on top of Meridian City’s sky-high spires. Granted, Meridian City was on the other side of the planet, but it had been known to happen.

She was coming in too steep. She adjusted her flight path, evened out, and circled some more, slowly, gradually losing height. Of course, ideally, she was meant to hang around in the air for ages, until everyone had landed, making sure they were all swell and dandy; but she’d already come in too steep, and, besides, Seren liked to give everyone a little excitement. What was life without a little challenge?

She came in to land. With a practiced twist of her wrists, the glider folded back into her belt a few metres before she landed, and she hit the ground in a graceful roll that absorbed most of the impact, leaving just enough to judder her teeth in her mouth and make her glad she’d kept her tongue well back; at times like these, the possibility of accidentally nipping it off was all too real.

Standing, she surveyed the landscape, ignoring the faint wobble of her knees. That was just the adrenaline. She certainly hadn’t been afraid. Pathfinders didn’t feel fear.

Seren was one of the Kind, and she was as tall and willowy as most, a concerto of graceful, aligned movement. Her ears were pointed and elegant, her skin smooth and creamy, her eyes hazel and almond-shaped. Her hair was short, feathery, and the exact shade of a raven that enjoyed splashing around in inkwells. Somehow not even a strand was out of place, despite the fact that she’d just freefalled from the edges of space. Her face was large-eyed and beautiful, of course – she was a Kind – but the expression it wore was cool and considering, and extremely professional, in an almost-clinical kind of way.

What she was considering was the planet, which was stunningly beautiful, in a way.

From where she stood, she could see the landscape for kilometres, and every kilometre was the same. Meridian’s bluish, spiky-soft grass stretched over the almost perfectly flat land. It seemed to go on forever, and it very nearly did; before Meridian City, the whole planet was like this, broken by a meandering stream here and there. That was why Meridian’s first name, the less creative ‘Blue’, had been replaced by what it was called today. Meridian. It was called that because it seemed to hold the sun forever. The light just sunk in and stayed there. Dawn came early, and dusk lingered. There was little night on Meridian.

Of course, it being flat was another excellent reason for fledgling Pathfinders to freefall onto it. No trees to skewer themselves, or mountains to be minced by, or oceans to squish them better than concrete ever did.

Speaking of the newbies.

She turned to watch them come in, arms crossed, eyebrows drawn in professional criticism. They were inexperienced, but there was some potential there; not a one of them panicked and ruined everything, not even the one whose parachute crumpled back into his belt fifteen metres from the ground. (They had a habit of doing that; Seren suspected that the Pathfinder Academy deliberately used dodgy parachutes to see which students could deal with the stress of nasty situations.) The student in question curled into a loose ball, hit the ground and bounced a bit, but he seemed unhurt, apart from a few nasty bruises, maybe. Good. From here they’d have to tramp overland to where the transport ship would be waiting for them, which was some distance away. Fortunately, the Academy hadn’t placed any traps or pits filled with noxious crocodiles in the way. Perhaps the reasoning was that planet-diving was more than dangerous enough already as it was.

Seren didn’t mind. What was life without a little danger? Being a Pathfinder was her purpose, and being a Pathfinder was a dangerous job. It was a whole lot more complicated than simply navigating. And a whole lot more interesting.

She checked the sky. There weren’t any whitish blobs that would indicate students still up in the air, so she started out towards where they had landed. Often, they were scattered over an area of a kilometre or more, but they were more closely packed than usual this time, which was a stroke of fortune. Seren murmured an automatic thank-you prayer to Lady Luck – the Kind didn’t worship the gods the way other species did, but it was best to be prepared – and went over to them.

She helped the one whose parachute hadn’t worked quite right to his wincing feet.

“You alright?” she asked, with a touch of compassion that may or may not have been there.

“Ltjela,ntehanghtjod’;;ejhf,” he groaned in pain.

“That’s the spirit,” she said cheerfully, and went on to the next one.


*


It was grim, and dark, and as smoky as though someone had shoved a torch into the beams and let it smoulder.

Considering the kind of crowd there was tonight, that wasn’t entirely unlikely. But the inn (unless it was a tavern; it couldn’t quite seem to decide) could hardly be blamed for smoke; it was on Ochre, and Ochre was a planet of smoke, of rough terrain and jagged volcanoes scraping at the sky. As inhabitants often, fondly, said, If it isn’t smokey, it isn’t Ochrey.

It was particularly bad tonight, because so many of the men – many of whom wore hooded cloaks, for some reason, despite the heat – were puffing enigmatically at long, strangely curled pipes. As to their faces … well, if there was a competition for Most Beetling Eyebrows, the winner would surely come from here.

It was largish and spacish, with many fires simmering in fireplaces, and a few not, though these were more surreptitious and seemed to be hiding behind tables and the like. It wasn’t uncommon for the whole tavern (unless it was an inn) to catch flame, streaks of sulky fire scorching the ceiling. The rafters, low enough that the room had a cramped atmosphere which made it seem even smokier, were tiger-striped with soot for that precise reason. No one really minded. This was Ochre, after all. Shades of brown were all the rage.

There really were an awful number of mysterious men in brown cloaks, though. Probably they were adventurers. Though why adventurers would come to a place like this, a planet like this, was anyone’s guess. This was the dregs of society, beneath the underworld. There were a few respectable citizens scattered here and there, mostly looking uneasy, but, all in all, the kind of people who visited this place were those who were never hired as thugs because they were too darn thuggish.

The whole place was brown, in various shades – scorched brown rafters, greasy brown bartop, dark brown floor - dirt, with the original wood almost visible beneath it, and also, as a matter of interest, brown – and brown air, as though the brown-ness seeped into the atmosphere. The people were also dressed in sober brown, with browned, brawny faces, as though brown-ness was some kind of disease caught by drinking too much of the queasy beer, which was brown. If a watercolour painter somehow wandered his way in accidentally, he’d tear all his hair out and go away to live in the mountains and eat nothing but raw eggs until he died of salmonella.

This description is all meant to show the fact that, when the various (brown-wearing) thugs who were carousing around carefully didn’t sit next to one person, it wasn’t because that person was wearing a brown cloak, because everyone was wearing a brown cloak. No. No, it wasn’t that.

This person didn’t look particularly dangerous, either, though, admittedly, their hood was over their head and the cloak hid most of their body. Considering that what could be seen of their figure was slender and willowy, it followed that they were extremely slender and willowy, which automatically meant Kind to any educated folk. But no, it wasn’t that, either; most of the clientele here certainly weren’t educated, and thought of the Kind in the same way they thought of unicorns dancing over sparkly, cheerful rainbows.

Could it be that the mysterious cloaked stranger simply radiated a sense of danger, as though sitting next to them was taking too huge a risk?

Maybe. But the truth was that everyone gave the willowy stranger in brown a wide berth because they were all terribly afraid that they’d somehow be hooked into paying the stranger’s bar tab, which was the largest ever seen, and rapidly approaching quadruple figures.

If things had gone any more downhill for Seren lately, she’d be so steep she was horizontal.

She sipped at her beer, not seeming to notice that it was all but gone by now, and had been for a good half hour.

The bartender eyed her uneasily, not disconcerted by her piercing eyes or Kind-featured face so much as the fact that she’d drunk about as much as people normally drunk before their liver rebelled, clawed up their throat and went to live on some nice sunny beach planet, and she wasn’t showing a sign of it. She wasn’t even cheerful-drunk. In fact, she looked even more dour than she had when she came in, which had been a week ago.

Nor had she moved since then. She spent the nights sitting at the exact same place, glaring into her beer mug. The only movement she’d made other than to drink was when the bartender had approached her, with a mind to ask her to leave, or at least to pay her bar tab before this nice gentlemen here had to get nasty with his vast truncheon.

She’d just looked at him. Looked at him.

He shuddered, remembering it. He did not want to be looked at like that again. It was the way that a rabid elephant calmly regarded the beetle that had somehow impaled itself on one of its tusks before going crazy and tearing half the bar down and losing all their customers … well, no, the metaphor didn’t extend that far, but it was chilling, all the same, he couldn’t deny it.

He rubbed a cloth absently over a glass. He shouldn’t be scared. This was his bar, wasn’t it? (Unless it was an inn, or a tavern. Even he wasn’t quite sure.) And he’d never quite been scared of any customers before. He had a sparky who sat in one corner and watched over things, ready to start a fire if any nastier-than-usual-which-meant-extremely-nasty things happened, which may, in fact, have been the reason for all the scorched patches. But this one … this girl …

Beneath the cloak, she was dressed in a Pathfinder uniform. He’d glimpsed it, briefly, back when she ordered her first beer. Unmistakeably Pathfinder; smooth, dull blue, with a thin silver stripe running down each side. A Pathfinder’s suit was an essential part of them, as much a part of them as their lack of fear and their belt full of shiny gizmos; the suit kept them safe, and swish-looking, and in return Pathfinders generally kept their suits so clean that you could eat off them, though then you’d have to clean them again. Generally. This one looked rather … shabby, almost as though the dark-haired, pretty, glowering Kind who wore it had been an accomplished and promising young Pathfinder up until a year ago, when she was suddenly and mysteriously dishonourably discharged from the Pathfinder Academy for reasons unknown and resorted to drinking and other bad habits out of lack of anything else, anywhere else to go. For example. But that was just silly.

All he knew was, if he lost any more money to her seemingly endless taste for cheap beer, burning his own bar down would probably be more profitable than running it.

Seren tapped her fingers on the bar. It was time to move, probably, time to move on, get out of this place, but she couldn’t quite seem to find the energy. What was the point?

A man slid into the scorched, brownish stool beside her.

She shot him a glower, more out of reflex than anything else. Then she gave a small, almost unnoticeable blink of surprise. He was Nightkind.

The Nightkind were as legendary as the Kind, in these parts, but they were more often associated with the legends about spiky, poisonous things that waited patiently under beds and bridges for the chance to sink their fangs into prey.

He wasn’t brown, and that was oddly refreshing. No, his skin was as dark a black as burned paper, his eyes as red as capsicums – the red ones, not the yellow, orange, or green ones. But anyway. His eyes were red as … peppers, because that’s a lot more dramatic even if it is less accurate, and he had the usual long white hair.

So long, in fact, and in such vast, foamy quantities, that it looked rather as if a wave was in the process of crashing over his head. Hair foamed a good three-quarters down his back, probably more if it was straight and not fluffy. Dear Grim. Otherwise, he would have been extremely brooding and dramatic-like, particularly with the reddish sword at his side, the plasma bow slung over his back and the veined white tattoos on the backs of his red hands, but with the hair … well, he looked kind of … silly.

He leaned forward on the bar, and didn’t flinch at all, which was quite manly, because the bar couldn’t be more splintered if someone had attacked it with a gigantic cheese-grater. His red-pepper eyes sparkled at her in his somewhat grim but rather pretty face. “Did it hurt?” he asked.

Seren may not have been familiar with this kind of seedy place until a year ago, but she knew a bad pickup line when she heard one, and she was Not In The Mood. “What?” she growled, clenching her black-fingerless-glove-clad hands into menacing fists.

He leaned back a little. Looked up and down. Smirked, in that extremely irritating Nightkind kind of way. “When you punched the last guy who asked you that in the face.”

She surveyed him suspiciously, but subsided grumpily against the bar, unfisting her fingers. “Well,” she admitted. “My knuckles did get a bit scraped when I broke his nose.”

He laughed, that extremely irritating Nightkind kind of laugh.

There was a little dais at one corner of the smoky room, and a girl stepped up onto it. She had long hair that cascaded about her shoulders in such curls that it would make a weight-lifter proud, and that metaphor suited her exactly not at all; she had the kind of pretty, pouty face that is normally worn by scantily-clad models who walk up and down runways. She lifted a voice-amplifier and said, in a smoky, sultry voice, “Here’s a little number for all you assassins out there.” She then winked, in an equally smoky, sultry kind of way.

“Can I buy you a drink?” asked the Nightkind.

Seren opened her mouth to answer, then said, “Wait, what?” as she registered what the singer had said.

“I said—” began the Nightkind, looking mildly annoyed.

“Not you.” She nodded in the direction of the singer. “Her.”

The singer began her song, with many eyelash flutters and pink-feather-boa-twirls. Her hair was so bouncy that it would be extremely fun for a 2-D animator to animate, if they had a lot of time on their hands and no particularly pressing business.


“The moment I saw you, up on my windowsill,
Like a piece of dark night – silent, deadly, still,
I thought, Is this someone I can learn to love?
I should have noticed the ring on your glove
Which said

Assassin, oh, my assassin.
Assassin, oh, my assassin.”

“She’s not that good,” said the Nightkind. “This bar, in general, isn’t. Not to criticise your taste, or anything.”

“Well, no. I come here purely out of a kind of morbid fascination. What kind of drink?”

“I was thinking an Ochran Sunset.”

“Is that a cocktail?” asked Seren suspiciously. “It sounds like a cocktail. One of those hideous multi-levelled ones with coconut.” She said it as though coconut was the sole thing that was to blame for her current circumstances. Which it wasn’t, but she could be forgiven for being a little muddle-minded. Seren lived in a haze of semi-permanent drunkness, these days.


The singer, meanwhile, continued smokily in the smoky background of the bar.

“Like a piece of dark night, your eyes are sooo bright.
(Yeah, yeah. Assassin.)

“You know how people always say they can’t describe sunsets?” said the Nightkind, angling his head thoughtfully towards her. The consequent bob of his mass of hair shone silvery in the brownish light. “This is like that but worse. It’s not a cocktail. I think.”

“Alrighty then,” said Seren, not particularly caring one way or another.

“You’re the one with whom I want to spend my life.
The only thing sharper than your wits is your knife.

Assassin, oh, my assassin.
Assassin, oh, my assassin.”

The Nightkind made some kind of extremely complicated signal to the barman, who grudgingly poured Seren a drink. It looked … interesting.

“Do they always bubble like that?” she asked, more out of curiousity than caution; she had precious little caution left, these days. Times being what they were.

“Sometimes they whistle. Be thankful it hasn’t exploded yet. I did mention the whole difficult-to-describe thing, didn’t I?”

Seren poked the Ochran Sunset cautiously. “It’s congealed,” she said.

“Ah, that’s a trick of the light,” he explained confidently.

“That’s some darn tricky light.” She regarded the drink wearily, then sighed, shrugged and drained it.

What followed was a thoughtful pause, with yet another sultrily-sung Assassin, oh, my assassin just about audible in the background.

“Well?” said the Nightkind eventually.

“It’s like having my brains smashed out by a lemon wrapped around a large gold brick,” said Seren, who had a regrettable tendency to make pop culture references when she was drunk. “Pour me another.”

The Nightkind shrugged, smiled, and made another ridiculously complicated gesture to the barman, who opened his mouth as if to protest, looked at his bow as if weighing his options, and closed his mouth as if he had decided, on reflection, that he was actually rather fond of living. He poured another. Seren drank half the Ochran Sunset, then set it down.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Why do you ask?” he said suspiciously. “Nightkind don’t give their names.”

“Ah, yes, see, I’ve always wondered about that,” said Seren, looking at him sceptically. “Why? Is it because your names are things of great and mysterious power?” Her tone made it clear precisely what she thought of that.

“Actually,” said the Nightkind, “it’s because our names are ridiculously hard to pronounce.”

Seren’s full name was Serendipity Avalon Corissca Duamine, and thus her heartfelt, “Fair enough,” was more than sincere. “I’m Seren,” she added.

“Well,” he said. “People call me Ferrous. Because I’m as cold as hard as iron. Or so they say.” He assumed an absurd affectation of modesty.

“Really?” she said simply. “People say that?”

He squirmed a little under her scepticism. “Well,” he said, a little defensively. “They might have. Y’know. Mentioned it. In passing.” He paused. “Once.”

“Is that so.”

“Ferre, for short,” he added.

She gave him a slow, heavy look.

He raised an eyebrow at her inquiringly.

“So,” she said flatly, because he didn’t seem to realise why she was looking at him in the way that people look at people who make horrible puns and then grin hopefully, “you call yourself fear?”

“Ah, yes, many people have commented on that remarkable similarity of phonetics,” said Ferre cheerfully.

She sipped her Ochran Sunset, because she didn’t have much else better to do.

“I wouldn’t put too much stock by names,” she said eventually. “Most of the guys here have dramatic names, and a lot of them are kings in disguise. Take that one.” She nodded her head at a brooding, brown-cloaked man smoking in the corner. “He calls himself ‘The White Thorn’. That fat bloke over there’s ‘Helfieh’thaf the Great’. That guy there calls himself Archduke Ferdinand.”

“Really?” said Ferre, startled. “He’s just asking for an assassination.”

“Worlds War One all over again,” she agreed.

“I couldn’t help noticing you’re a Pathfinder,” Ferre said, in a ‘casually changing the subject’ kind of way.

The atmosphere between them dropped several hundred degrees, and became so positively (or negatively, as the case may be, and indeed was) frigid that it was a marvel snow didn’t begin to fall, though that may have been because there too much smoke. “Was,” she said, as flat as a pancake that had, at some point in its delicious existence, fallen afoul of a berserk steamroller.

Ferre looked away rather than meet her cold brown gaze. Fair enough. (Or Ferre enough, but she wasn’t quite far gone enough to make such a horrendous pun.) Odd, though. The handful of Nightkind she’d met were all precisely as Ferre claimed to be – cold and hard as iron, and tough as old boots. Iron boots. It was easier to squeeze water from a stone than make one of the Nightkind merciful.

Mind you, the Kind were meant to be all cheerful and lovey-dovey too, and she certainly wasn’t that. Maybe every species had its exceptions. Maybe even some humans were kind and honourable and clever rather than twisty and flawed, though she doubted it.

“I suspect you could have helped noticing,” Seren said.

“Yes. Probably,” said Ferre, and his cheerful, ‘just a normal guy’ expression (funny how so much about this fellow was in inverted commas) slipped a notch. Beneath it was something calculating and infinitely, infinitely cold.

Mind you, even if every species had its exceptions, there was always a reason for stereotypes, and she had a nasty feeling that one of them had just bought her a drink.

“I suspect, also, that you’re nothing like how you act.”


“Also quite probable,” said Ferre. “But, in fairness, neither are you.”

She needed to stop talking to this man soon, or else she might actually end up liking him, and there was no way in Little Squid that that could possibly end any way even approaching well.

“I would advise you not to play games with me, Ferrous of the Nightkind,” she said. “Better men have died.”

“You boast.”

“No,” said Seren, “really, I don’t. Really.”

And she moved a little, enough that her shabby brown cloak was pulled away enough to reveal the sword at her hip.

It was an extremely big sword.

Really. Extremely big. You wouldn’t believe how hugely, mind-bogglingly big it was. It was a marvel she could wear it at her hip without dislocating something, never mind how slender and willowy she was. It was made of metal, layers of it, all folded together in an extremely complicated way. Ringed hilt or not, it looked more like a huge metal club than anything else.

To give Ferre credit, it didn’t take him long to recover. “That’s a sword?” he asked doubtfully. “It looks more like a slab to me. Actually, ringed hilt or not, it looks more like a huge metal club than—”

“Hang on a sec,” she said, feeling her irritation with the pepper-eyed Nightkind outweighed by her irritation with the singer. “This is getting increasingly absurd.” For the singer had just sung:


“You poison me with your treacherous words.
(And also with your poison.)
Assassin, oh, my assassin.

And now I die of a broken heart
And also of your poison dart
Assassin, ohhh, my assassiiin.”

“I bet I can get away from you without causing a tavern brawl,” Seren said. She wasn’t normally a gambling person, and, in fact, until a year ago, she would never have had cause to murmur a prayer to Lady Luck or even the Trickster, but, right now, she was bewitched by the Sunset, there was fire in her veins, and she was bored.

“Get away from me?” he said, looking a little insulted. “I thought we were getting along rather well.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” she explained, and jumped up onto the bar.
Even considering the fact that most of the people who visited the tavern (unless it was an inn) were thugs, people jumping up on tables wasn’t all that common. Actually, maybe because of that. The average broken-nosed, gristle-fisted thug would weigh too much for the average table to stand without breaking clean down the middle. (Or dirty down the middle, these being thugs.) The unusualness of her action immediately drew most eyes to her, the shabby-uniformed, slender woman standing straight as an arrow on the table.

“I'm Henery the Eighth, I am!” she bellowed. “Henery the Eighth I am, I am!”

There was a cautious silence, and then someone edged, “Um, I got married to the widow next door—”

“She'd been married seven times before,” Seren continued enthusiastically, and, as she clapped over her head, the entire bar joined in. (The people in it, that is. Not the actual bar, though it did judder in time to her footstamps in a fairly enthusiastic way that signified that it was maybe rotting underneath from all the corpses that had been shoved there over the years.) And it swelled in a triumphant chorus as she leaped from the table in a swirl of brown and ran from the bar, leaving Ferre blinking in bemusement behind her.

“And every one was a Henery
She wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam
I'm her eighth old man named Henery
Henery the Eighth, I am!”

Once outside, she chuckled, in a sardonically amused kind of way. But her amusement didn’t last long. The sword at her hip was heavy, and the weight of her abandoned responsibilities was almost as bad. Life would never be the same as it used to be.

Not that she wanted it to be. The Pathfinder Academy could keep their elitist noses out of her business, as far as she was concerned. No, she was well done with them, and it was best to keep it that way. That part of her life was gone and done with, and there was no point in wishing for it back. Those golden years, when all of the ‘nite stretched before her, when she could do anything, be anything she wanted to be. Those golden years were gone, with nothing left of them but a stained and patched uniform with no familiar belt of expensive equipment, a heavy sword for which she had sacrificed everything, and the teaching to never, ever feel fear.

She remembered fear, vaguely. She remembered the way it sung through her veins, turned her blood to fire, made life seem worth living; she remembered when doing something like planet-diving, or just hoverboarding, filled her with fierce joy and the love of living, when exhilaration made it seem as if she could match the stars themselves. However much she tried, she couldn’t get that feeling back, and it was that she mourned, not her potential, not her career, not her family, not her world. Seren missed her fear.

Oh, to feel the burn of that fire again. To feel heartbreak, to feel sorrow, to feel laughter.

To feel anything …

[Rikku]

And s'more:

SPOILER: Click to show

The sun rose over Meridian.

On the grassy half, the flat half, the half where the world seemed to stretch out for an infinity vaster than the ‘nite itself … well, on that half, the sun would have risen some hours ago, adding another dimension to the flat blue shadows of the night. On the Meridian Plains, the sunrise would have been a thing of beauty.

Of course, even in Meridian City it wasn’t half bad.

Meridian was a sky-high city, and clouds gathered around the spires, encompassing and obscuring their pointed tips. The rosy sunrise glinted off the city of shining silver and metal and glass, and, all at once, it seemed as if there was too much light, too much of a good thing, saturating the colour, leeching the depth; too much of a good thing, like drowning in chocolate pudding. The beauty of the city met the beauty of the sunrise, and the two beauties could not coexist.

Or so Mule thought. And he was an artist. He should know.

He was in one of the taller parts of one of the taller buildings, gazing out at the sunrise over the city, not really seeing it. There was an uneasy feeling in his chest. It wasn’t difficult to breathe, not exactly, but his breath hitched every now and again, and everything felt fragile, as though his heart would judder under any shock, and slow, and stop. He was doing his best to ignore this, and there was plenty to distract him. Disjointed music played from audios that couldn’t be seen in the smooth white walls, and priceless works of art were scattered here and there, inviting the eye to linger on their differing textures, the way they caught and changed the light, and all fitted together, somehow, each piece of art simultaneously drawing the eye and gently nudging it towards the next. The effect was beautiful. Of course it was. He’d designed it.

Mule sighed, and let his head fall into his hands, without quite realising it.

Of course, as soon as he had, he scolded himself, and got to his feet, walking carefully over to his desk. In a room filled with beauty, it was down to the earth, solid, practical. Still beautiful, but this was the raw beauty of tools and shaping and working until the sweat soaked through your shirt and your hands ached, the beauty of streaks of paint on rough wood. There was a lump of clay in the middle of the desk, and he looked at it.

The windows were curving and beautiful, the glass as clear and thin as winter’s first ice, and they caught the light and scattered it into a thousand myriad patterns, shards and scraps and pure beams that shifted and danced, slowly. The shadows had moved a lot when he realised that Ada was standing directly behind him, and had been for some time.

“Hello,” Mule said.

He felt her breath on his neck. “What are you working on?”

“Oh, just a little something,” he said, and felt her relax into the pretence.

For they both knew it was pretence. This same lump of clay had been resting on his desk for weeks, gradually drying, flaking, falling apart. He was no closer to knowing what to do with it than he had been before. But the familiarity of the conversation reassured her, and as long as it reassured her, it reassured him, in a vague, distant kind of way. Because Mule still loved his wife, in that vague, distant kind of way.

“You go back in,” he said. “Time for breakfast soon.” Even he could hear the flatness of his words.

Ada rested her head on his shoulder, and he knew without looking at her that she was as beautiful as the day he’d married her, seven years ago. He remembered her that day, fiery and laughing, her glorious curtain of red hair falling over her face and making her splutter as he force-fed her cake. She’d dyed her hair silver now, dyed it as soon as she’d seen the first early streak of grey, but her face was still the same, her lower lip that stuck out when she was angry, and her bold nose, her shining eyes. Yes, he loved her still, he knew that.

“Mule,” Ada said, softly. “You’ve been here for hours. It’s night.”

“Is it?” he said, distantly. The blue shadows made the works of art look distant and strange. Outside the windows, the city’s life moved on, darker, more stealthy, but no less alive; Meridian City was huge, and Meridian City never slept. When the sun set in one part of it, it was rising in another.

She stroked his hair. He knew she liked his hair, which was about the only reason he hadn’t cut it all off an age ago; it was thick and sandy-blond and got in his eyes when he was working. “Mule,” she said again, as though reassuring herself he was still there.

He was meant to say ‘Ada’, in a laughing, joking voice, because then everything would be alright again.

He said nothing, and after a while she said, “The scans came back today.”

“Scans,” he said, and rested his hand on the clay. After that, he wasn’t quite sure why, so he took his hand off again.

“It’s good news,” she said, in the kind of voice that meant that it wasn’t. She waited for him to make some response, and then continued, “Good news,” in such a hopeless but determined tone than he knew he should probably take her in his arms and kiss the sorrow from her eyes, but he didn’t, and she went on, after a pause. “You have Durant’s Syndrome.”

“That’s supposed to be good news?” he demanded, sweeping debris from his desk as he turned to glare at her. “Durant’s Syndrome is fatal, Ada!”

“We have good medical technology,” she said, meeting his gaze and, yes, sticking out her lower lip. She was determined. “We’re well-off, Mule.” Which was her way of saying that if they were any more filthy rich they’d need to bathe almost constantly for the sake of hygiene. “And we live near some of the greatest medical facilities in Little Squid. Fatal doesn’t mean what it used to.”

“Neither does life.”

“What?”

She gazed at him, clearly startled. Had he really said that out loud? He hadn’t meant to. He didn’t want to worry her. Yes, he still loved his wife.

Mule sighed.

“Ada,” he said. “My heart is dying, and there’s no way to cure it. Only a direct genetic match will do for this.”

Ada hesitated for half a beat, then said, recklessly, “Midas—”

“I will ask Midas for nothing!” snapped Mule. “Nothing! You hear me? Because he would give me nothing!”

“I’m not suggesting we ask him to cut out his heart for you,” said Ada sarcastically, “but with just a little bit of skin, just a sample of a healthy, genetically compatible heart … they can grow a new one, Mule! Science has—”

“I will accept nothing from my brother,” said Mule. “Least of all his heart.”

“Then you will break mine,” said Ada.

“Perhaps I no longer care.”

Ada looked at him, silently, too angry to show her hurt. Oh, he knew her so well, his muse, his darling wife … if only life seemed worth living, if only it wasn’t just the same routine over, and over, and over again, time without end. He was dying and he didn’t care.

“No,” said Ada, very softly. “No, I don’t think you’re quite so far gone as that.”

“Go have dinner,” said Mule, because it was what he was meant to say. “I’ll be there in a minute.” She left, and he turned his slow, unseeing gaze back to his table. His heart felt strange.

He stood there, alone, as night’s shadows deepened into blackness, and his fingers grew numb from being clenched into fists.


*


Phlebotinium was a strange thing, and that wasn’t just because it had a stupid name.

Its properties were difficult both to discern and to describe. It was like a congealed liquid, except it wasn’t. Sometimes it was solid, sometimes it was wispy and gaseous, sometimes it was like a solid slab, sometimes it was a swirling gash of reality that seemed to hold secrets in its shimmering depths.

It was always grey, though, as grey as one of those old photographs in which all the women looked the same and all the men had moustaches. No one had yet found out why. (Why it was grey, not why they had moustaches. Though that is also something of a mystery.) In addition, it turned bright pink when exposed to alcohol of any description. No one knew why this was, either, although a few theories about Phlebotinium being some kind of life form that was extremely pious and thus blushed when alcohol was splashed, poked, or spilled on it had circulated, meeting, in the scientific world, both general laughter and discreet tests, that, of course, failed to turn up anything. Phlebotinium was a strange thing.

It was also vital to faster-than-light-by-actually-quite-a-bit space travel. It was the thing that made it possible for mankind (and Squidkind, and … Kindkind) to skim the stars, to dive into the depths of the ‘nite and make it their own, to trade one planet’s oil with another’s delicious ripe pomegranates and so on. Ships that used an Applied Phlebotinium Drive always had a distinctive look about them; the metal (or liquid, or sludge, or whatever), when burned, gradually stained the metal of ships with a layer of greasy grey. Ship-makers had given up making shiny new white ships that turned grey within the course of a few years, and resigned themselves to churning out ships of a uniform grey, so you wouldn’t notice the staining.

Captain Letchford Achilles sat by the window, staring out. It was a fake window, as was evidenced by the fact that it showed a cheerful sunny garden instead of the terrifying depths of space that actually lay outside the ship, or so he presumed, unless the captain had decided to detour by a tilled square of begonias and assorted brassica plants. Still, Achilles had chosen this seat, and he stared out of it with determination, because if the man guarding him knew that he hadn’t chosen this seat because of the so-called ‘view’, he’d probably realise that Achilles had merely half-collapsed into the first seat he came across because his knee ached abominably, and Achilles didn’t particularly want him to know that, because Achilles intended to escape.

Exactly how, he didn’t know quite yet. But he was working on it.

“Excuse me,” said Achilles, not quite politely.

The guard glanced at him. “Yes, criminal?” he said, not politely at all.

“I think there’s something wrong with the Phlebotinium Drive,” said Achilles, trying to sink enough concern into his voice to make the guard forget that the window wasn’t real, and that, however whimsical the garden scene was, looking out at rows of rhubarb wasn’t going to tell him much about the state of the Phlebotinium Drive.

The guard said, “However whimsical the garden scene is, I don’t think looking out at rows of rhubarb is going to tell you much about the state of the Phlebotinium Drive.”

“It’s more of a feeling,” said Captain Achilles.

He hadn’t been a Captain for long, just a few years, and it still caught him by surprise when he was called that, though this didn’t do much to penetrate his permanent grouchiness. He’d spent most of his life being a second in command. He’d been good at being a second in command. When he was a second in command he didn’t end up in nasty situations such as, say, being caught by a Navy outpost with a load full of illegal alcohol, and stuck onto a ship in a different room from the last two remaining members of his crew.

It had been bigger, but the old captain had died horrifically four years ago in the same incident that had cost Achilles his knee, and Achilles’s Guard had left just a few days ago, showing rather remarkably good timing. So now it was a crew of three. Mood, pronounced ‘Mud’, apparently, was one of the Squidfolk, and nominally good at piloting, though less good at navigating. As to temperament … well, Achilles had known rainclouds that were more cheerful. Boheme was a round-faced man with a habit of speaking in rhyme when he forgot not to, who was rather skilled at baking but, it had to be admitted, not much else. And there was Achilles, with his short hair that curled inappropriately, and the chin that could never quite be clean-shaven, and his grudge against the Navy. Achilles, with his bad knee and bad eyesight.

The eyesight story was embarrassing. In this modern day and age, no one needed to have less than 20/20 vision, because of laser eye surgery. When Achilles had gone in for laser eye surgery, he’d been longsighted. When they were finished with him, he was shortsighted. After that, he gave up on surgery, and just wore glasses when he needed to see long distances. Which was often, considering his job.

The three of them had, until recently, crewed a broken-down ship even greyer than most, which leaked Phlebotinium when it rained. They’d taken jobs as they came, but were rumrunners, mostly, sneaking outlawed alcohol in and out of cities, countries, continents and planets. That was what they had been. Not much, but better than now, staring at a fake garden scene, for Grim’s sake.

Achilles did not swear by Lady Luck, because Achilles was not the kind of man who took chances. Everything had to be planned, and he’d been planning this since he’d been shoved into this room and seen how young and naïve his guard was.

“A feeling?” said the guard doubtfully.

“Can’t you feel it?” said Achilles. “Sort of a rocking feeling, deep in your gut.”

“Hmm …” The guard screwed up his face in thought, and then he blinked. “Hey, you’re right!”


“I am,” agreed Achilles, managing to keep a question mark from sneaking onto the end of that sentence.

Naïve was right.

“Maybe you should check the window,” he added, pushing his luck. No, he didn’t believe in luck. Pushing his … whatever it was that people who didn’t believe in luck pushed.

“Mm, you’re right,” said the guard, leaning up to it.

Achilles got to his feet, a little awkwardly, but as quietly as he could. They’d taken his blaster, of course, and it had been a cheap blaster anyway, the kind that fell apart when you dropped it and had an oddish habit of boiling any still water that you happened to pass whether it was on or not. But there was a red metal fire extinguisher on one wall. Achilles limped over to it and unhooked it with a ringing clang.

“What—?” the guard began, straightening from the window.

“That Drive must be really messed up,” said Achilles, and the guard frowned and leaned back down again.

Achilles limped over to him, and raised the fire extinguisher, ready to bring it down over his head and make his slow escape. He began to bring the fire extinguisher down –

And clumsily checked the motion as the Navy man who’d captured them walked through the stylishly hissing door.

He hated the Navy with the burning intensity of, if not a thousand suns, then definitely a few dozens. A few baker’s dozens. The Navy soldier who’d been standing guard over him hadn’t quite been up to par – perhaps they’d figured that it didn’t take the sharpest sword in the weapons shop to stand guard over a crippled rumrunner – but normally Navy men were sharp, intelligent, decisive. Sharp, intelligent, decisive slimeballs, he added in his mind, because that thought had come dangerously close to a compliment. Navy was the only human empire of any decent size, and boy, did it know it.

This Navy soldier looked much more like the Navy norm; sharp, with a clean-shaven jaw that Achilles envied and a navy Navy uniform so neat that he looked as if he’d just walked out from beneath an iron.

The man had polished buttons, for Grim’s sake.

“What are you doing?” asked the Navy officer, in a tone so sharp you could shave with it, unless you were Achilles, in which case it wouldn’t do much good.

Achilles tried, unsuccessfully, to hide the fire extinguisher behind his back.

The guard, straightening, explained, “Sir, the Phlebotinum Drive was … oh.” He looked at Achilles, who was still not doing a very good job of hiding the fire extinguisher. The poor guard looked crestfallen at this unexpected betrayal. Perhaps he’d assumed that a gammy leg meant that Achilles couldn’t use his arms properly.

“It’s Phlebotinium,” said Achilles, unhelpfully. Phlebotinum was the watered-down, less awesome-sounding version, like aluminium and aluminum.

The Navy officer sighed and pinched his nose, in that extremely professional way that Navy officers had. It reminded Achilles of Midas, and made him want to punch the officer in the face, or, preferably, whack him over the head with the fire extinguisher.

“Sorry, Ensign, I should have warned you,” he said, in a crisp voice that made it utterly clear that any fault in the matter was the Ensign’s own and nothing to do with him. “This man and his accomplices”

Accomplices. That phrase amused Achilles. Boheme would probably be bemused by it, and Mood would probably just undulate his tentacles miserably.

Anyway. His thought had interrupted the officer’s words midway through a sentence, which would probably be hellishly hard to punctuate.

“have been in Navy’s custody many times before, evading us each time. They’re as slippery as fish.”

“He had a limp,” the Ensign muttered guiltily. “I assumed he was helpless!”

“That’s politically incorrect,” said the officer sternly, at the same time as Achilles, annoyed, said, “Oh, I am helpless. Truly. Just give me a blaster or a knife, and I’ll show you how helpless I am.” He paused, and added, “With visual aids.”

“See?” said the officer. “Tricky as Brushtail. Real risk-taker, this one.”

“What?” said Achilles, in considerable surprise. “No, I don’t take risks.” But he was drowned out by the officer saying, in a voice that wasn’t raised at all but still managed to cut completely through what Achilles had been saying, “We’ll need to take this one to the Supreme Commander himself. Nothing else will do.”

His words drowned out all other thoughts out of Achilles. He mutely let himself be handcuffed to the chair, not putting up a fight, showing no signs of slipperiness.

The Supreme Commander. Well, well,well. Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps he could turn this to his advantage. Captain Achilles was a planning man, and he didn’t take risks. But he could imagine breaking this rule for the sake of the Supreme Commander.

He wished that the naïve young Ensign had taken him up on his offer. He really could use a knife.


There were few people who deserved a good stab through the heart as much as Midas Beckett did.


*


The assassin came quickly. Assassins always do.

All Midas saw was a swirl of black, and he had just enough time to push to the side. Fortunately, he was sitting on a comfy office chair. Rolling out of the way wasn’t dramatic, but he was willing to sacrifice drama for the sake of, y’know, living.

The assassin’s knife, tipped with a nasty black goop of some sort, sunk into the chair’s lumbar-supported, pleasantly foamed back. Midas, by this time, had had enough time to gather his wits, and he kicked out, rewarded with a startled cry as his booted foot connected with the assassin’s knee. The assassin automatically half-fell, and Midas snatched up his Navy laser and trained it on him.

The assassin went still.

“Don’t kill me,” said the assassin, and the voice was female. She carefully, slowly, pulled off her dark hood, revealing a tumble of black hair and slanted, exotic eyes. “I was under orders. I wouldn’t want to kill you. Not a handsome man like you. Have mercy, brave sir! I have heard many great things of the mercy of the Navy’s Commander. Mercy—”

He squeezed the trigger, and, quite calmly, shot her through the head. She slumped forward onto the ground, black hair falling over the scorch wound, and, in death, the hand she’d had behind her back opened. The knife she’d pulled from her boot fell to the ground. It, too, was tipped with that black poison, which, Midas noted, had begun to eat through the carpet.

He looked down at the dead woman and said, “Hmm.”

Then he put his laser back in its usual place at his belt, and went outside to see if all his guards were dead.

There was only one guard outside his door, the others either dead or distracted by a poker game, them being Navy. This guard was slumped against the wall, breathing in a bubbly, wounded kind of way.

Midas knelt down beside him.

“Sir,” croaked the wounded man, “tell my mother—”

“Rubbish,” said Midas.

The wounded man blinked, but then ploughed on, with admirable determination. “--that I didn’t mean to burn that rug when I was—”

“Officer,” said Midas wearily, “you’re not even mortally wounded. And there’s a Grade 8 healist just down the corridor.”

The wounded man looked at him, then glanced at the wound in his side, which was huge and raw and bleeding. Apparently deciding to trust the evidence of his own eyes than his Supreme Commander, he continued, “—eight, and that the cookie thing was an accident, and that it wasn’t my fault about the goose, really I didn’t know that noodles could—”

Midas slung an arm around the man’s shoulder and heaved him up, figuring that at least this might make the idiot shut up. And it did, too. The injured man drew in a startled, pained sort of breath, the kind of breath that you draw in when you have a huge gaping wound in your side and one of your superiors has just hauled you up for no easily explained reason.

It was a short stagger down the corridor, and blessedly silent; the man had evidently decided to give up babbling in favour of following his orders, which was a good plan, and Midas commended him for it.

He touched the wall, and a section of it slid away. He went through the door, and slid the injured man on the cool, metal table. All healists’ tables were metal, for some reason. Funny. You’d think there were more advanced materials out there for a table on which a probably only partly-clothed patient would lie, ones that wouldn’t make them shiver with cold and immediately feel wrong-footed. Perhaps that was the point.

Midas shivered just touching it, and looked around. It was the usual sort of medical bay, and he’d been here a few times before, when previous assassination attempts or crusades had left him injured instead of one of his guards. He’d been lucky this time, if you could count a woman dead by his hand as lucky. Strange. It was always the tendency to romanticise assassins, but when one was trying to kill you, you always thought more of staying alive than of the romance of the situation.

The healist bustled over. “Oh, good,” she said, sounding pleased. Her hair was scraped into a bun so severely that it was a marvel it hadn’t been yanked out. She was dressed in neat black shoes, neat white socks, a neat black skirt, and a neat, elaborate white shirt – all in all, the picture of a professional concert musician. A lot of people who played the heal were like that. And then you got people who played the heala, who were almost as controlled and professional, but not quite; one strand of hair free from the bun, socks that didn’t match, that kind of thing.

“Can you heal him?” said Midas.

“Of course,” said the healist, in minor indignation.

Midas shrugged and went to stand in the corner as she got to work.

Heals were interesting. They were cleverly designed things, as much instrument as device; to play the heal meant to be both an accomplished doctor and a skilled musician, which meant that healists were rare, but they were as valuable as gold. Heals were by far the most efficient of medical devices, when you had someone who could use them.

It was Mule that had designed heals, and they were distinctly his work, with the combination of different mediums – the shimmering light that played over the wound, the soft music that crooned out of it, the graceful lines of the device itself.

“Done. Quite a simple piece,” said the healist, sounding almost disappointed. Didn’t even have to do any positioning. Good thing the knife missed his kidney; otherwise it’d probably be in a minor key.”

Midas just nodded his head, as people who were ignorant of music always did when musicians got enthusiastic with their terminology.

“Try to bring me something more challenging, won’t you, Supreme Commander?” added the healist.

He hadn’t asked anyone to call him that. They just did.

“I’ll … do my best,” he said noncommittally, and glanced at the formally-wounded man, now quite wan and bloodstained but otherwise perfectly fit. “I’ll be expecting you into work tomorrow, man. And no repeats of the goose incident, you hear me?”

The man cracked a smile at that, and Midas began to leave.

“Oh, and congratulations,” he added, pausing by the door. “You’ve just been promoted.”

Oh, those other guards would be in trouble when he found them. If they weren’t dead, they’d soon wish they were.

Midas Beckett looked just like you’d expect him to look. His hair was cropped so close to his head it was just a thin coating of brown fuzz, his face square and determined, the face of a man you could rely on, a man who was good in a crisis. His nose was slightly crooked, where it had been broken, a few years ago, by an old friend who was now an enemy.

All of his old friends were enemies, these days. Friends were the first thing you sacrificed in a career like his.

Though, now he thought about it, he’d never made any conscious decision to sacrifice anything, or to gain power. It had just … happened.

Perhaps he should visit Mule some time.

But no. The last time he’d visited his brother had been five years ago, and the air had been full of awkward silences and even awkwarder words. He was in no hurry to repeat that experience.

It was lonely, being who he was. But there was no point complaining about it.

Midas stumped off to arrange getting his room cleaned. That black poison on the knives really hadn’t looked good for the carpet. Not to mention the blood.


*


The room had windows, but they were very small, and high up. They were the kind of windows that seemed to say that anything getting through them was immediately unwelcome, and even light was let through only with a sort of grudging tolerance, born of necessity. Most of the light in the room came from a skylight in the ceiling. This was so arranged that the light from it always fell squarely on the centrepiece of the otherwise empty but extremely vast room, a small pedestal, or, more specifically, the thing resting on the small pedestal. It was a diamond of surpassing and truly impressive size, which caught the light and refracted it and made it do all sorts of interesting things, and it gleamed casually on its black velvet cushion as though it wasn’t worth in the region of several billion gold coins/creds/whichever currency you used, though it, in fact, was.

The rest of the room was so empty that, if it was a metaphor for the rest of the world, it would have philosophers wandering through it wondering whether there was any deeper meaning to anything, which, in this case, there wasn’t. It was simply a room that had been commissioned specifically to show off this diamond. The owner of the diamond was one Mister Jael Fletcher, whose common name embarrassed him so vastly that even the possession of a huge diamond didn’t entirely appease it. He’d acquired the diamond from a late friend, and now visited it once a year, on the anniversary of his friend’s death. Mister Fletcher considered this very poetic. It would probably be more poetic if it hadn’t been he who had discretely arranged his friend’s untimely demise, but you couldn’t have everything.

A section of the skylight shifted. This was unusual; skylights, as a rule, are not very mobile things, and, in fact, are distinctly immobile the majority of the time. Unless this was a bizarrely limber young skylight with a taste for rebellion, then someone was moving it.

The rebellious section of skylight shifted again, and then grated, slowly and with infinite care, to be laid gently on another section of skylight. A man who had been lying down on a corresponding section of skylight moved forward, slowly and patiently, making sure that he didn’t make any sudden moves and that his weight was spread evenly. He was a black shadow against the sky. Of course, the fact that he was wearing a dramatic black cloak may have added to this impression.

The man paused, for a second, over the gap. Then he performed a tricky and complicated manoeuvre that started with him lying on the skylight, ended with him falling straight as an arrow through the gap, and had a bit involving using the iron grid to flip up and over somewhere in the middle.

The man fell soundlessly, cloak billowing, and landed just as soundlessly, thanks to his rubber-soled boots and, in part, to the thickly expensive carpet. He straightened from his crouch, and stroked his pointed little beard thoughtfully. It was the kind of beard worn by rogues and, somewhat more often, goats.

The beard, like his (now somewhat ruffled) hair, strongly bold eyebrows and quick, clever eyes, was a shade of something or other so dark it was nearly black, too dark, in fact, to see quite what it would be otherwise. In fact, all of him looked quick and clever, not just his eyes. He was as slim and nimble as a ferret, as evidenced by the way that, after glancing around for traps or guards, he somersaulted over to the diamond on its pedestal, for no other reason than that he could.

“Aren’t you a pretty piece,” he murmured to the diamond, dark eyes dancing with glee. He reached out a hand for it, and then drew his hand back sharpish, scolding himself fiercely. It would be a fool thing to just snatch it from the pedestal. Just because the diamond looked like it was undefended didn’t mean that it was. In fact, it probably meant that whatever defenses it had were of the vicious, invisible, ‘spike pit opening up beneath your feet and sending you plummeting to your extremely messy death’ sort. The man had no wish to plummet to an extremely nasty death, or indeed to die in any way, shape, or form, not even heroically, so he examined the diamond, critically, from all angles.

From all angles it remained an innocent and extremely huge diamond.

The man rubbed at the coin on a chain round his neck, automatically, while he tried to decide whether or not to take the extremely huge diamond regardless of his ignorance of its possible defences.

The decision-making process was largely a sham, because it was no decision at all.

He reached out and, carefully, ever so carefully, slipped the diamond from its rest on the black velvet cushion, nudging it with his nimble fingers, a little to the side, a little more … with his other hand, he eased a pouch full of sand of what, he hoped, was about the same weight to the place where the diamond had been. The diamond cleared the cushion, the pouch nestled in its place, and no alarms sounded. It was, all in all, seamlessly and impressively done.

“Hah!” said the thief, loudly.

And then an alarm sounded, as loud and strident and hideous as a few dozen cats being tortured by a brass band that included five trombones and at least one tuba.

Oops.

The thief, with honed thiefy instincts, span towards one blank wall, just as a seamless door in the wall opened and disgorged half a dozen security guards.

Oops indeed.

To say that it was a tricky situation was like saying that space was kind of cold.

“Halt!” cried the first of the guards, emboldened by the fact that he had another five guards to back him up, all in neat, professional uniforms. They weren’t Guards, though, which, in turn, emboldened the thief.

“Halt yourself!” he said, in tones of such imperial command that the first guard looked a little wrong-footed.

“You’re the thief!” barked the guard.

“Oh yes?” The man held out his open hands, having slipped the huge diamond into the open front of his crimson tunic. It bulged quietly, and he hoped they wouldn’t notice. One had to think fast in these situations. “What did I steal, exactly? Other than your tongue, apparently,” he added with a ringing laugh, when the guard couldn’t reply.

Another guard, evidently more astute than his colleague, pointed out, “There’s an empty pedestal behind you.”

“Is there?” said the man, turning to look at the pedestal in wide-eyed surprise. “I assumed that was meant to showcase that extremely fine cushion!”

“You are plainly lying,” said the second guard. “Who are you, anyway?”

The man drew himself up to his full, unimpressive height, stroked his pointed beard and declared, in ringing tones, “I,” and here he stretched out his arms, cloak billowing, “am the Prince of Thieves!”

“So, definitely a thief, then,” said the second guard, looking impressively unimpressed.

Oops.

“It’s … a … hereditary title,” the Prince of Thieves hedged, then sighed and said, “You’re not going to believe this, are you.”

“Nope.”

“Certain?”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely, positively sure?”

“Yes,” said the guard, drawing his laser.

The Prince of Thieves shrugged. Sighed, resignedly. “All right, then.”

And he pulled a long whip from his belt where none of them had seen it, wrapped it around a ceiling beam (though why the ceiling beam was there was a mystery; it seemed the kind of ceiling beam left somewhere purely to be convenient for things like this, for people like the Prince) with an accomplished flick of his wrist, ran half a dozen steps and launched himself into the air, swinging far above their heads before he came down at a run, rolled, and dashed at full speed through the open door, whip already dislodged from the beam with another casual wrist-flick and tucked into his belt.

The silence that followed was one filled with the kind of silent, reluctant awe that this sort of manoeuvre fully deserved, not least because ‘manoeuvre’ is a hard word to spell.

The guard who had first conversed with the so-called Prince of Thieves broke the silence by cursing, loudly and extensively. Most of the gods got dragged into his cussing, and there was some stuff about goats and dubious parentage thrown in for good measure.

The second guard added mournfully, “And he even stole the cushion.”


*


The Prince of Thieves waited until he was a good distance away before laughing manically.

He was attached to his laugh, and as proud of it as he was of his big but silent boots, his pointed beard, his fine, crimson-dyed clothes – in fact, as proud as he was of everything else about himself. He was that kind of person. But it was unprofessional to go ‘Muahahaha!’ when you were running for your life or in the middle of stealing a chest of gold from a den of sleeping trained attack mongooses, so he’d learned not to laugh until well out of shooting/killing/attack-mongoosing range.

Well, he’d thought he had. Ah well, no one was perfect, though he came pretty close to it sometimes.

He pulled out the diamond and tossed it into the air, and said, “Hah.”

Not a manic laugh, this one; just the quiet, satisfied laugh of a job well done. He was that kind of person, too.

“Thank you, Lady Luck!” he cried jubilantly, though he was probably talking to himself more than to any particular god. The Prince of Thieves wasn’t one to believe in any god but his own swift fingers, his own running feet. Gods were dandy, but they weren’t so good at actual, practical things, if they even existed, which he doubted. Besides which, the only gods likely to sympathise with a thief were Lady Luck and the Trickster, neither of whom were the kind of people you wanted on your side, if the myths were any indication.

He’d hidden his small, grey-streaked ship in a copse of trees not all that far from the building, and he climbed in it, quickly, but not hastily. Undue haste had snatched the rug from beneath the feet of many an unwary thief.

His ship was almost as unremarkable in the inside as it was on the out, and just as grey; flat bed with a flatter mattress set into the wall, message-screen above that, a few items of furniture, the usual sink and toilet and such hidden behind small doors that would have barely hidden a broom closet. It wasn’t luxury, but it was small, and people didn’t notice it. More than worth a little inconvenience.

The Prince set a course, and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling as the familiar judder of takeoff shook through him.

He turned the gold coin around his neck over and over in his fingers, rubbing its tarnished surface, letting himself relax, stretching aching muscles. Soon, he’d have to deal with selling that monster diamond, organising a buyer, a suitable price, returning to his knife-edge existence; but, for now, he already had more than enough money to be able to afford a few minutes just to lie there, and think of nothing.

[Amneiger]

This is good. =D I like the bit with King Henry the Eighth. And the scene with Mule. And the scene with Midas. And the other scenes too. And yeah. =D

Oh, a spelling error I noticed: "Ada rested her head on his shoulder, and he knew without looking at her that he was as beautiful as the day he’d married her, seven years ago." "He was" should be "she was." Unless I'm terribly misunderstanding that sentence.

[Rikku]

Welll, I don't know. Mule is awfully proud .... xD Yeah, thanks for spotting that. *scurries to correct*

[Rikku]

Georgette, Wil and Rosenbach irk me. As does Ferre.

SPOILER: Click to show

It was morning.

Mind you, this was kind of hard to tell. Ochre had the kind of atmosphere that is lovingly referred to as ‘ambience’, and also referred to, somewhat less lovingly and entirely more accurately, in some, most or, to be entirely accurate, all parts of the world, as ‘that bloody noxious smog’. Often it wasn’t referred to at all, because the people who would, hypothetically, be doing the hypothetical referring to it, hypothetically, were all too busy coughing up their lungs and oseophaguses. (Spelling optional.)

Not all parts of it were entirely uninhabitable, but, then again, not many parts were entirely inhabitable, either. Ochre was in that rough patch of planetary development that meant that it was … well, developing, roughly. It was that kind of planet, the kind where there were entirely too many volcanoes and you were more likely to see vast landscapes made from slabs of fissured rock than pretty, whimsical meadows. Occasionally a pretty, whimsical meadow sprouted up, here and there, as pretty, whimsical meadows so often do; seeing this normally happened in the shadow of one of the aforementioned entirely too many volcanoes, these pretty, whimsical meadows were often seen as a statement on the evanescence of life, because they seldom lasted very long before being blasted out of existence.

Seren rather liked Ochre. It wasn’t the kind of planet to put up with any nonsense.

She was standing on the outskirts of a small town, staring out. A slight, sulphurous wind was toying with the edges of her thick brown cloak, and her hand rested pensively on the ringed handle of her complicated sword. The sky was a blank expanse of stormy grey, with sharp flickers of lightning here and there, in the distance. This was one of the less volcanic areas; the landscape was flat, having been blasted entirely clean of any noticeable animal life, vegetation, or, indeed, anything.

There was life, though, if you knew where to look; stricken, foul-tasting streams wandered carefully through the rocks, and here and there she could see flashes of movement that abruptly stilled; ground-coloured mammals and small, straggly birds, diving for cover too fast to be seen. A ragged-winged hawk wheeled far, far overhead, dangerously. The thermals from the baking ground that held it up could just as easily prevent it from getting down again. There was a reason why Pathfinders never practiced planet-diving onto Ochre. Their parachutes would catch the heated air, and then they’d go up, rather than down, until they reached cooler, higher air, at which point they’d waft gently downwards, until they met warm air coming up. And there wasn’t an ‘everything you could possibly need to stay alive while stuck in Ochre’s ridiculously treacherous atmosphere’ device on the Pathfinder gadget-belt. Sometimes people had been known to get stuck in the atmosphere for months.

Seren frowned broodingly, trying to get the impression that she was out here of her own free will and, what’s more, for some vastly, cosmically important reason, and not because, say, the bartender had finally got the courage to not let her back in the tavern. (Unless it was an inn.) And the other inn/tavernkeepers had gotten wind of her. She’d be lucky to get a drink from anyone in this small but pert town for years, even counting the fact that time was more or less a subjective value, on the galactic scale.

Fortunately, she’d brought her own. Speaking of which …

Seren unhooked the flask of whiskey from her (gadget-less) belt, and took a thoughtful gulp. It burned down her throat and trickled viscously into her stomach, where it immediately began to do its best to sear a hole into the stomach wall and contaminate her bloodstream.

She’d had better. This stuff didn’t pack enough punch.

She might have to wait for good alcohol (of the ‘brains smashed out by a lemon wrapped around a gold brick’ variety) until she ran into that wandering rumrunner again. What was his name? She couldn’t remember.

Well, it doesn’t matter, she told herself, cheerfully ignoring the haze in her mind. It didn’t matter either. In fact, the fact that she could hardly remember anything, rather than just having mysteriously specific memory loss, was surely a good sign, wasn’t it? I mean, otherwise it would probably be a sign of having, say, burned some knowledge out of her own mind, and who would do that? No one, that’s who, not the President of the Galaxy himself! … not that Little Squid had a President. Doesn’t matter at all if I can’t remember that rumrunner’s name, or demeanour, or ship, or personality, or … look, well, he’s distinctive, okay? I mean, who wears glasses these days?

“Excuse me, miss?” said a polite but nervous voice behind her.

Seren turned to glare at the nervously polite speaker. “What?”

“I couldn’t help noticing your uniform,” said the nervously polite person, in a nervously polite kind of way.

“I bet you could help it,” muttered Seren, resignedly.

The girl looked between the age of twelve and twenty – hard to tell with humans, they all looked alike to Seren – and had hair that looked like burnished copper would look like if it hadn’t been burnished. Her face had a reddish tint, probably either from the reflected ‘ambience’ of the heated rock, the heat of the heated rock, or the fact that she was embarrassed. From the permanent nervousness on her face that expressed itself in large, concerned eyes and a forehead that was already wrinkled with worried frowns, Seren was willing to bet that the last was the case. And Seren won more bets than she used to, nowadays, mostly because she would never have dreamed of thinking of gambling before her dishonourable discharge.

The man standing next to her was even worse, if anything. He was so tall and spindly that he resembled a spider who had run afoul of the Spanish Inquisition, and had been stretched without mercy. He basically looked like his skin was a little too close to his bones for comfort.

“And your sword,” said the girl.

“Well,” admitted Seren reluctantly, “it is noticeable.” And she swept the cloak away from her sword and rested her hand on the hilt, showily. “What do you two want?”

“Well, you cut straight to the chase,” said a shadowy figure, stepping out from the shadows, shadowily. In a swirl of fluffy, snowy hair.

“Oh,” said Seren. “Hello, Ferre. Didn’t see you there.”

“No,” Ferre agreed, matter-of-factly, as though people not seeing him was a basic fact of life, which it probably was. The man was as sneaky as a ninja.

“I send out a revised draft of my question. What do you three want?”

The girl bit her lip, then blurted, “I’m going on a quest.”

“Oh, stars,” groaned Seren.

“What?” said the girl, in indignant indignation.

“You do realise how bloody generic that is? ‘Oh, let’s write a B-grade fantasy novel and, I know – let’s have a quest!’ We might as well have elves, for Luck’s sake!”

“Uh, the Kind kind of are—” began the spindly man hesitantly.

“Trust me on this,” said Seren, overriding him magnificently. “You have a quest, you’re doomed.” She flung out a sarcastic hand. “But hey, why let me stop you? Why don’t you go and find yourself a big nasty evil overlord while you’re at it?”

“Well,” said the girl, tucking a strand of reddish hair behind her ear. Her voice had a touch more wryness than Seren would have expected it. “Now you mention it …”

Seren held up her hands. “Hey, did I ask for all the sordid details? I have business of my own to worry about.” She turned sharply away and went back to brooding at the smouldering horizon.

“Like what?” said Ferre softly. “Exactly? I’m curious.”

Seren frowned. She had rather liked Ferre, and here he was being … what, a bodyguard? Some hired mercenary? To a quest. It was nauseating.

She turned back to tell him so, in time to see Ferre offering the girl, who hadn’t yet told her name, his red-metalled sword, hilt first. “Well, I don’t know about Miss Uppity Pathfinder Seren here, but you have my sword, Georgette.”

“Oh,” said Georgette. “Well, okay. Not sure what I’m meant to do with it, but hey, you know what they say about horses and gift mouths.” She shrugged and took the sword. Ferre looked surprised. Seren hid a smirk. Georgette continued, doubtfully, “Maybe we can, I don’t know, trade it for … something. That’s useful. To our quest. What do you think, Rosenbach?”

The spindly man gave a start. “Eh?” he said, and she waved the sword at him. “What? Are you a bandit in disguise now, or something?” He looked confused, and understandably edgy. He also looked vague, like he wasn’t quite where everyone else was. Possibly he had been dropped on his head when he was a child.

Georgette explained, “Ferre gave me his sword.”

“I knew you shouldn’t have hired that fellow,” said Rosenbach, vaguely. “Nightkind are dodgy. You’re lucky he didn’t know enough to … stab you with the right end.”

Ferre’s peppery eyes glinted with danger. Seren realised that now was probably the right time to interfere, if she didn’t want to see Rosenbach and Georgette dead from the Nightkind’s vengeful wrath.

“Hang on a bit, will you?” she said. “I’d like to get popcorn. This is entertaining.”

Ferre gave her a flat, peppery look. Seren smiled sweetly.

“Really, though,” she continued, her voice almost serious. “If you really want a Pathfinder, feel free to find one. Pathfinders are the best, well worth the exorbitant price you have to pay for them. A Pathfinder will guide your way and your back and keep you alive. In the darkest of nights, a Pathfinder will set their sights on a star, and guide you where you want to go.” Seren shrugged, took a swig of whiskey, and then said, grinning crookedly, “But I’m not a Pathfinder.”

Georgette said, “But you’re the closest thing we have.”

“If you’re trying to tug at my heartstrings,” said Seren, “it isn’t working. They’re broke.”

“And so are you,” said Rosenbach, with sudden, surprising alertness. “Aren’t you? Or you wouldn’t be resorting to cheap whiskey.”

“I happen to like whiskey,” said Seren roughly.

“I can see that,” said Rosenbach, with no particular intonation, but she glared at him anyway.

“Because of course, you have such deep insights into my character,” she snapped.

“I don’t know about him, but I do,” said Ferre.

“Oh yes? Like what?”

He grinned. “You’d be resorting to expensive whiskey.”

She glared at him, and then threw back her head and laughed. “Probably would, at that,” she said, more to herself than to them, and then continued, “So, you need a Pathfinder, hey?”

“Well—” started Rosenbach, in his vague, doubtful way, but Georgette elbowed him and said, very firmly, “Yes.”

“Tough. I’m not hiring.” Seren made a broad gesture, brown cloak flapping. “I’m done with that. I don’t live in that world any more. I’m not a Pathfinder, and I don’t want to be. And there’s nothing you can do to change that.”

Georgette pursed her lips, looked her up and down, and said, “We’ll buy you alcohol. As much as you want.”

“I’m in,” said Seren, instantly.

Ferre raised his eyebrows and smiled to himself.

“None of that smirking, sonny jim,” she said, drily. “I’m not that predictable. Nor am I that far gone, or at least not yet. I need adventure.” Her face was as stormy and dramatic as the bleak horizon, and her voice was low and harsh. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt fear.”

Georgette looked from Seren to Ferre-pronounced-‘fear’ with a quizzical expression.

“Is that meant to be some kind of pickup line?” she asked Seren.

“For his sake, I sincerely hope not,” said Seren, grimly. It was the kind of grimness normally used only by men in suits backed up by other, larger men in suits, all of whom carry large clubs and say ‘kapische’ a lot. “Boss,” she added, somewhat belatedly.

“Ahem,” said Ferre. “We ought to get going. Make the most of the day, before it becomes too hot to move.”

“We can make it,” said Seren. “Easily. The ground holds the heat, but it holds the same amount of heat throughout the day, due to the chemical makeup of the igneous rocks.”

Rosenbach, Georgette and Ferre gave her looks that were uniform in their blank surprise.

“We did a course on Ochre at the Academy,” she explained, with a slightly bitter twist to her mouth, as though she’d bitten into something she didn’t like the taste of. “He’s right, though. Let’s get going. No time to waste.”

They set forth through the lingering outskirts of the sleepy, drably brown town. The houses were all built of wood, which seemed something of an oversight. Perhaps it was fireproof wood. Though where they got the trees from, Seren had no idea. No business of hers, anyway.

Her sword already felt too heavy, and they’d only been walking half a minute. Georgette was talking seriously to Rosenbach, who kept on giving her those irritatingly distant looks. Ferre kept on checking and rechecking his plasma bow.

This was going to be a long trip.

“So,” said Ferre, in the kind of voice people use when they desperately want to make conversation and are only a few awkward pauses away from resorting to talking loudly about the weather. “Why did you leave the Pathfinder Academy?”

“Because I was forced to,” she said, cheerfully.

“Ah,” he said, somehow making that single syllable sound sarcastic. “Very illuminating. Thank you.”

“What did you expect? I’m hardly likely to babble about my personal life to a complete stranger.”

“Indeed,” he agreed. “Though the way your hand automatically went to your sword when I asked tells me that either you’re a lot more violent than you seem or the reason you left involves your sword, somehow.”

“Very astute,” she said, making her voice sound reluctant. “And … accurate.”

His black face looked surprised. “Truly?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, seriously. “It’s a magic sword. The only one who can wield it is the Chosen One, foretold in prophecy a thousand years hence.”

“Really?”

“No.”

He looked away huffily, his acres of hair billowing in the breeze. That must be impractical, and he surely had no side vision at all. How could he be as sneaky as a ninja? His hair glowed, white strands not just catching the light but all-out snatching it from the air.

Perhaps it was the restrictions imposed on Ferre by his hair that meant Seren was the first to notice the footsteps behind them.

“Hey,” she said, to Georgette. “Footsteps behind us. Thought you might like to know.”

Duty done, she went back to wondering exactly what risks this expedition would allow her to take. The girl probably wanted her to protect her, another stupid hired guard like Ferre. Protecting the client was part of the oath that Pathfinders took at the start of each expedition … but Seren wasn’t a Pathfinder any more, and she had made no oaths. Georgette hadn’t even asked her to, another sign of naivety on the girl’s part.

This idiotic quest already seemed dull, and they hadn’t even started.

“Footsteps?” said Georgette, in an undertone. Good. She wasn’t a complete idiot, then. Just a partial one. “Someone’s following us?”

Seren sighed. “Footsteps behind you stopping when you stop and starting when you start generally indicate that, yes.”

“Is it a robber, do you think?” said Georgette, eyes luminous with fear. Why was she even doing this quest? She was scared by feet, for stars’ sake.

“I don’t know. I can’t really be bothered turning around. Maybe they’ll leave us alone if we don’t—”

“Someone’s following us!” Ferre barked, and he turned in a whirl of hair and angry confrontation to angrily confront whoever was following them.

Well, there went that plan. Seren turned, too. It wasn’t like there was much else she could do.

A cloaked figure stood behind them. Who would wear a cloak in this heat?

… Seren was different. Her cloak was for disguise, not warmth. Didn’t count.

The stranger was tallish, and gangly, though nowhere near as spindly as Rosenbach. His face was hidden behind his cloak’s hood, and Seren had a nasty pang of recognition, because he looked exactly like the many, many adventurers and kings-in-hiding and the like that lurked around in bars and drank too much. And people who drank too much were dangerous people, all the more so if they were kings.

“I’ll leave you to question him, Mistress Pathfinder,” hissed Ferre, giving the cloaked stranger a terrifying look from beneath his bristling white eyebrows. The cloaked stranger took a step back automatically, as though being questioned by Mistress Pathfinder was the most terrifying thing in existence, which was, indeed, the impression that Ferre seemed to be trying to give. Well, Seren did like living up to her reputation.

“Right,” she said determinedly, and gave the stranger a brown-eyed glare. “Are you a king?” she demanded.

“Sorry, what?” he said, in a young, confused voice. Apart from the fact that it was a male voice, it did not have much in common with that of a king. Kings normally tended to the unctuous, rather than the young and confused. Though there were exceptions to every rule, of course.

“Good,” said Seren, and then, as something struck her, she added worriedly, “You’re not a halfling, are you?”

The stranger looked down at himself, and then up. “Er. No?”

“Goblin?”

“No.”

“Youngest son of seven off to seek his fortune? Orphan boy seeking those who killed his parents? Orphan boy with a mysterious curse? Orphan boy with a mysterious gift?”

Seren wanted to cover all her bases.

“No!”

“Are you sure?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes!” he said, his voice breaking a bit in exasperation. “I’m not even an orphan!”

She stared at him thoughtfully. Then she glanced down at the absurdly massive sword at her hip and suggested, “I could help with that, if you like.”

“Seren!” said Georgette, appalled.

“What? He’s a teenager. He’d thank me.”

“I heard you talking,” said the young man, pulling his hood further over his face. It was difficult to tell why; his face was already more than obscured enough. “I want to help.”

There was no mistaking the eager, fearful determination in his voice. Ugh. Teenagers.

“Huzzah,” said Georgette, directing a beaming smile at the young man. “Another young hero willing to join our fellowship. Truly, it is a—”

“Firstly,” said Seren, “no one says huzzah any more, or indeed at all, and, secondly, if you even think of dreaming of thinking of thinking of saying the word ‘fellowship’ again, I shall hit you very hard.”

Georgette hmphed.

“Please don’t tell me you’re going to let him come with us,” said Seren, with weary dread. Better and better. Two teenagers. Hormones would be rampant.


“I am the quester here,” said Georgette haughtily. “What I say goes.”

Seren grunted.

They began to walk out across the blasted landscape, which has already been described more than adequately.

Within a few short minutes, they were all suffering from the heat. No one said anything, of course. Georgette tramped on in determination, her face red and shiny with exertion. Rosenbach looked dreamy and disconnected, as he always seemed to – there was some kind of mystery to that man – but his long-legged lope slowed to a shamble. Ferre’s stupidly long hair was slick with sweat.

Seren shed her cloak. Her dull blue Pathfinder uniform had been made to withstand all temperatures comfortably, and it still had the ‘withstand all temperatures’ thing, if not the ‘comfortably’. At any rate, she didn’t boil like a lobster, which was something, even if the anti-grav on her large metal boots was being a bit dodgy. They kept on going from being slightly lighter than air, like boots that were on a diet of cucumber sandwiches and rosewater, to being considerably heavier than it, like boots that had a serious weight problem. Combined with the fact that the landscape, close to, was more riddled with potholes than a puzzle book was riddled with … riddles, Seren was constantly plunging and clambering, and if she hadn’t been wearing black fingerless gloves her palms would have been a mass of scratches. As it was, her fingers were a mass of scratches. That was the problem with fingerless gloves.

Oddly, though, the tall young man, who had introduced himself as Wil, didn’t seem to be having any problem with the heat, not like the others were. He was striding along, keeping up with the others easily and without showing any outward signs of being about to swoon with the heat, though admittedly swooning might be more Georgette’s area. And he was still wearing the cloak, too.

The others were mostly more concerned with the sun that had finally boiled through the clouds and was now boiling through them than with the other members of their party, so Seren grabbed the boy’s arm and walked extremely slowly until they were ten or twenty metres behind the others, where they could talk in an undertone without anyone hearing.

“So,” said Seren. “Anything you want to tell us?”

“No,” said Wil, with a promptness that meant he was telling the strict truth.

Seren sighed and rephrased her question. “Anything you should tell us?”

“… No,” said Wil, with a hesitancy that meant he was telling anything but the truth, no matter whether it was strict truth or relaxed, easy-going truth.

“Oh, Luck,” said Seren, seized by sudden foreboding. “Please tell me you’re not a halfling after all.”

There was amusement in his voice, and probably on his face, too, not that it could be seen beneath the hood. “I think it’s fairly safe to say I’m not a halfling.”

“Good. I hate halflings.”

“You’re racist.”

“And you are hiding something. Nobody’s perfect.” She paused. “Some of us more so than others,” she added, for the interests of accuracy. “Are you a sparky?”

Wil fell over onto his face.

“Ow. That must have hurt,” she said, with mild interest.

“How did you know?”

“Well, because the ground is all rough, and superheated, so falling on your face is definitely going to—”

“Not about that! How did you know that … that I …?”

“What, you mean you are a sparky? Huh.” She surveyed him critically. “Aren’t you too tall? Take off that cloak. Let’s get a look at you.”

He sighed, reluctantly, and pulled off his cloak. Beneath it he had a keen, interested face, with oval eyes and lean features. His hair was brownish and short, and didn’t look quite like hair normally looked, and there was more of it than you’d expect – there were feathery tassels of hair, if it was hair, down his arms and ringing his hands, and elsewhere too. He wore no shoes, but his bare feet were clawed and tough. (A little too much like a halfling for Seren’s liking; next thing you knew he’d be wandering around eating seed-cake). His clothes were simple, in drab colours that blended in with the landscape. He wore jewellery in the sparky style, though, if not quite as much as usual; there was a string of the usual red beads around his neck, so rich and translucent a red that they seemed to glow with colour. And another round his wrist, and one round his ankle, and a bead set in each of the rings in one of the pointed, tufted ears that poked through his furlike hair, the other ear devoid of decoration.

Also he had a tail.

“Half-breed sparky. That’s almost as bad as an orphan boy,” said Seren dismally, and with that, she trailed after the others. This quest was doomed before it had even started, as far as she was concerned. No sign of the promised alcohol, and certainly no risks. She’d just have to hope that something dangerous would happen soon, before she became sober enough to become depressed over her circumstances all over again
.
It was only after they’d already set up camp and Seren was taking her watch, staring into the flickering embers of their somewhat superfluous but very comforting campfire, that she realised that she hadn’t gotten around to asking what they were actually questing for.

Oh well. Probably didn’t matter that much. A magic sword, treasure, a key that only opened doors if a certain name was said over it – this kind of quest seldom had much in the way of original thinking.


*


Noir was a dark planet.

Not only that. It transcended mere darkness, and dwelled in a twilight world, where sun was unheard of and the sky was black.

Exactly how the Nightkind had managed to make their homeworld like this was a question that science had never been able to answer, at least not satisfactorily, but there was no denying that it looked awesome. It was the kind of planet where every alley hid a skulking man in a trenchcoat and a battered trilby offering expensive brands of sword, with the brand on backwards, or arrows which fell to pieces if you so much as sneezed, ‘real cheap’, and then, in the next alley, another man offering to sell you markedly better swords and arrows to deal with the criminal who sold you the first ones. The people of Noir were as black as its skies.

In the middle of the capital city, which had some long complicated name with lots of apostrophes in it, was the palace. While there was little light to begin with, the huge palace seemed to draw all that remained into its huge black bulk, its dark walls glistening like a singularity that could suck in a universe of light and remain blacker than the ‘nite.

The palace was called The Palace of Longlived Shadows, as the name ‘The Palace of Eternal Shadows’ was already taken, and, was, in fact, the name of a rather seedy fun park ride. The Dark Tyrant of the Nightkind, who lived in the Palace (the first one, not the fun park one), would have just destroyed the Palace of Eternal Shadows and thrown the people who ran the fun park into a pit of rabid and extremely hungry crocodiles so he could take the name, but he’d decided, on reflection, that ‘Palace of Eternal Shadows’ was too cliché a name. In other respects he was less genre savvy. For example, his title was ‘The Dark Tyrant’. Please.

The Dark Tyrant’s throne room was larger than some islands, and made of polished black marble. Or so it seemed. Actually, the stone that made the throne room, and indeed the entire Palace, was made from the ground scales, bones and teeth of an extremely rare reptile, native to Noir and found only there. The Dark Tyrant supported conservation, and kept a whole population of the reptiles ready to hand so he could kill some of them whenever he liked and still have others left to kill later. The Dark Tyrant was a clever man, the kind of man that knew, if you killed all the population, there was no one left to bow to you, think of amusing titles for you with ‘Your Most Superior Venomous Evilness’ in them, and bring you delicate, expensive foods on silver plates, which you could throw at them.

A fawning toady oiled up to him. The Dark Tyrant kept his fawning toadies doused in lamp oil to remain suitably amphibian, and he kept guttering, foul-smelling candles close to hand to keep them suitably fawning.

“The Commander of your Armies of Darkness is here to see you, as you requested, Your Majestic Really Nastiness.” If the man’s voice had been any oilier, he would have been a serious fire hazard, not that he wasn’t anyway.

The Dark Tyrant smiled internally, while the toady quaked as though afraid he’d be set in fire then and there. Really, he hated the whole title business, and gamely kept it up because the population expected a few evil eccentricities in their Dark Tyrant. But every now and then it amused him.

On the outside, of course, the Dark Tyrant kept cold and forbidding, as he always did.

“Then send him in, you snivelling insect,” he said, sounding bored, and he waved a hand at another toady to bring a glass of wine over to him, and to taste it first.

The wine-taster sipped the wine, started to oil over to him, then slipped over slickly and crumpled to the ground, mouth foaming.

The Dark Tyrant’s wine was always poisoned, but it amused him to try it.

The first toady slid in with the Commander of the Armies of Darkness (another regrettable but necessary title), and then slid out, very quickly, leaving a trail of oil on the black floor.

The Commander of the Armies of Darkness was as tall and muscular as he would be if he spent all his spare time at home in front of the mirror, lifting weights and doing several thousand press-ups to a minute. Which he might do, actually. The Dark Tyrant did not select his Commanders based on intelligence; intelligent, ambitious people could so very easily aspire to become Dark Tyrants themselves.

The Dark Tyrant wondered where his … nephew? … had gone. Had the boy been a more distant relation than that? The Dark Tyrant had a feeling it involved ‘quadrice removed’ in it somewhere. Either way, the boy had been the only one of the Dark Tyrant’s household to show any real potential, even if he had stupid hair.
Troublesome, that he’d run away, but maybe that was a good thing – if the boy wasn’t looking for power, he’d hardly want to take it from the Dark Tyrant, now would he?

The Dark Tyrant couldn’t quite remember the boy’s name, though he had a feeling it probably had a lot of apostrophes in it, and a few ‘z’s and ‘x’s and ‘v’s skulking around too.

The Commander of the Armies of Darkness gave a complicated and impressive salute. “You asked for me, Your Viperishness?”

Viperishness. These titles got worse and worse with each passing day.

“Yes,” said the Dark Tyrant, drawing himself up to his full, impressive height. “Have you found it?”

“Um,” said the Commander of the Armies of Darkness.

Um? Standards had really gotten low lately. He’d have to get himself a new pit of rabid, extremely hungry crocodiles. The last lot had eaten each other.

“Please don’t kill me, Your Evilness!” said the Commander of the Armies of Darkness, with admirable haste. “We found someone. A girl. She beat us to the information we’ve been looking for, about where the Keys were located. She’s questing for them, so all we need to do is wait until she’s got them and steal them. Your Extremely Impressive Superbness,” he finished, with a triumphant flourishness.

Superbness? Yes, crocodiles would do nicely.

“Oh yes? Just steal them, when she has them?” said the Dark Tyrant mildly. “You think so?”

The Commander of the Armies of Darkness gave an eager nod.

“Incompetent worm!” howled the Dark Tyrant, making him jump. “Steal them once she has them? Once she has them, it’ll be too late! They’re Keys, you fool! Keys open! Now get out of my sight!”

The man ran, slipping a bit on the oily floor. The Dark Tyrant leaned back against his chair and rubbed his eyes. Oh, how he wished he could cut through all this scheming.

Something occurred to him. He opened his eyes and told the nearest gleaming toady, “Go tell the Commander of the Armies of Darkness to keep an eye out for that nephew of mine who ran away, would you? I wish to punish him. Mind he brings him in alive, now,” he added.

The toady nodded and slicked away. The Dark Tyrant settled against his throne again.

A quester. A questing girl, no less. When would these people learn? Quests always failed.

*


Meridian City shone in the light, all sparkling spires and swooping stretches of wall and graceful arched bridges and glimmering mirrored windows, like a giant spider had grown tired of wandering the endless plains and spun its crystalline web there. It took up half the planet, and navigating it took a certain kind of person. Drivers of the (flying, of course) taxis were honoured, and Pathfinders were always in great demand.

Once, there had been courtyards on the ground, and gardens, and parks, and ornamental fountains shaped like dolphins or maidens or birds. But the ground had been swallowed up long since, along with the courtyards, and the gardens, and the parks, and the fountains, all engulfed into the sky-high buildings.

So naturally it made sense to build more courtyards, gardens, parks, and fountains on the buildings.

This courtyard was so high up that the air was as crisp as apples, and wisps of cloud hid coyly behind the rows of odd cone-shaped evergreen trees, paved pathways and delicate blooming plants with their curling tendrils wrapped around curving statues whose graceful lines suggested shapes without forcefully declaring them. Birds with curved beaks and fanlike crests perched, here and there, their ankles tethered on long silver strands to the coned trees. It was a quiet, orderly place, plonked square on the top of a tall building; the kind of place where rich men gathered to discuss rich things, while they sipped golden wine and the vivid birds crooned.

Achilles wondered, not for the first time, what he was doing here.

The Navy officer had landed his ship on the landing platform a few levels down and ushered them up there, completely unfooled by Achilles’s claim that walking was difficult and he could really use a swordcane. He had offered no explanation of what they were doing there, and made no further mention of the Supreme Commander, more’s the pity. Getting his revenge against Midas Beckett wasn’t Achilles’s main goal in life, exactly, but it was quite a sizeable one.

A sizeable crowd was gathering, drifting in little clumps amongst the beautiful statues, conversing and always drifting in the vague direction of a raised podium that was set into the paved pathway, in the centre of the courtyard. Achilles, to his own acute discomfort, was one of those selected few who were right next to this podium.

What were they doing here?

“Captain, what are we doing here?” said Boheme in an undertone, his brow folded into a worried frown. “I’m wondering - is it some kind of dare?”

“Stop rhyming,” muttered Achilles. “I don’t know. But I have this feeling we’ll find out.”

Boheme stuck his hands in his pockets. He was normally a cheerful man who spent so much time in kitchens that the heat of them damped his hair into little spikes that framed his round face, but right now it seemed even he couldn’t find much to be cheerful about. “Sure you’re right, Captain,” he said, smiling, with a little more confidence. “You generally are, if you’ll mind me saying so.”

Oh, Grim, now the man was relying on him. He’d only been the captain for a few years, and he didn’t even care about this stupid crew; they were means to an end, and that end was his continued liberty, his continued freedom from the claws of the Navy. Seeing that freedom seemed, by all accounts, about to come to an abrupt end, why was the fool cook making the mistake of thinking he’d be trustworthy? Achilles never took risks!

Achilles, with a sense of impending doom, opened his mouth to say so and heard it saying, “Just trust me.”

Boheme gave a closer replication of his usual broad smile, and Achilles cursed himself for a fool. What was he doing, saying fool things like that? Well, at least the man wasn’t moaning now.

Not that the same could be said for all his crew.

Mood, pronounced ‘Mud’, as he never let any of them forget, said, “We’re doomed.” Sometimes voices are said to have a shade of hysteria; his contained not just a shade, but a whole well rounded palette, possibly with a gradient or two thrown in for good measure.

“We’re not doomed,” said Achilles wearily.

“We are,” Mud insisted, drearily.

Achilles opened his mouth to say, “Are not,” realised how easily this could degenerate into a childish debate, and instead contented himself with saying, “Trust me.”

“Yes,” said Mood. “Trust the rumrunner. Brilliant idea, sir.”

If his voice had been any thicker with sarcasm, it would have congealed. Achilles shot him a glare. The man was one of the Squidfolk, yes, and his face was a rubbery mass of baleful tentacles, but that didn’t mean he had to be rude.

“I expect you’re wondering why you’re here,” said the Navy officer, appearing next to them so suddenly that Boheme jumped and then had to try and hide it by shoving his hands in his pockets and whistling innocuously.

Achilles looked around, at the condensing crowds, the luxurious garden, the raised podium with, he suddenly realised, a shape draped in a sheet smack-bang in the middle.

“A bit,” he said.

“All the major people are here,” said the Navy officer. “They’re more or less commanded to be. Which is why I’m here, of course, but you … I’m thinking that the Supreme Commander will be sure to spare a little of his valuable time to think of a suitable punishment for a rogue who has been such a thorn in his side.”

“A thorn in his side?” said Achilles. “I’m a small time alcohol smuggler. That must be one extremely tiny thorn.”

“You defy Navy authority,” said the man. “And we can’t have that.”

“No,” Achilles said. “No, I suppose you can’t.”

“Death is too good for you,” said the Navy officer, and he turned to look at the podium, the same as everyone else in the crowd. A hush was gradually falling over the meaningless babble.

“Well,” ventured Boheme, “at … least we have our health?”

“Encouraging,” grated Achilles, reaching down to rub his knee. It ached.

Someone jostled into him, and he staggered, nearly falling.

“Oh, sorry,” said the someone, reaching a hand out to help him up. Achilles accepted the help grudgingly.

“Watch where you’re going,” he muttered, hating that he needed the careless fellow’s help.

“Or,” suggested the someone, “you could try that? That might help.”

He sounded mild and bored and dreary, as though this, and, indeed, everything, held little that interested him. At Achilles’s lack of response, he raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and made to move on.

“Wait,” said Achilles suddenly. “Do I … know you from somewhere?”

“Is that meant to be a pickup line?” said the man, critically. “Because I don’t swing that way.”

“Neither do—” began Achilles, and then he stopped, frustrated. “Look, I just thought you looked familiar. Never mind. Carry on with whatever meaningless thing you were doing.”

“Wait,” the man said, slowly. “Do I …?”

The man was tallish, slenderish, with thick hair that wasn’t quite blond but certainly wasn’t brown. He looked sickly, wan, but Achilles seemed to remember him vibrating with life, his blue eyes sparkle-bright, his grin mischievous and infectious. But who was the man?

“Achilles!” he said, in some surprise. “Achilles … Letchford? You .. you were a friend of—”

“Letchford Achilles,” Achilles corrected, automatically. “Don’t worry about it. My last name sounds like a first one, my first name sounds like a last one … people get confused.” And then he remembered where he knew the man from. “Samuel Beckett. You’re Midas’s brother.” He gave a slightly sarcastic, extremely bitter smile. “How is the traitorous ball of slime?”

A silver-haired woman was tugging at Samuel’s sleeve. He frowned at Achilles. “I prefer ‘Mule’. Weren’t you a friend of Midas?”

Achilles actually laughed, he was that surprised. “Friend? Exactly how long has it been since you’ve spoken to your brother?”

“Oh, about five years,” he answered, and he actually seemed serious. “Why are you here?”

“I’m arrested,” said Achilles, his voice tending to the sardonic.

“The Navy arrest their own now?”

“I’m a rumrunner.”

Mule gave a mocking smile, though there was no more life in it than in his feverish eyes. “How the mighty have fallen,” he said, and climbed up onto the platform.

Achilles clenched his hands into fists. Curs’t if the man wasn’t just as bad as his brother.

“Gentleman!” called the announcer, the kind of announcer who always appeared at these things, with the kind of moustache that looked as if he’d been brushing his teeth that morning and the bristles had stuck to his upper lip. “And ladies! May I introduce to you … Muuuuuule Beckettttt!”

Dear stars. How was it even possible to slur ‘t’s?

Mule half raised his hand in lacklustre acknowledgement of the applause. The silver-haired woman – his girlfriend, lover, wife? – stood beside him, watching him with an oddly troubled look in her eye. Everyone else was watching him with something close to fanatical devotion. Achilles was surprised he hadn’t recognised the man at first glimpse, but he’d looked different than before, sicker, and anyway, it had been years. Mule Beckett was one of the most famous men in Little Squid.

“As you know,” he said, in a clear voice that rang out across the crowd, silencing it, “I’ve been working on something for a while. Something …” He paused, for effect. “Big.”

More cheers. Mule smiled, but it was a mechanical smile. He was a little more lively now. Achilles was willing to bet that most of that was acting, plain and simple, but some of his enthusiasm seemed almost real. Well, fair enough. He was an artist, after all, and if he’d been working on whatever-this-was for a while …

The silver-haired woman was watching him even more closely than before. Something close to hope was slowly replacing the troubled look in her eyes.

“So, without a ridiculous amount of speeches, I present to you … the Grace Note!”

He gestured, and servants pulled off the long length of sheet. It rippled away from … from …

Well, it was …

Well, right then it was a kind of nebulous blob. He pulled his glasses from his pocket, glad that the Navy officer hadn’t overenthusiastically taken them away from him thinking they could be sharpened or used to start a fire or something, and settled them on his nose. Then he could see the …

The …

Words failed him.

It was big, to start with, but its graceful, curving lines were so shaped that it didn’t seem unwieldy in the slightest. Bigger than a yacht, smaller than a passenger vessel. Because whatever else it was, it was, unmistakably a ship.

But oh, it was beautiful.

It was made of some kind of glimmering … something, possibly a metal, possibly something else; it seemed to contain all colours and none, a swirling, gentle expanse of smooth maybe-metal. It was definitely a ship, but exactly how Achilles had arrived to this conclusion was difficult to tell, because it had none of the usual marks of one. Instead of stubby fins, it had … well, here and there were these things that were like fans but infinitely more graceful, and all the ship was grooved, in interesting patterns; the patterns you get when you have a pool indoors, and glance up at the ceiling, where the patterns of light on water dance and shimmer. But deeper grooves. They’d seem almost harsh, cut into that living metal, but instead they seemed natural.

Instead of a blunt nose, it had something sharp and gleeful and almost predatory, spiralling away into the grooves. It was definitely a ship, alright; he could see portholes, here and there.

It was a strange little ship, this one, and some hidden part of his heart loved every graceful line of it.

But it couldn’t fly. It couldn’t possibly fly. How could it fly? Phlebotinium Drives were as distinctive as they were ugly, caking the hulls of ships with white and grey. But this ship just had three slits near the end, curling around the hull. How did it work? Achilles found he almost wanted to know.

It was impractical, though. No question of that. It would be impossible to avoid detection in a lump of solidified rainbow like that thing.

The rest of the assembled people were surely more concerned with beauty and practicality, but they didn’t seem as … appreciative as he might have thought. In fact most of them looked almost bored.

“The Grace Note,” declared Mule, striding across the podium, “is a revolution in artistry and in spatiodynamics. It’s taken me … a long, long time, but, finally, the dream is made flesh. This is a ship that is music, my friends!”

He beamed at the audience. The audience looked bored and nibbled on canapés. His smile wavered, a little, and then solidified. But behind it, his eyes were dark and flat and dull and sickly. His silver-haired woman looked alarmed.

“It’s very good,” said the Navy officer, who have been higher up than Achilles had thought. Literally, because he was standing on the podium, next to Mule. Achilles looked around hopefully, but no, there were other Navy men guarding the three of them, blue-suited men with blasters at their belts. “Very good. Very …” He searched for the right word, and landed on it with a smile. “Creative.”

Mule frowned.

“The Supreme Commander couldn’t make it here today, evidently, but he would have loved it, Mister Beckett.”

“Mule,” corrected Mule, absent-mindedly, his eyes as dull as a chalkboard.

“And, of course, we’ve found a lovely place for it. A prime exhibition spot, in the—”

“What?” said Mule. “You mean, you’re … you’re not going to fly it?”

The officer laughed. “Mister Beckett, you should know better! This artwork is priceless. You can’t go around flying art.”

“But …” Mule’s voice was calm, but Achilles noted that his hands were clenched into fists. “I made it to be flown.”

“Then that’s unfortunate, isn’t it? Really, we can’t allow that, Mister Beckett.” And he turned to take questions from the crowd.

Achilles saw the artist bite his lip. Saw the signs that showed that something in him had broken. Recognised the signs, because the same thing had broken long ago in himself.

The artist pulled something from his pocket; a ring of keys. He turned and tossed them straight to Achilles. Achilles, caught by surprise, fumbled them, nearly dropped them.

“I wish you luck, Mister Achilles!” called Mule, and then he ran to a bank of controls and smashed his fist against them. Fireworks went off, prematurely, shooting into the sky and leaving thick pillars of smoke behind them. And the graceful fountain nearby exploded in a mass of sparks, shooting chunks of raw stone into the crowd, who started to scream and panic and run.

They all jostled against Achilles, who swayed, still blank with shock.

He planned things. Always.

But a plan would do him no good inside a Navy cell.

“Boheme! Mood! Quickly!” he roared, and leaped heavily onto the platform, his bad leg nearly buckling beneath him. Boheme sprang, somewhat more lightly, after him, and reached out to help him back up, but Achilles shrugged of his hand and limped as quickly as he could towards the strange ship. The Grace Note.

Mule watched as he pressed the keys into a small, circular hole in the ship’s hull, and a section of metal pulled back to show the entrance. The three of them ran in, and then, a few moments later, the engine compartment started to rotate, the three slits pink and then red and then white with heat. Slowly, it rose, and then …

Then it flew, as he’d imagined it would, as he’d known it would. It flew, and the wind hummed and sung and shivered through the grooves, sharp and strange and swooping, and the stunned audience were left with the peculiar music that was the song of the Grace Note.

The ship flew into the ‘nite, bearing its roguish crew, because there was no one else who would fly it. The ship flew off into freedom.

And, back in the city of steel and glass, Mule staggered heavily, and Ada was at his side in an instant. But Mule’s face was a flat mask, and she could see no expression on it.

She’d thought that him finally unveiling this dream project of his might help him get better, but he was … he was worse. And he refused to be treated …

This had gone on far enough. It had to be stopped. It had to be.

[Rikku]

Seren gets her first glimpse of Reynard. Oh, and stormwolves. Yes, I know.

SPOILER: Click to show

Ferre woke them all up bright and early that morning. ‘Bright’ being metaphorical, of course; some sickly light made it through the mutinous clouds, but there was little other sign to show that dawn was coming. Ferre must have some kind of fiendish internal clock.

Bright or not, it was far too early for Seren’s tastes, because she had a pounding headache that pounded at her every time she moved, every time she so much as breathed, with every beat of her heart.

She groaned.

“Why so glum?” said Ferre, and then he looked at her whiskey flask. Her empty whiskey flask. “Ah. That would be why.”

“Don’t talk so loud,” Seren snapped, rubbing her forehead.

“You look a mess.” He held out a hand to her, to help her up. She glowered mutinously and stayed down, relaxing against the boulder she had her back to her for all the world as though she merely enjoyed sitting there rather than because she couldn’t stand unaided. Ferre shrugged, as if to say, ‘Suit yourself’, but he said nothing, just looked at her wryly.

“Oh, like you can talk,” she growled. “Your hair looks like you’ve just been electrocuted.”

Ferre ran a hand through his long wave of hair. “It’s always like that in the mornings,” he said, defensively. “Anyway, what’s wrong with my hair?”

“It makes you look like an idiot,” she said, bluntly.

“What? No it doesn’t! Girls swoon over my hair back home.”

“Oh yes? Name one. And your mother doesn’t count.”

“You think I know the names of all my admirers?” he said, with great dignity. “Anyway, you do look a mess. Perhaps you should splash your face with water?” He examined her dubiously. “It might help.”

“Thanks for that, Romeo,” said Seren, and she hauled herself up. Her headache throbbed, and nausea twisted at her stomach, but she did a fair job of ignoring it as she staggered over to the stream they’d set their camp by yesterday.

Before she dipped her hand into it, she paused. The water was a sickly sort of colour, and she could feel the heat of it even with her hand a good half a metre away. As she watched, a thick bubble floated to the surface and popped, filling the air with a foul smell, like sulphur.

“Wonderful,” she said grimly, and rubbed her aching head and sighed. Then she got to her feet and walked back to the main camp. A while ago, she might at least have had enough dignity to force herself to walk tall and straight and arrogant, but right now she couldn’t gather enough pride to bother.

And she was out of whiskey.

Georgette was fully clothed, fully awake, sitting on the blanket she’d slept on, running a comb through her already smooth hair.

Ah, thought Seren sourly. A morning person.

Georgette shot her a smile so bright it would have dazzled any small mammals that wandered onto the road and said, “We should get an early start today. We need to find the Ring.”

“We’re looking for a ring, eh?” said Seren, sitting down on a convenient boulder. They’d left behind the flat tableland a while before they made their camp yesterday, and the terrain here was broken and fragmented. A mountain, or more probably a volcano, loomed over quite a bit of the horizon, dominating it. “Don’t tell me: it makes you invisible.”

She could somehow hear the capital ‘R’ in ‘Ring’ without even needing to see it written down, but stars burn her if she was going to go around proper nouning things without a reason.

Georgette looked as surprised as if she’d been slapped in the face with a fish. “As far as I know, it’s just a ring. No magical properties whatsoever.”

“Then why are looking for it?”

Georgette looked even more surprised, as if she’d been slapped in the face with more fish. “I told you this yesterday. Weren’t you listening?”

“There was a yesterday?” said Seren, rubbing her head. “I wasn’t aware there was a yesterday.” She paused. “What happened yesterday?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Of course I remember!” she said fiercely. “I just don’t … recall.”

“Of course,” said Georgette, delicately. “Let’s just say that the Ring, while not important in itself, is very important in the great scheme of things.”

“I hate that phrase,” said Seren. “The great scheme of things. Makes it sound like the gods are some kind of fiendish plotters, or something.”

“If they exist,” said Georgette, “then they probably are.”

“What do you mean, if they exist? They’re the gods. Of course they do.”

“Ah,” said Georgette, with the air of someone who is about to say something extremely clever, “but where is the evidence?”

She sat back and winked knowingly.

Seren looked at her blankly.

Eventually she ventured, “What, the whole universe isn’t enough for you? What more evidence do you need, a giant neon sign saying ‘here there be gods’?”

Georgette gave her an icy look. “I think maybe you should go splash your face with cold water,” she said, in a voice even more icy than the look, if that was possible, which it shouldn’t have been. “Until you’re willing to be reasonable.”

“Ah,” said Seren. “That’s a problem.”

“I give the orders on this quest!”

“You shouldn’t. You’re a kid.”

“I’m sixteen!”

“Like I said. But it’s irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant how?”

Seren gestured towards the stream, leaned back and closed her eyes. Her hangover clubbed her in the head with each shrill word the teenager uttered. “See for yourself.”

Georgette left, and came back looking crestfallen.

“Everyone!” she said, in a loud voice that made Seren groan and curl vaguely into a ball. “Could you come over here, please?”

Ferre came over, his hair looking somewhat less … well, just somewhat less, which was definitely a good thing. The cloaked figure that was the half-breed sparky Wil stirred and sat up, turning in Georgette’s direction. The only one that didn’t pay any attention was …

“Rosenbach,” Georgette said, in an undertone. “Wake up.”

When the spindly man showed no signs of stirring, she shook his shoulder gently, but he remained stubbornly asleep.

Seren lazily opened one eye. “Perhaps you should splash water on him,” she suggested.

“Very funny. I want to wake him, not boil his face off. Rosenbach.” She shook him more fiercely, as fiercely as an unusually violent washing machine. “Come back.”

Something about her choice of words rang odd to Seren, as did the way that Rosenbach stirred groggily and sat up. He didn’t look like a man waking up from a deep sleep; he looked like a man pulling himself back from a thousand miles away, and having difficulty with it.

“Bad dreams?” asked Seren, brown eyes sharp despite the fuzzy haze in her mind.

“You could say that,” Rosenbach said, looking shaky and tired. He rubbed sleep from his eyes. He didn’t look tired, he looked …

Exhausted. And scared.

Interesting, this whole business. Did everyone on this expedition have secrets? Next thing you knew it, Georgette would have some hidden diary in which she wrote how she was secretly a penguin, or something.

Georgette cleared her throat. “Company, I have troubling news.”

Dear stars. Was it even possible to sound more generic? Next thing you knew she’d be speaking in archaic, all ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s and ‘verily!’s.

“We have a water problem. The water is contaminated here, possibly everywhere, and we … we didn’t pack accordingly.”

“We didn’t?” said Ferre, raising his eyebrows and jerking a thumb at his pack. A reassuring leather water bottle was strapped to one side of it.

“You came into the Fiery Wastes without water?” said Wil, surprise overriding his timidity.

Seren kept silent. She had taken no water. Some part of her had looked forward to the challenge of doing without it, and what little remained of her common sense could obviously do nothing to battle her twisted sense of adventure when it wanted its own way.

“I didn’t think,” Georgette said, her face ashen. “Is … is this whole quest going to be like this? I thought … I wanted to … I wanted to help, I wanted to save the worlds, but if I can’t even remember to bring water …”

“Miss Georgette?” said Wil hesitantly, going up to her and offering her a flat waterskin. “Take mine. I brought plenty.”

“Oh.” Georgette’s cheeks turned faintly pink, and it wasn’t the heat that did it. “Th … thank you, Wil. You don’t need to—”

“It’s okay,” he said quickly, and scurried back to his seat. Seren saw the tufted end of his tail being hurriedly swept beneath the cloak, but Georgette was too busy looking all dazed and blushable to notice.

Seren murmured, “Don’t leave your mouth open too long. Something nasty might fly into it.”

Georgette gave her an acidic glare, and said, “Well, now that’s all cleared up. We should be getting along.” And, in a vicious undertone, intended only for Seren’s ears, “Oh, come on. Like you and Ferre are any better.”

What? Her and Ferre? The girl obviously didn’t know what she was talking about. Obviously.

Her and Ferre.

Huh.

… Stupid Georgette, vaulting to all the wrong conclusions. You and Ferre. Honestly, humans were so dense, always seeing things that weren’t there.

They all got up to go. Ferre immediately strode to the front of the company, smiling confidently and flicking his stupidly long hair; Seren drifted vaguely in that direction, realised what she was doing, and hastily reversed, ending up in the tail end of the procession. The others arranged themselves in the middle.

“Er,” said Georgette, in a voice only slightly more loud than that of a mouse wrapped in cotton wool. “Wil? Do you want to walk with me? We could, um, talk. About this planet!” she added wildly, and then added, “Well, I mean, not if you don’t – only if you – nice weather isn’t it,” and then she gave up and stared fixedly at the ground.

“I’d love to,” said Wil, and then he stared at the ground as well. Seren couldn’t for the life of her figure what it was about the ground that was so fascinating to them. It was pretty bland, after all; rocky, broken, steaming here and there, but certainly not interesting enough to warrant the intent stares they were giving it.

They started to walk towards the volcano, Ferre at the front, Wil and Georgette close behind, Rosenbach behind them, Seren behind him. It wasn’t right, for the Pathfinder to be at the back, and she walked moodily, meandering. Perhaps she could pretend to be the rearguard. At least that would make her feel as if she had some purpose.

An hour or two passed. The heat became almost unbearable, slicking her skin and damping her hair to her forehead. Her sword felt very heavy at her side, stupid thing that it was.

Ferre strode on as confidently as he had before, but there was a slight frown of annoyance on his face. Georgette and Wil’s conversation faltered, and the two of them walked on in silence, him helping her over the tricky bits with the natural lope of someone born to the planet. Seren wondered if he realised how naturally he fitted in here; from what little conversation she’d had with the half-breed, he was intently uncomfortable with who and what he was, and didn’t feel he belonged. Mind you, he was a teenager. They were all like that.

Ferre was bothered, Georgette was silent and sweating, Wil was nervous and alert, Rosenbach was beginning to stagger, and Seren …

Seren could really use a drink.

She reached at her belt for her emergency flask. It contained some kind of unspecified moonshine, strong stuff that she’d bought from that bespectacled rumrunner a month or two ago, and had saved for emergencies or whenever she needed to clean wounds, it being such strong alcohol that it could be used just as easily to accelerate fires as to get drunk. She looked at it thoughtfully, tipped a drop onto her sleeve, watched as it singed a round burn mark in it, and decided she wasn’t that thirsty, quite yet.

Half an hour later she decided that, in fact, she was, and had half a mouthful of the moonshine. It wasn’t quite enough, of course; no matter how much she drunk, it was never quite enough. This was because her default state was being slightly tipsy, and thus that was when her senses and mind were sharpest, not that that was saying all that much; she had to drink even more if she wanted to become cheerful-drunk, about as much drink as it would take to have most people curling up in miserable balls in the corner. On the bright side, this meant that she really had to drink a lot to suffer extreme ill effects.

Bored, she let her eyes wander over the landscape. There wasn’t anything more to see than there had been before; nothing changed except the volcano ahead of them, getting bigger and bigger all the time, in a vaguely disconcerting way. Seren felt like she had to keep her eye on it to stop it sneaking up on her.

She fell a little further behind, watching the tired figures of the others in front of her. They were just emerging from a kind of valley; the ground was still creased on either side of them, making a dip along which they walked, but it evened out in a kilometre or two, and the slopes on either side of the, for lack of a better word, path, weren’t so steep and jagged as the ones in the valley had been. Seren hadn’t liked the valley, because the path had winded a lot and the volcano kept on leaping up from improbable places. All very disorienting.

It really was stiflingly hot, even for Ochre. It was like walking around in a furnace while wearing several layers of clothes and a hat with a bobble on it.

She saw a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, and glanced in that direction. A ragged fox looked at her from near the top of the right slope, ears pricked, eyes a bright, vivid green that was visible even from here.

As she watched, the fox flicked its tail and ran nimbly up the slope, disappearing over the other side.

Seren looked after it, wondering why something about it seemed to jar with the rugged landscape. It certainly seemed to fit – its red colouring blended in rather well with the rocky ground, its coat was as rough as the ground, and it seemed to be as nimble as all the other darting little animals she’d seen. She shrugged and focused her attention on the path ahead. The others were further ahead of her now, and she’d have to run to –

There were no foxes on Ochre.

Seren ran up the slope after the impossible vulpine. Of course, this was about the same time as the dodgy anti-grav on her boots finally gave out completely, making it seem as though she was carrying several kilograms more than she had been; it certainly didn’t help that the boots themselves, with their heavy metal and gleaming clasps and complicated gadgetry and optional magnetism, weighed more than the average planetoid.

Well. That was maybe a slight exaggeration.

All the same, she ran. The situation would have frightened the average person, maybe, once they’d had time to think about it; an animal where no animal of the kind should be, for reasons they didn’t know, a situation that was strange and alien and frightening. Yes, frightening.

Fear. Seren missed it.

It really was very hot –

Seren topped the rise, and her eyes widened a bit.

There was no sign of the fox.

The sky was a mass of clouds, piled upon each other, too many for the sky to fit – they seemed about to burst apart and crush each other into grey-black fragments, or to burn. The sky was filled with so much sheer energy that it hurt to look at; Seren could feel it vibrating in her teeth, tingling at her skin. The clouds were the colour of old mushrooms, the kind of mushrooms that brought visions of painful colour and burning, sharp-edged images, and left you sobbing and shaking and alone. The heat was even thicker now that she acknowledged it, a thick, humid heat, that crawled on her skin and dampened the air with suffocating warmth. The clouds had brought an unnatural dusk to the rocky plain, and she watched, the shadows of deepening grey were driven away for a moment by a flash of blinding a light, a bolt of lightning that dashed from the storm clouds and speared the ground. More electricity crackled in the distant heights of the clouds, so far away. It was the mother of all storms, almost enough to make Seren afraid.

But they weren’t what caught her eye.

The storm was rolling closer to them, and that wasn’t what grabbed her attention either. What did was the way that the lightning that flashed down to the ground every few seconds now didn’t just disappear like it was meant to, fixing the nitrogen or whatever it was that good lightning did, though why in Squid the nitrogen would need fixing Seren couldn’t guess. This lightning was different.

This lightning was alive.

Or, no, that was maybe a little too dramatic, but it was the first thought to spring to mind to describe what was happening, the way that the glowing strands of lightning gathered into shapes, sharp shapes that etched themselves into Seren’s eyes with the brightness of their burning. Distant shapes, but … moving, coming closer, running, running. Bright-fanged shapes built of lightning, twice as tall as man, hollow shapes of electricity and nothing else, with blue-gold manes and flickering fangs, running, running. The roar of the thunder was the sound of their howl.

Wolves.

“Interesting,” she said.

Then she turned and ran, ran, ran back to the others. They had stopped moving, had gathered into a group. They must have heard the storm.

“Seren! Good!” said Georgette, looking shaky but determined, despite the fact that her face was as pale as dodgy yoghurt. “We need to find shelter.”

“No, we don’t,” said Seren. “Shelter wouldn’t help.”

Ferre glanced at her, his peppery eyes troubled. Otherwise, he looked calm and cool and confident, confident to the point of arrogance. But at her words he pulled the plasma bow off his back and loaded an arrow (or was the right term ‘bolt’? With plasma bows, it was exceedingly difficult to decide) into it.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Wolves,” said Seren, matter-of-factly. “Made of lightning.” Even as she said it, she realised how ridiculous it sounded.

He lowered his bow a little. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?” he said, frankly. With a little more frankness than she would have liked, to be entirely honest.

“Actually, yes.”

Wil’s hood slipped back over his head, showing his ears, tufted and pierced, and his oval eyes, and the expression of frantic worry on his lean face. This frantic worry was further shown by the fact that he didn’t bother to pull the hood back up. “Stormwolves,” he whispered.

“Oh, stars,” said Seren. “Compound words are never a good sign.”

“They come, on days like … nights like this,” he said, gesturing with one fur-fringed hand to the unnatural twilight surrounding them in its murky depths. “When the storm drowns the sky, and the heat bends the world to the point of breaking …”

“You’d be easier to hear if your teeth weren’t chattering,” said Seren helpfully.

“Stormwolves are dangerous. Stormwolves can kill.”

“So can power sockets. Never let them scare me.”

Wil’s oval eyes were huge with seriousness. He looked as grave as a cemetery, the kind with mouldering tombstones and colourless grass. “Power sockets,” he said, “can’t rip your limbs off.”

Seren hesitated at that, as Georgette’s face went from yoghurt-coloured to porridge-coloured. The girl’s face just seemed to attract edible metaphors, for some reason.

Eventually, Seren said, “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve known some pretty vicious power sockets in my time,” in tones of false cheer that were meant to encourage Georgette. They didn’t.

“Are we going to die?” she said, with more calmness than Seren would have expected, given that the girl was quivering like jelly in a high wind. “Because I can’t. I need to find the Ring.”

“Look, if you’re that concerned with getting some jewellery,” snapped Seren, “borrow some from Wil, he has more than enough! I suggest we get off this wretched planet before—”

A thunder-howl rolled over them, close, too close, and Seren glanced up and saw the blinding flash that meant stormwolves were approaching, just as the first one breasted the slope some five hundred metres away and came running along the path-of-sorts towards them. Others followed.

“—that happens,” she finished gloomily, speaking quickly. “Isn’t the lightning meant to come before the thunder? Ferre, you set?”

Ferre checked his plasma bow. It was a good quality one, made of some solid greenish metal, shaped like a normal bow but thicker, held loosely in his expert, white-tattooed hands. He strung it with a flick of a switch; liquidy blue plasma arced from one tip of the bow to the other, meeting the tip of the arrow on the way, gathering in a ball there.

“Yep,” he said. “I mean, terrified, but yeah, ready. Ish.”

He didn’t look terrified. Or, anyway, nowhere near as terrified as Seren would have been if she’d had all that hair blowing in her face and obstructing her vision.

Because there was a wind now, dark and depressing and dismal. Fat drops of rain started to fall, sizzling on the overheated ground. They helped with the heat, but they slicked her sword with moisture, and she was very glad of her gloves.

“Wil!” she hollered. “Can you help us out with some fire here?”

Wil looked stricken and terrified, and shook his head.

“You’re a sparky, stars darn it!” she hollered over the rising wind, and then there was no more time for discussion, because the stormwolves were upon them.

She didn’t have time to worry about what was happening to the tohers, because a stormwolf leaped towards her throat. Considering it was twice as tall as she was, it had to sort of stoop to achieve this, and she lifted her sword, with some difficulty, and plunged it into its throat –

And achieved precisely nothing, the stormwolf snapping at her with burning jaws made of light. She fell to the ground to dodge it, and it landed on top of her, glowing eyes narrowed, flickering jaws wide.

A ball of pulsing blue struck it in its glowing heart, and it remained for an instant, an outline, before folding into individual sparks.

“What are you playing at?” yelled Seren, getting to her feet. “Do you want me to get plasma’d to death?”

“I’d rather not answer that!” Ferre yelled back, already loading another plasma arrow.

Georgette and Wil and Rosenbach were in the shelter of a boulder. A stormwolf was loping over there, and everything was mad and frantic as storms always were, loud and crackling and fierce with brightness, and Seren laughed a terrible wild laugh as a stormwolf’s jaws sunk into her leg, scorching the skin. She smashed the sword down on it, sliced it through, but she was slicing through electricity, and it formed again as her sword passed through it. However sharp a sword was, there was no sword sharp enough to kill lightning. And her sword was not sharp at the best of times. It was more like a huge metal club than anything else, albeit one with vaguely sharp edges.

Another plasma arrow caught the stormwolf mauling her. It was a glancing blow, shooting through the creature’s leg, but the leg faded away, leaving only the after image, and the stormwolf, distracted, scrambled back a pace, making a thunderous whining noise in the back of its throat. Seren shot to her feet and over to Georgette and Wil and Rosenbach, and the stormwolf that was approaching them.

“Hey, ugly!” she yelled, picking up a slab of stone and heaving it at its head.

The stone passed right through it, but the stormwolf looked, and howled at her, a deafening howl that knocked her off her feet.

“I am so not in the mood!” she roared. “And I very sorely need a drink! Leave them alone—”

It began to run towards her. This was the hugest of them, the size of a young elephant, a jagged blue giant, with teeth like sharp spears of lightning, each of them longer than her arm. There was a feeling of prickling heat behind her, getting closer, and all of a sudden she had a plan.

“—and pick on someone—”

It leaped at her, that cavernous blue mouth open wide, wider, ready to swallow her whole in a whirl of electricity.

“—your own size!” she yelled, and threw herself to the ground. The stormwolf sailed over her, and she could feel the scorching heat of its passing. She rolled around to see it collide with the one that had been sneaking up behind her in a flash of blinding blue and a roll of thunder and disappeared, and she started to laugh again, a mad laugh, unstoppable laugh, building up in the back of her throat and shaking her with its force.

Seren lay there laughing in the storm, burned and bleeding and triumphant. She very nearly enjoyed this.

And then a yell. A defiant yell, with a tinge of terror, that was as far from cool and calm and confident as it was possible to be. But the voice was unmistakeable.

Seren got to her feet, slowly, aching, laugh fading as she turned and saw.

Ferre was surrounded, utterly and completely, and even as she watched a stormwolf leaped at him. He lifted the plasma bow, but the strength of the wolf’s jump knocked it from his hands. He went down, and others leaped at him, jaws open to tear –

“I think not,” said Seren, and she lifted her sword.

She’d been expelled from the Pathfinder Academy for this sword. It had curs’t well better be worth it.

She thought of Ferre’s plasma arrows, cutting right through the stormwolves, destroying them.

“What I need …” she said, in a whisper, “is lightning.”

And mechanisms deep inside the sword shifted, and it crackled as a blazing halo of electricity surrounded it. She lifted it, experimentally. The heat of all that electricity so close burned her hands. Unlike the plasma bow and the wolves, this electricity wasn’t blue. It was red, red as blood, red as a dying star.

Seren started to laugh.

She ran forward, as fast as she could and then faster, faster, and then she leaped and brought the sword down and red collided with blue in a spray of painful sparks that hissed and hurt her skin where they landed on her, and then she was landing and bringing the sword up and driving it straight through the mouth of the stormwolf that leaped at her, dancing in the pouring rain as the rain fell and the wind howled and the thunder shook through her bones, dancing with the lightning and fighting it, fighting fire with fire, and laughing, laughing in the flame.

And then it was over, and she was left standing, drenched and shivering and grinning.

Ferre looked up at her. His white hair was caked to his skin with the rain, and he was bleeding a bit from his side, where one of them must have savaged him.

“You’re terrifying,” he said. And then, “Thank you.”

“Any time,” she said, and then her knees gave out and she crumpled to the ground beside him. Which could have been worse, all things considered.

“Stormwolves, eh?” he said, in a failed effort at a conversational tone, and, somehow, it seemed hilariously funny. Seren broke into laughter again – normal giggles, not the terrifying kind – and Ferre grinned.

After a bit Seren said, “The others are—”

“Probably scared out of their wits, yes. Let’s go scare them a little more.” He hauled himself to his feet by sheer effort of will and offered her a hand, and this time she took it, and held it for just a second longer than was strictly necessary.

Then they trouped through the rain to where Wil, Georgette and Rosenbach were sheltering behind a very large rock.

“Sparky,” said Seren, “can you do us some fire?”

“Would you stop asking me that?” said Wil, looking tired and exasperated and pained. “I can’t. I’m not a full-blood. I’ve tried, a couple of times, but …”

“So we all remain soaked,” grunted Seren. “Fantastic.”

“Actually,” Ferre said, “I have a flint and steel in my pack—”

“Yeah, because flint and steel is so helpful when we don’t have any fuel.”

“What, you expect me to carry timber around everywhere? You think I’m hiding a small pine plantation in my boot?” He glanced at her feet mock-disparagingly, harder than it sounds. “More likely to be in yours, they’re certainly big enough.”

“Hey! What’s wrong with my boots?”

“Nothing. They’re just … a bit … much.”

“Oh, like your hair?” she said triumphantly.

“Hey! What’s wrong with my hair?”


*


Wil left the two Kind to their flirtatious banter and went off into the rocks a small distance away as the others set up camp.

Ferre was one of the Nightkind, and that was different from being one of the Kind. But both kinds of Kind were equally terrifying, and Seren with her cold eyes and mad laugh was almost worse than Ferre, even if he seemed a little too attached to that plasma bow of his.

Wil didn’t dislike them, particularly. Actually, he rather liked them, but they were the kind of people his mother always warned him about, along with clowns and shady men in trenchcoats offering cut-price Phlebotinium at rock-bottom prices, presumably the kind of rock-bottom that came with a free pair of concrete shoes and a one-night stay in Sleeping with the Fishes Hotel.

He could see his mother now, sharp and small and quick, with those beadlike eyes beneath her forehead fur. His mother was normal Jurrkind, half the size of a human, covered in fur that did a lot to keep out Ochre’s heat, draped all over in strings of firebeads.

Whereas Wil was … not normal at all.

He fingered his firebead bracelet. Firebeads were pretty; they had a rich, real colour, and when you held them up to the light they glowed. But Jurrfolk, sparkies, as they were colloquially known, did not wear firebeads for decoration. They used them for … well, for …

It was hard to describe, what the Jurrfolk did, but it made perfect sense to them. Why shouldn’t a race of people that had lived for generation upon generation on a fire planet have something of the fire inside them? Any sparky could start a fire as quick as blinking, even the young ones. Any of them except Wil.

He started fires without thinking, small, sullen flames that burned through the legs of tables and through cloths and through walls, without anyone ever noticing until whatever it was was beyond repair. He had some of the Jurrfolk natural talent for flame, combined with what was known as Luck’s Curse, a kind of innate clumsiness. He tripped over things, and broke things, and somehow he never quite belonged.

Except for here, maybe, amongst this group of misfits.

Maybe he could start a fire, now. The rain had stopped, and the wind had died down, but everyone was clammy and ill-tempered, and he could help with that. He could help. Here he could be a help, not just a liability, some awkward half-and-half child always shunted to the back of any crowd. Wil wasn’t chosen last for sports teams, because he was never chosen at all. Humans and Jurrfolk alike looked at him like he didn’t belong, and then, inevitably, decided that he was somebody else’s problem and promptly ignored him.

Maybe he could start a fire. Maybe he could.

Wil pulled a firebead from the earring in his ear (oh, how he hated his ears! Big and bizarre and sticking out from either side of his head like kites! Like he was some talking jug with stupid oval-shaped eyes and a not quite human face) and settled it in his hand, rubbing it between his slightly clawed fingers the way full Jurrfolk did. He could feel the energy in it. Firebeads were made from the glass at the heart of a volcano, crafted in specially-designed jars. Before the glass had time to cool and set, it was kept heated, the heat gradually reducing over a few years until it faded away, by which time the glass was as hard and red as heartrock.

He rubbed it in his fingers, gathering the energy like static sparks, and flicked the energy at a rock, hoping for a neat, pretty flame like other kids his age got. All he got were sparks that fizzled, and some burned fingers before they did.

He put the firebead back on his earring and went back. So. He didn’t belong here, either, wasn’t of use even here. And he hadn’t had the chance to talk to Georgette since she’d seen what he was. She would hate him, now, or ignore him like all the others, and somehow that thought made something painful happen to him deep inside, somewhere between his spleen and his liver; a sharp, worrisome pain, to add to the perpetual ache that he carried around everywhere.

On the bright side, it wasn’t raining any more.

[Rikku]

I can never remember the name of those wooden scroll things.

SPOILER: Click to show

Captain Letchford Achilles was discovering that his ship went beyond mere impracticality and explored a whole new world of inconvenience.

“Mood, can you—” he growled, and was unable to finish his sentence, because a glowing, whispering ribbon of light drifted past him, making all his hair curl. He tried to uncurl it, unsuccessfully.

“Can I what?” said MoodpronouncedMud, somehow managing to make the question sound as gloomy as a funeral when the rain’s made the ground all soggy and you can’t walk without squishing worms underfoot. That was Mood’s voice exactly – the squish of worms on a rainy day. It suited him. “Smile? Laugh? Because I don’t think I can.” He dwelled on this gloomily for a seconds, before a thought occurred to him, and he added, “If you were going to say ‘do something about my hair’, then no, I can’t do that either. I think it’s beyond saving.”

“Mood,” began Achilles again, with the fragile façade of patience that is only possible when someone is very impatient indeed, “could you – oh please don’t tell me there are ribbons there are ribbons oh stars I hate this ship.” He limped to the porthole to get a better look, putting on his glasses so as to see something other than a vague starry fuzz. Sure enough, trailing in the ship’s wake were long ribbons, strips of silver metal, that waved and undulated and twirled in the streams of glowing particles that came from the crystal-grinder.

“Mood,” he started again, now distinctly annoyed, “could you—”

“Are you ever going to finish that sentence?” said Mood gloomily, interrupting him, probably deliberately.

“Mood, could you figure out how to fly this cursed thing?” growled Achilles, and he limped over to see how Boheme was getting on. Not because he cared, particularly, but because he wanted a purpose.

This ship bothered him. He was used to their old ship, a creaky thing that leaked when it rained and remained airtight only through a larger than usual miracle and some hasty application of blu-tac. It had been small, rusty, but it got him where he needed to go when he needed to go there, and he knew how it worked.

Whereas this …

Achilles did not approve of beauty for beauty’s sake, and this ship reminded him why.

The walls of the corridors had a soft sheen similar to the inside of a shell, giving the light a kind of quiet glow, a strangely warm quality, like over saturated photographs, or something out of a dream. There were occasional artistically applied straight angles, but mostly things curved in gently sweeping, gracefully artistic lines, the corridors almost seeming to rotate; what had been the floor twisted into the ceiling half a dozen paces later. Achilles suspected that it might actually move.

Every now and then the corridor parted around a sculpture, or a fountain, which he was terribly afraid had some real purpose.

And wherever you went, there was that music, and those drifting ribbons of light that you could only see out of the corner of your eye. Half-seen music, and half-heard light. The two were linked, and gave the impression that if you sat down and thought about things, quietly, in one of the curving alcoves set into the walls, you would see the relationship for what it was; how light was sound, sound was music, and music was light.

It was irritating. Achilles was a practical man, and this was far from a practical ship.

He entered what he had thought was the kitchen, to find out that it was, in fact, the bridge. Or so he presumed, to judge by the beautifully curving windows in front and top and side, showing a wonderful view of the ‘nite, stars against blackness, the blob that was Meridian visible due to the curved nature of space, and rapidly growing smaller due to the fact that they were moving far faster than any ship had a right to. Beyond that, though, there wasn’t anything that indicated the bridgeness of this bridge, none of the banks of controls and bleeping lights and displays he was used to. There wasn’t even a captain’s chair, just benches moulded into the walls, like the alcoves, and something vaguely like carpet and vaguely, somehow, not underfoot, as though the ship expected whoever piloted it to stand up while doing so and felt slightly apologetic about it. Light did interesting things here. There were flowers, too, made of semi-transparent crystal, coloured like glaciers – hints of blue and pink and violet visible through the ice. They might have been ice, actually, but if they were, it was some kind of unmelting ice. These flowers were everywhere, tucked into nooks and crannies, seeming to sprout from places, and even occasionally in actual vases. It was like some glacial garden. Achilles wondered what Mule’s obsession with flowers had been. Well, the man was an artist. Only to be expected.

There weren’t any controls, but half of the room was taken up by what looked almost like some kind of piano organ, like the kind found in old churches that were built over generations. In sharp but somehow pleasing contrast with the cool, spacey feel of the rest of the room, it looked old-fashioned, made by and furnished with cedar, walnut, darkly fragrant leather, and softly gleaming brass. There was a glass-panelled gauge of some sort, like on an old-style invention of some sort. All in all, it looked as though someone from the Victorian era (all worlds had a Victorian era. No one was quite sure why) had wanted to build some kind of complicated mechanism to make ice cubes or generate anti-gravity or something, scratched his head, built it out of the available materials, and made it work.

There were five tiered rows of keys, made of polished ivory and blackbone. Achilles stood looking at the organ in mute silence. It was tautological, but that couldn’t be helped and he couldn’t help it.

The organ was beautiful and fascinating and intriguing and, on its own, would be a lovely work of art, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was doing on the middle of his bridge.

He shook his head, and went back to brave the shimmering corridors in search of the kitchen. He was starting to feel quite hungry, unless that gnawing feeling in his stomach was nausea.

He hated this ship.

Ten minutes of wandering later, and he’d found the kitchen. There was a trick to it. You had to sort of let your mind drift, let your feet take you wherever they willed, and you’d end up where you were going. This subtlety annoyed Achilles so much that he was sorely tempted to deliberately try his preferred method of logic and reason to find the places he was looking for, but he was a practical man, and he knew that wouldn’t work.

Curse Mule. Curse this ship.

The kitchen/mess was … well, it was pretty. Glowing strands of some kind of fiber optic festooned the ceiling, fashioned in the shape of vines and illuminary fruits and flowers, delicate and graceful and wild, crawling over the ceiling and down the walls a bit. They swayed gently, as though alive. He pushed a clump of whispering vines aside irritably to find the serving counter.

He found it, with a feeling of slight smugness. No matter how artistic the ship, no matter how bizarre the ship, all ships had a kitchen connected to the mess with a serving window with one of those wooden scroll-y things. It was the only way that it worked, a kind of scientific constant.

Of course, the Grace Note’s wooden scroll-y thing was ornately carved and had openings here and there through which light would cast strange patterns, which soured his triumph somewhat.

Boheme was standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking even more cheerful than he normally did, almost ecstatic in fact. His apron was dusted with flour, and his arms were floury up to the elbows, and the heat of the ovens had sculpted his hair into wild spikes above his beaming face.

“Captain!” he cried, smiling even more broadly at the sight of Achilles, though Achilles couldn’t imagine what it was that Boheme would find to enjoy in the sight of a man with irritatingly curly hair, myopia in more ways than one and a face that looked like he was permanently eating something he didn’t eat the taste of. Well, whatever it was, he wasn’t going to complain. At least one of his little crew was happy. “I’ve been baking!”

“Really?” said Achilles, looking at the flour-coated cook. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

Boheme grinned and flailed a spatula. “This place is fantastic! The sieve is this weird fabricy thing, but it works! You should see the lightness of the flour!” He waved a floury arm as though to demonstrate. “And the frying pans! I could wax poetic about the frying pans alone!”

He could and did. Achilles tuned him out with the ease that was made necessary by having been on the same crew with the incessantly talkative cook for the past five years, and thought about other things. Namely, the size of the mess. It, and the size of this ship overall, indicated that it needed a much, much larger crew than their little trio of misfits. Achilles had a feeling that the Grace Note would be more than difficult enough to pilot (or play, if you factored in its highly musical nature) with a full complement, and this feeling extended to the fact that it would be ridiculously difficult to be piloted by a miserable squid-man, a permanently irritable cripple and a well-meaning but whimsical cook who was about as much use in a combat situation as an overcooked noodle.

Achilles tuned back in as Boheme reached his triumphant finale.

“… can’t imagine why they fly, but I must admit it really adds to the flavour!” He pulled a tray of fresh, tasty-looking muffins from somewhere and smiled a particular kind of smile. Achilles had long practice at recognising Boheme’s various shades of smile, and he recognised this one with a dawning sense of horror. This was the smile that meant Boheme was in a rhyming mood. Some people had bad habits like belching or leaning back on chairs; Boheme rhymed. It could’ve been worse, but it could’ve been a lot better, too.

“I like to openly state, not subtly infer,” said Boheme, and he set the tray of muffins on the counter, alluringly. “These muffins are delicious. Which flavour’d you prefer?”

Achilles, annoyed, snapped, “Orange.”

He immediately regretted it, because Boheme looked utterly crestfallen. The cook opened his mouth. Closed it again. Looked at the ground. Achilles could practically see his mind searching for a rhyme, and coming up blank.

To cover the awkward moment, and to make it up to him – not that Achilles cared one whit (whatever a ‘whit’ was, though he suspected that, whatever it was, Boheme lacked it) what Boheme felt, but two gloomy crewmembers would be unbearable – he took a muffin and bit into it. It was raspberry and white chocolate, soft, fragrant and delicious.

Achilles didn’t like muffins very much, but he didn’t have the heart to say so, somehow. So he tried to mumble something that sounded like a generic compliment, aided in the ambiguity by the fact that his mouth was full of muffin.

“Thank you,” said Boheme, good spirits restored, smiling the smile that meant he was truly happy, as he was most of the time. “I think.” He raised his eyebrows as though asking Achilles to share his amusement. “Though that sounded more like a generic compliment than anything … But hey, I’m not complaining.”

At that point the Grace Note shuddered. Achilles’s bad leg nearly crumpled beneath him, and he had to seize the counter top (which was smooth, polished, and made of some kind of glass through which patterns could be seen, rather like marbles) to keep his balance.

Then he started to run off and see what was the matter, stopped, came back, opened his mouth to say something to Boheme, closed it again, gestured the partially consumed muffin vaguely, and then gave up on politeness, plonked the muffin on the counter and limped off in what he hoped was the general direction of what was possibly the bridge.

Boheme looked after him, shrugged resignedly, put a cover over the muffins and followed.

Achilles stomped through the corridors, trying to remember the route he’d taken to get to the kitchen from the bridge. Then he stopped, struggled with himself for a moment, sighed, and let himself wander, partially guided by the drifting half-seen lights. Shortly after he found himself in the bridge, or what he presumed was the bridge.

Mood was sitting at the piano thing, staring at the keys.

“I think these are the controls,” he said. “Either that or the guy that made this ship has a really weird sense of humour.”

“I think we’ve rather definitely established that,” said Achilles.

“I hate the piano,” said Mood, moodily. “Wretched instrument.”

“Yes, well, you hate everything,” Achilles said irritably, and then he added, more out of further irritation than out of a desire for terminological accuracy, “And it’s not a piano.”

“Yeah?” said Mood. “Would something that wasn’t a piano be able to do this?”

As actions went, it wasn’t really deserving of the italics he put it in. He simply flourished a slimy finger and plonked it down on one of the not-a-piano’s keys.
A sweet note rung out, and a hologram flickered into life between the not-a-piano and the window, or whatever the term is for a portholey viewscreeny windowy thing in space!! The hologram was shaky and blurry, a bit grainy, but still recognisable, with the greenish, semi-transparent quality that holograms always have.

“Yes,” said Achilles promptly. “Probably. I mean, I haven’t seen many pianos that can do that.” He paused, and added for the interests of accuracy, “Though admittedly I haven’t seen many pianos at all. They don’t really come up much in the rumrunning business.”

“There was that one time we smuggled that case of Rosewater—”

“That was in a tuba. Tubas don’t count.”

Mood scratched his tentacles thoughtfully. “What about that time when we tried to smuggle those flasks of brandy?”

“Yeah, but those burned right through the piano, so I didn’t really get a good—”

This intelligent musical conversation was mercifully cut short by the hologram speaking up. It had been grinning in the meantime, in a knowing kind of way that actually looked sort of evil.

“Hello, gentlemen,” said the hologram of Mule, his grin widening to sharklike proportions. “Whoever you are, you’re the men the Navy chose to pilot my masterpiece. So, whoever you are, good luck …”

Boheme entered the bridge, looked at the hologram and brightened. “Would that be one of those holograms that the makers of the ships leave behind to instruct the pilots on how best to fly them?” he asked hopefully.

“Yes,” said Achilles, almost gleefully. “Yes, I think it would.”

“And,” continued the hologram, now grinning more than it should have been possible for someone to grin without the top of his head falling off, “whoever you are … my apologies. Because I am frankly not in the best of moods right now.” And he wasn’t. His smile didn’t even come close to touching his coldly flickering eyes, and he looked just as sallow and sickly as he had when Achilles had seen him just before. “This is my ship. Good luck trying to figure out how to fly it, because, frankly, even I have no idea. Bye.”

And the hologram died away into vague green smoke, as they always did.

Achilles stood looking at it. Then he said, “You know, I’m really beginning to hate that man.”

Boheme smiled. “You hate everyone, Captain.”

“Him more than most. Why are you on the bridge? You shouldn’t be on the bridge.”

“This is the bridge?” said Boheme, in some surprise. “I thought it was the music room or something.”

“Why would I go to the music room when the ship shakes, Boheme?” said Achilles, with a thin façade of impatience.

Boheme shrugged. “Perhaps I thought you were developing keen musical sensibilities, Captain?”

Achilles just stared at him. Tried to speak, couldn’t think of anything, and pulled out his glasses to inspect Boheme through them, as he would some strange creature who didn’t quite make sense.

“Not likely, I know,” continued the cook, “but stranger things have happened.” He paused. “I guess.”

“We’ve known each other for a few years now, more or less,” said Achilles. “Tell me, when have I ever had the chance to be exposed to anything that would make me develop keen musical sensibilities?”

Boheme frowned thoughtfully, while still smiling. It was quite something to watch. “Well, there was that tuba—”

“Tubas don’t count.”

“What about the time when we tried to smuggle those flasks of bran—?”

“Would you all stop reminding me of that?” said Achilles. “It was only a small building—”

“Well,” Boheme grinned, in a dodgy-punctuation-around-dialogue kind of way, “it certainly was when we were finished with it. Not to mention the Alsatian.”

Achilles winced. “Yes, please don’t mention the Alsatian. Now, if that’s everything, I need to find my quarters and—”

“Oh!” said Mood, quite suddenly. He had been quietly angsting in the corner while Boheme and Achilles conversed, and now he tentacled over to them and said, “I meant to tell you, sir,” he said, in a voice so laden with gloom that it threatened to stain the carpet. “The Navy are after us.”

“What?” roared Achilles. He was yelling a lot lately. It wasn’t really in character – he was more inclined to be sarcastic and cynical when he got annoyed. But then again, he didn’t normally have reason to be quite so frequently annoyed. He stumped over to the viewscreen (portal? Window? Sub-atomic Visionitron?) and squinted out at it through his glasses. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, I tried to,” muttered Mood mutinously, and alliteratively. “But you kept on talking about pianos …”

“Forget the pianos!” yelled Achilles.

“I wish I could,” he said gloomily, and somewhat irrelevantly. “They still haunt my nightmares. That poor Alsatian …”

“Forget!” yelled Achilles, “The! Alsatian! Forget everything except telling me what you’re bloody well talking about!”

“Oh,” said Mood, in tones of reproach, “weren’t you paying attention? I’m talking about how the Navy are after us.”

Achilles rubbed his aching head. He hated this crew, he hated this ship, he hated his stupid broken eyes and his stupid body that didn’t work right, he hated the Navy, he just wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and pull it closed behind him.

He was the captain.

“Right,” he said, tersely. “Boheme, could you try and find the engine room? We need to figure out what propels this thing if we want to know how to fly it.”

“Yes sir!” said Boheme enthusiastically, and Bohemed off into the corridors.

“Mood, report. How far the Navy behind us?”

“Oh, they fell behind after they fired on us, sir,” said Mood. “The ship did this weird thing where it sort of …” He flailed his tentacles ineloquently. “Well, there was this light, and this … sort of an inky kind of thing, and then we were further along than we had been, and their ships were kind of foaming, and—”

“Right,” said Achilles tiredly. “Can you try and pilot us to the nearest spaceport?”

Mood looked at the piano and said, “Um.”

“Just try. I’m not expecting a masterpiece, just get us there.”

“I hate the piano.”

“So I gathered. Just … do your best.” He clapped him on the shoulder, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The Squidfolk always felt kind of … congealed.

“I thought you hated docking at spaceports, sir,” said Mood, as Achilles started to limp after Boheme.

“Yes, I do. But we need to repair whatever the stars it was that happened to the ship when the Navy fired us.”

“Oh, it repaired itself,” said Mood, and blinked when Achilles glared at him. Which was odd because Mood didn’t have eyelids, but he managed it somehow, nonetheless. “Didn’t I tell you?”

Achilles ran a hand through his short, annoyingly curly hair, sighed, and said, “Then we need a cargo. We can’t be rumrunners if we don’t have any rum to …” He paused, searched for the right word, and eventually settled for, saying, “run,” in an unsatisfied kind of way.

Then he limped off into the corridors after Boheme, to try and find out exactly how the propulsion worked. Ribbons of light and music twined around him as soon as he entered, threading themselves insidiously around his legs and arms, whispering half-heard light and half-seen music, sweet, chiming notes that sounded like distant bells.

Stars, he hated this ship.


*


Their room was cosy. Ada had insisted on that.

“But muse,” Mule had protested at the time, when the last interior decorator had fled in terror from him criticising their work and she had suggested that they do it themselves and keep it simple, “we’re rich. We can have a … a swimming pool in our bedroom if we want to!”

“Why would we want to?” she had replied, and he’d laughed and given in. So their room was small, and cosy, with thick rugs on the floor, and an embroidered bedspread, and a fireplace.

Of course, the anteroom to their room was huge, cavernous, and gleaming with the latest technology. This was what was known, in a marriage, as ‘compromise’. Ada never felt particularly compromised about it. It was nice having a place where the two of them could get away from technology, and it was nice having a place right next to it where the two of them could come right back to it again, when they needed to.

Ada walked over to her personal message-screen. She seldom used it, but it had all the fanciest new technologies. She waved her hand in front of it to open it, leafed through the menu by blinking three times, and selected the number to call.

She’d done her research. All the famous, advanced, cutting-edge medical institutions in Meridian City had already turned her down, and the ones on Navy. So she’d started looking for the less famous ones, that quietly sat down and got things done. And she’d found this one, on the out-of-the-way little planet called Bronze.

They were what she was looking for.

Ada flicked her finger, and the message-screen flickered and resolved itself into a face.

“Yes, ma’am?” said the face, politely. It was an inoffensive face, the kind of face that, if you bumped into it, would apologise and pick up the grocery bag you’d dropped. There was probably a person attached to the face, but the face was all Ada could see, this being a small message-screen.

The absurdity of that struck Ada, and she said, “If you’ll wait a moment,” and transferred the call to her other, much larger message-screen beside the first one. Why Mule had bought it for her, she couldn’t guess. Probably he just liked buying things for her.

Well, he used to. When they’d met, she’d hated him, she truly had. And he had bought her flowers …

“Ma’am?” said the inoffensive-looking face, now an inoffensive-looking man wearing a labcoat.

“I want to talk to you people,” she said. “There’s something I want you to do for me.”

The man squinted behind her. “Are you certain you have the right number, ma’am?” he said, a trace of doubt entering his politeness for just a moment. She glanced over her shoulder, at all the rich, expensive toys in the anteroom. She looked down at her rich, expensive clothes, and gave an internal sigh. This happened a lot. People always assumed she was a trophy wife, some pretty little thing who Mule had married to do nothing except hang onto his arm and giggle a lot. It didn’t bother her for the most part, because Mule always helped her laugh it off.

Mule …

Oh, she loved him, she loved him so much it hurt, and he was dying, and he was too much of a stubborn fool to let her take a tissue sample of his heart so they could make a new one, to much of a fool to care that he was dying.

He’d bought her flowers, once. Rooms and rooms of them, all the flowers you could name and some you couldn’t, and flowers he’d made, paper flowers and painted flowers and holographic flowers and clay flowers, flowers of plastic, flowers of glass, flowers of living crystal that glowed when you touched them.

She would not let him die. She could not.

“You are the ones that experiment with human clones?” she said, and the man blinked, and some of his politeness dropped away, leaving wariness gleaming in his eyes. He nodded, and she gave a cool, confident smile that counteracted the ache in her heart. Oh, Mule … “Then I’m certain. I have a sample to send to you.” She rolled the vial in her fingers. It contained blood. Mule’s blood. He’d had a coughing fit that morning, had coughed so much that blood had came. And he still insisted that he was perfectly fine. Durant’s Syndrome didn’t just attack the heart. It started there, yes, but it spread through the blood, contaminating every inch of a person. Her Mule … “I need the heart. Just the heart.” A healthy, disease-free heart. That was all he needed. “My husband is dying. His name is Mule Beckett. You’ve heard of him.” This last was said with no particular inflection, because it wasn’t a question, it was a statement. Everyone in Little Squid, and maybe a few other galaxies besides, had heard of Mule.

The man’s face had gone pale, and something like greed shone in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I have. Excuse me, ma’am. I must direct this call to my superiors.”

“A moment, before you do,” she snapped, in her coldest, most commanding tone. Something about this felt wrong, immoral somehow. Human cloning was utterly illegal in all the worlds. Which was probably why they were hiding on a backwater planet like Bronze. Ada had never even heard of it. It was probably one of those Navy planets where the people paid only lip service to the Navy Empire, and got on with doing things the way things had been done for thousands of years, worshipping the same gods as their fathers and their fathers’ fathers and their fathers’ fathers’ fathers. The institute was, quite frankly, dodgy, but she had no choice. No choice. “My sources say that you only make non-sentient clones. Is that true?”

“Oh, yes,” he assured her, looking so shocked that she was inclined to believe him. “Anything else would be immoral!”

“Good. Now put me through to your superiors.” She managed another smile. “I’m a little short on time.”

Once she had finished the call, she terminated the message-screen and remained standing there, for some time.

Then she quietly went to make dinner for Mule. If she didn’t bring it to him personally, and make sure that he ate it, he wouldn’t eat at all.

Oh, she loved him, and she missed him, and she wanted the best for him.

She only hoped that it wouldn’t be too late.

[Rikku]

I like Reynard. No idea what his motives are, particularly with the end and all, but he's cool.

SPOILER: Click to show

Seren sat cross-legged on a rock, cleaning her huge mechanical sword.

It didn’t exactly need cleaning. Stormwolves were menacing and all, all vicious and lightning-y and scientifically implausible, but at leaving actual tangible traces to be cleaned, they took second places to things that could bleed. But Seren needed to think about this sword, and figure it out.

She’d been the one that made it. Most Kind technology used Sources, much cleaner and more efficient and just generally prettier than that Phlebotinium that humans used. She’d found this what she assumed, at the time, was a Source, and just assumed it was meant to be made into something. The Pathfinder Academy often did that to its students, tried to get them to be good at everything, pathfinding and technology and fighting and all. So she’d taken the glowing red thing and built a sword around it, because it just seemedright. And she’d been expelled for it. But she’d taken the sword with her, at least. That was some consolation.

The sword sat on her knees, looking dull and grey and not at all worth giving up her old life for. She scowled and rubbed the cloth over it with renewed vigour. She’d find out how it worked if it killed her.

… Which it might, actually. That strange electricity yesterday had come about because she’d told the sword that that was what she needed, more or less, so far as she could tell. Anything with that much power was dangerous. She needed to find its limitations. Finding out its strengths would also be a plus, seeing she didn’t have a bow, not even so much as a knife. Just the sword, and it was far from practical.

They’d stopped for now, because it was midday and far, far too hot to move, even with the volcano shadowing most of the horizon. Wil had chosen a spot in the shadow of a tall, thin spire of rock. Which was nice, but they would have had to string out in a thin line to benefit from the spire’s equally spindly shadow, not to mention constantly shuffling to keep up with the shadow’s movement as the sun rolled across the sky. Seren had sighed, taken the lead, and led them to a larger chunk of rock some ten minutes walk distant, with a much more sizeable shadow. Pathfinding done, she’d settled on her rock, while the others ate. The Kind didn’t need to eat as much as humans and Jurrfolk did.

Neither did the Nightkind. Ferre strode over to her and sat next to her on her rock.

“I’m lucky you don’t have a death grudge against me,” he remarked, with the kind of expression people wear when they’re about to make a horrendously bad joke.

“Yes, you are,” she agreed resignedly, and went on cleaning, prepared for the worst.

“Because if you did,” he continued, “you could just cover it by saying that you were just cleaning it and it went off. And that you didn’t know it was loaded.”

“It’s a sword, not a gun,” she snapped.

“I don’t know,” he said, more seriously. “I don’t think it’s just a sword.”

“Of course it’s not just a sword,” she said. “A sword is never just a sword. Don’t you read fantasy novels?”

“No,” he said. “No, not really.”

“We’re just lucky that it doesn’t talk, or something. And that it isn’t cursed.”

“Isn’t it? It looks suspicious to me.”

“Oi!” she said, indignantly. “I made this, thank you very much!”

“Yes, that’s what I meant.”

She whacked him over the head.

“Ow!” he said.

“You deserved it,” she said.

“Yes, quite possibly,” he agreed cheerfully. “So. Enjoying the trip?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, come on.” He leaned his head on his hand and smiled at her sideways. “Not even the company?”

“Especially not the company.” She grinned at him. “You snore.”

“What? No I don’t!”

“And your hair is ridiculous.”

“Would you stop going on about that?”

“Nope.”

“You can’t claim to be much better,” he said, and he reached out a hand to ruffle her short, feathery black hair.

She sat looking at him, and he sat looking at her, and he didn’t take his hand back, just left it resting on her hair.

Then, very slowly, she leaned forward, and he leaned forward, and …

And a fox darted past them, a streak of ragged red against the red-brown rock.

Seren, still with her cream-skinned face close to Ferre’s coal-skinned one, but with her eyes focused on the fox, said, “Hey, that was a fox.”

Ferre sat back. “Is that significant in some way I’ve missed?” he said, sounding resigned.

“You don’t get foxes on Ochre,” said Seren absently, and she stood up and looked in the direction the fox had gone.

Maybe foxes were unlucky or something. She knew they were sacred to the Trickster. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was the Trickster that always made bad things happen when she saw foxes. Because this was a very, very bad thing.

There were ships in the sky.

They were as black as night, as black as coal, as black as a murderer’s heart, as black as a glimpse of infinite sky, and they were huge, as huge as something extremely huge and menacing. Also they were as menacing as that huge and menacing thing. They sat in the sky, slowly descending, and Seren knew from the shape and the size of them that they were ships of the Nightkind. The Armies of Darkness.

Ships so huge that they blocked out the sun.

She turned to face Ferre, and he wasn’t there. He’d started walking backwards towards the ships, eyes on her. He was wearing an expression she couldn’t quite fathom. She stared at him, confused.

Below, where the rest of the party were, Rosenbach sat up suddenly. He had been asleep, but now his eyes flew open, and he screamed.

“The night,” he said, his voice sweaty and hoarse and scared. “The night is coming.”

Wil hopped up onto a rock with all of a sparky’s nimbleness. His oval eyes widened.

“They …” he said. Then he yelled, “Georgette! Run! The Nightkind are coming!”

Georgette had been nibbling on some bread. Now she looked up at him, her eyes wide in her sunburned face. “What? They’re coming after us?”

Seren, having recovered some of her composure by now, snapped, “Well I don’t see anyone else on this starforsaken wilderness that they could be coming after. The boy’s right. Run.”

“But how could they find us?”

Seren looked at Ferre. He turned away, and started to run.

“I have an inkling,” she said grimly. “You guys go on. I’ll catch up.”

“Go where?” whispered Wil. “There are millions of them. The Nightkind are coming.” He repeated it, his voice near hysterical: “The Nightkind are coming.”

Seren remembered. On Ochre, the Nightkind were a myth, just like the Kind. But the Nightkind were the kind of myth that would keep children up late at night, shivering, scared of the monsters underneath beds, behind locked doors.

The Nightkind were coming.

“And with the night …” said Rosenbach. He looked delirious, his eyes fever-bright, his thin face pale, sweating. He didn’t look entirely awake, but his eyes were huge, staring whitely out of his gaunt face. “Comes the nightmares.”

The Nightkind were coming.

“Go where?” repeated Wil, soft and hoarse, his tail and ears twitching frantically.

“Off the planet,” said Seren calmly. “It’s the only way.”

“What? But we can’t. There’s no ships in the Fiery Wastes,” said Wil, at the same time as Georgette said, “What? But we can’t! We need to find the Ring!”

“If you want so badly to be helpful,” said Seren to Wil, “take them to the dragons.”

Comprehension flickered on his face. “But there’s no way to pilot—”

“So? Being lost is better than being dead. Get going. Georgette—”

“I’m not leaving without the Ring!”

“Where’s the Ring?”

“In the volcano.”

Seren grinned. Her heart flickered in her chest, her blood sung, this was living, this was very nearly fear! “I’ll find it. Get going, idiot.”

“But you—”

“I’m a Pathfinder,” she said, brown eyes gleaming. “I’ll find you. Now run already!”

Wil took Georgette’s hand, and she shook her head and went to grab one of Rosenbach’s shoulders. The spindly man was dazed and unaware. Seren reminded herself to ask about him some time, as Georgette and Wil each shrugged beneath one of his shoulders and ran, off to one side, to where, presumably, there were dragons.

Seren slid her sword into its place on her belt, ran a distracted hand through her short hair, and ran after Ferre.

She caught up to him on a flat plain, all harsh angles and uncompromising sunlight. He stopped as he heard her footsteps, and turned, and faced her, looking uncertain.

“I have to go back,” he said. “They’re looking for me. I’ll endanger you all by staying here.”

“Yes. Of course that’s why you’re leaving.”

He swallowed, then met her eyes. “They’re my people, Seren. I belong with them.”

“Your people? They’re a bunch of traitorous, yellow-bellied turncoats too, then?”

“Yep,” he said, wryly. “Pretty much. Like I said. My people.”

“And you’ll help them track us down?”

He stood silent for a moment. Then he said, “Run, Seren. They’ll kill you. The Dark Tyrant is looking for the same thing that Georgette is.”

“They have a grudge against me, personally?”

“No, but they probably think you’ll be fun to kill. Run.”

She stood still, surveying him critically. Then she took a step forward, closer to him. “You know,” she said, “we never finished our conversation, just before.”

“No?” he said.

“And maybe it’s a good thing. Words can’t express my feelings right now.”

He paused, and took a step closer to her, reaching out a hand, probably to stroke her cheek or something. She punched him in the face. He fell to the ground, groaning.

She stood over him and said, cheerily, “But that can.”

“Ow,” he said, clutching his nose and glaring at her, starting to get to his feet.

“Hang on,” she said, and drew out her sword. She had just enough time to see his eyes go wide, before she brought down the blade.

He blinked, and ran a hand through his newly short hair. The rest of his hair, jaggedly cut by the bluntish edge of her sword, slid to the ground in a silvery-white wave. Without his hair to soften his face, with just that new, brutal, spiky hair, his face looked … meaner, leaner, crueller.

It suited him.

“Good luck,” she said, putting the sword back in its sheath.

“You too. Now run, you halfwit. They’re coming, and I don’t particularly want to see you dead.”

Seren nodded, turned, and ran.

The heat was boiling, prickling at her even through the suit. The storm yesterday had broken the worst of it, but it was still pretty darn bad, the midday sun scorching down as though it had some grudge against her personally, though what Seren could have done to anger a sun she didn’t know. She seemed to anger most people, these days.

She ran.

After about half a minute she remembered the anti-grav on her boots, and flicked the switch, desperately hoping …

It turned on, but too much, making her too light, and the step she’d partially completed sent her soaring up into the air far higher than she’di ntended to. Once she’d recovered from surprise, she fell into her stride, using low, bouncing footsteps that carried her a dozen metres at a time across the rocky landscape.

Which was helpful as she began to ascend the volcano.

It had been lurking ahead of them for the last few days, always getting bigger,a steady, menacing presence. It was almost a relief to finally be climbing it, as much a relief as yesterday’s storm – it broke the heat, broke the quivering tension. Except this didn’t. There was still heat, sweat dampening her forehead, and there was still the tension, buzzing in every part of her, making her want to climb mountains and leap from great heights and do something, anything, so long as it was dangerouss.

Climbing the mountain qualified as that. It was dangerous in bucketloads. Mountainloads, actually.

This was an active volcano.

Her long steps took her through dangerously slick patches of volcanic glass, past places where steam hissed through cracks, smelling foully of sulphur, past boiling mudpools that spat and crackled at the air, past cracks where …

Lava. Lava was trickling down the sides of the mountain, here and there, in thick, glutinous flows, like bits of steam escaping from a kettle that was past boiling point. If this particular volcano was any more active, it would be a valued member of the local gym, and probably the kind of person that drank health shakes made out of honey and kelp, and owned their very own treadmill.

Fast, bounding footsteps took her past all of these things, strange, twisted growths, odd rock formations, bubbling mud pits, barely time to glimpse them before they were gone and she was past, running, running, as the sun stood still in the sky, and her muscles cried out in protest, and she left the Nightkind’s ominously hovering ships far, far behind.

And then she stood on top of the world.

It took her a second to realise, and she almost fell, but she managed to pull herself back in time, hastily stepping back in an attempt to counter it, before falling over. It was undignified, but better than the alternative. If she’d taken maybe two more steps, she would have fallen into the crater.

It was boiling hot up here. She would’ve thought that that would be changed by the high altitude, that the thin air would do something to sap away the heat, but no, hotter than ever. The ground was boiling hot. She got up, a little too quickly.

When she’d landed again, she cursed herself for a fool, and switched off her boots’ anti-grav. Then she looked around.

She had somehow assumed that the top of a volcano would be cloaked in choking grey smoke, and stinking of sulphur. It certainly smelled, a peculiar, pungent, heated-chemical smell that she couldn’t quite identify, but there was no sign of any smoke. The air was clear, and heavy with chemicals. It hurt to breathe.

Seren squinted her watering eyes and turned from the crater to look over the landscape. There wasn’t much to look at, so she glanced in another direction, and saw a distant, far-away glimmer, like light reflecting off glass. That would be the dragons, where the others were heading.

There was no way she could catch up to them now. Even if she had her old glider, it wouldn’t be fast enough to get there before whichever dragon they’d chosen took off, and there was nothing in the whole vastness of the ‘nite that could catch up to a dragon.

The ground was quite a distance away. Fortunate that she had a good head for heights.

She turned to the landscape again, baked red, made flat by distance. She could make out the shapes that were the Nightkind ships. Coming closer.

The Dark Tyrant is looking for the same thing that Georgette is.

The Ring. She had to find it. Whatever it was.

She turned to face the crater again, and there was someone standing there.

He was ragged, and she couldn’t quite guess the age of him. He looked lean, wiry, with a back that wasn’t bent by age. His face was smooth and unlined, and his ruddy red hair showed no signs of grey. By all outward appearances, he was as young as she was, or younger.

But there was something vast and terrible and ancient in his eyes. Bright eyes they were, bright as emeralds, bright as holly leaves, and just as green.

Just as hard. Just as sharp.

He was dressed in rough clothes, peasant clothes, ragged pants held by a braided leather cord, a ragged shirt that was too large for him. But his casual, arrogant stance held nothing of the beaten-down subservience of peasants.

His grin was as bright and sharp as his eyes, and promised mischief.

Seren looked at him blankly and then blurted, “Who in Squid are you???” The extra question marks were, she felt, more than warranted.

He just grinned at her. His teeth were sharp. After a moment’s deliberation, he said, with odd inflection, “My name is Reynard.”

Something about the way he said it seemed to give it more significance than just an introduction, but for the life of her, Seren couldn’t imagine what.

Two strangers, standing on top of the world, as it shook and shuddered beneath them, as it burned.

“Great. I’m Seren. Nice to meet you. What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same question,” said Reynard casually. “And probably do it with more style. You look like a duck who’s just been whacked over the head with a mallet.”

“I’ll mallet you!” she growled, taking a step forward.

He took a step back, wearing a smirk that did not seem at all appropriate to the situation, seeing he was just a few steps from the edge of the crater, being menaced by the kind of Kind who carried a huge sword and randomly verbed nouns. “Steady. What have I ever done to you?”

She shrugged, and then something sunk in. “Wait. ‘Reynard’?” She raised her eyebrows critically. “I think you’re lying to me.”

“Really,” he said. The lack of a question in his voice was due either to it being a sarcastic, amused sort of statement rather than a question or because he wanted, in some way, to compensate for her excess of question marks earlier. It was hard to tell, but Seren was betting on the former. He seemed that kind of person, and he didn’t seem the grammar type, somehow.

“Yes. Really. Because no one would call their child that.”

His sharp-toothed grin widened by a fang or two. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

Her certainty slipped a bit, and she shrugged, wondering what he was so confused about. It was straightforward. “You’re named after the Trickster.” And even someone who worshipped the Trickster wouldn’t be mad enough to incur his wrath or bad luck by naming a child after him, not that the Trickster’s worshippers were likely to be the familiar type. He was one of the most notorious of the gods, and that was really saying something.

Reynard’s grin slipped a bit. “Um,” he said. “In a manner of speaking.”

Seren laughed. “Oh, come on. If you were any more transparent, you’d be glass. You’re one of those people who get off on pointless lying, always making bigger and bigger claims. Next thing you’ll claim you’re the Trickster himself!”

He paused. “Actually,” he said, “now you mention—”

“Whoever you are, I don’t have time for you. I’m on a bit of a … quest … here. And definitely in a bit of a hurry. So get out of the way.”

She tried to step forward, to get closer to the crater, with the vague idea that if the Ring was anywhere, it’d be in there. And, anyway, she wanted to see what the heart of a volcano looked like. But Reynard casually moved to intercept her, still smiling that infernal, ragged smile of his.

“Quest?” he said. “That’s a bit …” He made a ‘so-so’ gesture with one hand.

Seren snorted. “Yeah, tell me about it. But I have a job to do.”

“Why?” he said, still smiling, his bright green eyes examining her. Something about that unfathomably ancient gaze made her shiver, almost as though she was scared. Though of course she wasn’t. If she wasn’t scared by the Armies of Darkness or by standing on the lip of an active volcano, she wasn’t about to be scared by some ragged red-haired madman, no matter how strange his eyes. Squid, there were thousands of stories in which the main characters had unusual eyes. All it normally indicated was that the writer was too unoriginal to think of any more creative distinguishing traits. Particularly if they were, like, purple or something. And bright, piercing green was almost as bad.

“Are you doing an internal monologue?” asked Reynard. “Stop it. I asked you a question. Why?”

Wow, he was good at acting like Little Squid revolved around him. “It’s … well, it’s my job.”

“To complete someone else’s quest?” He tilted his head to one side and regarded her. “How is that your job?”

“I’m …” She clenched her hand on the hilt of her sword. She needed to catch up to the others, she needed to get away, she didn’t have time for this. “I’m a Pathfinder,” she said, and realised only as she said it that it was true. “I’m a Pathfinder! In the darkest night, a Pathfinder can set their sights on a star, and lead you to where you want to go! In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil – wait, no, that’s something else.” Her train of thought briefly derailed, and she jerked it back on track with a savage, sweeping hand gesture. “Nonetheless! Pathfinders don’t know the meaning of fear!”

Reynard looked from her, to the gaping crater of the volcano, to the ground, so far below that it was misty with distance. He grinned.

“I suggest you invest in a good dictionary,” he said.

It was a pity that she’d already filled up her punching-jerks-in-the-face quota for the day, but hey, you couldn’t have everything.

“Get out of my way,” she said brusquely. “I need to find the Ring.”

“The Ring?” He regarded her again, head tilted to one side. It was so annoying when he did that. She began to rethink the whole punching-in-the-face thing. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. What was the worst that could happen? “The Ring is in the heart of the volcano, Pathfinder.” He glanced into the volcano. “Down there. You can try to get it, I suppose, but I won’t bother wishing you luck. My sister isn’t in the habit of giving luck to those who gamble with lives instead of money.”

She tuned out his meaningless babble and walked callously over to the edge of the volcano.

Then she walked somewhat less callously back, very quickly.

“Um,” said Seren.

“I think—” said Seren.

“I’ll just … hang around here, for a bit,” said Seren. “If that’s all right.”

“More than all right. It shows you’re sane. Ah, well, cheer up, you’ll get the
Ring.”

“I will?”

He nodded. “Yes. The Nightkind are firing on you.”

“What?”

He grinned. “Good luck, Seren the Pathfinder.”

And then he somehow wasn’t there any more. Nothing so flashy and gimmicky as disappearing. One moment he was there, the next, he wasn’t.

“Hmmph,” said Seren grumpily, and she looked in the direction of the Nightkind. Two streaks of fiery blue were coming from that direction, and coming rapidly in hers. Reynard knew what he was talking about, in that respect at least. They were firing on her.

… Or possibly on the volcano.

Her maths wasn’t as good as it used to be back in the days when she was the Academy’s most promising graduate, but she still knew how to figure out flight plans. Anyone who wanted to live was. She watched the flight of the plasma missiles, calculating their trajectory … yep, they’d land right in the crater.

The crater. The smoking, bubbling crater. Of an active volcano.

Were they utterly, completely mad?

No, scratch that question, of course they were. They were Nightkind. As a civilisation, they took the same sort of pleasure from killing as other civilisations did from things like cricket and rugby and cheese-rolling. Seren would not put it past the Nightkind to disrupt a volcano just in the vague hopes that the resulting eruption would destroy someone who was mildly annoying to them at the time.

She was in trouble. Really, serious trouble.

Seren grinned.

She started to run. Forget the Ring. She had discovered, somewhat belatedly, that she was actually quite fond of life, and would rather hang on to it. She was in no particular hurry to journey to Grim’s realms quite yet.

A pity she hadn’t discovered that beforeclimbing up the side of a volcano, but hey. Anything for a challenge.

As she went, she tried to remember her planet-diving training. It wouldn’t help, because she had none of the right gear, not even so much as a bubble-shield to cushion her fall. She’d splatter on the ground below. Forget flat as a pancakes; she’d make pancakes seem like mattresses with an eating problem when the fall was done with her.

Behind her, she heard the whistling, boiling sound of plasma missiles in flight, and then something that sounded like what a spray of boiling water escaping from a kettle would sound like if it was a thousand times larger and made of molten rock. The missiles had hit.

Seren ran faster.

She reached the rim of the crater, and found herself on the edge of a sheer cliff. This side of the volcano was near-vertical, apparently.

Without pausing, she flung herself over the edge, and the world exploded behind and around her.

She’d heard of violent eruptions, when the force of the eruption broke off pieces of the mountain itself. This wasn’t one of those, but it came pretty darn close. The air was hotter than a thousand furnaces, so hot she could feel her skin scorching, smell her hair burning. Chunks of rock screamed past her, white with heat, and ash covered everything in grimy blackness.

And then the sheer heat of the blast caught her in its grip.

Seren had thought Ochre was hot. She had thought that walking underneath the midday sun in Ochre was about as close to Grim’s fiery realms as it was possible to be without dying.

Now she knew better.

The heat caught her and spun her and pushed her away, tumbling wildly with the other assorted fragments that the heat had snared, cutting and gashing herself on a dozen fragments of razor-sharp rock, bruising herself on a thousand others, all of it a chaotic mess of heat and ash and pain.

Suddenly, incongruously, she remembered something.

A sword is never just a sword.

She pulled her massively huge sword from her belt, held it in her hand as she was tossed over and over by the heat and the impact of rocks, the blistering heat scorching her battered old Pathfinder uniform. She didn’t know which way was up and which way was down, but if this didn’t work, she’d soon find out, in the messiest way imaginable.

“Sword!” she yelled, gripping the sword’s hilt, twisting the rings, trying to figure out the right mechanism. “I need a hoverboard!”

For a second, nothing. And then …

The twist of mechanisms. Parts of the metal twisted over other parts, things folded, things connected, things flattened …

And then it was a hoverboard, or so she presumed. Hoverboards were dainty and stupid and light enough to be blown away by a sneeze. This … wasn’t. It was bigger than her torso, complicated-looking, with bladed edges and huge thrusters
.
It looked seriously badass.

For a second or two Seren kept on spinning, caught in the heat’s grip. Then she righted herself, set her boots on the transformed sword, and switched on their magnetism. She could feel the tooth-tingling tremor of it, holding her securely against the board.

Still she spun, doing stomach-churning flips and strange, twisting loops. There was no way to properly steer this thing through the heat, no way to do this that was anything even approaching safe, no way for this to be anything other than utterly, utterly insane.

Seren laughed, and crouched low over her hoversword, and rode the heat blast clear of the eruption.

Then the thrusters kicked in, roaring, providing their own boost before she was in any danger of falling. The wind whipped past her, stinging her burned skin, and she crouched down lower in order to not get knocked clean off the sword.

Something glinted in the air beside her, a piece of debris thrown clear of the volcano and caught in her wake.

It was ring-shaped.

“Oh, no,” she said, “that is entirely too lucky,” but she reached out a hand for it all the same, and snatched it out of the air.

It was a ring, quite plain, quite heavy. It looked like it was made of tiger’s-eye, all gleaming bands and strips of golden and amber and rich, dusty brown. It was polished, smooth to the touch. She slid it on her finger.

Then she got down to the more trivial matter of, y’know, surviving.

The hoversword had brute strength down pat, but it was hard to steer it – she had to swerve her whole body to the side and lean to even tilt it, and she needed to do a lot more than tilt it to avoid the stay rocks which were thrown this far. And she had nowhere to steer it. The others would already have –

Aha.

There. A gleam of transparent light, like glass, glimmering against the red landscape. And getting closer. They’d found their dragon.

Well, presuming that this was them, and not some random, passengerless dragon taking off because it felt like it. If the second was the case, as it could very well be, then, if Seren boarded this one, she could land on an entirely different planet than the others ended up on, with no way of knowing where they were.

Oh, well. She wasn’t exactly wealthy in the choices department.

Seren leaned forward low over her hoversword, sending it into a dive, towards the approaching dragon. As it came closer and closer, she could make out details – its broad, horned snout, its coat of glimmering scales, its massive wings, its long spiked tail whipping the air behind it, its huge clawed feet. And she got closer still, wind resistance roaring in her ears, until she could make out its eyes, and very strange eyes they were. She couldn’t decide whether they were completely without colour, or made of all colours.

She dived closer, and the hoversword’s thrusters spluttered and died out abruptly, leaving her in plummeting freefall. From here she got an even better view of the creature’s spiky snout, opening wide, lined with teeth like shards of glass …

Close enough.

She did something quick and difficult to describe to the hoversword, and it folded back into a sword. She had no time to put it back at her belt. Instead, she passed within biting distance of the dragon’s jaws, and almost fell past it, managing, in time, to snag one of its horns and yank herself into a rough landing.

It hurt. A lot. The impact drove all the wind out of her lungs, and bruised a couple of ribs for good measure. She exhaled in a painful wheeze, but she didn’t have time to cry out or anything dramatic like that. The air was getting thinner and thinner as the dragon ascended, and soon enough there’d be no air at all.

This was not how dragons were meant to be ridden. There was no precedent for this.

Seren crouched down as close as she could to the dragon’s glimmering hide, hoping it would help. She slung her sword across her back so she could grip the base of a horn with each hand, flattening herself as low as she could go, getting as close as she could, hoping.

“Lady Luck,” she howled with the last of her air, as the atmosphere thinned around her, “don’t desert me now!”

They reached the outer fringes of the atmosphere, where the air was so thin it was practically nonexistent, and the planet could be seen curving away beneath them, and the skies could be made out, brighter than they ever could when blurred by layers of air.

And then they left the atmosphere behind altogether.

[Rikku]

Babel makes me sad.

Mulberry's the planet I originally named Cornflower, by the by.

... Man, Rosenbach annoys me. xD; He's so ... not-a-character, y'know?

SPOILER: Click to show

First, he knew of light. There was whiteness above him, and whiteness was all he knew.

Then, he knew of sound, the meaningless babble of the people standing over him. They looked strange, not matching the whiteness, and he discovered he could close his eyes and turn everything black.

When the people went away, he discovered that he could move, and with the realisation that he had a body came the realisation that it was hard to use. Parts of it ached from lying against the cold, hard table, and bits felt strange when he moved them. But he worked at it, and soon he could sit up.

This so cheered him that the next time the babblers came in he sat up, thinking it would pleas them. He saw their faces change, eyes widening, their mouths dropping open. He didn’t know what this meant, or why their babble was higher-pitched and frantic, and he barely had time to notice before there was a searing pain in his arm and blackness came without him closing his eyes.

When he came to he hurt, particularly in his arm, and he felt slow and stupid. When he managed to coax his heavy eyes into opening, he saw there were things in him, long tubes attached to his skin … no, beneath his skin, stuck in him. Strange-coloured liquids trickled through them.

He struggled against them, trying to get rid of them, but he didn’t know how to use his hands yet, and his clumsy attempts to pull out the tubes did nothing except bring a sudden, agonising something.

And then he knew pain, real pain, and he struggled and screamed until a babbler came in with something sharp and, despite his struggles, plunged it into his arm. Blackness came again.

When he came to his brain felt slow and stupid and fuzzy, and everything was dark. He decided against opening his eyes, because he heard the quiet murmurs of babblers, and he didn’t want them to know he was awake.

He remembered the sharp thing they kept on stabbing him with, and the tubes, and then, for the first time, he knew hate. It wasn’t right. He didn’t know what right was, but he knew this wasn’t it. Surely?

He lay quiet and listened to their babble, feeling the leaden heaviness of the tubes in him, knowing he didn’t dare to move in case they came again with their sharp things that brought blackness. He feared the blackness, now, feared it being forced upon him. So he listened.

And the next time babblers came in he listened, too, and the next, and after a while he realised that he understood them when they talked.

Thus, the next time they left, he knew enough to open his eyes and try and sit up, but he could barely move, and he moved his mouth and made sounds with it, and then, though the words were slurred and slow and strange-sounding, he could talk.
He said, “Help me. Help me.”

He said it over and over again, until the babblers came, and looked at him with eager eyes, and one of them plunged one of the sharp things he now knew were called needles into him, and the blackness came again.

Next time, when he woke, there were no tubes, and something else, something coarse and strange and heavy against his skin. Clothes, like the babblers wore, a loose white shirt and loose white pants. He looked down at them and rubbed the coarseness of the fabric between his fingers, and smiled, because it was the first thing he had felt other than pain and the coldness of the table.

This made him realise that he wasn’t lying on the table, but on something slightly cushioned and soft, and he tried to get up and fell back again and tried to get up and fell back again and laughed, because it was fun, and after a bit of effort he was jumping up and down on the bed, until his legs gave out and he crumpled, laughing.

Then the babblers in their white coats came in with eager eyes, wanting him to do things, speaking very slowly to him, as though they didn’t think he understood. They lifted up some kind of stick, and pointed it at some kind of white thing that fel slightly rough when he brushed it with his fingers: pencil, paper, they said, and he nodded, wanting to please them, and lifted the pencil against the paper and then wondered what they wanted him to do.

The pencil made black marks against the paper, and he made vague loops with it, wanting to please them and avoid the needle, wishing desperately that he knew what they wanted. Something that he now recognised as disappointment came over their faces, and they took the pencil and paper and left, but not before one of them approached him with a needle. He screamed and scrambled back, putting his back to the wall, and the whitecoats looked at each other and said, “Interesting,” and left him alone without stabbing him. He sat, shivering, wishing he knew what they wanted, wishing he knew anything.

He became well acquainted with disappointment over the next few whiles, because every now and then they came, and tried to make him do things, things with paper and pencil, and oily wet things that left pretty coloured streaks on the paper, and something thick and lumpy that they called clay, and whenever they brought something he tried his best to do what they wanted him to do, and always the disappointment came on their faces and they left.

Every now and then whitecoats came in and left trays of what they called food, and he ate it. It was bland and mushy, but he never felt weak and queasy after he ate it, so he always ate all of it. It was easier to face the whitecoats with a full stomach, particularly now they knew what scared him.

Because he had discovered fear at the same time he discovered hate. He feared the sharp prick of pain that brought darkness. He feared people that could use needles to make his mind do things he didn’t tell it to. Not just the needles; chemicals, drinks, strange pills, that made him feel sick or happy or sad or angry, all against his will, and he feared them, and he feared the whitecoats, feared them as much as he hated them.

Because they knew what scared him, and they used it.

“Now, then,” said one of the whitecoats, in a kindly voice that sounded as insincere as their kindly voices always did. He spoke slowly, too, as though he thought that the man was extremely stupid, though the man was stupid only when they stabbed him with the darkness. He’d learned to act stupid, though, because that seemed to be what they expected. “Try … to … use … sense. Do … what … we … want, and … we … won’t … use … needles.” The man smiled and held up a needle. “Understand?”

He nodded, and he tried to do what they wanted him to do, but he didn’t understand, and he screamed when they stabbed him, and left him in the darkness again.

So he spent his days and nights, sitting on the bed with his back to the wall, trying to get as close to the corner as he could, wishing that he could just disappear, wishing he was nothing.

You couldn’t manipulate nothing. You couldn’t make nothing scream.

So his days and nights went, always the same.

It never ended, and it never changed, until he felt as stupid as they treated him, and accepted their drugs and chemicals with a hung head and silence, until they began to speak in mutters about mind damage and imperfect cloning, and destroying him.

The idea almost pleased him. At least then something would change.


*


It was like the weirdest drug trip ever.

The dragon cleared the atmosphere, and for a moment Seren couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, because the vastness of the universe was spread out before her.

She knew then why people called it the ‘nite. The infinite. She sunk into the depths of the ‘nite, of the night, and it had no end.

There was a myriad of stars, glimmering, in fiercer, brighter colours, green and violet and blue and red, not just the silver that they shone with the atmosphere in the way. There were suns and galaxies and stars and worlds, and it had no end.

It was cold. So, so cold.

Seren felt her consciousness slipping away, and she did her best to hang on to the dragon’s back, because at any moment, it was going to –

There was a strange, visceral feeling, extremely difficult to describe. The dragon’s scales shimmered …

And it turned into light.

The light, a rainbow-coloured streak, shot through the empty blackness of space, circled moons, soared through rings of stone and ice and crystal. The light zipped and spun with the sheer, fast joy of being, not even of living, of something far more primal and simple than that. The light blurred its way through the universe, until it began to tire, and then it turned towards the nearest world and streaked down towards it.

Night was drawing its dark curtain over this world, and the light sped to that dark half of the planet and dived down towards it.

It streaked through the atmosphere, suffering no friction, because it had no matter to be burned. Then, as it came ever nearer the surface, it shimmered and shone and abruptly turned solid, turned into a glasslike dragon with shimmering scales and massive wings and a soot-covered Kind clinging wearily to its neck.

No one was ever quite able to explain the physics of what dragons did. But everyone agreed that it was pretty darn cool, so no one really minded.

The dragon landed, and Seren shook herself and sat up straight, still gripping the dragon’s horns. That had been … that had …

Well, it had … she felt …

Words failed her, completely and utterly. It wasn’t because she was unintelligent or anything. It’d be hard for anyone to describe how it felt to turn into light and back again, because language simply did not allow for it.

Seren contented herself for laughing, a weak, somewhat crowlike caw of a laugh. Her hands were white through the soot that covered them.

The dragon stretched out its neck, shook itself irritably, opened its cavernous snout of a mouth, and coughed up her travelling companions.

Wil was the first to bounce to his feet, his fur all slimy with transparent dragon-spit. Nonetheless, his face was shining with enthusiasm.

“Aren’t they incredible?” he said, staring at the dragon in wide-eyed admiration. “Y’know science has never quite been able to find a rational explanation for what they do but I think it’s wondrous anyway even more so for that don’t you and I think the universe is such a vast place and so full of wonders and miracles and I want to one day study all the different forms of life and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah …”

Seren ignored his babble and directed a cheerful grin at Georgette, who was just now staggering to her feet and groaning.

“Enjoy your trip?” asked Seren.

Georgette groaned.

“I think I like my way better. Not as safe, sure, but, frankly, being eaten by a giant transformative reptile is not high on my priority list. Oh, and catch.”

She pulled off the striped, tiger’s eye ring and tossed it at Georgette, who caught it in a slimy hand. Her eyes went big.

“The Ring. You. How did you? Um.”

“Oh, I just snatched it from midair as I flew through the air after a volcanic eruption,” said Seren casually, sliding from the dragon’s neck and trying not to show how cramped and painful her muscles were, how much her various burns and scrapes pained her, and, particularly, how much she was inclined to just stand and tremble and maybe faint. Turning into light did that to you, but she sure as Squid wasn’t about to let it get to her. She was a Pathfinder, and Pathfinders didn’t know the meaning of fear.

The meaning of dizziness was, however, known, and Seren drew her sword, planted it in the ground and leaned against it in what she hoped was a casual, arroant-looking way.

The dragon huffed, extended its vast wings, flapped them once or twice and took off to sail to some place where half-breed sparkies with a passion for spatio-zoology wouldn’t babble endlessly at them. Wil stopped babbling, looking a touch disappointed, and went over to where Rosenbach lay on the ground. He hadn’t moved.

“Is he all right?” the boy asked Georgette.

Georgette helped him heave Rosenbach into a more comfortable position. “Rosenbach is … complicated,” she said. “He lives in dreams.”

“Ha!” said Seren triumphantly. “I knew it!”

Georgette turned to look at her, and frowned, looking almost … concerned. “Seren, are you all right? You look like a volcano erupted on you, or something.”

“Funny you should say that,” said Seren wryly, examining herself. She was rather a mess. Her old, battered Pathfinder uniform was now even older and battered-er, with lots of slits and tears and scorched patches. All of her was grimy and covered in ash. “I’m fine. Just a few bruises.”

Georgette shrugged and turned away, and then paused, and gave her a closer look. “And since when have your eyes been green?”

“What?” said Seren, startled, but the girl had already turned away to examine the world they found themselves in.

Seren did the same, and what she saw made her use the strongest curse she knew.

“Reynard!” she spat. “We’re on Mulberry!”

Georgette turned to give her a slow stare. “ ‘Mulberry’? Is that meant to be menacing? It sounds like a nursery rhyme.”

“It isn’t meant to be menacing. It just is.”

Wil looked around, flicking his tail, incidentally flinging specks of slime all over the place. His not-quite-human face split into a broad, dreamy smile. Wil had a passion for alien flora, apparently. “But it’s … beautiful.”

“Yes, it is. That’s the problem.”

It was night-time, and two moons shone overhead. One was a soft, whispering blue, the other a creamy golden-red. The twin light of the moons lit the landscape fairly well. Not as if it was day. This was an entirely different kind of beauty. Through it Mulberry could be seen in soft, tinted, purplish shades, pastel-coloured, smooth as an oil painting.

Mulberry was a beautiful planet. The ground was covered in soft moss, which was a pleasant creamy colour, tinted by the moons. All around them grew strange, fantastic plants – trees with bulbous bases and broad, shiny, umbrella-shaped leaves, small bushes with trumpet-shaped blooms, long, trailing vines studded with tiny dark berries. The air was rich with a thousand subtly blending scents, and small, pale-furred bats hovered and darted at the flowers. The bats in particular reminded Seren of the Tangleforest back home, but whereas the Tangleforest was a fierce, joyously overgrown wilderness, this place couldn’t have been any more beautiful if it was a garden planned by Mule Beckett himself.

It was beautiful, and in its beauty lay its danger.

Wil wandered over to inspect a tawny wildflower, his face serious and intent. Seren rolled her eyes. How often did she have to warn these people? “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

He jerked his hand back as if it had been stung. “Is it poisonous?”

“No. Nothing on Mulberry is. It’s a paradise.”

He looked around, and frowned. “There’s no people.”

“Oh, there are people, here and there. They all die, sooner or later.”

Georgette was turning the Ring over and over in her hands. “Of what?” she asked. “Is it like the lotus blossoms? That send you into perfect sleep, so you die dreaming?”

“Nope.” How to explain Mulberry? “People come here, now and again, mostly by accident. They wander for a while, and, eventually, they all decide it’s the most beautiful place they’ve ever seen. They decide to stay, to flee from the dreary dullness of their everyday lives. Live on the land, here in paradise. And it works well enough, for a while. There’s an abundance of edible roots, and all the fruits are delicious and nourishing. The wood of the trees is sturdy but splits cleanly under the axe if you want to make a shelter out of it, not that you need to – in many places interwoven trees offer their own shelter, and, besides which, there’s no need for a shelter. The weather is always temperate and mild.”

“Sounds perfect,” said Georgette. “So, what, they die of boredom?”

Seren snorted, amused despite herself. “No. After a while, everything just seems so beautiful that all they want to do is sit and appreciate it. Just sit. Nothing else. No sleeping, no eating. After a while, they die. Smiling.”

Georgette and Wil looked at each other, and they both shuddered.

“You may think it’s beautiful now,” said Seren, “but its true beauty is only fully visible when the sun is up. If we’re not off the planet by then …” She shrugged. “Then we’re lost.”

There was a sober silence, which Seren used to toy with her sword and scan the landscape. It was hard not to get caught up in the beauty of it, but she could’ve sworn she saw something, something small and quick and ragged and not beautiful at all.

Georgette said, in tones of forced cheer, “Well, on the bright side, we’re in a bit of a hurry anyway. I need to get to Navy and find the Coin.”

“The Coin is on Navy?” said Seren, after briefly wondering whether she wanted to know what the Coin was and deciding that she didn’t.

Georgette hesitated. “Well. Um. Rosenbach said it used to be …”

“Rosenbach? Who’s Rosenbach?”

“People forget about him,” explained Georgette. “He just kind of … disappears.”

She knelt down beside Rosenbach. Oh, yes. Seren remembered now. The spindly one. Funny how he just slipped out of her mind like that. Maybe it was because he lived in the dreamworld. Just as likely it was the beauty of the planet getting to her.
A moth with gilded wings flew past her, sending clouds of glittery dust into her face, making her blink and rub at her eyes. It would be so easy just to lie down and sleep, dream Mulberry dreams, and then, in the morning, wake, and wander, along the crystal-clear stream to the waterfall where dragonflies hovered and spun and silvery fish stirred the water.

Luck curse it all, it was getting to her. Seren thought ferociously of Ochre, of barren landscapes and dry heat, and her thought snapped back into its usual focus. ‘Its usual focus’ being a kind of blurry distraction. She sipped from her brandy, and wished she had something stronger. Mulberry disconcerted her.

Georgette shook Rosenbach. “Rosenbach. Wake up. We need to hurry. We need to find the Coin. Wake up.”

Rosenbach stirred and said nothing.


*


In his dreams he was flying.

He always seemed to, in the dreams, almost without thinking of it. In the dreams he was powerful.

It was all too easy to just stay in them, and never wake.

It wouldn’t be that bad, really. He never needed to eat or drink like other people, not really. Or, well, he did, but dream-food was enough, honey as sweet as the sky, wine as smooth as thinking. It would be so, so easy just to remain, and he was always tempted to do just that. Real life certainly never had as much to offer him.

But he didn’t want to remain trapped, halfway between the worlds.

His dreams weren’t dreams. Not in the way the dreams of normal people were. His dreams were mirrors.

Here, for example, he could see the vegetation that he’d glimpsed before falling asleep, lush and rich, but somehow transparent, hollow, unsubstantial. There was something menacing about it, something insidiously greasy about the beauty, something repulsive that just made him want to get away. By contrast, when he looked up at the sky, the stars were bright, far brighter than they ever were in the real world. All was silent.

Rosenbach would almost prefer the dream world to the real one, were it not for the fear that he would get stuck in it, fall asleep one day and never wake up …

“Hello.”

Rosenbach jolted, performed a rather stunning flip, and fell to the ground in a show of spectacular lack of coordination. There were people in the dream-world, but just the shadows of them, going about their business without realising they were casting a reflection. None of them had ever spoken to him.

And this was no reflection. It was a sturdy, cheerful-looking man with dark hair and feathered wings that was quite a bit too small to carry his weight, which was probably why he was on the ground, looking down at Rosenbach with an amused expression, though at least he looked a little apologetic about it.

“Sorry about that. It can be startling, I know,” said the man, and he held out a big, reassuringly solid hand to help Rosenbach up, or possibly shake his hand – difficult to tell. “I’m Mart.”

Rosenbach eyed him distrustfully and wriggled away. “Who are you?” he said, fear and surprise and anger making his voice all raspy and strange.

“Um,” said the winged man. “Mart?”

“No, but … what are you?” Rosenbach staggered back to his feet unaided, giving the impossible stranger a deeply suspicious look. “How come you to be walking through dreams?”

“Same way you do,” said Mart, shrugging his wings. “Blood of a god, and all that.”

Rosenbach stared at him. “… Blood of a god?”

“Well. Ichor, if you want to use the technical term,” said Mart.

Rosenbach took another hasty few steps away from him, and held out his hand, holding energy in it loosely, ready to shape. He could change things in the dream-world, make a weapon, but if this man had the same power (power? It was a curse, to be held between two worlds) as he did then he could easily anticipate that. “Blood of a god? You killed a god to get here?”

Mart stared at him. “Um. No,” he said. “Luck, you are a paranoid one, aren’t you? Can’t really blame you, though. I’m really the first of us you’ve seen?”

“Us?” said Rosenbach hoarsely. “Plural? There’s more of you?”

“More of us,” corrected Mart gently. “You’re one of us. Somewhere way back in your family tree is a god. We all inherit a few things. I got wings, and dreamwalking. Looks like you got dreamwalking too.” He looked him up and down. “And maybe a tapeworm. Do you eat enough?”

“Real world food never tastes as good as dream food.”

“Then don’t eat it,” said Mart, looking surprised. “Why would you eat real food?”

“Because I don’t want to die!” snapped Rosenbach, shaping the energy in his hand into an axe.

Mart’s wings twitched in agitation and what might have been fear. “Hey. Steady, there. I don’t want to hurt you.” He paused, and admitted with a sheepish grin, “Don’t particularly want you to hurt me, either. There are others of us, but not many, and it’s a lonely existence, ours. Just a few thousand people in our universe, instead of billions, but—”

“A few thousand?” repeated Rosenbach, all shocked and silent. His eyes widened. “… And … you don’t eat? But you stay alive?”

“Of course. This world may just be a reflection of the real one, but that doesn’t make it any less real.” Mart stood looking at him, and then his eyes widened. “Oh,” he said softly. “Oh. You thought you were mad?”

Rosenbach let the axe slip away into energy again, and let the energy go. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Oh,” said Mart again. Rosenbach was willing to forgive the repetition; these were far from normal circumstances. “Well. Um. You’re not.” He paused. “I presume. Do you have hallucinations, or anything?”

“Well,” said Rosenbach. “I had this strange dream where a winged man talked to me …”

“Heh.” Mart grinned. “Y’know, I think I like you, strange paranoid man. What’s your name?”

“Rosenbach,” said Rosenbach.

Mart winced. “That’s a horrible name.”

“Yes,” agreed Rosenbach, “it is.” This had never occurred to him before, but now he knew it to be truth. ‘Rosenbach’ was a perfectly fine name; it just wasn’t his name.

“We’ll just have to find you a new one,” said Mart cheerfully. “Come on. There’s a colony on Dream-Olive who’d like to—”

“Wait. Hang on. I can’t just leave.”

“You can’t?”

“No! I’m in the middle of a quest!”

“Oh,” said Mart, in the doubtful way that meant he didn’t quite understand, but was willing to play along. “Is it an interesting one, then?”

The man with no name raised his eyebrows. “It’s more of the saving-the-galaxy kind.”

“Since when did Little Squid need saving?”

“Since a few centuries ago, when someone invented a weapon that … well, I’m not quite sure what it does. But it’s called the Starfall, and that’s anything but good.”

“Oh.” Mart frowned at the ground, then looked up and smiled. “Need any help?”
The man with no name nodded. “I’d appreciate it. I used dreams to find out the original information, but I can’t seem to … We’re looking for three items, three Keys, that will enable the bearer to use the Starfall. I think. Possibly four Keys, but the sources … The Keys have some relation, anyway. We have the first one, I think – I caught a glimpse of it on our guide’s hand just before I fell asleep. She definitely had it, though she looked rather the worse for wear.” And her eyes had changed colour, but the man with no name saw no need to mention that. “And now we need the Coin, but … something’s happened to it. Navy used to have it, but I think it’s been shunted around, and then it was stolen, and no amount of dream-eavesdropping does any good.”

“Ah,” said Mart thoughtfully. “Why not just skip it? Go to the next one, and hope it’ll turn up later?”

“Oh,” said the man with no name in some surprise. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Mart nodded and said, “I’d gathered. Being caught between two worlds does that to you. Tears you apart. I know more than anyone.” For an instant, his genial expression became pained with memory, and then, with an effort, the smile was back again. “So just go to whoever’s questing with you, tell them where to go to find the third Key … thing, and then you can go to sleep and enter this world permanently. And the pain will stop.”

The man with no name went silent, looking at him, something like hope warring with doubt in his eyes. Eventually he said, “Really?” in a quiet, brittle voice.

“Really,” Mart assured him. Then he laughed, self-consciously. “I realise that I may seem like some too-good-to-be-true secret-villain in a B-grade fantasy novel, but I’m not, truly. I want to help you.”

The man with no name stood staring at him. Then he grinned, broadly, and reached out and shook his hand warmly.

“Right, then,” said the man with no name. “See you shortly.” And then he woke up.

[Trilly (18426 words)]

Argh, it's taken me awhile to post a congrats on getting the story done! D= So congrats now!

And excerpts! Are they in order, or random snippety things? Because I'd draw a cover-ish thing for you if I can find the time, but I don't really know anything about the plot and characters and character designs and... yeah, you get the idea. ^^; I'd have to read the story first.

[Rikku]

Nov 30, 2009 19:48:59 GMT -5 Trilly (18426 words) said:

Argh, it's taken me awhile to post a congrats on getting the story done! D= So congrats now!

And excerpts! Are they in order, or random snippety things? Because I'd draw a cover-ish thing for you if I can find the time, but I don't really know anything about the plot and characters and character designs and... yeah, you get the idea. ^^; I'd have to read the story first.

Thanks! ^_^ This one was fun.

They're in order. (Though it's difficult to tell, seeing the viewpoint switches around so darn much. -___-) And ooh, if you can that'd be fantastic. =DDD I shall post more of the story posthaste.

... Speaking of which.

SPOILER: Click to show

Seren had decided to wash.

She wasn’t a hygienophile or anything like that, but there comes a point when even the most staunchly image-ignorant person gets tired of walking around covered in soot and unwashed scrapes.

While the others gathered around Rosenbach, who hadn’t woken up yet, she slipped off through the moonlit forest until she found what she’d been listening to, the whisper of a stream. It was clear, even with just the moonlight, the water taking on a lovely violet tinge. Fairly deep, too, maybe half a metre. No mud on the stream bottom, just round, smooth rocks, white and grey and speckled.

Seren followed the stream till she couldn’t hear the sound of the others’ voices any more, at which point there was a conveniently situated place where a waterfall flowed into a deep, calm pool. Seren took of her sword and laid it on the soft, grassy ground. She did the same with her boots. Her Pathfinder uniform she left where it was, because it could more than deal with a little wet.

She glanced in the water and frowned. She looked a mess, but that wasn’t why she was annoyed. Her eyes were green, a bright, fierce green that didn’t seem right in her face. Stupid Reynard.

Oh, he wasn’t really the Trickster, of course not, but he’d obviously done … something … to make her eyes like that. The details didn’t bother her, but the whole did. She liked her eyes brown.

Having frowned at her reflection in the shimmering water for long enough, she dived smoothly in, making no splash. That was one of the other things they taught at the Academy.

Once in she scrubbed at her hair, and at her skin, until the blackness was washed away and her skin shone creamy in the moonlight. That done, she dived underneath.

The pool was deeper than she’d thought, four or five metres, and almost perfectly round. She dived to the bottom to look at things. Nestled amongst the round stones were other stones chipped with quartz, and stones made entirely of shining crystal. She picked up a small one and rolled it between her fingers, and knew by how it shed the water that it was a diamond. A diamond that had somehow been in this gentle current long enough to be smoothed by age. Seren put the diamond in her belt pouch and swam over to where some kind of weed swayed gently. It was dark green, and with its tendrils wrapped around the rocky wall of the pool, the contrast was quite striking.

Half a dozen silvery fish streaked past, and Seren turned over to follow them with her eyes, smiling. It was so beautiful, this place. So very beautiful.

Sort of enchantingly beautiful. But the vague, suspicious thought drifted across her mind and then was gone, leaving nothing but bliss in its wake. It was so beautiful here, so very beautiful, she just wanted to sink into the water and relax and …

Drifting dreamily underwater on her back, Seren saw something, a distorted face looking down at her through the water. She recognised that face.

Sudden fury chased away the dreaminess, and she kicked off the bottom with such force that she breached the surface in a column of spray and arced down to land square on top of the watcher, knocking him to the ground.

“Gerroff!” he said, squirming in annoyance. “It’s me!”

“Why do you think I’m doing this, idiot?” growled Seren, drawing back her fist to punch him, wishing she had her sword.

Reynard didn’t look worried, exactly, but there was something that might have been concern in his bright green eyes, warring with amusement. Seren decided to join that war on the side of the concern. It was more than justified, she felt, and she knew that he’d agree once she’d punched his face in.

“Why are you here?” she shouted at him, glowering, wishing that her hair wasn’t all damp and droopy. She would have looked a lot more menacing before she’d washed all the soot off, too.

“You called me,” he said, and then he winced as she punched him, concern now definitely dominant over amusement. “Ow! Stop that! It’s true!”

“Called you?” repeated Seren, frowning.

“I would love to explain, but I seem inexplicably unable to breathe.” He raised his eyebrows at her, and after a few moments of distrustful inactivity she got off him and crouched next to him as he sat up, with rather more pained winces than she thought entirely necessary. She could have done without the way he pointedly brushed himself off, too. Sure she was battered and angry, but that didn’t make her contagious. Though she wouldn’t have terribly minded Reynard getting all battered. He was irksome.

Reynard gasped in a lungful of air, melodramatically. “My ribs thank you,” he said. She glared at him.

He looked a little different than he had before. Mind you, people seldom look their best when they’re standing on top of a volcano. There was a more vulpine look to him now, a pointedness to his features, a sharpness to his smile, a ragged look to his hair. The pricked, distinctly inhuman ears and the bushy tail that he was currently sitting on might have added to the whole ‘foxlike’ thing also. Yes, there was something more foxlike about him now. Also something more squished, but that could be more readily explained.

“An explanation would be nice at about this point,” said Seren, after Reynard had stretched out all his limbs with a lot of pained gasping and stoic wincing. “Now that you mention it. Unless you want me to sit on you again.”

Reynard stopped hastily and said, managing somehow to look dignified despite the situation, “I gave you my name, you called it, I came. Simple as that.”

“So you have to come whenever I call?”

His ageless face looked apprehensive. “I hope you’re not getting any ideas.”

“Oh, I am now,” she said, with more than a touch of wickedness. He groaned.

“So.” Seren settled down and crossed her legs beneath her. “You’re the Trickster?”

“Yep.”

“Old Brushtail?”

“Mm-hmm. Well, I don’t know about old.”

“You look old.”

He snorted. “Not sure how to say this, but you’re not exactly a spring flower yourself, Pathfinder.”

Seren chose to ignore that. “You’re a god?”

“That’s me.” He gave a mocking bow. He must have been using some of his godlike-with-a-lower-case-‘g’ powers on that one; it’s extremely hard to give any kind of bow when you’re sitting down.

“Quite a long list of titles, isn’t it?” said Seren thoughtfully. She was babbling a bit, but the whole ‘god’ thing was quite a bit to come to terms with all at once. It was better to deal with in little pieces. “Reminds me of those horrible formal letters written by people in power in which their list of names is longer than the actual letter.”

“Does a bit,” he agreed cheerfully. “Although of course I’m a lot more impressive. Oh, and you missed out ‘star’.”

“That’s true?” she said, startled. “I thought it was a myth.”

“Nope. See up there?” He pointed at the sky, speckled with stars.

Seren looked up, managing not to focus on the beautiful moons, trying to see where he was pointing. “Yes.”

“That’s me. That impressive-looking greenish one.”

She regarded it thoughtfully. After a while she said, “It’s a bit small.”

“What?” He sat up straighter, and his brush bristled with indignation. “No it isn’t!”

“It is. I’ve seen larger fireflies.”

“Size isn’t everything, you know,” he said, with great dignity, folding his arms over his chest.

“Ah, so you’re admitting you’re small?” said Seren, as cunning as a fo … as something cunning.

“I am not!” he snapped at her. “Anyway, I make up for it by sheer presence.”

“Do you now.”

“Yes!”

“Your tail’s showing,” she pointed out.

“That’s deliberate. The worshippers love it when I go part-aspect. This brings down the house in the Trickster’s Temple on Burgundy.”

“I’m sure it does,” she said, delicately. He scowled at her.

“Anyway, you can’t talk. You look like you—”

“Jumped off an active volcano?”

He examined her critically. “And then were eaten by some manner of rabid beast, yes.”

“Appearance doesn’t matter to me, all that much. Oh, except one thing.” She got her feet, shedding water, and in the same motion she picked up the sword and held it to his throat. “I want my eyes back,” she said, and her voice was dangerous.

He’d looked mildly amused throughout the conversation, and patronising, as though he was speaking to someone who was nowhere near his equal but almost entertaining enough to make up for it. Now some of that airy superiority dropped from him. Though he kept his face the same, wearing a slight smirk, and his ancient eyes didn’t change, his posture, how he held himself, became wary, almost nervous. “Don’t threaten me with that thing,” he said quietly.

“You don’t have much say in this, Mister I Can Act Like I’m Better Than Everyone Else Because I’m A Celestial Body,” she growled. “Give me my eyes back.”

“I’m serious. That sword is—”

“You don’t like my sword?” She pulled it up from his throat, inspected it in the moonlight, and whipped it back again, laying a thin cut across his cheek, drawing blood. “Tough! I want my eyes back!”

All of the amusement dropped from him then, and he put his hand to the cut. His eyes watched her calmly, coldly, calculatingly, and she felt a cold shudder go down her spine as she thought of what, exactly, this man was. However human he acted, however petty, this was a being made of fire and air, a being centuries old, a being she couldn’t begin to comprehend.

She hadn’t expected the cut to land, hadn’t expected to be able to hurt him. The surprise of it almost made her flinch, though she kept her fiercest expression on. So. The gods could bleed.

It didn’t look like normal blood. When he brought his hand away from his face to hold the blood on it up to his eyes, she could see it … glowing? Was that the word? It seemed almost more gaseous than liquid.

“You will pay for that, mortal,” he said quietly.

“Put it on my tab,” snarled Seren. “It’s so big already a few more creds won’t hurt. I want my eyes back!”

He curled his lips into a smile that did not touch his eyes. “Yes, I gathered that.” Gingerly, he touched his cheek again, and winced showily. “Ouch. That hurt, you know.”

He was making a joke of it, making himself seem silly and normal and human. Seren wasn’t fooled.

“So.” She kept the sword at his throat. Not because she wanted to threaten him, particularly – she’d never meant to hurt him, that wasn’t her way. No. She kept the sword at his throat because she was terrified of what he might do if she left herself defenceless. “What is it about my sword that you find so appalling?”

“It offends my artistic sensibilities.”

“Funny. I hadn’t pegged you as the artistic type.”

“You know,” he said, “I might be more inclined to talk if you weren’t holding a sword to my throat. Just a thought.”

Seren sighed. “I’m holding a sword to your throat because I’m scared of what you might do to me otherwise,” she said, with characteristic bluntness.

One corner of his mouth curled upwards. “You’re scared. Good. Not completely inept, then. Let me up.”

She gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Like heck.”

“Trust me.”

Seren stared at him, sprawled and smiling, his green eyes the only serious part of his face, watching. Then, rather to her surprise, she found herself lowering the sword, and planting it on the ground.

Reynard exhaled, half-closed his eyes, opened them and shot her a smile. “There. Now that wasn’t too hard, was it?” He sprang to his feet. “You’ll make a decent Champion after all. And, if you really want to know …” His eyes slid to her sword, then away again. Seren could have sworn he shuddered, but his tone was upbeat. Almost too upbeat, like he was doing his best to keep it that way. “That sword is … monstrous.”

“Monstrous? That’s it? Wow, great job on the specifics, fox boy.”

He shrugged. “Never claimed to be eloquent.” He paused and grinned modestly. “Though I am eloquent, of course. One of my many talents.”

“Of course,” said Seren resignedly. “So.” She slid her sword into its place at her belt, noticing how his eyes followed it, and how he kept a wary distance away. “How many gods are there?”

He held out his hand and counted them off on his fingers. “Grim – he’s the Reaper. God of Death or Fate or something dramatic like that. Then there’s me, the Trickster, God of Rogues.” He gave a modest smile that somehow managed to be utterly unmodest. “Best of the lot, naturally. And there’s my sister Lady Luck, God of … well, God of Luck. Shockingly enough. And Ayvi, I suppose.” He sounded extremely grudging.

“I haven’t heard of him.”

“Well, no. He’s god of only one world. One! Where’s his ambition? I mean, if it was a good world, I could almost understand it, but the weather’s rubbish and the magic system is bizarre.” He shrugged. “And there’s Greenthumb, God of Plants.” He hesitated. “Except ferns. Envy does ferns.”

Seren blinked.

Reynard gave a long-suffering sigh, as though he’d explained this many times before and wasn’t in any particular hurry to do so again. “Suffice it to say that he used to be God of Envy, and then he got jealous.”

“Ah,” said Seren. “And that’s it?”

“No. We number many. Trying to count us is like trying to count all the stars in the sky. And there’s no hyperbole in that last sentence, by the way.”

“I gathered. If there’s that many of you, why don’t I hear more about gods meddling in the affairs of mortals and suchlike? Most people think of you as mythological.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said breezily. “You’d be surprised. We’re seldom seen unless we want to be seen.” He made a lazy gesture. “Are we finished with the game of 20 Questions yet? I tire of it.”

“Not quite. You’re the Trickster. God of Rogues. What is your business with me?”
She feared that she already knew what the answer was, but when it came, it wasn’t at all what she expected.

“You’re not one of mine, not quite yet. But you’re a gambler, a risk-taker. You’re a disciple of Luck, whether you know it or not. She’s busy right now, so I’m watching over you for a bit.”

“That’s it?”

He shrugged. “She’s my favourite sister.”

“Uh-huh,” said Seren, her voice so extremely sceptical that it would probably be quite good at writing scathing articles for movie magazines.

He gave another half-shrug, smiling faintly. “Besides which, you’re fun. I’ve only been keeping tabs of you for … what, a day? Two?”

“Time is weird,” said Seren baldly. As understatements went, it was quite a massive one. Time was fluid in Little Squid. It was impossible for things to be any other way in a place so vast, even though Little Squid was one of the smaller galaxies. Because of that, events often seemed to happen after events that could only have happened after, and so on. It got confusing. The best way to deal with it, in Seren’s opinion, was to get drunk out of your mind. Everything seemed weird when you were that drunk, so time didn’t stand out, and you could get on with living or, more likely, being quietly sick in the corner.

“Not long, anyway, and already you’ve, like, blown up a world.” He made an odd circly sort of gesture with one that was presumably meant to represent a world blowing up, then added, conscientiously, “There was a little hyperbole in that one.”

“Yes, I gathered.”

Then Seren started to drift. Not that she was being entranced by Mulberry’s beauty, of course not, she … it was just so easy … no, she couldn’t, she had to …

It was so beautiful. And the moons were dipping toward either horizon. It would surely be dawn soon, and the sunlight would paint the garden in brilliant shades of gold and soft, pastel rose. It would be a sight to see. Not that it wasn’t already, the descending moons reflected in the shimmering water, the tasselled leaves of plants whispering in the gentle breeze, the –

The sharp teeth fastened around her ankle.

“Ow,” said Seren in outrage, and she kicked out. The fox who’d been biting her flew off less far than it should have, landed on its feet, and stood calmly, watching her, sharp little teeth bared in a grin.

“Alright, I get the point,” she snapped at him, stumping off through the gardens in the direction of her fellow questers. “I’m going already. I’m hardly likely to be trapped by this planet.”

Reynard made no reply, being a fox at the time. But he kept pace with her, his tail at an arrogant, jaunty sort of angle that seemed to be saying ‘Of course you are’ in an extremely patronising voice. She dearly wanted to kick him again, but it probably wasn’t wise. Antagonising the gods, and all that. Particularly if he really was watching over her for Luck, however much Seren doubted that.

He had helped, though. She had been in danger of slipping into a trance.

But she sure wasn’t about to thank him.

Wil and Georgette were bent over Rosenbach (gosh, that was a weird name. And this was Serendipity Avalon Corissca Duamine talking, so she should know), who was finally awake. The spindly, skeletal man looked … happy.

It really didn’t suit his face at all. Kinda creepy.

“You want to go to sleep?” said Georgette, nearly crying. The misery suited her face as little as the happiness suited Rosenbach’s. “And … never wake up?”

“Not as bad as it sounds,” said Rosenbach. “I hope. I’m just here to tell you not to go after the Coin; it was stolen a few years back, and I can’t figure out where it’s gone. Just skip to the Cup.”

The Ring, the Coin, the Cup. This Quest featured more and more Proper Nouns every Day, and Seren had a Sinking Feeling that it was only going to get Worse.

Georgette nodded, her face all drawn and determined. “All right. Where is it?”

“On Tawny.”

Seren felt mild interest at that. Tawny was one of the Kind’s three Worlds – three worlds. She’d spent a lot of time there in her not-yet-graduated days.

Georgette looked up at Seren and said, “Oh, and tell our resident drunk what the Cup does before you go, just to get her interest so she won’t murder us all in our beds.”

“Don’t be silly,” Seren said. “We don’t have beds. Because someone forget to bring bed rolls …”

“Would you stop going on about that?” snapped Georgette, and Wil chimed in with, “Yes, leave her alone!” Young love. How nauseating.

Rosenbach smiled and said, “My sources indicate that any liquid poured into the Cup will turn into richest, highest-quality wine.”

And now he had Seren’s complete interest. Forget mild interest. If mild interest was a mouse, how Seren felt now was an elephant on steroids.

“Wine, eh?” she said casually, trying not to say something like, Ooh, shiny, trying to remain professional and –

Oh Luck. The moons were setting.

“We need to move,” Seren said. “Fast. There are bases with emergency ships for people who get stranded on Mulberry, and the nearest—” She glanced up at the stars, gauged distance, time, angles, all with that automatic calculation that Pathfinders were taught. “—is half a kilometre away. We need to move. It’s nearly dawn, and when dawn comes we’re lost.”

“Good luck,” said Rosenbach, sincerely, and then he closed his eyes.

“You too,” said Georgette, but he’d already fallen asleep. She sat silently for a moment, watching him, and then let Wil help her to her feet. “So. We should get going, then?”

“Yeah, it’s not like I’ve been saying that for the past ten pages or anything!” snarled Seren, and, not sparing a glance for the downed Rosenbach, she started off at an easy lope that the others could keep pace with.

“Just remember,” she said, “to not look at the landscape. Don’t even think about it. Think about fire, or spiders, or whatever it is that scares you” – which didn’t give her much to think about, but she could always think about how humiliating it would be if Reynard, who she glimpsed loping along beside them every now and then, had to snap her out of it again – “and you should be fine. Or just think about where we’re going. Or your quest or … whatever it is you’re looking for.”

The realisation that she still had no freaking idea what this whole thing was actually about was a little disconcerting, but not very. After all, she knew what their next step would be.

It would be good to visit Tawny again.

They walked as fast as it was possible to walk without breaking into an actual frantic run, and soon they had left Rosenbach well behind them. Seren got on her tiptoes and craned ahead – yes, there it was, a little way ahead, a smooth, silvery mound half-covered by irritatingly pretty grass.

She glanced up at the horizon. The moons had sunk over, and the sky was turning grey. Nearly dawn.

“Faster,” said Seren tersely. “Faster would be good.”

They went a little bit faster. At this point, if they wanted to be any more fast, they’d have to skip a few meals.

And then there was the mound in front of them. Seren opened the doors quickly, via a complicated mechanical device that would just seem ill thought-out if properly explained but nonetheless worked perfectly well, and ushered them through. She then paused to give a glare at Reynard, who was sitting and giving a foxlike grin and showed no signs of following them, before she ducked in the doors and closed them after her using the same complicated mechanical device. The doors gave a faint pneumatic hisssss as they closed. Doors on spaceships always did, even when their mechanisms contained no pneumatics and, indeed, it was even chances that the designers knew what pneumatics were. It was one of the great mysteries of the universe, like how ‘monosyllabic’ has more than one syllable.

Georgette looked around, apprehensively. “How old is this?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Seren said cheerfully. “Not that old.”

“Seren. Even the cobwebs are rusting.”

“Pah. Cobwebs always do that.” She brushed a bunch of them away from the view-screen. Squinted. “Yeah, this’ll do fine. So. We’re going to Tawny?”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like any of us can fly this thing.”

“I’m a Pathfinder,” said Seren. “There’s no ship in the ‘nite I can’t fly. Hang on tight.”

She pushed a button, which made the whole, small, grass-covered ship shake.

“I meant to do that,” she added.

“Seren? Look after this for me, will you?” said Georgette, and gave her the Ring.

“You trust me to look after this?”

Georgette grimaced. “No. But it’s too big for my finger.” She went over to stand, a little timidly, by Will.

Will looked pale, his odd face sweating. “This is my first time on a spaceship,” he explained, with an attempt at a laugh.

Seren rotated slowly to look at him. “You’re kidding, right? You’re not scared by being eaten by a dragon and then turned into light, but you’re scared by a spaceship?”

“In fairness,” said Georgette, defensively, “it’s an extremely old spaceship.”

“It’s sturdy,” said Seren, more for the sake of being contrary than out of any real fondness for the ship. She slapped a bulkhead encouragingly, and it fell off, with much skeletal creaking. “I meant to do that too,” she added, and then she gave up, slipped the Ring onto her finger, and strode over to the controls.

She hadn’t been lying. Pathfinders could fly anything.

Yes. She could fly this.

Easy.

Surely that lever-thing was some kind of … well, those buttons certainly … if nothing else, that gauge would certainly …

“Oh, to Grim with it,” Seren said, and she jerked down on the lever, slammed her first on some buttons, and hoped for the best.

Rattling and juddering, the ship rose from the ground, and then, as the Applied Phlebotinium Drive kicked in, zoomed off into the ‘nite, leaving a shower of rust in its wake that contrasted sharply with the softly beautiful Mulberrry sunrise.


*


It was not Ada’s day.

To start with, the only reason why Mule hadn’t stayed in bed all morning was because he hadn’t gone to bed in the first place. She’d found him in his workroom (a place as large as some modestly sized continents), crumpled on the ground, sleeping in a way that looked extremely uncomfortable. None of the worry left his face when he was sleeping, and all of the pain remained on it. She’d hauled him into bed, wishing that they had servants instead of just robot drones who were very pretty but not so good at lifting people, and then her day had just got worse and worse. People kept on calling, wanting things signed, wanting appearances, artwork, commission. She swore, if she got one more message, she’d –

Her small, personal message-screen beeped. Quite smugly.

Ada glared at it, strode over, lifted up the nearest thing that was, for some reason, a wrench, turned on the message-screen with a flick of her wrist and snarled, “What.”

It was the inoffensive, white-cloaked man, who looked at her and blinked. “Um,” he said.

Ada sighed, rubbed her forehead, lowered the wrench, moderated her tone a bit. A bit. It had been a trying day, and she didn’t particularly feel like talking to some scientific institute’s version of a receptionist. “What?”

“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. If it’s a bad time—”

Ada gave a humourless smile. “Every time is a bad time. Is something wrong?”

He paused, and scratched the back of his neck, and looked around. It was that last look, a hunted, nervous look, that made Ada a little suspicious.

“Do your employers know you’re calling?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “No, they don’t. Ma’am, I just wanted to tell you. The … article you … commissioned …”

Ada’s heart beat faster. “The clone?” she asked eagerly. “It’s finished?” If it was finished, Mule would –

“Yes.” He bit his lip at the expression of delight that must have bloomed on her face. “Ma’am, we were not entirely truthful with you,” he said, speaking quickly, glancing over his shoulder again. “My superiors took your case because they wanted to see if a clone of your husband would have his same talents, those same qualities, that same brilliance—”

Ada opened her mouth, outraged, to say something pointed about how very inferior liars were to something like, say, dung, when a sharper, uneasy thought penetrated her rage. “Don’t tell me you made a sentient clone,” she whispered.

The man couldn’t meet her eyes.

“Oh, Greenthumb,” she whispered. “I …” She rubbed her forehead. This was at least a six or seven on the Richter scale of moral shakiness. Cloning was bad enough, but sentient clones … creating actual, thinking life …

No, no, no, she never intended this to happen, it wasn’t her fault!

“They thought he’d have your husband’s brilliance,” continued the man, still talking hastily and casting uneasy looks over his shoulder – Ada got the impression that he was very short on time. “He didn’t. Project bb1 was a complete failure – the man is a simpleton, he barely talks! They’re going to destroy him. I just thought you needed to know.”

And then, abruptly, the signal died. The message-screen continued to show a grid of sparkling white lines for a few seconds before it, too, died, with a crackling hiss of protest.

Ada stood staring.

“Destroy …?” she whispered.

Then her lip curled, and her shoulders lifted, and she stuck out her lower lip, though she didn’t realise she did that last one.

“No!” she barked. “I will not let that happen! I can’t steal the heart of an actual thinking human, not even to save my husband. I can’t save Mule. But I sure as stars can save him!”

Something was biting into her hand. The wrench. She glanced at it, dropped it, and, with a wave of her hand, called up the message-screen again. Her searches for a medical research place that had sufficiently advanced technology to help Mule had turned up a lot of interesting contacts with people on the shadier side of life.

She fluttered her fingers to select the number she wanted to call, and the message-screen was blank for a second and then showed a man’s face.

The image was grainy, less-than-ideal. That meant that the man’s message-screen was quite poor quality. Then again, considering what kind of man this was, he could very easily have a poor message-screen just so no one could ever quite get a positive fix on his face. Or to foster a suitably dark, dramatic atmosphere. He seemed like that kind of person, too, from what Ada had heard of him.

“Are you the one they call the Prince of Thieves?” she asked, just to be sure.

The man quirked an eyebrow and nodded. He had very bold eyebrows, emphasising the quick, clever eyes that glinted from out of his quick, clever face. Ada did not trust him. “If I’m not, then I sincerely hope that he doesn’t catch me in his ship. What can I do for you?”

“I need something stolen,” Ada said.

He stroked his pointed, roguish little beard. “I’m not sure I can help you there,” he said, with an exaggerated sigh.

“No? But you’re the King of Thieves or whatever, aren’t you?”

He made an irritable noise at the back of his throat. “Prince,” he said. “Price of Thieves. And I don’t normally steal things on commission unless it’s a … special circumstance.”

“Unless people pay you a ridiculously disproportionate amount, you mean,” said Ada, who was quite good at cutting straight to the heart of things, after all her time spent dealing with Mule’s customers.

He grinned. “Exactly.” He looked her up and down, and then raised his bold eyebrows and said, “Or unless a pretty lady asks me particularly nicely …”

Ada didn’t roll her eyes, but it took a severe effort. The man was obviously either over-compensating or in denial. “I have money. A ridiculously disproportionate amount, as a matter of fact.”

“How very convenient,” he observed.

“The item is on a planet called Bronze. It’s an out-of-the-way, minor little planet. Do you have any problem with that?”

“Oh, no. I have a weakness for out-of-the-way little worlds.” He stroked his beard again. Probably some kind of compulsive habit, like smoking or checking social networking sites. “Very easy to get away from, and no one knows who you are.”

“How could anyone not recognise the Master of Thieves?” said Ada blandly. For a start, his ego would be easily recognisable from several star-systems away.

A flash of annoyance passed across his clever face. “Prince,” he corrected.

“Oh, yes. My mistake. Sorry. The item is in an institute …” She gave rapid directions, to the planet and the facility and the room where she was pretty sure ‘Project bb1’ was being kept, and he nodded slowly as he listened to them. She managed not to mention what the item was throughout, which turned out to be a good idea, because the Prince of Thieves had doubts even without knowing that she was hiring him to kidnap a clone.

“I’m not sure about this,” he said, when she had finished.

“I’ll pay—”

He gave an irritable wave of his hand. “The pay isn’t what’s concerning me. I’m acquainted with Bronze. Like you said, it’s a backwater world, way out in one of the more uncharted parts of Little Squid. It has basic technology. Farms. Forests. Carts. This whole facility does not fit in, and that worries me.”

“Oh,” said Ada sweetly, “I’m sure it’s nothing the Ambassador of Thieves can’t handle.”

“I told you, it’s—”

“Are you the Surgeon-General of Thieves or aren’t you?”

“Look, would you stop—”

“I never thought, with all I heard of the famed Chaplain of Thieves, that he—”

“All right! All right!” he snapped, in great annoyance. “I’ll do it! Just stop … misnaming me!”

Ada smiled sweetly. “Of course, Prince.”

He scowled. “Half in my bank account now,” he said, “half on delivery.”

“Of course, Prince. Anything you want.”

“The things I do for pretty women,” he muttered, and he clicked his fingers. The message-screen turned off. Ada let her cool, confident smile fade away.

Oh, Mule. I’m sorry, dearest. I tried.

I tried.

[Rikku]

Achilles and Boheme aren't actually a 'ship; I just wrote 'em that way because I was in a hurry. Let's pretend that it's Lady Luck being all meddlesome.

SPOILER: Click to show

Midas Beckett had a headache, and that headache was named Achilles.

“He stole a ship?” asked Midas, who had heard this report half a dozen times already and still couldn’t quite believe it.

“Yes, sir,” said the unfortunate reporter, who was quivering like an unset jelly.

Midas ran a hand over his short-cropped fuzz of brown-and-silver hair. His honest, reliable face wore an expression so utterly formidable that it had already chased away most of his guards, his healist and the man who had come in to water his ferns. “Letchford Achilles stole a ship. And you let him.”

“Um.” The poor man glanced down at his inevitable clipboard. “Actually, sir, the name here is ‘Achilles Letchford’, but, yes, it does rather seem that the Navy men on site were less than—”

“It’s Letchford Achilles,” said Midas, “he has a last name that sounds like a first one,” and somehow his tone of voice made the somewhat unthreatening words seem extremely menacing, along the lines of something like ‘I will rip out your intestines and use them to fertilise aforementioned ferns, because they’re sort of drooping currently and it takes away from the professional atmosphere of my office’. Except even more menacing. Because ferns aren’t, actually, all that menacing, much as Envy would wish they were. “And you let him steal a ship! And not just any ship, oh no.” Midas didn’t lapse into sarcasm very often, as he thought it unprofessional, but these were extenuating circumstances. “You let him steal a ship that’s worth more than the average planet!”

The man checked his clipboard again, as though hoping the small piece of wood with paper pinned on it could offer him some protection against the Supreme Commander’s rage. His face brightened. “Ah, sir, it depends on whether you use mean, medium or—”

“Get out of my office!” said Midas furiously. “And slam the door after you!”

“Um, what? Sir?”

“I’m in a bad mood but it would be kind of silly to get up just to slam the door!” he snarled furiously. “Get out!”

The man scurried away, paused, scurried back and slammed the door most satisfyingly. Midas leaned back in his comfortable, Lumbar-supported chair and exhaled, pinching his nose with his fingers. What was Achilles playing at? He’d stuck to small, petty crimes for the last few years, ever since – well, anyway, he’d stuck to small, petty crimes, and this was anything but. Stealing the Grace Note! The pride of the Navy!

Midas’s brother’s ship.

Had that been part of Achilles decision? Was this whole thing a deliberate attempt to infuriate Midas?

If so, it was working.

Midas growled in the back of his throat and slammed his fist on the desk so hard that it hurt more than he would have thought possible. He waved it around in the air, and at that point someone knocked, rather timidly, on the door. “Come in,” he called, through teeth gritted with pain.

The head of Intelligence came in. “Sir, we’ve had reports—” he began smoothly, and then he frowned. “Why are you waving?”

“I am just that happy to see you,” Midas said, sarcastically. His hand throbbed. “Go on.”

The man eyed him doubtfully, but shrugged and continued, “We’ve had reports that one of the Keys has been taken, sir. The Ring.”

And just like that, all of Midas’s worries seemed petty and insignificant. His eyes widened, and his voice came out somewhat hoarse. “By who?”

“We’re not quite sure, sir. The wards we set just tell us it’s gone.”

“If we knew where it was in the first place,” growled Midas, “why didn’t we just recover it and keep it safe on Navy?”

“Intelligence matters, sir. You wouldn’t understand.”

Ouch. This man was asking to be made into fertiliser. “I was head of Intelligence before being promoted, in case you’ve forgotten,” he said coldly.

“Oh, yes. How could I not remember? Aren’t you the one who let a thief steal the Coin from right underneath your fingers?”

Midas flinched. He had almost forgotten that, or tried to. “I didn’t know what it was.”

“Yes, sir. Seems strange to me, as you were head of Intelligence at all, but far be it from me to question your loyalty—”

That was it. He was the Supreme Commander; time to start Supremely Commanding.

Midas got up. He was, he noticed with a stab of vengeful delight, at least a head taller than the other man. “Ready the troops. The first and third legions are to safeguard the remaining Key. Unless it’s already gone, too?”

“No, our wards indicate—”

“Good. Now, tell the Lieutenant Commander he’ll be in charge during my absence. Oh, and ready the second legion to—”

“Your absence, sir?” said the head of Intelligence, blinking rapidly.

“Yes,” said Midas, taking a grim pleasure in the way the man’s mouth had fallen open. “I’m going to guard the Key too.”

“But, sir … protocol dictates—”

“If the Starfall is used, the whole universe is at stake. This is hardly a time for protocol. I’m going. Now, ready the second legion to catch the alcohol smuggler Achilles.”

“A whole legion? For one petty criminal? Isn’t that a little …” He searched for a word, and then ended, reluctantly, with, “Petty?”

Oh, yes. Extremely. “No. He is in possession of valuable property which we need to recover. Now get going! Fetch the Lieutenant Commander!” Midas strode out of his office, spun at the door and added, as an afterthought, “Oh, and remind him to water my ferns.”

And with that, he strode out magnificently, smiling a grim, dangerous smile that warned all who knew enough to read his expressions to keep well, well away.


*


It can hardly be a coincidence that no language in Little Squid, and probably Big Squid too, wherever in the ‘nite that was, has ever produced the expression ‘as pretty as a spaceport’.

This is partially because most planets are well past the idiom-forming stage by the time they’re developed enough to even know what spaceports are, let alone think of whimsical descriptions involving them. Not because spaceports are ugly. Because, as a rule, they aren’t. They’re not exactly works of astonishing, mind-boggling, making-the-minstrels-weep beauty, but they’re not ugly.

Because, mostly, the thing about spaceports is that they are all, by and large, exactly the same.

“I could have sworn we passed that drinks dispenser before,” said Boheme, frowning at it in a good-natured, perplexed kind of way.

“Yeah,” said Achilles, trying not to limp too heavily – it was harder in this spaceport than on the Grace Note, because, like all spaceports, this one seemed mostly to be a labyrinth of corridors, pseudo-intestinal in their elaborate windings, with peeling wallpaper and the occasional cheery poster that Achilles remembered from previous spaceports. “Back near Beige, remember?”

“Oh, yes,” said Boheme. “I’d forgotten Beige, Captain.”

“Most people do,” Achilles grunted. “It’s that kind of world.”

There were too many worlds in the ‘nite to keep track of them all. Some, like Navy, everyone knew; others, like Verdigris, everyone knew but never, ever talked about. But Verdigris was a special case. People didn’t talk much about Beige either, but that was just because it was boring.

“You seem to be in a bad mood, Captain,” said Boheme, with the fretful smile that meant he was concerned. “Want a muffin?”

Achilles blinked at the muffin that had suddenly appeared in Boheme’s hand. Boheme seemed to have the ability to somehow spontaneously generate muffins, which would have been cooler if Achilles actually liked muffins. “Where in the ’nite did you get that from?” he exclaimed, surprise overcoming his perpetual grouchiness.

“The muffin dispenser,” Boheme explained helpfully.

“Oh, yeah.” Achilles recovered. “I remember that from the spaceport on Burgundy.” He rubbed his leg irritably.

“Are you … all right, Captain?” asked Boheme, quietly.

“I’m fine,” snapped Achilles, and his leg chose that precise time to send another agonising jolt of pain that made his eyes water. He bit back a curse. “Stop worrying!”

Boheme looked away, as though he suddenly found the cheerful poster advertising half off on all flights that didn’t fly on a day that ended with ‘y’ extremely interesting, though Achilles couldn’t imagine why – they had seen that same poster when they were smuggling that rum through Alizarin, and it hadn’t interested Boheme then. The cook shrugged slightly, and said, quietly, “Can’t make myself not care about you, Letchford. I don’t have much choice in the matter.”

Achilles was so busy staring that he forgot about the pain in his leg, almost.

Letchford? Since when had Boheme called him Letchford? Since when had anyone? No one did.

“Well,” he snapped, eventually, rather at a loss for words, slightly flustered, not sure why and hating himself for even thinking about being flustered, “… do something about it. Oh, we’re here,” he added, in something approaching relief.

The two had emerged from the spaceport’s intestinal track of an internal corridors system into the spaceport proper, a vast open space with all the obligatory check-in counters and cafes and falsely smiling women standing at counters wearing far too much makeup. (The women wore too much makeup, not the counters. The counters were really quite modest, as counters go.)

“Where’s our contact?” asked Boheme.

“You’re the one with working eyes,” growled Achilles, even more irritably than usual.

“Right,” said Boheme, with the awkward smile that meant he didn’t really feel like smiling at all. His voice was quieter than usual, too. “Sorry, Captain.”

No more Letchford, then.

Well. Good.

Yes.

“There, Captain,” said Boheme, pointing.

“Right,” snarled Achilles, and he stumped off to talk to their contact.
He arranged to have the casks of rum they were taking dropped off discretely in the Grace Note’s cargo hold, trying not to give any sign that he wasn’t entirely sure where the Grace Note’s cargo hold was. Let them figure it out. Throughout the discussion Boheme was quieter than usual, and less smiley. Well. Good. Yes. The man was far too irritating, anyway.

Once everything was done and dusted Achilles began to limp back to the ship. It was one of those days, he could tell. He should pick up some painkillers. But no. If you started using painkillers, you’d start using more, and then more, till you had to take unhealthy amounts just to maintain the amount of pain you had originally. It was too much bother, and too expensive, and he didn’t have the time or the patience for it. Besides which, he wasn’t quite messed up enough to resort to that.

Mind you, if Boheme offered him a muffin one more time he would come curs’t close. Grim, the man was irksome.

They walked through the spaceport, Boheme mostly silent, Achilles entirely silent and grouching. It was the same as all the spaceports. Except –

Suddenly there was a woman in front of him. He could have sworn that there hadn’t been a woman there before. Particularly not someone with such feline poise, and with eyes like that, eyes like … eyes like …

“I need passage,” she said. “To Tawny. I think you will find you have cause to go there.”

“Oh yes?” said Achilles. “And why might that be?”

“On Tawny there is an item, and I think it might interest you.”

Achilles glared at her. She was beautiful. Why was he noticing that? He never noticed things like that. But this woman, she was … beautiful, yes, but the more he looked, the more he began to think that it wasn’t the kind of beauty he would ever, ever want to get involved in. There was something odd about her.

He realised he was staring. Boheme gave him a troubled look, and delved his hand into his pocket, probably – and Achilles dreaded this possibility – to fetch a muffin that he kept for emergencies. To forestall this, Achilles growled, “And what might you know of me, little lady?”

“Not much, probably,” the woman said. Her expression hadn’t changed all the time they’d been talking. It was a vague, smug sort of smile. It wasn’t like Boheme’s perpetual smile, which gave the impression of good cheer and fortitude and other long-extinct ideals like that; it was more the kind of smile worn by a cat when it’s hunting a mouse. Or indeed a cat at any time. Cats always smile.

“I don’t take passengers,” said Achilles. “And it’s unlucky to have a woman on board.”

“I think, this time,” said the woman, “it might be an exception.” She blinked her eyes at him, slowly. Very strange eyes they were.

“I think, this time,” said Achilles testily, “it mightn’t. Leave me alone, girl. I have things to do.”

She just looked at him.

And then they were on the Grace Note, in the kitchen, and Boheme was talking to him.

“Eh?” said Achilles.

“I said, why did you let Felicia on board, Captain?” Boheme’s honest face was distressed. “We can’t afford the risk of taking passengers. We don’t know how to fly this thing. Captain, we’ve been lucky to make it this far. Why did you let her on board?”

“A captain doesn’t have to explain his decisions,” growled Achilles, to cover his confusion. Why had he let Felicia on board? When had he? When had she even told them her name? He couldn’t remember. His memory … things were … what had …?

“Letchford,” said Boheme, now looking alarmed. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Don’t call me that,” said Achilles, and he limped away, making no effort to conceal his frown. Much as he hated to admit it, the whimsical cook had a point. Why had …?

He cursed, and clutched his head. It hurt to try and remember.

Almost as though someone didn’t want him to rem –

His legs gave out beneath him with the pain and he crumpled awkwardly, only managing to stay up due to managing to seize the opalescent wall with his hand. Using it to prop himself up, he clutched his forehead all the tighter. It hurt to … what hurt? What was he trying to think ab—

“Argh!”

Ah, yes. That. This latest burst of pain was worse than the others, but with it came a moment of lucidity. Felicia, if that was really her name. The cat-eyed girl. She must have done this, to stop him from thinking too hard about—

Not again not again not again. Frantically his thoughts tried to veer away from that subject, but Achilles was a stubborn man, and a plan was something he always had, and you couldn’t plan if you didn’t know the facts of the matter.

Was her name Felicia?

When he thought about it, thought hard enough to make his mind cry out in the pain of it, he seemed to recall that she hadn’t actually said so. Not as such.

You can call me Felicia, she had said. Not My name is Felicia. But what difference could that possibly make? The only time when semantics like that mattered were in the old stories about the gods –

Oh.

Oh.

The pain had bled away, leaving a kind of aching weariness. Achilles sighed and hauled himself to his feet. He didn’t think any more about the cat-eyed girl, because the affairs of stars were not for mere mortals to meddle in, merely to muddle along, as best they could.

He had to think about it some, though. This made everything about ten thousand times more complicated. You couldn’t plan if there was a god involved. That, at least, was one thing all the stories agreed upon.

Slit-Eyes. Wasn’t that the name for Lady Luck?

Even worse. People often forgot that she was the god for both kinds of luck. Not just good.

As evidenced by the fact that when he finally found his way into the bridge, Mood had, apparently, turned into a parrot.

At least, there was no sign of his usual squiddy presence, and he was normally quite noticeable in a room, mostly because of the smell of damp. Achilles entered the bridge braced for the normal tide of squelchy gloom, opened his eyes cautiously, and saw Felicia standing there, smiling down at the piano. There was a bird on her arm. It was quite a handsome creature, mostly crimson, with green lining its wings and a black-masked head from which its beady eyes peered curiously. It wasn’t quite a parrot – its beak was too long, and slender and curved, like that of an ibis. It turned its head to look at Achilles and chirruped a song. Its voice wasn’t that of a parrot, either, but nor was it that of an ibis. Achilles was at a loss on how to describe it, so ‘parrot’ would have to do.

Also Achilles wasn’t the most educated of men, and he still laboured under the misimpression that an ibis was some kind of MP3 player, which didn’t exactly help.

Anyway, the fact remained that the ibi – the parro – the bird was where he had last left his Squidkind pilot, looking, somehow, remarkably like his Squidkind pilot did. In general ambience. How an ambiguous bird could look like a gloomy, betentacled fellow without being gloomy, bentectacled or, indeed, humanoid, was another of those mysteries.

Mood tilted its head at Achilles and chirruped cheerfully. Wow. If that really was Mood, he’d had a radical attitude transplant – possibly he’d had his faulty optimism organ removed and replaced with a working one.

“What have you done to my pilot, ma’am?” asked Achilles, near-politely.

“Oh, he’s happier now,” said Felicia, neatly veering aside from actually answering the question he’d asked. “Just look at the smile on that beaky face of his. Besides which, I didn’t do anything. A sudden bolt of energy floated through the hull and transformed him.”

“Of course,” said Achilles, who found this extremely unlikely. It sounded like one of those plot devices used by the writers of a sci-fi show when the special-effects budget is running low and they can’t afford any backgrounds or prosthetic. “Nothing to do with you,” he added, politely. This was a god, and it didn’t pay to antagonise gods.

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far, Captain,” said Felicia, and then she giggled. “He’s really quite sweet, isn’t he?”

“Mood?” said Achilles doubtfully, not sure whether or not they were talking about the same … bird. Mood wasn’t exactly famous for his kind and good-natured temperament.

She cast him a sidelong, slit-eyed look. Then she gave that secretive feline smile of hers. “The former cephalapodian is who was I referring to, yes. Though possibly it may have been a different name that came to your mind?” She raised her neat eyebrows questioningly.

“Eh?” said Achilles blankly.

“Well, you and that cook—”

At that point, the bridge shook, and what looked remarkably like Navy ships could be seen through the portal window viewscreen. The Grace Note was under attack.

“Oh. What a shame,” said Achilles, hugely thankful that that particular line of conversation had been so abruptly ended, and he put on his glasses to see better. The vague navy-coloured blurs became sharply defined ships, somehow both sleek and cumbersome at once, but undeniably menacing at whatever angle you looked at them from, particularly from the current angle, which was the angle that showed their massive guns. Like all ships that used the Applied Phlebotinium Drive, their hulls were caked in white, but beneath that could be seen the rich dark blue that all Navy ships wore. ‘Navy’ could refer to the planet Navy, or to the Navy Empire, or to the Navy Empire’s Navy. That the terms were interchangeable caused a lot of confusion and had linguists staying up late at night leafing sadly through grammar dictionaries and tearing out their hair.

“Who are they?” said Felicia.

Achilles grunted, “Navy.”

“Navy?”

“The term can refer to either – oh, never mind, just get under cover!” said Achilles, some small spark of previously buried chivalry managing to counter his annoyance and compelling him to try and protect the girl, star or not.

Boheme ran onto the bridge, wearing the smile that meant he was panicky. “Are we in trouble?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Achilles shortly. “Mood, can you try and figure out—”

The bird had, by now, flown off Felicia’s arm, and was perched on a whimsical statue. It tucked its head under its wing – quite pointedly, Achilles thought.

“Right,” he sighed, and limped over to the piano-thing. “Now then,” he mused to himself. “Which key activates the weapons?”

“Does the Grace Note even have weapons?” asked Boheme curiously.

“I don’t know. Maybe Mule Beckett expects us to sing our enemies to death,” said Achilles, and he pressed a key at random. Achilles had never been the most musically gifted of men, and this particular key somehow managed to sound both flat and sharp, a rather impressive achievement. It was discordant despite the fact that it wasn’t even a chord.

It also made what had previously looked like just another shining segment of shell-interior wall roll away and reveal a walk-in wardrobe.

Achilles said, “What.” Then he pressed another key, somewhat desperately, and the statue Mood was perching on tinkled into life, a stream of crystal-clear water springing from a maiden’s mouth and falling into the bowl she held in her hand, at which point it, presumably, looped. Mood gave a startled squawk and flew over to land on Achilles’s shoulder, beadlike droplets of water sprinkled over its feathers.

“What,” said Achilles again, evidently in the hopes that repeating the word might make the Grace Note make a few iotas more of sense. It was a vain hope and he should have known better.

Oh, how he hated this ship.

“I don’t think that’s working, Captain,” Boheme murmured.

“Yes. Thanks, Boheme, I’m certainly entirely incapable of working that out for myself.”

Boheme looked distressed. “I didn’t mean—”

What was he doing arguing with his crew when they were being fired upon? Achilles made a slashing gesture with one hand and said, “Doesn’t matter. If we can’t figure out the weapons, we’ll just have to fly this thing out of here.” He paused. “… Provided we can.”

Mood, on his shoulder, shifted a bit and dug its claws in encouragingly. Or maybe just spitefully. It was hard to tell. Avian faces weren’t exactly expressive.

Another missile of some sort shook the ship, and Achilles grabbed at something to steady himself. It turned out to be a monitor, or what he presumed was a monitor – it looked, vaguely, like a monitor, kind of.

It was showing a starmap. Starmaps were normally quite bland things, just circular points and labels and dotted lines, but this was of the old variety, when humankind roamed the seas, not the ‘nite. It had a weathered, parchmenty look to it despite being on the monitor. The stars were drawn on in coloured ink, or seemed to be, and small, moving, inky dragons flapped around between them. It was pretty cool.

The map also showed a small musicy note thing. Achilles, as mentioned, was not the most intelligent of men, music-wise, but he presumed that this was a grace note, meant to signify … well, the Grace Note, and this grace note was quite a distance from the spaceport. And heading to Tawny.

“Come to think of it,” Achilles said, “how did we even get the ship this far? Once Mood decided to go all birdlike and strange?”

“Well,” said Boheme, and he looked at Felicia.

Ah.

“Felicia,” said Achilles, “could you help with this, maybe? If you feel like it.”

Boheme raised an eyebrow at him, obviously wondering what he was playing at. The cook apparently didn’t have an inkling who Felicia was. Achilles mouthed ‘later’ to him and turned to give Felicia his most oblivious, ignorant-captain scowl to Felicia.
Felicia said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you think I can do,” and leaned against the piano, which, in a stroke of remarkable coincidence, apparently pressed down the exact keys which played a bracing tune which sounded vaguely like something from Carmen. The Grace Note performed a sickening flip of some sort which sent Achilles tumbling and also, by another stroke of somewhat suspicious coincidence, enabled it to avoid the two missiles, which streaked past the window without harming the ship.

Achilles was a different matter. He’d cracked his head against the monitor’s base during the fall, and was wondering, vaguely, why everything kept on spinning even though the ship wasn’t doing its somersault any more. His thoughts were fragmented for a few seconds, and then he managed to gather them and haul himself to his feet.

Mood had, of course, fled to a more stable perch the moment the ship started shaking.

“Nice going,” he managed to say, trying not to make it too grudging, and he felt his head cautiously. There was blood in his hair, but his hair was annoying anyway, always trying to be curly and adorable. Didn’t suit him.

“Ca—” started Boheme.

“Would you quite with the ‘concerned friend’ thing? It’s getting old,” Achilles snapped, rubbing his head. “It would make for extremely tedious dialogue!”

Boheme blinked. “What?”

“uij;p’hjyug,” Achilles groaned. “My head is …” He tried to shake himself into lucidity. It didn’t entirely work, but it helped. A bit. Maybe. “Doesn’t matter. I’m fine. We need to get out of here. Even if we can dodge the Navy’s weapons, there’s still nothing to stop them coming and getting us in a tractor and … taking us to a farm and … eating … asparagus … wait. Wrong tractor,” he mumbled fuzzily. “I don’t like asparagus.”

“Darn,” said Boheme cheerfully. “There goes my plan to surprise you with a delicious asparagus quiche on your birthday. You’re right, though. We need to get out of here. Felicia, could you … do whatever you … just did … again?”

Felicia shrugged. “I didn’t do anything. ‘sides which, I don’t think the Captain could handle another jolt like that. He’s falling to pieces.”

“I am not!” snapped Achilles, swaying unsteadily. “You are comparing me with a jigsaw puzzle and I find it quite insulting! At least compare me with a sudoku!”

“In any case,” said Felicia, utterly ignoring him which was, he had to admit, entirely reasonable, “nothing needs to be done.”

“Eh?” said Achilles.

“Well, look.”

His glasses had come off in the fall, so he bent down to pick them up, stolidly ignoring the wave of dizziness that threatened to batter him to the ground again. Through his glasses he could see …

“Are we heading through a ring?” he said. Bits of rock and ice were floating past the windowscreen, some barely more than dust, some huge and massive and chunkier than the good-quality tomato soup you can buy in tins.

“Yes,” said Felicia, calmly.

Achilles glanced at the starmap. Yep. It was one of the outer rings of a planet whose label was so ornately cursive that he couldn’t quite make out the name. Well, it was presumably named after a colour, like all the other planets in Little Squid. He wondered how that had come about. It didn’t seem probable. Maybe the gods had got together and plotted and schemed a bit. It seemed like the kind of thing that would amuse them.

“Ah, so—” began Achilles, and then he stopped and stared. The sight was well worth staring at.

One of the Navy ships crashed into a chunk of rock. And then, once the Grace Note was out of the ring and the Navy ships had followed it, another Navy ship crashed into a third, resulting in a huge explosion. A small singularity suddenly opened and devoured three more ships, and a spacewhale swam hugely over and crushed the others with a careless flick of its mighty, herbivorous fin. It then swam away magnificently. The last ship turned tail and ran, which was quite clever considering the circumstances.

“What,” said Achilles.

Lady Luck smiled. “Stranger things have happened,” she said.

“No,” said Achilles, “no, they really haven’t,” and he caught the monitor just in time to avoid falling again.

“Captain,” began Boheme, and then he said, “Oh, right, tedious dialogue, sorry,” and fell unhappily silent.

“Guess we’re just lucky,” said Achilles, and he felt a mad laugh coming on. He restrained it. “We need to get out of here. Things are—”

At which point a wormhole opened in space in front of the Grace Note, and sucked them in.

“This is getting silly,” observed Achilles, his voice distorted by the strange, unobservable properties of wormholes that stretched and twisted things and, for some reason, made everything look a nauseating sort of brownish shade.

Felicia shrugged. “You wanted to get there, this will get us there. Or not. Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether it gets us there or not.”

Achilles sighed. “Thank you for your help in either case,” he said. Maybe it wasn’t all that bad having a god aboard. Good, even. Though Lady Luck wasn’t something you could plan for.

“Help? I haven’t done anything, Captain,” said Felicia, with a sweetness that meant she was lying, and she went off into the corridors.

Light switched into the normal spectrum again as they left the wormhole. Achilles glanced at the starmap and sighed. They were further from Tawny than they had been before. And he didn’t even particularly want to go to Tawny.

“Wonder what item it is that we’re searching for,” said Achilles, musingly.

“Felicia mentioned it after you went all strange and malleable back on the spaceport,” Boheme explained. “It’s a Chalice or Kettle or Jug or something. Turns whichever liquid poured into it into highest-quality wine.”

“Oh,” Achilles breathed, and the light of greed came into his eyes. That would be something of great use to a rumrunner. Great use indeed.

“So we’re going through with this, Captain?” said Boheme, unhappily, apparently having had (correctly) interpreted his expression.

“Yes,” said Achilles. “We don’t have much choice, truth be told. That lady is …” He paused, and glanced at Boheme. Gods don’t like it when you gossip about them behind their backs. “Very powerful.”

“Oh,” said Boheme, looking unhappier still. “That kind of situation.”

Achilles frowned at him, confused. “Eh?”

“Do you and she …” began Boheme, and stalled.

“What? No! Stars, she’s half my age!” Or about a thousand times older than him, if you went by actual age rather than appearances. Luck was a fairly old star, wasn’t she? She’d certainly been around for a while. Ancient documents contained references to Lady Luck’s Way, and there were Temples to her that were thousands of years older, almost as old as Grim’s, and Grim was as old as the ‘nite. Older.

“Oh,” said Boheme, looking mighty relieved, which was worrying.

“You and me need to have a serious talk when I’m coherent,” said Achilles.

“Mm,” said Boheme, probably just for the sake of agreeing. “Want a muffin, Captain?”

“No,” said Achilles, and he decided to limp away to his quarters. Staying here certainly wouldn’t do any good. You couldn’t make plans that allowed for Luck. All you could do was muddle along as best you could, and hope.

[Rikku]

I saw someone use the line 'I slipped and all my clothes fell off' in a theatre sports game once. Always wanted to use it.

SPOILER: Click to show

The building was flat and bland and rectangular. All in all, it looked as though someone had taken a large white brick from some giant construction site and plonked it down in the middle of the forest.

It did not fit.

Bronze was not a very developed planet. They still used bows and arrows, for a start. And not the plasma kind, either. And the majority of people were, by necessity, farmers, living quiet lives on their secluded little homesteads, raising families to take over when they were dead and gone. Some of these farms had been passed down father to son for hundreds of generations, longer than anyone could remember.

The Prince of Thieves liked Bronze. Not because of the majority that were farmers, but because of the minority who were richfolk, merchants and the like, who, thanks to this being a young planet, were not yet jaded enough to realise that swaggering around the marketplace with bulging purses and no bodyguards did not rank highly on the list of Good Ideas For Not Being Robbed.

This was not his usual kind of job, but the Prince of Thieves prided himself on his adaptability. He could handle it.

He slipped past the door guards with their poorly concealed guns, slipped through closed doors, down closed corridors, silent and soft and slick as a whisper. Until he found himself in front of a bland white door, in a bland white corridor.

He checked the number plate on the door. Like the ferocious silver-haired lady had said, it said bb1. Just that. He wondered what, exactly, that he was stealing. It didn’t bother him unduly. The Prince was adaptable.

The door was locked, of course. Out with his lockpicks, and within moments the knob gave a satisfying click. He turned it testingly, and this time it opened without any difficulties. He gave the door a gentle push to open it, stepping aside so that the wall sheltered him in case there were any nasty booby traps.

No rabid crocodiles were forthcoming. The Prince poked his head around the door.

And blinked.

There wasn’t an item in the room. Not one. The ceiling was white, the floor was white, the walls were white, everything was padded, in the way reminiscent of the ancient madhouses. A man was sitting with his back against the far wall, and when he looked up, slowly, to look at the Prince, his eyes held the blankness of madness.

Only for a moment, though, and then they held the blankness of confusion.

“You have very large boots,” said the man. He spoke softly and slowly, as though he had to put great thought in the words.

“Um,” said the Prince doubtfully. “Yes. Thank you. Are you babel?”

The man said nothing for a while. Then his brow furrowed. “babel?”

“It’s what’s written on the door. No? Never mind.” He gave a quick, apologetic grin. “I’ll just sneak heroically away, then, if you don’t mind. Sorry.” He turned in a swish of cloak.

“Wait,” said the man. The Prince turned. The man had sat up straight, and was staring at him with those empty blue eyes. Not that empty, now the Prince looked closer. There was something sharp in them, something piercing and wry and sad. “babel? Is that my name?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said the Prince, and made to sneak away again.

“Who are you?” asked babel.

The Prince could never resist introducing himself. “I,” he declared in ringing tones, swivelling on the ball of his foot to face babel, “am the Prince of Thieves!”

babel looked at him. “That’s quite impressive,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

The Prince’s supreme self-confidence wavered a bit. No one had ever responded quite that positively to his grand introduction before. Normally they were too busy chasing him with weapons and yelling things like ‘stop, thief!’ and ‘vile fiend!’ to comment on his overacting prowess. He wasn’t about to show this, though. “I’ve always thought so,” he said carelessly, stroking his beard. “I’m here to steal you.”

“Steal me?” repeated babel.

“Yes. Apologies in advance if you don’t want to be stolen.” He shrugged. “Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

Said babel, slowly, as though he didn’t quite understand, “You’re going to …. take me away from here?”

“That’s the general idea, yes.” The Prince frowned. “Or so I presume. My client, I now realise, was more than usually cryptic. She didn’t even mention that you—”

“You’ll help me get out,” said babel, in tones of wonder, and a disbelieving smile spread across his face. It suited him.

“Um. Yes.”

“Then I’ll come with you.”

He stood up. He was … tall, really really tall. And the Prince was average height, a lot of that from his impressive boots, so he was biased. The man was tall, and lean with muscle, and his face was lean and dangerous too. But it had a sort of openness about it, like the face of a child or those few people lucky enough, writers and artists and others of the kind, to live a life where they could still hang on to the amount of soul that children had.

He looked vaguely familiar, with his blue eyes and short sandy-blond hair, but the Prince couldn’t quite place him.

“Right,” said the Prince, and grinned. “Follow me, don’t make a sound, and, most important, don’t get us killed.”

In a swirl of cloak he turned on his heel and sneaked away finally, and babel followed him with stumbling footsteps, as though the man wasn’t quite used to walking yet.


*


Night was falling. It was falling about as quickly as an anorexic feather, but it was falling all the same. The Prince could see the twist of night in the darkening sky, hear it in the rustling leaves. He spent most of his time planetside, on one world or another, and after a while you became attuned to these things.

“Night is falling,” he said, putting on an expression that he always thought of as ‘brooding, hints of mysterious’.

Of course, it was hard to be brooding and mysterious when your temporary travelling companion knew so little that everything was a mystery. Babel – the Prince had decided, on reflection, that referring to him by an uncapitalised noun wasn’t very polite – was giving him that look that he was fast becoming accustomed to. That curious look.

“Night,” said the Prince curtly, “is when the monsters come out to play, and when sensible thieves and clones get under cover, or at least start a fire.”

Babel frowned. He opened his mouth, and closed it again.

The Prince sighed. They were travelling through a forest, a few hours’ walk away from the facility. The onset of spring was visible in the green buds here and there on branches, but it was still fiercely cold, and there was precious little in the way of camouflage. They had to keep moving, and they had no time for questions.

But answering questions was better than travelling with a simpleton, and if the amount of questions Babel asked was any indication, he was far from stupid.

“Ask any questions you like, if they’re short ones. And if you keep on moving.” He strode beneath a branch, which Babel, who was stupidly tall, had to duck under, which showered him with droplets of damp. He held his finger up to his face, a bead of water on it, and there was an expression of wonder on it. “If you keep on moving quickly,” added the Prince impatiently, bouncing on the balls of his feet in his hurry.

“What’s a monster?” said Babel, looking at him, blue eyes bright and eager. “What’s play? What’s clones? What’s fire?”

The Prince winced.

Well. I did ask for it, I suppose. Now I remember why I always travel alone.

“A monster is a creature that preys on people. Playing is a … thing people do, an entertainment. Kids mostly. Kids are young people,” he added hastily, seeing the chance to forestall that particular question and seizing it while he had the chance. “Fire is a thing that burns and gives heat and light. Clones are … well, people like you.” It wasn’t hard to figure out what Babel was when every inch of the facility had screamed ‘clone’. “People made by people, to sort of … replicate … other people.”

Babel was silent for a time, frowning ahead. The Prince dreaded being asked to give a definition for ‘replicate’. Eventually the clone said, “What are people?”

Oh, Reynard. This tour guide thing was alright for a lark, but it was already growing wearisome, and they weren’t anywhere near his ship yet. He’d decided to loop around, so as not to lead anyone who might be following them directly to his ship within range of whatever weapons the facility had.

“Less asking,” said the Prince, “more running for our lives.”

“What’s run—?” began Babel.

“Doing this,” said the Prince, and he started to run.

It was hard in the close quarters of the forest, but there wasn’t much in the way of undergrowth currently and he was small enough and nimble enough to be able to dart beneath branches and between gaps with ease. The main difficulty was knowing where to put his feet, but the Prince had always been quick on his feet, and it was a tremendous relief to stretch out his legs and run until all the impatience and irritation were forgotten in the simple rhythm of putting one foot after another, jumping over roots and streams, ducking beneath branches that trailed wet twigs against his back and made him shiver.

The rhythm of running was a kind of trance, and thus it was with a start that Babel was keeping pace with him. Easily. The tall man was running through the forest, forcing his way nimbly through bushes and gaps between trees, rolling with the landscape, regaining his balance whenever he tripped before he was in any danger of falling, and he was doing it easily.

The Prince was so busy staring at him in surprise that he ran headfirst into a tree.

He picked himself up, cursing the Trickster and Lady Luck and any other deity that came to mind. Babel stopped running so abruptly that he fell over, too, and didn’t seem to notice, picking himself up, running back to the Prince in concern.

“Are you all ri—” he began, but the Prince had already leaped to his feet, shot him a challenging little grin, and sped past him.

Babel stood looking after him in confusion, before comprehension came over his face. He smiled. It wasn’t an expression his face was familiar with, but it came easily in this clever little man’s company, apparently.

Babel crouched and sprang after him, running as fast as he could, until he was almost caught up, and then he got a little ahead, and then the Prince got a little ahead, the two of them switching places and darting around and ahead and behind each other, racing frantically through the dripping woodland, the only sound their footsteps and breathing.

At last the Prince stopped and casually leaned against a tree. “All right, that’ll do,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to strain something.”

Babel looked down at him and smiled again. He rather liked smiling. “I was beating you,” he pointed out, in his slow, reasonable way.

“Pah.” The Prince got a sharp little knife from at his belt and started trimming his fingernails with it. “I was letting you.”

“Of course you were,” said Babel.

“I’m just that good.” The Prince pointed the knife at him. “Don’t be getting any ideas, now. Only room for one dashing thief in these parts.”

Babel leaned against a tree facing him. “A thief is someone who takes things that belong to other people?” he said.

The Prince hadn’t gotten around to giving him this definition yet. He must have worked it out on his own from context and conversation, which was … actually quite impressive. “A thief is someone who liberates poor, languishing items from the tyranny of ownership,” he said loftily. “Your definition lacks finesse, but is fairly accurate, I suppose.”

Babel nodded. “I thought so. In that case, I don’t want to be a thief.”

The Prince raised an eyebrow. “Why not? You’d make quite a good one.” He had, actually, been harbouring thoughts of maybe giving the man a little basic training. He was quick enough to make a good thief, though he was far from unobtrusive. But of course, it made no sense to train up your competition. However fast he was.

He had been beating him. That was pretty much a first. The Prince was intrigued.

Babel said, “It’s unkind.”

The Prince gave a huff of disgust and unleaned from the tree, starting to gather up branches that didn’t look particularly damp. “Ah,” he said. “One of those people.”

“I have nothing against you, Prince. You’ve been good to me, and no one else has.”

The matter-of-fact way he said them was the only thing that stopped the words from being irritatingly sappy. The Prince shrugged, uncomfortably.

“But if this is all your life is,” said Babel, “always running, stealing from people, no company … it is not the life for me.”

“This isn’t all my life is,” said the Prince, kneeling down to arrange the branches in a pyramidy sort of shape, solid branches at the bottom, tinder at the top.

“No?”

“No.” The Prince turned and flashed him his lightning-fast grin. “My life also has dehydrated food!” He waggled the packet at the clone, enticingly, and Babel snorted but smiled despite himself. “You will either love it or hate it,” the Prince continued. “Though actually the latter is a lot more likely. Find me some water, will you?”

He started the fire with the flint and steel he carried everywhere. Of course there was technology for these things, something with a name like Trans-Ether Submatic Combustion Oxidiser-Tron, but as a rule the Prince never trusted technology with a name he couldn’t pronounce. He’d found that, however shiny the devices were, they had a tendency top go glitchy when it really mattered, like, for example, when you needed a fire. It was cold, and it was only going to get colder. A fire was necessary unless he felt like dying of pneumonia, and you couldn’t steal when you were dead. At least, not that he’d heard of. Stranger things had happened, this being Little Squid and all. Little Squid was the oddball galaxy that all the other galaxies sniggered at and shunned at major social events.

Babel came back bearing water, carefully, in a tin. The clone was soaked and shivering, but he looked content.

“Water is wet,” he said. “And it does strange things to light.” A particularly bad shiver made his teeth clack together, and he looked surprised and continued, “And it is cold.”

The Prince gave a weary sigh. At least they had a fire.


*


Achilles was relaxing in his quarters.

Of course, ‘relaxing’, in this context, had a meaning more akin to something along the lines of ‘sitting on his cheerfully patchworked bedspread and glowering bad-temperedly at the cheerful fire and the cheerful flowered wallpaper’. It wasn’t a definition that you’d find in any dictionary, but it was about as close to relaxing as Achilles ever got.

They were a day or two’s journey away from Tawny, on their way to find this magic Cup thing. A day or two in relative time, of course, but it was still a day or two too many in Achilles’s mind. He was quietly hoping that Felicia would disembark when they reached Tawny. He had nothing against her, and in fact she seemed quite helpful, but it just threw him off, having a deity about. Half of the crystal flowers had randomly reverted into crumbling coal, and the Grace Note had passed a drifting asteroid in the precise shape of Midas Beckett’s nose, a white spacewhale, and not one, not two, but five singularities, which was surely an oxymoron. As if this wasn’t enough, a room off the bridge that had possibly started life as the captain’s ready-room was now home to a inexplicably thriving meadow of tropical flowers. The only one truly happy about this latter development was Mood, who was still a bird, spent most of his time sipping nectar delicately and showed no signs of sprouting appendages and piloting. Achilles had to try and figure out how to work the exceedingly impractical ship’s controls, along with occasional (mostly unhelpful) comments from Boheme and serendipitous things which were, he suspected, due to Felicia – things like a pretty vase falling onto the piano and playing the precise tune that made the crystal-grinders work at twice speed.

That was the thing that really annoyed him, he realised. Not having a god onboard, not Boheme’s incessant muffinry, not the fact that his pilot was an exotic tropical bird. What annoyed him was the ship itself.

For the Grace Note was an impractical ship, and Achilles was a practical man. It didn’t sit well with him, and it didn’t seem right, and he hated it. The sooner he could get rid of the conspicuous thing and buy a nice normal ship, the better. Normal ships did not rely on a pseudo-piano to be flied. Normal ships didn’t leave trailing ribbons of light behind them, or make fluting, ethereal music as they entered an atmosphere. Normal ships were not like this.

And his leg hurt.

Achilles sat on his cheerful patchwork bedspread, and glowered at the wallpaper, and was quite surprised when the door opened and Boheme stumbled through.

Boheme looked just as surprised. “Oh,” he said, “sorry, I thought this was the rec room.” He looked around. “Guess it isn’t.”

“Obviously not,” snapped Achilles. Then curiousity overtook him. “Why were you trying to find the rec room, of all things?” He frowned. “Do we even have a rec room?”

“That’s what I was trying to find out,” said Boheme cheerfully. “Say, Captain, while I’m here … you don’t happen to have a pack of cards, do you?”

“No,” said Achilles. “Leave me al—”

Boheme looked at something. Achilles followed his gaze, to see a small half-open chest, in which were various board games, chess pieces and, resplendent on top, a pack of cards.

“Oh,” said Achilles, in some surprise. “I didn’t realise that was there.”

“Right,” said Boheme.

“Really,” Achilles said, taken aback by the slight hurt in the man’s voice. Did he think that Achilles was just trying to get rid of him, or wanted to be all petty and trivial and not give him the cards, or something? They were cards, for Lu – for Grim’s sake. Hardly important. “I don’t know my way around here yet.”

“Around your own room?” said Boheme, heading over to fetch the cards.

Achilles sighed. “To be honest, it doesn’t seem like my room at all.” He ran a hand through his short, curly hair, somewhat despairingly. “It really doesn’t.”

Boheme sat down beside him and smiled. “Perhaps some company would help?” he suggested, and he opened the packet of cards. Achilles took them and leafed through them, half without realising he was doing it, a faint smile forming on his face.

They were good cards, each one hand-painted and stylistic. They were of the kind he used to like, back when he played cards, back when he still had friends to play cards with – the kind where the King and Queen and so on were the major gods, each beautifully painted, and fairly represented. The Trickster was his favourite, as it had always been, vivid and grinning and ragged, the ‘trick card’. Depending on the game, the two Tricksters could be the highest-value card, the lowest, or not included at all. The Trickster had always been his favourite card, and that was strange, considering who he was. Perhaps it had been an attempt to escape his orderly life, back when his life had been even approaching orderly. Nowadays, of course –

He realised he was holding one card in particular, and staring at it. The vague smile had gone, replaced by a much less vague frown. The card was Lady Luck, and she was represented as a sleek black cat, golden slit-eyes knowing and watchful.

He’d never much liked that card.

Achilles swore.

“What is it?” said Boheme, frowning for once.

“Doesn’t this strike you as a little too convenient?” said Achilles, through gritted teeth. “You just happen to get lost and end up here? I just happen to have a games chest in my quarters? It’s too coincidental for coincidence!”

Boheme’s frown deepened. “What are you getting at?”

“It’s that interfering … conniving little god!” yelled Achilles, getting to his feet.

“A god? What do you mean?”

“Felicia is Lady Luck,” explained Achilles, struggling to control his anger. Wretched, manipulative Slit-Eyed wench! He would not have some uppity girl telling him who his friends were!

“Oh,” said Boheme. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Achilles made an impatient gesture. “Gods don’t like it when you talk behind their backs.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“What? No! No, that’s not—”

“Letchford,” said Boheme, wearing an irritatingly patient expression, “you’re not making sense. If Felicia is Lady Luck, what reason would she have to make us play cards?”

“She—” started Achilles, and stopped. Remembering. Her amused little smile …

He’s really quite sweet, isn’t he? You and that cook …

Achilles had thought that he could never hate anyone more than he hated Midas Beckett. Now he discovered that he had been wrong, and he could never, ever hate anyone as much as he hated Lady Luck right then. Manipulating him! Manipulating Boheme, too, just because she thought they’d make a good couple or something, trying to force – no! He wouldn’t have it! Free will was something the gods could not take away and he would not let her!

Boheme started to get up too, giving a concerned smile, and then he fell to the ground.

“Oh,” he said, sounding surprised. “I slipped and my shirt fell off. Do you think you could—?”

This was the last straw. Fiery rage left him, leaving something harsh and calculating in its place, cold and sharp as a sword made of ice. He limped away, to find the bridge, or to find Felicia. He would not let this go on, not on his ship.

Felicia was watering the flowers in the ready-room, and as he entered she straightened and gave him a sugary-sweet smile.

“Really this is more of Greenthumb’s area,” she said, “but I find plants so relaxing. Don’t you?”

So she knew, and had known all along, that he knew that she was Lady Luck. And by the way her smile became smug, she knew that he knew that … that … well, she knew, anyway, regardless of how complicated the chain of reasoning was, and that was probably a bad thing.

“No,” said Achilles.

Felicia gave a ladylike sigh. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. What has you looking so sour?”

“You,” he said. “Get off my ship.”

Her smile faded. “What?”

“Sorry. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear.” He took a step forward, feeling the heat of rage taking over again, mixing with the icy rage in quite an unpleasant combination. “Get off my ship, now.”

Her expression became ugly, but her voice was still a sweet purr. “I don’t think you quite understand what you’re doing, Captain.”

“I think I understand perfectly well, ma’am. I will not be manipulated.” And so furious was his voice that she actually took a step back.

She stared at him. Then she shrugged. “Well, all right, then.”

“You – what?” said Achilles.

“I’d much prefer it if you let me have my fun,” said Felicia, “but if it must be this way, then it must. I won’t interfere with the lives of you or your precious crew. All right?”

“You mean it?” he said, having recovered enough from his surprise to be extremely suspicious of this.

Felicia now looked insulted. “I will not interfere.” Her voice took on a strange ring, a kind of weight, as she said, “Thrice I tell you, I will not interfere.” Then the ringing left her voice, and she pouted and said, “Satisfied?”

He looked at her mistrustfully. “And I want you off at Tawny,” he said flatly.

She rolled her eyes. “You mortals, with your precious free will …all right, all right!” She threw her hands up in resigned disgust. “I’ll leave at Tawny.”

“Good,” said Achilles. “I have a ship to run, and a Cup to steal.”

He turned and started to limp away. As he reached the door, she said, as though it had just occurred to her, “Oh, by the way. I can manipulate free will, and emotions, but where’s the fun in that? In this case, there’s no need to. Anything that would have happened between you and him would have been entirely natural. I just … helped things along a bit.”

“I don’t want your help,” said Achilles, “let alone need it.” And with that, he left, and she said nothing more.

Tawny could not come too soon.



*



Seren almost missed Tawny.

Not really, of course. And it wasn’t homesickness. If she had been homesick, she’d be homesick for the Kindworld, where she had lived. But she wasn’t. The fact that she’d left it as soon as possible, and before then spent as much time as she could away from it, testified to that.

Seren missed Tawny because it used to be the place she went when the claustrophobia of remaining on one planet became too much to bear. It was a pretty planet, Tawny, with its silver cities and sepia seas.

Seren leaned back in her creaking chair and sighed, rubbing her eyes. The journey had been four days and three nights already, and she hadn’t yet slept. The Kind didn’t need to sleep as much as humans, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t need to sleep at all. But this ship was not the most restful of places. Heating was faulty, so it was freezing cold, and –

Her eyes snapped wide open, and then narrowed. “Reynard,” she said wearily. “Don’t do that.”

Georgette and Wil were lying on the ground, there being no beds. They were cushioned by some folded camouflage netting Seren had found. Reynard looked up from tangling it around Wil’s leg and raised his eyebrows innocently. “Don’t do what?”

“It’s going to be bad enough in close quarters when all three of us are awake. It’ll be even worse if they’re stumbling around everywhere because they’re trapped in camouflage netting.”

“Fair point.” He mused for a while.

Seren leaned back against the chair and tried to catch some sleep, but sleep was elusive and it kept on slipping out of her grasp just when she thought she –

“We could give them sleeping pills,” he suggested eventually. “That’d knock ‘em out.”

Seren forgot her tiredness. “Reynard! I am not going to tranquillise my employer!”

“Just the boy, then?” said Reynard hopefully. “He’s annoying. I’m allergic.”

“To sparkies?”

“To angst,” he said seriously. “His cripplingly low self-esteem makes me sneeze.”

Seren snorted. “Of course it does.”

Reynard shrugged, and turned fox, probably because he was bored. The ragged fox shook out its reddish coat, and trotted off to poke its nose in corners.

“What do you care, anyway?” called Seren after it. “Whenever any of the others are awake, you just leave.”

The fox sat and tilted its head at her, green eyes very bright.

Curiousity scourged the remainder of her sleepiness, and she sat up straight. “Why is that?”

“What a pity that I’m currently a fox and thus unable to speak,” said the fox cheerfully.

Seren’s eyes narrowed. “Uh,” she said. “I’m pretty sure there’s a flaw in your logic somewhere, but I’m too tired to find it.”

The fox scratched. “Why don’t you drink yourself stupid?” it suggested. “That seems to be your policy.”

Seren stared at it, and then slumped back against the creaky chair, which, predictably, creaked. “I will not be criticised by a mangy fleabag,” she muttered.

“Really? Seems to me you just were,” said the fox.

“Would you quit it?” she snapped irritably.

The fox shrugged. Somehow. “Just thought you might actually care that you’re self-destructing. Never mind. Carry on.” It gave a foxy yawn and settled its head on its paws.

Seren’s eyes widened a bit. She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again. She looked as stunned as if someone had just slapped her across the face with a fish.

A few minutes went by.

“I’m not self-destructing,” said Seren roughly. “I’m not. I just … what’s the point, y’know? I’m not a Pathfinder any more.” She glanced down at her shabby, stained uniform. “It was my life.” She glanced at the fox, which looked, for all intents and purposes, asleep. She continued, to herself, “I’m here to find my fear. The Academy stole my fear, and I’m here to find it. That’s all. That’s why I take risks; just searching for my fear …”

The fox said nothing.

“But. Somehow, I’m suddenly thinking … maybe fear’s not what I’m looking for. Maybe I’m just trying to find my course again. Figure out where to go. Find my course … when did I last know what to do, what to say, where to go?” Her voice sunk to barely more than a whisper. “… Have I ever?”

The fox sneezed, quite pointedly.

Seren scowled, resigned herself to another night of no sleep, got out her sword and started cleaning it. The fox gave it an edgy look, and swaggered over to the side of the little ship furthest from her, as though it was still entirely and confident and its decision to move had nothing to do with the sword.

Seren smirked, shook her head, and went on cleaning, whistling under her breath.