Sola hurried through the streets of Messer’s Reach. She should have asked for the

cart. She could drive it on her own now. She needed a better way to get through the

crowded streets than the cart, or a horse.

Hardy would have carried her, but he had been sent after the drawing man.

Her da had seemed too excited when he had seen the drawings from his memory. She

should have asked Bolan to find Hardy and let her da try to fix the street. She didn’t

like that he was looking for someone he held responsible for the destruction of their

city.

There were so many things that could go wrong. Her da didn’t seem that much of a

fighter. If he did find the man, Hardy would have to protect him in case of trouble.

The beetle would do it, but she didn’t want either of them hurt when the city’s guards

could handle things much better than they could.

She spotted the ambassador’s square house. If she could convince him to do

something, maybe he could find her da with his daemon. She realized she didn’t what

it was.

Maybe it was some kind of plant with extending limbs, or a cat that isn’t there, or a

dragon like Primrose and capable of wiping out the city.

If he couldn’t threaten Messer’s Reach for Riordiana, why was he there?

She ran to the front door and banged on it with her fist. She stepped back when no

one answered her knocking. She spotted a bell pull and yanked on it until the bell

roared overhead.

The door snapped open. The ambassador’s assistant stood there. Anger flickered

across his stoic face before he calmly said, “Do you mind? I can still hear.”

“I’m in a hurry,” said Sola. “Is the Ambassador in? I need to talk to him right now.”

“He has some guests,” said the functionary. “Wait here, and I will get him for you.”

The functionary closed the door in her face. She gritted her teeth as she thought about

what she should do. She had to do something to save the city. She decided that she

would count until she reached five hundred. After that, she was going to do what she

had to do.

Sola reached the number and the door still hadn’t opened. It was time for her to take

matters into her own hands.

She pushed on the door. It wouldn’t budge. If she had Hardy, the heavy wood

wouldn’t have been much of a problem. She looked around for her next option.

She walked down to the corners of the square house. She found a set of trash

containers in the right hand alley. She nodded as she looked up at the roof line and

measured the distance with her eye.

She could maybe jump up and grab the gutter. It might come away from the wall, and

roof. It might not. She didn’t have the time to care. And Bolan could fix anything she

broke with Knife.

She climbed up on the trash containers. They were round things of metal with Reach

Cleaning on the blue sides in white letters. She looked up at the gutter. She looked

down at her feet. She looked back up.

Sola bent her knees and jumped. She caught the gutter with one hand. She quickly

secured a grip with her other hand. She used her sandaled feet on the wall and pulled

herself over the edge of the roof and climbed up the shallow slope to a flat top.

She looked down from the roof. Ambassador Campbell and some others she didn’t

know were playing cards at a table under one of the trees. She frowned. She had been

held up for a card game.

She walked down to the edge of the roof. She noticed a gutter ran on the inside of the

wall too. She used that to drop to the ground. She brushed her hands on her pants as

she walked toward the group.

“Miss Sola?,” Campbell said. They had met after her da had set up the shop so they

could live in the city. Paperwork had to be filed.

“Ambassador Campbell,” said Sola. She glanced at the other two men, but she didn’t

know them, and they weren’t important unless they tried to stop her. “Messer’s Reach

is about to be destroyed. I need you to send a message back home to let the King

know.”

“How do you know this?,” said one of the men. He stood, green light glowing in his

eye.

“My da is looking for the man,” said Sola. “I have to get back to the shop and try to

track him down. This is what my da remembered from before the attack on

Riordiana. This one was from a few hours ago. It’s taken me a while to get here on

foot.”

She handed over the drawings to Campbell. He examined them side by side. He made

a huffing noise as he stood.

“Miss Sola, this is Grimes from Baldwin,” said Campbell. He folded the drawings up

as he indicated the man with the green light in his eye. “This is Sourby from Messer’s

Reach’s Diplomatic Corps.”

Sourby didn’t stand. She noticed he had a cane at hand, leaning against the table next

to him. He wore silver and blue like most of the Reach’s citizens. A patch covered

one eye, she thought the same side as the wounded leg.

“It’s nice to meet you,” said Sola. “I have to go. Bolan is trying to dig up the sign

right now. I don’t know if he is succeeding, and my da is wandering the city.”

“One moment,” said Campbell. “Grimes will take you back to where you need to be.

Sourby and I will follow as soon as we can.”

Campbell put the paper in a metal tube from his pocket. He took a piece of paper from

a pad from another pocket and wrote a note on it with a pencil. He put the note in the

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tube with the drawings. A bird made of fire burst from his shoulder.

“I have a job for you, Streak,” said Campbell. He clipped the note on one leg of the

bird. “The king has to see this as soon as possible. Go directly to his office. If he is

not there, go to his apartments. Understood?”

The small orange bird sang a melody.

“All right,” said Campbell. “I need you to come back as soon as possible. We might

need you to help us search the city for an expatriate and a magician.”

Streak sang another song.

“Go ahead,” said Campbell. “Come back as soon as possible.”

The bird took flight, flapping his wings to climb into the sky from the courtyard.

When he was high enough, he exploded in a streak of fire across the sky.

“He’ll be in Riordiana in a couple of minutes,” said Campbell. “If you don’t mind,

Grimes, I think you should go to the drawing and make sure nothing will happen

while I wait for the king to give me an answer.”

“Come along, young lady,” said the Baldwin. He stepped into the air. Sola followed,

dragged by an invisible hand. They streaked across the sky. Sola gave directions as

best she could.

Everything looked different from the air.

“There’s Bolan,” said Sola. She pointed at the crowd of people, the boy, and his

spider. Red light came from the back of the spider as they tried to cut into the

drawing.

“It doesn’t look like he’s having much success,” said Grimes. He brought them down

for a landing.

“Why aren’t you in the air race?,” asked Sola.

“We’re not allowed to use our gift for personal profit,” said Grimes. “And some of

us are faster than any machine could ever hope to be. There’s no point in kicking a

man when he’s down.”

“My ma said that was the best time to kick a man,” said Sola. She led the way to

where Bolan looked at the drawing and shook his head.

“Knife can’t seem to cut this up,” said Bolan. “It grows back everything we do to it.”

“This is Master Grimes,” said Sola. “Master Grimes, this is Bolan, and his daemon,

Knife.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Bolan. He stepped closer and whispered, “I thought you

were going to get us some help with this?”

“The ambassador has sent a message to the king,” said Sola. “He will be here when

he gets an answer. His daemon is pretty fast, maybe the fastest I have ever seen.”

“So we wait for him to get here?,” said Bolan.

“I think I can handle this for you,” said Grimes. “Then we can talk about finding

Sola’s father and the man who drew this.”

“Be my guest,” said Bolan. He waved a hand at the drawing as he stepped back. Knife

backed up with him, smoke curling from the barrels sticking out of his back. Sola

joined them at the edge of the crowd.

Grimes walked out to the edge of the drawing. He looked at it. The green light in his

eye pulsed slightly. The street repaired itself after a second of arguing with his talent.

“That’s great,” said Bolan. “How did you do that?”

“I have been given command of a reality altering force,” said Grimes. “And using it

on someone else’s reality altering was a small work.”

“Would you like some ale?,” said Bolan. “I think we still have some in the icebox.”

“We have to find my da,” said Sola.

“Knife can do that on his own faster than he can with the three of us following him

around,” said Bolan. “And someone is going to have to tell Ambassador Campbell

that if this is the only drawing, we have saved the city from a fate worse than death.”

“And he will be able to inform King Festus of that,” said Grimes. “The question is

this the only drawing, or are there more?”

“You can tell from the air,” said Sola. “The memory machine only showed us the one

my da noticed back home.”

“All right,” said Grimes. “I will do a study and see if I can find any more of these

drawings.”

He took to the air in a flash of green light. He vanished over the roof tops.

“Can Knife find Da and Hardy?,” asked Sola.

“Can you find Zachariah and Hardy, Knife?,” asked Bolan.

The mechanical spider cast about, turning on its eight legs. Then it skittered off in

that direction.

“Follow him,” said Bolan. “I’ll get the cart and catch up.”

Sola jogged after the fleeing spider as it clinked along the street. An antenna extended

from its back. A small rectangular box turned on the end of the antenna as the daemon

moved forward.

He turned right, or left, where the street was blocked from heavy traffic, but he kept

on the same general line deeper into the merchant district.

Knife paused in front of a building that looked like an inn. The antenna on his back

turned as he considered the information it was giving him. He needed to go in and

look around to make sure he was at the right place.

Master Eight Arms had saved their lives and given them a place and a purpose. It

would be a pleasure to pay him back after the last two years.

And he was the only one of the daemons with weapons of any type. Gold Bug was

harmless unless it had eaten and had time to build something. Hardy could only ram

a target. That was effective against some targets, but not everything would fall to a

battering ram.

Sometimes you needed a lightning gun to punch through a barricade. And look, he

happened to have one he could extend on the pseudo-mechanical arms he possessed.

Knife waited for Sola to open the doors for him to proceed. He crossed the lobby in

a skittering of legs as he zeroed in on the route he had to take.

He went to the stairs and waited for Sola to open those doors too. He skittered inside,

climbing the wall to where he felt Master Eight Arms the most. He dropped down to

the landing to the eight floor as he checked his antenna. They were close now.

The sounds of furniture breaking attracted his attention. It could be anything but he

had feeling that was where his fellow daemons and Master Eight Arms were.

He extended his lightning gun and skittered to the door. Did he really want to get

involved in what he was hearing inside the room?

And Sola expected him to do something.

Knife didn’t have a way to tell her that Bolan was the brave one of their pairing.

Something had to be done. He might as well get to work. The sooner started, the

sooner done.

Knife blasted the door to splinters. He charged into the room, lightning blasting the

air. Something flung him through the window as he looked for targets. He grabbed

the outside of the wall before he crashed into the street.

The daemon paused before it tried to pull itself back into the room. Why go in when

you can do your fighting from the outside?

He secured a line to another building in case something happened to the wall he

clung to before he was done. Then he used a remote vision pod attached to the

lightning gun to take aim.

The wall came apart under him. He retracted the line and swung clear as that part of

the building fell down in the street. He saw that people were running to get clear and

thought that was a good thing.

He landed on the other building and made sure his anchor was secured with his

weight before he took aim at the hole in the wall across the street. He didn’t like the

lack of targets. He didn’t want to shoot Master Eight Arms by accident.

Bolan would not like that at all.

The room cleared of darkness. Master Eight Arms stood with Hardy in his arms. He

patted the daemon on the back as he looked around. Sola burst into the room from the

hall. He handed the beetle over gently. The thing was half as big as the girl now. If

it kept growing, she would be able to ride it like some flying daemons.

Gold Bug looked unsure what it should be doing. The machinist picked the ant up and

put it on his shoulder as he examined the battlefield. He seemed satisfied that he had

done enough damage.

He ushered Sola out of the room with one hand.

Knife walked down the wall to meet them in the street. He had done nothing useful,

but he had tried to do his task as well as he could. He couldn’t do any better.

“Good job, Knife,” said Sola. “You’re a good daemon.”

Master Eight Arms looked down at the spider. He smiled the small smile he usually

did when things went better than expected.

“Let’s find your master, and see what we can do about fixing our mess,” said the

machinist.