Abbee screamed and thrashed in midair. Pain lanced through her broken shoulder at the movement. Her body healed the damage while she fell. Healing broken bones while falling to her death was adding insult to literal injury. Abbee had seen what a person looked like after falling from a great height. Higher than a mover pit. She hyperventilated at the idea of living through her eventual impact with the ground.
“Relax,” Kai called from somewhere above her. “You look ridiculous.”
Abbee twisted and looked up. The wizard was a few meters away. Abbee realized that she wasn’t falling fast. Falling, yes, but slowly. She remembered what Kai had said about the protective wards on her cuirass. It would slow her descent if she fell further than three meters. She was a lot higher in the air than three meters. More like three kilometers. The ground spread across the world in a mountainous carpet of stone and snow. Abbee oriented herself to the morning sun. Jagged ridges and mountain peaks went north to the horizon. Foothills stretched south. She’d had no idea the world was so big.
The wind was doing interesting things to Kai’s robes. He had to hold his hands against his thighs to keep them from wrapping up around his head. Abbee laughed at him. Her giggle sounded insane in her own ears, but it calmed her down. A little. “Speaking of ridiculous.”
“Yes, well, this is better than burning to death in molten rock.”
“Where are we?”
Kai looked down. He tried pointing with one hand, but the wind grabbed his robes and pulled them over his head. He fought with the cloth for a moment, until he did something, and his robes smoothed down around his legs by themselves. The wind didn’t touch him anymore, not even his beard. “That’s better.” He pointed again. “Veronna’s over there.”
She looked where Kai was pointing and saw mountains and rocky terrain. “Which mountain is it?”
Kai squinted. “The one with the dark bands on the side is the enclave. And it’s six mountains, not one.”
“Six?”
“A volcano complex.”
“Wait, Veronna is in a volcano?”
Kai nodded. “An active one, too. Multiple peaks with multiple magma chambers.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“The old wizards harnessed the mountains and made the whole thing stable. It hasn’t erupted in millennia. I couldn’t be sure which chamber we were in or how deep we were, so I warped us straight up, as far as I could. I didn’t dare take the tube at that distance.” He held out his hands. “I’ve got all my fingers, and I think I’ve got all my toes. Do you?”
Abbee examined her hands and flexed her feet in her boots. Everything seemed to be where it should be. “I’m good. How high up are we?”
“About two kilometers. That’s my maximum safe distance for a tandem warp. Slow-fall wards slow you down to about a meter per second. We’ve got about … yeah, half an hour before we get down to the ground.”
“You going to apologize for breaking my arm?”
Kai snorted. “You’re alive. You’re welcome.” He stuck his arm out like a rudder and drifted away from Abbee. Away from Veronna, toward the northwest. “We want to go this way,” he called.
Abbee mimicked Kai’s arm position and drifted after him. “To where?”
“Valetown,” Kai said.
“Never heard of it.”
“That’s because it’s not there anymore.”
“What happened to it?”
“Vani Brattle happened. Well, technically, Parn Trippers initiated the collapse, but Vani kicked off the landslide when she dropped the entire mountain.”
“What the—” Abbee exclaimed, startled. “Trippers wrecked a town? A whole town? He put me away for—wait, did you just say mountain?”
Kai nodded. “Vani was quite something to behold. Usually from a safe distance, though.”
Abbee tucked away the detail about Parn for later. She couldn’t wait to ask Whimsy about it. “You knew her, didn’t you? Brattle.”
Kai cocked his head as if listening. A faint smile crossed his face and was gone. “Yes.”
“What was she like?”
“She’d give you a run for your money in the stubbornness department.”
“What? I’m not stubborn.”
Kai snorted and opened his mouth to retort, but Abbee wasn’t interested in his ideas about her temperament.
“Why are we going to this Valetown if it’s not there anymore?”
Kai didn’t answer.
“Fine, don’t tell me. Maybe you can go back to explaining why Ipsu abandoned me for your daughter.”
Kai rolled his eyes. “How long are you going to define yourself by that? You were, what, nineteen? Ancient history. You seem to have turned out mostly fine, except for your brief foray into armed robbery.”
“That was an accident.”
“You hijacked a bank cart by accident?”
“That’s not what happened,” Abbee said, folding her arms. She stopped drifting north and unfolded them. “They attacked me first.”
“Ah, the refrain of every kindhearted robber. Nobody gets hurt. Never works out that way. But sure, let’s not talk about why Ipsu helped you survive. Let’s not talk about why he spent so many years training you to be resilient, self-sufficient, and tough. Let’s not talk about that. Let’s instead dredge up childhood angst over why he was so terrible. You’re no paragon of humanity, Abbee Danner. You know, Ipsu stopped talking about you after Graywall. He never talked about you much, but he definitely stopped mentioning you after that. I think you were an embarrassment for him.”
Dark fury and venom licked at Abbee’s composure. “I guess it was easier to train the new kid than confront what he did to me.”
“Did to you?”
“He made me this way,” Abbee snapped. “Don’t put down roots. Don’t make friends. Every relationship is a transaction; everyone is out to screw you, and nobody can help. People aren’t inherently good; they’re just status seekers trying to improve their own positions. Ipsu drilled that into me for years.” Abbee remembered Randall and Whimsy and Captain Barnes. “He was wrong. He was wrong about all of it.”
“Yeah? If he was so wrong, then how come you were living alone in the slate quarry?”
“You know what?” Abbee shot back. “I can’t wait to meet this Emma. If all she had was you and Ipsu … I can’t wait to find out how badly the two of you twisted her up. I bet she’s a piece of work.”
Kai harrumphed.
They drifted in silence. Abbee didn’t feel any better. She had gotten some good shots in, but they hadn’t helped. She was still mad at Ipsu, and now he was gone. She’d never get to say any of the myriad things she’d dreamed she’d tell him when she finally saw him again. Angry words, harsh words, hurt words—even the kind ones. All gone. Abbee knew she should feel a little guilty about unloading on Kai, but the wizard made it hard to like him. She recalled her experience with Ilo and Marin and decided that it was wizards in general. They were all hard to like.
Neither of them spoke until the ground was closer and the mountains no longer looked like anthills. They drifted over a pair of peaks and a long, sloping rock pile. It had looked like jumbled stone from higher altitudes. As they neared, Abbee realized the jumbled stone was covered with a crisscrossing warren of wood-and-metal scaffolding. Some sort of dig site. Abbee spotted a few tents to the south and, beyond that, the telltale blue rectangle of a portal frame standing alone atop a snowy hill.
Kai led them to the northern peak. They slid down through the air toward a small outcropping on its southern slope, facing the excavation site.
“When you land,” Kai advised, “keep your feet together and your knees bent. You’ll want to fall and roll to absorb the impact with the ground.”
Abbee knew how to land without breaking her ankles.
Kai hit the ground first and ignored his own advice. As soon as he stumbled, he threw out his hands, and his body stopped its forward momentum. Abbee didn’t have that luxury and executed a forward roll. She worried that the cuirass might impact her flexibility, but she popped up to her feet with little trouble. Abbee felt disappointment that the ride was over and she was down on the ground again.
She walked to the outcropping’s edge and looked down. The ruined valley lay below. A massive landslide had pulled dirt and stone down the mountainside like hot taffy. A lot of the scaffolding looked old and had collapsed over time—through age or shifting ground, Abbee couldn’t be sure. Most of the work seemed focused on the eastern flank of the landslide, with the tightest cluster of people and material. Even from this distance, Abbee discerned House soldiers in their recognizable helmets.
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“Hmm,” Kai said behind her.
“What?” Abbee asked, turning.
The wizard stood with his hands on his hips, facing uphill. “There was a cave here. A way in. Looks like it collapsed.”
Abbee looked where Kai was looking and saw dirt, stone, and nothing unusual. She couldn’t tell if there had been a cave anywhere. “A way in to where?”
Kai turned and walked over to Abbee, grunting at the scene below. He gestured at the old scaffolding. “Ha! They were digging in the wrong spot for a while.” He frowned. “Where is it all?”
“All what?” Abbee asked. “What was so special about Valetown that they’d go to all this trouble?”
“Valetown was nothing,” Kai said. “A small collection of hovels with very bad food. It’s what was underneath the town that’s important. I can’t believe there’s nothing here. They must have moved it.”
“What’s ‘it’?”
“This place should be covered with glimmermote.”
“Glimmermote?” Abbee echoed. She looked around but didn’t see any glittering specks of dust. “You’d have to store up all the mote in the world to cover this place.”
“I know,” Kai said. “You’d have a small sea of it. There should be something left. Hmph.” He pointed north, to the top of the valley, where the ground looked unspoiled. “We want to go over there. Follow me.”
Kai jumped off the cliff. He drifted down through the air to a spot twenty meters lower, touched off a rock with his foot, and bounded down the mountain.
Abbee had a momentary bout of panic before she remembered her cuirass. “Idiot,” she muttered, annoyed that she’d somehow already forgotten about her fantastic descent out of the sky. She jumped off the cliff and dropped like a stone for several meters before the cuirass slowed her fall. Abbee landed on a big rock, spent an instant deciding where to go next, then pushed off into the air again. It took a few jumps and landings to time it right, so she got the best burst of speed from her initial fall before the cuirass took over.
A grin spread over her face as she hopped and bounced after Kai, and Abbee was laughing in exhilaration when she got to the bottom. “That was so fun. Can you warp us back up and go again?”
“What? No.”
“C’mon, wizard,” Abbee said. “It’ll only take five minutes.”
“No. I’m not here to have fun. I’m here to get my daughter back.”
“So?” Abbee asked.
Kai turned and walked away from her.
“What about me?” she persisted. “Can you warp me up there?”
Kai didn’t reply.
Abbee huffed in disappointment and decided when this was all over and she got back to Akken, she’d try the same descent off the escarpment. Her new hobby might be climbing tall things and hurling herself from the top of them. “Where are we now? What are we even doing here?”
Kai stopped and turned. Abbee thought he was going to snap at her again, but he looked over her shoulder and crouched. Abbee turned and spotted three House soldiers climbing the debris field. Heading their way.
“Come here,” Kai hissed.
Abbee dropped low and scrambled up to his position. Kai gestured, and the air around them shimmered. His hands moved in slow, sinuous waves. The soldiers kept coming.
“Did they see us?” Abbee whispered.
“I don’t think so,” Kai said. He stood up. “You don’t have to whisper. They can’t see or hear us anymore. I don’t think they saw us—I’m not getting any threat outlines. Speaking of which, do me a favor and don’t look at them and don’t think about them. They might still have working chips.”
“I live in Akken,” Abbee said, straightening. “I know how threat detection works.” She stilled her mind and kept from thinking about the soldiers directly. “None of the soldiers there have had those chips for years, though.”
“This is Veronna,” Kai said. “They save the best for themselves.”
“Where did they come from?” Abbee asked as the soldiers picked their way up the debris field. “I didn’t see them on our descent.”
“I don’t know,” Kai said. “I can’t be sure if this is a normal patrol or not. But you’re right. They did come from somewhere nearby. There shouldn’t be any entrance near here big enough for a person, but who knows what happened during the landslide?”
“Entrance to where?” Abbee asked. “Will you please—”
“Quiet,” Kai interrupted her.
“I thought you said they can’t—”
“Shh. I’m trying to concentrate.”
Abbee fell silent. The soldiers were close enough to see clearly. A man and two women. Sword hilts poked up over their shoulders, and all three wore red sashes. House Danan’s color. Abbee never saw red sashes in Akken. Only House Togrim blue and very occasionally the green sash of House Stonar. Abbee knew there was another color, gray, for House Halkren. She’d learned about the Veronna Houses in school, before she’d run away to live under a bridge.
The man stopped and peered up the hill toward Kai’s shimmering dome. “I don’t see anything,” he called over his shoulder to his companions. “There’s nothing here.”
“Keep looking, Tal,” one woman said, walking past him.
“What for?” the man, Tal, asked. “Lieutenant, there’s nothing—”
“Because that’s an order,” the lieutenant snapped. “And because I can use the fresh air. I’ve been cooped up down there for three days straight.”
“Three days?” Tal asked. “I haven’t been. I get to—”
“Shut it, Tal,” the other woman said. “Nobody wants to hear about how you lick Canor’s backside to get your plum assignments.”
Tal glowered at her. “That’s ‘Corporal Larimer’ to you, Private Easlee.”
The lieutenant walked past them and stopped a couple of meters away from Abbee. The Danan soldier took off her helmet and sat down on a rock. She had graying brown hair and a weathered face. She looked tired. “Would you two shut up for a minute? I’d like to forget where I am for a bit.”
Tal grunted and walked a little way down the hill. He stopped with his back to them and bent down. Came up with a handful of stones, which he threw down the mountain, one by one.
Easlee climbed up to the lieutenant and stood nearby. She watched Tal with a sour expression. “How much longer until he goes home?”
The lieutenant shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I didn’t realize the ‘hazard’ in ‘hazard pay’ was dealing with Tal.” Easlee’s voice lowered. “What was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“Back in the old days,” Easlee said, “when we weren’t scrounging for scraps out in the middle of nowhere. Back when House Danan had a real leader in cha—”
“Watch it, Easlee,” the lieutenant said, raising her hand. “That kind of talk can get you disappeared.”
“I’m not the only one saying it. There’s a bunch of chatter like that in the barracks.”
“Yeah, well, then that means a whole bunch of you will disappear at once.” She stood up and put her helmet back on. “Maybe it’ll be quiet around here for once.” She raised her voice. “Tal, put your rocks down. There’s nothing here. We’re heading back.”
Abbee watched the patrol descend the mountain, picking their way through the scattered rocks and debris. The soldiers vanished behind a big rock about two hundred meters below their position. Kai held his shield for a moment longer before ceasing his waving hands. The air stopped shimmering.
“That was interesting,” Abbee said. She started down the hill. “Looks like there’s an entrance down there.”
“We’re not going in that way,” Kai said.
“What? I thought you were looking for—”
“I found it already,” Kai said. He gestured at a steep rock face behind them.
Abbee looked closer and saw three small holes in the ground. The holes were about ten centimeters across and spaced apart too evenly to be natural. “What are those?”
“Ventilation shafts,” Kai said. “I know where these go. While that patrol was relaxing, I was sensing the shaft terminations within the complex below us.”
“Sensing the … Underground?”
“A little trick I learned from Brattle,” Kai said. “My method is a bit cruder than hers, but it’s the results that count. There’s an empty space about twenty meters straight down.” He gestured down the hill. “I looked for the entrance that patrol is using. It doesn’t extend far before it runs into rubble, and there are about ten more people in there. If we warp in here, we’ll be closer to where we need to go, and those soldiers will be separated from us by a tunnel collapse.”
“Okay.” Abbee gave the wizard her best smile. “Hey, if we’re going to warp down there, can we at least warp to the top of the mountain and run down again?”
“Maybe,” Kai said.
He walked up to her and touched her on the shoulder. A bubble of yellow light enveloped them both, and the world shifted. The yellow bubble faded, and Abbee found herself in a dusty stone room.
Not the mountaintop. “Aw,” Abbee said, looking around.
They were in a small room with stone walls. The stone had been smoothed at one point. The floor tilted downward, and the wooden door in front of Abbee stood ajar. The frame tilted along with the floor, and the door didn’t look like it closed all the way anymore. A light breeze flowed through the room and up into three evenly spaced holes in the ceiling. The air smelled of dirt and damp.
Kai went to the door and poked his head out. A magical light in the ceiling flicked on at the movement. Abbee followed behind and saw an empty hallway beyond, tilted at an angle. To the right, the hallway stopped at a jumble of dirt and stone. A cave-in had collapsed the ceiling. To the left, the hallway stretched about fifty meters and ended at an intersection. The floor had a thick layer of sparkly dust on it. Kai walked down the intact hallway. Magical ceiling lights flicked on as he passed.
Abbee had no choice but to follow. She had no idea how to get out of this place. Kai got to the intersection and turned left. Abbee looked right and saw more debris. A rivulet of dirty water ran down the lowest corner of the hall and disappeared under the rubble. Everything that way seemed destroyed. She wondered where those House soldiers were and if there were more of them in here. She let Kai lead the way both from a navigational standpoint and the assumption that the wizard would annihilate any obstacle in his path.
“How do you know where you’re going?” Abbee asked.
“Because I’ve been here before, obviously,” Kai said.
Everywhere they went was the same. Tilted and broken. A few of the rooms had big cracks in the ceiling, wide rents with water dripping down thick pillars of ice. Abbee wasn’t cold, not with her new fancy cuirass, and Kai didn’t appear cold either. He looked frustrated. The underground complex was a warren of halls, rooms, and stairwells. All empty. Cleared out. Kai’s mood darkened with every new room. At one point, Kai led them through one cavernous space as big as a bout hall, completely barren save for some stone tables and scattered glass. Kai paused in the middle, looking around. He muttered a nasty curse.
“What was in here?” Abbee asked.
Kai didn’t answer except to swear more.
“Where is everyone? How come we’ve not seen any soldiers?”
“I don’t know,” Kai said. “Maybe I was wrong about Emma being here.” He cocked his head as if listening. “I wish she hadn’t removed my trace.”
Abbee wanted to make a comment about violating a daughter’s trust, but she held her tongue. She rubbed her finger across a stone table and came up with more sparkly dust. Looked like glimmermote. It was everywhere in here. No evidence from the scattered debris gave any indication besides some sort of storage area. A workshop, maybe. The largest scrap was a thin glass tube with a rounded end. Like some sort of vial. Abbee had been inside an alchemist’s shop one time. Had seen damage to their equipment, and a broken beaker. The glass underfoot in this empty underground complex looked like that. She remembered Kai’s workshop under his house in Akken. Glass tubes and bubbling, glittering mud in bowls, beakers, and vials. Glittering mud.
Glittering. Like glimmermote. A strange thought thumped through Abbee’s head. Not like glimmermote. Actual glimmermote.
Abbee had never seen enough glimmermote in one place to do anything other than wisp around like smoke. Well, there had been one time where it had collected into a flaky crust, but Abbee didn’t like thinking about that. She looked around at the big room. Maybe Kai’s glimmermote contraption in his Akken workshop had been small. Maybe there had been a bigger one in here. She had no idea why someone would experiment with glimmermote. It didn’t do anything except make you itch.
“Why would Emma come here?” Abbee asked the fuming wizard. “How did she even know about it?”
Kai huffed in frustration. “Wait here. Don’t go anywhere.”
“What? Where are—”
A yellow bubble of light enveloped Kai, and he flickered. The yellow light turned a sickly brown. Abbee hadn’t seen that before. The brown bubble withered away, and Kai reappeared. He staggered and fell against a stone table. His shoulders heaved, and he threw up.
A man appeared in the center of the room as if stepping out of thin air. Abbee knew it was an illusion, on account of his image intersecting a stone table. He looked a bit strange with its corner poking out of his hip. The man wore a plain gray jacket and trousers. Fine boots. He had a short-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. He smiled at Kai. “The years have not been kind to you, Kai. You look terrible.”
Abbee froze at the sound of his voice. The memory of a sightless man dressed in black flashed through her head. She remembered how the leather straps had felt, pinning her arms to a table. A familiar itch prickled her back as she remembered that voice coming out of the darkness, over and over in the dark. The voice in Graywall. She’d recognize it anywhere.
The gray wizard looked at her. “Abbee Danner, it’s good to see you.” He gave her a little bow. “Again.”
Abbee flinched. “You.”