Athen stared up at the Arch with wonder. A village could be built beneath it for how massive it was. And all smooth metal, black and without carvings or adornments. It was as though the Archangels had only second-hand knowledge of architectural style.
“Do you think the Archangels used to walk under here, mother?” he asked, his small feet tapping rapidly to keep up with her pace. Even in the low light she could recognize his excited smile.
“I believe so. But they are supposed to be quite tall. Much taller than their statues.” She took his hand as they walked. “When I was your age, I used to sit in my window in the Citadel and wonder if they would perch on top of the Arch when they were here.”
He cocked his head. “Well I think they used to walk underneath. Because, why else would they put a road under it?”
“Yes, I’m sure they used to walk this road just as we are tonight,” she laughed, tousling his hair.
The Night Quarter stood out against the rest for being the only one with a road to the Citadel. That road drowned in darkness early, as the sun passed beyond the Tower of Manataklos and spread its long shadow eastward. There the city’s rich and spoiled, the Guild Masters and merchants, resided. So desperate were they for attention from the nobility that they forsook the sun to live in their shadow.
Lyrua scoffed. Fitting that the Night Quarter was the district engineered by Faaldet, who was associated with darkness and sin. Not that she was sinful herself, but her lair in Soulhollow was where she watched over all the souls too fat with sin to make the journey up to Machina.
Faaldet’s district was all irregular structures with slithering arches, pointed black stained glass windows that resisted the light of day, and foundations that jutted out, wide enough to sit upon. The towers twisted cruelly like screws, as if trying to fasten the district to the night itself.
Lyrua should have felt safe in the Night, packed like it was with privileged folk, it was typically the safest district. The central thoroughfare for the city, the Night was heavily trafficked by all manner of folks. That meant it was well warded for the arrogant prunes. It did not feel safe tonight. Not with the way stalkers creeped in the dark. Lyrua pulled her cloak tighter. Worse, they could not even travel the well-lit King’s Way that ran through the entire city for fear of being seen.
“Ove,” Lander said quietly, as they turned down a southward street, “want to carry some of this?” He hefted his burden, swinging the sacks down to the street with a thump. She had not slept long, but Lander had used the time well. Three bulging potato sacks that Lyrua hoped dearly were not full of potatoes.
“No!” Ove cawed indignantly. “Those sacks are bigger than I am. What did you take, the whole pantry? There will be some thing besides ‘tatoes in those if you have half a wit.”
“Meat, bread and cheese.” he rumbled. “There might still have been some potatoes in one of them. I won’t be able to fight carrying these,” he protested, “and I’d rather not drop your food in a fight.”
Ove glared at him, puffing her feathers out. She always put on a show of indignation when arguing with Lander.
His mouth stretched in a mischievous grin, “I thought you had huge armpits that could hold anything?”
“They’re shadows, you rusty ingot.” The back of her head puffed up even more at his teasing, and she was beginning to look like a fluffy hatchling. “Give me those sacks and I will show you what it looks like to be useful.” Ove flourished her cloak and pulled it over each sack in turn with an exaggerated twist and swish. As she did, they vanished into it and Athen’s eyes widened with wonder as though he had never seen her do that.
“Don’t forget,” Ove suddenly took an odd defensive-looking stance, almost doing splits, she bounced around, waving her finger as close to Lander’s face as she could get it. “I am the only one who can get these out, so we should find some other way to carry things as soon as we can in case some thing happens to me.”
Lander covered his mouth as he laughed at Ove’s bouncing, but the booming cackle was as loud as if he had not. “Calm down!” He bent over with his arms wrapped around his chest, trying to stop his metal body from vibrating loudly in the night and alerting the entire city. “You look like a baby!”
“We will deal with it when we are safe somewhere,” Lyrua motioned impatiently, urging them to continue. Lander collected himself, shaking his head to quell the laughter, and stood up straight. Even with the streets quiet as the Hollow Woods and echoing with emptiness, she was nervous to stand still. At least anything pursuing them would need to pass through the warded Queen’s Arch.
Lander grabbed Athen under his arms and lifted him to his shoulders. Lyrua frowned. She did not like Athen being up so high, but at least they could quicken their pace. And because it was Lander, he could hang on as tightly as he wished.
“Where is our carriage, mother?” Athen whined, leaning farther down than she liked, so his head was nearly level with hers. “Why are we not riding a carriage out of the city?” He stared down at her, but with the lamps behind them she could not see his face. If she knew her son, this was his way of trying to rekindle the conversation she had put out earlier.
Before Lyrua could come up with an answer, a dark blur of rustling feathers bounced over. Ove leaped into the air, extending her wing to tickle his chin. “No time to prepare a carriage!” She quietly exclaimed. Athen put his arm up to defend his chin, giggling. “Adven-ture waits for no one!” Reaching into her cloak, she withdrew a bundle of sticks, cloth, and string. The bundle unrolled smoothly without tangles. “We will do it all just like the adven-turous heroes of old! On foot, the whole way!” she explained, dangling a masterwork puppet of a man with black hair and dark, narrow eyes.
Rolling her eyes, Lyrua cast a faint light on the puppet rod so Athen could see it more clearly. Ove was a master puppeteer, but she mostly used her talents to entertain her son. She used his love of historical figures and language to trick him into remembering his other lessons.
Athen tightened his legs around Lander’s neck and clapped his hands quietly, a wide grin spreading across his face. “His name is Tith Ae-Haru! But…” his expression became grim, “he got killed. I would not want us to get killed, Ove.”
“And…” Ove’s voice took on an ominous tone. She lowered the glowing rod to exaggerate the shadows across her face. “Such a death it was… that some say, he is still dead to this very day!” The puppet of Tith raised its arms as if surprised, and then its feet swept out from under it and it lay still, one arm draped over its face.
“Pfft,” he laughed, “that is silly, you know. And Tith came back, after they wrapped him up in Geodome and put him in the ground. Richard, the Father of Undeath woke him back up.”
“That’s right!” Ove said. With a flourish and a flick of her wing, the puppet of Tith Ae-Haru disappeared, and was replaced with a paler Tith, wrapped from head to toe in strips of cloth. It was unnervingly lifelike in spite of its exaggerated proportions; the oversized head and stumpy body that all Ove’s puppets had, so they doubled as nice dolls for Athen to play with. Lyrua could almost believe it could come alive, wiggling its tiny fingers. Ove never let him play with that one.
“Who is he now?” Ove queried.
“Tith the Decayed!” Athen declared, “He helped Kasder Wilsen and Maybreth Freyrill kill the Moonflower King, so he could finally reach Machina and see Osadelse again.”
As Athen recounted the tale, a puppet of Osadelse came out from somewhere, a pretty green-skinned Sunflower, the large sunflower characteristic of their race growing out of the back of her head and resting atop her hair. The puppets danced around each other dramatically, miming elation at finally seeing each other again after a thousand years apart.
They shared the kind of love Lyrua had childishly yearned for when she married Aban Dhabil. Her heart beat heavily in her chest, recalling the tall, long haired man with his tan skin and charming demeanour, and how he seduced her with talk of the perfect life as Queen and King, mother and father, a large beautiful family of well-educated and responsible children. Happy subjects… happier nobility. But that was before the pressure of the Kingdom squeezed the charm and kindness out of the man like juice from a lemon, until only a thick rind of avarice remained. It was her fault he changed.
“Yes,” Ove said to Athen, pulling Lyrua from her reverie, “and how did they travel?”
Realising the answer, his voice tottered with consternation. “… They walked.”
“That’s right.” Ove said. She spun the rods and dolls up in cloth and slipped them behind her. As the light of the rod disappeared into Ove’s cloak, she faded into the darkness.
“If we don’t want to end up like Tith, we have to be careful,” Lander added quietly. “Just like Tith wasn’t. Unfortunately, that means walking this time, at least for now. When we reach Kraken’s Boundary I can show you what I was up to when I was your age.”
“Ooh, I get to learn about you, Lander?” Athen cooed excitedly.
“Aye, if it pleases you. You like ships, lad?”
“Oh, yes! I have never been on a ship at sea, you know, but I have seen the royal vessels. It took all day to get to the Military district by carriage.” Athen’s grin stretched back across his face, even though he had complained the whole trip, and had not stopped whining until he got to play with the helm of one of the warships.
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“Well, young man, wait until you see the unsinkable ship they have in Kraken’s Boundary,” his rubber mouth stretched in a proud smile. “It’s legendary.”
Athen was so excited he flailed his legs, banging Lander’s chest with his heels. “Mother, may I steer the ships? Will you ask them if I can steer the ships?”
“No I will not. Stop encouraging him, Lander. You know he is far too young.” Of course, she knew some of the blame was hers for asking the captain of the warship last time. She had been desperate to sweeten his mood after hearing him whine all day. Athen frowned.
Lander grabbed Athen by his boots to stop the banging. “Your mother’s right, lad,” Lander said, nearly putting the boy off his shoulders with a shrug. “the helm is no toy. That said, my fathers have a good ship, so I can ask them to at least show you how it works, if they’re available.”
“I would like that very much. Thank you Lander.” He took Lander’s tricorn and put it on his own head. “You have two fathers? Like Mister Agard? Does that mean you are adopted like his children?”
“No,” he growled slowly. “Children of Iron are much simpler than you fleshfolk.”
Lyrua could not tell if his naked head or the subject matter annoyed him more. “Any two Iron can put a bit of their crystals together to make an Iron Egg. Bind metal to it with mana, and you have a brand new Iron.”
Athen cocked his head, no doubt trying to make sense of what Lander had just put in his head. “That is not… Then how does a human mother make her babies? What about Faunafolk like Ove?”
“That is quite enough of that talk!” Lyrua exclaimed, pulling her son from Lander’s shoulders. “Give the man his hat before the cold frosts whatever he has for brains.”
Lander accepted the hat from Athen, ignoring a mirthful squawk from Ove, and set it back on his head with a twist of his wrist. “Whatever I have for brains are plenty warm.” His chest shook with laughter.
They continued on, with Lyrua marching at a quickened pace to make up for lost time. The black buildings around them framed the narrow street, leaving barely enough width for a carriage. It was more of a wide footpath. Lander stopped and stared ahead through the dim light of the far-spaced orb-lamps. Gaps between the lamps were filled with deep shadows that Lyrua could not help but stress over.
“The pompous meatballs around here demand a lot of protection,” Lander snorted, a sound of air sucked through an iron pipe. “Gottfred said the patrols were snuffed, but we still should have seen someone else by now. I almost hoped all that racket we were making would draw out something for me to kill so we could get it out of the way.”
Those pompous meatballs, as Lander so elegantly remarked, huddled like rodents in the center of the Quarter, near the Queen’s Way and the King’s Way. It was not so surprising to Lyrua that these back roads were quiet. They were all storehouses or rented property. Still, she did not envy the ministers who would face their complaints in the morning, when they found out their guards were gone.
“What does that mean for us?” Lyrua asked. “Perhaps they have reduced the guard around the edges of the district, on top of pulling most of the Spellwards.”
“Well if anyone else noticed the change in guard there may be ruffians creeping about,” he continued. “Unlikely given the timeframe, but there could still be stalkers. At least Ove will sense those. I’m more concerned about guards, and what to do if we find any. Spellwards would be using Light to watch a large area passively as they patrol, which means they won’t even need to see us directly.”
Lyrua perked up, leaning onto the balls of her feet. “I have been practising my Light quite diligently, you know. I like to think I am well prepared on that front at least. Can I help in some way?”
“Maybe,” Lander shrugged, “I wouldn’t be the one to ask. Ove?”
“We would need to know how their spell works to do any thing about it,” Ove’s voice came from somewhere unseen. Lyrua could not find her even after scanning the road twice, the rustle of her feathers a hushed memory of her position.
Lander rubbed his chin in thought. “It’s like a web or something? It moves with them as they walk. It has to be efficient to keep it up all night, so they can’t really see with it. More that it creates a vague impression to reference against their memory, to see if anything has changed,” he sighed as if recounting it exhausted him. “And movement stands out like a beacon. So says Spilde,” he sighed again, cooling his core. A bit of steam escaped the chest of his armour. “I wasn’t a guard for long, and only did these patrols a few times before all the guards here were changed to Wards. I don’t know if they have any other tricks like that but given the difficulty of it, I’d imagine not.”
Ove’s beaked face appeared in the lamplight at the end of the shadows before them, nodding approvingly at Lander. “Finally some brains from you,” she said, before melting into the shadows, “maybe you will be useful for more than steaming my Lady’s clothes,” Ove chuckled, but it came from behind them. “My Lady could use Light to tamper with the spell as it passes over us so the Ward believes naught is there. She has no spell for that though. She will have to figure it out on the spot.”
Lyrua looked over her shoulder looking for Ove, and squeezed her son subconsciously. Images of folk creeping up on them in the dark invaded her thoughts. Guards and Wards leering through the night at her as though she were a common criminal, with only her spells to keep them safe. Never mind that the Wards would never attack her, it terrified her anyway.
“I will do it.” Her stomach churned as the words escaped. Could she really? Even with a wealth of mana and two decades of practice, she suddenly felt as though she were over-stating her ability. “I can do it.”
“Mother!” Athen wriggled out of her arms, but could not escape a kiss on his head that was more to make her feel better than him. “Are we in real danger?” he asked. “What can I do to help? I have been practising too, you know. I can even light the lamps now.” The more he spoke, the more excited he became. “Ove taught me Sound too!” He hesitated, and took a step away from her. “Oh, I was not supposed to tell you. I made it sound as though Lord Kaman passed wind in front of father, but I did not get caught, because they both found it very funny.”
She shook her head, swallowing the urge to pull her bangs out. Just why she never wanted to let him learn Sound. Now that he had, he could not be attuned to Dream as she wanted. She should have had someone like Toldremand attune him to Dream when he was younger, as she had done herself with Light and Water.
“Just stay close to me so Ove and Lander can do their jobs,” she said firmly. “And if I fail at mine, the worst that should happen is we have to dismiss more Wards. If we avoid them, no one will know where we are, and we can’t be followed. Do you understand?”
He nodded, grinning. “When I play peek-a-bird in the gardens with Ove, I always find her by following her little tracks.” He radiated with pride, no doubt fancying himself a master tracker. Then his smile fell away and he turned his eyes down. “Then Fourstaile finds me by following mine and scolds me.”
“Good,” Lyrua said. “You should not not be stepping on her plants and undoing her work.”
Athen pouted, but there was no remorse in his eyes. He liked peek-a-bird more than he feared discipline.
Lander took a few steps forward and stood there deaf to their conversation. “I might put you under my expansions from here,” Lander said, beckoning them towards the other end of the street. “I’ve been avoiding doing this; it will drain a lot of my mana… but I’m growing more anxious with each step.”
She had rarely seen Lander unnerved. A tense night in the dark subtlety of the unknown was enough to rattle even Iron, she supposed. At least knowing she was not the only one spooked helped her fend off the feeling of isolation.
“Wait, Lander.” Ove hopped out of the dark and crouched against the wall at the mouth of the road ahead. Her feathers were as still as the wall as she peered into the dimly lit street beyond. She craned her neck back and flapped a wing at Lyrua. “Come look, my Lady. Come and look at this.”
Lyrua crouched low to the ground and approached the corner as quietly as she could. Ove stepped aside to give her space and Lyrua pressed herself against the wall to glance around the corner. A good distance away a small bubble of lantern light drove the darkness away.
Three figures clad in the light armour of the guards and another in the white Spellward’s tunic marched in their direction. Beyond the reach of their lantern the darkness shimmered lightly, rippling like a clear pond just barely disturbed.
“I can see it!” she whispered, her nervousness diluted slightly in excitement. “I can see the lattice of light; its light glitters in the dark. The edge of it is quite close, but they are too far for us to sense each other casting. Let me focus on the spell.”
She scuttled away from the corner, taking care not to dirty her hands by touching the street, and rested her back on the wall. Closing her eyes, she started a rhythm of deep breathing. Cool air filled her lungs, and she released it slowly. Focusing, she formed the image of her soul in her mind, filled with all her mana like a jar of sweet honey milk. She drew a small amount, thin as spider’s silk and directed it around to the road. Her thread brushed the edge of the Spellward’s web and she flinched, pulling back. It was already upon them. Her heart began racing, and she repeated the deep breaths to calm herself.
Lyrua prodded the edge of the web more carefully. It came wrapping around the corner, clinging tightly to the walls and street as it crawled into the alleyway. She overlapped the threads of the web with her own Light, flattening them against the street so they could not reveal their forms.
Touching the other’s mana tingled her arms like a sprinkle of rain on her skin and she prayed the Ward did not feel it as well. She shuddered from the effort of tracing dozens of threads at once, all attempting to twist and tangle around her friends.
Deep in concentration, her senses fought to distract her. A breeze brushed through Ove’s feathers, forcing Lyrua to shut her eyes to avoid the temptation of turning her eyes to look. Athen squeaked gently with concern, seeing her struggle to keep her breaths even. She clutched her elbows in clammy hands to keep from reaching out to him. The footsteps drew nearer, tapping distractingly in the street behind her. Even her desperately ragged breaths threatened to tear her attention away from her task.
Her teeth clattered together as her jaw began to shake. She manipulated the threads well, keeping them flat and even, but without warning the web shifted direction. The entire spell spun out of her grasp, and she failed. She failed, and her threads of mana vanished as she hung her head in defeat. The footsteps on the road stopped. Pearls of sweat cascaded down her face and soaked her blouse. She struggled to catch her breath, pressing her hand to her chest, futilely trying to stall the heaving.
Athen wiped the sweat from her face with the edge of his cloak and tossed his arms around her. He kissed her cheek, but he said nothing. Even he could tell that she failed.
“Lander,” Ove spoke quietly from the corner.
Lander drew his sword in the same moment the side street flooded with lantern light. The patrol marched around the corner led by the Spellward, a bright spell-lantern dangling at the tall woman’s waist.
Panicking, Lyrua pulled her and Athen’s hoods up and pushed him behind her. Crouched as they were, she feared they looked like scoundrels creeping for trouble. She should have stood up and asserted herself. Instead she huddled over Athen with her back turned to shield him, and trusted her retainers to guard them while watching over her shoulder.
As the light poured over Ove, she melded into the black steel wall as though being pushed by the light. Lander wore excitement on his face, relishing the idea of combat in the streets.
Lyrua instinctively looked for their rank on their chests. The Spellward was a head taller than the others and bore the crest of Light, a silver circle inside a gold ring, but no mark of rank. That was typical for Spellwards; only Lieutenants and Captains were decorated beyond the crests. The guards were bare, which made them rankless. That was not possible unless they had not even completed their training. Lander saw it as well, and his doubt must have echoed hers; his sword was already on its way down from his shoulder.