Spellbreaker (55 page)

“So…” Leandra said while narrowing her eyes at the man. “So I have a slave.”

He smirked. “Perhaps, when we go to Chandralu, your father will finish what he started so long ago and kill me.”

The mention of her father sent a spasm of pain through Leandra's heart. She looked up at her mother, who looked down at her.

“Well, old man,” Leandra said without looking away from her mother's inscrutable draconic eyes, “if my father is still alive, he just might do that. Of course, he might also kill me.”

 

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

With Lotannu holding her arm, Vivian walked the war galley's deck with a queasiness she associated with a recently broken fever. She had spent too long in her master spell, become frail. More upsetting had been the recovered memories and the revelation that Nicodemus had not been smuggling gods out of the empire, Los had.

A bracing wind blew across the deck. All around, the standing islands stretched up to a tropical sky. Slowly the galley sailed between stone formations toward the bay's open water. Other imperial ships—of sea and air—were taking similar courses.

“How long until both fleets are in formation?” she asked.

“No more than an hour.”

Vivian brushed her long black hair out of her eyes. This was taking too long. Deconstructing the master spell had proven more difficult than anticipated. During their casting, Vivian had improved many of the subspells, but she had not known how to write them to be quickly stored in spellbooks. As a result, once Lotannu had explained the situation, she had needed several hours to reverse her previous edits. She had wanted to move against Los with speed, but now it was nearly midday and the fleets were just emerging from the standing islands.

They had missed the chance to catch the dread god Los … no … the dread goddess Los when she was most vulnerable.

But Vivian did have one consolation: Belowdecks several hundred spellbooks now preserved her master spell. If needed, she could reconstitute the spell. Gingerly she touched the Emerald that hung around her neck. All her life she had been training for this moment. “When should we expect the scouts to report back?” she asked.

“Any moment now,” Lotannu answered. They both looked up at the sky but saw no lofting kites. “But I would be shocked to hear any report other than Leandra's retreat—”

“Los's retreat,” she corrected.

“… Los's retreat into a Chandralu now bristling with defenses.”

“We let our chance escape.”

Lotannu bowed his head.

“Not your fault, old friend. Any blame is mine.”

They made another lap around the deck. From the railing, her commanders watched. They were of every rank and training in the empire: Spirish admirals, Verdantine nobles, wizards, pyromancers, and on and on. Among the crowd, Vivian's eye fell upon Captain Cyrus Alarcon. He was dressed in his green hierophantic robes and turban. His veil was lowered to reveal his handsome face. Before this expedition, he had commanded the
Empress
, but at his request she had him transferred back to the
Queen's Lance
. The encounter with the Savanna Walker had left both ships badly damaged. The smaller
Queen's Lance
had been easier to repair and would fly in the coming attack.

Vivian had no doubt the aerial battle would involve an encounter with the draconic Francesca. In that regard, Captain Alarcon's personal knowledge of the creature would be invaluable. Vivian nodded to the captain. He bowed.

Lotannu made a low, thoughtful sound. “Empress, did you have a chance to read my private communication?”

He was speaking about an encoded Numinous message he had secretly cast to her. It described the Savanna Walker's claims that Vivian's metaspells would eventually sterilize Language Prime until disease and crop failures destroyed civilization.

“I did. Certainly it is nothing to disregard; however, if we defeat Los, there won't be a need to for me to continue casting my metaspell.”

He pursed his lips but said nothing.

“What is it?”

“There may be a need to suppress the formation of new divinities, especially in conquered league kingdoms.”

“True, but for how long? In only thirty years, we have unified the entire empire behind the idea that there should be no divinities other than the Creator.”

“I worry that ideas and cultures are more persistent.”

“We will address that in the future. But given our present situation, would you advise a different course?”

He sighed. “With the reincarnation of Los not a hundred miles away, how could I? The dread god—”

“Goddess.”

“The dread goddess destroyed human civilization once already. We can't allow her to do so again. But if our victory is to mean anything, we have to look past the immediate fight to our greater goals.”

“How fortunate, then, that I have you to remind me of such greater goals after we win this war.” Vivian smiled. The sunshine washed away her queasiness while the galley made admirable progress. Already they were slipping past the last standing island into the open water. Ahead nearly a hundred ships were forming battle lines. Above, squadrons of airships glided in formation.

Vivian looked at Lotannu. “It is torture,” she said softly, “to think of all the lives we could have saved if we had just caught Los out in the open.”

“She was still protected by the Savanna Walker.”

“Could he have survived the full strength of this fleet?”

“What he did to the
Empress
and the
Queen's Lance
was impressive. On the other hand, we've never applied the new pyromantic spells in a full fleet action.”

Vivian nodded. “Spread the word that all sailors and pilots are to keep careful watch for any sign of the Savanna Walker. A pound of gold to whoever spots him first.”

Lotannu bowed his head.

Vivian looked across the water to the distant city. “Pitting the fleet against the Savanna Walker might be a bit of a gamble. But he is not the only one who has changed over the years. Every day since he stole my ability to spell, I have grown stronger. Today just might give me the chance to settle an old score.”

 

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Leandra wanted to see her father before the war began. Preferably, without her mother. That was going to be difficult.

After the Savanna Walker finished his revelation, the obsidian shore became tarlike and swallowed him. Next the black island had sunk into the bay, prompting Leandra's crew to hurry aboard the remains of their catamaran. Moving below the water, the Savanna Walker pulled them back toward Chandralu. When they reached the port, the Savanna Walker disappeared into the depths, apparently to keep from alarming the city's war deities. So Leandra waited impatiently as her crew paddled into the docks. Francesca flew ahead.

Once ashore, Leandra took Dhrun and ran up the many steps. Everywhere they saw citizens hurrying, merchants boarding up stores, red cloaks on patrol. Leandra's future selves felt everything from panic, to triumph, to the nothingness of death. Not much time left.

Her family's pavilion was filled with red-cloak officers and hurrying messengers. No sign of Francesca. In the chaos, no one noticed Leandra and Dhrun as they ran up the stairs. She had just started to hope that she would reach her father without incident when she pulled back the screen to his room and found herself standing in front of Ellen D'Valin.

Ellen looked up with her usual impassivity, but then recognition wrote tension lines around her eyes. “My Lady Warden,” she said with an infinitesimal bob of the head.

Leandra became acutely aware that this greeting, in the delicate and restrained machinations of an academic physician, was akin to spitting in her face. Leandra also became acutely aware that she, in her own indelicate and unrestrained machinations, did not give a shit. “I'm here to see my father,” Leandra said and gave her a tight, artificial smile.

Ellen mirrored her artificial smile and said, “I'll wait in the hallway in case the Lord Warden should need medical attention.” She sidestepped around Leandra and then, with wider sidestepping, around Dhrun.

Leandra forgot her anger as trepidation churned in her gut like wine in a rolling bottle. Out on the patio, her father walked carefully while Doria held a cane horizontally ahead of him so that he could grasp it with both hands. The pair slowly crossed the patio, turned and began to head back. Her father's steps were tentative, his expression concentrated. The sight filled Leandra with images of his frailty. She had always supposed that she would die before he did. But now …

Leandra paused, suddenly unsure about what she wanted to say. Did he hate her? She wanted to turn around. Then the absurdity of her situation struck her: discover you're the immortal reincarnation of chaotic change, worry about talking to your father.

Funny organ, the heart.

So Leandra took a deep breath and was only mildly surprised when Dhrun took one of her hands. She gave his hand a squeeze. He returned the pressure. Then she let go and walked out on to the patio. “Dad.”

Nicodemus and his physician turned, stood frozen as if a tiger had just dropped onto their patio. Then her father said, with admirable levelness, “Hello Lea.” No one moved for a long moment before Nicodemus said something softly to Doria. The old physician nodded before withdrawing from the patio with a glare for Leandra.

It was then that Leandra noticed Dhrun had remained by the door to afford them at least the appearance of privacy. She felt a flush of gratitude for his thoughtfulness.

Then she turned back to her father, who was holding the railing and looking out at the city. The docks bustled with soldiers in scale armor. Catamaran warships filled the harbor like knives in a drawer.

“Your mother already told me.”

“I see” was the first thing that Leandra could think to say.

“She will stay airborne.” He looked upward.

When Leandra followed the gesture, she saw her mother's dark silhouette carving slow circles above the city.

“Several lofting kite scouts have been spotted,” Nicodemus continued. “The first attack will come before nightfall. Has the Trimuril visited you yet?”

“She hasn't.”

“She is frantically organizing the pantheon to repel the coming attack. She was here when your mother gave me the news. She wanted to know how I understood the recent developments.”

“What did you tell her?”

At last he looked at her. His deep green eyes reminded her, unsettlingly, of the Savanna Walker's. “Nothing, I told her nothing. What should I have told her?”

“That I am Los Reborn and you are the Storm Petrel.”

“It's true then?”

“How in the burning hells should I know? I'm only the reincarnation of a millennia-old demonic entity. Can't you keep up with the times, Dad?” She over-emphasized the last word as she had done as an adolescent.

He smiled slightly. “So you … you don't know?”

“Assuming Mom told you everything, I know what you know.”

“But you must have some sense…”

“You mean like a supernatural demonic sense of my nature and past lives? Yeah, no, missing that.” She paused. “Well, kinda. There's this feeling I had about … destiny.”

“Lea…” he started to say but then frowned. “Are you taller?”

“Yes. It's nothing important. I'll explain later.”

“Is there something else you're hiding from me, like you did the god smuggling?”

“No, nothing else. You know everything.”

He stared up at his wife flying above him.

Leandra closed her eyes. “Dad, about the tetrodotoxin…”

Again silence.

“I did it … I did it to try to avoid killing you.”

He continued to look into the sky.

She continued. “Paralyzing you duplicated the feelings I had prophesized. I knew that feeling was coming and there was no escaping it. I thought it was my only chance to avoid killing you … or Mom. Maybe it was.”

At last he looked at her. A breeze had picked up and tossed back his long raven hair, the silver streaks glinting. “Is that truly why you did it?”

“Yes, and I'm truly, painfully sorry,” she said flatly, but in truth a hollowness had filled her. Involuntarily, she touched the loveless spell at her head and wondered what she would say if the spell weren't there.

In the corner of her eye, Leandra saw Dhrun shift his weight. Likely he was formulating arguments as to why she should take off the loveless.

Nicodemus was staring up at his wife again. “Since I was a boy, I've wondered if I was the Halcyon or the Storm Petrel. At least now we have our answer.”

“Wouldn't you rather have tea with a destroyer of a civilization? I'd imagine the saviors would be dull conversationalists.”

He rolled his eyes. “Maybe things aren't so white and black as we imagined. Maybe the Halcyon is no more the savior of humanity than the Storm Petrel is its destroyer.”

“Well, sometimes you can be a pretty dull conversationalist.”

“Lea, I'm serious. You and I and your mother aren't the champions of chaos and ruin, we're just the champions of divinity and humanity existing together. We're only champions of the league.”

“You and Mother might be.”

He looked at her then, bright green eyes. “Why not you?”

“I don't see a difference between the empire and the league. One sets neodemons on the weak and the poor, the other sets powerful spellwrights against deities.”

“But that's not all the empire does. Do you know what it is like to be magically illiterate in their lands? They're not slaves yet, but they will be. The empire is becoming an excuse for spellwrights to exploit illiterates.”

“Now you sound like the Trimuril's sermonizing priests.”