"Well?"
"Well, what?"
"Aren't you wondering what this is all about?"
"Not really, no. A bunch of guys made off with half the airships and bombed the rest. What's to wonder?"
"Well..." Corvin shifted his foot. "For one thing, how did they get through? There's over a hundred dragoons and as many regular soldiers stationed at the shipyard. Anything big enough to break through that could be seen a mile off. And they also need people to pilot the ships."
"So they took prisoners. Big deal. If anything else had happened, we would've been told."
"That's just the point. There's something we haven't been told. I tried to get a look at the shipyard myself, and the guards wouldn't let me through. I tried to pull rank on them and they told me they had orders from Mom. Sound fishy?"
"So what are you saying? That there’s something down there that’ll give us information they don’t want us to have?"
"No. The reason they wouldn’t let me in is because they think we’re too young to see the sort of thing that’s down there; blood and gore and whatever else. But that’s also too young for us to know whatever it is they’re hiding about the attack."
Caitlin thought a moment. "Okay, it fits. But what do you plan to do about it?"
"I’d think that’s fairly simple. I’m going to go along when they leave to go after them."
"If they wouldn’t let you in the yard, how do you intend to get on the ship?"
"Dad didn’t teach us skulking for nothing."
"Point taken."
"Want to come along?"
"No. I don’t care what their reasons are, it’s clear that they don’t want us to get involved. You’ll have to get in trouble on your own, this time."
He grinned at her. "Oh, I think you’ll change your mind."
"Why?"
"All the high-ups are going to be aboard, I’ll wager. That’s going to include Vashin."
She glared at him. "You’re a dirty fighter."
"No, just a practical one."
"All right, I’m in. Now go to hell."
"Yes ma’am, reporting directly to hell, ma’am." Corvin waited a second. "I don’t see why you’re so interested in Vashin anyway. He is a good four or five years older than you."
"That’s not really all that much, and you know it. Haven’t we discussed this before?"
"Of course, but it’s fun to irritate you."
"Yeah, well, my tastes can’t be any worse than yours. I saw you flirting with the Elder’s grandniece earlier."
"This is the part where you mention the fact that I was thoroughly slapped, right?" Corvin asked, trying not to sound embarrassed. He was failing miserably.
"Looks like you beat me to it."
"Yeah. Come on, let’s sneak out there."
"I better go get my swords, first. I note that you have yours already. You were planning this from the start, weren’t you?"
"Yep."
She rolled her eyes at him. "All right. I’ll meet you in our side room in half an hour."
"Done. See ya."
"Bye."
Corvin didn’t waste much time once his sister was gone. He had just enough time for lunch in that half hour, and he didn’t intend to waste it.
The dining hall was nearly empty. Unsurprising. Corvin’s lunch was quick, quiet, and uneventful. It was almost anticlimactic considering what he had just been planning a few minutes ago. He didn’t think much as he walked to what he and his sister called the "side room," an abandoned storage closet in the east tower that offered easy privacy.
Left turn. Right turn. Another right turn. Pass the guard, look him in the eyes. No hint of any plans. Good. Climb the staircase. Go across the wall toward the tower. Oops, someone’s there. Who’s this?
'This' was apparently a young woman. Corvin would have guessed her age at around eighteen, but her face was turned away, so he couldn’t be sure. As was his usual custom, he dropped what he was doing and stopped to talk to her.
"Hi. I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before." Corvin gave himself a mental slap at what he’d just said. There were plenty of people around here that he didn’t know. She turned around...and he jumped with a startled sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a screech.
Her eyes were pure black. No irises, no retina, nothing, just jet black, yet somehow radiating an inner light, as if a star had parked itself in the center of her eyeball. The rest of her looked normal - aside from being absolutely stunning, Corvin noted to himself absently - but the eyes belied the fact.
Whoever she was, she was not human.
"I...I'm sorry," he said once he pulled himself together. "Sorry I jumped like that. I thought you were human." Corvin gave himself another mental slap.
She laughed, but there was a distinct nervous tone to it. "It’s all right...I’m Hapheera. I just got here a few minutes ago." Her voice sounded as nervous as her laugh.
Must be her first time up here, above ground...no, that’s not likely. She really is nervous. Maybe she was just startled when I came up behind her.
"Err...hi. I’m Corvin. Nice to, uhh...meet you."
"Same here. Can you...can you tell me where King Cecil is? Vashin told me to go see him."
"Vashin brought you here?"
"Yes. Why?"
"I know him, that’s all. He sometimes helps my mother train me for Calling."
"Caller in training?"
"Yeah."
"Well..." was all she said. But he could see her reevaluating him. "Anyway, do you know where he is?"
"Try the shipyards. They’re taking a fleet out in an hour or so."
"Thanks...umm, how do I get there?"
"That staircase behind you. Go all the way to the bottom and take a right. Keep going until you get there."
"Thanks." She walked off...and he was entreated to another peculiar sight as she seemed to drag...something along behind her. It was like she was pulling light in toward herself as she walked, and it made the space behind her look...twisted. Corvin shook his head. Way too many strange things for one morning.
Of course, he mused, there was a fair chance things would get stranger yet.
Forty minutes, two rope climbs, five harrowing drops, and a long shot of luck later, he and his sister were hiding about thirty feet from the shipyards. The two of them watched as people walked up the gangplank.
"Now how do we get in there?" Corvin asked.
"Maybe we can use the exhaust chute, or something."
"We’ll be seen as soon as we’re in."
"Probably. Do you have any better ideas?"
"No. But we still have time, I’ll think of something."
"I’m going in. Vashin just got on board that one over there."
"Heh. I take it once we’re up you have no problems with letting it be known we’re there?"
"None."
"Good. If you’re going, go."
"You’re not coming?"
"If we go at the same time, there’s more chance of getting caught."
"Point. You going to jump on the same ship, though?"
"I don’t know. Probably not."
"I’ll see you when we get back, then. Bye."
"Bye." Corvin took careful note of the ship she headed off to, the Dawnrunner. Then he returned to his own thoughts.
I’ve got to be insane, Caitlin thought as she moved through the shadows towards the ship. There’s no need to do this. They don’t want me here, I don’t really want to be here, so why am I here?
I guess, she concluded, I’m just crazy.
She tossed a grappling hook up over the edge of the exhaust chute, then hauled herself up while no one was looking. Once she was inside, it was relatively safe. Until the engines started up and a roaring fire and smoke billowed out. She didn’t want to be in here when that happened.
She scuttled up the pipe until she was just a few yards away from the internal port. Just out of sight. Now she had to see what was in there. She muttered a few words that ought to let her see into the room...and sneezed before she could finish.
Damn dust, she thought to herself, waiting to see if anyone had heard. Apparently no one had, so she started again. This time it worked. She fell into the magic, and her sight dwindled, dwindled...went black, but only for a moment. After it was done, she had a perfect view of the inner room and, more particularly, to the exit from the tube she’d been crawling through. No one was near it...at least not yet. She cautiously moved down towards the inner room. It was difficult moving by sense of touch while her eyes saw a different area entirely, but she wasn’t prepared to give up the sight just yet. She waited a moment, then dropped down when it was safe, suffering another...interesting moment, as she watched herself drop to the floor from outside.
Three minutes and she was hidden in the cargo compartment, looking out the window at the boarding plank...and she cursed softly as she watched Vashin walk down it, join Cecil at the bottom, and then board a different ship. Great. Her only real reason for being in here, small as it was, had just left the ship. Damn. She briefly considered trying to get out and follow them, but a roar of engines firing told her she was too late. She briefly wondered if Corvin had made his way on board one of the ships, but concluded that it didn’t matter. She was here, and he...wasn’t.
Since it didn’t matter anymore, she went ahead and wandered out boldly into the hall. She got a few startled looks and double-takes from the crew, but that was it.
Except for Palom. She really wished he’d let her ponder her own stupidity in peace. No such luck.
"Hi, there," the wizard said cheerfully as he walked by. "Breaking the rules, I see. Good habit to get into."
"Considering the way people look crosswise at you whenever you say something, I doubt I should be giving much credit to your opinion."
"Maybe not. How’d you get in?"
"Exhaust tube. It wasn’t all that hard."
"Dangerous. You could’ve gotten caught."
"Trust you to think of that first."
"If you trust me with anything, you’re much, much stupider than you look," he replied, grinning. She laughed in spite of herself.
"Good point. What’s all this about, anyway? There’s no way we’ll catch up with them now."
"They flew overhead just a few minutes ago. Didn’t you hear?"
She groaned. "I thought that was us taking off."
"Nope. That won’t happen for another thirty seconds, at least."
"Crap."
"Why, what’s the problem?"
"Nothing. Why did they come back?"
"They didn’t know they were coming back," Palom told her, clearly holding back laughter. "Vashin had an interesting monster friend with something of an affinity for light. One of the things she was particularly good at is illusions. It’s very difficult to hold a direction when the position of the sun keeps changing, don’t you think?"
"Err...I guess so."
Palom nodded. "It makes her tired, doing something that big, but it’s really a wonder. Want to come up on deck? We’re about to take off and head after them."
"How are we going to go up against twenty ships with just six?"
"We don’t really intend to, not seriously. We’re going to chase them, engage them for a few minutes, and then retreat."
"I don’t see the point in that."
He winked at her. "Well, while we’re fighting, my sister’s going to do another interesting little something that’ll let us follow them wherever they go."
"That’s risky."
"I know. Risk makes life fun."
"I suppose for you, it does. I don’t suppose Cid came up with a way to avoid getting us shot out of the sky?"
"That’s my job. There’s at least one wizard on each ship, to protect it."
"How the hell do you protect a ship using black magic?"
He winked again. "You’ll see. It’ll be a fairly impressive sight. Now come on, I have to be up there when things turn hairy."
It was a long way down, Caitlin noted when they reached the railing. A long way down. She’d never actually noticed it before, but it occurred to her that if something went wrong, it would be a very bad thing to be on this ship. She was headed for the forecastle when she noticed something else: half the cannons were unmanned. Either this ship was running shorthanded, or someone didn’t want to kill people. Caitlin couldn’t see why either of the above would be true.
"Palom?" she asked, "Why are we running shorthanded? I only see about half the cannons manned and people as a whole have been pretty sparse since I got on board."
He glanced at her. "You don’t know?"
"No," she replied. She was starting to believe what Corvin said about them not being told something.
"Then I probably shouldn’t be telling you."
"Since when have you listened to what you should and shouldn’t do?" she countered.
"Good point. All right, but you’re not going to like this."
"I’m not going to like not knowing, either."
"The people who attacked the shipyards didn’t come from outside. They were some of our own men."
Caitlin gasped.
"Engineers, most of them," Palom continued on relentlessly, "so no one questioned them as to why they were there. Next thing we know, we’re short twenty ships and half our workforce. Why, we don’t know. Cid commented earlier that they looked a lot like Kain did, during parts of the First War...but you wouldn’t know about that. Anyway, suffice it to say, they might not be acting under their own free will. Vashin went over to the other ship to discuss it with them, him being our resident mind expert."
"He knows a lot about that sort of thing?" Caitlin asked, genuinely curious.
"Yeah, the mind’s his specialty...actually, it’s pretty much the only part of standard magic he’s good at. He can even cure minor forms of insanity. Who knows, maybe he’ll figure out a way to break these guys out of it. Anyway, that’s why we’re shorthanded out here. Half the engineers are gone, and most of the rest are back there fixing what’s left of the Red Wings. You’d better duck behind something, we’re almost on top of them now. Shots’ll be fired any minute."
Caitlin backed away from the railing but stayed on deck. She wanted to see this, so she stuck around while Palom started chanting.
Whoever was commanding the enemy ships didn’t seem to have much of a knack for tactics. They were in no meaningful formation what so ever; their angle of attack was highly varied but in almost all cases bad; about the only thing they had going for them was superior numbers. Which, Caitlin reflected, was more than enough.
Things moved almost in slow motion as the opposing fleet fired, ships lurching to one side or the other, or backward, depending on their orientation. Unfortunately, even though they were incompetent at tactics, they seemed to have an unfailing aim; they had been trained to use such weapons, after all. Cannonballs and several firebombs converged on each of Baron’s ships...a fair number of them were headed towards the one occupied by Caitlin. She watched in detached horror as iron balls of destruction descended downwards towards her.
And flinched back as they were annihilated by several dozen searching bolts of lightning that blew them apart. Palom was grinning insanely.
"What d’ya think of that, huh?" He yelled over the din.
"I think you’re mad, that’s what I think!" she shouted back at him. "What the hell possessed you to use twenty six bolts at once? How long do you expect to be able to keep that up?"
Instead of answering, Palom calmly blew the next wave of enemy fire into a shower of sparks and iron filings. It occurred to Caitlin that maybe he was as good as he usually said; a look at the other ships showed them being defended much more sparsely, but no less effectively.
It lasted five minutes; it lasted hours. Caitlin was never sure which, but eventually the order was given to withdraw. The rudder engines fired and the Dawnrunner listed to one side, turning rather quickly for a ship of its size. Caitlin shifted her balance as it tilted, though not much was needed.
One of the engineers caught her eye, and she sucked in breath sharply. Magic was forming around him. Black magic. Mage.
"Palom!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, as the engineer-who-wasn't hurled a ball of fire at his unprotected back. Palom spun immediately, and dove out of the way as the fireball crashed through the wooden safety railing, leaving a great gaping hole that a person could easily fall through. Flames licked up around the wood. Palom whirled around again with a terrible expression on his face that made Caitlin suddenly, unreasonably afraid. She had seen Palom annoyed. She had seen him mildly angry. She had never seen him in a towering fury. Looking at him now, she hoped she never would again.
Palom barely had time to think before he was forced to defend himself, this time against a bolt of lightning. The Black side of magic had very few defenses against such things.
One mistake people often made when confronted by Palom’s vulgarity, drunkenness, and arrogance, was that there wasn’t much of a mind in his head. This person was apparently one of them, and Palom caught him standing in shock after his bolt had been absorbed by a wall of ice that shot up from the deck. Whoever he was, the wizard was forced to dive out of the way as lightning struck from the sky and blew a large hole where he had just been standing. And then he had to dive again as a cannonball crashed down; Palom, distracted by his opponent, had missed it. Yells came from below deck as parts of the surrounding structure fell in on itself.
Caitlin watched in horror as the two black wizards hurled terrifying elemental bolts and dark blasts at each other while an increasing number of cannonballs struck home. The ship was starting to fall apart around them. First one rotor stopped turning, then two. A third was completely blown off. The exhaust port was smashed in, and smoke began pouring out from below the deck. And all this time, two agents of death danced across the ship, each doing their best to kill the other, only acknowledging the outside world when they dodged or destroyed an oncoming cannonball. How either of them could hold a chant while diving away from both enemy spells and falling objects, Caitlin couldn’t understand.
By now, both wizards were getting tired. Caitlin could see them moving slower, speaking slower, stumbling over the words. It was only a matter of time before one of them made a fatal mistake.
Apparently, Palom wasn’t willing to wait. After a raging whirlwind of his tore up the deck and then died out, he stopped moving at all. He fell silent for a moment, and then began a spell that Caitlin didn’t recognize. But she understood some of the words, and whatever it was dealt on a level of reality she had never even attempted before. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know what it did.
Meanwhile, Palom wasn’t moving, completely absorbed in what he was doing. His opponent took advantage of the fact, and a pillar of fire sprung up around him. The wizard didn’t even flinch as his face blistered and his clothes flamed up. Nor did he stop when a lightning bolt struck him with enough force to knock over a bull. He fell, but he didn’t stop.
The enemy wizard was getting desperate now. An ice spike that Palom mustered enough strength to attempt to dodge pinned his shoulder to the mast. A cannonball then struck the base of the mast, toppling it and dragging the ice out of his body. A gaping hole remained in his shoulder. But even that didn’t stop him from speaking, nor did another cannonball that landed less than a yard from his feet. And then he finished.
Caitlin had a sudden impression of pure, unbearable heat. She flinched and looked away. She could feel the unimaginable power of whatever it was Palom had unleashed, as incredibly small particles of the surrounding air were mass converted into pure, explosive energy. She forced herself to look, and was nearly blinded by the raging fire that consumed the other wizard, force that could have torn the ship apart, torn Baron Castle itself apart, and yet was somehow confined to a space two yards across, raging, burning, destroying. And then it was over. And there was nothing left. Not even ashes remained.
Palom collapsed.
Caitlin rushed over to him. He was bleeding heavily, and most of his body was covered in burn blisters. His wizard’s robe was in tatters; his face was recognizable, but only just. The hole in his shoulder was the worst of it. It was several inches wide and penetrating straight through him.
Caitlin was no wizard; she realized that now, after seeing the kind of power that real wizards could control. But she could use what she had, and she did. In a few moments, most of Palom’s minor wounds had stopped bleeding. He blinked a few times and managed a wan grin at her. Caitlin couldn’t do anything for the greater part of his injuries, though.
Palom looked up and took in the condition of the ship. And also the position of the other ships, some five hundred feet above them.
"Shit," he said. Caitlin couldn’t think of any better way to put it.
"Oh, damn..." Cecil muttered, far above them. He’d wanted to avoid this. Five people watched over the edge with him: Kain, Vashin, Corvin, the Mysidian elder and his grandniece, Ophelia.
Most of them knew that Palom was on that ship. They also knew that he was perfectly capable of magically transporting himself off of it. They didn’t, however, know who else was on it.
"What ship is that?" Corvin asked, worry in his voice.
"The Dawnrunner. Belrae’s ship," Cecil replied sadly. He knew captain Belrae quite well, and liked him; but people died in war, and he was prepared to take it.
Corvin wasn’t, and moreover, no one else nearby was aware that his sister had stowed away on one of the other ships. Thus it was a complete surprise to all of them when he sprang to the railing with horror spread across his features.
"Caitlin!"
"I’ve got to get you out of here." Palom was saying. The Dawnrunner was plummeting towards the ocean below at an alarming pace; the two remaining rotors were not nearly enough to keep the ship aloft.
"Not a chance. I don’t know enough magic to get myself out of this, and you’ll just get us both killed if you try and take me with you."
Palom grimaced, but she was right. It was dangerous to use magic when injured; only barest luck had kept him from doing something serious to himself with that last spell. There was no way he could possibly control a teleportation enough to bring them both to safety.
"There’s no way in hell I’m leaving you behind. Edge would kill me."
"Now’s not the time to be a hero, Palom!" she shouted at him, grabbing at his robes and pulling him up. "Go on, get yourself out of here. We’re over the water and we’re not falling all that fast; I can live through it. You can’t. Go!"
Palom cursed violently, but he had no choice. A short spell, and he vanished.
When he was gone, Caitlin tried to see if anyone else was still alive. Those that were, didn’t look like they were going to live long. Most of the crew had been mutilated by stray spells; one man had been blasted apart by a huge lightning bolt that had not only killed him, but smashed the deck beneath him into splinters. Caitlin looked down once into the exposed hold, then wished she hadn’t.
She found the captain by the tiller - Caitlin noted, in a detached sort of way, that it still had the name tiller even though it functioned entirely differently that it’s seaside counterpart - and again wished she hadn’t. Everything below his waist was missing, just gone. His entrails were spread across that part of the deck.
Caitlin moved to turn away, then stopped. She took a closer look, and realized something that made the scene all the more horrid:
Captain Belrae was still alive.
He looked as if he was struggling to breathe, and failing. His eyes were open. And he saw her. With what seemed to her an unimaginable effort of will, he lifted his hand, and pointed to a nearby hole in the deck.
And then he died.
No time to lose. Caitlin knew it. But even so, she stopped for a second, just looking. She wasn’t sure, then, if what she felt was relief...or sorrow. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
A look over the side snapped her out of it. She was less than five hundred feet above the water, with the ship falling further every second. She jumped down into the hole Belrae had pointed out. She saw the room inside...and recognized it. But she had no joy in the recognition.
Most airships had various emergency procedures, backups and such, things that could keep a ship afloat or at the very least soften a crash landing. This room housed the equipment for one such, the controls marked by a bright red panel marked "emergencies only." But Caitlin would be damned if she knew how to use it.
Think, she told herself, think. There has to be a way to figure this out. At the same time, another part of her mind was saying Not a chance. There’s less than ten seconds until I hit the water, if that.
Mind half frozen, she turned to the controls, not sure what to do. But in a moment she decided that there was no way she would be able to figure it out in time. She grabbed a nearby support beam and braced herself for the impact.
The Dawnrunner smashed itself into the sea, hull bursting in several places under the impact. The beam Caitlin clung to was ripped from her hands as her body sailed forward from her own inertia. She crashed into the inside of the hull, the force enough to drive yet another hole in it...but Caitlin couldn’t remember what happened next; pain drove her mind into darkness.