Daylight woke Saul and he realized he must have drifted off. The rhythmic sound of the boat’s wings beat the air and gently nudged back toward sleep. He shook himself and climbed to his feet beside the darkened lantern on the bow. His shoulder and neck ached where he had leaned against the hull in sleep.
The sun was rising east of him, filtered through pale strands of cloud. He smiled blearily as he realized they had entered the skies of Hidria. Peering over the side of the boat,
Saul realized they must have come out through the highest passage in the northern hills. The city of Mortressa with its polished heights, smoky streets, and crumbling tenements spread out below him, covering the land out to the seashore with brown and white rooftops. A tower that dwarfed all the buildings on the hills around it drew his attention for more than its size. A massive ring of brownstone stood atop the huge edifice, polished and gleaming in the new day.
The Lord’s Tower of Mortressa supported the city’s only world gate. Passages were like roads, but world gates ignored the laws of space and time and were far rarer. The family of Dao had ruled the city from that tower for generations. Saul did not remember much else about the city from his childhood books. High walls of polished stone bordered the old bounds of the city, but the low portions of Mortressa sprawled far beyond those barriers.
Saul glanced back at the boat. Olivia was curled up in the low middle of the deck, asleep with her trench coat draped over her. She had taken off the coat carefully before laying down the night before. Her cattle prod and a taser sat on the seat beside her. She trusted me so fast. Telling the bare truth had its uses, but with the truth came danger.
She began to stir. Her arms and legs stretched. Her eyes opened. She sat up and glanced at Saul. “Where are we?”
“Morning.” Saul’s stomach growled and he wished he had brought some kind of food. No time for that, unfortunately. “We’re in the air over Mortressa.”
Olivia tossed aside her coat, revealing that she wore jeans and a black t-shirt with some logo on it Saul didn’t recognize. She stood up and stretched her lithe frame. Her arms spread wide as if pushing at the wings of the boat. Saul watched her in the cool morning air. She looked pretty good for someone earth born. In spite of himself, he smiled.
Olivia’s cheeks turned grew pink. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing. Really.” Saul motioned for her to approach the side of the boat. “Come look at this.”
She grunted. “Yeah. Right.” She walked down the center of the boat, between the seats past the place where Saul and left the swords he had taken from the two guardians. She looked out at Mortressa. “Woah, this place is as big as New York.”
Saul grinned. “The big cities on Hidria can eat New York.”
Her eyes were wide as she gazed won at the city. “How many people live here?”
“Give or take? Fifteen million souls, or, at least, that’s what I learned in school.”
“Souls?”
“People.” Saul folded his arms and leaned against the boat’s hull. “There probably at least that many art-children and animals too.”
“Holy crap.” Olivia glanced at him. “You grew up in a place like this?”
“Not exactly. My father has an estate in the countryside.” Not to mention his whole private world. “But it’s not around here.”
Olivia squinted past the Lord’s Tower at the sunrise. “Looks like the light is pretty similar to Earth.”
“The original realms are all fairly similar in structure, but Hidria and Earth are the most similar to each other.”
“Original realms? How many other worlds are there?”
“Worlds? Don’t know. Realms might be called universes in the parlance of Earth.”
“Parlance? You took out a fancy word there.” Her tone was flippant, but her eyes remained wide as she stared down at the city.
Saul shrugged and followed her gaze down to the streets below. “Luther’s got to be down there somewhere.”
Olivia nodded but said nothing.
Saul’s eyes moved over the rooftops. He picked out a few aerial sentries, winged art-children, gliding between the rooftops, but otherwise fliers were scarce. “Why aren’t there more fliers?”
She looked up from the view of the city below. “What did you say?”
“I wonder.” He turned and picked up his backpack. “Just a second.” He fished in the pack for the surge bowl and pulled it out. The weapon looked no different after channeling a thunderbolt the previous night. Even so, it bubbled with unconcealed presence leftover from the prior fight. “Damn it. Nat, get ready to compare.”
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Nat hopped onto Saul’s shoulder, wings folded to keep from being swept away by the breeze. The little art-child’s fur stood on end, unmoving even in the wind. Comparators reached out and touched each other’s taphs on command. By comparing taph resonance, the children could communicate remotely. People on Earth had cell phones. People on
Hidria had comparators. Comparator art-children tended to have different tells, and Nat always became static when he connected to the network.
Olivia frowned at Saul and Nat. “What’s going on?”
Saul glanced in her direction. “Nat, we need to know if they heard we were coming. Did Jackal send a message here from Earth?”
Nat’s stiffened hairs trembled. The insectile art-child rocked from side to side. “I’m looking, master, but I can’t tell.”
“Why not?”
“There are hundreds of thousands of comparators in the city. You try picking one message out of that when you don’t have a signature.”
“Can you narrow the search? Try just the area around the Lord’s Tower.”
“I’ll try.”
“Guys,” Olivia said. “I think we’re in trouble.” She pointed, not down at the city, but up at the few wisps of cloud between them and the orange sunrise.
Saul squinted up to the eastern sky. Shadows descended from an illusory veil. One by one the shapes of three, then four other wing boats with sleek black hulls and gray feathers, rippled into view in the air. Apparently Jackal’s message had gotten to the guardians in Mortressa.
He glared at the boats descending toward them. Each one of them was over twice the length of the little patrol boat. Most likely they also had at least twice the crew as well. “We need to land. Fast.” Saul glanced at Olivia. “Take the wheel.”
“While you do what? Fight four boats full of bad guys?”
“Not exactly.” Saul looked across his shoulder at Nat. “Can you get me on board any of those boats?”
“It’s too bright” Nat’s stance softened as he stopped comparing. “There aren’t even enough shadows out here for me to make a veil.”
Saul grimaced. “That’s one less thing to plan around.”
Olivia took the wheel at the front of the boat. She glanced back at Saul. “How do I get it to go down?”
Saul grunted. “Think hard. Use your will. The ship will pick up on what you want.”
He looked up at the black wood hulls slicing through the sky toward them, casting pale shadows from above. Saul looked at his sheathed sword but knew it wouldn’t do him much good against superior numbers.
His eyes flicked to the swords he had taken from the other two guardians. Both of them had winged cross guards, but they probably would not fly against other guardians, not for Saul. His options waned fast. “Damn it.”
One of the other boats descended to the level of Saul and Olivia’s. The hull’s rocked as wingtips brushed each other. Saul looked across the deck to the other vessel. Eight people stood on the deck, most of them with swords. A beefy man spun a grappling hook and then let it fly. The grappler caught on the side of Saul’s boat.
Saul drew his sword. “Olivia, I don’t care what you have to do. We need to be somewhere else.”
“I’m trying.”
Saul leaped to the grapple and sliced the line from the steel hook at its end. The line fell toward the city. Saul looked up as three more grappling lines crossed the gap between the boats. He gritted his teeth.
“Hang on,” said Olivia.
The winged boat folded its wings like a massive round-bodied hawk. They dived toward the city, tugging the attached guardian boat with them. Saul’s eyes narrowed. He half-slid, half-climbed down the diagonal deck toward the next line to sever it.
One of the guardians slid down the line and caught himself on the deck in front of Saul. He held a sword in one hand, and his boots gripped the deck with high-traction treads.
“Surrender, criminal.”
The boat angled even steeper and Saul lost his footing. His stomach lurched as he went airborne. He fell toward the guardian. The man brought his sword up. Saul parried a desperate thrust. He grabbed the man’s face with his other hand.
The guardian clutched at Saul’s wrist. Saul’s fingers dug into the man’s eye sockets. He yelled in pain. They tumbled toward the front of the boat, locked together.
Saul released his sword and grabbed the guardian’s wrist. He twisted and the man lost his blade too. They tumbled over each other. Saul hit the bow of the boat first. The guardian slammed into him. The wind went out of Saul, but the force of the fall flipped the guardian over the side. Saul’s grip broke, but the guardian grasped Saul’s wrist with wild strength.
He grabbed for the nearest support. He found his sword embedded in the bow of the boat and wrapped his fingers around its hilt. The guardian screamed below him. Saul drew in greedy breaths, trying to recover from the man bouncing off of him.
Olivia glanced at Saul with wide eyes. She spun the wheel away from him. The boat banked in its mad dive. Above them, the guardian boat shuddered and shook. Its shadow covered the smaller boat. If they landed with that ship above them, they would be crushed.
Saul mustered as much strength as he could. He released his grip on the sword. Then he grabbed the guardian’s hand with both of his. He dragged the man, muscles straining up, and up, and up to the boat. When he saw the guardian’s surprised face over the side, he threw all his bodyweight up and forward. The guardian’s body whipped into the near-vertical deck of the wing boat.
He hit back first, upside down, and yelled over the sound of the rushing air. Saul’s free hand became a fist and followed the guardian’s path. The blow smashed against the man’s temple and his head bounced off a seat. Eyes rolled in the guardian’s face.
“You alright?” Olivia’s voice was all-but-lost in the wind. She kept her hands on the wheel.
Saul’s stomach turned to jelly. He grabbed the hilt of his sword and held on for his life. “Forget me. Steer.”
Olivia’s knuckles turned white on the wheel. She gave it a sharp jerk to the left. They began to level out. Evidently her focus was improving.
Saul glanced over the bow. Mortressa’s streets weren’t far below. They flew only a few dozen feet from the low rooftops. Olivia leveled them out more. They approached the green treetops of a park.
“I’m gonna find a clearing and set us down,” Olivia shouted. “How are our friends?”
Saul looked back at the guardian boat that had grappled them. Its crew had cut the lines. The boat had leveled out a few hundred feet behind them.
“They’re no longer with us.”
She drew in a nervous breath and grinned. “Looks like we’re gonna make it.”
A thunderous boom echoed from above them. Saul looked for the source of the explosion but saw no fire or debris. A flicker of pale yellow passed overhead. Another sonic boom followed the passage of the thing. Shit, that looked like a blast child. Saul’s fingers tightened on the sword hilt. He reached out and grabbed Olivia’s wrist.
She looked at him, a question forming on her lips.
The blast child hit the boat with the sound of a third thunderclap. The boat heaved to one side. They spun out of control. Treetops raced up toward them. Saul held on as they raced toward the ground of Hidria.
