Matt Forbeck - Marked for Death

Kandler looked over at the woman. Her face was flushed with shame for letting Esprл get away from her, even though the girl had been walking between the two of them at the time. The lady knight would barely meet the justicar’s glance, but he could see tears of frustration welling in her eyes.

Kandler nodded at Sallah in agreement as he lay a hand on her shoulder in forgiveness. Sallah hadn’t snatched his daughter away.

“You are wounded,” Xalt said to Kandler.

Kandler put his hand to where the changeling had bitten him. It came away wet and red. “Doesn’t matter now,” he said. “We have to go after Esprл.” He looked up at the mists swirling past above as they sailed along and held up his hand to the sky. “Can anyone stop this ship?”

“By the Flame,” Sallah said, “you’re right! We’re being carried farther away with every minute.”

Deothen launched himself at the wheel.

“No one’s been able to fly this thing but Esprл,” Kandler said.

Deothen flashed a grim smile as he gripped the wheel. “I think you’ll find I’m as strong willed as anyone.”

The ship braked to a halt so fast that Kandler found himself nearly thrown from the bridge. He righted himself and stared at the gray-haired knight.

Deothen raised an eyebrow at him and said, “They don’t put just anyone in charge of a mission like this.” He nodded at Sallah. “Get the justicar fixed up. I’ll bring the ship around.”

“But Esprл-!” Kandler started.

“Is out of our hands until dawn,” said the senior knight. “You need to be ready to fight if you’re to help her when we find her again. Get that wound cleaned before it festers. You’re no good to your daughter dead.”

Kandler started to argue with the old man, but the wisdom of his words sunk in. He suddenly realized how tired he was and how much his neck hurt. He climbed down onto the deck, and Sallah knelt down beside him. She reached up and tilted his head away from her, angling his neck so she could see the wound in the light from the ring of fire above. She grazed the opened skin with her fingers, and the justicar winced.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Sallah said. “If she’d bit a little deeper, you’d have bled to death before we could’ve hauled you aboard.”

“If I hadn’t been locked in the hold, this might never have happened,” Kandler said bitterly. He held onto that feeling for a moment before he looked down at Sallah’s face.

Sallah ignored him and concentrated on the wound instead. “He’s a good man in a bad position,” she said.

“That’s how you tell who’s good,” Kandler said. “It’s easy to behave when everything’s going well. Ow!”

“Hold still,” Sallah said. “I want to make sure I get all of this.” She tugged at the collar of Kandler’s shirt to expose every bit of the wound.

“Ouch! Are you sure she wasn’t a vampire too?” Kandler said.

Sallah peered at the wound. “Teeth marks are too even. No sign of fangs.” She lay her hands atop the savaged skin and spoke a solemn prayer to the Silver Flame. Her hands glowed with an argent warmth that spilled into Kandler’s flesh. When she lifted her hands, his skin was whole again.

“Thanks,” Kandler said, looking into her eyes as he rubbed his healed neck with a rough hand.

Sallah returned his gaze. “I’d do the same for anyone.”

“Any of your prisoners?”

Sallah smiled. She stood and wiped her bloodied hands on her white tabard. “Almost anyone.”

“I’m honored,” Kandler said. He glanced back at the bridge and noticed Deothen watching them. When the old man saw that he had caught the justicar’s eye, he beckoned the pair to join the others back on the bridge.

“At my best guess, I’ve brought the ship back around to where we were when Esprл was taken from us,” Deothen said, gazing out into the seamless night. “Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much we can do until the dawn.”

Kandler nodded reluctantly.

“Where to then?” Sallah asked. “By morning, the changeling will have had hours to get ahead of us or to hide. She could be anywhere.”

Kandler frowned. “Those wings of hers aren’t all that strong. She’ll be stuck on foot, dragging Esprл along behind her. She’ll need food and water, too, neither of which is easy to find around here. I bet she’d kill for a horse.”

“My best guess?” Burch said. “She’ll head northeast again. The way she was going before we ran into Lady Majeeda’s tower.”

“What’s off in that direction?” Sallah asked.

Kandler shook his head. “I don’t know. Burch and I never made it this far into the Mournland before.”

“I wasn’t asking you,” the lady knight said. “Xalt is the native here.”

The warforged rasped a soft laugh. “Nothing, I fear. This is the Mournland.”

“There has to be something,” Brendis said. “Maybe she went for one of the old lightning rail lines.”

Deothen grunted. “Those haven’t run since the Day of Mourning. They’d be useless to her.”

“There is something that maybe off to the northeast,” Xalt said. “But the changeling couldn’t possibly know about it.”

“She’s a psion,” Kandler said. “A mindreader. If you know about it, there’s a chance she might know about it too. Who knows how long she was in that hold scanning our thoughts?”

Xalt nodded then said one word. “Construct.”

Kandler cocked his head at the warforged. “What’s that?”

“Construct is a town the Lord of Blades founded after the end of the Last War as a warforged settlement. It’s meant to be our capital someday.”

Deothen curled his lip at this. “I’ve heard rumors of this place,” he said. “Different reports have placed it in every part of the Mournland, but no one’s ever been able to confirm them. The place is like a ghost.”

“Almost like it moves,” said Xalt.

Sallah’s eyes grew wide. “It’s a moving city? Like Argonth?”

The warforged nodded.

Burch whistled. “That explains a lot,” he said.

“But how can anyone find such a place?” Brendis asked. “It would be almost impossible.”

“Not if you knew when it was coming,” Kandler said. He looked at Xalt.

“It was scheduled to meet with Superior,” the warforged said, “later today.”

There it is, boss, Burch said. He handed Kandler the spyglass he’d found in a compartment on the bridge.

Standing in the airship’s bow, the wind whipping all about him as they sailed forward at top speed, the justicar lifted the spyglass to his eye and gazed off in the direction Burch had pointed. Even at this distance, he wasn’t sure how he could have missed it. The city had to be half a mile long and perhaps a hundred yards wide. It was built on a series of interlocking platforms that crawled along the ground. Smoke billowed from great furnaces in the factories that rose from the center of the town. Guard posts lined the edges of the place, each outfitted with a massive set of ballistae and a squad of well-armed soldiers.

“If there was ever a good reason for people to stop making warforged, that’s it,” said Burch.

“We are not all bad,” Xalt said from over the justicar’s shoulder.

“Staggering,” said Sallah, who stood next to the warforged and peered over Kandler’s other shoulder. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” She turned to Kandler. “How does it compare to your Argonth?”

Kandler handed the spyglass to the lady knight, who looked through it and gasped. “It doesn’t,” said the justicar. “Argonth is a floating fortress built from the start for war. It’s the most powerful weapon in Breland. An entire army can travel on it at once.