Thomas Reid - The Sapphire Crescent

"Stop blaming yourself," she told him, looking him directly in the eyes. "You have done everything possible to fight this, and now, whether you realize it or not, you're in a better position to put a final stop to it once and for all."

"This is where your military training must come to the forefront," Kovrim said. "Now is the time to put your skills and resources to work. We can surprise them, but only if we keep our heads."

"They don't know we're coming," Horial said as he and Adyan gathered in with the rest of them. "They think only you're likely to come back."

"Assuming they don't know I defeated the thugs that were after Uncle Kovrim," Vambran argued. "The leader got away and could easily warn them, and he said that he had some sort of mental connection with his superior, that he would have known if something was going wrong at the estate. That link very well could have worked both ways."

"Maybe," said Xaphira, "but he vanished before the Sapphire Crescent showed up. So even if the conspirators know that the three of us might be on our way, they still don't know that the platoon is coming, too. We've got to use that to our advantage."

Vambran considered their words, looking for anything he could anchor his emotions to and find some calm. He realized they were right. They had the element of surprise, but they had to make sure they could use it correctly. What they needed, he decided, was some on-the-sly scouting.

"We've got to get a peek inside the house, and maybe around the grounds, and see just how bad it really is," the lieutenant said.

"I can do that," Xaphira said. "Since I know the place, I can scout everything out without the chance of getting lost or cornered if something goes wrong."

Kovrim nodded and said, "All right. But I have another idea that might help. Xaphira can look for a way to get me and the mercenaries inside the walls without being seen. In the meantime, Vambran, since you would like very much to get up there now and check on your family, especially Em, let me do something that will get you there quickly and without notice."

Vambran was all for it and readily agreed.

As the group neared the Matrell estate, they finalized their plan. Kovrim began to pray, taking a talisman out of his robes and clasping it tightly as he closed his eyes. He uttered the words of a sacred prayer to Waukeen, then touched Vambran. When Kovrim opened his eyes, he looked at his nephew.

"You now have the ability to walk on the air," the priest said, gesturing for Vambran to try it. "Just imagine that you're walking up a steep hill, planting your feet on the air in front of you."

Vambran took a tentative step forward, trying to visualize himself following a sloping path upward. His foot settled solidly on something invisible maybe two feet off the ground. The mercenary took another step, and another, and suddenly, he was standing at a level higher than his companions' heads.

"This is magnificent!" he said, taking a few strides more. "What wonderful magic."

"You can walk levelly or come back down, just by imagining it," Kovrim explained.

Vambran strolled along for several steps, hovering a good fifteen feet above the street, then he began to descend, just as his uncle had described.

"How long will it last?" the lieutenant asked Kovrim.

"More than an hour," the priest replied. "Plenty of time to get high in the air and walk in well over the grounds without being spotted."

"But remember," Xaphira warned her nephew, "you are not invisible up there, and the moon is bright tonight. You should try to go in from the south side, where the garden is the most overgrown."

Vambran nodded.

"I'm going to Em's rooms, first" he declared. "If I get into any trouble, I'll send up a flare."

Everyone else wished the mercenary luck, "We'll be working our way in from a different direction," Kovrim said. "I don't have a way to contact you when we begin, but I think you'll know when we set our plan into motion."

Vambran shook hands with them all and set out. He tried to stick to the shadows as much as possible, gaining altitude quickly by imagining the slope as being quite steep. Very soon, he was high in the sky and looking over the grounds of his own home, trying to figure out a way to smuggle himself inside without being seen. The irony was not lost on him, but he spared no time worrying about it. Instead, when he was satisfied that he was far enough over the ground that no one would be likely to spot him, Vambran leveled off in his walk.

He took a quick glance around and, despite the urgency of his goal, had to stand for a moment and simply appreciate the beauty of the entire city spread out before him. Arrabar had always been an amazing city to the mercenary's eyes, though he usually only gazed across it during the daytime. At night, it took on a different but no less enchanting demeanor, with its twinkling lights spread out in undulating waves across the gentle hills stretching from the perimeter walls down to the bay. The water there glowed in its own right, the shimmering light of the bright, nearly full moon glimmering across its glassy surface. It was a magnificent city.

Vambran shook his head, refocusing his thoughts on the task at hand. He began to move toward the interior of the estate, peering down. He moved slowly, keeping an eye out below for any potential threats, but it was as Xaphira said; the garden was at its densest and most overgrown there, with lots of trees to obscure the night sky from anyone down below.

As he got in closer, Vambran began to angle into a very gradual descent, heading for the highest point of the house, the observation deck upon the flat roof, to start. He figured that he could step off the invisible pathway at the apex of the estate and work his way down from above. Anyone inside who was waiting to ambush him would not likely expect him to come from overhead.

As he walked, Vambran thought about what Emriana had said in her desperate message. The house guards had turned. Denrick had her held prisoner in her own rooms. He wondered if anyone else had put up a fight, had tried to resist. He feared for Hetta, and for his mother. He wondered about Evester, Marga, and the twins. It was hard for him to imagine his uncle Dregaul turning on all of them, but the evidence was damning.

Dregaul had certainly strayed into murky territory with his latest decisions. Vambran thought about how little he and his uncle had seen eye to eye over the past few years. They had rarely gotten along, especially because of the death of Rodolpho Wianar, but the lieutenant never remembered seeing evidence of his uncle straying so far from the righteous path before. Perhaps the tragedy at the Generon all those years before had tainted Dregaul differently than it had Vambran. Perhaps, in being a part of the cover-up, Vambran's uncle had blurred the lines of right and wrong in his own head more and more in the intervening years. The shooting had been the crux, and Vambran and his uncle had taken opposite paths from it. They had become opposites themselves, apparently. So different in their takes on life.

The lieutenant's most recent visit home had seemed to bring those differences to the forefront. It seemed like a hundred years had passed since he was standing on the deck of Lady's Favor, hesitating to step off, just so he could avoid facing Dregaul for a little longer. How he had wanted to avoid such unpleasantness! He and Dregaul had found an uneasy peace when he stayed away.

But there the two men were, on opposite sides of the most divisive conflict in the history of the family, and Vambran was preparing to bring his uncle down, once and for all. He was perhaps the whole family's last hope. The thought didn't make him feel particularly proud, only sad that it had come to that, and he didn't even really understand why.