Col Buchanan - Stands a Shadow

So easy to kill her, he thought, right here and now, if his lips had still been smeared with venom.

The taste of the Royal Milk was like nothing he had ever tasted before. It was neither sweet nor sour, bitter nor salty. His tongue began to sting, and then to go numb, as Sasheen continued to kiss him.

‘ Whore,’ came the strange belching voice of Lucian from behind her.

And then the rush of it hit Che, like a breath of fire blossoming through the blood-ways of his body. It jolted him out of his tiredness in a snap so that his blood surged, pounding, and a sense of weightlessness overcame him, filling him with light instead, and air, and the first real glimmers of lust.

Sasheen pulled clear with a moan, and glanced quite obviously down at his crotch. She whirled away with a satisfied smile.

He gasped, close to losing himself entirely, and sprawled back against the settle as though falling.

Two pulses, he thought distractedly. I have two pulses in my neck .

‘Ah, breakfast,’ she declared, as the old priest entered with a tray of food.

Che tried to move and then thought better of it. He clung to the settle as though he would fly from it at any instant, while the sounds of Sasheen preparing to eat filtered towards him from far behind.

‘What is this?’ snapped her voice. ‘I can hardly see them, they’re so small.’

‘Sandshrips are always small this time of the year, Matriarch. They are still young.’

‘What? And they can’t be fed up a little? And what’s this? Grubby marks everywhere. I suppose the kitchen staff are also too young this time of year to keep the silver clean?’

‘My apologies, Matriarch. I’m still training the new replacements in the proper ways. It will not happen again, I assure you. I can have something else prepared, if you wish?’

‘And wait even longer? No. You may go.’

Che looked at the grim face of Lucian glowering at him with his maddened eyes. With a loll of his head Che looked to his right, where the old woman Kira still sat unmoving.

There was a definite glimmer beneath her eyelids now – those bird eyes of hers staring across the space at Che as though they could see right through him.

Che closed his own eyes and soared.

Without Wings

Whoah, thought Coya, as a gust of wind buffeted the figure that dangled between the two skyships, and set the man swinging like the pendulum of a clock.

‘Hold there!’ shouted the startled deck charge, raising a palm to the crewmen heaving away on the secondary line. At once they stopped hauling, and stood there frozen in their positions, watching the swaying figure with the uncertainty of men who’d never attempted this feat before, and were aware of its possibility only because others were telling them of it.

Out there in the gulf of air between the two vessels, bobbing from the line strung between them both, the figure on the wooden chair opened his mouth to shout: ‘ In your own time, gentlemen! ’

Coya smiled despite his concerns for the man.

‘Bring him in, Seday, quickly now,’ he told the deck charge smartly, and although Coya appeared young for his twenty-seven years – young even with his body stooped over a walking cane – the men snapped to with the respect of earnest sons for a father, and started to haul on the rope once more.

Just then another gust hit, stronger than the previous one, setting the distant figure pirouetting again on his seat. Coya heard the wind pressing against the silken envelope overhead, saw how the two skyships were drifting from their relative positions. Manoeuvring tubes fired along their sides, at the hurried commands of their captains. Still, the skyships drifted slightly apart, the line playing out on the far Khosian deck. The slack was lost, causing the man to bob even more dangerously beneath its tightening length. With an inrush of breath, Coya leaned forward with his weight on his walking cane and his hand clutching the ebony grip tightly.

To lose this man now could very well equate to losing the entire war.

‘Quickly now!’ he urged, without taking his gaze from their charge.

The figure was well past the halfway mark and nearing the ship at last. He looked calmer out there than Coya did merely watching from the deck. With his feet dangling over an abyss of several thousand feet all the way to the choppy sea below, he was turning his head to take in the rugged coastline of Minos, and the bay in which the city of Al-Minos lay like a gleaming pearl. Drawing closer, Coya saw his long black hair whip around his wind-reddened face; his hands with their many plain rings; his heavy bear-skin coat covering his great bulk.

Suddenly, Coya felt his pulse grow faster from the sheer anticipation of the Lord Protector’s presence.

‘Easy, lads,’ General Creed boomed as they pulled him roughly onto the decking; and suddenly there he was, towering over them all, feigning an easy nonchalance when in truth Coya saw only exhilaration in his eyes.

The crewmen released the general from his safety harness while Creed clapped a few shoulders for good show. He stepped forward to shake Coya’s offered hand.

Coya scented hair oil, and that awful spiced goat’s cheese so beloved of these Khosians.

‘I’d hoped you were joking when you suggested an underway transfer,’ remarked the old general. ‘We couldn’t have met on the ground, eh?’

Before responding, Coya caught the eye of Marsh, his own bodyguard. Marsh scowled at the gang of crewmen still pressing for a better look at this living legend from Bar-Khos, and shoved them without ceremony towards the rest of the crew gathered on the opposite side of the deck.

‘Too dangerous,’ Coya admitted when they were at last beyond earshot, while Marsh stationed himself close by, watching everyone on deck through his dark-tinted refractors. His eyes could be seen blinking through the lenses on the back of his head.

‘Someone else was hit?’

‘Last night in Al-Minos. The visiting League delegate from Salina had the misfortune of being strangled in her sleep. That’s eight assassinations in the last two weeks. Which would suggest a coterie of Diplomats is now at large within the city.’

The Lord Protector nodded without expression, keeping his thoughts to himself.

Together they watched as the transfer line was reeled back aboard the Khosian skyship that had borne him all this way from Bar-Khos. The vessel fired its tubes to assume a patrol around the Minosian vessel they now stood upon. In the silence, Coya studied the man’s profile in an attempt to judge his present condition. Creed had visibly aged since they’d last met over of a year and half before. The greying at his temples had spread into streaks of silver; the lines deeper now around his eyes. All of it from grief, Coya knew from the reports he’d been hearing.

‘How are you, anyway?’ he asked the Lord Protector. ‘I hope your journey was a smooth one?’

‘Smooth enough. I only regret that our meeting must be so brief.’

‘Yes,’ said Coya. ‘The Khosian council must fret whenever you are gone from the Shield for so long.’ At that they both smiled, knowing it to be true. As their eyes met, unspoken between them lay the question of why Creed was here at all. ‘Still, it’s good that we can meet for this little while at least. A meal is being prepared for us in the captain’s cabin. If you wish, we can retire to some comfort and be out of this wind for a while.’

Creed responded with a look that said he was seldom accustomed to thinking of his personal comforts. He glanced towards Marsh and the many crewmen still watching them, the captain of the ship included. ‘I’m too old to be skulking around in fear of a few assassins, if that’s your concern,’ he said. ‘Let’s enjoy the fresh air while we talk, and then we can eat.’ He paused as he looked at Coya, who was stooped and wrapped heavily against the cold. ‘Unless of course it would be better for you… to be inside.’