Мэтт Форбек - The Queen of Death

Sallah screamed at Duro to stop, but she couldn’t reach him before he plunged over the airship’s edge. Determined not to let his sacrifice be in vain, she set to the gunwale fast and hard with her silver-burning sword. As she worked, she heard something thud into the deck behind her, but she was too engrossed with her work to even turn her head to look at it.

Within a handful of strokes, the battered railing creaked and then snapped. The airship zoomed backward, and Sallah tumbled toward the broken railing. She might have fallen through it had Xalt not managed to grab the back of her tunic and haul her back.

“Go back for Duro!” Sallah shouted as she scrambled to her feet and clambered on to the bridge. “We can’t just leave him there.”

Monja screwed up her face as she brought the airship about in a tight curve and pointed the Phoenix toward the fortress. Below, Sallah could see Duro swinging his axe back and forth, cutting a swathe through the elf guards foolish enough to get close to him. As she watched, another patrol of archers streamed onto the docks and leveled their bows at the battling dwarf.

Sallah watched in horror as the airship’s prow eclipsed the scene below. “What are you doing?” she said, grabbing Monja by her shoulder.

“What Duro would have wanted,” she said as she pulled the Phoenix hard to port. “If we go back for him now, his effort will be wasted. We have to let him go.”

A flaming ball of pitch spun past the starboard gunwale and arced out into the distance beyond. Then something slammed into the bottom of the ship and shook her hard. Sallah fell to her knees.

“Ballista bolt,” Monja said as she leaped down from the spars on the wheel. “Here, take over—and fly for Esprë’s father’s tower. You know where it is, right?”

Sallah leaped forward and grabbed the wheel before the elemental trapped in the airship’s ring of fire could take control and destroy the ship. “I think so,” she said.

“You’d better know so,” the halfling said as she left the bridge. “Soon we’ll have a whole fort full of soldiers out after us.”

“Wait!” Sallah said. “Where are you going?”

Monja pointed toward Te’oma’s collapsed form, still smoldering in the middle of the ship’s main deck. Xalt knelt over the changeling, beating out the flames on her wings with his bare hands.

Sallah reached out with her mind and urged the elemental to swing back to the starboard. As she did, the top of Ledenstrae’s tower appeared straight in front of her, and she prodded the Phoenix forward at full speed.

“Kandler?” Esprë said. “What’s wrong?”

When her stepfather didn’t answer, the young elf pulled her shirt’s collar back up and turned on the wizard and her father. Kandler and Burch stood behind them, but neither of them said a word as she gazed at them. They didn’t move an inch. They didn’t even blink.

“What have you done to them?” Esprë asked Majeeda.

The deathless wizard gave Esprë a smug look and fanned her fingers, which crackled with the movement. “I’ve excused them from our little talk,” she said. “This is a conversation between elves.”

Ledenstrae nodded his approval. “We need to make our decisions about this based on what is best for our race. Peoples like humans and shifters cannot have the perspective our years bring. They cannot comprehend as we do the long-term effects of the choices we must make here today.”

Esprë steeled herself as her father reached out to caress her cheek. She had longed for such affection from him for years, but now it only made her want to run screaming into the streets. She’d not known much about him, except from what her mother had told her, and she’d discounted some of Esprina’s comments as naturally biased against the husband she’d abandoned back in Aerenal.

Esprë realized now how she’d become infatuated with the idea of her father rather than the real person. It had been easy enough—perhaps too easy, as she hadn’t had any new information about him to deal with since shortly after her birth. Once her mother died, her daydreams about her father had grown stronger, helping assuage her terrible loss. With one parent gone for good, she clung to the idea that she and her father would one day be reunited.

Kandler had been much more of a father to her than Ledenstrae, but she’d allowed her fantasies to come between them. When Esprina had been alive, Esprë had known that both she and her mother would outlive Kandler by several of his lifetimes. If they’d somehow had a child, as sometimes happened between humans and elves, she’d live longer that that younger sibling too.

It had been easier to keep Kandler at a distance, but then Esprina died, and Kandler had been all she had in the world.

“Why don’t you send me back to my father?” she’d asked the justicar once over a meal. He’d just come back from a mission with Burch and a couple friends, scouting the land that would soon after become the town of Mardakine.

Kandler had put down his fork and knife, then swallowed his half-chewed food. “Do you know your father?” he’d asked.

She’d shaken her head.

“Neither do I,” he’d said. “All I have to go on is your mother’s word, and from what she tells me he’s not a nice man.”

“He’s not a man at all. He’s an elf.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Wouldn’t I be better off with him?”

Kandler had stared at her hard. He’d come back the day before, covered in ash and singed by what he’d described as living fireball spells. His skin had looked like he’d stayed out in the sun far too long, and most of his eyebrows had fallen off after he’d bathed.

“I swore to your mother I’d take care of you if anything ever happened to you.”

“She made you do that?”

“She—she didn’t make me do anything. I made that vow to her, and she accepted it.”

“Why would you do something like that?”

Kandler had stuffed another bite of food in his mouth, and he’d finished it before he responded.

“I wanted to. We both lived dangerous lives. I knew something might happen to her.”

“Did she vow to take care of me if you died?”

Kandler had grinned at the joke. “I think she thought she already had that covered.”

They’d returned to their meal then. After a while longer, Esprë had pushed back her plate and spoke.

“I relieve you of your vow.”

“I didn’t make the vow to you.”

“You made it to my mother about me. I am her heir, and all her assets pass down to me, including the obligations of others. I absolve you of your vow.”

“Very well.”

Esprë had almost fallen out of her chair, but she’d recovered from her shock before Kandler had noticed—or so she’d hoped.

“I can leave then?”

Kandler had pushed back his own plate then. “You can leave any time you want. I’ll even go with you if you like, escort you back to Aerenal. I bet we could even convince Burch to come with us.”

“But?”

“But my vow still stands. I made it not just to your mother, but to myself. If you’ll allow me the honor, I’ll make it now to you.”

Esprë had pursed her lips at that. “Give me a moment to think about it.”

“Take as long as you like.”

After dinner, Kandler had taken Esprë for a walk outside the camp to look up at the moons and stars. When they’d reached the top of a hillock, they’d lain down on the grass to take it all in.

“Do you really want to go to Aerenal?” Kandler had asked after a quiet moment.

“No. I—I just wanted to make sure you wanted me around.”

Kandler had sat up. “Have I given you any reason to think I didn’t?”