Мэтт Форбек - The Queen of Death

“Let me finish. Please.”

Kandler took a deep breath, then nodded. He wanted to see where it was she planned to take this conversation, even if he didn’t like its direction.

“You married my mother, not me. You’ve been a fine father to me, the first real one I’ve known.”

“When I asked your mother to marry me, I knew you two came as a package deal. That didn’t stop me.”

“The best part of that package is missing now.” She held up her hands to cut off Kandler before he could protest. “I know. It’s silly, but it’s how I felt.”

Esprë turned and looked back down the deck at the fire over which Monja, Burch, and Te’oma were roasting the soarwing. Sallah had the wheel, and Xalt stood on the bridge with her to keep her company and to help with the navigation.

“When I figured out who Te’oma really was—or wasn’t, I suppose—I resigned myself to my fate. I didn’t dare hope that you’d come after me. The last I’d seen of Mardakine, it had been going up in flames, and I had no idea if you’d been killed or not. I figured I’d have to start doing things on my own.

“That didn’t work so well. I never would have survived if you hadn’t come after me. I’d have been stuck in that tower with Majeeda forever—or at least until she contacted my father and arranged to accompany me back to Aerenal. Then I’d have ended up in the hands of the Undying Court, or the Stillborn, or worse.”

“You underestimate yourself. You always did.”

“Sure,” Esprë said with a weak smile. “I might have managed to get away on my own, I suppose, but they would have just tracked me down again. Even with you, how many times did Te’oma alone snatch me in those first few days?” Kandler smirked. “I think I lost track. She’s a tenacious one.”

“Right up until Ibrido broke her neck, at least.”

“She held on right through that too. A lot of people would have given up and died.”

Esprë shrugged. “The point is that I would have never made it through all this without you. I just wanted to thank you for that.”

“You should thank the others too,” Kandler said, trying hard to not sound ungrateful. “They had just as much to do with it as I did.”

“Don’t fool yourself,” Esprë said. “Without you, they’d all be dead.”

“Even Burch?”

The girl grinned. “Maybe not Burch.”

Esprë wrapped her arms around Kandler and pulled him into a long hug. “I love you, Kandler,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

“I love you too.”

Lightning cracked the sky so close that it left an afterimage like a tree trunk in Kandler’s eyes. The thunder sounded more like an explosion than the distant rumbles that had echoed around the Phoenix for most of the day, ever since the storm had swallowed them up.

The hair on the back of Kandler’s neck stood on end, despite the rain lashing him. Although he stood straight under the airship’s ring of fire, which vaporized any rain that fell near it, he could not avoid getting wet. The wind brought the water down almost horizontally, spattering against the justicar’s front as he stared out past the ship’s bow.

Xalt said something to Kandler, but the justicar’s ears still rang from the lightning strike that had barely missed the ship.

“What?” Kandler said, squinting at the warforged standing next to him.

“Smells like a forge doused with a bucket of rusty water,” Xalt said as he sniffed at the air. He wiped the rain from the surfaces of his obsidian eyes. “The lightning does, I mean. It’s as if it burned the air.”

Kandler nodded as his hearing returned. The hiss of the rain evaporating as it passed too close to the ring of fire let him know he hadn’t been deafened forever.

He glanced back and saw Sallah at the wheel. He waved at the lady knight, but she ignored the gesture. Standing there on the bridge had to be miserable, but she had not complained or asked anyone else to relieve her during her shift at the airship’s controls. He wondered if the Silver Flame was all she needed to keep herself warm.

“Burch, Monja, and Esprë are still below?” Xalt asked.

“Until the storm lets up,” said Kandler. “We re not all as durable as you when it comes to the weather.”

“Then why are you up here?”

Kandler grimaced. “I thought I heard something.” “What?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be up here.”

“What did it sound like?”

Kandler stared at the warforged for a moment. “Wings. It sounded like beating wings.”

“I heard that too. Do you think it could be dragons?” “Possibly. We should be close to Argonnessen by now.” “What do you think they want?”

Kandler ran a hand over his face. “I don’t know.”

Xalt pointed over Kandler’s shoulder with his one-fingered hand. “That’s unusual.”

The justicar turned and saw what the warforged meant. Something out in the depths of the black, roiling clouds glowed soft and reddish. It flared brighter for a moment then disappeared.

“That didn’t look like lightning to me,” Kandler said, his voice barely loud enough to pierce the blustery wind.

Xalt shook his head. The water sluiced off the warforged’s hard outer surface.

Then something large smacked into the bottom of the airship, hard.

Kandler fell to his hands and knees. As he landed on the deck, he heard Esprë scream. The board between them muffled the sound, but he knew it was her.

He pounded on the slick wood beneath him. A quick series of knocks answered—yet another of the signals that he and Burch had worked out between themselves over the years. Everything seemed all right in the ship’s hold, at least for now.

Kandler scrambled over to the gunwale, Xalt right behind him, and thrust his head over the railing. “What was that?” he asked.

“It wasn’t lightning,” Xalt said.

Kandler ignored the warforged and scanned the dark sky below. Despite the light from the ring of fire, he couldn’t tell how high up they were. The swirling material below seemed like clouds rather than the sea’s black waves, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Whatever it was, it wanted to get our attention,” Kandler said.

“It did that,” Burch said as he slinked up behind the others.

“You left Esprë down below?”

The shifter jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “She’s up on the bridge with Monja and Sallah.”

Kandler glanced back and spied the trio standing there at the aft of the ship. Esprë gave the justicar a quick wave before ducking behind the console, out of the wind and away from the terrors of the night. It took everything he had not to race over to comfort her.

Lightning crashed all around the ship, slashing down in different places. None of the strikes came as close as the one that had nearly deafened Kandler. Instead of blinding him, they cast fogged illumination into bright pockets in the sky, although only for a split-second each.

“Did you see that?” Xalt asked.

Kandler raised an eyebrow at the warforged. Xalt pointed a finger straight up.

At first, all Kandler saw was the ring of fire arcing over them like a hungry, orange rainbow. Its light made it hard to see too far beyond it.

“What am I looking for?” Kandler asked. He peered at the restraining arc that held the ring of fire in place, inspecting it for widening cracks.

“Wait.”

Rain ran down Kandler’s face and into his eyes. As he blinked it away, lightning flashed overhead, and he saw it — a long, wide, winged shape silhouetted against the clouds in the brief instant of light.

Kandler wiped the rain from his eyes. “What’s it doing there?”

“Not much yet,” said Xalt.