Chapter II
Seen from a distance, Palleron doesn't have much to recommend it, and closer inspection did not improve my opinion. To the north of the city, on our right, a volcano steamed gently. A pitted wasteland spread below us between the edge of the woods and the city walls, marked by vents jetting steam. The steam vents appeared throughout the city, too, giving it its name: City of a Thousand Pillars.
The reality is much less poetic. The noble houses have always eyed each other with suspicion-now we learned that they had each drawn into their own section of the city, and thrown up barricades to protect their territory. Vast stretches of no-man's land between each occupied section were a refuge for vermin, both the human and the four-legged variety. Conscript gangs ventured into these areas occasionally-everyone else found it wiser to stay out. Airships patrolled the skies overhead, enforcing the territories. Everything stank of sulfur.
We all had our separate reasons for coming to Palleron, but none of us could risk going off alone and running into the conscript gangs. Zelda was curiously reluctant to find her family, and it began to sound as though her stay in the nunnery had resulted from a situation remarkably like Isobel's. So, we all accepted temporary positions as an elite force in House Beshim's guard. When we arrived at headquarters, a cursory glance at the practice going on in the barracks yard showed us just how elite we really were. Alaric was inspired to offer a few lessons on the basic grip of a sword. Diego found a young woman to talk to.
That evening we traded more of our stories. I mentioned my sister. Alaric revealed that he was doubly burdened, both by the loss of his fleet and by the loss of his memory. Whatever trauma had separated him from his ship was gone from his mind, and he knew only that Five Claw was somehow behind it. Diego told a story of being imprisoned by a mage--a summoner who had something to do with the death of his parents, and the death of a young woman who tried to help him. He was intimately familiar with the kind of silver collar that the bear had worn, and gave us the summoner's name--Raskin. This puzzled me exceedingly-when you use magic, you become used to odd things, but a shapeshifter is not in the same category as the supernatural creatures usually of interest to summoners. Even given an uncanny strength and the ability to throw fire, Deigo is more a part of this world than any other. Why then would a summoner go through all the trouble to keep him in bonds? That collar was a complex and draining piece of magic, immensely difficult both to work and to maintain. I wondered if Diego had told us the whole story. Using an arcane piece of magic, I tried to look at his true form--a very complex spell, which I failed miserably--so miserably in fact, that when I recovered somewhat from a pounding headache, I found the rest of the party staring at me in astonishment. And well they might--I was bleeding profusely from both eyes, both ears and the tips of all ten fingers. After ruining several handkerchiefs in an attempt to clean up, I explained it away by saying that I had attempted to look for the summoner who had held Diego prisoner, and promised myself that I would be more circumspect in the future. Whatever Diego is, though, he is not merely a shapeshifter.
The captain sent us off the next morning to deliver a message to the airfield. We took a cart out to the airfield, and saw that the streets beyond the barricades were just as bad as we had been warned.
We arrived at the airfield and met up with our contact, a small, garrulous pilot named Hacken, whom we convinced to take us on a tour of the city--apparently it was much safer to travel several hundred feet above the ground than to attempt the streets. Hacken and Alaric loaded up a small dirigible run by giant watch-spring mechanism, piled the four of us in, and took off. Zelda immediately wanted to try out the controls. Diego looked like he might be about to be airsick.
We flew over the city, weaving in and out among buildings, learning the names of the noble houses and the location of their territories. We had passed over the river where a heavy fog was rising and were on the point of looping back, when we spotted a particular airship--nondescript, but distinctive for the marks of fire in its side. We all recognized it from the attack on the caravan--it appeared to be returning to its base, which looked like nothing more than a giant garbage heap. We asked Hacken to set us down quietly in the vicinity.
Hacken did not quite understand our sudden enthusiasm for investigating a massive, rat-infested, rusting heap of scrap metal and spare parts in a dodgy section of town, and said so at some length. We hinted darkly at a threat to House Beshm, followed by less obscure comments on the need to keep this all very quiet. Hacken agreed finally, but expressed his opinions by plummeting suddenly from the air and diving for the ground with the speed of a hawk going after a mouse, but with much less precision. He then agreed to come find us in a couple of hours and left us to our own devices.
He had set us down behind the enormous pile of scrap, which, seen at close quarters, could certainly have provided camouflage for a building large enough to conceal at least one airship. We tried to go around quietly, but only Zelda was successful. In fact, she disappeared before our very eyes, leaving only a shimmer in the fog to mark where she had gone. The rest of us, I regret to say, made rather a lot of noise, including Alaric, which made me feel better. Strange how watching a professional slip up can improve one's mood.
Sadly, we attracted attention almost immediately--a scouting party sent out to investigate the noise. They spotted us-all of us except Zelda who had vanished without a trace. I would like to learn the name of that convent some day. The guards pulled guns and ordered the rest of us to stop and surrender.
So tedious. We took cover and Diego threw up a wall of flame to scare them off. Some of them fell back, but others rushed through, batting at smoldering bits on their grey uniforms. Alaric pulled a couple of throwing stars. I strung my bow again.
We pushed our way forward, I will say that for us, but we were badly outnumbered. We kept the wall, I suppose I will call it, on our right, but we were in constant danger of being hemmed in. Worse, the noise of the fight had attracted shouts from the front and the interior, precisely where we had wished to investigate most circumspectly. So we were somewhat shocked, when we made it around the corner, ran into a fresh and larger group of grey shirts, and Zelda won us a few seconds' reprieve by stepping out of the mist in front of them and asking, in the tones of an aggrieved librarian, what was going on.
That startled them, but didn't stop them. It did allow us to make it far enough forward to see inside-the heap of scrap did indeed conceal a garage and hangar, and the airship.
I fell back a little, still trying to make an impression with a barrage of arrows. Diego targeted the airship with a gout of flame, intending, I believe, to render it permanently unfit for flight. Zelda engaged a couple of guards using a flurry of movements worthy of Alaric. And Alaric ran forward into the hangar, intent on some sort of acrobatic mayhem. He stopped short. Five Claw had appeared.
Alaric drew both swords. "Traitor," he shouted. "Where is the fleet? Where is the honor in this?"
Five Claw held up his right hand, displaying the steel spikes. "Mantis," he said conversationally. "You were offered your chance." And they engaged each other.
Their fight took them into the hangar, and in fact, up into the rafters that held the whole structure up. Below, Diego's fire caused pandemonium. A couple of barrels against the wall ignited. A small, spectacled man emerged from some warren in the back, waving his hands and shouting at us to leave his garage alone. Grey shirts poured out of nooks and crannies, shouldering weapons and shouting. Above, Alaric and Five Claw brought a platform storing barrels crashing down, and more than one of them spilled open and caught fire. And then somebody, probably the small mechanic, had the bright idea of piling into the airship and trying to take off.
It seemed reasonably easy to stop them. But it became clear, as propellers began to whir one by one that, for all of Diego's fire, he could not breach the outer shell to set the thing permanently ablaze.
Men were piling into the small cabin underneath the belly of the airship. By now, my bow and arrows would have so little effect as to be laughable. I reached for my pouch, to summon something that might actually strike fear into the hearts of my enemies. I drew out a feather and prepared to call forth a great bird from a lost and more ferocious time.
Without this pouch, I wouldn't be much of a summoner. The items it contained were collected by my great aunt, who was also a magician of some note. She left it to be passed down to any of her relatives who displayed the gift, and she would have been very glad to see it passed to a woman, as she never had much to say for the men in our family. It contains objects-- feathers, fangs, a little hair a fingernail--which allow me to call certain creatures through time and space. This is the art of the summoner, and it takes not only immense skill and discipline, but also a calm mind and a powerful intellect, which is the reason that the College considers it the highest form of magic.
The drawback to all of this is that the creatures find it extremely annoying, and when they appear you must then instantly impose your will on them or they will turn on you. There were whole sections in the library at the College devoted to cautionary tales of unwary summoners, who were disemboweled, dismembered, clawed to death, beaten, eaten, strangled, incinerated, frozen, drowned in slime, poisoned, diseased, frightened to death, turned to stone, disintegrated, and, on one memorable occasion, all of those, though not, if memory serves, in precisely that order.
The further trouble is, of course, that imposing your will on a creature is not something it takes kindly to, and if it remembers anything about the experience at all, it is likely to remember you as the cause of all its troubles the next time you summon it. However, not all creatures think alike, and I had summoned this bird before (it had set an entire squadron of bandits scrambling over themselves to get away, an episode which still makes me smile), and it has an appreciation for the proper courtesies. This is fortunate, because it possesses not only a formidable wing span, but also teeth and poisoned claws. My great aunt called it Geoffrey, and she was very fond of it.
Geoffrey emerged before me with a thunderclap and landed, prepared to do battle with whomever his eye first lit upon. This being me, I immediately added a spell of dominance, and saw with relief the dip of his head, something between a courtesy and grudging acquiescence. I ordered him to keep the airship from leaving the ground. He launched into the air and propelled himself forward, steel claws at the ready.
Zelda ducked out of the way, uttering words no nun should be acquainted with. Diego abandoned fire, and began to try to remove men bodily from the cabin of the dirigible. One of the pilots, who had been starting propellers, turned, screamed, and disappeared under an onslaught of bird.
Inside, something large caught fire, and a whole wall of flame shot up with a roar like thunder. I saw a couple of ceiling beams begin to buckle in the heat. The airship began to grind forward, but Geoffrey had broken through the front of the cabin and was hanging on with both claws, jabbing his beak through the broken window at whoever sat at the controls.
I watched in horrified fascination as the flames leapt higher. Zelda knocked out a few more guards in a desultory fashion.
The airship grumbled and groaned clearing the hangar door. I actually lifted a few feet off the ground before crashing heavily to the ground, Geoffrey disengaging himself neatly and coming back to light by my side and preen with a self satisfied air. The garage began to crumble. Diego shouted Alaric's name and ran into the flames. Zelda and I could only hang back and watch.
A moment, where the only sound was the hideous groaning of overtaxed metal and the frantic swearing of the small mechanic, and then Diego emerged with Alaric, who had lost both swords and had one arm held clumsily across his middle. His head was down, blond hair straggled over his face, but he struggled grimly on, barely accepting Diego's help. Once free of the flames and smoke, he all but collapsed onto the ground. Zelda and I ran up to help.
"Five Claw," he snarled in an undertone, cradling his wounded arm.
I looked at the hangar, filled with fire and noxious smoke, slowly folding in on itself. "Nobody could have survived that," I said, intending to be soothing. Alaric lifted his head and shot me a stone-shattering glare. He had lost his...lost her mask.
I judged it best to be silent. I dismissed Geoffrey, with thanks. Zelda made a makeshift sling for Alaric, who barely paid her any attention, being engaged with a discussion with Diego over his, over her lost swords. It was, Diego said cheerily, no problem at all, and while the rest of us attended to various wounds, rounded up prisoners, searched the cabin of the airship, and found enough spare fabric from guards' uniforms to make Alaric a new mask, he strode into raging fire and returned about ten minutes later with the two swords. The fire, which had mostly burned away his shirt and pants had not marked him at all. He searched among the bodies for a spare uniform to fit. It was to become a common occurrence after battle-finding Diego a spare pair of pants.