Copper Ravens(78)

I squeezed Micah’s hand, grateful for his calming, solid presence. When I called him my knight in dirty armor, he didn’t get it, but he smiled anyway. His battered leather shirt was tossed over his shoulder, and he was once again wearing the token I’d given him. Since he’d regained his own sword, he’d given me the iron one he’d made on the fly. It was a lot heavier than the one Ash had made me, and nowhere near as beautiful, but the edge was razor sharp; it seemed that Micah had been wrong in sending me to the blacksmith, since he managed to create quite fine weapons all on his own. I only hoped I wouldn’t need it.

I also hoped that Mom would be okay. Since we’d left the Goblin Market, she’d done nothing but mutter away to herself. I wondered if Dad’s lack of presence at his last known haunt, coupled with the years of mistreatment by Peacekeepers, had finally done her in.

“Do you think she’ll be all right?” I asked Micah, my eyes on Mom. He didn’t answer, so I tugged at his hand. When he still didn’t answer, I followed his gaze down the road and gasped.

Iron warriors blocked our path.

“Stand aside,” Micah boomed, for all the good it did him. The iron warriors, true to their nature, remained immobile. I counted seven standing shoulder-to-shoulder across the road, and a group of at least ten behind them, clustered together as if they were shielding someone important. That someone was probably the person in charge of this little event.

Micah, frustrated that the warriors refused to move or even acknowledge him, the Lord of Silver, raised his arm to fling them aside. They wobbled a bit, and one toppled over, but they remained on the road.

“You think you’re so strong,” came a gravelly voice from behind the cluster of warriors. “All you of metal, thinking you’re so much better than the rest.” In another moment, Old Stoney stepped around to the front, a pair of orcs flanking him. The very same orcs that had been in the Whispering Dell’s tavern the day Max and I were attacked by that iron warrior.

I glanced at my brother, and he nodded. Great. We’d been captured, drugged, interrogated, beaten, and then I find out that we’d also been followed by orcs and iron warriors, for who knows how long, and they had been on Old Stoney’s payroll. Could my day get any better?

“Interesting words, Farthing Greymalkin, coming from one of stone who surrounds himself with iron warriors,” Micah observed.

“We of earth and stone have always been stronger!” Old Stoney shouted, indicating the warriors before him. Their feet were held fast by fingers of living stone, thus keeping them in place when Micah would have flung them away. “We ruled the Elemental court for centuries! Nearly a millennium, until you of metal betrayed us!”

“Fool, there was no betrayal,” Micah countered. “Those of stone had been challenged countless times for the right to rule us all. You merely despair now, because, the last time, you lost.”

“And you now ally yourself with his children!” the granite madman continued.

“Wait!” I shouted. Surprisingly, Old Stoney paid attention to me this time. “What about his children? What about my father?”

His face split like a fissure carved out by a river long since dry. “He was our greatest rival, for all that he fell before us.”

“Our?” I demanded, but Max got it right away.

“Ferra,” he ground out. “You and Ferra killed my father?”

“We did him one better,” Stoney said. “You recall when iron warriors attacked your prison, boy?” Max, too shocked to be offended, nodded. “That was your father’s feeble attempt to rescue you. We captured him ourselves and turned him over to the human magistrates.”

And, just like that, we were all struck dumb. Now we knew that Dad hadn’t died when he’d stopped meeting with Max, and that he’d tried to rescue Max from the Institute, which meant that he had been alive just a few years ago. Thanks to Old Stoney, this was the first new information we’d had about my father in more than a decade.

Thanks to Old Stoney, we now knew that he and Ferra had betrayed my father and turned him over to an enemy even worse than the two of them combined. Who knows what the Peacekeepers had done to him since then.

“Disappointed that you allied yourself with a loser?” Mom said, her voice dead calm. “It must pain you, Greymalkin, to have betrayed your kind, only to watch Ferra falter and die.” Mom crossed her arms and raised her chin, her eyes glazed as if she was about to take on Old Stoney hand-to-hand. “Pity you weren’t there to watch her rust. It was a fitting end for one like her.”