Reclamation(124)

Heart led him up a narrow side street toward a three-story house. They splashed mud and stumbled over the penitent. Jay cursed the ones who were trying to run the other way, shoving and jostling and forcing him against the walls and into open doorways.

Heart barged up to the mouth of a back alley and through the honor guard, who were in too much chaos to stop him. Jay let the Teacher go and pushed his way between their shoulders. The guard didn’t even look at him.

Hands grabbed him from behind and shoved him against the wall. Jay looked into the terrified eyes of Holding the Keys.

“What is happening, Skyman!” he thundered, slamming Jay against the wall again. “What is happening!”

“Invasion, Holding.” Jay grabbed Holding’s hands and forced them away. “They are Skymen, like me. They are masquerading as the Nameless, that’s all!”

A measure of sanity returned to Holding’s face. “You’re coming to tell Her Majesty.” He snatched Jay’s wrist and nearly pulled him off his feet as he raced around the corner of the tavern.

King Silver knelt in the mud, straight-backed and slack-jawed. Her eyes stared at the glowing sphere as if locked into place.

“Majesty,” said Holding. “Majesty, Messenger of the Skymen says these are not the Nameless. He says they are known to him.”

King Silver didn’t so much as blink. A gust of wind blew her black hair into her face and she didn’t even flinch.

Jay swallowed hard. He needed her. She couldn’t go catatonic on him. Not yet.

He knelt in front of her. “King Silver, those creatures are called the Rhudolant Vitae. They are nothing more than a race of Skymen. Do you hear me, Your Majesty?”

Slowly, King Silver focused on him. Her faced twitched back to a painful kind of life. “Are you sure, Skyman?”

Jay nodded. “I know them, Majesty. I have lived among them. There is no mistaking them.”

“Skyman,” she hissed. “I have listened to you and listened to you and what has happened? My city has been torn out from under me. I cannot count the dead I have laid on the pyres. Tell me quickly why I should not lay this new disaster in your hands?” She stood up, and the controlled fury on her face reminded Jay sharply that this slender girl was a strong, fast soldier of war.

“Majesty.” He bowed his head humbly and spoke to the mud puddles. “Unless you want the People, all the People, to be reduced together to the level of the Notouch, you must find a way to wake the power that the Nameless, the true Nameless, left in the Realm. That is what brings the Skymen here. They seek to steal it for themselves.” He raised his eyes.

“And do you now suggest you know how to do this?” Behind her thunderous expression, Jay saw yearning. She wanted to believe him. No, she needed to believe him, because otherwise everything she had done, from her grandfather’s death to the retreat from the High House, was wrong.

“I do.” Inside, Jay rebelled against the game he was forced to play, but he had no choice. No matter what she was, King Silver could still kill him here and now. He needed her. Later she’d be beneath notice, but for now she was his only hope. “Majesty, you must buy me time!”

“Why?”

“So that I can find the power the true Nameless left behind. For all their tricks, we still have a march stolen on the Skymen. The keys to the world are just outside your city walls. I need just a few days more and then the Skymen are dust at Your Majesty’s feet!”

Bit by bit the rage drained out of her face and Jay saw a little girl standing in front of him, tired and frightened.

“All right, Skyman,” she said. “Take whom you need. Take a troop with you, if you need to, and go search for this power. I would have you gone from my sight and out of my hearing.” She looked toward the glowing sphere. “I warn you, though, if you do not bring me back victory in those pale hands of yours, then hide yourself where you think best, because I will have your life otherwise.” She leaned against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands. Holding the Keys laid his hand on her shoulder. Jay stood, feeling oddly abashed, and hurried away.

Jay ducked through the maze of houses and barricades, trying to plan, but his head was full of the screams still sounding around him and the crying of someone who had believed she was a King.

Lu drew the blanket back over Broken Trail’s trembling body. She plucked at the thick, brown felt as if she were trying to pick it to pieces. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, but whatever she saw there, it wasn’t the polymer dome. The white fabric and struts couldn’t have caused three days of nonstop murmuring and tossing back and forth. Once, Lu had put his ear close enough to her mouth to hear what she was saying, but his translator disk provided him with nothing but a stream of random syllables.