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Chapter Thirty-Two

The press of bodies around the gangway was tight. Hundreds of desperate people were trying to squeeze into the two-foot gap between a pair of burly guards who stood at the end of the swinging bridge. The mood was a mix of desperation and calm surrender. The windship swaying overhead was already filled to capacity; passengers clung to the spars and stood shoulder to shoulder on the main deck. The crew clambered through the rigging, setting lines and trimming sails. Even the deckhands carried pistol-braces and boarding knives, casting nervous looks down at the crowd that was threatening to swarm their ship at any second. Ever since the breach along Anvilheim’s northern border, anyone in the entire steading who could find a place on a coreward-bound airship had taken it. The previous evening’s attack in the warehouse district of Aervelling had brought panic all the way to Oesterling, traveling faster even than Estev and his enchanted horses. Rumors swirled about fiendbinders, or a cabal of demonic assassins, and a wraith that had tried to drag the whole city into Oblivion. Until the Airman’s Guild could divert more ’ships in this direction, the Pearlescent was the last ride out of Oesterling, and no one else was getting aboard. Not without a miracle, and a lot of begging.

Rae and his friends were short on both.

“My good man, this will simply not do. It will not do at all. We’re expected in Fulcrum,” Estev said. He had somehow managed to clean his suit and now looked every inch the respectable spiritbinder, despite their days and weeks on the road. The guard looked at him dubiously, his eyes going to the gaggle of three children standing behind him. “These three are favored guests of the Iron College. They are my apprentices, and we must continue their training without delay.”

“Spiritbinders, eh?” The guard sucked a dangerous amount of snot in through his crooked nose and swallowed noisily. “Feels like we could use you lot back in Aervelling, hunting down those damned demons. Or northerly, keeping Chaos at bay. What makes you four so special?”

“That is the work of other mages—justicars and the like. A demon would chew these three up and spit them out,” Estev said. “Besides, it’s not like three children will make a difference in a battle of that size.”

“Well, apprentices or not, there’s no room aboard,” the guard said. He brandished the pistoned head of his kinetic mace. “You’re not on the manifest, and Aervelling has need. Head that way. I’m sure the justicars will find something to do with you.”

“Aervelling is perfectly safe,” Rae said from the back. The guard shot him a look, which Rae met with a bright smile. “We’ve just come from there. The stories are overblown.” He drew himself up straight, trying to look like the apprentice of a man like Estev. “You have my personal guarantee.”

The guard grumbled about the value of guarantees coming from vagrant children, but before he could get too far into his description of Rae’s clothes and his particular smell, Estev cleared his throat.

“I’m a lifebinder,” Estev said. “Surely you have injured on board? I can help them. I can guarantee your safety all the way to Fulcrum.” He laid a hand on the guard’s wrist and, before the man could jerk away, channeled a healthy stream of shimmering life energy into the man. The guard’s eyes lit up, and the tension in his face relaxed as motes of glowing light swirled around his head. Eventually, Estev cut the connection and leaned back. “Have I made a convincing argument, my good man?”

The guards exchanged a glance and a nod, then slowly moved apart. The crowd around them tensed.

“Speak to the captain once you’re aboard,” the guard mumbled. “I’m sure he can make some accommodations.” He stepped aside and let Estev through. The others hurried to follow. The murmurs in the crowd soured into shouts of anger and threats of violence. The guard closed the gap just as quickly, pushing his mace into the surging mob. “Back! The rest of you, back!”

“That was a bit of a close thing,” Estev said under his breath. “Didn’t even ask for tickets, or a justicar’s badge, or anything. Damned lucky.”

“What did you do to him, at the end there?” La asked quietly as they hurried up the gangway. “He looked half drunk by the time you let go.”

“The realm of Life dips deep into the dreaming world. Brutish minds are easily calmed by such powers.”

“Brutish minds?” Mahk asked sharply. “You mean simpletons? Idiots?”

“Oh, um, I mean . . .” Estev cleared his throat.

“Never mind that,” Rae said, looked back at the mob behind them. “They’re going to have a riot on their hands in a moment here, and there hasn’t even been a demon in this city, yet. Hard to imagine things like this happening in the Ordered World.”

“This is barely the Ordered World, anymore,” Estev said. “Hell has sown the seeds of discontent in this place. It is always this way, before a breach.”

They ascended the swaying length of the gangway. The bridge lurched underfoot, bucking and groaning as they climbed toward the ship. La clambered easily onboard, but the steep angle proved too much for Estev. He slipped and went to one knee, his hand flailing for the rail and missing. He started to slip, and was about to go over the edge when an ensign swung down from the rigging and grabbed him.

“Easy now,” the man said. He snapped a tether onto Estev’s belt. “Worst part’s over. We can take it from here.”

“Hope you’re right about that,” Rae said. “Been a hell of a time getting this far.”

The ensign answered with a carefree smile, then reeled Estev up onto the windship deck like a squirming bundle of well-dressed cargo. Reluctantly, the crowds standing around made room for him. Estev collapsed against the gunwales, joined a short while later by Mahk, La, and Rae. Estev stood, wiping his forehead with the tattered remnants of a handkerchief and muttering about the impropriety of the operation.

“I hope the rest of this journey is a good deal more civilized,” he complained. “Standing room only, to boot. I don’t fancy standing on the deck for the whole trip. I’m going to have a word with the captain.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a bed and a roof as much as the next guy. But this lot is an elbow in the ribs away from rioting,” Rae said. “If we start pushing people out of their cabins, we’ll be over the rails in a heartbeat.”

“Let them try,” Estev said sharply. That drew the attention of a pair of hulking brutes, both well dressed but with the look of men who earned their money through violence, rather than birth. Estev caught their gaze. “Unless they wish to try their hand against four of the most talented spiritbinders in the northern territories?”

The brutes grimaced and shuffled away, but Mahk and La both pounced on Estev as soon as they were gone.

“Spirits only go so far,” Mahk said quietly. “There’s a lot of blackpowder on this vessel. Bullets go through flesh, bound or not.”

“Not to mention the fact that you’re the only actual mage among us,” La whispered harshly. “Rae is more likely to drag us all into Oblivion, and Mahk and I, while clever and capable, are no more spiritbinders than we are elementals!”

A bell rang overhead, and the crew started scrambling through the rigging. A twinge went through Rae’s soul, the familiar ache of spirits being summoned nearby. The windship’s stormbinders, feeding the anti-ballast. A gust of wind filled the sails, and the rigging groaned as the vessel strained against the anchor. The shouting of the crew and the grumbling of the passengers reached a fever pitch. Seeing the windship was about to depart, the crowd at the base of the gangway surged forward. The guards laid into the mob, scattering bodies with their kinetic maces, the snap of their discharge echoing hollowly off the surrounding buildings of the town square. They were quickly overwhelmed, disappearing under a wave of scrambling arms and screaming faces. The gangway bucked as the mob rushed onto it, straining under the sudden weight of dozens of bodies. People fell, shoved over the railing by those behind them, or dragged underfoot by the press. The windship lurched in the direction of the gangway. The passengers gave up a cry of panic. Weapons came out, ornate flintlocks and rusty blades. The crew tensed up.

“Cut us free.” The voice came from high on the forecastle, slicing through the muttering crowd like a knife. The captain of the Pearlescent emerged from his quarters, a tired-looking man in immaculate dress, his knuckles white on the ornate basket hilt of his ceremonial saber. “Clear the gangway, and lift off.”

“Sir, they’ll fall to—” the ensign who had helped them aboard replied. His handsome face was clouded with doubt. The captain cut him off.

“See to your orders, Mister Collins,” he said, then disappeared back into his quarters. Collins’s face fell, then he turned and nodded to a pair of crewmen waiting by the gangway.

“Clear the gangway,” he said. The men drew short blades and hacked at the ropes holding the gangway in place. The windship jerked away as the weight of the platform and its dozens of refugees fell away, dropping onto the cobbles of the village square below. The screams of women and children falling to their deaths echoed through the sudden silence on deck.

“Barely the Ordered World at all,” Estev said grimly. “I’ll speak to the captain. See what I can do about accommodations.”

He turned away from the spectacle unfolding down below, wending his way through the horrified crowd on deck to where the captain had disappeared into his chambers. The other passengers, who had seconds ago been waving pistols and calling for blood, moved humbly out of his way, dumbstruck by the sudden violence of their departure.

As soon as the gangway was clear, the windship shot into the air like a rocket. Rae grabbed at the gunwales, fighting vertigo as the ship rose and rose and rose, the press of acceleration shoving him toward the deck. The ship turned hard, deck tilting until Rae had a clear view of the ground below. Only the inertia of their turn kept him and the rest of the passengers from sliding off the deck and tumbling into the void. From this height the village of Oesterling looked like a perfectly normal place, as safe as bed bugs, not the kind of place a mob would threaten a windship, nor die in their mad rush to board. The ship righted itself, pointed south toward Fulcrum, and accelerated.

Still gripping the brass rail of the gunwale, Rae leaned forward and looked north. The newly established orderwall of Aervelling was little more than a bright smudge on the horizon. According to rumor, the justicars were fighting a war of attrition against the surging waves of Chaos flooding into the steading. Rassek had disrupted the natural Order that had kept Anvilheim safe. His very presence was enough to destabilize a steading that hadn’t faced a breach in generations. And then he had died in a warehouse fire. It was unreal.

And none of this touched on the name Rae had heard whispered the night before. The name of the dead man bound to his soul. Yveth Maelys. A familiar name. A justicar, if Rae remembered his father’s stories correctly.

What did that mean, though? How could a dead justicar end up bound to a spiritblade, hidden in the root cellar of the Kelthannis farm, on the edge of the world? And hadn’t Estev named Yveth as friend? Didn’t he say that Yveth Maelys was now high justicar in Fulcrum? How could that be, if he was dead?

There’s just too much I don’t know, Rae thought. He hadn’t told the others yet. Not even La.

Mahk pressed in next to him. The big man’s eyes were vacant, almost like he was still back in Hammerwall, shaking down food cart merchants for spare change, rather than fleeing from a personal apocalypse.

“We could still run,” Mahk said. “Cut a lifeboat free somewhere over the wilds. Make for the border.”

“The border to what?” La asked. “We’re caught between Order and Chaos, Mahk. Do you think we’d be any better off hiding in the wastes? Do you think Rassek’s ilk will be kinder to us than the justicars?”

“For all we know, this Rassek fellow was working alone. Maybe he’s dead, maybe he’s some kind of walking corpse. Either way, he’s behind us,” Mahk said. “And we all know what’s in front of us: Fulcrum, and the whole bloody legion of justicars. And we still don’t know why your dad didn’t come clean to them when he had the chance. Ten years Tren Kelthannis hid. Sounds like something a criminal would do.”

“Funny, coming from you,” La said. “First time we met you were shaking down merchants for protection money.”

“I know what I am. That’s why I know what I’m talking about,” Mahk said.

Mahk turned and disappeared into the crowd before Rae could answer. People got out of his way, despite the tight conditions on deck. When he was gone, the dozens of bystanders who had been listening in with barely concealed curiosity were pointedly ignoring Rae. He turned back to his sister.

“So what do you think?” he asked.

“Mahk is paranoid. But that doesn’t mean he’s not right,” La said. “I think we should keep an eye open and be prepared to run. I still don’t trust Estev. He wants something from us. Damned if I know what it is, but a man like that doesn’t help three vagrants out of the kindness of his heart.”

“I just feel like we’ve had so little choice, ever since the justicars slapped those chains on us,” he answered. “It feels like we’ve been dragged along like fish on the hook.”

“We’re not in chains at the moment,” La said lightly.

“Aren’t we?” Rae asked. He clenched his jaw and glanced up at the afterdeck. Estev was there with the captain, gesticulating grandly toward the children. The captain turned to look at them. The man’s face could have been carved from granite. But eventually he nodded once, and Estev’s face broke into a cheerful smile. The mage waved to the children, gesturing them to join him and the captain. Rae shook his head. “I wonder if we would even know.”


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Framed