Chapter 21
Jayce jolted awake. Sarai wasn’t in the shelter, but the cover was still in place.
“Sarai?” Jayce cracked the cover open and made sure razors weren’t still falling, then charged out of the nook, his hilt in hand. The only sound was the rustle of the tall grasses all around the tree. The same haze obscured the horizon.
The sky wall hadn’t changed, and he quickly found the direction toward the Pinnacle. He put a hand on the tree and looked around the other side in case Sarai was hiding there.
Nothing.
“Sarai!”
Jayce’s flapped his arms against his side in frustration. She’d taken over the watch after a few hours of sleep. He’d fully expected her to be there when he woke up, or at least she’d give him a kick if there was a threat or if she wanted to get moving sooner.
He looked at the soil around the tree and there were only two sets of footprints.
“Sarai!” He went around the tree looking for more clues. He did a double take at two words carved into the bark.
GO HOME.
Jayce yelled at the sky and kicked a rock into the grass.
“Maybe I will! Maybe I’ll drop my anchor and meet you all at the gate. You think I need this?” Jayce sat on a root arch for a moment, then stood back up. “Spoiled brat doesn’t have all the attention in the galaxy put on her and she goes and leaves a shipmate behind. You’d get black-marked on my docks for that!”
He shook a fist at nothing.
Jayce put his hands on his hips for a moment, then looked around.
“Well . . . shit. Do I stay here and wait for Maru to find me? Who am I kidding, he’ll go find little miss princess first. Then she’ll pout and whine until she gets her way, and they’ll keep going to the Pinnacle while I sit here with an un-baited line in my hand like some kind of an idiot. An idiot that’s talking to himself in the middle of no-gods-damn-where. I’ll catch up to them. Decent idea. Maybe I won’t get killed before I find them. I love this place so much.” Jayce felt the hilt buzz in his hand.
“Oh, you’ve got an opinion all of a sudden?”
His hilt hand raised of its own volition to the start position for the Flow kata.
“That? Now? You know you could’ve given her even a little bit of acknowledgment or encouragement. She might be a nicer person,” Jayce said as the hilt pointed toward the direction of the Pinnacle and then twisted back to the Flow stance. The blade materialized without Jayce’s action.
In the distance, a song began.
All of Jayce’s frustrations faded away as he moved through the kata. Each strike and block flowed from one to the next and he made every jump and thrust with ease. His mind went still as he flowed to the end and to the final salute of the weapon’s cross guard against his brows, the stone over the center of his forehead.
The hilt jumped out of his hand and landed with one side of the cross guard plugged into the ground, the blade vertical to the ground. It pointed two hands off from the direction he felt toward the Pinnacle.
“OK, I’m not going to pretend that’s an accident. Is she that way?” Jayce picked the sword up. The blade disintegrated and the motes flowed back into the hilt. “Maybe if you’d done something sooner, she wouldn’t have left.”
The hilt didn’t react.
“Now you’re quiet. Fine! Let’s go get her.” Jayce took off at a jog.
He doubled back at a run and picked up the shield over the shelter and struggled to fold it back up as he ran after Sarai.
Jayce pushed a cobalt frond out of his way. The endless fields of grain had ended abruptly almost half an hour ago and transitioned to a jungle biome full of plants with the same ivory trunks he’d seen before, but the leaves were a spectrum of blues.
Birds the size of his thumb flitted from branch to branch. None made so much as a chirp at him or each other.
He’d reoriented himself every time he could see through the upper canopy. Following the direction he’d received from the hilt hadn’t been too difficult, so long as he could see the cracks and features in the sky wall.
“Am I lost?” He stopped and took a sip from the water bladder on his back. “Would I even know? Being lost implies having a correct place to be, or the right way to go. I’m running on faith here.”
He pushed through the brush and came to a steep ravine. A stream ran through the bottom.
“More water, lovely,” he said. Something drew his attention to the right, like there was a live wire buzzing on a ship that needed to be grounded or shut off before it could hurt someone. He drew his hilt and slid down the embankment. His boots splashed in the water, and he hopped out before they could soak through.
He crept around a bend in the stream and kicked a broken brick. An overgrown Shrine was the source of the stream, water flowing from the bottom of an altar. Floating a few inches over the altar was a Void stone.
The stone was almost the size of his palm and pulsed in tune with the thunder of Jayce’s heart.
“Whoa.” Jayce reached for it . . . then paused. He could almost taste the power of the stone. A vision of him aboard a trade galley with a loyal crew looking to him for command as he plied the star routes trading and adventuring his way to fame and fortune came to him.
All he had to do was take it.
He reached again, then pulled his hand back.
“You too?” he asked the hilt. “You want me to get what’s good enough and go home, eh? And here I thought you cared about—”
A twig snapped in the jungle. Jayce ducked and moved into the undergrowth and tried to breathe as quietly as possible as more rustling approached.
“You’re not going to find it, you git,” a reedy voice said. “You think walking another circle’s going to get us there? Give me the diviner and I’ll find the bloody thing.”
“You had it for two hours and where’d you take us, eh? Right back where we fargging started with the wench,” another voice said.
“Neither you lot know where we is, so how’d you know if we’s in a circle or not?” a deeper voice asked.
“Shut up, Mort, or I’ll crack your tether and then there’s no bonus for ya,” the first voice said.
Jayce spied a pair of men in dark clothes and hoods several yards away. One had a pair of leg bones lashed together at the joints with a Veil-fleck talisman hanging from the front. A larger figure followed behind them.
“I knew that fortune-teller back at the Pilgrim rendezvous was selling us a bill o’ goods,” the one without the bones said. “Spent all that coin on a trinket, we did.”
One turned his head toward Jayce, and he realized it wasn’t a man, but an alien with one eye over a bulbous nose and lime-green skin.
“They’re legitimate Docent bones, they are!” The one with the divining sticks slapped the other on the shoulder. “Docents find stones. Is what they do.”
“Oh yeah?” The second kicked the other in the rear end. “Which way’s it telling us to go find our fortunes now?”
“That way!” The alien pointed straight to the Shrine hidden behind bushes.
“I’s hungry.” A hulking mass of alien pushed a branch down and snapped it from the tree. Jayce recognized an Ogroid when he saw one. They were cheap muscle, known for violence and the inability to count their pay correctly. “Can we eat her?”
The Ogroid pulled on a chain and another figure behind him fell to the ground.
“No, we can’t eat her, Grug!” The one with the divining rod shook the talisman at him. “How we supposed to sell off a stone-bounded Attuned if she’s in your stomach?”
“She won’t be in there forever,” the other alien giggled. He had the same single eye, but it was milky on one side from an old scar. All of them had Syndicate colors on their chests and armbands.
“Don’t even let him think it’s a good idea,” the one with the divining rod said. “Why don’t you let him snack on you? I’ll buy you a new arm when we get out.”
“Blet won’t taste good,” Grug rubbed a thick hand against a wary nose. “He don’t smell good. What don’t smell good don’t taste good.”
“The hungrier he gets the better I’ll smell.” Blet cowered behind the leader. “Let’s get our little prize to a stone and be done, yeah? Doesn’t have to be that shiny, grab some flecks from that stream bed and that’ll cover our costs, won’t it?”
“Boss Zallak didn’t fund us to break even.” The leader shook the divining rod again and pointed toward the Shrine. “We’s been blessed by capturing this little prize. We best come back with more than just flecks and we’ll be able to buy our own territory with our cut. Now quiet down, we’re close. I can feel it in the bones.”
Jayce waited for them to break through the underbrush and used the noise to cover his movement behind them. He couldn’t get a perfect look at the one in chains behind Grug the Ogroid, but the figure looked female enough.
“Blight my eye!” The leader stopped at the edge of the stream. “Would you look at the size of that one?”
“Whazzat? I’ve still got me trousers on,” Blet chuckled.
“No, you git!” The leader grabbed Blet and pointed him toward the altar. “That one good enough?”
“We’ll need Grug to carry all the coin we’ll get when we sell ’er off,” Blet said. “Grug, bring her up! Keep her leash tight, don’t want any funny business this close to payday.”
Jayce waited for the lumbering Ogroid to pass him. The figure behind him tripped and sprawled out.
Grug turned back as he tugged the chain . . . and stared right at Jayce with his single porcine eye.
“Boss!”
Jayce burst out of the brush and ignited his Fulcrum. Grug snapped a punch at him with the arm holding the chain, and had the blow slowed by the weight of the woman on the other end.
Jayce stabbed Grug in the chest. The blade flashed and sent a bolt of energy down the length that knocked the Ogroid off his feet and into a tree trunk.
“Kill ’im! Kill ’im!” The leader chucked the divining bones at Jayce. He raised his blade and swatted the bones away. His vision was blocked for a split second, which was just enough for the leader to pull out a small hand crossbow from off his belt.
Time slowed as the Syndicate member unsnapped a bolt from the top of the crossbow.
Jayce gave a war cry and charged. The leader shrieked and set the bolt, then pulled it back with the string, but fumbled the weapon and sent the bolt spinning into the air. Jayce struck and cut the one-eyed alien from shoulder to hip. The leader spun around and transformed into icy chalk before he could hit the ground.
The statue of the dead alien landed in the stream and crumbled into dust. All that was left of him was washed away.
Blet jumped onto Jayce’s back and beat Jayce’s head and face with his fists. Jayce reached up and seized the Syndicate thug’s hood and flipped him off. The alien dug long, jaundiced fingernails into Jayce’s sleeve with one hand.
Jayce raised his trapped arm and swiped his blade at Blet’s grip. His sword chopped through the alien’s arm, straight through the anchor band. There was a flash of light and Blet vanished.
Most of him vanished. The severed arm still clung to Jayce’s sleeve, the fingers twitching as the color drained from the cut and swept up the limb until it crumbled.
“Wait . . .” Jayce kicked at the debris left by the alien, then to the stream, then at the felled tree where Grug’s foot was propped over the broken stump. “Wait. Why didn’t . . .”
Grug sat up suddenly. The Ogroid bayed like a pack animal and picked up the fallen tree. Jayce’s eyes went from his Veil sword to the much larger tree.
“Crush your bones!” Grug stomped toward him, the bleeding and burnt gash on his chest not slowing him down. Grug swung the tree with a long windup. Jayce noticed something the Ogroid hadn’t and charged him.
Grug’s tree smashed into another, startling a flock of bats with glowing wings from their roosts. The improvised club bounced out of Grug’s hands and landed on his foot.
“Ow!” The Ogroid bent down to toss the tree aside and Jayce used his lowered height to decapitate him with a single stroke.
Grug crumbled into sand and grit, his head disintegrated before it even hit the ground.
“There, that did . . . Ow!” Jayce shook the arm that Blet had latched onto as blood ran down his fingers. “Sarai? Sarai!”
Jayce splashed through the stream and found the chains leading around a large tree. A hooded woman cowered against a fern.
“Don’t worry, it’s me.” Jayce pulled the hood off.
A pair of blue eyes stared up at him under loose dark hair. The young woman gave him a nervous smile, which was something Sarai would never have done.
“Wait a minute.” Jayce looked at the Veil stone in his cross guard, then deactivated the weapon.
“Standard, yej? Friend. No hurt.” She held her cuffed hands up to her chin. Her accent wasn’t like anything he’d ever heard before. Something about her face made Jayce’s heart skip a beat.
“I thought you were—yes, Standard. Are you hurt?” he asked. “Name. Name? You have a name?”
“Leeta, Eshanti tribe of the Minari clan.” She wiggled her hands back and forth. “Don’t suppose you got the keys for these? They were on the dowsing bones the ugliest one carried.”
“He threw them at me, hold on—” Jayce turned away, then back to her. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m Jayce.”
Leeta raised and lowered the heavy chains, making them clink together. The entire length was too long and too massive for any human to move around easily with.
Jayce brought the broken bones over. The charm on one end had a key and several coins and carved amulets. He pulled the key off and tossed the rest to the side. Their hands brushed together as he unlocked the cuffs.
They fell to the ground and Leeta shoved Jayce back. He hit the ground with an “Oof!” She scooped up the pile of charms and gripped an anchor stone between her fingers.
“No! Stay back or I’ll do it!” she cried.
Jayce sat up.
“Do what? Send yourself back to your Aperture gate?” Jayce asked. “I’m not going to hurt you, Leeta. I meant to . . . to help someone else, but I’m not regretting anything. Let me guess . . . you’re Attuned just like me, but no stone yet.”
Leeta brushed hair from her face and Jayce’s heart did that thing again.
“Are you a Paragon? You have that special sword they use,” she said.
“Yes. Well, no. Not yet. That’s . . . why I’m here,” he said. “I need to find the people I came in here with. We’re on a mission. That is secret. Forget I said that.”
Leeta gave him a smile. She rubbed the anchor stone between her fingers.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got someone with you that might be able to help with a little problem? See, I crack this now and it’ll send me back to my gate on Succarran III where a gang of Syndicate is just waiting to auction me—a me with a Veil stone—off to the highest bidder.”
“I doubt . . . I doubt you’ll be any better off if you go back without a stone.” Jayce got to his feet. “I don’t have one yet either.”
“There’s one right over there.” She rubbed her wrists, then pointed to the shrine. “Be my guest.”
“Wait, you don’t want one?”
“You think I’d be here in chains and carted around by three scum grunts if I wanted a stone, you silly? I get a stone and I’ll always be someone’s property or running from people that want me to be their property. No thank you.” She looked around and sniffed the air. “This whole place is just . . . wrong.”
“That’s . . . a way to look at it. You leave now and the Syndicate is waiting for you. Well, you can come with me. Hopefully my master can help you. When we find him.”
“Did you really kill all three of them?” She pulled off her tattered cloak. She wore a loose blouse and shorts underneath along with a tight bodysuit.
“Pretty sure.” He rubbed the scratches on his one arm.
“Oh, thank you!” She hugged him and kissed him on both cheeks. She wiggled the tip of her nose against his and skipped away.
Jayce was flat-footed for a second, then went after her. Leeta leaned against a tree and stretched from side to side.
“You’re awfully happy about that,” Jayce said.
“They kidnapped me from my clan holdings and were going to sell me into slavery. You want me to boo-hoo-hoo for them? No . . . anyway. How’re you going to find the super Paragon that’ll help me?”
“I know where he’s heading. Which is where I’m heading. So, we’ll meet there,” Jayce said. “Which is this way. Follow me.”
“Did you have to get here through the swamp with all the fire plumes? There were more than three of them when we first came through.”
“No, the labyrinth with the hydra monster in the river. Doesn’t everyone have to go over the hydra river?”
“This place isn’t right.” Leeta shook her head. “Which is weird because it feels . . . Does it feel like home to you?”
Jayce thought for a moment.
“It does, come to think of it,” he said. “If anyone explained it before I came through, I don’t think I would’ve come. Ice skies? Water that isn’t water? Maybe that’s why I didn’t get all the details. Funny how that works.”
“And yet we’re both oddly comfortable with how we are here. I assume you are.” She unzipped the front of her body suit to reveal just a bit of cleavage.
“Dry ground is starting to appeal to me. I’m from a—Hold on. What if my . . . master can’t help you? I don’t even know if he can.”
“Legend in my clan is that Paragons can do anything their heart desires in the Veil. Healing. Magic. Moving my anchor point doesn’t seem impossible. And if he can’t . . . I’ll find a gate. Any gate but the one I came through.”
“Without knowing what’s on the other side?”
“A chance at living is better than certainly dying,” she said. “And let me guess what you were about to say, you grew up on a water world?”
“How’d you know?”
“Months at sea with my clan. You’re still walking like there’s a swell to the deck,” she said.
“You got me.” Jayce raised his hands.
Leeta lifted a tube from the open collar of her body suit and took a sip. She frowned at him with the tube still in her mouth.
“You don’t want any of this,” she said.
“I’ve got my own . . . and likewise.” He took a drink from his water pack.