Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) (19 page)

“Goodbye, Vanna!” Tony yelled at the red-haired Mage who was the last to leave. “See you soon.” He threw her a kiss, which Sivana returned with a sneer before going through the portal and closing it behind her.

Thomas let out a grunt as the portal closed, more of disappointment than of pain. Gramps had gone; he had seen him in pain and beaten, yet he still had chosen to go with the Azure Guards instead of staying with him. He snorted as he felt his eyes beginning to swell.

“Here,” Bolswaithe said, extending a white handkerchief to him. Thomas took it without saying a word and wiped his eyes with it.

He handed it back, and snorted again, composing himself. The clearing was still full of fauns. He was not going to break down in front of them; he had already let down the Guardians too much.

Hoormel Kian and a dozen of fauns approached them. “We take our leave too,” he said, visibly pleased. “We have seen enough.” He turned around, the Azure Guard pendant glinting in the sun’s light. “No one will disturb the sign, Cypher. It is yours to be taken.” He walked away and the other clan leaders followed.

“What was he thinking about, Doctor?” Elise asked as the fauns disappeared from sight.

“Victory,” the Doctor said. “Let's go home.”

The Engineer

Thomas spent the next week away from the library. Elise and the Doctor had worked on the wound Nardir had inflicted. Only a thin line across his cheek remained, but he still had some swelling and a throbbing sensation in his ear and teeth. Nardir’s claw had grazed the Trigeminal nerve and the Mansion’s doctors at the medical ward had told Thomas that he could lose some sensitivity on the left side of his face.

Nardir had cracked a rib too, but that was easily taken care of by Doctor Franco’s cane. The Rod of Asclepius was a powerful artifact and symbol of his office as both CEO of Guardians Inc. and the Grand Master of the Council of Twilight. It was made of black wood, and a silvery serpent ran the length of the cane with the serpents’ heads ending at the top of the cane. The Doctor hadn’t delved too deeply into the story of the cane, but Thomas knew that Asclepius was the ancient God of Medicine and healing in the Greek Pantheon. Thomas had seen the Doctor use the rod’s power to heal injuries and to cast a protecting light around an area. He had held back the Wraith’s onslaught in Ormagra, and he healed the wounded after the battle too.

       Even though he was practically cured, Thomas used his injuries and the doctors’ recommendations to rest as an excuse to stay away from Mrs. Pianova. He wasn’t ready to talk with her after coming back from The Halls of Remembrance, and she seemed to understand since she hadn’t contacted him either.

      Killjoy had analyzed—dissected was a better term—the battle and had found ways to reprimand them and at the same time compliment their performances.

      “I was about to take him out,” Tony said in their meeting with Killjoy.

      “Joran was holding back,” Killjoy said, and Tony feigned shock.

      “I was holding back too,” Tony shot back.

      “Why were you holding back?” Killjoy asked, and Tony was disconcerted for a second.

      “Why was he holding back?” he asked instead of answering, and Henri rolled his eyes behind Tony’s back as Killjoy dismissed him with an admonishing look. 

      “It was a masterful plan. They had a carefully planned strategy from the very beginning,” Killjoy said. “They locked the only flying member at the start of battle. Then they used their fastest member to tangle with Bolswaithe and they allowed you two to reach the cascades where they separated you. They let Thomas make a heroic effort to reach the sign, and then they sent in the faun to stop him almost as an afterthought. Meanwhile their Mage kept Elise busy, and she could have helped you from a distance, but she was too busy defending herself and providing the fireworks in the foreground. It was very skillful, theatrical until the very end. A contest where the Honorable Azure Guards allow the defeated Guardians their rightful prize. It was all a show for the Clans and they ate it up.”

      Thomas became sullen. “You think Gramps knew about all this? Cause if he did…”

      Killjoy took a long breath. “I wish I could tell you for sure. His concern seemed genuine, and he was the one who proposed a blood-less contest, but in the end it could all have been planned, even his intervention. I guess you are a better judge about him than I could be.”

      Thomas was sure that his grandfather would never have participated in the Azure Guard deception, but still a sliver of doubt nagged at him.

      “They haven’t touched the sign, have they?” Thomas asked.

      “And they won’t. That was the whole point of the show, Thomas,” Killjoy said. “They don’t need it. They are letting everyone know that they’re so confident they’ll win that they can let us keep this one.”

      “I’ve heard that there are rumors of secession floating around The League of Nations,” Bolswaithe informed them. “Every faun present at the Falls has told the story a hundred times, and not all of them were Azure Guards. The other Clans are listening.”

      “As I said,” Killjoy said, “masterful.”

      “So what do we do now?” Tony asked.

      “We train,” Killjoy said, “and cross-train in different arts and weapons. Next time you might need to use them. Form up.”

About halfway through their session, Cuthbert crossed the bridge to Five Treasures of Snow dojo and approached Killjoy. After a brief conversation she thanked him and called Thomas. “You’re excused from training, Thomas. Follow Cuthbert. Mr. Pianova wishes to meet you,” Killjoy said.

Thomas left the sword and dagger he had been using against Tony’s twin blades in the weapons rack. “Mr. Pianova?” he asked.

“This way please,” Cuthbert said.

“You said Mr. Pianova, right?” Thomas asked once inside the Mansion.

“Correct,” Cuthbert said. “Mrs. Pianova is in the library, and she has been a little less talkative than usual since you came back from your mission.” Cuthbert glanced at him. “She’s also been a little more…let’s say sour, too.”

Thomas gave him a dry smile. Now that Cuthbert had inherited the position of the Mansion’s head butler from Bolswaithe he practically knew everything that was going on with its inhabitants.

“So…” Thomas changed the subject. “How…
sour
is Mr. Pianova?” he asked.

Cuthbert smiled. “I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Pianova yet,” he said, “but he handles the Guardians’ Engineering Vault. One of the most important collections in the Guardians’ possessions. Second only to the library.”

“I haven’t heard of the Engineering Vault,” Thomas said.

“Few have, sir. I learned about it this morning. Here we are.” Cuthbert stopped at a door on the farthest side of the right hallway. “Go in, sir. I can go no further.”

Thomas opened the door and stepped into a circular room. Once the door closed behind him, the wall separated into horizontal and vertical lines, like a wood puzzle where you needed to move a piece in certain way to free it. The door began to move in unison with the pieces of the wall. The room vibrated and clicked, and once the door stopped at the other end of the room, it clacked into position and the wall pieces melded together again.

Thomas opened the door.

The room was as big as the library, a huge vault taller than a stadium and seemingly without end. Where the library had passageways and bookshelves, this room had metal struts and boxes. Utilitarian warehouse lights hung from the different storage levels. Thousands upon thousands of boxes and cases of different sizes filled it as far as the eye could see. Instead of the little robots that carried books around in the library, this room had large mechanical arms, each one larger than a five-story building, running through a center rail along the room.

Smaller arms ringed the sides of the floors, moving to and fro, carrying boxes from different levels, and storing them deep into the bowels of the room.

It looked, smelled, and felt like a warehouse and mechanical garage. Just in a huge scale.

“Hello there!” a young, dark-skinned man said from under a very old car. “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Thomas said. “I’m—”

“Gimme a sec.”  The man pulled himself out from under the car and wiped his greasy and sooty hands with a dirty cloth. Then he walked toward a machine that was sitting on top of a metal table. “Come here, man. You gotta see this.”

Thomas approached the table. He was not very good at calculating age, but he guessed that the man was barely in his late thirties or early forties. He was thin and had a very dark skin. He wore a greasy fisherman’s hat, a t-shirt, and heavy, steel-toed boots. Almost all of his dirty overall pockets had a dirty cloth hanging from it, or seemed to be full of something, probably metal pieces or tools.

“This machine was designed out about a month ago in the Netherlands,” the man said. He had a slight accent that Thomas couldn’t place. “Check this out,” he said, turning the machine on. A screen lit up with a map of the world on the front of the machine. “You choose the continent, say, South America…” He pushed the screen followed by a couple more. “Then strength level, then milk level, then aroma. And voila!”

The machine made a whirling sound for a couple of seconds, then a door opened and a cup appeared with steaming coffee and a perfect creamy froth on top. “Just look at that,” the man said as he picked up the cup and gave it an appreciative sniff. “This is perfection. Go on, pick one. You look like a mocha.”

Thomas punched in the buttons and a cup of coffee appeared seconds later. The pleasant smell of dark cocoa permeated the machine shop. He took a small sip. The liquid wasn’t scalding hot; it was perfect.

“What’s the verdict?” the man asked.

“I don’t really know a lot about coffee,” Thomas said, “but this is delicious.”

“Mmm hmmm. This is a good cup for you to start learning.” The man took another sip. “So, how can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Mr. Pianova.”

“Right, and you are?” the man said as he sipped his coffee.

“I’m Thomas Byrne.”

“Well, Thomas Byrne, look no further,” the man said extending a hand. “I’m Mr. Pianova.”

Thomas was taken aback for a second. He involuntarily sized up Mr. Pianova. This man wasn’t at all what he had pictured in his mind as Mrs. Pianova’s husband. In fact, he was probably the complete opposite of what he would have imagined. Thomas guessed that he had even made a small frown of surprise, because Mr. Pianova moved his head to the side a little bit.

“What?” Mr. Pianova asked. “Too young? Too happy? Or too dark skinned?”

“No,” Thomas said, shaking his hand, realizing that he had put his foot in his mouth and that anything he answered would only push it further in. “It’s just that…um…I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” he said. “Mrs. Pianova is a wonderful wife.” He leaned in and whispered in Thomas’s ear, “Still full of life, if you know what I mean.” He clacked his mouth twice.

“I didn’t mean that!” Thomas said, and Mr. Pianova let out a hearty laugh.

“Don’t worry, I’m just being nasty,” he said. “She’s the Ying to my Yang, or positive to negative, or whatever philosophical term you wanna use. Opposites attract, you know?”

Thomas could very well see just how opposite the Pianovas were, and not just physically. Mrs. Pianova was stern and orderly, and her husband was surrounded by tools and grease and had a happy-go lucky attitude. His workstation was simply a mess—crushed cups of coffee and paper spilling over the trashcan and stained machine blueprints tacked to the walls with masking tape. On one side of a table hung a stalactite of dried glue coming from an overturned bottle.

Thomas smiled openly. Gramps would have a different opinion about how Thomas kept his own room if he ever saw this one.

All in all, Mr. Pianova was the type of person who Thomas found approachable and he liked him from the start.

“So, Thomas Byrne,” Mr. Pianova said, “my wife told me that she was a little rough with you the other day.”

Thomas wouldn’t just call it being a little rough; she had opened his eyes to the truth about life on the planet and burdened him with the future of not only of the human race, but of all fauns, too.

He kept quiet.

“She can be like that sometimes,” Mr. Pianova said, “but she does what is needed to do. You can’t deny that.”

 Somehow Thomas felt completely at ease with Mr. Pianova, as if he was his oldest of friends. “She scared the hell out of me!” he said and some weight was lifted from his chest. “She took me to the heart of the Halls of Remembrance and told me that I was the only one who could save the world from the Wraith and showed me what would happen if I failed! Just like that...” He found it very easy to talk with this man, and the words just came flowing out from his mouth. “Hey, Thomas. Here is the place where the Fauns write their stories. You see this column here?” he mocked Mrs. Pianova's voice. “We killed them. All of them. Oh yeah, and you see this other room?  The Wraith killed the fauns in this one, and guess what? They’re coming back. And you!” he yelled. “You are the only one who can stop it. So it’s going to be your fault if everyone dies.”

“She actually said that?” Mr. Pianova asked as his forehead crinkled. “That last part?”

Thomas took a deep breath. He hadn’t let steam out for quite some time. “No,” he said, “but she implied it. And then there are all the other things too! The library, and the courses, and classes, and all the things that I’m supposed to know already, but I don’t. I mean, she can be just such a—”

“A bitch?” Mr. Pianova interrupted.

Thomas froze, thinking that maybe he had gone a little too far.

“Go on. Get it out, “Mr. Pianova said. “Just finish this sentence: ‘Mr. Pianova, sometimes your wife can be a huge—’”

“Bitch,” Thomas said and felt immediate relief. He started pacing around the room, yelling, “Bitch, bitch, BITCH, bitch. Bitch!” until he started laughing.

“Feels good, huh?” Mr. Pianova said with a smile.

“You know, Mr. Pianova,” Thomas said. “I don’t really mean any of this.”