The Companions of Tartiël (30 page)

“Shall we help him?” Caineye asked, a conspiratorial smile forming on his features.

Kaiyr gave the question some serious thought. Then, looking at his nearly empty wineglass, he replied, “In a moment.” He downed the wine and rose, and they chased after the others.

“What should we do with him?” the half-orc was asking the shorter woman as elf, human, and wolf arrived in a vacant area of the upper foredeck. Wild leaned against the rail in a nonchalant pose, but he fooled nobody with his posture. He’d been caught, and he knew it. With the others was a human man who carried a large sword on his back; he must have been waiting outside the dining hall.

The short woman, whose body was covered with sheathed daggers, scowled. “Once you find out what he wanted, do whatever you want with him, Doann Ga’bar. I don’t really care if he lives to see tomorrow morning. Just try not to hit anybody on the ground with the body.”

“Now, now,” Wild said, waving one hand. “Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves? I mean, what ever did I do to you?”

The short woman leveled a steely glare at the halfling, who tossed his curly hair, utterly unimpressed. “You stole something that belongs to my friend.”

Wild shrugged. “Not really. I mean, it was really loose in her grasp. Oh—and didn’t it belong to one of the gentlemen in the dining hall?”

“Princess,” said the taller of the two women, nodding in the direction of the approaching blademaster and druid. “We’ve got company.”

“Indeed you do,” Kaiyr replied, stopping far away enough to be non-threatening but near enough to be at hand, should Wild require extraction. “You have the company of one of our companions, and now, of us.” He shot Wild a steely glare of his own, and this time, the halfling seemed somewhat more remorseful, but only slightly. “I already know of our small friend’s transgression against you, Lady…”

“Princess Thelia,” the short woman proclaimed proudly, straightening to her full height of four-foot-nothing.

Kaiyr paused, running through the names of the elven royalty in Vintiens. He had heard the name before. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there were many small kingdoms throughout Vintiens, all ruled by the Elven High King in Naerith’elia. It was possible, but not very likely, that this woman was a minor princess.

“… Princess Thelia,” he amended, deciding to play along. He added to it a bow that would not have been inappropriate to give a minor princess, but also not one of true obeisance. “I apologize for Master Wild’s rash actions.”

“That’s all well and good, but you have to apologize to my servant, ‘Hot-hands’ Deluth here, whom your little friend—” Wild barely stifled a laugh at such a tiny woman having the gall to make such comments about his height “—wronged by stealing what was rightfully hers.”

Kaiyr bowed to “Hot-hands” Deluth, a somewhat shallower bow which he deepened at the insistence of the decidedly childish princess. Deluth watched rather demurely, holding herself with more grace than Princess Thelia did.

“So,” Caineye said, stepping forward. Vinto joined him and sat down, his tongue lolling in boredom. “Can we conclude our business here? We’ll go our separate ways and forgive and forget?”

Thelia pondered it for a moment, then declared, “No. Deluth, kill the runt.”

Everything happened in an instant. “Hot-hands” Deluth raised a dagger to Wild’s throat. Before she had even begun to move, however, Kaiyr darted inside her reach, covering thirty feet of ground in the blink of an eye. His soulblade flashed in his hand, sending the dagger spiraling out into the sky and down to the ground far below.

The rest of them exploded into motion. Doann Ga’bar, the half-orc, drew his longsword and leveled it at Kaiyr’s neck, who proceeded to divest the grayish man of his weapon, too. Another dagger appeared in Deluth’s hand, aimed at Wild’s throat; Kaiyr, in turn, rested his soulblade on her collarbone. The human drew his sword and pointed it at Kaiyr’s neck while Wild drew his crossbow, already loaded, and aimed it at the princess, who proceeded to draw two daggers in the blink of an eye and menace both Kaiyr and Wild with one in each hand. Vinto leaped into the group like a silver arrow and bared his fangs at Doann Ga’bar.

Caineye had fired off a spell of his own and was holding the magic at his fingertips, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. In the circle formed by his fingers hovered a splinter of wood perhaps two inches long, ready to fire. “All right,” said the druid, “first one to move gets a seven-foot spar of wood in the eye.”

Princess Thelia’s eyes narrowed, and she looked up from where she had been glaring at Vinto. “I know who you are. You’re my uncle’s men, come to take me out. Tell him he can have the throne, but he’ll never have me!”

Her words faded into silence as Wild, Kaiyr, Caineye, and even Vinto each raised an eyebrow. “What?” Wild half-laughed, carefully so as not to let Thelia’s weapon dig into his neck. “That is the biggest load of crap I have ever heard! Ha! Can you believe it, guys? Seriously.” He paused, waiting for a reaction from somebody. “Wait, don’t tell me. You believe her?”

“Whether or not I believe what Princess Thelia says is true is not important right now,” Kaiyr said through gritted teeth. “But I firmly believe in the weapons pointed at us.”

“Oh, come on. Caineye wouldn’t hit us, silly.”

“This is no laughing matter.” Kaiyr glanced down at the short woman. Thelia. No, he knew he had heard the name before, and he even remembered some of the history of the family. An idea hit him suddenly. “How is your brother doing?”

Thelia gave him a confused look. “Wha? Er, oh, um. He’s not weathering so—wait, why ask about my brother?”

“Because Princess Thelia has no brother.” The blademaster looked up at “Deluth.” “You should have filled these people in better on your history, Princess Thelia Arai’elith of Zaerieth.”

Thelia—the real Thelia—started, her eyes flying wide. “Wait! What? How in the Nine Hells did you know?”

Kaiyr glanced at the silent human behind him. “I would be more comfortable telling you if you would tell your men—and woman—to stand down. I give you my word as a blademaster that neither I nor my friends will bring you harm.”

Thelia glanced down at the soulblade still resting against her neck. “I… suppose we have little choice. Doann, Deluth, stand down. You, too,” she added to the human, who scowled but replaced his sword in its sheath. Kaiyr’s soulblade vanished, and Wild, Caineye, and Vinto all lowered their weapons as the ones Thelia named did the same. Only now did Kaiyr realize that the real princess had produced a hidden blade from her sleeve after he had knocked the first one from her hands. She gave the party an appraising glance, then nodded, apparently having made a decision. “All right. Not here, though. I have a conference room rented on the ship. We’ll talk there.”

The “conference room” was really little more than a large cabin furnished with a table and chairs rather than a bed. The two parties sat down and ordered room service, waiting in silence until it arrived. Then, the two leaders of the parties, officially Thelia and unofficially Kaiyr, led a lengthy discussion over the meal, with the others listening on, chewing thoughtfully and occasionally offering a few words. By the end of it, however, Kaiyr, Caineye, and Wild managed to convince Thelia and her entourage that their encounter had merely been a case of sour serendipity.

“I am sorry to hear of your father’s passing, Princess Thelia,” Kaiyr said as the parties on both sides of the table pushed their plates away, some of them loosening their belts. “More aggrieved will be my father, when he hears this news. King Arai’elith was one of the few whom Sorosomir Stellarovim counted as a friend.”

Thelia looked down at the table. “Thank you, Kaiyr. And don’t call me ‘Princess’ anymore. It…. Not only does it hurt, but I no longer hold the title.”

Kaiyr bowed his head. “My apologies, Lady Thelia. I should have realized it myself.” He paused and took a sip of his wine. “You must understand that it is the duty of a blademaster to aid those in distress, Lady Thelia. However, I am already questing to relieve the burdens of another, and I can only offer you my blade as long as our paths remain the same. I promise you my protection as long as we are together on this airship and as long afterward as our travels take us together.”

Thelia shook her head. “Stop calling me ‘Lady,’ too, Kaiyr. And thanks, but no thanks. A blademaster bodyguard would just draw more attention to me than I really need.”

Again, Kaiyr bowed in his seat. “I understand, Lady Thelia.” She sighed in exasperation and looked to Caineye and Wild, who both shrugged.

“There’s no stopping it,” Wild told her.

“Regardless,” Kaiyr continued, with no note in his voice to indicate annoyance at having been interrupted, “my offer shall remain open. You have merely to call on me, Lady Thelia.” He looked at his companions, then out the window. “I believe it is time for us to consider this dinner over. I am relieved that we could resolve our concerns without bloodshed.”

Little Deluth snorted quietly. “Mostly because you wouldn’t have survived it.”

“I am, too,” Thelia replied to Kaiyr quickly, shooting her underling a glare. She stood, and only then did Kaiyr make a move to rise. “I suppose I’ll be seeing you, Kaiyr. And you, Caineye and Wild. It’s been an unexpected pleasure, I think.” She and her guardians left the room first without another word.

“She thinks? She thinks?” Wild repeated incredulously after Doann Ga’bar closed the door behind Thelia and her entourage. “Come on, we are totally the next best thing since mithril chain shirts. Ooh, I’d love to get my hands around that short one’s neck, too.” He scowled and made a choking motion with his hands.

Caineye watched Kaiyr depart in silence, then dropped a hand onto Wild’s head. “I think you should probably be careful whom you call short, Wild.” He led the way out the door, and the halfling followed.

“What? No, I’m tall for my kind. Seriously, I’m almost three feet! There’s no way…” The door closed on the empty and silent room.

XXIII.

Kaiyr awoke with a start when an explosion rang out on the deck above, causing the whole ship to list and rumble ominously before the pilot righted the enormous craft. He rose swiftly from his meditation and to his feet, his senses sharp despite having been so roughly roused from his rest.

Peering into the hall, he saw Caineye, Vinto, Wild, and a whole host of frightened, confused, sleepy, or some combination of all three, passengers poking their heads out into the hall. “Master Kaiyr?” Caineye said, half-yawning. “What’s going on?”

“I do not know,” the blademaster replied, his voice scratchy from several hours of disuse.

“Let’s go find out,” Wild said with a giggle. “It might be fun!” He skipped eagerly down the hall and toward the stairs leading to the top deck, dancing around the other, sleepy passengers.

“Master Wild!” Kaiyr called, but his words fell on deaf ears. He looked to Caineye.

The druid shrugged. “Let’s go,” was all he could offer, and the two of them padded down the hall and up the stairs, Vinto loping behind.

Some small part in Kaiyr recognized the pattern of the explosion: the group together on an airship, one or more female figures from the group away on errands, and then an impact as of a meteor crashing to the deck. He should have trusted his senses, he decided upon arriving topside. There, in the center of a now-familiar ring of airship security officers, surrounded by a giant scorch mark in the wood of the deck, lay Astra. A nighttime wind whipped her black hair about her, what little of it wasn’t already caked to the blood on her skin.

Caineye stopped in his tracks, as had Wild upon seeing Astra curled into a ball, covered in her own blood and the bare remains of her armor and clothing, which seemed to have been torn apart by the claws of some terrible beast. Wild reached up and tugged on Caineye’s little finger. Vinto whimpered slightly and hung his head at the sight.

“What’s with Astra and her… incarnations and suddenly dropping in on us like fireballs?” the halfling asked a distracted Caineye, who did not respond.

Ignoring Wild’s ill-timed humor, Kaiyr strode forward and pushed his way through the ring of soldiers with polite but stern pardons that brooked no argument. He knelt before Astra, appraising her wounds. “She will not last,” he muttered to himself, pulling out the curative wand he kept in one sleeve.

“Hold,” said a man, moving to stand over the blademaster. “You… know this woman?” He wore the trappings of the airship’s captain.

“I do. However, she will not last long unless my friends and I are allowed to tend her wounds,” Kaiyr said over the howling wind. The captain gnawed on his lip for a moment until the blademaster pulled out five pieces of platinum from his sleeve. “We will cover her fare and board and see that she causes you no further trouble, captain. Now I ask you to give me leave to do what I must to preserve her life.”

The man stared at the valuable coins—many times the standard fare for his ship. “All right,” he shouted over the wind, pointing to the stairs. “Go.”

Kaiyr touched Astra’s shoulder with the rune-inscribed wand once and whispered a brief triggering word. The blood still seeping from her wounds stopped flowing, but the wand’s power was not nearly enough to keep her alive for very long. Carefully lifting her, he returned to Caineye, Wild, and Vinto, the first of whom flanked Kaiyr on his windward side to help the blademaster keep his balance—and thus keep Astra safe.

“Gods,” Caineye swore under his breath upon seeing the nymph’s wounds clearly. “What manner of creature could do this to her?”

Kaiyr glanced down at the gashes in her flesh and gear. “Herself,” he replied. “Her weapon would make such lines, were she to wield it in a slashing manner. I suspect this may be the work of Lady Luna.”

Caineye raised his eye when Kaiyr affixed a title to the Nemesis’s self-given name. “Let’s just get her cleaned up and cared for.”

Kaiyr’s room was small, not large enough for all of them to fit while he and Caineye tended to Astra’s grievous injuries. Particularly after the battle in Andorra and after having to see to the wounds of many of the townsfolk in addition to their own friends, both Kaiyr and Caineye had gained much field experience in a short amount of time. Where last time Astra’s injuries had made Kaiyr hesitate, he now worked diligently and confidently alongside Caineye, whose experience, knowledge, and ability at surgery and healing far outpaced his own. Supplementing their calm expertise with newfound magical abilities and items, the two had Astra stabilized and well on her way to recovery after less than an hour of work.