Chapter 14

  Dalex and Hitasa soared through the air half a mile off the ground. Dalex carried her cradled in his arms, finding it hard not laugh at the warring expressions of indignation and panic on her face. There wasn’t any danger that he might drop her, but she certainly didn’t believe that. She clutched his arm like it was the safety bar of a rollercoaster.

  It had taken her several minutes to decide if she wanted to go with him or brave the journey on her own. Eventually, the prospect of a week alone on a dangerous road with mutts and Castreier chasing after her worried Hitasa more than the thought of being touched by a human. Once they were airborne, her fear of falling kicked in and she experienced another crisis of indecision, but ultimately didn’t demand Dalex ground their flight.

  They followed the road, passing over rivers, hills, and narrow mountain crossings. After an hour of flight, Dalex checked their progress. At their current speed, it would take another five hours to reach Batulan-bar. Dalex didn’t dare push them any faster. {Wall of force} deflected some of the wind, but it was still a frigid altitude for long-distance travel. Hitasa started to shiver in his arms and he looked for a place to land and warm up for a few minutes.

  Before he found one, a massive wedge-shaped airship descended through the clouds above him, dropping until it held altitude off his right side.

  “Get inside,” Seventh told him, and he finally recognized the profile of the E7’s transport vessel. The transport’s cargo ramp lowered, and Dalex flew inside with his precious freight.

  He set Hitasa down next to one of the jump seats. She dropped to her hands and knees, panting with a wide-eyed expression. Between breaths she managed to say, “Who– are– you–?”

  “It might be a while before you have a full answer to that question. Excuse me a moment, I have to–”

  He turned toward the cockpit at the front of the transport to see if Seventh had flown the vessel down herself, only to see the [android] walking out to meet him. At the sight of her, he blew out his breath in surprise. He had totally forgotten she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. She looked the same as before, still dressed in the catsuit, but twenty-four hours on Gaia Eta had helped Dalex forget. He had to look away for a moment to compose himself.

  “Seventh,” he said, finally able to face her without blushing, “is there a reason your creators made you so outrageously pretty?”

  “Yes. Prior experience has shown that mission partnerships between humans and [androids] are more successful if the [android’s] physical form matches the sexual preferences of the human.”

  “So, if I had been a straight woman, you would have been a hot guy?” he asked.

  “A physically appealing male human, yes. All sexual preferences are accounted for, including asexual preferences.”

  That was so manipulative and degrading for the [android], and for him. Dalex felt a little like gagging. “I guess I’m not surprised, but that’s kind of bleak.”

  “It is an effective strategy.”

  Behind Dalex, Hitasa finally managed to get her breathing under control and rise to her feet. She glowered at the newcomer. “Another human.”

  Dalex raised a finger. “Actually, not a human at all.”

  Seventh respectfully bowed her head in greeting and added, “My name is Seventh. I am an [android], an artificial being created to serve Dalex Little.”

  “Dalex of the Expedition 7,” he corrected her. “And I prefer to think of us as partners.”

  “Little?” Hitasa asked, but she immediately shook her head and waved away any curiosity she had about his name. She walked to the side of the cargo bay and looked out one of the windows at the ground passing by below. “What is this thing?”

  “An airship,” Dalex said before Seventh could fill her mind with any sci-fi mumbo jumbo. “One that is also capable of traveling through the astral void.”

  Hitasa turned around and gave him a scrutinizing look. “Only the dragons can do that. They made the Waterfall Portals, and some humans say the dragon gods can traverse the void without a portal.”

  “I’ll stop you there and tell you again that I don’t work for any dragon.”

  “That is hard to believe,” she said, and then, after a long pause, “But it is just as hard to believe you would take any interest in me if you were so closely trusted by a dragon god.”

  “Is it easier to believe I came from outside this realm?”

  “No.”

  Dalex slumped with a sigh. He felt a subtle change in the thrum of the vessel’s {astral engines}.

  “We have arrived over the city Batulan-bar,” Seventh said.

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  Hitasa spun around. “Already?”

  Seventh nodded. “I have engaged the ship's [dynamic camouflage] for the time being.”

  Dalex went to a window and looked down. At first, the city didn’t stand out. He saw only a canyon surrounded by green plains of grass and sparse tree cover. As his focus narrowed on the canyon, he saw detailed construction in its depths. Stone and brick structures jutted out of the walls and lined the canyon floor. Some of the buildings dwarfed the others, surrounded by thick roads or delicately carved terraces in the rocky walls.

  A wide river split the canyon, probably the same river that ran through Hitasa’s hometown. Large ships moved up and down the river or docked in rows along its banks. Several bridges connected the sides of the river, and others even spanned the walls of the canyon.

  Hitasa joined him at another nearby window. She gasped. “That is Batulan-bar. We were hundreds of miles from this city. How did we get here in five minutes?”

  “It’s a very fast airship,” Dalex said. “Is one of those big buildings a mutt hunter lodge?”

  She shook her head. “You can’t see the lodge from here. It’s built into the north canyon wall.” She cocked her head, adjusting her view of the landscape. “I am not sure which way is north from this vantage point.”

  “We’ll find out when we’re on the ground. Take us down, Seventh.”

  Dalex and Seventh went to the cockpit and she took the controls. While they flew down to a viable landing spot, not too close to the city but not too far away, Dalex lowered his voice and said, “I seem to attract trouble, and I think Hitasa does too. Is there anything we can do to give her some protection if I’m not around?”

  Seven nodded. “I will prepare something.”

  “And let’s see if we can convince her to change out of those rags.”

  ***

  Seventh landed the vessel a mile from the city in the grassy plains overlooking the canyon. Dalex disembarked first. He jogged out into the open and spread his arms wide, taking in the sun. Strong gusts of wind swept across the grassland, threatening to blow him over if he wasn’t careful. The pressure felt good on his skin. It rustled his tunic and trousers, making him feel like the sail of a tall ship at sea.

  Thankfully, Hitasa had accepted a new wardrobe, and Dalex had taken the chance to update his own outfit. They both wore Gaia Eta appropriate clothing fit for the common man and elf. Neither would stand out as too fine or too shabby.

  Hitasa hesitantly walked down the cargo ramp. When she set foot on solid ground, she looked back and was visibly shocked that she couldn’t see anything. The transport vessel was completely invisible. Spread out in its place were the endless plains. The {astral engines} were still audible, but not loud enough to be heard for any great distance.

  Seventh followed Hitasa out, and the cargo ramp retracted into the vessel, removing all visual sign that anything was there. Dalex heard the {astral engines} spin up. After a brief roar, it flew back into the sky without them.

  He jogged back to join the [android] and the elf. “You’re coming with us this time, Seventh?”

  “I am. The [stealth frigate’s] systems are mostly repaired. Its automated systems can finish the job from here.”

  “Wonderful!” Dalex pointed in the direction of the canyon. “Tally-ho, then.”

  ***

  They didn’t say much as they crossed the grasslands. The blowing wind drowned out anything below the volume of a shout.

  Halfway to the canyon rim, Dalex noticed an orange flag rippling in the wind. Below it was a small wooden shack. Hitasa explained there was a lift that descended into the canyon from the shack.

  When they reached the shack, the door was wide open. An old and withered beastkin man with ears like a goat’s sat on a stool inside, sleeping against a wall. His snoring was almost as loud as the wind. Dalex knocked on the open door loud enough to jolt him from his slumber. He looked groggily from human to elf to human-passing [android] and gave himself a slap on the left cheek.

  “No, you’re not dreaming,” Dalex said. “We’d like to go down to the city.”

  The old beastkin led them down a staircase carved into the canyon until they reached a sturdy wooden platform with a pair of rope-operated lifts. Each lift held a maximum of ten humanoids, so he had no trouble lowering the three of them down into the canyon proper. The wind quickly died down, though a cool breeze blew through the chasm from the west.

  Dalex studied the city as they slipped deeper into the canyon’s depths. Both walls of the canyon were a maze of stone homes, larger structures, and carved amphitheaters. Wooden scaffolding and chiseled walkways made traversing up and down as well as across the vertical city easy, at least if you had the stamina from living there for years. Save for a few smaller lifts, it did not look handicap accessible. In another life, that would have been a big problem for Dalex.

  Hitasa pointed across the river to the opposite canyon wall. “That’s the Batulan-bar Mutt Hunter Lodge.”

  Her finger led to five story structure that blended into the rock more than the buildings around it. Green flags hung from lamplit windows, displaying the gray skull of a hound. The bottom story looked open to the air, supported by a long row of thick columns.

  “Have you been here before?” Dalex asked Hitasa.

  “Once, a few years ago. My brother and I came here to see our uncle. He was a mutt hunter himself. That was the only time I met him. He died during a hunt a few months later.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. What made you want to see him?”

  Her eyes hardened. “Sitoa thought he might help us make paper. Elves who are hunters have a little more freedom than the rest of us. Not much more, but some. It was a mistake. He didn’t have access to any of the tools we needed and asking him drew too much attention from the Wolf Brigade.”

  She went quiet. Not catatonic quiet, but she didn’t elaborate further. Was paper important?

  “It occurs to me,” Dalex said, “that you know a lot about me, even if you don’t believe most of it. I can’t say I know the first thing about you.”

  She gave him a sideways glance but kept silent.

  “Why were you on that scaffolding. Why did Castreier kill your brother?”

  “You were there in Telman square. You must have heard the charges.”

  The lift touched down on solid ground and they walked onto a rocky outcropping. They stood at the edge of the projection, looking out over the city, and Dalex said, “I heard some of what Castreier said. Your fellow elves didn’t seem to think his word was worth much.”

  “It’s not, but, in the square, he more or less spoke the truth.”

  Dalex remembered the specific word Castreier had used. Sedition.

  “Were you and your brother revolutionaries of some kind?”

  Hitasa snorted. “That’s too grand a word to describe it, but maybe you could say we wanted to start a revolution. My brother and I had things we wanted to tell our people, words we thought they needed to hear. That probably would have been enough for my brother. Elven kind could hear what we said, read what we wrote, and maybe someone could make a revolution from there. But I–”

  She paused, and a shiver went through her like the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.

  “I wanted more. I wanted a spell; to coin a word of power that would kill a dragon.”