Airlean Tales

Nicolina lit the candle with a spark of fire mana and sat back in her chair.

She watched the little wisp dance in the darkness of her study—a lonely little star defying the pressing black of night. The wax was pleasantly scented. Strawberry fields and azalea flowers. Nicolina breathed in and let the sweet smell press into her lungs. It laid heavily on her chest.

“She’s not dead, you know,” said a voice by the doorway.

Nicolina looked up at the figure rimmed by dim candlelight. “Only a matter of time,” she said plainly.

“She could succeed. Stranger miracles have happened.”

“I plan around probabilities, not possibilities, Thom.” She sat up and reached for her quill. “How many?”

Thom paused. His eyes flickered to the candle. “Maybe I should come back later.”

“How many, Thom?”

He sighed, a grimace crossing his mouth. “One. Two, if you’re counting Fairwen.”

“And the wounded?”

“Most will recover in time.”

“The top Three?”

“The First took some hits, but he’s got a strong system. He’ll bounce back quick. The Second’s got some overburn—she helped with the triage. Also fine. The Third’s basically untouched, he left to raise morale at Grimwall.”

Nicolina’s shoulders slumped. “Well. About the best I could ask for.” She stood and descended the steps from her chair. “I’ll make the rounds.”

“Lina, you need sleep.”

“So do you, yet here we are.” She stepped past him and vanished into the medical ward.

Every bed was occupied, and several chairs had been pulled into the room for yet others to rest. Nicolina was greeted by the endless chaos of beaten and battered bodies sprawled over rumpled covers, tattered clothing and dented armor, discarded weapons.

Every face, Nicolina knew. They were files in her cabinet, names in her journal, and one day, waning candles on her desk. She had long grown desensitized to the anguish written on their faces, but she looked, and absorbed, and her heart tried to remember what it was like to ache.

Markod, the Thirty-Sixth Hunter, was missing. Then he was the casualty Thom had spoken of. Nicolina would have to pen the condolence notice, vacate his cabinet, and slide his file into her already overburdened shelves. She’d pick a candle, too. Cinnamon and chocolate, maybe. He was always thieving triple dessert portions from the refreshments table—probably to pass on to his doting wife. Another widow, another funeral.

Nicolina’s gaze moved on. She passed over Loff, snoring and spread-eagled on a bed sagging under his bulk. Then Corpse Princess, the Seventh Hunter, reclined in the corner playing with a doll made of human bones, a cheery lullaby on her lips.

But then Nicolina stopped. Halcyon, the First Hunter, was awake.

He’d been so quiet and still that she almost hadn’t noticed, but he was there, in a sickbed, watching something intently with unmoving eyes. Nicolina followed the line of his gaze and found that it ended at Karis, currently sleeping in a chair with a drab blanket pulled up to her shoulders. He watched her like the ocean watched the moon, swept in by its lovely, inescapable pull.

Death and life, Nicolina thought. The unstoppable cycle.

She withdrew from the room and closed the door softly. She’d debrief him later. And find out why the hell the Dragon Whisperer had come inland.

When Nicolina stepped back into the tavern area, she was met with a small retinue of soldiers, tabards vibrant and trimmed with gold, armor engraved with beautiful, swirling vines. The retinue of a noble.

Asters above. She barely suppressed a groan. Just her luck. Complaints from the aristocracy.

The leading soldier stepped forward and bowed. “Announcing the presence of His Lordship, High Lord Roland Geppett of the Eminent House of the Heavenward Tree,” he said.

The soldier fell back in line, and Nicolina relaxed, just a little. It could certainly be worse. Lord Geppett was a hard man, but civil, and often open to reason. And he had a good reason for visitation; his son was, after all, currently in the Guild’s care.

The man in question swept into the room after his grandiose heralding. He was just as tall and foreboding as ever, towering high enough to put a permanent crick in Nicolina’s neck. Despite the late hour, he had spared nothing in appearance, donning all of his trappings and lapel pins and even his famous Hundred Battle Cloak, lined with the furs of beasts from a hundred different battles. Had they been borne by any other man, the grand garments would have seemed like needless posturing. But Nicolina knew better. Lord Roland Geppett was a man who valued status and power in equal measure, choosing to appear just as intimidating as he could enforce. He was not a humble man, but nor was he one to put on airs.

“Guildmaster Cotton,” Lord Geppett said. His voice was a low burn out of consideration for the late hour, but gilded with a stone-cold authority that was impossible to shake. “I’ve received word that my son has been admitted to your infirmary.”

Nicolina resisted the urge to clasp her hands behind her back. “That he has,” she said, forging her tone into something round and smooth, elegant, the preferred tone of the nobility.

“Then I will return him to the family estate at once,” said Lord Geppett.

“Very good,” said Nicolina.

“And I will question the attending physician on the matter of his biokey.”

Nicolina’s mouth tightened. Thom was on the brink of collapsing after tending Hunters for forty hours. The last thing he needed was an interrogation for a kind sacrifice he had made.

“The physician in question is otherwise occupied,” she said. “I have instructed him to take no note of the biokey. It will pass from his memory soon enough.”

“And how did he learn of it?” Lord Geppett said without pause. “I presume he had not the time to decipher it from scratch.”

“Of that I do not know.” But Nicolina had a feeling that the reason was related to the pretty little Hunter that Wes was always watching.

“Then I must question him,” Lord Geppett said.

Not on your life, Nicolina thought. Then, diplomatically: “The discretion of the Guild physicians is under my purview. I shall discover the source of the biokey and take according action.”

There was a flash in Lord Geppett’s eyes before it disappeared. “You? My heir’s wellbeing is my responsibility. I would thank you and your Hunters to remember that.”

Nicolina suppressed a flinch. Yes, Karis had taken a risk by bringing Wes to Thom. Had it been any other heir, the house lord would have been livid, accusing the Guild of subterfuge or house insurrection. Of course, if Karis had done anything differently, Wesley Geppett would probably be dead. House physicians were highly skilled in technical work, but they were unused to the pace and pressure that Thom weathered on a daily basis. To him, keeping someone from immediate death was as regular as morning coffee. A lesser man would have frozen up or shattered under the pressure long ago.

Lord Geppett nodded at a few of the soldiers, and they marched off to the madroom to retrieve Wes.

“I expect that, in the future, the sons of nobility are to be returned to their own estates,” he said in veiled warning.

“And on that day, Lord Geppett,” Nicolina said softly, “you would be the father of a corpse.”

Lord Geppett did not deign to acknowledge her comment. He swept from the room in just as much poise and grandeur as he had entered, the retinue of soldiers carrying Wes out on a stretcher.

Nicolina slumped in the nearest chair as the door slid shut. She would have to decide how to resolve this mess. Technically, she could place the blame on one of the dead field medics in Wes’s company. In their dying moments, they shared the only thing that would keep the young lord alive to the presiding Hunter, Karis Caelute, who enacted regen on grounds of medical emergency. A tidy testimony, and mostly believable. But such a falsehood could result in terrible repercussions for the medics’ families. A certified regener was to take their biokeys to the grave, even if it might result in the death of their charges. Nicolina could not make this decision lightly and endanger innocent people.

She closed her eyes and laid her head on the tavern table. No matter. It could wait. Some decisions were not meant to be made without sleep, and this was one of them.

If only she had that luxury all the time.