Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📕

“Lady Sadena knows, and she requested you do it,” Key said smirking at the girl who had grown into a seventeen year old woman of rather lovely proportions.

Rolling her eyes, Lanona groaned. “Sure. One wizard will pass on the job to another. Look. Moving rock is a tedious business. The nature of stone cannot be altered. It has to be moved. Wingsley was on the edge of a mountain range. Strange boulders rising out of the ground over there were less likely to be noticed. Calcumum is on flat land.”

“It is on coastal land,” Loid interrupted. “Why not have the rock end up in the sea?”

She blinked at him, partially because she did not know him. “And ruin the bay?”

“Do we care?” Loid asked, glancing to Key.

Nodding, Lanona said, “Of course we do. If those shipping merchants discover odd formations of rock blocking their ships in the bay, they would suspect something. Bad idea.”

“Why not move them as smaller rocks?” Tiler asked, leaning forward. “You don’t have to move them as boulders, do you?”

She drew in a breath. “Now…that might work. Smaller rocks. I’m not so sure I could do sand, but I could try that also.”

Key smiled. “Then you can do it?”

Looking to him again, Lanona nodded. “I can, but for what compensation?”

Leaning over to her with a look at Lady Renna, Key said, “For the swords I made for your people two years ago. You people of Sundri did not keep your part of the bargain, and I am still quite angry with you. But if you do this, and do a good job, I’ll consider your debt cleared.”

Glancing at Lady Renna, Lanona sighed, then nodded.

“Ok.” She rose from her seat. “When should I start, and how long should I take?”

With a nod and a smile, Key rose also. “Start right away and do a good job. Dinnis of Mistrim is the one you should answer to. If he is not satisfied, I’ll know about it.

“How extensive are these tunnels supposed to be?” Lanona asked, watching Key’s expression.

Thinking, Key said slowly, “Oh, very extensive. Try to make this your masterpiece.”

With a snort, Lanona smirked at Key. He was one who always talked about hard work as art.

“We will depart then, if you have no other business with us,” Lanona said, nodding to her lady.

Lady Renna rose also.

Key bowed, watching them go. “Alright then. See you in Calcumum, Wizard.”

“See us?” Lanona paused at the door. She had almost gone out. Looking back, she glanced also at the others. “You are going to Calcumum also?”

“I have business there,” Key said. “And I will be checking up on you.”

With a light groan Lanona nodded. “I see. Well, my lady will not be coming with me.”

“I didn’t expect she would,” he replied. But as he was about to finish his thought, he heard a thump on the wall then the door as if a scuffle had erupted outside. He set his hand on his mock Kolden blade and opened the door, urging the others to get back, though Tiler rose to join him.

Out in the hall Key saw Callen struggling with that merchant. Neither had a weapon in his hands though Callen obviously had the upper hand. The Sky Child was clawing for Callen’s face since Callen wore porter’s gloves and the demon could not find any other skin. So far, Callen held him at bay.

“What are you doing out here?” Key raised his sword to the merchant, his glare narrowing at him with a ferocity that made the demon actually quiver.

The Sky Child merchant jerked away from Callen and backed down the hall. “I heard you. You’re doing business with a wizard here. You’re going to Calcumum.”

“Our business is none yours, demon,” Key said as he passed Callen, marching down the hall towards the Sky Child.

“It is, if your master is dealing with wizards!” The Sky Child glared past them at the women who peered out the doorway with Loid.

Loid looked up at them then whispered that they ought to make an escape while Key and Tiler held the Sky Child off. The women ducked out, going down the hall in the opposite direction.

“You can’t get out that way! There is no back door!” the Sky Child shouted.

Key approached him, his sword up. “Like she needs a back door.”

The merchant only saw the two women turn the corner. He did not see them make a hole in the wall and walk though to the back of the building. Key knew they would need to give them a head start. That wizard was the tactile sort; only able to handle things she touched. Unlike Sadena and Soin, she could not divert bullets. Swords, maybe. But not bullets.

But the merchant turned to run. Key sprang after him, scrambling down the hallway. He could already predict what the demon was about to do. The streets were full of Sky Child soldiers, and the last thing they needed was to have them alerted to their group. Key grabbed the merchant and jerked him back into the lounge before the demon could reach the doors.

All the merchants and aristocrats rose at once, watching the bodyguard to the Kolden aristocrat chase into the room after the Sky Child merchant. The others of their party rushed out of the hall, Tiler urging Loid out into the street while Callen ran up to get their bags.

“You will not lay a finger on my master,” Key said, pointing his sword at the merchant.

The Sky Child scrambled to the far wall looking for a window he could break through since the human bodyguard was between him and the doorway. None of the aristocrats and merchants were armed, though among them was a captain of their military. The captain drew his gun. Seeing it, Key pulled his own hidden pistol from his holster right away and without thinking shot the captain.

The captain fell back. The room burst into shouts as Key walked further inside.

“All of you will get down on the ground.” Key kept his face hard, looking them over with all his strength to keep an intimidating stance so that fear rather than common sense would hold them in control. He remained there, watching over them while they backed off from him towards the wall. Callen rushed down the stairs with their packs.

“Come on, Key, let’s go!”

Key shook his head, not even looking back. “No. You go on ahead. I’ll meet you there.”

“There as in there? Or just at the station?” Callen snapped, halting just next to him. “You know Tiler won’t let you—”

“I don’t care, just go. I’ll get myself to the final meeting place.” Key kept his eyes on the merchant who was still trying to find something in the room to use as a weapon. So far all he could find were stubby steak knives next to the dinner plates.

Shrugging, Callen hurried out.

Taking another step into the room, Key smiled. “We’re going to be waiting here for a while.”

“I’ll kill you.” The merchant hissed through his teeth.

Smirking, Key shook his head only slightly. “No. You won’t.”

“Key! Behind you!”

Key whipped around, his sword meeting the fire iron in the fist of a burly cook. Tiler had jumped in then and sparred with an armed porter, dispatching him with two slashes. Jumping back, Key parried then stabbed the cook. The brown-eye cook shuddered, stumbling to his knees.

Key withdrew his sword.

“Come on, you idiot,” Tiler snapped. “I’m not leaving you behind.”

“Did they go? I was holding them back for you guys.” Key sprang to the door. He cast the room one sharp glance before exiting.

“That’s not how it works,” Tiler said, rushing through also. “We came to give you cover, not the other way around.”

They ran into an empty street, though. The vehicle had gone like Key had wanted. Though he was sure Loid would be angry with him, Callen seemed to understand his need for watching their backs rather than doing the other way around. Unfortunately two guards from Kolden without their master looked suspicious, and both men had to run to find a place to change their clothes for the next length of the journey.

Within the hour, Tiler found their contact again and traded their Kolden uniforms for some common dustman coats and hats. The pair of them walked out of town without so much as an eye batting at them, the soldiers still searching for the two bodyguards from Kolden. In the back of his mind, though, Key reminded himself that he would have to return to deal with the overpopulation of Sky Child soldiers in that town.

The streets of Calcumum were dirty in the human areas. The stone walkways went up and down the hills, meeting at the peak where the governor’s palace stood. Next to it was an elaborate prison for crooks and political captives. When Key and Tiler met their contact in the city market they learned of the real situation in Calcumum. It was much worse than Key had figured.

The former patriarch of the city was said to be languishing in a cold cell somewhere in the prison towers. The general human population of the city was so beaten down they were practically groveling in dust as the proud Sky Children trotted down the streets without a care. Also, the streets were almost as inundated with soldiers as in Wimanus. Three squadrons of soldiers patrolled the city streets in addition to the police force that regulated everything else. From Key’s view of the city, no human could aspire to any sort of position among the ruling class. Like the patriarch, all the aristocrats had been unseated and imprisoned without one collaborator to blame among them. Perhaps those early rulers of Calcumum had been just as proud as their current rulers, unwilling to let go of their ruling position without a fight.

“Ok,” Key murmured after their contact snuck off. He sat on the curb of a middle area of the town with Tiler, trying to look as pathetically beaten as the people trudging around him. “We need to meet up with Edman and the others soon. Going at it alone to the palace to get that boy is going to be extremely difficult.”

“Is there no way for a human to sneak up to the palace unnoticed?” Tiler asked, peering up at the stone building at the top of the hill.

Gazing up there also, Key shook his head. “No. Looking at this city, I’d say a human would stand out on the high streets. Only a slave with a Sky Child would be able to go, and it looks to me that even those seem to be numbered. We need to resort to magic.”

“Resort to magic,” Tiler murmured, glancing down the hill with his head ducked to make sure no one would harass them. “You talk like a blue-eye sometimes. You know that?”

Rising, Key slid back into the shadow of the alley. “Sorry.”

They hurried back through the alleys toward the danker part of the city behind the front walls. It really was the limit of human travel in that city anyway. What the patriarch of Wendora was asking really was impossible for a normal human. Knowledge of Sky Children wasn’t enough. They needed a witch, a magician,