Trapped

He'd jumped to the wrong conclusion. And my clothes were now spattered with the blood and brains of a woman I once (might have) loved.

Bending over, I snarled into Xavier's face, "You didn't kill Dreamsinger, you killed the real Gretchen. How does that make you feel?"

I never got an answer. I hope he lived long enough to realize he wasn't some great Spark killer: just a stupid man who'd murdered a woman he found beautiful. But I'll never know if my message got through. By the time I'd got out my last word, Xavier was dead.

Oberon was dead too. Pelinor tried to help the big lobster… but there was no way to staunch the bleeding or repair the damage from metal shards gouging Oberon's brain. His pincers clutched convulsively, clack-clack, clack-clack, in some kind of postmortem reflex; Pelinor had to keep back for fear of getting sliced in two. But Oberon had already stopped breathing, unable to draw air through the mutilated mess of his mouth.

After a minute, the brown blood stopped flowing. It began to cake. The claw-twitching continued but with longer gaps between each clench.

Clack… clack.

Clack.

Clack.

Pelinor looked away, brushing his eyes with his hand. Impervia stepped over Xavier's corpse and went to kneel beside Oberon. "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritae Sanctae…"

If she'd prayed like that when Gretchen died, I hadn't heard it. Possibly Impervia had been too busy rowing the jolly-boat; or possibly, Magdalenes didn't pray for rich idle women who were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. They would pray, however, for anyone-even an alien-who died in righteous battle.

We all have standards for who is worthy of our prayer. I wondered if anyone would ever pray for Warwick Xavier.

17: BEACHHEAD

I made my way back to the jolly-boat. People peered surreptitiously from nearby fishing jacks: peeping over railings or around the corners of deckhouses, wondering if the shooting had stopped. A few slipped out of sight when they saw I'd noticed them-the folk of Crystal Bay had no intention of getting involved with whatever death and lunacy we'd brought to their town.

Inside the jolly-boat, Myoko was still unconscious in the Caryatid's arms. Blood had dried on Myoko's upper lip; I don't know why the Caryatid didn't wipe it away.

Annah had blood on her face too. Gretchen's blood. Annah laid Gretchen's corpse on the sand and began fussing with the arrangement of limbs, clothes, etc. She looked up as I approached.

"Oberon?" Annah asked.

"Dead. Xavier too."

"And he was the only Ring man here?"

"The only one we've seen." I glanced up the beach toward the center of the village. An empty street led from the docks to a muddy square where several horses stood at hitching posts. No people in sight. "We'll keep our eyes open for bully-boys," I said, "but if I were Elizabeth Tzekich, I wouldn't deplete my forces by leaving people in places like this. She knows she might run into Dreamsinger; she'll need all the troops she can get. Probably she dumped Xavier here because he was getting on her nerves."

Annah nodded. She spent a moment trying to arrange Gretchen's hands in the classic "Death is peaceful" pose: folded serenely across her chest. The hands were too limp to stay put; they kept slumping onto the sand. After several attempts, Annah gave up. "So what now?" she asked softly… as if she didn't want anyone else to hear. "Do we keep going on?"

"Sebastian is still out there. Do we leave him to Dreamsinger? Or the Ring of Knives? Or Jode?"

"If the boy's such a powerful psychic, maybe he can take care of himself."

I looked at her in surprise. "Are you suggesting we abandon him?"

She didn't answer; she was still gazing at Gretchen's body. Gretchen's corpse. Finally she said, "It's not about Sebastian, Phil. You know that. He's just the excuse we're using."

"What do you mean?"

"Impervia thinks this is a holy mission. She's received a heavenly calling and doesn't give a damn what it's about; all she cares is that God has finally given her a job. Pelinor's the same, but without the divine overtones. He didn't start pretending he was a knight just because he wanted to teach at the academy-to him, knighthood was a romantic ideal. A way to use his sword for more than forcing people to pay some pointless border tax. Pelinor's been hungering for a knightly quest the way Impervia's been hungering for a sacred vocation: to be lifted out of a humdrum existence and into something worthy."

After a moment, I nodded; Annah must have thought this all through back on Dainty Dinghy. I could imagine her waking early, before those of us who'd stayed up late drinking in The Pot of Gold. She might have gone quietly up to the deck, leaned against the rail, and watched the shoreline drift past as she asked herself why we'd let ourselves come this far. "Go on," I said.

"The Caryatid's here because Pelinor is. She loves him, you know; she'd never let him run off alone."

I tried not to gape. "She loves him?"