Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [16]
“Why you?” Rhandh asked.
“Because I was the best shot with a crossbow. I was told to use them all. At least that part of my hire was accomplished.”
“The vullwings are not long distance fliers,” I said. “Where was your attack launched from?”
“That I will not answer. I would not be responsible for a reprisal against any who might still be at the site.”
I smiled and shrugged. “All right. I did not think you would tell us but it was worth the attempt.”
His answering smile matched mine, though thinner.
“Let me kick it out of him,” Kreeg said.
“No,” I said. “A beating would get nothing from this one. Watch him, though.”
I turned away toward Rannon and heard my name called. “Wait! Ruenn Maclang, wait.”
I looked back at Diken Graye, expecting him to ask now about his future. He did not.
“There is one more thing I would tell you,” he said. “There is one of your enemies I would name.”
I waited, as did we all, and inside of me was something that seemed afraid.
“The man who hired me,” he said. “The man who gave me the explosive quarrels. He had a false right hand. His name was Bryce Maclang.”
CHAPTER FIVE
SEAT OF EMPIRE
“His name was Bryce Maclang,” Diken Graye had said. And those words filled me with both elation and relief. My brother was alive! It seemed to me impossible that Graye could be lying outright, for he had mentioned a false right hand, and only I recalled the revolver that had blown up in Bryce’s grip just before we were sucked through the sphere gate to Talera. Even if someone had heard the name Bryce Maclang and urged Diken Graye to use it, that person could not have known of my brother’s hand without seeing him.
No! Bryce had to be alive. And this was the first clue I’d had of him.
Yet, mixed with my happiness was a darker emotion. If all that Graye had said was true, Bryce was working with those who had made themselves my enemies, and the enemies of people I cared about. There was no reason, of course, why my brother could not have joined a mercenary band. He would have been alone when he arrived on Talera—like myself—and on a planet such as this who could predict what companions one might be thrown among.
And, I realized suddenly, my brother surely could not know that it was my adopted country his verdredi band was attacking. I just needed to find him and tell him. Then we’d be together again. Perhaps, my thoughts ran, Bryce had even located our cousin Eric. Might not I get them both back at the same time? Or others of my Earth crew?
A faint voice in my head suggested that things wouldn’t be so simple, but the warning was easy to ignore as my mind turned toward a search. The first place to look was Trazull, on the Roshjavik Peninsula where Diken Graye had been hired. Bryce had done that hiring. With any luck he would be there still, recruiting others.
Before Trazull, however, I had to see Rannon safely back to her father. This proved easy enough to accomplish. Where our airship had crashed, the Shauval River still ran deep and swift from its upland birth, but soon our borrowed firewood barge carried us down to the vast, cedar-fringed plain of Nyshphal, down to where the Shauval was joined by the blue-green Coulder and the muddy Vehr. And just past that point lifted the rose-colored buildings of Timmuzz, the capital of Nyshphal and the home of Rannon and her family. My home too.
In childhood dreams of exotic cities, I had always pictured them with vastly tall towers and slim jade bridges running like sweet fairy magic between them. Timmuzz has no such towers, no such bridges. She has been built solidly by a practical people, erected on a simple plan with an eye toward both defense and function. And yet, she is lovely.
Few structures in Timmuzz stand more than four stories high, but they are roofed in tiles, and slates, and shingles of many colors. Only government buildings are cut from rock—marble and quartz and massive gray granite. The houses of the citizens are walled with rose-colored stucco that gleams bright and clean in the light. Polished woods and metals add luster to doors